The Babys - Head First (Guitar Cover)

The Babys are a British Pop or Pop Rock band and in my mind one of the definitive power pop bands of the late 70’s.

“Head First” is the title track from the third studio album by the Babys “Head First” produced by James Stroud and Ron Nevison and released in January of 1979. The album featured primarily John Waite, Wally Stocker and Tony Brock.

Head First & Union Jack are two of my favorite albums and I will eventually cover every song on both albums so if you’re a Baby’s fan and want to learn to play these classics stay tuned.
"Head First" (Waite, Stocker & Brock) – 3:56
• John Waite – Bass & lead vocals
• Wally Stocker - Guitars
• Tony Brock - drums, percussion

The song is in the key of C major and revolves around an G to E chord in the verse and a little riff during the chorus. I’ve played this and Midnight Rendezvous in bands from the late 70’s until now, enduring timeless songs.

Obviously, I love Wally Stockers playing and consider him one of my favorite players, I really enjoy learning these Baby songs. Living in Atlanta I haven’t gotten a chance to see the Babys much but look forward to catching them soon. I did get to see John Waite recently and that was a thrill.

Equipment used in this video:
The process of final product you are seeing is as follows: I import the original track from iTunes into PreSonus Studio One, tempo map it in PreSonus Studio One, and record all of the guitar part as close as I can get them a track at a time, for reference I only used five tracks to record the guitar parts on this song.

I then buss the guitars to an effects track where I generally use EQ and Compression and then a Send for reverb. On the master I have a limiter and I usually master in the same workspace. All of the guitars are recorded through a Fractal Audio AXE FX III, I generally use Fractal presets and tweak (I actually have one Fractal Preset I named Wally Stocker) them a bit, and then I record the video on my iPhone 12, import the video onto my desktop where I use Adobe Premiere Elements to edit the video. I then drop the audio from the video and import my guitar tracks from Studio One.

On this track in the video, I used a 2005 Gibson, Les Paul Standard – AA Flame Cherry Sunburst which is a stock Les Paul.