How Nick Griffiths Tamed a Power-Starved Club to Capture Pink Floyd's Ummagumma Live Disc

Nick Griffiths, the assistant engineer on Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma live sessions, had to get creative with the Pye Mobile Recording Unit at Birmingham’s Mothers Club (sometimes called the Moonlight Club). The mobile truck was parked outside, but the venue’s electrical supply was a joke—barely enough to power a kettle, let alone a 4-track tape machine and a lighting rig. Griffiths tapped into the club’s main breaker, but every time the band hit a loud chord, the voltage sagged, causing the tape reels to wobble and the pitch to drift.

The acoustics were just as brutal. Mothers Club was a low-ceilinged, carpeted basement with zero treatment—just damp squashy couches and hard walls that swallowed any high-end clarity. Griffiths had to cram eight microphones into a tiny stage area, fighting bleed from the drums into every vocal mic. To compensate, he used heavy limiting and close-miking, but the room’s boxy re