NICK Moorbath smiles as he reaches an arm over the latest love in his life. “Isn’t she beautiful,” he grins. “Absolutely amazing.” The object of his affections — a huge 1980s mixing desk — is the centrepiece of Evolution, the recording studio set up by the musician, promoter, producer and general music industry insider. The console, a Trident Series 80B, is indeed a beauty. Rescued from a studio in Cornwall, where it was used to record the likes of the Stone Roses and Oasis, it has been stripped down and rebuilt at a cost of £35,000 and installed at his West Oxford studio.

For Nick, who has been a towering figure on the Oxford music scene for three decades, it is money well spent. “It was in bits in a shed when we found it,” he says, stroking its polished ash trim. “It has a lovely warm analogue sound — and there are only three left in Britain I can find; the rest have all been taken to America and are in studios in Nashville.” Nick’s journey from budding entrepreneur to recording studio owner has been long and eventful. He has crammed more into the past three decades than most of us will have fitted into a lifetime. There are few things in the industry Nick hasn’t tried.

As session keyboard player of 1990s bands Ride and Hurricane No 1, he toured the world and played the main stage at Glastonbury Festival.

As a promoter he staged the likes of Radiohead, Kings of Leon and Muse, and as a venue owner, he successfully ran Oxford’s premier live music club — the Zodiac.

And that’s just scratching the surface. Nick’s story started humbly enough in Kennington, where he attended the local primary followed by Matthew Arnold School. Musically, he was a late developer. He took private piano lessons from the age of 10, but only really got interested some years later when he taught himself the electric guitar.

When an American friend showed him how to play blues scales it changed his life.

“It taught me how to improvise and play along with other people, so I started playing the keyboard again.” He left school at 18, working as a van driver and sales rep for a fish company before starting the first of many businesses — Market Place Catering, which sold high-quality meals to pubs and restaurants.

“We made the best chicken Kiev you’ve ever tasted”, he laughs. “I had my feet on the ground from a young age,” he goes on. “I’m virtually unemployable as I’ve always worked for myself.” After selling his share of the business, he joined his first real band, Frank Fish and the Fins. “We didn’t make any money but had a really good time,” he says. When not playing he made a living planting trees along motorways.

“I was really good at it,” he says proudly. “I must have planted 70,000 of them.” Realising Oxford lacked a decent rehearsal studio, and still in his 20s, he converted an apple store at a Cumnor farm and created The Coldroom.

He also dabbled in sound engineering and together with friend Adrian Hicks, began putting on some of the bands he had seen at his studio, staging them at a club on Cowley Road called The Venue. Among them was a little known act called On a Friday — now relatively well known as Radiohead.

Fame also beckoned for Nick, when, in 1994, he was offered the job of keyboard player in Ride — then one of the biggest bands in the country. “It was great,” he says. “My third gig was on the main stage at Glastonbury in front of 30,000 people. I wasn’t even nervous.” But, with his business head on, he also fixed his sights on the project which would make him one of Oxford’s best-known men. Taking over the lease of The Venue, he reopened it in 1995 as the Zodiac. It wasn’t easy, he says: “The Venue was decrepit. It was an Edwardian building and the infrastructure was falling apart. But we had a real vision of what it could be. “We needed to knock it into shape but me and Adrian didn’t have enough money to do the place up so we borrowed from people who wanted to help us in return for shares.” They included members of most of the big Oxford bands of the time: Radiohead, Supergrass and, of course, Ride. “We were quite naive,” he grins. “We knew lots about putting on gigs but not about running venues. It was not all glamour, but Adrian and I worked well together. He was good at bookkeeping and I was good at booking bands. Lots of bands really liked the Zodiac, which is why they kept coming back even when they were big.” Coldplay, Snow Patrol, Kings of Leon, Robert Plant, Killers and Primal Scream all played at the club, along with Radiohead, who recorded the video to their breakthrough song Creep there.

Nick was also responsible for putting on their famous outdoor show in front of 40,000 fans in Oxford’s South Park in 2001. When Ride disbanded he joined another band, Hurricane No.1. And when it seemed like things couldn’t get any busier, he became a father. “I played 130 gigs with the band, was running the Zodiac and then my daughter, Mae, was born.” Hurricane No.1 stopped by mutual consent in 1999. But rather than take a rest, Nick joined local reggae outfit Dubwiser, and, after 11 years, sold the Zodiac to national venue operator Academy Music Group, who run it today as the O2 Academy. “I felt I couldn’t do anything else with it,” he says. “I’d had it for 11 years and knew it was time to move on. They made us a good offer though, and promised it would remain as a live music venue and that people would keep their jobs. I don’t regret it a bit.” The club closed for refurbishment, but not before a huge send-off featuring some of the bands who had helped make it a legendary venue — some, like The Candyskins, re-forming for the party. Nick continued to remain at the heart of local music, setting up A&N Music, later to become TCT Music, with local rock promoter Alan Day. “We put on 650 concerts in two years,” he says. “But I ended up doing loads of paperwork and that put me off going to gigs. I wanted to be creative again. We were still good friends but we’d had enough.” Alan was headhunted by rock promoter Kilimanjaro, where he now looks after some of the biggest names on the planet, while Nick concentrated on another venture, ticket agency wegottickets.com which he became involved with during the days of the Zodiac, and which operates from offices above the studio.

He also married long-term girlfriend Laila, with whom he has a daughter, 18-month-old Celeste (he also lives with Laila’s older daughter, Erin, 14). Again seeing a gap in the market, this time for a high-end recording studio, he opened Evolution on Osney Mead industrial estate in January, after a £150,000 refurbishment. He believes he has found his perfect niche. Business is going well and new bands are signing up to record there every week. “I’m really proud of it,” he says. “I get up in the morning and look forward to coming to work. I’m very content. And I get to go to bed a lot earlier than I used to!”

For more details on Evolution Recording Studios go to www.evolutionstudios.co.uk