Fuselage studio ‘a crazy idea’

The 21ft front section of the 1963 Handley Page Dart Herald belongs to band member Mark Hollingsworth, who hopes who hopes one day to restore it to its original condition.

Fellow band member Mark Le Gallez said using the aircraft as a studio had been a novel idea.

‘It was just a crazy idea that Mark [Hollingsworth] had,’ he said. ‘I’m as daft as he is and I just went along with it.’

The session was a bit of a trip into the unknown.

‘We didn’t know if it was going to work, but we knew it was going to blow a force 10 over that weekend, which it did.’

Space was not an issue, according to Mr Le Gallez, who said there was plenty of room for the band to work in. He said he was confident that the final sound would be worth waiting for.

‘It was sounding good even unmixed,’ he said. ‘It’s the sound of band playing in a room, which is the way that I like to record.’

The aircraft clocked almost 41,000 hours of flying time, many of them in local skies.

‘In 1967 it was requisitioned by the Israelis to fly troops around during the Six-Day War, so it’s nice to use it for something more creative,’ said Mr Le Gallez.

In 1973, G- BAZJI was sold to British Island Airways. It was the first Dart Herald to be painted in the dark blue Air UK livery in 1979.

For more than 30 years, from 1985, it was used for smoke training with crews at Guernsey Airport. When the aircraft became unsafe Mr Hollingworth acquired it having made a cost neutral deal with the States.

He hopes to restore it to its former glory, replacing seats, rebuilding the galley and cockpit and perhaps repainting its graffiti-scarred exterior with its famous blue Air UK livery. It is situated at Rue des Auberts, the headquarters of Refco, the company of which he is a director.

The Crow Band hopes that their album will be out early next year. Mr Le Gallez said people could expect quite a lot of local references and friends of theirs had helped with narration.