Deep Snow, Ice in the Loo and Baked Beans

 Just for a laugh, I've decided to post the blurb from the back of the Best Of Budgie LP. I do not intend to steal Roger Bain's intellectual property (he was the author of the blurb).

Budgie are a Welsh hard rock/heavy metal band from Cardiff. They are said to have influenced the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, as well as Metallica.  The following words appear on the back cover of 1979's Best Of Budgie:

Pre-flight Budgie - an album containing the best, i.e. the heaviest tracks from the first two seminal albums by this band.       

I first saw Budgie when Kingsley Ward, the mastermind behind Rockfield Studios, arranged for Burke and the lads to audition in his studio. I had just finished some heavy recording sessions with ''The Earth Blues Band'' who were later to change their name to ''Black Sabbath,'' and Kingsley thought I would be interested in hearing the Welsh answer to ''The Birmingham Bashers.'' Kingsley was quite right, I was.

Apparently the band had never met a ''Record Producer'' before, and expected me to arrive in a Rolls Royce, smoking a foot long cigar and wearing a nine carat gold knuckle duster! When they were told that their roadies had to meet me off the train at Gloucester station, they were quite relieved. I knew straight away I wanted to work with this band, and we agreed there and then to record the first album, despite the fact that it was now in the middle of winter and the snow lay five feet deep around the Welsh studio. Every playback was preceded by a fight for the best place in front of the parrafin stove, in fact Burke wore woolen gloves for most of the takes (so that's the secret of his heavy bass sound!); and those 'cordon bleu' trained roadies - I have never tasted baked beans on toast like that before! (what a glamorous life it is in showbusiness).

The personnel on these sessions reads as follows:
Burke Shelley - Bass Guitar/Vocals (studying to perfect a method of keeping his glasses on while poncing around on stage).
Tony Bourge - Lead Guitar, which he had stuffed with old newspapers in order to reduce the feedback from his amp (you should have taken the fish and chips out of the newspaper first Tony!).
Ray Phillips - Drums. An expert at a hundred miles per hour without recourse to unnatural substances.
And, of course, Tom Allom, whizz engineer, who despite his constant complaining about ice in the loo, and double portions of baked beans for breakfast, went on to success as producer of 'Judas Priest' and 'The Tourists.' We had fun recording these albums, and having been allowed to combine the best tracks, I feel that all dedicated Budgie fans (God help them!) will be in seventh heaven (that's just outside Cardiff you know) when they get this piece of recorded history onto their turntables.
Roger Bain
1980
(Ten years after the event, and I still wake up screaming.)