I’ll never forget seeing the columns of black smoke spacing the eastern horizon of Los Angeles, rising vertically into the breezeless air, and thinking about the homes and livelihoods that were being destroyed. It was April 1992, I’d been in LA for a year and was having trouble finding work, and the riots were a dispiriting development.
Then Michael Cook called. An expat from Manchester, Michael was making a big name for himself as one of the leading DJs playing the LA rave scene of the time. He needed help with some demos he was working on.
So we set up my Juno 106 and Akai s1000 in Michael’s apartment on Dudley Avenue in Venice, a block from the beach. The demos were going well when something happened which caused the demos never to be completed.
Michael had recently been employed as an intern at Lol Creme’s studio in the Valley, he of course being a former member of Hotlegs and singer of all-time Rico fave Neanderthal Man, as well as a couple of other hits with his Stockport pals. There Michael had honed his sound design skills with a talented film student named Tarsem Singh.
After Tarsem directed the award-winning Losing My Religion video for REM his career took off and he was able to concentrate on his first love: TV commercials, at which he excelled like no other. He loved Michael’s sound work and wanted to use it as much as possible. My job was to weave music into the sound effects tapestry. And so a company, M62 Sound Design, was born. The name came from the highway which links our ancestral homes of Lancashire and Yorkshire in the UK.
Tarsem didn’t direct our first collaboration but I think he was the one who got us the job. Produced by the highly talented Wieden & Kennedy ad agency based in Portland and featuring rising tennis star André Agassi, this completely music and sound effects driven spot was a great way to start.
Rico's Reel 