Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob West's podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is the one and only Tony Visconti, record
Speaker 1: producer extraordinary. So Tony, how do you produce a record?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm the guy in charge of everything. I found
Speaker 2: that out very early on. If anything goes rom I'm
Speaker 2: to blame. So I have to do a lot of
Speaker 2: planning before the group and myself actually sets foot in
Speaker 2: the studio, which would require pre production, which means you
Speaker 2: visit the band in their favorite space and you rehearse
Speaker 2: the songs and learn the songs. And then when I
Speaker 2: get into the studio, I have to be both a
Speaker 2: technician and a creative director. I think I qualify for
Speaker 2: the latter because I studied music I was like fifteen
Speaker 2: years old, and I play several instruments. I write orchestrations,
Speaker 2: and I understand how harmony and theory works. And I
Speaker 2: also understand rock and roll people too, because I'm one myself.
Speaker 2: I guess.
Speaker 1: Okay. So generally speaking, do people find you or are
Speaker 1: you looking for opportunities?
Speaker 2: It comes from all different directions. I have a really
Speaker 2: good manager who finds people for me and people contact him,
Speaker 2: but just recently, I was in Hamburg, Germany for the
Speaker 2: Ripabond Festival. It's like south By Southwest over there, and
Speaker 2: I saw a group called Daisy the Great two front
Speaker 2: female singers, and I thought they were fantastic. They played
Speaker 2: in the RIPA band and I found that they were
Speaker 2: from New York. They live in Brooklyn, So just yesterday
Speaker 2: I made my first record with them. So that was
Speaker 2: a direct face used to face contact with a group.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know, the world is totally different from when
Speaker 1: you began your career. So if you're dealing with these
Speaker 1: two women, A do they have a record company?
Speaker 2: You know, they have an indie label, which could mean anything.
Speaker 2: It's you know, I don't know what capital that label
Speaker 2: has or anything, but I'm always attracted to the music.
Speaker 2: It's that's where Mahart is. I love these girls. The
Speaker 2: music really got to me when I was in Hamburg
Speaker 2: and we had a writing session that started two days ago.
Speaker 2: The one of the girls came in with her guitar
Speaker 2: and just played about three chords and within an hour
Speaker 2: we had the structure of a song, the melodic and
Speaker 2: chord structure of a song, and then we chipped away
Speaker 2: at it for the past two days, so now I've
Speaker 2: actually recorded an entire song with them. It's just amazing
Speaker 2: how it works.
Speaker 1: So in this today's world, you can record the equipment
Speaker 1: just to get basics down is much cheaper ie digital computer,
Speaker 1: but it still requires a certain amount of money. So
Speaker 1: in the old days you might have hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars to make a record, whereas today frequently, even
Speaker 1: with acts that are well known, the budget's constricted relatively low.
Speaker 1: So an act like this, how much is the budget
Speaker 1: and how do you make it work?
Speaker 2: I would say, if I was going to make an
Speaker 2: album with them, we have some nice studios in Brooklyn
Speaker 2: and Manhattan where I live, where you can get them
Speaker 2: for about five hundred dollars a day. And I would
Speaker 2: only need, say, two weeks in a proper studio like that,
Speaker 2: just to record the drums. In my little place I've
Speaker 2: got here, I'm sitting in the twentieth Street in Manhattan.
Speaker 2: I could record vocals, guitars, saxophones, bass guitars, but not drums.
Speaker 2: It's just no space that big. So it really I
Speaker 2: make these albums more economical by having my own facility.
Speaker 2: So what do we say, like twenty grand at the minimum,
Speaker 2: I would say that, Yeah, okay, So you know you
Speaker 2: talk about getting drums right, and certainly in the pre
Speaker 2: internet era that was a big thing. In the big
Speaker 2: studio could certainly take days just to get the sound right.
Speaker 2: Many people today listen via earbuds. The goal in the
Speaker 2: seventies was to have the biggest stereo you could possibly
Speaker 2: have to get closer to the music, and now it's
Speaker 2: kind of the opposite. So how do you feel about
Speaker 2: this making records? Well, you know, I've got the Apple
Speaker 2: EarPods and they sound really great. They have the high
Speaker 2: end ones. You could hear a lot of low end
Speaker 2: on it. You could hear the width of a big
Speaker 2: stereo production. But you know a lot of kids can
Speaker 2: only afford like cheap and nasty things with on them. Still,
Speaker 2: you know, they're not Bluetooth, so I have to listen
Speaker 2: to what I do on everything. I've got these big
Speaker 2: expensive speakers in my studio. I've got smaller ones at home,
Speaker 2: and I've got to hear the Apple buds and somewhere
Speaker 2: you can make a mix that's going to sound great
Speaker 2: on everything. In fact, that's the wholemark of a good mix.
Speaker 2: It should sound great on everything. It might not sound
Speaker 2: the same, but it has to sound great.
Speaker 1: What are the speakers you listen to? What are the
Speaker 1: brand names? I have.
Speaker 2: A pair of genial X. I don't know. I think
Speaker 2: they I think they're German or Swiss or something like that.
Speaker 1: Actually they're Finish. I have upset myself.
Speaker 2: There go finish right. And I've got a pair of
Speaker 2: a bigger pair of Monetors from Barefoot. It's a company
Speaker 2: that I think is in Washington State and they make phenomenal,
Speaker 2: phenomenal speakers. That's what I listen to mainly.
Speaker 1: And in terms of recording equipment, in terms of a board,
Speaker 1: pro tools, how do you do it?
Speaker 2: I'm in pro tools almost exclusively. I have no board anymore.
Speaker 2: There's no need for it because I don't record drums.
Speaker 2: But I've got preamplifiers for and I've got an amazing
Speaker 2: set of microphones and so one two three phone. I
Speaker 2: have about ten preamps, which means I could record up
Speaker 2: to about one of them's got four inputs, so about
Speaker 2: fourteen microphones at the same time. But there's no need
Speaker 2: for a board anymore, not for my purposes since for.
Speaker 1: This deep how big is your monitor and how many monitors?
Speaker 2: How big is my Oh? What I'm looking at you
Speaker 2: on now?
Speaker 1: No, I'm talking about when you're recording, you get your
Speaker 1: pro tools rig it's on a computer, but you're watching
Speaker 1: a screen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm watching a screen.
Speaker 1: And is it one screen? Is it twenty inches thirty inches?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: No, I've got two twenty six inch screens and I
Speaker 2: stacked them one above the other really, yes, side by side,
Speaker 2: because it gives me more room for my speakers. And
Speaker 2: you know a lot of studios have their screens off
Speaker 2: to the right, and that means you spend half the
Speaker 2: session listening in your left ear. It's a ridiculous setup.
Speaker 2: So I put my screens on top of each other.
Speaker 2: They don't take up much space, and I have my
Speaker 2: when i'm mixing. When I'm working, I'm always in between
Speaker 2: the two speakers, always at all times.
Speaker 1: Okay, Now, you know, once the union era ended in
Speaker 1: the sixties, there were record producers and engineers. Everybody was
Speaker 1: independent except for a few people like a Warner Brothers.
Speaker 1: Then we hit an era where the engineers became producer. Personally,
Speaker 1: I found a lot of those people, although they had success,
Speaker 1: we're not as musically evolved or trained like you. So
Speaker 1: do you do the engineering yourself? Do have preferred engineer?
Speaker 1: How does it work?
Speaker 2: When I record drums and perhaps a live band. I
Speaker 2: do occasionally record a whole band in the studio, just
Speaker 2: like the good old days, I need an engineer. I can't.
Speaker 2: I have to concentrate on the music. I just can't
Speaker 2: twiddle the knobs during those serious moments, you know, when
Speaker 2: you're trying to get the best out of a band.
Speaker 2: So then I'm a director in the studio, a big studio,
Speaker 2: I'm a director. But when I come back to my studio,
Speaker 2: I don't use an engineer. I do all my recording myself.
Speaker 2: I'm always on one microphone, you know, with a singer
Speaker 2: or maybe a stereo output from a keyboard. It's easily
Speaker 2: manageable to do that and to give direction at the
Speaker 2: same time, So I don't. I don't need an engineer
Speaker 2: when I'm mixing, and I mix how they say inside
Speaker 2: the box. In the box, explain to my audience what
Speaker 2: that means. The means I do all the mixing in
Speaker 2: the computer itself. It never leaves the computer. However, I
Speaker 2: do have sixteen analog outputs to do that. If I
Speaker 2: want to, if the project wants a more analog sound
Speaker 2: which kind of has all the little bit of bits
Speaker 2: of distortion and you know, overblown base, I could come
Speaker 2: through sixteen channels of this thing called dangerous audio two bus.
Speaker 2: It is a it's a real magic trick for anybody
Speaker 2: who works inside the box, which is the computer, but
Speaker 2: takes it out of the box just to get an
Speaker 2: analog flavor and then it gets recorded back into the
Speaker 2: box again. The nice thing about digital, I mean, people
Speaker 2: say it's cold and all that, but digital is really true.
Speaker 2: What you put in comes out, it's not It doesn't
Speaker 2: color it in any way. So that's why we are
Speaker 2: now after we ask for this kind of magical recording
Speaker 2: all these years, now we'll finding we need all these
Speaker 2: techniques to mess it up again, to make it sound
Speaker 2: saturated and you know, blown out tape and all that.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the old days of the analogy hat all
Speaker 1: this outboard gear. So you have digital replications in the
Speaker 1: box of those sounds and effects you might want to use.
Speaker 2: Sure, I've got I've got some effects in analog gear still.
Speaker 2: And next door a friend of mine has this retro
Speaker 2: tape machine that we can I could use at anytime
Speaker 2: to get that real bad repeat echo, that slapback echo.
Speaker 2: But in pro tools, there are a lot of virtual
Speaker 2: apps that replicate the sound of a tape recorder or
Speaker 2: any kind of reverb. I've got a reverb that emulates
Speaker 2: Hansa Studios in Germany because I did my Bowie recordings
Speaker 2: there and I I sent a team over there to
Speaker 2: capture the reflections, make note of the wood panels. And
Speaker 2: it's called t verb. So for all you recording enthusiasts
Speaker 2: made by the company called Eventide and Teaset TV verb,
Speaker 2: you know they named it. I didn't name it, but
Speaker 2: it's called t verb in honor of me. And you
Speaker 2: can get that Bowie's hero vocal sound with this app easily.
Speaker 2: It's very easy to do.
Speaker 1: Okay, a little bit slower. You sent your team over there,
Speaker 1: then you made a deal with Eventide.
Speaker 2: Well, my team was even Tide. We worked together. I
Speaker 2: did a lot. I do a lot of things for them,
Speaker 2: and they do a lot of things for me. I've
Speaker 2: got all their new equipment, their old equipment. We're good friends.
Speaker 2: And I grew up ten blocks away from the guy
Speaker 2: who owns even Tide. Now Tony Aiello. We're both both
Speaker 2: Brooklyn boys.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we live in an era of vinyl fetishism.
Speaker 1: From my viewpoint, I'm eating up mature. It's one thing
Speaker 1: if it's recorded analog, it makes no sense to me
Speaker 1: to record at such a high res and pro tools
Speaker 1: get it down to analog. You have all the issues
Speaker 1: that we're aware of. What is the tracking angle, the
Speaker 1: inside groove, the outside groove, all these other things. What's
Speaker 1: your take on today's vinyl mania.
Speaker 2: I'm very pleased with the way vinyl sounds now. Because
Speaker 2: we could record, we could make vinyls louder than they
Speaker 2: ever were, which was always a problem, especially with lengthy
Speaker 2: sides like in the prog rock days. Groups you used
Speaker 2: to like to make forty even fifty minute albums, which
Speaker 2: you get, that's the law of diminishing returns. You only
Speaker 2: have so many grooves from the label to the you know,
Speaker 2: beginning of the record. So now, because of computer technology,
Speaker 2: even the cutting lathes are working at speeds that a
Speaker 2: human brain can't work at. Because in the old days,
Speaker 2: when you wanted to widen the groove, you had a
Speaker 2: little wheel and the engineer did it by hand to
Speaker 2: open up the groove for a very loud passage, and
Speaker 2: when it's quiet, he would close the groove by hand.
