Feature: Don McGlashan - Loneliness of the Long Distance Strummer
Author: Mark Bell
He goes on to talk about a photo on the sleeve of Neil Young's 'Harvest' where the light refracts through holes in a barn wall, the band are sitting on hay bales, you get the picture...
"Just that idea of isolation and being able to sort of think our way through each song and not be distracted. Because we knew we hadn't had much rehearsal with the songs and we really needed to find the center of each one somehow. And so Ed really put a huge amount of energy into that."
Always an even-handed sort of a fellow, Don is also high in praise of engineer Tom Miskin, who took care of most of the button pushing, but also lent his considerable organisational skills to the sessions.
"It was great having Tom there, because apart from having great ears, he's also an extremely organised engineer who can keep track of multiple sessions. He's the kind of guy who will take notes as to what's being said in the room. So you'll go back months later and look at a whole bunch of takes and you'll read, 'Ross (Burge, drummer) liked this one' or 'Ross didn't like the cymbal crash' or something like that, which is really great."
With such a long gestation period there are naturally many other musical collaborators who also deserve mention. Of the core musicians, old Muttonbird mate Burge took care of the bulk of the drumming, doing a great job according to Don.
