A Tribute To David Lane

In memory of an amazing engineer

In November last year a much love and respected member of Richmond Film Services, David Lane, suddenly died.  It came as a big shock to everyone and the world of sound recording.  He was famous as the Nagra specialist but turned his skills to Audio Ltd radio mics and a variety of mixers.  Not only will he be deeply missed as an excellent engineer but also for his wonderful nature and personality.  British broadcaster and writer, Tom Vernon had got to know David through owning a Nagra and has written a very fitting tribute.

DEATH OF A SERVICEMAN

It is something necessary to record – something uncomfortably close to the end of an era.  An analogue sound engineer has just died.  He was the high priest of the Nagra: and anyone who had anything to do with professional reel-to-reel tape recording in Britain knew of him and respected him.

You could not add much to the reputation of the Nagra tape recorder - for decades it was the workhorse of practically every film crew in the land.  About the only plus possible was the name of David Lane.  Whenever someone wrote an advertisement for a second-hand machine, the words ‘Serviced by David Lane’ were an absolute guarantee of quality.  It was not just that he knew every last possible detail about his chosen machines, he had a feeling for them that made you ask yourself: were they even better?  They were often different or more capable, since he was known for his ingenious adaptations and conversions, for instance to specialist machines for sound transfer, which looked so good that you wanted one, even if you didn’t have any use for it.  He still had Nagras on the bench in his crowded workshop at Richmond Film Services when he died.

We now live in a de-skilled age in which mechanical precision matters less.  Smooth-running motors, delicate clutches, tape speeding precisely past finely-machined recording heads are on their way to museums along with those beautifully-worked brass sextants, over-complex engines, delightfully abstruse Victorian devices for performing tasks that are no longer necessary.  And their inventors, high priests and acolytes become history too.

Craft gives way to commerce and progress.  You do not need to be dedicated when you can cure a problem by chucking an old bit out and shoving a new one in: nor do you need precision workmanship when you can simply reprogram.  The great and exciting skill of electronic and mechanical diagnosis goes out of the window, or on to the computer screen, where it is much less fun and much more frustrating.

It is the inevitable fate of technicians and engineers to be superseded.  But how much poorer we are when yet another treasure-chest of knowledge and experience goes into oblivion.  And when the treasure was as rich and individual as David Lane’s, one wonders: he made it possible for us to record the world – but why didn’t we record him?

And such a kind and modest man, too.  He always had time to explain things to people who understood so much less than he did.  That was another form of service that came naturally.

Tom Vernon