Peter Henderson
Peter Henderson started his musical career as assistant engineer, at George Martin’s Air Studios. He worked for Geoff Emerick – engineer of some of The Beatles’ most famous albums, including ‘Revolver’ and ‘Sergeant Pepper’. “He was my mentor,” says Peter. Having cut his teeth assisting Geoff on Paul McCartney’s ‘Wings at The Speed of Sound’, in 1977 Peter was offered the opportunity to engineer ‘Even In The Quietest Moments’ for Supertramp. “It was very cool at the time!” he agrees.
Clearly they liked what he did, as it forged a 5-year partnership co-producing three albums, not least ‘Breakfast in America’ and the live disc ‘Paris’. His most notable efforts included ‘The Logical Song’ and ‘Breakfast in America’ which picked up a Grammy in 1980 for Best Engineered Recording, Non-Classical. His final collaboration with the band was ‘Famous Last Words’, in the autumn of 1982.
Peter was drafted in at a late stage as co-producer for ‘Grace Under Pressure’, assisted by Frank Opolko and Robert Di Gioia. In August 1983 he was invited to come and meet the band in Toronto. “Rupert Hine was first choice I believe. At the time I was totally unfamiliar with their music, I have to say I was very impressed with Neil’s drumming,” he says. At the end of the session, he was asked if he could record a live project for Rush. “For some reason it didn’t happen,” he says. “Maybe my manage- ment asked for too much money!”
Peter returned to the UK to work on a number of projects with Paul McCartney, including the 1989 album ‘Flowers In The Dirt’ and its live follow-up ‘Tripping The Live Fantastic’, as well as working with a number of grungier bands across the pond. “As time went on, I wasn’t Division 1 anymore,” Peter says, explaining why he decided to turn to other things including designing a number of TV productions. As a sideline, he interviewed a number of artists (including Roger Waters) for Mojo.
Recently Peter has been working on a virtual drum kit follow-up to the popular ‘Drumkits from Hell’. “It’s called Superia Custom and Vintage,” he says. “We recorded 5 sets of drums, and we had 100,000 drum samples to edit!” He’s also remixing Harry Smith’s seminal ‘Anthology of American Folk’. “It was the blueprint for Dylan, Cohen, those New York artists,” says Peter.