Speaker 2: And now the computer does this about ten times quicker,
Speaker 2: therefore optimizing the space between the beginning of a vinyl
Speaker 2: and the end of a vinyl. So this is a
Speaker 2: good thing that's happened. I like new vinyls. They sound
Speaker 2: better than ever.
Speaker 1: Let's say you cut something what at won ninety two
Speaker 1: in pro tools, and then it is ultimately rendered to vinyl.
Speaker 1: And let's see you're listening to the one ninety two version.
Speaker 1: You haven't scaled it down. Are they just different listening
Speaker 1: experiences or do you feel that one is superior?
Speaker 2: They should be the same. One ninety two has got
Speaker 2: so many bits in it that it's it's almost a
Speaker 2: smooth curved analog sound, you know. And if you look
Speaker 2: at these on an acilloscope you could see digital is.
Speaker 2: It looks like steps in a Mario game, you know,
Speaker 2: a Nintendo game. It looks like steps that you would climb.
Speaker 2: Whereas a pure analog single is a curve, it's very smooth.
Speaker 2: So one ninety two is got so many bits jammed
Speaker 2: into per second that it resembles a curve, very closely,
Speaker 2: so if you transfer one ninety two to vinyl, it'll
Speaker 2: probably be the same. But vinyl has the one artifact
Speaker 2: that it's a medium. It's got that plastic sound that
Speaker 2: you're not very aware of all the time. But analog
Speaker 2: sounds warm because of the vinyl itself. That's one of
Speaker 2: the reasons vinyl has a warm, kind of loose kind
Speaker 2: of sound to it. But if you listen to the
Speaker 2: one nine two, it would sound incredible. I think from
Speaker 2: forty eight Killer Hurts Up A mix sounds pretty good
Speaker 2: if you're doing all the right things, if you're recording
Speaker 2: fat you know, nice pre am and nice bass sounds
Speaker 2: and all that. From forty a K, which is I
Speaker 2: think uh DVDs of forty AK it sounds good. It
Speaker 2: doesn't sound horrible. You know, who's got who's got these
Speaker 2: big like you said, Bob, who's got these big speakers
Speaker 2: in the living room anymore? Who gets a shit? Really? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 2: even the older people are listening on on headphones and
Speaker 2: in near earbods, EarPods.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you know there's so many takes out there.
Speaker 1: There are some engineers who say the sound you like
Speaker 1: from vinyl is actually distortion you're talking about the plastic itself.
Speaker 1: Can you go a little deeper there?
Speaker 2: The plastic itself adds the distortion. Uh, it's a physical process.
Speaker 2: It it's it's gonna you're hearing something from outside the music.
Speaker 2: It's the physical world, the groove and the vinyl. It's
Speaker 2: a medium. Like if you just, you know, scratched a
Speaker 2: chalk on a blackboard. It's a medium. You'll hear that
Speaker 2: surface noise. That's what the word I'm looking for, which
Speaker 2: everyone really talks about when they analyze a vinyl recording,
Speaker 2: how much surface noise is there compared to how much
Speaker 2: musical content is there. So that's the problem we have
Speaker 2: with vinyl. And if you keep your sides short, you
Speaker 2: will never hear surface noise. I recommend no more than
Speaker 2: eighteen minutes per side, because beyond that you will be
Speaker 2: losing a dB for every minute. That's actually a ratio,
Speaker 2: it's a law in vinyl cutting.
Speaker 1: So if we were at your house and it was
Speaker 1: equally EASi or difficult, and I say I'm going to
Speaker 1: play it on either vinyl or play it at one
Speaker 1: ninety two, which would you prefer.
Speaker 2: With absolutely no coloration, you would prefer the one ninety
Speaker 2: two with the digital surface noise, et cetera. It still
Speaker 2: sounds great. It's just slight. It will sound slightly different,
Speaker 2: and maybe only I would Maybe if you gave me
Speaker 2: a blind fall test, I couldn't tell the difference, except
Speaker 2: I would. Maybe somebody putting the toe arm down on
Speaker 2: the record might give it away. But I you know,
Speaker 2: a well cut final that has an eighteen minute maximum
Speaker 2: side and a one ninety two file, it's going to
Speaker 2: sound pretty close to each other.
Speaker 1: So have you always been a technology geek? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, from the good old days when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: I used to take radios apart. And I had a
Speaker 2: little radio once and it was like I took it
Speaker 2: out of my mom's kitchen. But I bought a ten
Speaker 2: inch speaker from Lafayette Street. Oh wow, Canal Street, Canal.
Speaker 1: I thought you talking about the company Lafayette, which was
Speaker 1: the whole thing long time ago.
Speaker 2: It's actually Canal and Lafayette when there was all these
Speaker 2: geeky electronic parts places. And I bought a ten inch speaker,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to hook up my very naively, I
Speaker 2: wanted to hook up my mother's AM radio to those
Speaker 2: ten inge speakers and I made a little box for
Speaker 2: it to put the speaker in. That was my first
Speaker 2: speaker I ever built. And I was about fourteen years old.
Speaker 1: Well, this is the dark, agers, there's no internet. How
Speaker 1: did you know how to do this?
Speaker 2: I had a good friend who went to Brooklyn Tech
Speaker 2: High School. He was my best friend. He lived around
Speaker 2: the corner for me in bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and he
Speaker 2: could do He was good with the soldering iron and
Speaker 2: taught me how to do that. But what we actually
Speaker 2: did this. He said, you know, there's not much power
Speaker 2: in your mother's radio to power this tenange speaker. So
Speaker 2: he built a little transistor circuit. At the time, they
Speaker 2: just came out, and he built a little amplifier that
Speaker 2: he put inside and it worked that. Actually, I was
Speaker 2: in my room. I used to listen to the Alan
Speaker 2: Freed Show, the Jocko Show on radio and all that,
Speaker 2: and I could really crank that ten inch speaker. Because
Speaker 2: of Bruce's intovention, my mom, My mom flipped out. She says,
Speaker 2: you broke my radio, you know, and in those days
Speaker 2: a home only owned one radio. My home did anyway,
Speaker 2: you know. But she was okay, she was happy I
Speaker 2: went into this career. So you know, I was okay
Speaker 2: after that.
Speaker 1: Okay, you know computers. The Apple Tube comes out at
Speaker 1: the end of the seventies, the Mac comes out in
Speaker 1: the mid eighties, the Internet hits in the nineties. Were
Speaker 1: you an early adopter? Where did you come into the
Speaker 1: computer world.
Speaker 2: It's a good question. I got a what you call
Speaker 2: a desktop in the seventies. You know, it looks like
Speaker 2: a big cheese grater there the first when they first
Speaker 2: one they brought out, and I wasn't on a laptop.
Speaker 2: I was using this and I had a monitor which
Speaker 2: was extremely expensive in lo fi, and you know, a
Speaker 2: visual monitored. And a friend came around and I had
Speaker 2: a rack full of gear from playing live and all that,
Speaker 2: and that's when I began. It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: I don't think I started on pro Tools. They they
Speaker 2: had only a four track thing called digit Design or
Speaker 2: something like that. They weren't they weren't pro Tools yet.
Speaker 2: And then there was this German company who made Logic.
Speaker 2: So Logic was the game changer from uh they went
Speaker 2: a track when pro Tools were still four track. So
Speaker 2: I switched over to the Logic brand and I started
Speaker 2: to make really good, good recordings at home and what
Speaker 2: I ended up doing was because I didn't have an
Speaker 2: analog tape machine. I would do a lot of tricky stuff,
Speaker 2: a lot of editing the in the UH in pro
Speaker 2: tools or logic, and then I would there were some
Speaker 2: studios that already had it too. I would bring my
Speaker 2: files there and we'd lock them up with the twenty
Speaker 2: four track tape or the sixteen track tape that we had,
Speaker 2: so I could do a lot of work at home,
Speaker 2: which was inexpensive on editing, and then go with the
Speaker 2: edited files back and put it on the the tape
Speaker 2: that had the analog drums recorded on it and all that.
Speaker 2: So I did this really quite early in the game seventies.
Speaker 2: I can't remember what year, but probably seventy nine around then,
Speaker 2: seventy nine to eighty.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have this external piece of equipment. Needless to say,
Speaker 1: almost no one cuts on analog tape anymore, for no
Speaker 1: other reason. You can't really even get it. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you use your system, will it sound to a train deer?
Speaker 1: Will it sound just like tape?
Speaker 2: Pretty much? So I have had so many people tell
Speaker 2: me that you're an analog guy. I can hear it,
Speaker 2: you know, And I'm mixing in the box, you know.
Speaker 2: So that's that's good. It's a good thing that I could.
Speaker 2: I could capture that sound again by the way I do.
Speaker 2: When I have these clients who can afford it, we
Speaker 2: do use twenty four and forty eight track. Going back
Speaker 2: to to an analog studio. There are plenty of them
Speaker 2: still in use, but the clients have to be quite
Speaker 2: wealthy to use it. And at the end of maybe
Speaker 2: two weeks of recording drums, et cetera and things like that,
Speaker 2: then we'll have the engineer put everything into pro tools.
Speaker 2: But we could work for an analog for like the
Speaker 2: two weeks time, and then once it's in pro tools,
Speaker 2: then I could do what I normally do.
Speaker 1: Okay, in the old days, if you were a big act,
Speaker 1: you'd go through rezillion reels of tape, just if you
Speaker 1: go into a studio when you're recording on a studo
Speaker 1: or something. Since tape is expensive in not in volume,
Speaker 1: just use the tapes over and over again, or do
Speaker 1: you do at old school record it.
Speaker 2: Once we shelve it, you could use it over and
Speaker 2: over again. Tape has quite a long life. There's only
Speaker 2: one brand now anyway, and thank god it's good, doesn't
Speaker 2: shed as much. It used to be sickening to play
Speaker 2: a tape all day long. And then you go and
Speaker 2: take the tape off the machine and you see this
Speaker 2: little mountain of oxide that was shedded from the tape
Speaker 2: going past the heads for hours and hours on end.
Speaker 2: And then you can actually sometimes hold the tape up
Speaker 2: to a light and you could see through the tape.
Speaker 2: It's a horrible medium, it really, it's archaic, But what
Speaker 2: studios do nowadays, this is a really nice trick. And
Speaker 2: you could do it with a machine called Stuoter. Because
Speaker 2: it's got three heads instead of the traditional two heads.
Speaker 2: You can actually record a session on tape and simultaneously
Speaker 2: play it back into a computer. And as soon as
Speaker 2: it comes off the record tape, it hits a playback
Speaker 2: tape and it goes into pro Tools like within a
Speaker 2: split second. That is quite a modern day of ing now.
Speaker 2: So after you've got the drums and all that done,
Speaker 2: you could then open up pro Tools and listen to
Speaker 2: it and it just sounds fantastic. You can't get it
Speaker 2: fresher than that, you know, Okay.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to growing up. People may not realize
Speaker 1: that a ten inch speaker is actually pretty big. It'd
Speaker 1: be pretty loud. So what'd your parents say when you're
Speaker 1: playing the radio through this amplified ten inch speaker?
Speaker 2: Oh, everything you can think of, like shut that thing off,
Speaker 2: turn it down, but it you know, I'd say, it
Speaker 2: sounds so good loud mom, you know. And she was
Speaker 2: more sympathetic. My dad. Dad just couldn't tolerate it, you know.
Speaker 2: And he hated the music. He hated rock and roll.
Speaker 1: And your parents did what for a living?
