BOLAN ACETATES

The Marc Bolan acetates article (RC 341) was interesting but George Rab says that I, Denis Blackham, was ‘Bobil’: this is incorrect. ‘Bobil’ was Bob Hill, a Trident cutting engineer, and I was ‘Bilbo’ a cutting engineer at IBC Studios. George Peckham started the trend of writing his nickname of ‘Porky’ in lacquer masters in 1969; He was formally a butcher, hence ‘Porky’; I was reading The Hobbit at the time and decided on ‘Bilbo’ for my nickname. The earlier Marc Bolan and T.Rex cutting was mainly shared between Bob Hill, Ray Staff (‘Rays’, another Trident cutting engineer), and George Peckham, ‘Porky’, who was at the time, the Beatles cutting engineer at Apple Studios. I cut Hot Love when I was a mastering engineer at IBC Studios (see image 10 of the article) and I still have my original acetate. This session was attended by Marc, June and Tony Visconti. Marc wore his leopard skin jacket (or was it a suit?). I remember thinking he had large hands, probably because he wasn’t overly tall. The main request was to cut the master as loud as the Beatles’ Hey Jude because they were both long tracks. I went on to master virtually every release for the Marc On Wax label in the 80s, and image 17 of the article (above, left) shows my handwritten label from Tape 1.

by Denis Blackham
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