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The 6 photographs shown above are BBC copyright

Photo 1: Rick with Nick R. Thomas, Sonia Beldom, Eric and Graham.
Photo 2: Stood up are Graham and Eric, then seated is Sonia's assistant, Trudi, then Sonia, Dave Dade, and Nick to the rear.

Nick R. Thomas explains : They were taken on the afternoon of Wednesday 15 February 1995 at the BBC Maida Vale Studios by David Greame-Baker as publicity shots for the Well Above Average documentary.

Eric, Graham and Rick turned up at 4pm. Eric was very ill with the flu (I'd had the same thing myself a few days earlier and it was NASTY!). The guys had done loads of interviews already that day (a figure of 14 was mentioned - surely not, even if they were all 5 minutes on local radio by phone?)

They sat vamping and strumming away the basic rhythm of The Things We Do For Love while Graeme snapped away. They brought their own guitars in but the piano was hired by the BBC at Eric or Philip Lisberg's request.

Playing the session took until 7pm. Eric's voice kept breaking on I'm Not In Love because of the cough. Several versions of some songs were recorded and they all lasted the same length of time - to the second!

There's a group shot of a moment of great concentration in the studio, all listening intently, was because the first half of one recording of Dreadlock Holiday and the second half of another were put together and Eric wanted to find out if you could hear the join. You couldn't.

You see in the shot that I'm next to him. I remember at one point turning and staring (he didn't notice - he was too busy listening!) and thinking how incredible it was, what an amazing privilege, not only to be 'in' on something like this but to have actually instigated it.

The guy in the shot with the great ZZ Top beard is Dave Dade, BBc session engineer.

I'm sure the guys would have loved to have gone home - especially Eric - as they had the Lloyd's of London gig the next day but they stayed and answered questions going right back to the Mindbenders for over an hour and many of the quotes were used (and credited) in Liam's excellent book.

An amazing day and these photos bring it all back.

Three photo's taken at the Labadoux Festival, May 2003, in Belgium.

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