Speaker 2: My father was many things. He was a shipwright in
Speaker 2: the World War Two, so he built ships with the
Speaker 2: in the navy yard, the Berkley Navy Yard. Then he
Speaker 2: afterwards found it was like a kind of all around
Speaker 2: handyman guy. So he became a professional, sorry, a professional carpenter,
Speaker 2: and he was a union member and built a lot
Speaker 2: of houses on Long Island in those days. He would
Speaker 2: just go off in his car. We lived in Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: He'd go off in his car and after the cement
Speaker 2: work has put down the foundation, he would put the
Speaker 2: timber and the lumber and start building the house. Quite
Speaker 2: often he'd build a house single handedly. One day he
Speaker 2: took me just he wanted me to hold up a
Speaker 2: beam while he nailed it on the other end, you know,
Speaker 2: and I had too. He wanted to make a man
Speaker 2: of me, he said. So it took two weeks of
Speaker 2: my life and my hands were full of splinters and
Speaker 2: cuts and all that. And I said, Dad, I'm just
Speaker 2: not going to be a carpenter. You got to get
Speaker 2: used to it. But he was. He was a good guy.
Speaker 2: He taught me music. He taught me how to play
Speaker 2: mandolin and guitar, and he played accordion too, So we
Speaker 2: used to jam together. And thanks to him, I knew
Speaker 2: all the songs from the thirties and the forties, you know,
Speaker 2: the music that he grew up with, the nineteen thirties
Speaker 2: and forties.
Speaker 1: Right right right, So he literally taught you. He would
Speaker 1: get the instrument out and say this is how you do.
Speaker 2: It, yes, and this is I got my first ukulele
Speaker 2: at five years old, and it came with a book.
Speaker 2: The strings were colored strings. The book had colored the
Speaker 2: colored strings equivalent in the book, and I would just
Speaker 2: put my finger where the dot was on the right
Speaker 2: colored string, and I was playing. By the end of
Speaker 2: the day, I was playing a few of the songs
Speaker 2: in the book and within a couple of weeks they
Speaker 2: got me a proper This is a plastic ukulele with
Speaker 2: the popeye and olive oil decops all over it. Real
Speaker 2: Woolworth's piece of dung. But anyway, about three months later
Speaker 2: they went out and got me a wooden ukulele and
Speaker 2: I started really, you know, jamming on that thing. He
Speaker 2: was a good man, it was really. He knew I
Speaker 2: had talent, and he nurtured me.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is Brooklyn in the forties and fifties. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of how I've had to put this,
Speaker 1: you know, you gotta be wary of anything you say today.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of ethnicities. There were Jews, there
Speaker 1: were Italians. Was this well, you know, were you you
Speaker 1: have an Italian last name? Was this something that was
Speaker 1: part of your upbringing?
Speaker 2: Yes. I lived in what is now called Bourham Hill,
Speaker 2: which we used to just call it downtown downtown Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: So I lived on Warren Street between Hoyt and Smith Street,
Speaker 2: pretty close to the shopping area that was not too
Speaker 2: far away. And our building had basically all Italians in
Speaker 2: it because my grandfather owned it, So we had Italians
Speaker 2: on We lived on the ground floor and we had
Speaker 2: Italians in the middle floor and on the upper floor,
Speaker 2: and next door we had a Sicilian family who owned
Speaker 2: that house, and you know, we were Neapolitans, not that
Speaker 2: I could speak any Italian, but there was like a
Speaker 2: lot of love lost between Sicilians and Neapolitans, so we
Speaker 2: had that little battle going on, you know. But my
Speaker 2: mother made friends easily because on the other side of
Speaker 2: the street around the corner was Wykoff Street, which was
Speaker 2: all black, all black people, and my mother used to
Speaker 2: go to the end of the garden and she had
Speaker 2: a friend. I forget what her name was, but they
Speaker 2: addressed each other as you know, missus Smith and Missus Visconti,
Speaker 2: and they got on. They would chat for about an
Speaker 2: hour each time and wouldn't invite each other in each
Speaker 2: other's houses, but they became good friends. Across the street,
Speaker 2: we had this crazy guy who had a junkyard. He
Speaker 2: just like was dangerous if you got close to his
Speaker 2: junk yard and you wanted to like peek in. And
Speaker 2: at once I went in and sat on a tractor.
Speaker 2: He nearly killed me, you know, chased me off the
Speaker 2: tractor and I ran back across the street to my
Speaker 2: home down the street. We had Irish people all on
Speaker 2: us the same street, and we had Hispanic people, and
Speaker 2: we all got along kids in the street, you know,
Speaker 2: playing hopscotch, ring Aleivio, all these crazy street game. You
Speaker 2: can only play it in the middle of the street.
Speaker 2: And you needed a lot of chalk to make all
Speaker 2: the patterns. And all that. We weren't you know, I
Speaker 2: guess you can gather that we weren't wealthy. We were
Speaker 2: quite working class. But I got toys at Christmas. I
Speaker 2: got the ugulele. I got some fun stuff. And my
Speaker 2: mother was a fantastic Italian cook. She would cook and
Speaker 2: sing in the kitchen at the same time. And her
Speaker 2: sauce or gravy with depending on your ethnic what you
Speaker 2: want to call it started two days before Sunday because
Speaker 2: she reduced that those jars of tomatoes to just liquid gold.
Speaker 2: It was just delicious. And she would sing Italian songs
Speaker 2: in the kitchen. She was a fluent Italian singer, and
Speaker 2: she had a voice like an opera singer. I heard.
Speaker 2: We had a friend who had a disc cutter in
Speaker 2: those days, in the late fifties. He cut these little
Speaker 2: seven inch discs. So I heard my mother sing Italian
Speaker 2: songs on those discs in recent times, about twenty years ago,
Speaker 2: and I said to her on the phone, I said, Mom,
Speaker 2: you had an operatic voice. You are a contralto. Do
Speaker 2: you realize you could have sung an opera? And she goes, oh,
Speaker 2: she goes, all Italian women could sing. She was a
Speaker 2: great sobering influence on me. You know, I didn't grow
Speaker 2: up with any airs. The two of them kept me
Speaker 2: in check and themselves in check too.
Speaker 1: But they were both born in America.
Speaker 2: Yes, my father was born in New Jersey and to
Speaker 2: Italian immigrants, and my mother was born in Brooklyn to
Speaker 2: Italian immigrants as well. They were both both born in Naples.
Speaker 1: So what was your upbringing like? Were you popular? Were
Speaker 1: you good in school? Were you a loner? Were you
Speaker 1: exterior or into her? What kind of kid were you? Uh?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I remember the first day of kindergarten
Speaker 2: well because I cried my eyes out. My mother left
Speaker 2: me and went walked out the door. And that was
Speaker 2: the most traumatic day of my life up until that
Speaker 2: period to do without my mother, because I was by
Speaker 2: her side all the time until I went to kindergarten.
Speaker 2: And then I remember within an hour, we were supposed
Speaker 2: to sit down and clap hands and sing a song.
Speaker 2: And I didn't like the girl to the left of me,
Speaker 2: so I clapped. I opened up my hands so wide
Speaker 2: that I hit her in the head. I don't know
Speaker 2: what I was taking my anger out on, but you
Speaker 2: know why I was doing this. But I really did
Speaker 2: not like being separated from my mother. And after that year,
Speaker 2: which I don't remember anything more about it, it was just kindergarten.
Speaker 2: We just played on the floor and drew, you know,
Speaker 2: pictures and all that. But the first grade was quite interesting.
Speaker 2: I was very interested in learning how to read and write,
Speaker 2: and I was already my parents started me off. I
Speaker 2: could read basic words, I knew how the alphabet worked,
Speaker 2: and until I was about up until the third grade,
Speaker 2: I was a good scholar. I paid attention and it
Speaker 2: was good and kind of after that I lost interest.
Speaker 2: When I got up to fifth grade, I or sixth grade,
Speaker 2: I got a great teacher. He pulled me out of
Speaker 2: the doldrums of like, you know, just going to school
Speaker 2: and all that. His name was James Flanagan, and he
Speaker 2: was in World War maybe the Korean War. Probably maybe
Speaker 2: the Korean War could have been World War Two. I
Speaker 2: don't know, but he told me like lots of stories
Speaker 2: and he took me aside. He so that I was like,
Speaker 2: like after class, we'd chat for about fifteen minutes and
Speaker 2: he was really good to me. And one day he said,
Speaker 2: when I was in Japan, I saw men who could
Speaker 2: break wood with their bare hands, and I said, that's it.
Speaker 2: I got to learn how to break with with my bands.
Speaker 2: He got me like going. And there was early karate
Speaker 2: schools in New York City at the time, which I
Speaker 2: was too young to go to. But I bought a
Speaker 2: book and I did my own training in my backyard.
Speaker 2: And I have James Flanagan or Jim, you know, we
Speaker 2: could call him. He was cool. We could call him
Speaker 2: by his first name in the sixth grade, whereas before
Speaker 2: that you had to call the teachers by their surnames.
Speaker 1: You know, well for people who weren't around. You were
Speaker 1: really early on the karate thing that did not really
Speaker 1: go mainstream to like mid to late sixties. But you're
Speaker 1: an only child, correct, Yes, I am so any viewpoints
Speaker 1: on that.
Speaker 2: Oh, I love being an only child. I don't know
Speaker 2: how to be any other way. Like I look at
Speaker 2: brothers and sisters, and I see how they get along.
Speaker 2: And what I witnessed most of the time when I
Speaker 2: was growing up was that they were often fighting with
Speaker 2: each other over something like there's one toy to be
Speaker 2: shared between two kids, and all that. I didn't share
Speaker 2: anything with anybody. They were all my toys, and that's
Speaker 2: how I thought it was great. It was great being
Speaker 2: an only child. I had a cousin, a close cousin
Speaker 2: who used to come over to my house and we
Speaker 2: play for a while, and like around I guess twelve
Speaker 2: years old thirteen, we just kind of He became very religious.
Speaker 2: He became a religious Catholic and went to a parochial school,
Speaker 2: which I just couldn't handle it. I already knew something
Speaker 2: was wrong. I didn't want to learn any more religion.
Speaker 2: I didn't like it. I didn't like the nuns. I
Speaker 2: didn't like the priests. The masses were nice if they
Speaker 2: had a nice organ playing, and some of the hymns,
Speaker 2: you know that. I like the musical part, but it
Speaker 2: just wasn't for me. And when I was fifteen, I
Speaker 2: totally left the church. I had a chiropractor who was
Speaker 2: a very modern thinker, and he was again like a
Speaker 2: father figure, like mister Flanagan was, and we were talking
Speaker 2: about religion one day. He goes, how do you feel
Speaker 2: about it? And I go, I don't know. I said,
Speaker 2: it's kind of simple, and yet there's nothing there that
Speaker 2: entices me, like wants me to go to church. He goes,
Speaker 2: I stopped going to church too, and yah, he made
Speaker 2: me the atheist that I am today. I'm actually in
Speaker 2: touch with his sons now, who are like in their forties.
Speaker 2: You know, he's still alive, that guy.
Speaker 1: Okay, you learn how to play the ukulele. That is
Speaker 1: pre rock and roll. You know, there's so many definitions.
Speaker 1: What the first rock and roll wreck was? Was it
Speaker 1: Rocket eighty eight? Rock around the clock? When did you
Speaker 1: hear rock and roll? When did you become infected?
Speaker 2: That would be about ten or eleven. I heard these
Speaker 2: early radio shows that Alan Freed did in New York.
Speaker 2: He was on once a week, and that's the main
Speaker 2: reason why I wanted to build this Frankenstein Radio was
Speaker 2: to hear it a little bit better. I wanted to
Speaker 2: hear some bass coming out of the speakers, and Alan
Speaker 2: Freed just played fantastic music. He was mainly playing R
Speaker 2: and B, and he played a lot of black artists,
Speaker 2: you know, like Little Richard and the Moon Glows, Harvey
Speaker 2: and the Moon Glows, all those old doop groups. And
Speaker 2: then I discovered Jocko, who was a DJ. I don't
Speaker 2: know his full name. He just used to go like,
Speaker 2: I am your engineer, ooh, bop do, how do you do?
