He chased us all round the studio and we had to lock ourselves into another studio to prevent him getting us. He was a big guy. He came in the follow… - Martin Rushent

In [the early 1980s], making electronic music was a big job, particularly the way that I was doing it. To get the sounds I wanted, I might have 24 synthesizers playing one synth line, all programmed, all analogue and all drifting out of tune. It used to take hours and hours and hours. I don't know how we ever got through it.

It filled me with dread – she had a reputation for being difficult. She had been headlining on the Royal Command performance the night before we were due to start. She arrived and swept through reception looking like thunder and disappeared into the studio. I thought, ‘I’m the first here, I’d better go in and introduce myself’. I walked in and I said: ‘Morning Miss Bassey, my name is Martin Rushent and I’m going to be your new engineer and co-producer’. She threw a mic stand at me. She told me to get out. She apologised afterwards, I hasten to add.

I’d got all this new technology and we spent a year making the album, programming all these primitive computers. [The LinnDrum] sounded so much like real drums it was difficult to tell it apart. The tempo was absolutely precise because it all ran to a digital clock and the record just was precision itself. It was also very simple. If you actually analyse what was going on at any given moment in time there may be only four or five things going on, but it does the job."