Rockfield Studios

Rockfield Studios is a residential recording studio located in the Wye Valley in Monmouthshire, south-east Wales, close to the village of Rockfield. The studio was founded in 1963 by brothers Kingsley and Charles Ward.

Rockfield is a two-studio facility consisting of The Coach House and The Quadrangle. Both studios are in converted solid-stone farm buildings. Rockfield was one of the world's first recording studios to provide living accommodation for clients.

Constructed in 1968, The Coach House includes a large 150-square-metre (1,600 sq ft) live area with stone walls, a wooden ceiling and a Yamaha grand piano. It has a stone drum room, an acoustically variable second drum room, and two isolation booths. Recording equipment is based on a customised Neve 8128 recording console with vintage outboard processing, including Neve 1060 microphone amps, Rockfield's original Rosser Electronics microphone amps, API 550 equalisers and UREI 1176 compressors.

Artists who have recorded in The Coach House include Queen, Oasis, Bullet for My Valentine, Brian Eno, Sepultura, Jayce Lewis, Simple Minds, The Cure and Opeth.^{[citation needed]}

Constructed in 1973, The Quadrangle has a total of 170 square metres of recording space spread between the main area, with a Bösendorfer grand piano, two large variable acoustic drum rooms and three isolation booths. Recording equipment in the central control room is based on an MCI 500 Series in-line mixing console with outboard processing, including Neve 1061 microphone amps, Rockfield's original Rosser Electronics microphone amps, API 550 equalisers, and UREI 1176 compressors.

In the early days The Quadrangle was used by a new group, Queen, who recorded ‘Killer Queen’ here for the album ‘Sheer Heart Attack’ (1974). They recorded ‘A Night at the Opera’ here in 1975, including their hit single ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. The Quadrangle has also hosted such notable artists as Rush, Manic Street Preachers, Robert Plant, Shop Front Heroes, and Coldplay.^{[citation needed]}

The Ward family bought Amberley Court Farm in Rockfield, originally a Shire horse breeding centre, in the early 1950s and ran it as a livestock farm with 500 pigs and a herd of dairy cows. Brothers Kingsley and Charles Ward were educated at Abergavenny Grammar School. Charles liked the early rock and roll music of Elvis Presley and began playing an acoustic guitar that he had purchased for £5. In 1960 the brothers formed a band, the Charles Kingsley Combo, and Kingsley wrote songs which they recorded on a tape deck borrowed from a local businessman. The brothers decided to pursue a record deal and drove to EMI's pressing plant in Middlesex, London, where they were redirected to the label's offices in Manchester Square. That day, without an appointment, they met producer George Martin. He did not sign the brothers, but said the reason he arranged a meeting was that they were the first artists he had seen bring a portable reel-to-reel tape deck with them.

The Ward brothers returned to London the following year and met producer Joe Meek at his studio. Meek signed them, and the brothers recorded songs as The Charles Kingsley Creation and as The Thunderbolts. After observing Meek's studio techniques, they set up a recording studio of their own in an attic space at Rockfield with a Rosser Electronics mixing console and a Ferrograph tape machine. In 1961 the brothers began recording local bands in their studio, which they named Future Sounds Ltd, charging £5 per acetate.