Speaker 2: This is your engineer Jocko. And I used to listen
Speaker 2: to him like one morning a week, and he would
Speaker 2: play the most insane he'd go much further with the
Speaker 2: R and B. He would find some music from the
Speaker 2: Deep South that Alan Freed wouldn't play because Alan Fee
Speaker 2: was catering mainly to a white teenage crowd and Jocko
Speaker 2: was catering to a black crowd, black audience. So I
Speaker 2: had the best of both worlds. I can't complain. Was
Speaker 2: that so? Anyway? Alan Freed started the first rock and
Speaker 2: roll shows ever, like at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater, where
Speaker 2: you would have on one bill you would have Buddy Holly,
Speaker 2: Little Richard, Harvey and the Moon Glows, the Cleftones, Shirley
Speaker 2: and Lee, all singing two songs each and they would
Speaker 2: work from morning to night. The first show was like
Speaker 2: ten am and the last show ended at midnight, and
Speaker 2: I would pay for the I would go in in Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: I would take the train to the Brooklyn Paramount, pay
Speaker 2: for the to get in, and then hide in the
Speaker 2: bathroom in between shows and go back. And I'd stay
Speaker 2: till at least eight o'clock at night and see three
Speaker 2: shows and to see the people that I was hearing
Speaker 2: Alan Freed play on the radio, to see them live
Speaker 2: in color, you know, like the Cleftones would wear double
Speaker 2: breasted suits in shaw truce, you know, and shar truce loafers,
Speaker 2: you know, and they were the cool They would have
Speaker 2: the coolest dand steps. You know. While the guy was
Speaker 2: singing lead, the other four guys would just drop down
Speaker 2: into a split and you can't see that on the radio,
Speaker 2: you know. To see these people actually perform these songs
Speaker 2: live was incredible. The other thing I remember from this, Bob,
Speaker 2: is that they had one guitar amplifier in the middle
Speaker 2: of the stage, and that was to suffice for all
Speaker 2: the guitar players in the show, and the lead the
Speaker 2: guitar chord went all the way to the side of
Speaker 2: the stage, like it was about, you know, thirty feet
Speaker 2: thirty five feet maybe forty feet long, and only about
Speaker 2: half the had a guitar player. The rest was an
Speaker 2: in house band. But all of a sudden you would
Speaker 2: hear the buzz of, say, somebody plugging it in, and
Speaker 2: that had to be either Chuck Berry or Buddy Holly
Speaker 2: or somebody like the I think the moon Glows had
Speaker 2: an electric guitarist in their band, and that's my heart
Speaker 2: would start beating. I said, who is it going to be?
Speaker 2: Is it going to be Buddy or is it going
Speaker 2: to be you know, Chuck Berry? And that was even
Speaker 2: The buzz of that guitar being plugged in was exciting
Speaker 2: for me. It made my heart beat quicker.
Speaker 1: Okay, are you an Elvis guy?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, definitely. I have a picture of me singing
Speaker 2: Elvis songs. It's just a photograph on my baritone yuke
Speaker 2: because I was still too young to have a proper
Speaker 2: sized guitar. But I could sing Love Me Tender, playing
Speaker 2: accompany myself on a baritone ukulele, which is a slightly
Speaker 2: bigger ukulele than the little guy. And I could never
Speaker 2: see him in person. I don't think he ever played
Speaker 2: New York. No he didn't. That would have been that
Speaker 2: would have been you know, that would amaze, be amazing.
Speaker 2: But he, you know, had Colonel Tom Parker, who if
Speaker 2: the money wasn't right, like he would want the money
Speaker 2: from the whole show if Elvis was to appear. So
Speaker 2: he never did shows like that, and I never saw
Speaker 2: him in person, Bowie said. He met Elvis in person,
Speaker 2: but I never did.
Speaker 1: Okay, you learn how to play the ukulele at age five,
Speaker 1: you become infected with rock and roll. What's your musical
Speaker 1: life span after that? When do you start playing other things?
Speaker 1: When do you decide you want to play in a band.
Speaker 1: When do you decide this is what you want to
Speaker 1: do for a living.
Speaker 2: Okay? So by when my parents saw that I was
Speaker 2: outgrowing the ukulele, they got me a guitar and a
Speaker 2: friend of theirs who sold it to them, who was
Speaker 2: his secondhand guitar. He said, your son should take lessons.
Speaker 2: And I've got this great friend the mine. He's a
Speaker 2: guitar teacher who lived in Eastern Parkway, so it was
Speaker 2: quite a trick for me. But his name was Leon Block,
Speaker 2: and he wrote some great books, great guitar books. And
Speaker 2: I went the bus ride from my house to his
Speaker 2: and I would do this all four seasons I went.
Speaker 2: I studied with him for three years until I was
Speaker 2: fifteen fifteen and a half. That would take an hour
Speaker 2: both ways, and I would go in the middle of
Speaker 2: the winter if it was snowing, I would not miss
Speaker 2: a lesson. And it was all It was like three
Speaker 2: bus rides, you know, three bus changes, you get you
Speaker 2: what do you call it? Transfer? And after the three years,
Speaker 2: he said he taught me how to read and write music.
Speaker 2: He taught me how to play jazz guitar, classical guitar.
Speaker 2: He pulled out some Bach duets. He would take a
Speaker 2: Bach two part invention and he would play the bass
Speaker 2: line on a guitar and I would I could already
Speaker 2: read travel Cleft, so I would play the top line
Speaker 2: and they were difficult gault. But you know, by after
Speaker 2: about two years, I was pretty good. And then he
Speaker 2: surprised me. He said, now we're going to swap. We've
Speaker 2: gone through the book. Now you play the bass line
Speaker 2: and I'll play the top line. I couldn't have asked
Speaker 2: for a better teacher than him. That was three years
Speaker 2: of bliss, and I always loved him, and any assignment
Speaker 2: he gave me was never too hard. I would just
Speaker 2: practice because I wanted to impress him. But by fifteen
Speaker 2: and a half I started meeting local musicians who lived
Speaker 2: around me and from school and all that, and that's
Speaker 2: when I formed my first band. It was actually a
Speaker 2: little earlier, but maybe fourteen, and that was with a
Speaker 2: sax player who was Mike Di Stefano and his cousin
Speaker 2: who was I forget his cousin's name, but he was
Speaker 2: a blind drummer and I was the guitarist. So it
Speaker 2: was guitar, sax and the drummer and we called ourselves
Speaker 2: Mike d and the Dukes. That was my first band.
Speaker 2: I was a duke, obviously. So we went and started
Speaker 2: playing parish dances, like you know, Saint Bernadette's would have
Speaker 2: dance night for the kids, heavily supervised by priests and nuns.
Speaker 2: But we'd get up there and we'd play rock and roll,
Speaker 2: and then if we played a slow dance, they would
Speaker 2: start dancing cheek to cheek and the priest would say,
Speaker 2: stop the music. Stop the music. That's enough to get
Speaker 2: you know, kids who would fourteen and fifteen really get
Speaker 2: into it, you know, if you give him a half
Speaker 2: a chance and from there. I played that for a
Speaker 2: while and I couldn't it was too young for nightclubs.
Speaker 2: But when I was seventeen, the most amazing thing happened
Speaker 2: to me. And I can't remember exactly how, but through
Speaker 2: a friend, there was this nightclub at the far end
Speaker 2: of Brooklyn called Ben Maxick's Town and Country. It was
Speaker 2: very close to Floyd Bennett Airfield, and Ben Maxick had
Speaker 2: this vision. He loved Las Vegas and he wanted his
Speaker 2: was to bring Las Vegas to New York. And he
Speaker 2: couldn't find a space like those enormous you know places
Speaker 2: that you can build in the desert in Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: It couldn't build in Manhattan. But in Brooklyn there was
Speaker 2: real estate where he built like a I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's probably a six acre nightclub. He could have a
Speaker 2: capacity with two thousand people, and he pulled in acts
Speaker 2: like Milton Burle, Robert Goulay, Sophie Tucker, the last of
Speaker 2: the Red Hot Mammas. I played for all these people.
Speaker 2: So through a friend I got the job. The bass
Speaker 2: player just quit his wife had a baby or something,
Speaker 2: and I was already another instrument I play is you
Speaker 2: know double bass? The upright bass, and Ned Harvey, the
Speaker 2: leader of the band, wanted a kid in the band.
Speaker 2: He wanted a young person in the band. My job
Speaker 2: was to play the bass for the dance band and
Speaker 2: play the bass for the acts like Robert Gulay and
Speaker 2: people that, and then when it was dancing time, I
Speaker 2: would have to bring my guitar and play some rock
Speaker 2: and roll songs like Elvia songs so the kids could
Speaker 2: dance to it, and the kids and their parents could
Speaker 2: dance to it. It was a gig from heaven. I
Speaker 2: had that job for three years, and I made so
Speaker 2: much money I bought That's when I got my own instruments.
Speaker 2: I didn't have to have my parents by instruments for
Speaker 2: me anymore. And I kind of you know, I was
Speaker 2: working till three am. So often my father would come
Speaker 2: home and find me. He come over from work, say
Speaker 2: at four thirty, and I would have my feet up
Speaker 2: watching television, and it made him so angry that I
Speaker 2: could just work seven nights a week and make all
Speaker 2: this money and he had to work like a dog,
Speaker 2: you know. He would often come home at four thirty,
Speaker 2: have dinner, and then go out to someone's house and
Speaker 2: put up cabinets for them, you know, And one day
Speaker 2: he had we had a big fight about this. I said, Dad,
Speaker 2: I can't. What do you want me to do? Work
Speaker 2: during the day as well as six hours at night.
Speaker 2: I can't do it, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, A couple of quick questions, were you ever Anthony
Speaker 1: Anthony junior?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I get on the I'd answer the phone,
Speaker 2: and by that time, as fifteen, we had my father
Speaker 2: and I had the same voice, the same accent, and
Speaker 2: they go hello Anthony, and I go, yeah, you go, oh, okay, Anthony,
Speaker 2: I want to tell you about a job. I've got
Speaker 2: few and this would be a carpentry job. I go,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, you want Anthony senior. This is Anthony junior. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So then they would start calling up I want Anthony
Speaker 2: Junior or I want Anthony Senior and all that. So
Speaker 2: we had a little problem with that, but it was fun.
Speaker 2: It was funny.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you finish high school? And is there ever
Speaker 1: a thought of college?
Speaker 2: No? I knew I wasn't going to go to college.
Speaker 2: I was in college material. I couldn't wait being in
Speaker 2: this band until I was seventeen or eighteen. That just
Speaker 2: ledged for more great work. And there was no if
Speaker 2: you know, I wanted to go to Juilliard. I knew
Speaker 2: about Juilliard in Manhattan School of Music, but you could
Speaker 2: tell from all these late nights. And I wasn't doing good.
Speaker 2: My marks were horrible. In high school, I didn't get
Speaker 2: good grades. My only two subjects where I got good
Speaker 2: grades were music department grades and English. My English was good.
Speaker 2: I was always a good reader, a good speller. I
Speaker 2: like poetry, I like novels. I read Charles Dickens and
Speaker 2: all that. Had no problem with that stuff. But mathematics,
Speaker 2: forget about it. I was the worst, you know, and
Speaker 2: algebra I could barely understand. Then when it got up
Speaker 2: to trigonometry, I just totally flunked. And I couldn't wait
Speaker 2: till I hit sixteen because I could leave school, and
Speaker 2: I did. I left school as soon as possible. I
Speaker 2: just kept getting gigs after gigs after that, and I
Speaker 2: never looked back.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what kind of gigs were you getting?
Speaker 2: Well, mostly club dates where you would play in a
Speaker 2: either a catered hal for a wedding or a bar
Speaker 2: mitzter or it's something that those are the only two
Speaker 2: gigs available. Actually, a wedding or a bar mitzter or
Speaker 2: you sometimes get a Jewish wedding where you had to
Speaker 2: know how to play the horror and because shee was
Speaker 2: have their own dances, you know. So I was so
Speaker 2: well versed I could do anything. I don't know. I
Speaker 2: played Greek weddings too, which back basically it's the same music.
