M: I've been wanting to do stuff with Chris since the last time I did stuff with Chris. He actually got in touch with me and said, "I hear you're doing the Remasters. Do you want me to come down and help you out?" I said, "that would be brilliant, yeah great!" So that's how that came about.

C: Describe to me briefly, what do you do with a Remaster?

M: In the old days - pre-digital, you'd have a multi-track. You'd have a 24-track machine and that records onto the multi-track. That has to be mixed down to a two-track - left and right stereo. That is what you master from. That is the original master. The multi-track is not the original master.

C: So are we talking about just transferring from analogue to digital?

M: Yeah.

C: Not enhancing anything?

M: Yes you are, because the original two-track has not been enhanced - that's direct from the multi-track.

C: So when you were doing this for Kings, did you notice any significant differences? Was there something that stood out during that process?

M: I actually thought it sounded better than I remember it sounding.

C: Why did you choose Wales to record the album?

M: I didn't choose it.

C: It was the same studio that Bohemian Rhapsody was recorded in.

M: Was it?

C: Yeah, Rockfield in Monmouth.

M: I dunno. It was a pretty well used studio at the time. I dunno if it still is.

C: It's still family run. There's two up there now.

M: I haven't been there since. Chris chose it coz he liked it. That's what producers do - it's their job.

C: He's got a studio in Bath. Did you do any of the remastering there?

M: No, we did it in London. You can't do mastering in a recording studio. You have to go to a mastering studio - a mastering room.

C: If this has been ongoing for six months, how hard is it to keep quiet about it when you're chatting to fans on the Internet?

M: You can't say, "I'm gonna do this and do that", because I don't know if that's actually possible. For instance, there was a demo of Killer In The Home that I really wanted to include. But we recorded it on a cassette and there's nothing they could do with it. The cassette has stretched, it was all wowwing and fluttering all over the place and we couldn't edit it. It was just fucked, this thing. There was like nothing we could do with it. So if I had said this version of Killer In The Home is going on there... You see, I don't know what can be done, what the state of the tapes are, till I hear them - till we get them into the studio.

C: Technology can restore to a certain degree.

M: To a certain degree, yeah.

C: Was there a lot of technology used on restoring the demos?

M: No. We got rid of all the clicks and there's a certain amount of edits you won't notice.

C: Anything we should know about?

M: No, it's just like taking a bit from the middle and putting it in the beginning.

C: So you played around just to tidy them up.

M: Yeah, we were gonna leave them as they are, because people might say, "well they don't sound that good!" Well they never sounded good coz they're demos! Because we already had a deal, we didn't do the demos with a view to playing them to anyone else. We didn't need to impress anybody else with them. They were just getting our ideas down. So they were just for us - so they didn't have to be great.

C: You've had the cover re-created from the still of the video, because you couldn't get hold of the original.

M: What happened was, that the cover was not from a photo session. It was a video. And we did this video of Kings Of The Wild Frontier. We played the video back and the photographer took a still off the TV. We got that original video and I always thought this still came from it.

C: So did I!

M: It doesn't! When Mark sat down with it he said, "I've looked at every fucking frame and there's no sign of anything like that!" I said there must be. It isn't. It's not there. So I thought, "we've fucked it up!" I couldn't get hold of Ashworth, I don't know why he didn't wanna come back to me, but he didn't. We didn't have the original photography. So it was digitally recreated.

C: Now someone who had that slide got in touch with me...

M: Yeah, that bloke Steve.

C: ...who said he had the original print without the the text. But you said it was too late as the artwork had gone to the printers that day. So we could have got it, but the new sleeve looks ok.

M: Yeah it looks fine. It comes from the original cover.

(Marco looks at Carty's notes with a small recreated cover)

C: You may wanna look at the large CD sized print. You've cut off the lettering.

M: You know yourself when you're doing graphics, if you get a graphic and it's got lettering on it, you just can't take the lettering off. You can take it off, but there's nothing underneath.

C: You can air-brush it.

M: But you have to re-paint it all. So that's what Mark did. It looks fine.

C: I think they'll recognise the album.

M: Kings Of The Wild Frontier was printed and pressed in so many countries and went through millions and millions of copies. Every time you went to a different country you saw your album and thought, "it's a completely different colour!".

C: That's your pride and joy!

M: It's not the colour it's supposed to be. And that is just printing stuff. The difference in Printing in different countries.

C: I want to move away from Kings and come back to demos, because you've put a lot of demos on here, and you've moved the track listing round a little bit. All that info's already on this site, so I won't go into that now. But the Decca Demos. You said on Adam-Ant.net that Sony were interested in doing the Decca Demos. That was three years ago. Is there any movement on that?

