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The mystery of what happened to the audio console used to record one of modern music's most iconic songs has been solved, with the two men responsible for its "punk death" confessing to the crime.
The 24-track console which was in the Brisbane studio the night The Saints blasted out I'm Stranded in 1976 had been the subject of a worldwide search by the man who witnessed music history being made.
Mark Moffatt was a 25-year-old rocker and engineer when he managed to capture frontman Chris Bailey, guitarist Ed Kuepper, drummer Ivor Hays and bassist Kym Bradshaw hammer out a template for punk music and inspire countless future stars with a sonic fury not heard until that moment, beating the Sex Pistols and The Clash to the punch.
Moffatt, now a producer in Nashville, had become interested in what had happened to the console and put the call out on Facebook.
It was known the console, custom built by Bruce Window Electronics (BWE), had been taken from the Brisbane studios to Hobart, installed at Nick Armstrong's Spectangle Studios in the late 1970s.
After that its whereabouts were unknown, until the renewed call for information got to the ear of Graham Himmelhoch-Mutton and Steve Jay, ABC employees working in Hobart at the time.
'Punk death' at the local tip
Jay was in the crew room at ABC Hobart in the 1980s the day colleague Graham Himmelhoch-Mutton came rushing in, shouting "have you got the Kingswood today?".
Jay said Himmelhoch-Mutton ordered him to drive to North Hobart, with the instruction "Spectangle Studios! I'll give directions, they're giving away their Bruce Window desk!"
"We heaved and lugged this horrendous behemoth into the back of the old HJ wagon, drove back to his place, hefted it into his garage, along with some of the most NASA looking ancillary parts and began to try to figure it out," Jay said.
He said upon inspection it was apparent the console's power supply was "rooted" and the custom-built internals "dusty as f***".
The pair then made the discovery that Jay admitted sealed the fate of the console: it was full of expensive German-made transformers.
"We gutted the console for these transformers and took the rest to the tip," Jay said.
'Mortification only just sinking in with me'
Himmelhoch-Mutton, now based in Sydney, said if he and Jay had known of the part the console had played in music history "things would be very different".
He described the fate of the console as being a "suitably punk death" but said the "mortification is only just sinking in with me".
Jay, who now lives in Melbourne, reacted to the news of The Saints connection to the console with a mixture of emotion.
"I am that philistine. That cretin who destroyed a piece of Australia's recording history. I feel ashamed of myself," he said.
"However, isn't that the nihilism that punk stood for? I didn't know what I wanted but I knew how to get it, I (well, didn't really want) to destroy.
"I am anarchy. I am utterly horrified. And right now, as I write this, I'm Stranded on my own.
"I've played 'Stranded' so many times and never knew we had that connection ... I too, feel like a complete philistine," Himmelhoch-Mutton said.
Moffatt took the news of the console's demise in his stride, thanking Himmelhoch-Mutton and Jay for helping to solve the mystery.
"Finding it in one piece was not really an expectation, and I am extremely grateful for the pics that turned up during the quest and the knowledge of it's eventual fate," Moffatt said.
Topics: music-industry, music, arts-and-entertainment, social-media, tas
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