Speaker 2: If you play Hava Nagila at a Greek wedding, they'll
Speaker 2: dance to it. It's amazing, but it's the same beat.
Speaker 2: So I was doing club dates, club.
Speaker 1: Dates in the music world by time we hit the
Speaker 1: late fifties early sixties. Although we have Bobby Darren who
Speaker 1: has gotten a renaissance in terms of his reputation, we
Speaker 1: had Fabean, we had a lot of other stuff. Ultimately
Speaker 1: in the sixties had the Four Seeds of the Beach Boys.
Speaker 1: There was also a big folk scene. Where were you
Speaker 1: at on all that.
Speaker 2: At the time In my late teens, I definitely wanted
Speaker 2: to jump on that bandwagon. And growing up in New York,
Speaker 2: it's not really difficult to find a manager or people
Speaker 2: who work in the music business. They either live in
Speaker 2: Manhattan or they live in Brooklyn, and they actually did
Speaker 2: talent scouting in those days, and at one gig, this
Speaker 2: guy came up to me, Jay Fishman, and he said,
Speaker 2: I was singing this time. I was singing duets with
Speaker 2: a guy called Carl, and we were singing like Everly
Speaker 2: Brothers songs, and he said, I'm going to make a
Speaker 2: record with you, guys. I can get you a deal,
Speaker 2: And he actually did get us a record deal, which
Speaker 2: got local airplay. In those days, there was not too
Speaker 2: much national radio. Everything was basically local. So he didn't
Speaker 2: work out, and I just went through a series of
Speaker 2: managers who I guess, you know, in reflection, they want
Speaker 2: to be managers. We didn't get a big manager who
Speaker 2: could actually get us on a big label, but I
Speaker 2: ended up through these managers. I ended up doing a
Speaker 2: lot of recording sessions. So I stepped into the recording
Speaker 2: studio is early is like probably my sixteenth year, and
Speaker 2: started playing for demo sessions. They were quite lucrative, so
Speaker 2: a songwriter would come in and just say I've written
Speaker 2: four songs. I need you guys to just give me
Speaker 2: some backing, and we could get that done in maybe
Speaker 2: two three hours, and I'd walk away with about you know,
Speaker 2: twenty five dollars in my hand, which was good in
Speaker 2: those days. Good pay.
Speaker 1: Okay, the Beatles hit What does that mean to you?
Speaker 2: The Beatles changed everything. I keep telling younger people. I said,
Speaker 2: the world was black and white, and then when we
Speaker 2: heard She Loves You, Yeah, yeah, yeah, the world suddenly
Speaker 2: became technicolor. They did that in music, and they did
Speaker 2: that in lifestyle. You know, kids actually started looking like
Speaker 2: kids instead of you know, young adults wearing your your
Speaker 2: bar Mitz for suit all the time when you went out.
Speaker 2: You know, we started wearing buying these hip clothes that
Speaker 2: were being imported from from England and they were inspired
Speaker 2: by the Beatles. With the Beatles wore you know, collarless
Speaker 2: jackets and all that stuff. And I said to myself,
Speaker 2: somehow I'm going to get over to London. I don't
Speaker 2: know how I'm going to do it, but somehow I'm
Speaker 2: going to do that. And that took a while, but
Speaker 2: it happened. It really it happened. At one point. It
Speaker 2: was a keeper, another key person who came into my
Speaker 2: life and I had to learn how. I said, okay,
Speaker 2: here's how it happened. I had a publishing deal. A
Speaker 2: talent scout saw me and my wife, who were doing
Speaker 2: a duet act by that time. We called ourselves Toni
Speaker 2: and Sigrid, and we were playing at the in the village,
Speaker 2: like at the Cafe Wi and all those village kind
Speaker 2: of cool hippie places to perform at. And as a
Speaker 2: result of a talent scout seeing us there, he got
Speaker 2: a publishing deal with the Richmond Organization, which is a
Speaker 2: big publishing house in Manhattan and they've got branches all
Speaker 2: over the world. So Howie Richmond listened to my songs
Speaker 2: for weeks on end and brought me into his office
Speaker 2: one day and he said, Tony, I've got to have
Speaker 2: a serious talk with you. And I got terrified. He
Speaker 2: was the CEO. I got terrified, and I said, okay.
Speaker 2: So I went to his office and he said, Tony,
Speaker 2: I've got to tell you you've put in a lot
Speaker 2: of songs. I've listened to everything. I've listened to your tapes.
Speaker 2: He goes, I don't like your songs. Got to tell
Speaker 2: you the truth, and I go and my face talk
Speaker 2: about crestfallen. I nearly my jaw dropped. I never was
Speaker 2: expecting that. So in the next breath he says, but
Speaker 2: I like your tape recordings. He says, I like you
Speaker 2: recordings very much. He goes, I would like you to
Speaker 2: make the house record producer. I have all these kids
Speaker 2: here who write music and all that, but we don't
Speaker 2: have good recording facilities. I can't get decent demos. They
Speaker 2: sound horrible because your demos, what do you do? And
Speaker 2: all that? And I go, well, I've got two machines
Speaker 2: at home, and I do all this bouncing like Les Paul,
Speaker 2: does you know I have five guitars and two basses
Speaker 2: and things like that. I hit a pillow for a
Speaker 2: kick drum and things like that. So he set me
Speaker 2: up with the studio in the Richmond Organization. This is
Speaker 2: a fifty ninth street in Columbus Circle. And I worked
Speaker 2: there for about a year. I was getting paid to
Speaker 2: do all this and not making any records of my
Speaker 2: own anymore. But at the water fountain, the water cooler,
Speaker 2: one day I happen to be there at the same
Speaker 2: time as this very tall, distinguished gentleman was. He had
Speaker 2: silvery curly hair. He was wearing a jacket and a
Speaker 2: soup and no tie. And he said, she said one thing.
Speaker 2: He said, Hellaire an English accent, and I go, you're English.
Speaker 2: I was like, the first english person I ever met
Speaker 2: my life. He goes, oh, yes, I am. My name
Speaker 2: is Danny Cordell. I work in England. And I said,
Speaker 2: my gosh. He said what's your name? I go Tony Visconti,
Speaker 2: I said, and he says, what do you do here?
Speaker 2: I go, well, I'm Tony Visconti and I'm the house
Speaker 2: record producer. And he goes, ah, my American cousin. I go,
Speaker 2: what do you mean by that? He goes, well, I'm
Speaker 2: the house record producer for this company in London. Same thing.
Speaker 2: It's the same job. And I went, that's fantastic, you know.
Speaker 2: And we sipped a few more cups of water and
Speaker 2: I said to him what are you doing here? And
Speaker 2: he goes, I'm recording a track for Georgie Fame. It's
Speaker 2: a big, big British artist at the time, very jazz
Speaker 2: orientated artist. And he said, I'm going to record at
Speaker 2: I've got a session book at A and R studios.
Speaker 2: The R was Phil ramon phil Ramone Studio, which was
Speaker 2: Hallowed Ground. I had never been in there, but this
Speaker 2: is cool. I go, well, that's fantastic. Can I see
Speaker 2: the charts, you know. He told me he had Clark
Speaker 2: Terry on trumpet. I adored Clock Terry, one of the
Speaker 2: greatest jazz musicians ever, trumpeters who ever lived. And I said,
Speaker 2: can I see the music? And he said, I don't
Speaker 2: have any charts. I don't have any music. And I go,
Speaker 2: how do you do it in the UK UK? And
Speaker 2: he says, well, we booked the studio for three in
Speaker 2: the afternoon. I hire a bunch of musicians and we
Speaker 2: play a demo and then we'd start rolling some spliffs,
Speaker 2: and we smoke some weed, you know, and we just
Speaker 2: work all day until maybe by eleven o'clock at night,
Speaker 2: we've got it, you know, we've got the track. And
Speaker 2: I said, Denny, this is New York City. We have
Speaker 2: the local eight oh two Musicians Union. You will be
Speaker 2: crucified if you ask Clark Terry to write down these
Speaker 2: trumpet parts that you're playing to me on this tape.
Speaker 2: He'll do it, but you get it. You'll get a
Speaker 2: thousand dollar bill for it. You know, you can't ask
Speaker 2: Clock Terry to write the charts, because what am I
Speaker 2: going to do? I said, I can read and write music.
Speaker 2: So I wrote the chart. I wrote the chord changes
Speaker 2: indicated in which bar like in bar number thirty drum fill.
Speaker 2: I just wrote the words drum fill. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to write a drum fill. I'll leave it to the
Speaker 2: clever drummer who we booked. But I had to write
Speaker 2: Clark Terry's parts out. It was a very strict written thing.
Speaker 2: This took me a good part of an hour. We
Speaker 2: slammed it on the Xerox. We had these new Xerox
Speaker 2: machines and ran down forty eighth Street in Manhattan with
Speaker 2: about eight eight parts, put them in front of all
Speaker 2: the musicians, and right away I saw clock Terry right away.
Speaker 2: He starts going up up, but he starts playing it
Speaker 2: off the sheet music, and I look at Danny, and
Speaker 2: Danny looks at me. Danny's got this big grin on
Speaker 2: his face. This isn't going to be like London. This
Speaker 2: is we're going to get this done. When I told
Speaker 2: him he'd be crucified, he was very, very worried by
Speaker 2: the way. He had just produced a wider shade of
Speaker 2: pale and he was rolling, you know, pop success. But
Speaker 2: he didn't have a lot of money. So this session
Speaker 2: took all of forty five minutes and we had this
Speaker 2: fantastic tracts. The song was because I Love You. It's
Speaker 2: an early Georgie fame hit, and clock Terry was cool.
Speaker 2: Everybody was cool. They liked the fact that it was
Speaker 2: well prepared. So a week two weeks later, he goes
Speaker 2: back to London and he phones me up and says,
Speaker 2: how soon could you get here? I go, Now, I'm
Speaker 2: not doing anything, so he said, okay, He goes, well,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna after I spoke to you, I went to
Speaker 2: I met a few other people, record producers, and I
Speaker 2: even spoke to Phil Specterer asking him to come and
Speaker 2: work for me. I said, oh, you'd be lucky. You've
Speaker 2: got Phil Specks that to work for you. He's not
Speaker 2: that kind of guy, you know, but anyway, he says,
Speaker 2: you're the guy I want. He says, the way you
Speaker 2: work you did that session was great. I need someone
Speaker 2: to translate what I hear in my head into music
Speaker 2: into musical notes. And two weeks later I was in
Speaker 2: London and went to the studio, but my very first
Speaker 2: day I was terribly jet lagged. But then he took
Speaker 2: me to a Manfred Man session which he was producing.
Speaker 2: He was producing too many people, and he really did
Speaker 2: need an assistant, and after about two hours he left
Speaker 2: me with Manfred Man on my own. Bob, I had
Speaker 2: no experience, no experience dealing with especially with British people
Speaker 2: who spoke a different language basically, so they hated me.
Speaker 2: They didn't like my American accent. So I thought I'll
Speaker 2: be a little cheerful. So I was in the studio
Speaker 2: and we did a lot of takes. We did up
Speaker 2: to six takes, and they were already in misery, these guys.
Speaker 2: They wanted Denny and they got this young American punk instead.
Speaker 2: So I said, okay, here we go. We're going to
Speaker 2: do take seven, Lucky take seven, and they went oh,
Speaker 2: they all audibly groaned. I was like being a DJ,
Speaker 2: you know, Lucky takes seven. And so when Denny come back,
Speaker 2: came back, we finally got a good take and he
Speaker 2: listened to what we had done, and they did as well.
