Like Trying to Catch Lightning in a Bottle

In 1980, a young musician and engineer, recently graduated from Cambridge with a degree in architecture, decided to start a music studio. That person was Philip Bagenal, and the studio he started was Eastcote Studios.

Situated north of Ladbroke Grove, Eastcote would go on to become one of the most important and influential music studios in London. It is where Massive Attack recorded their seminal first album, Blue Lines, where Neneh Cherry recorded, as well as Tricky and Seal in the 1980s and early 90s. Mute Records recorded many of their artists there, including Depeche Mode. In the late 90s, it became a central part of the brit pop scene with Placebo, Elastica, and Suede, and more recently, it is where a new generation of musicians—from Adele to the Arctic Monkeys, the Kaiser Chiefs to Mumford & Sons—created some of their greatest albums.

But Like Trying to Catch Lightning in a Bottle tells the story of so much more: of why it became so successful, about the bands you may never have heard of, the sessions that collapsed into chaos, and the triumphs on the other side. And about the anti-authoritarian sound magician that was Philip Bagenal.