With no place to go, a group of them decided to build another studio called Rhinoceros in a building on the corner of Goulburn and Riley Street, directly across from the looming Surry Hills Police Station.
Which, the more they thought about it, sounded like a great idea! Shortly after, they invited all their mates to a ‘trash the studio’ party, turned the whole thing into matchwood and left. It was a total disaster for acoustic isolation he may as well have gutted the place. One day a contractor walked in and drilled two-inch holes through all the walls.
But changes to Ordinance 70 meant all those tinder-lined wooden buildings had to get up to code by installing fire extinguishers and sprinklers. Some of David’s more memorable moments included kicking off shows for Cold Chisel on their Set Fire to the Town tour and supporting Midnight Oil at the Royal Antler.īack in Surry Hills, Limousine’s lighting guy owned a rehearsal studio called Rhinoceros that doubled as their home base and demo studio. On the way home, they’d head back inland to places like Albury, Dubbo and Orange.
They’d drive the M1 down the coast from Queensland to Port Pirie, occasionally stop to unload the truck, set up the PA, make some mischief and leave before anybody noticed. He’d been touring the support circuit with his band, Limousine. Up to that point David, like most sound engineers, had been a reasonably successful musician. Neither of them had any idea it was the start of something big in Aussie music.
With it, David and Andrew bought the first SSL console shipped to Australia - an SSL 4000 series - and set it up at their newly minted Rhinoceros studio in Sydney. He guaranteed the loan that, at the time, was enough money to pick up a handful of Sydney properties. “I learnt that getting $250,000 from somebody was no different from getting $2000, you’ve just gotta be talking to the right guy.” Luckily Andrew Scott, David’s business partner, had a father who was the financial controller for Yates Seeds. “There was a lot of venture capital going around in the early ’80s,” remembered David. It was the ’80s, the only time in musical history when even a broke guitarist from Surry Hills with a bad case of GAS* could convince someone that investing in a studio was a good idea. O vernight, David Nicholas went from being a musician on the dole to owing a quarter of a million dollars.