Speaker 2: They warmed up to me at the very very end,
Speaker 2: but that was was It was horrible. My first day
Speaker 2: was so horrible. And the ability not to understand them, like,
Speaker 2: you know, they've got different words, like if they're happy
Speaker 2: about something, they're chuffed. I didn't know that word chuffed.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what chuffed meant. Sounds like a chimney
Speaker 2: going what the hell does that mean? You know? So
Speaker 2: that was it. That's how I got there, and that's
Speaker 2: basically the beginning of my career as what I do today.
Speaker 1: Okay, so play it out. You're in London, now you
Speaker 1: work with man from Man, You're working with Denny. What
Speaker 1: comes next?
Speaker 2: Well with Denny I played. I went onto all kinds
Speaker 2: of sessions, including more another Georgie Fame session two. I
Speaker 2: tagged along on his Parcol Harrem sessions and helped again.
Speaker 2: He left me in charge one day, which went down
Speaker 2: a little bit better. They they knew me already. They
Speaker 2: I came to a few before he left me with them,
Speaker 2: and they they knew I was on their side, and
Speaker 2: I knew what I was talking about. So I remember
Speaker 2: I produced a whole track from scratch called Magdalene my
Speaker 2: regal Zonophone, all in one day. Denny was in awe
Speaker 2: of that. He came back, he goes, you did this
Speaker 2: all in one day? He was He was slow and
Speaker 2: I was fast. So after that I worked with his
Speaker 2: group called the Move, which was Birmingham's answer answer to
Speaker 2: the Beatles, like Birmingham was called the Birmingham Beatles at
Speaker 2: one point because they wanted they emulated everything the Beatles did,
Speaker 2: and I had had quite a few hit records with them,
Speaker 2: both as a co producer and an arranger. The first
Speaker 2: record I did for them was a song called Flowers
Speaker 2: in the Rain, and I recorded, you know, everybody was
Speaker 2: doing Elden or Rigby. They wanted strings and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: and I thought it's time we got off the strings
Speaker 2: and onto some other classical instruments. So because it was
Speaker 2: Flowers in the Rain, I thought of Mendelssohn and I thought,
Speaker 2: I'm going to write something pastoral and for that you
Speaker 2: need a flute, you need an obo, a clarinet and
Speaker 2: a French horn. That's that's a win combination that normally
Speaker 2: plays pastoral music. So it was a wacky arrangement I wrote.
Speaker 2: It was reached number two in the charts and when
Speaker 2: Radio one in England opened, you know they had these
Speaker 2: this corny radio before, but Radio One was the pop station.
Speaker 2: I listened to it at eight o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2: I wanted to hear that this station opening up. The
Speaker 2: DJ Tony Blackburn the first record he played It was
Speaker 2: Flowers in the Rain by the Move, and I nearly
Speaker 2: screamed and jumped off my couch. You know, it was
Speaker 2: just a fantastic experience.
Speaker 1: Well, just to stop there for a second. That was
Speaker 1: an interesting band. They used to come to America, they
Speaker 1: canceled tours, they broke up, whatever. But roy Wood was
Speaker 1: seen as the talent and jeff Lynn was a secondary character,
Speaker 1: even though we sang a certain amount. Then there was
Speaker 1: the first Elo, then they split apart. There was roy
Speaker 1: Wood's Wizard, and then ultimately jeff Lynn goes on to
Speaker 1: this incredible career with Elo and more. Did you have
Speaker 1: any idea at that point in time? Was he just
Speaker 1: another guy in the band?
Speaker 2: Well, when they formed Not Yellow, what did you say? Wizard?
Speaker 2: Roy wanted me to play keyboards in the band, and
Speaker 2: he was dead serious. And I said, Roy, he thought
Speaker 2: I played keyboards because I wrote arrangements. I had already
Speaker 2: written three arrangements for them by that time. I said, no,
Speaker 2: I actually write them on the classical guitar. And he says, well,
Speaker 2: we've got enough guitar players in the band. Sure, so
Speaker 2: you're sure you can't play keyboards? They go, no, I
Speaker 2: have to give up on that. So Jeff Lynn came
Speaker 2: in around that time, and you know they did a
Speaker 2: great job. Well that worked, but I gave birth to
Speaker 2: some of that. Some of my soul is in the
Speaker 2: In the subsequent things that Roy did, we always got
Speaker 2: on really great. He's a great guy.
Speaker 1: Okay, So from the move, keep telling, let's what happened.
Speaker 2: Well, from the move, my boss said it's time you
Speaker 2: got a band of your own. He goes, you know
Speaker 2: how to do it? Conduct a session on your own. Now,
Speaker 2: you know, I was with him by his side for
Speaker 2: a whole year, and so he tried me out with
Speaker 2: a guy called Bedo. First all, he walked into our offices.
Speaker 2: Bid is a famous Bollywood composer, but he came to London,
Speaker 2: as he called himself the Indian Elvis, and in truth
Speaker 2: he had a voice just like Elvis Presley, but he
Speaker 2: had a bit of an accent. So I made one
Speaker 2: record with Bido and I said, and then he said,
Speaker 2: well I'm not going to It didn't do anything, and
Speaker 2: we didn't leave acrimoniously. It just didn't do anything. So
Speaker 2: David dropped Bido and he said, you pick your band.
Speaker 2: You go out and pick your band. Who you want
Speaker 2: to work with? I said, okay. So I heard this
Speaker 2: band called Tyrannosaurus Rex played every weekend on John Peel's
Speaker 2: radio show, and I happened to see the Underground. I
Speaker 2: got a copy of the underground newspaper. I forget what
Speaker 2: it was called now and Tyrannosaurus Rex we're playing right
Speaker 2: around the corner from my office on Tottenham Court Road
Speaker 2: in England. So after work, I noted the time it
Speaker 2: was seven pm. I left work at six pm, went
Speaker 2: to the corner pub, a pub called a Tutor. I
Speaker 2: fortified myself with a big pint of ale, and then
Speaker 2: I walked down to Tottenham Court Road and went to
Speaker 2: that nightclub where Tyrannosaurus Rex was playing. And I walked
Speaker 2: down the steps. It was like red light, dim light dim,
Speaker 2: red lighted steps, and I hear the band playing coming
Speaker 2: up through the stairwell and it was dead quiet. And
Speaker 2: I'm used to going to gigs where the band the
Speaker 2: audience is clapping, singing along and all that, and I thought,
Speaker 2: no one's there. I walk in that room and there
Speaker 2: were about seventy five kids sitting on the floor, cross legged,
Speaker 2: listening attentively to Mark and Steve sing these songs. I
Speaker 2: have never seen that in my life. They weren't singing along,
Speaker 2: they were just worshiping him. So I approached the group afterwards,
Speaker 2: and I approached the drummer first, because I didn't even
Speaker 2: know if Mark was like an alien. Mark Bowling was
Speaker 2: weird and he sang in this very affected voice, which
Speaker 2: I thought, maybe he's French. You know, I didn't know
Speaker 2: how to approach him anyway. Steve said, just don't talk
Speaker 2: to me, man, talk to him. He's the leader. So
Speaker 2: I gave Mark my business card and Mark followed up.
Speaker 2: The next day. He came to our offices and he
Speaker 2: phoned from the street. He said, I just happened to
Speaker 2: be passing your offices and I'd like to come up
Speaker 2: an audition for Denny Cordell. So that's how it began.
Speaker 2: With my very first talent scouting produced came up with
Speaker 2: Mark Bolan and Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Speaker 1: Okay, but they were an acoustic act. Then how did
Speaker 1: it end up becoming an electric act? And called t Rex?
Speaker 2: Well, that was about all I could handle. You know,
Speaker 2: two people I could handle. I could play the psychology
Speaker 2: games with two people. They had like percussion in the band,
Speaker 2: bongo drums, conga drums and all that, and they Denny said, okay,
Speaker 2: we'll tell you I like them, we'll take them on
Speaker 2: as our token underground group. That was exact words, token
Speaker 2: underground group. And already there was a very popular or
Speaker 2: in England, a band in England called the Incredible String Band,
Speaker 2: and Torontosaurus Rex were not unlike them, so there was
Speaker 2: a big market for this kind of rock folk early
Speaker 2: you know, psychedelic folk people will call it. So we
Speaker 2: made these kind of psychedelic rock folk records for three
Speaker 2: albums with the acoustic instruments, and then by the end
Speaker 2: of the second album, Mark used to come around to
Speaker 2: my apartment and he would always pick up my Fender
Speaker 2: Stratocaster guitar and play it, and he ended up borrowing
Speaker 2: it on the third album, and then that's when we
Speaker 2: started going electric, but not the drum kit yet, except
Speaker 2: everything had to be like miniature. So they did get
Speaker 2: a drum kit for the next album, where it was
Speaker 2: a toy drum set from Hamley's Toy Shop in London,
Speaker 2: so it's actually a drum kit for like an eight
Speaker 2: year old. But we detuned the drums and Steve played
Speaker 2: the hell out of these drums. So it's on especially
Speaker 2: on a song called Cat Black the Wizard's Hat, you
Speaker 2: can hear this full drum kit, but it's actually a
Speaker 2: toy drum kit called from a company called Chet, from
Speaker 2: a company called Chad Valley.
Speaker 1: Okay, in America, the incredible stream band I think was
Speaker 1: on Warner Brothers. They had a certain amount of a presence.
Speaker 1: T Rex was almost nothing. You saw write a White
Speaker 1: Swan in the bins? What was the profile of the
Speaker 1: group in the UK?
Speaker 2: By the time they did right a White Swan they
Speaker 2: were Mark was quite famous because he was so cute
Speaker 2: and he was a teenage He noticed that the girl
Speaker 2: the audience was made mainly of girls who was screaming
Speaker 2: while he was on stage. This is towards the fourth
Speaker 2: album and with the electric guitar, and he borrowed my bass.
Speaker 2: Uh this is this is very funny because wider White
Speaker 2: Swan is an a flat which means he had to
Speaker 2: play it with the capo on the fourth fret of
Speaker 2: the guitar. And then when he borrowed my bass to
Speaker 2: play the bass part, he had to put the capo
Speaker 2: on the fourth fret of the bass, which I never
Speaker 2: saw a bass player do in my life, put a
Speaker 2: capo on a bass, but he played all the guitar
Speaker 2: and the bass. And by this time we had Mickey
Speaker 2: Finn in the band. Steve Peregrine took was fired unceremoniously
Speaker 2: fired and that record took about two hours to make,
Speaker 2: Right a White Swan, and we put it out. You know,
Speaker 2: we always put out singles as Tyrannosaurus Rex, but they
Speaker 2: didn't do very well. It never did very well. We
Speaker 2: did a name change. We called a band t Rex.
Speaker 2: John Peel reluctantly played it. He thought that they had
Speaker 2: sold out and he was ready to discard them quickly
Speaker 2: because he defeated the underdog and now Mark was becoming popular.
Speaker 2: That was like, you know, an eth to John Field.
Speaker 2: But he played it and then Radio one took it
Speaker 2: up and that record was played night and day, and
Speaker 2: we sold We was selling upwards of about six thousand
Speaker 2: a day. In those days. You know, there was no internet,
Speaker 2: so you had to go out and buy a record
Speaker 2: if you liked it, and maybe you taped it off
Speaker 2: your friend's record player. But basically record sales were enormous
Speaker 2: in those days. He was now he was a megastar overnight.
Speaker 1: People don't understand how big he really was. He was
Speaker 1: as big as they get.
Speaker 2: He was as big as the Beatles, and Ringo said
Speaker 2: so himself when he made the movie with him, he said,
Speaker 2: he said when, And then Mark went four piece as well.
Speaker 2: By then they were drawing the same crowds and the
Speaker 2: same reactions, probably even bigger crowds than the Beatles. Because
Speaker 2: the Beatles never really played arenas apart from the say
Speaker 2: stadium or something like that. Mark was playing arenas by
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two in the UK, not so good in
Speaker 2: America though he never quite broke the back of that one.
Speaker 1: So how did you feel having this incredible success?
