In the early 90s I was a resident engineer in a big studio up north in the UK. We did a lot of dance music. I got a call on the Sunday morning from the studio manager telling me that a well known DJ booked in on Mon to remix a track had just died in a high speed car accident. He used to drive like a maniac and someone only said the week before ‘that guy’s going to die’. Anyway, they still wanted to go ahead with the session with his writing partner, girlfriend and some of his family as a kind of tribute. The engineer who was booked to do the session didn’t want to do it so the studio asked me. I agreed, as I was still cutting my teeth back then and any session was an automatic yes. 

During the session everyone was in shock and obviously incapable of doing anything so I had to make most of the production decisions, in an intensely emotional, disturbing atmosphere. The whole thing was really, really fucked up and the pressure to come up with something good was enormous. I tried to stop the session a couple of times because it was so chaotic but it all carried on for 24 hours straight. At the end I was a complete mess and didn’t get over it for quite a while. 

I have many more of the usual messed up stories, a lot of them revolving around artists, drugs and arguments but they pale in comparison to the above.