Olympic Studios was a renowned British independent commercial recording studio based in Barnes, London. It is best known for its recordings of many artists throughout the late 1960s to the first decade of the 21st century, including Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, Ella Fitzgerald, Queen, Ray Charles, the Who, B.B King, Traffic, Prince, the Eagles, Eric Clapton, Madonna, Adele and Björk. It is often regarded as being as significant as Abbey Road Studios, and remains an important cultural landmark. The studio's sound mixing desks became famous when the technology and design they pioneered was manufactured commercially. Although much of Olympic has returned to its original purpose as a cinema, it also still maintains a small recording facility, designed with the help of original members of the studio's staff, who are now also involved in the construction of a much larger studio, performance and teaching space, to run alongside Olympic's cinema at the iconic location. First locations The first home of Olympic Sound Studios was in Central London in the late 1950s. It was owned by Angus McKenzie, who had purchased Larry Lyons's Olympia Studio in Fulham. McKenzie then took on a lease for a derelict synagogue situated at Carlton Street, in London's West End. In conjunction with Richard "Dick" Swettenham, McKenzie opened Olympic's Studio One, with a valve-based recording console from the Olympia Studio. Swettenham designed the first professional transistorised desk in the world, which was installed into studio One during 1960, along with the first four-track tape recorder in England. The studio first came to prominence in 1958, when its senior sound engineer John Timperley recorded music which was listed in the music magazine Melody Makers top ten ratings. John Timperley's assistant was Roger Savage, who quickly gained a reputation as a good sound balancer. In 1962, Terry Allen joined the company as an electronic engineer, assisting Dick Swettenham with his new transistorised sound desk. Allen became studio manager, and Timperley left the studios in late 1962, when Keith Grant was given the position of senior sound engineer. Another employee was Michael Ross-Trevor, who later joined CBS Records at the start of a long career in classical music recording. Across both the studio's original locations, several other young staff began their careers at Olympic Studios, among them Gus Dudgeon, who began as a tape operator and was later associated with Elton John, using