Going for a Song
GOING FOR A SONG
Kylie Minogue, Olly Murs and Ellie Goulding are just three of the high-profile artists that Jim has written songs for. As far back as he can remember, Jim Eliot (1989) always wanted to be a musician. He was obsessed with it – from the piano to the drums, he would try and play any instrument he could get his hands on, even going as far as to pull apart an old Speak & Spell machine when he found out you could modify it to create different sounds using the vowel keys. This kind of technical ingenuity was a necessity though because in the late 1980s there wasn’t a great deal of everyday access to music technology and schools of the time didn’t really understand or focus on the electronic music that so interested him. At prep school, he played percussion in the orchestra and on coming to Radley it was more of the same, with the choir and recitals taking centre stage. Having finally bought his own a synthesiser, around about the time of his first year at Radley, he had to make do with occasional access to a small room, hidden away in the music department where he could play drums and generally make noise. It took the rather radical intervention of a great music teacher, Mr Gunningham, to truly introduce music technology to Radley, as he brought keyboards, synthesisers and drum machines into the music school. It proved to be perfectly timed for Jim who, through 42
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his own work, was already well-versed in how to set up these systems. Working together they took this new technology and transformed the small room into a music technology suite for the boys to use, although he frequently kept hold of the keys for the room and tried to keep everyone else away! It was a start, but this was still the early stages of Radley working with music technology and at this point it was still just a side hobby for him. It was not until he bumped into a friend who had already left school and who was working for an advertising agency that Jim got his first glimpse into music as an industry, rather than a hobby. Knowing of his interest in music, his friend asked if he wanted to visit a recording studio, something he’d never been to before. He jumped at the chance. The studio in question was a sound dubbing studio, used for taking sound effects and placing them over pictures to be used in adverts, and whilst it wasn’t a music recording studio, it had all the same equipment in it. He had no idea that there were studios like this and he was completely blown away by it – the sound quality he heard was just incredible. Up until this point, all he’d been exposed to had been through pop bands and what he’d read in the NME, but this studio visit opened his eyes to how much work was done behind the scenes.
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As part of the Radleian Society’s careers programme, Beyond Radley, Jim Eliot (1989) spoke to us about his early pathway into music, what it’s like working in the industry today and why he thinks music is one of the most exciting places to be.
