COVENTRY Music Museum curator Pete Chambers BEM writes for the Observer.
I’m so sad to report the passing of John Lord, who was known to most in the city for masterminding Cabin Studios and the offshoot record label Sonar Records.
I had the pleasure of knowing John from way back in the early Cabin days, and he was always helpful and obliging a true gentleman, always allowing me access to the studios and the artists working in there.
John’s schooldays were spent at a boarding school in Southend.
In the holidays he worked in the spares department for Coventry Motor Mart (the family business) in the motorcycle shop on the London Road in Coventry.
This building would play an important part in his career many years later.
In 1959, he married Pauline and they had two daughters, Caroline in 1963 and Tessa in 1968.
He took over the family business, Coventry Motor Mart that had a shop in the Gaumont buildings at Jordan Well selling bicycles and scooters.
In 1968, Pauline and John started to manage the band The Ravens.
John had always wanted to write songs – specifically lyrics, and he met Graham Wale who played keyboards and sang in The Ravens.
John and Graham started meeting up and writing songs together once a week recording original songs on cassettes – Graham would play piano and John would write lyrics.
Much later, still based in Coventry, John had always wanted his own recording studio.
He had suitable premises above the old Coventry Motor Mart car showroom on the London Rd and made the dream come true and Cabin Studios were born.
As the studio took shape, a few bands used it for a rehearsal space – ‘Lhomme De Terre’ ‘X-Certs‘ ‘Hot Snacks’, ‘Team 23’.
In 1980 Cary had met vocalist Caron Joyce, Kip and Bill Gough (Swinging Cats) and Lhomme de Terre were asked to contribute a track to the ‘Boys And Girls Come Out To Play’ an EP organised by Guy Surtees from the Human Cabbages – another local Coventry band.
John and Graham’s song ‘Get A Grip’ was recorded and played on John Peel’s radio show.
Paul Sampson joined the team as an in house engineer and they had their own analogue eight-track studio.
Many bands recorded at Cabin including Courtiers Of Fashion, The Primitives, Catatonia, The La’s, Diesel Park West, The Pink Umbrellas, Armalite, Furious Apples, Crokodile Tears and the Coventry music scene was booming.
The studio closed in 2010 but the record and publishing companies are still going.
Moving on several years later, John came up with the concept of the ‘Mysterious Monks’ and The Sweethearts (also John and Graham).
Cary, John’s daughter, said: “Dad was very proud of the sonar and Cabin.
“We had lost dad to dementia a few years ago and he didn’t talk very much he preferred to sing and constantly hummed or sang to the staff at the nursing home where he had been living for the last six months and finally left us on September 5, falling asleep forever.
“RIP John Cyril Maudslay Lord.”
