Episode 17: Stuart Epps (Producer/Engineer) Interview

Brian Tarquin's Guitar Trax Show

Stuart Epps’s ‘official’ career in music began in 1967 at Dick James Music (The Beatle’s first publisher) on New Oxford Street in London. Aged only 15, he’d been persuaded by his friend Clive Franks, who was the record cutter at DJM at the time, to leave school and apply to be a ‘runner’. Getting a job as an office boy, he found himself right in the middle of an incredibly vibrant and growing industry at one of its most exciting and formative times. Epps also began working in the demo studio at DJM and in a short time had learned everything he could about it. He was also lucky enough to be able to produce his first record with a band called ‘Birds of a Feather’, which he did at Trident Studios with Elton John as the session pianist and Rick Wakeman on the keyboards. Although it was a successful project, Epps was also interested in the business side of the industry so gradually things began to change. Elton’s next record, Elton John (The Black Album), was his ‘big one’ featuring huge orchestral scores for numbers like ‘Your Song’ and ‘Sixty Years On’. This project saw Epps take on a project management role away from the console working closely with now legendary Producer Gus Dudgeon – again at Trident Studios.
Stuart Epps engineered on many projects at The Mill throughout the 70s and 80s, working with Elton John, George Harrison, Bill Wyman and Paul Rodgers. The biggest change came in 1980 when Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin bought the studios and appointed Stuart as the studio manager. “I didn’t meet him for 3 months,” Stuart laughs “The Zeppelin myth always painted Page as being a dark disciple of Aleister Crowley – he was a real Howard Hughes character though, I can tell you – I didn’t see him that often, he was a strange guy, a total eccentric.”
It was Stuart’s work on the very last Led Zeppelin album ‘Coda’ in 1982, that lead to him being asked to produce the debut album for the New York based band ‘Twisted Sister’ for Atlantic Records in 1983, giving Stuart’s craft a true, transatlantic, rock appeal.

GUITAR TRAX is hosted by mulit-Emmy award winning guitarist Brian Tarquin featuring in- depth interviews with today’s hottest guitar legends and airs every Monday night from 10pm-12pm on NPR's WFIT 89.5FM on the Florida space coast and can be streamed on WFIT.org. In 2023 Brian’s music video “Speed of Sound” featuring Joe Satriani won Best Video of the Year by the Josie Music Awards. His all star album Brothers In Arms topped the metal radio charts peaking #7 on the NACC Loud Rock charts and #11 on the Metal Contraband charts. Both in 2022 & 2023 the Josie Music Awards nominated Tarquin for "Musician of the Year (Guitar)" and "Music Producer of the Year." In 2019 Tarquin received a Global Music Gold Award for his release Orlando In Heaven for “Best Album.” In 2023 the Hollywood Independent Music Awards nominated his company BHP Music-Guitar Trax Records for "Independent Record Label of the Year."