Mike Hedges

Lore & Background

Hedges returned to the UK in 1969 and was working in Haywards Heath as a squash coach when he was offered a job as a tape op at London's Morgan Studios. His first engineer credit came in the form of Heatwave's Central Heating. In 1981, he left Morgan Studios to become a freelancer and start Playground Studios in Camden Town, then moved on to work at Abbey Road Studios for ten years. Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Associates, and Wah! were among some of his earliest clients. In 1990, he purchased Chateau de la Rouge Motte, a home in Domfront en Poiraie in the Normandy countryside, and retired for less than a month in 1992. He renovated the chateau to act as a new studio and outfitted it with a 16 channel EMI TG12345 Mark IV mixing desk, which he bought directly from Abbey Road Studios in 1983. The desk was originally installed in Abbey Road Studios, and had been used to record The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd and John Lennon's single 'Imagine'.

Reader's Guide

Hedges was born in Nottingham, England in 1954 and grew up in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), where he attended a Jesuit school. He comes from a Catholic family. He has four children.

Did You Know?

• He bought a 16 channel EMI TG12345 Mark IV mixing desk from Abbey Road Studios in 1983, which had been used to record Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon and John Lennon's 'Imagine'.
• Hedges greeted Manic Street Preachers with a hand covered in Normandy brandy and lit on fire, claiming that was how he welcomed every new band.
• In 2017, his EMI TG12345 Mark IV mixing desk was auctioned off for £1.4 million.