Gray was revered by Radiohead's producer Nigel Godrich for his work on the Police's Reggatta de Blanc.[5] 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".[6]
Surrey Sound Studios
1975–1987
In 1975, Gray converted a co-operative hall building on Kingston Road, Leatherhead, in southern England, into a four-track recording studio named Surrey Sound Studios, on a budget of £1,200, with his brother Chris Gray as engineer.[7][8] Initially it was used as a rehearsal space and a demoing facility.
In 1977, the studio became 16-track, housing an Ampex MM1000 16-track tape machine and an Alice desk.[8] Amongst others The Police recorded their first album Outlandos d'Amour there using this setup.
In 1983, the studio underwent further refurbishment for two months, reopening with a newly-installed Harrison MR4 console, Otari MTR-90 tape machines (24-track and 2-track) and Sony tape decks and digital recorders.[9]
In 1987, Gray sold his studio and retired to Cornwall.[10] His last project was the production of the album Universal Sky, the third by local band the Viewers.
His younger son Tom is a well-known British luthier, under the name Gray Guitars.
1980–1981
In 1980, thanks to the developing Surrey Sound empire, Gray began running his own record label, Surrey Sound Records, from the Leatherhead base. Despite having no hit records on the label, the label managed to get lots of good deals. However, finances eventually ran out and the record company closed at the end of 1981.[9]
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".[11]
Collaborators
Artists for whom Nigel Gray produced or engineered include:
^"Radiohead Biography capitolmusic.ca". Archived from the original on 29 June 2006. Retrieved 10 February 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) Excerpt. Colin Greenwood remembers: "The running joke when we were making this record was that if we recorded a track that stretched over 3mn 50 sec., we'd say "Oh fuck, we've buggered it then. It's gone on too long." Of course, the irony is that the first single we're releasing is actually the longest song on the record. ("There There"). It was all recorded live in Oxford. We all got excited at the end because Nigel was trying to get Jonny to play like John McGeoch in Siouxsie And The Banshees. All the old farts in the band were in seventh heaven."