M: Well there is actually. But the only movement has been in my brain. I'm sort of guessing. I don't know what there is. I know I could ask David Mantell, but I'd rather not. I don't know what fucking demos they did.

C: At the 2002 Ants Convention, David Mantell came up to the DJ booth with a Minidisc of the Decca Demos - this was 12 months after AntBox was released. He wanted us to play them, and I thought I'd better listen to them on my headphones first. I'll be honest Marco, the quality I was hearing was mind blowing. Miles better than anything I've ever heard. So they ARE out there. Is there something about you that says, "I'm not gonna go to the fan base and ask, "Has anyone got this?"" Are you just going to make do with what YOU can find?

M: It depends what it is I find.

C: Is it a pride in you that won't go to a person like David Mantell and...

(Marco laughs)

C: No. Seriously.

M: I don't wanna get other people involved telling me...I think I know how it should be.

C: Even with the Beatles Anthology for instance. Some of those demos and rare recordings were sourced from fans. The only copies in existence.

M: Sometimes if you involve people they say, "why didn't you do...?", "it should have had this demo in it!" Well I didn't put it in coz I didn't like it!.

C: The point I am trying to make is - get the best quality version of a particular demo. If it exists, Why not go out there and try and find it? At the end of the day, is the final product we're talking about.

M: I'm not that interested in the actual sound quality. I'm interested in if it's a good track.

C: I thought you would be interested in the sound quality!

M: I am. You've got to get the balance right There are other mixes for Dirk. There are other mixes of things I've got. I think there's a few of Digital Tenderness. There's a remix of Zerøx that Chris Hughes did, but they're not that good. Just coz they've never been heard. there's a reason they've never been heard - they're not that good. I'm not just gonna stick a load of stuff on that.

C: You mentioned in another interview about two demos, And So You Shall and Yellowbeard. How come these aren't listed? Is it the same thing? They're not really that good?

M: Yellowbeard's crap.

C: In your opinion.

M: Yeah. So You Shall wasn't supposed to be on Kings was it? No it wasn't. It was supposed to be on.... I dunno. It's hard to say. When we write these songs we're just doing them. When we did the Prince Charming demos, we'd only just finished Kings Of The Wild Frontier. So we didn't know that Prince Charming was going to exist. Everyone knows what happened next, but we were doing it, so we didn't know what was coming next.

C: Moving on to Prince Charming. Looking at the cover, that's undergone a transformation too.

M: We used the original photographs for that.

C: What about the background colour?

M: It's been re-done. Originally I said to Mark we need the original covers and blah, blah, blah. He said, "I wanna change the covers!" at this meeting at Sony, and everyone said, "Whoa! You can't change the covers!"

C: Sacrilege!

M: It was a bit yeah. I said, "you can't change the covers!" and he said, "no, let me try and do it and see what you think" So he did it and I thought it all worked.

C: The text around the edge. It stands out as a slightly different product but the same..

M: Yeah, but you haven't seen all the insides have you?

C: No. I was hoping you'd bring them.

(Marco laughs)

C: You included the Stand & Deliver demo on here - even though it's on AntBox coz you liked it?

M: Yes.

C: I've been getting emails about the b-sides. There're no b-sides on these.

M: No.

C: Why?

M: Because I want to put stuff out that hasn't been put out before.

C: Which brings me to another point. Press Darlings appeared on the US version of Kings. It didn't feature on B-Side Babies, because that was a US release. So in the UK, we've not heard that on CD.

M: Do you know the real reason why you've never heard it on CD?.

C: No.

M: The real reason is, I forgot all about it.

C: Until when?.

M: Since someone mentioned it the other day. I'd forgotten it entirely.

(Marco orders more cappuccino, the Cartographer a beer, and nothing for Carty - too busy)

C: I want you to look at this. This is B-Side Babies 2 compiled by Annet, AKA Ant Lady. It's a track listing of a possible compilation that could exist. She also has forgotten a track - Whip In My Valise. Have you ever thought about doing a Volume 2?

M: No.

C: There's tracks on there that have not been released - Lady, the B-side to Young Parisians, Press Darlings - same. Is it something you'd consider?.

M: I might do one day.

C: Are you keeping your cards close to your chest on that one?.

M: I haven't thought about it.

C: It's money for you. I'm trying to help. These BBC tapes! You get a bit more money and we can get these videos out!

M: We might do, we might do.

C: Something to think about then?.

M: Yeah, I'd just rather try and put out the things first that have never been out.

Part 3 continues here

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