Skylarking - Recording Process

Recording Process

The album was produced by Todd Rundgren after the band chose his name from a list of potential producers submitted by its label, Virgin Records. According to Dave Gregory, "We were called in and told: 'Look lads, your career's down the toilet unless you start to sell records in America.' So we were given this long list of American producers, and the only name on it I knew was Todd's." The colloboration with Rundgren proved to be difficult, especially for Partridge but ultimately very satisfying for the band.

The recording sessions took place in early 1986, at Rundgren's upstate New York recording studio. Rundgren convinced the band that the songs which Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding wrote would form a concept album. It was recorded track to track on one reel of 2 inch tape. The segue between "Summer's Cauldron" and "Grass" was performed in the studio. The sessions were fraught with tension, due to creative differences between Rundgren and Partridge. In the book XTC: Song Stories by Neville Farmer, Partridge says:

"(Rundgren) was so bloody sarcastic, which is rare with Americans. He's got it down to an extremely cruel art. He'd ask how you were going to do the vocals and you would stand in front of the mic and do one run through to clear your throat and he'd say, 'That was crap. I'll come down and I'll record me singing it and you can have me in your headphones to sing along to.' I just thought it was so insulting."

However, in the same interview, Partridge acknowledged Rundgren's contributions to the album, saying:

"He did do great things musically. The arrangements were brilliant and I don't know how he came up with them... The bloke is ludicrously smart when it comes to certain things."

Elsewhere, in Song Stories, Moulding called the finished product "my favourite album so far", even 12 years and several more albums after Skylarking's release. In a promotional insert included with their album Nonsvch, Partridge wrote "Musician and producer Todd Rundgren squeezed the XTC clay into its most complete/connected/cyclical record ever. Not an easy album to make for various ego reasons but time has humbled me into admitting that Todd conjured up some of the most magical production and arranging conceivable. A summer's day cooked into one cake."

Most of the album was recorded at Rundgren's studio in Woodstock, with Prairie Prince's drums being recorded in San Francisco. Partridge admitted that this caused some problems when recording "That's Really Super, Supergirl" due to the snare being sampled from Utopia's Deface the Music, forcing both Prince and Moulding to play around the beat. The solo was played by Gregory on Eric Clapton's famous psychedelic Gibson SG.