“This is a real piece of Cult history from the Beggars Banquet arkive and absolutely cool looking label on this 2-inch tape box.
You can see it’s very clearly marked as “NOT! MASTER” so somebody definitely didn't want this “Ruff Mix” going out as an official release!
Interesting to see the producer nickname as Steve “Lugs” Brown as that was definitely not from the band as we always called him "Bodger Brown".
The story of recording “Sanctuary” has been well documented that we wanted to record at Olympic Sound Studios in London to try and get some kind of vibe from the bands who recorded there in the 60s and early 70s... primarily Free and Led Zeppelin from memory.
We didn't want to record in a sterile modern studio as we wanted something that had some friendly ghosts... and it was certainly a gamble that paid off.
In retrospect, and credit to Beggars for loaning us the money to record here because Olympic was exceptionally expensive considering it was actually quite an old-fashioned studio at the time.
I remember looking at the mixing board and laughing because I thought it looked like something from the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek (the original TV series version) as it was that old-fashioned haha
But it certainly had the magic... and the rest as they say is history”
Billy – June 2026