Picture sent to Rajaz by Rupert

Some Camel thoughts...

"I cannot believe it's now exactly 25 years since my own personal Camel 'moment'. The "I can see your house from here" album was one of the first albums to be recorded in Farmyard Studios, Bucks, a recording environment that Trevor Morais and I put together in the buidlings and grounds of an Elizabethan country house in 1979. It was a residential recording studio and seemed to suit the band well.

The two most memorable musical moments for me were firstly the madness of coming up with "Remote Romance", not exactly a typical Camel piece! Primarily driven by Kit Watkins and Andy Ward as I recall, aided and abetted by my own background in synthesisers and electronic music, it certainly had the 'purists' howling; although ultimately it was accepted as the lighter-hearted side of the band, merely 'gone all electronic'. Various friends and non-singing musicians (not to mention the producer) interject throughout.

The other quite extraordinary moment for me was Andy Latimer's improvised solo on "Ice". I hadn't realised just how passionate a player he was. As I recall the solo was just one take, not as was already typical by that time - a composite of 'best bits' of a number of different takes. This was a fine example of consciousness-flow through musical expression that only a player entirely comfortable with his instrument can achieve. Unlike so many guitarists of his era bent on illustrating how many notes could be crammed into a solo or how much overall noise could be produced from one instrument, Andy's approach seem to be born out of less is more with each note having both flow and feel.

Overall, I felt that with Andy Latimer, there was always the threat of him sinking into self-doubts and worry. I determined early on, that there was a need to keep the vibe 'up' and fast-moving (something that for me works most of the time with most artists anyway). I felt Andy relax as the sessions progressed and be more and more content to let the album grow relatively organically and be steered by 'an outsider'. I remember Andy W talking to me about how much more Andy L seemed to be enjoying the process of recording, rather than being worried about it, as seemed to have been the case in the past."

Rupert