BACK STREET GENIUS: DEREK TOMPKINS and SHIELD STUDIO
(Dave Clemo, Roger Kinsey, Mavis Tompkins, Shield Books, 2020)
Recording studios are an often overlooked piece of music history. The expensive recording costs (especially for young artists) puts musicians in workman mode with little time for the usual high jinx. However, studios are a vitally important cog in the musical industry and three local writers collaborate to not only tell the tale of Kettering’s Shield Studio but it’s wonderfully maverick owner, Derek Tompkins.
More expansive than its title suggests BACK STREET GENIUS: DEREK TOMPKINS AND SHIELD STUDIO also includes a hefty slice of social history and the development of recording sound. Derek Tompkins is the focus of this book and he’s the kind of loveable, mildly eccentric artist that only England produces (I’d draw career parallels with ‘Hurricane’ Smith). For example Derek was in his 30’s when he started his own band (simply because he could) and this book chronicles his time on the road with The Barry Hart Quartet and then The Q-Men before ill health found Derek opening Shield Studio.
Cultural events form a backdrop to this book and memorabilia peppers the pages and puts the era in context. Despite being authored by three writers ‘Back Street Genius: Derek Tompkins And Shield Studio’ flows evenly and it’s an easy read with all the technical jargon and terminology simplified (even for a technophobe like me).
Whatever your taste in music you’ll find something of interest from the teenybop of Barry Noble to the hard rock/proto-metal of the criminally underrated Black Widow.
‘Back Street Genius: Derek Tompkins And Shield Studio’ is the first in two volumes, the second of which will cover Beck Studio in Wellingborough, but this book is an enjoyable read and a fitting tribute to the man himself
Pete Dennis
Pulse Alternative Magazine
Jan 2021
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