It’s late 1972 and the UK is on the cusp of the beginning of Commercial Radio. Two London franchises have been awarded to London Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) and Capital Radio. Lintas Overseas, an advertising agency in New Fetter Lane that is part of the Unilever group, sees the potential for a recording studio aimed at the boom there would no doubt be in production to feed this new market. And what better place to put it than Euston Tower, the proposed home for Capital Radio and the London home of Thames Television. A lease is secured and two top BBC engineers are appointed to build a studio. The future is rosy. But getting Scorpio designed and built was challenging and when the project was finished there was little creative energy left to actually run it.

Also the people with the vision to create the facility had moved on in the corporate structure and by the time Capital goes on air in late 1973, Scorpio Studio manager Aidan Day has moved upstairs to take a senior role at Capital and not much happens that is commercially positive at Scorpio Sound.

Enter a new team. Paul Dallas is headhunted away from Chappell’s studio as new Studio Manager. He brings along technical wiz Sean Davis and hires Ray Hendriksen from Pye Studios and Peter Hoskins from Radio Luxembourg as the house balance engineers. Both are very experienced and respected mixers. With Paul comes a change in focus away from servicing commercial radio and jingles and into Music.
Changes are made to the equipment from the original setup. The 24 input Cadac console remains, but The Ampex MM1000 16 track is replaced with a newer MM1100, the latest Cadac “powerhouse’ monitors with twin 18” bass units replace the Altec based originals. Mono and stereo Fairchild Compressors are acquired as is a Cooper Timecube and an additional EMT 240 quad plate to complement the existing EMT plate.

Paul, Ray and Peter start promoting the studio to all their clients and are finding it a struggle. It’s a fine studio, with a large control room but the décor is pure BBC. Around this time Capital realised that they could get around the needle time restrictions by recording bands specifically for broadcast. The small 8 track studio at Capital was far too small for most bands so it was logical to book the big 16 track down stairs.
This proved to be the making of Scorpio. Through 1974 and into ’75 just about every chart act came through Scorpio’s doors and in doing so was often blown away by this excellent, if perhaps drab studio. Also around this time Dennis Weinreich arrives from Los Angeles. He is looking for a base to work out of and instantly hits it off with the Scorpio team. The reputation is starting to take hold and the book is filling up.