Name Nigel Gray | Role Record Producer | |
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Nigel Gray (1947– 30 July 2016) was an English record producer. His album credits include Outlandos d'Amour (1978), Reggatta de Blanc (1979), and Zenyatta Mondatta (1980) for The Police, Kaleidoscope (1980) and Juju (1981) for Siouxsie and the Banshees, as well as five albums for Godley & Creme.
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Gray was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album for Zenyatta Mondatta (1981) and also won two Grammies for producer of Best Rock Performance ("Don't Stand So Close To Me") and Best Rock Instrumental ("Behind My Camel").
Gray was revered by Radiohead's producer Nigel Godrich for his work on the Police's Reggata de Blanc. Gray's production on Siouxsie and the Banshees' records with guitarist John McGeoch was also a reference for Godrich during the recording of Radiohead's "There There".
Surrey Sound Studios (1975-1987)
In 1974, Gray converted a village hall in Leatherhead in the south of England into a four-track recording studio named Surrey Sound Studios, with his brother Chris Gray as engineer. In 1977 the studio became 16-track and amongst others The Police recorded their first album Outlandos d'Amour there. In 1979, the studio upgraded again to 24-track and The Police, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Godley & Creme recorded albums. Singles from The Lotus Eaters and Latin Quarter made the UK Singles Chart. Other albums included those by The Professionals, Girlschool, Tank, Hazel O'Connor and The Eurogliders.
In 1987, Gray sold his studio and retired in Cornwall.
Death
On 31 July 2016, the members of The Police; Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland reacted on a social network to Gray's death writing: "Nigel Gray recorded the first three Police albums, the first two in his converted studio above a dairy in Leatherhead in Surrey. Nigel was a qualified medical doctor who followed his passion into music and was able to use his kindly bedside manner to coax three extraordinarily successful records from a band operating at the time on the tiniest of shoestring budgets. We simply couldn't have done it without him, that's the truth".
Collaborators
Artists for whom Nigel Gray has produced or engineered include: