Fairview was one of the first independent studios to find success outside London
(Image: Hull Daily Mail)
Tributes have been paid to an East Yorkshire man who led “an amazing life” steeped in music. Keith Herd, founder of Fairview Studios, has sadly passed away at the age of 89.
What began in the front room of a house – Fairview – in Willerby, “with a big fire going because we didn’t have any central heating”, later expanded into a stable in the garden that had housed Keith’s wife Vicky’s horse. With an extension built to accommodate increasing demand and newer equipment (much of it hand-built by Keith) for the evolving music recording scene, Fairview has gone on to achieve renown, with names including Def Leppard, Marty Wilde, Mick Ronson, The Housemartins, Robert Palmer, The Sisters Of Mercy and The Beautiful South entering its portals to cut tracks.
From the 1960s, when farmer’s son Keith first launched Fairview, in Great Gutter Lane, and right through the eras of disco, glam rock, the New Romantics and into R’n’B, indie and pop, Keith and his team helped artists old and new and gave acts in Hull an opportunity to record an album on their doorstep, while also pulling in names from across the country. In a post on Facebook, Fairview announced the sad passing of Keith, described as “founder, owner and the brains and hard work behind Fairview Recording Studio and Fairview Music”.
The post was met with many messages of condolence. One said: “Keith was a remarkable, brilliant and humble man, kind and helpful, always interested in the musicians who used his studio.
“I liked him immensely. Despite his humility, what he had achieved with Fairview was very, very special.
“The studio was literally built from the ground up, from modest home recording equipment to a professional multi-track studio capable of producing recordings on a par with many more well known London studios.” Another said: “Keith was the man with the gift of both personal warmth and pioneering curiosity.
“Always happy to share his experience and some pearls of wisdom and learning. Thanks for building a dream that offered so much to help with the music and projects over the decades.”
A further reply said: “Innovator…musician…comedy historian…genius technician…quiet raconteur…and a good man.”
Andrew Newlove has been Keith’s business partner and manager of Fairview Studios for a number of years. He said: “Keith was a big influence on my career; I’d known him from the 80s when I got a cassette done with him.
“We became friends and neighbours. I had been in various bands around Hull and guitar tech for some bands; I thought I’d stick in the building trade I was in until Jackie, Keith’s daughter, said, ‘would you come to work for us?’”
Through the connections made there, Andrew became good friends with Pete Doherty and went on to become his solo guitarist and tour manager, and tech and guitarist for The Libertines. “We did Glastonbury last year before Rod Stewart – and it’s all because of Keith.
“He was highly influential in what I’m doing now.” Keith’s daughter Jackie said her father, who would have been 90 in September, had led “an amazing life”.
She said: “He was still working at the beginning of this year; his whole passion was music and recording.” Jackie, who has a sister, Lisa, said the family hailed from Holmpton, near Withernsea, where Keith attended the village school and when he was 14 or 15, he worked on the family farm.
“His dad played the organ in church, which was possibly one of the things that inspired him. Mum and dad lived in Withernsea until I was two; we moved to Fairview in Willerby and dad started a studio in the front room of the house.
“He always wanted to have a recording studio and was in bands for years. At the back end of the garden was a stable where my mum had her horse; he had an eye on that for his studio.”
Jackie said: “Everyone always said what a gentleman he was and how much time he had for them.” In a series of videos recorded with the studio’s chief engineer John Spence for Fairview @ 50, in 2017, Keith spoke about the “good feeling” he had the moment he saw Fairview and the fact it had the perfect spare room in which to create a music studio.
He started with no equipment, barring some microphones, and the first recording he did was with Basil Kirchin in mid-1965, with Keith playing guitar and keyboard. “We had a big fire going because we didn’t have any central heating,” he said.
Keith went on to line the room with acoustic tiles and put a drum booth in the bay window. In 1970 they were able to build a wooden stable in the garden for Vicky’s horse, freeing up the barn it had occupied to create the studio.
Keith built a mixing desk over the space of a year-and-a-half, with things taking off “pretty quickly”. Keith described “doing admin, billing, cleaning, washing up and vaccing” and said: “It was hard work, a lot of the sessions went late into the night. A lot of the singers would ask us to arrange their backing, and we got a nucleus of good musicians.
“We got a really good set-up; we could do excellent back-up for mediocre singers and it made them sound pretty good. It brought the business on a lot.”
He said the 80s “were fantastic” with lots of work, people wanting cassettes, and Fairview was “well equipped” to provide them. Asked what he was most glad he bought, looking back over the years, Keith said it was his echo unit.
“It was the one thing rural studios couldn’t get, a really good echo… it really set us apart a bit. I can always tell on the old recordings whether it was done here or somewhere else just by the reverb.
“And the customers loved it. It wasn’t bettered until the digital ones came out.”
Speaking previously to the Hull Daily Mail, sound engineer and record producer Keith said it was after he worked with Mick Ronson and The Rats – Hull’s top local band at the time – that he moved his shoestring-budget studio into the barn out back. Ronson’s playing was so loud Keith could not get the mic far enough away not to overload it, and he was afraid the neighbours would complain.
Many in the music industry consider Keith to have pioneered music recording in northern England. In another earlier report, Keith said: “At the time I started there were no studios in Leeds or Sheffield.”
Did you know you can make Hull Live a preferred source of Hull news in Google, which will mean you get more of our breaking news, exclusives, and must-read stories straight away? Here’s more information about what this means and how to do it – you can also do it straight away by clicking here .