Speaker 2: I loved it. You know, now all my dreams are
Speaker 2: coming true. I wanted to be a successful record producer.
Speaker 2: I'm also singing backups on these records. I'm very much
Speaker 2: a part of the band. When they're in the studio,
Speaker 2: we get on, we get along as friends. It was
Speaker 2: the dream everybody wants to happen when they get into
Speaker 2: the music business.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I had about three solid years of t rextasy. It
Speaker 2: was called by the press, and Mark was controversial. He
Speaker 2: used to do the wickedest interviews. He would really be
Speaker 2: insulting to the journalists and just to get controversy. You know,
Speaker 2: they try to tear him apart, but they were actually
Speaker 2: giving him more ink than the normal rock star because
Speaker 2: because they wanted to tear him down. You know, it
Speaker 2: was so cool. You knew what to do.
Speaker 1: And how did Bengagong get it on come together?
Speaker 2: That was on a trip to America that we both
Speaker 2: coincidentally went on at the same time. He got a
Speaker 2: mini tour planned for him and it was to start
Speaker 2: in New York and then they would fly to LA
Speaker 2: to work with Flow and Eddie from the Turtles, and
Speaker 2: they got flowin Eddie got a studio and I just
Speaker 2: happened to be there to see my parents. I came
Speaker 2: home for a trip to Brooklyn to see my parents,
Speaker 2: but Mark knew I was there and he said, let's
Speaker 2: make a record you're here. So we hired Media Media
Speaker 2: Sound in Manhattan. It was like a jazz studio, but
Speaker 2: we did Jeepster and Monolith. We did a couple of
Speaker 2: tracks that would later appear on Electric Warrior. Then the
Speaker 2: trip to La came up, because do you want to
Speaker 2: go with us? You want to go to La, I go.
Speaker 2: Of course I do. So we flew out to La
Speaker 2: Flowin Eddie arranged Wali Hyder's studio for us, which was
Speaker 2: like one of the best studios in La at the time,
Speaker 2: and that's how we recorded Get It on Bangagong and
Speaker 2: I got some lovely photos from there. And they made
Speaker 2: the Jewish connection too. When Flo and Eddi, who were
Speaker 2: both Jewish, found out that Mark was Jewish, there's something
Speaker 2: deeper about that relationship took place, you know, it was
Speaker 2: really great. And then they started making Yiddish jokes. You know,
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it. They grew up. Mark grew up
Speaker 2: with you know, he heard these words when he was
Speaker 2: growing up, and so did Flow and Eddie, you know.
Speaker 2: And if you live in New York, no matter if
Speaker 2: your Italian friend or Jewish, you learn Yiddish. That's one
Speaker 2: of the languages you pick up the words. So we
Speaker 2: had sessions that were so funny and I left the
Speaker 2: tape running, you know, just cracking jokes all the time.
Speaker 2: And that's how we re recorded about four or five
Speaker 2: more songs at Wally Hiders studios with Flowin Eddi at
Speaker 2: their auspices because they made it really easy for us
Speaker 2: to work there, and then the rest of the tracks
Speaker 2: were on the flight back to London. We took up
Speaker 2: in Tried Studios in which was a great studio in
Speaker 2: Soho and finished the rest of the album. It was
Speaker 2: like a Frankenstein album, all different consoles, all different sounds.
Speaker 2: But I mixed it in Tridon Studios so that in
Speaker 2: that way I made it a more cohesive, cohesive sounding record.
Speaker 2: But that was we were in Seventh HEAVENO.
Speaker 1: Okay. But the sound of the guitar on Bang of Gong,
Speaker 1: can you tell us anything about getting it? It just
Speaker 1: has an incredible sound.
Speaker 2: Yes, he had a two pedals. One was a wah
Speaker 2: wah and the other ones. You know what a wah
Speaker 2: wah is that it goes so and another one was
Speaker 2: a treble booster which had had had a distortion and
Speaker 2: crunch to the sound and he had that almost maxed out.
Speaker 2: So between the wah wah, which if you don't move
Speaker 2: the wah wah, you could move it to a certain
Speaker 2: position and get a certain tone, but when you move
Speaker 2: it up and down you get the wow effect. So
Speaker 2: between positioning the pedal in a certain way and having
Speaker 2: the screaming bird put in the circuit. He got this
Speaker 2: crunchy sound, and then I would go up and you know,
Speaker 2: like let's make it loud, OR'd turn up the Marshall
Speaker 2: lamp and all that, and basically that was the sound.
Speaker 2: What I did add in the mixing, which he loved,
Speaker 2: was slapback. He was so keen on the you know,
Speaker 2: the Elvis Presley slap back, a Wop Boba loom up,
Speaker 2: the Little Richard's slap back and all that stuff, and
Speaker 2: he wanted on both his guitar and his voice, and
Speaker 2: it became a signature sound. Having the kick drum to
Speaker 2: the four was another sound. We were one of the
Speaker 2: early doers of that, you know kick You listen to
Speaker 2: early R and B you can barely hear the kick drum.
Speaker 2: But suddenly in the seventies people were saying, what what
Speaker 2: what the kick drums a great thing? Why is it
Speaker 2: so quiet in the mix. So we had the drums
Speaker 2: up pretty loud. We even put slap back on the
Speaker 2: drums too, for the tom phills. And I said, after
Speaker 2: about two years of this, I said, you can get
Speaker 2: me out of bed at five in the morning and
Speaker 2: put me behind a console. I'll get you that sound
Speaker 2: in half an hour. You know, it was a formula.
Speaker 2: We invented a formula and we were accused of formulizing
Speaker 2: the sound and I said, yep, that's what we're doing.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely Did you know.
Speaker 1: Get It On was gonna be a gigantic kit when
Speaker 1: you finished it?
Speaker 2: No, we honestly didn't. We were doing everything the same
Speaker 2: we always did, Bob, and we put singles out. They
Speaker 2: weren't hits, minor hits, but not major hits. Something was
Speaker 2: right about this one. It was more brevity in the
Speaker 2: lyrics that helped. You know, Mark was writing these sagas
Speaker 2: in his earlier work. They were based on Tolkien and
Speaker 2: you know, full of dwarfs, elves and things like that,
Speaker 2: and he just did the right stuff. There's couplets and
Speaker 2: then the chorus, get it on, Banga gong, get it on.
Speaker 2: That's the chorus. That's the shortest chorus he had written
Speaker 2: in his life. And that was the secret brevity. And
Speaker 2: the strings that was another thing. He got very superstitious
Speaker 2: about the strings. When we did our next single, gosh,
Speaker 2: I can't remember what it was, oh metal Guru, he said,
Speaker 2: let's go in, let's just mix it and I go, Mark,
Speaker 2: the strings, we've had the strings on ride a white
Speaker 2: Swan and get it on. I think it's part of
Speaker 2: our good luck. And he turned pale. He goes, you're right,
Speaker 2: let's have strings on hot hot love. It was hot love.
Speaker 2: Let's have strings on hot love. So that was it
Speaker 2: from then to the very end. I did eight albums
Speaker 2: with him. I had to get down and write some
Speaker 2: pretty nifty strings every time we made an album.
Speaker 1: Afterwards, Okay, the Slider Summer of seventy two, I believe
Speaker 1: in the UK gigantic Banya Goong is delayed as a
Speaker 1: hit in the US, and it is a big hit,
Speaker 1: certainly on FM radio formats were changing. The Slider meant
Speaker 1: nothing in America and meant everything in the UK. Do
Speaker 1: you have any insight on that?
Speaker 2: That's interesting. I wasn't aware of that. I know a
Speaker 2: lot of Americans now like the Slider. You know, looking back,
Speaker 2: it is a fantastic album. It's the best of the three,
Speaker 2: the first three. The next one would be an album
Speaker 2: called Tanks, which tanked. But the Slider was phenomenal, and
Speaker 2: I think Mark was at his best. His guitar playing
Speaker 2: was at his best, his writing was at its best,
Speaker 2: and we took a little more time on it. Another
Speaker 2: funny thing happened on that he stopped using Flow and Eddie.
Speaker 2: We originally had them on one or two tracks, and
Speaker 2: then we went in on another day and he said,
Speaker 2: we're going to do backing vocals. I go, what happened
Speaker 2: to Flow and Eddie? He goes, they copped in attitude
Speaker 2: with me? I go, what happened? What did they say?
Speaker 2: He goes, they wanted to get paid honestly, so I'm
Speaker 2: looking at him. I am getting paid as the producer,
Speaker 2: but you know, not as a backing singer. So that
Speaker 2: was a shame, a real, real shame. I think later on,
Speaker 2: when he in his late late seventies before he died,
Speaker 2: he got back. He got them on one of his
Speaker 2: self produced albums. He got them back again. I hope
Speaker 2: he paid him. I think he did.
Speaker 1: Okay. He ultimately dies in this car accident and Gigantic
Speaker 1: in England. You were the producer. How big a talent
Speaker 1: was Mark Bowlin?
Speaker 2: He was great. His songwriting abilities were enviable, even David said.
Speaker 2: David Bowie said, Mark writes the greatest lyrics and there
Speaker 2: his imagery was incredible, like you know, diamond star halo.
Speaker 2: You wear a diamond star halo. It's beautiful. David wouldn't
Speaker 2: come up with diamond star halo, but then he would
Speaker 2: go on in the same song more metaphors like that,
Speaker 2: you know, crazy ones. And his guitar playing was primitive.
Speaker 2: I worked it out one day. He's got a knowledge
Speaker 2: of seven chords. But oh boy, what he did to
Speaker 2: some people say, oh but oh boy, what he did
Speaker 2: with those seven chords. But you know, he would slide
Speaker 2: his guitar up, his capo up and down the fret.
Speaker 2: He could play in any key he wanted. And some
Speaker 2: chords he obviously didn't know. And I wondered why he
Speaker 2: couldn't even figure that out. And I tried to teach
Speaker 2: him these chords. He wouldn't want to learn. He just
Speaker 2: had this. He was formulaic himself, and his records were
Speaker 2: still sounding the same. But why not, because it was
Speaker 2: a really good formula we had going. But I'd say
Speaker 2: his talent was in the songwriting. He must have written
Speaker 2: over two hundred songs, maybe even more than that.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're working for the company when you find Taranosaurus
Speaker 1: Rex today, Well, let's talk pre internet. A record producer
Speaker 1: would get four or five per saying, either from record
Speaker 1: one or when we coop, is it you getting paid
Speaker 1: a producer's fee on every record? What's going on with you?
Speaker 2: So everything up to at the up to the end
Speaker 2: of Electric Warrior, I was getting a royalty and till
Speaker 2: this day, Bob, it's the gift that keeps on giving.
Speaker 2: I get royalties three times a year from that company
Speaker 2: and I recorded a few other acts for them as well.
Speaker 2: But from the Slider they wanted to we had a
Speaker 2: deal and Mark said, I don't know. We had a
Speaker 2: royalty situation for a while. Then his company stopped paying it.
Speaker 2: They said, we feel you've had enough. You know, the
Speaker 2: record's long been paid for. You know, it's sold, and
Speaker 2: we're not selling those those amounts of records anymore. Then
Speaker 2: the next album, Tanks, I worked without a contract. He
Speaker 2: his wife came to me and she said, you know,
Speaker 2: we feel We spoke to Mark's lawyer and we feel
Speaker 2: that you don't need a contract anymore. You don't need
Speaker 2: a royalty anymore. We're going to make a deal with you.
Speaker 2: We'll pay you ten pounds per annum something like for
Speaker 2: the rest of your life. But maybe it wasn't. It
Speaker 2: was like for the next five years or something like that.
Speaker 2: So I did. I made the next album, zinc Alloy,
Speaker 2: under those conditions, the fourth album that was the big
Speaker 2: t Rex hit, and it did well. But then Mark
Speaker 2: started the cocaine and alcohol abuse started getting out of
Speaker 2: control and he was being really unkind to everyone. He
Speaker 2: was like he was a drunk, you know. He was
Speaker 2: like cursing everyone out, being a very, very unruly. So
Speaker 2: I had a little talk to them at the end.
