1st October, 2001

National Trust
Fax No.9251 1110

The Who's Who of Australian Rock compiled by Chris Spencer in 1987 and revised in 1989 is a fairly innacurate anthology of what we did at Festival in the late 60s and early 70s. Page 40 has my credits but there are so many contributions missing even in the Rock Era.

It must be remembered that in those days we also produced some great Australian Jazz Classics (John Sangster, George Golla amongst others) and some good country tracks such as 'Armstrong' for Reg Lindsay which was a National Number One. In fact going from my first day in Studio 'A' we created a great deal of Australian musical history.

We went from reel to reel recording ('Que Sera Sera' - Normie Rowe) to the first four track studio in Australia. In fact during the changeover I sat in the studio night and day for two weeks so that I would be able to understand how to operate it as an engineer as well as a producer. Engineers in those days were employed from 9 - 5 and I became aware that music is one of those products that is not run on a working day scale. Musicians are night people so I ran the artists and repertoire office during the day and the studio at night with a constant turnover of some fabulous talent.

We turned Studio 'A' into a very busy music factory, not forgetting that in those days Joe Halford was the other House Producer and turned out some very fine work. We became part of a system throughout Australia that put Australia on the commercial music map world wide. Since those 'springboard' days Australia has become one of the top 5 producers of commercial music in the world.

We studied American and English sound techniques and perfected them with our somewhat limited equipment, but we made a huge statement if you check the history of the product that came out of that room which is now part of Australian Music History.

Since our days of course, Australian music has gone from strength to strength but Studio 'A' played a major 'pioneering' role.

Studio 'A' has a huge list of credits over its long history including my opportunity to contribute. Even the great Neil Sedaka recorded his "Wheeling West Virginia" L.P. there with John Farrar (who wrote most of the music for "Grease") as the Arranger and myself as the Producer. It was a huge hit world wide. Then there were the nights I would spend with Johnny O'Keefe producing his vocals until daylight which would never have been logged but are nevertheless true.

Apart from my small contribution over six years, Studio 'A' has played a major role in the birth of an industry in Australia and it would be a great shame not to dedicate that room to Australia's musical history. I am sure that Festival and others have enough information and memorabilia to make it quite a brilliant permanent exhibition of the development of our musical culture.

Yours Very Sincerely

Pat Aulton (1967-1973)