David Tickle

Early career[edit]

Tickle was born on 6 September 1959 in Guildford, Surrey, the only son of a university professor father and an artistic mother. By his own account,^[1] he was mixing Red Buddha concerts at the age of 16, and mixed three singles for pop-rock quartet Liverpool Express, which achieved modest success on the UK Singles Chart in 1976 and 1977.


Through a friend he was introduced to New Zealand band Split Enz and laid down some tracks with them in a Manchester studio in early 1978.


He was hired soon after by Terry Melcher for a job at Ringo Starr's Ring O' Records label, and appointed the in-house engineer for the label's newly-acquired recording facility, Startling Studios, at Tittenhurst Park, John Lennon's former house and studio near Ascot, Berkshire. Tickle helped convert the studio from 16- to 24-track and lived on-site, later telling one interviewer "It was a great mansion, an 82-acre house, I was the only one to live there full time. I lived like a lord. Cooks, maids, the whole thing".


At Startling Studios, Tickle produced a further session with Split Enz, recording "I See Red", a punk-influenced single that became a hit in Australia and New Zealand. Although the band was keen to have Tickle produce their third album, Frenzy, they were overruled by their Australian management, who wanted a more experienced producer, and American Mallory Earl was drafted in. The band always regretted the decision, sensing Earl's work had failed to reach the levels of intensity and creativity their earlier sessions with Tickle had achieved.

Tickle never worked with Split Enz again, though he did produce the Practical Jokers album for The Swingers, the band formed by Split Enz co-founder Phil Judd. (Judd, however, was not a member of Split Enz while Tickle was their producer.) The Swingers' album included the major Australian/New Zealand hit single "Counting The Beat".


In 1981, Tickle was hired by the Stiff label to remix the single "Is Vic There?" by London new wave cult band Department S. He produced a fatter, slicker pop sound.


Later in the 1980s, Tickle produced hit singles and albums for several Canadian acts. Production credits during this era include Canadian and US chart hits by Red Rider (including "Human Race"), the first album by Platinum Blonde, which featured the Canadian hit singles "Doesn't Really Matter" and "Not In Love", and two albums by Gowan, which featured his Canadian top-10 hits "A Criminal Mind" and "Moonlight Desires" and "Strange Animal".


During that same era, Tickle began a long-running working relationship with Prince, for whom he would work as engineer and mixing engineer, co-producing portions of six albums, and as live sound engineer on Prince's "Purple Rain" tour.


Tickle was also involved in the recording of the new material. He worked front-of-house sound for the Purple Rain tour and mixed some of the singles taken from the soundtrack. As with Susan Rogers, that was the first time he had been involved in a Prince album from its inception.


“There was no clear objective with what the next album was going to be,” says Tickle. “It wasn’t like it started out and it was gonna be this specific focus. Prince would literally write a song a day and every three days or so we would go and do a full production on something. If you listen to the album, there’s actually quite a difference in the context of the songs themselves, and even in production and sonic value. That’s because when you worked with Prince what happened was he would say, ‘David. I’ve got a song. Get a studio’ - maybe after a show one night, or we may have a couple of days off. We'd start with the drum machine and I wouldn't leave the studio until it was mixed. Right from the first bass drum being printed. That could be 24, 48 hours, and on a couple of occasions we got into about 72, 76 hours. Without going to sleep. That was his thing. You go in, you start it, and you don't leave until it's done. And that moment in time is encapsulated.”


“Some of it is raggedy,” says Tickle. “It doesn’t sound like it was done super high end in a studio, particularly at that time, when a lot of stuff was very pristinely recorded. That’s why everything is so unique. We’d go in, do a song and once it was done, we’d leave it.”


“They had more input,” agrees David Tickle. “Prince would put down a drum machine, do some kind of guide vocal, because he may not have figured out all of his vocal moves yet, then say to Wendy and Lisa, ‘Hey, you go and put background vocals on this’ and we'd build the thing up for him.”