Album dossier / 1985

No Jacket Required

Phil Collins · Pop/Rock

Phil Collins' third solo album was co-produced and engineered by Hugh Padgham, who had already forged the record's signature 'gated reverb' drum sound with Collins on Peter Gabriel's third LP and Collins' own Face Value; for No Jacket Required he re-tracked the live drums in the Townhouse's famed 'stone room' -- the same ambient space -- and layered them against Roland TR-808/909 drum-machine parts, later recalling in interviews that Collins 'was always sat next to me next to the mixing console, wanted to know what this knob did or that knob,' hungry for the latest Roland and Simmons gear. Assistant engineer Steve Chase worked the desk alongside Padgham across sessions at the Townhouse and Collins' home studio Old Croft in Shalford, Surrey (May-December 1984), while John Jacobs engineered a separate string session at AIR Studios, London; touring guitarist Daryl Stuermer, a co-writer on three tracks, recalled trading guitar and bass parts with Collins and bassist Leland Sklar over marathon days in the studio. 'Sussudio' and 'One More Night' both grew out of Collins improvising vocal lines over drum-machine loops rather than starting from finished lyrics, and the finished record -- mixed on the Townhouse's SSL 4000E console -- won Padgham a Producer of the Year Grammy and the album itself Album of the Year in 1986.