JIMMY PAGE, Sir Paul McCartney, David Gilmour, Pete Townshend and, er, Stuart Nevison!

East Lancashire businessman Stuart Nevison has been inducted into a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, after the Association of Professional Recording Services (APRS) awarded him a Fellowship.

He joins an illustrious list of not only performers, but the names behind some of pop music’s greatest hits.

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These include ‘fifth Beatle’ Sir George Martin, Rupert Neve, who created the recording console, and Ray Dolby OBE, who invented noise reduction techniques.

Former Burnley Grammar School students Stuart and Mark Crabtree founded AMS Neve, based in Billington Road, Burnley, which has provided audio equipment, such as mixing desks and amps, to create the scoring or soundtracks to films such as the James Bond Skyfall movie, King’s Speech, The Black Swan, Inception, 127 Hours and Toy Story 3.

Their inventions also helped forge the distinctive sounds of Prince, Peter Gabriel and Culture Club.

Stuart’s award is made ‘to recognise the excellence and achievement of those who have made a special contribution to the art, science and business of recording’.

He said: “The award is to do with the company we set up in Worsthorne in 1976. One of the products we developed was the Technological Digital Reverb System which has been used to make drum sounds, like the Phil Collins drums in In The Air Tonight.

“We were dealing in digital audio before compact discs. We made a product called AudioFile and that was the world’s first commercial hard disc digital recorder.

“We also digitally edited. Before digital editing, you had to take a magnetic tape, a razor blade and cut out the bits you didn’t want.

“Mark is the technical one and I ran around the world marketing it – we were the team that brought these digital audio products to the world.”

Stuart has since co-founded Globe Enterprises Ltd, which has seen the evolution of The Globe Centre in Accrington, and several successful regeneration projects in the town as well as AMS Technology Park in Burnley.

The award will be presented by Sir George Martin next month at a luncheon hosted by Tom Robinson at Richard Branson’s Roof Gardens restaurant in Kensington.

Stuart said: “This is an unbelievable honour.

“The list of Fellows is very short, and the majority are household names ranging from Sir Paul McCartney and Mark Knopfler, to Ray Dolby (Dolby noise reduction system) and Nile Rogers (musician/producer) “I join this year as a Fellow with Ray Davies, from the Kinks, and Mike Oldfield of Tubular Bells fame.

“The company I started with Mark changed not only rock music, but both sound for television and sound for film.

“Mark remains at the helm of the business AMS-Neve, and products from the company continue to dominate world markets.”