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Nowadays he's a successful producer in America, but for our immediate purposes Richard Dodd is remembered as an engineer and as one of the key backroom boys of the 70s. Like Pip Williams, Dodd worked in both the teen-pop and the nascent disco scene. Actually he worked in just about every field, but it's the stuff he engineered for Mike Chapman and Biddu that we should concentrate on. Chinn & Chapman came across him in the early Sweet sessions, produced by Phil Wainman; when they branched off into production with Mud, they took him along as well, which maybe explains why there was such a continuity of sound. As Pip remembers it: 'When we went in and did the sessions for "Crazy" and "Hypnosis", Richard Dodd said, "What kind of drum sound do you want, Mike?" And he said, "Oh just do your usual thing."' Dodd stayed with Chapman for several years, but he was also busy working with Biddu, engineering 'Kung Fu Fighting', 'I Love To Love' and all the other classics. 'For Biddu,' he says, 'his key man on the musical front was Gerry Shury, and on the technical front it was myself.' Which can only make you think what a damn good engineer he was, given the totally different sounds that he put together for Tina Charles and for Smokie. |
Eddie Amoo |