Speaker 2: I said, we're going to part company. I don't like
Speaker 2: the way you're treating people. And that was it. We
Speaker 2: parted under those conditions.
Speaker 1: How long did you get the ten thousand dollars?
Speaker 2: I never got it. I think I got the ten
Speaker 2: thousand for that fourth album, the zinc Allo album, and
Speaker 2: that was it. And it was you know, it's a
Speaker 2: little foggy in my brain because I don't really want
Speaker 2: to think about it that much. How David was the
Speaker 2: complete opposite. He was a gentleman of his word. He
Speaker 2: would always honor his contracts, even if it was just
Speaker 2: a handshake. He would always honor what he said. Mark
Speaker 2: was the opposite. He would just hope you would conveniently
Speaker 2: forget about it, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're working with t Rex over a period
Speaker 1: of years. You're a record producer. You're not in the band,
Speaker 1: so you're working on other stuff. What are you working on?
Speaker 2: Well? I went through many period different periods.
Speaker 1: In the eighties, no no, no, no, no no. Back
Speaker 1: in the seventies, seventies, late sixties. When how do you
Speaker 1: ultimately get hooked up with David Bowie?
Speaker 2: That was really easy was Mark Bolan's publisher, and my
Speaker 2: offices were in the same house as the publishing house.
Speaker 2: So Gus Dudgeons. Gus Dudgeon produced Elton John. He was
Speaker 2: one house producer. I was another house producer, Denny Cordell
Speaker 2: and Don Paul. We were four house producers for that
Speaker 2: company who had a label called New Breed at first
Speaker 2: and then Good New Breed Productions. Oh, I forget what
Speaker 2: else it was called. But David Plattz, who was the
Speaker 2: publisher who owned all these companies, including our contracts, had
Speaker 2: all these writers. One of his main writers was Anthony Newley.
Speaker 2: And when he heard David Bowie sing, he saw a
Speaker 2: young Anthony Newley. He hired him on the spot. He
Speaker 2: signed him up for a publishing contract, and David had
Speaker 2: already made a record for d Ram Records, which is
Speaker 2: a Decca company, which tanked. It really didn't do very well,
Speaker 2: although it showed off his skills and it was all
Speaker 2: over the place. So one day David Plattz calls me
Speaker 2: into his office after I had all these Tyrannosaur these, yeah,
Speaker 2: the Tyrannosaurus rex hits, and you know, I'm making money
Speaker 2: for the label. He said, I've got an artist I
Speaker 2: think would be a good match for you. And I said, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm listening. He goes, so he put on the d
Speaker 2: Ram album when he's saying like when I Live My Dream,
Speaker 2: which sounded exactly like Anthony Nuley. Then he did another
Speaker 2: played Another song was the Laughing Postman, which was he
Speaker 2: did this chipmunk voice, you know, half speed voice where
Speaker 2: he started laughing like a postman but with a chipmunk.
Speaker 2: And then all the other songs bore no uh, there
Speaker 2: was no continuity in styles. So he said, what do
Speaker 2: you think. I said, he's great, He's got a great voice,
Speaker 2: he's a great writer, but he's all over the place.
Speaker 2: If I were to work with him, I would have
Speaker 2: to focus him he'd have to do one thing, and
Speaker 2: I think the op obviously obvious thing for him to
Speaker 2: do would be to be a rock singer. He's got
Speaker 2: the chops, he can do it. I'm sure he can
Speaker 2: do it. He goes, okay, I was thinking along those lines.
Speaker 2: He goes, would you like to meet him? I go yeah.
Speaker 2: He goes, step right this way, and he opened the door.
Speaker 2: It was a setup. He asked David to come in
Speaker 2: that day to meet me. He opens the door to
Speaker 2: his like inner sanctum there and David's waiting for the meeting,
Speaker 2: and I the first thing I noticed were his eyes.
Speaker 2: You know, I thought he's a good looking boy, But
Speaker 2: what's he got these two different colored eyes for? You know,
Speaker 2: what's all that about? So he shakes my hand and
Speaker 2: he's very, very like excited to meet me. And I
Speaker 2: found out that he was a like I don't know
Speaker 2: how you said, he equivalent an Anglo file, an American file.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: He he loved American music. He grew up on R
Speaker 2: and B records, same as I did. We loved we
Speaker 2: loved the odd person out, like the legendary star dust cowboy.
Speaker 2: We both were in love with those kind of records
Speaker 2: Nervous Norvis who sang Transfusion, he had all those records
Speaker 2: that I had, and we found that out in that
Speaker 2: interview outside of David Plattz's office, and we got on
Speaker 2: like brothers, and by six, when six o'clock rolled around,
Speaker 2: we said, oh wet, they were locking up. They kicked
Speaker 2: us out, so we walked down Oxford Street, which is
Speaker 2: one part of town, and we walked and talked for
Speaker 2: another hour until we got to King's Road in London
Speaker 2: and we were looking at all the windows of clothes
Speaker 2: we couldn't afford yet, and we came to the art
Speaker 2: theater they had there. Forget the name of the street,
Speaker 2: but they had They only played scratchy black and white films,
Speaker 2: which we said, we like scratchy black and white films.
Speaker 2: Both of us liked those. And they had a Knife
Speaker 2: in the Water playing at one of these cinemas, and
Speaker 2: we said, shall we go in and watch it? So
Speaker 2: this is about eight eight in the evening, so we
Speaker 2: bought two tickets, sat down, we watched the Knife in
Speaker 2: the Water and we eventually said good night at about
Speaker 2: eleven thirty at night. From say three point thirty in
Speaker 2: the afternoon, that's We were such good friends by the
Speaker 2: end of the day. And then we started seeing each
Speaker 2: other socially for quite a while. And then he said,
Speaker 2: Deco wants me to make one more record, and I
Speaker 2: made this record with him. It's kind of a It's
Speaker 2: a record called London by Tata. It was as close
Speaker 2: as it was pop record. It wasn't a rock record,
Speaker 2: it was a pop record. And they had another male artist.
Speaker 2: It was either they wanted to drop one of them.
Speaker 2: It was going to be Bowie or Kat Stevens. So
Speaker 2: when I I produced this less than you know, this
Speaker 2: less than kind of production, they kept Cat Stevens and
Speaker 2: dropped David. But actually it freed him from that label.
Speaker 2: He would have they would never have seen him as
Speaker 2: a future rock star. I always did. I knew he
Speaker 2: was going to go places. So we kind of rambled
Speaker 2: around over the next couple of years. We never really
Speaker 2: did anything great until the Space Oddity album, which we
Speaker 2: worked on together, and then The Man Who Sold the World,
Speaker 2: which was the next one. Now he was a rock star.
Speaker 1: Okay, Space Oddity, that's Gus, right, Are you involved in
Speaker 1: Space Oddity? The track?
Speaker 2: No? So when David played it to me, I said
Speaker 2: to him, I know what you're doing. There's a guy
Speaker 2: up in space. Now, you know, the NASA just put
Speaker 2: a guy in space in his tin can. I know
Speaker 2: what you mean by the tin can. And I said,
Speaker 2: but it's a cheap shot, you know, if it's it's
Speaker 2: based on a special event, it's not based on like,
Speaker 2: what are you gonna do? Write an album full of
Speaker 2: science fiction songs? Which he eventually right. He goes, he
Speaker 2: says yeah, but he goes everyone's saying it's a hit record.
Speaker 2: I go, I think it is a hit record. But
Speaker 2: I said, in good conscience, I can't go this route
Speaker 2: with you. You know, go go it some Gus loves you,
Speaker 2: he adores you, and he he had already worked with
Speaker 2: When David used to be on Decka, the Deca label,
Speaker 2: Gus already had worked with him. So I went to
Speaker 2: Gus and I said, you like this? He goes, yeah,
Speaker 2: He goes, why don't you do it? He goes, you're crazy, Tony.
Speaker 2: I go, no, I don't like it. I can't rook.
Speaker 2: I can't produce something I don't like. And he said,
Speaker 2: you're sure you're okay with this? I go, you got
Speaker 2: my blessings. So he finds Paul Buckmaster, who was also
Speaker 2: published by David Platz. It was all kind of in house,
Speaker 2: and when I heard it, I changed my mind. I said, shit,
Speaker 2: I should have produced that record, but I don't think
Speaker 2: I could have done Gus's job. He he threw the
Speaker 2: kitchen sink in it, and I wasn't yet a kitchen
Speaker 2: sink producer. I would have it would have been a
Speaker 2: more subtle piece of work. But since then, with all
Speaker 2: these atmosts and all these surround sound mixing things, Gus
Speaker 2: Gus has passed away, had passed away years ago. I
Speaker 2: have been mixing Space Odyssey over and over again in
Speaker 2: new formats. So I'm quite familiar with the song.
Speaker 1: Okay, but you work on the album after you hear the.
Speaker 2: Song, definitely yet so that surprised me. This is where
Speaker 2: our friendship came in. So after the song was made,
Speaker 2: I met David back in the office and I go, well,
Speaker 2: I suppose you're going to be working with gust from
Speaker 2: now on. You guys did great together. He goes, oh no, no,
Speaker 2: I had to get out. I had to get that
Speaker 2: out of the way. Now let's make the album. So
Speaker 2: he invited me back to make the rest of the album,
Speaker 2: which was good. You know, it's not a bad album.
Speaker 2: It's got some really good tracks on great songs. And
Speaker 2: then Space Out Audity sticks out like a sore thumb.
Speaker 2: You know, it's clearly the best track on the album
Speaker 2: that you know, you live and you learn.
Speaker 1: Okay, then The Man Who Sold the World, which means
Speaker 1: nothing when it comes out, nor does Space Oddity in
Speaker 1: the US, but I know it had some impact in
Speaker 1: the UK. So tell me about that album.
Speaker 2: But okay. By this time David was coming around to
Speaker 2: my flat with Mark Bolin. Sometimes David would would miss
Speaker 2: his last train to Beckenham and he would sleep over.
Speaker 2: Sometimes he would bring girls back to my flat to
Speaker 2: have sex with them. But it was clear that he
Speaker 2: had to have a flat of a house of his own,
Speaker 2: you know, he was like living between friends apartments and
Speaker 2: his go back to his parents now and then to
Speaker 2: get the laundry done, things like that. So he found
Speaker 2: this big house in Beckenham, Kent, which is hat In Hall,
Speaker 2: which is you know everyone knows about had In Hall now.
Speaker 2: It's an old Victorian house. It was beautiful. It was
Speaker 2: like a film set from Hammer Films. It was just
Speaker 2: absolutely beautiful and eerie. It felt haunted, I believe it was.
Speaker 2: So he lives there, and he and Angie, his wife,
Speaker 2: felt that it was just too big just for the
Speaker 2: both of them, and they asked myself and my girlfriend Liz,
Speaker 2: would they like to come and share the place with them.
Speaker 2: And we took one look at it and the real
Speaker 2: estate was huge. You know, there's a lot of apartment there.
Speaker 2: There was a wine cellar where we could set up
Speaker 2: a band, a drum kit and rehearse. So Liz and
Speaker 2: I moved into Haddon Hall and it was like really
Speaker 2: great for a while until it became a kind of
Speaker 2: meeting place for all the young kids in the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: And there would be knights that'd come home from work exhausted.
Speaker 2: There'd be about twenty people in that apartment, you know,
Speaker 2: just hanging off the There was a beautiful balcony around
Speaker 2: around the apartment, you know, hanging out doors, smoking dope.
Speaker 2: People would disappear into a bedroom upstairs. It was just like,
Speaker 2: this is getting like too hedonistic for me, you know,
Speaker 2: for a guy who just wanted to come home from
Speaker 2: work and chill, you know, So we still kept we
Speaker 2: still made the Mansoul the world. Under those conditions, I
Speaker 2: moved to a nearby town called Penge and we went down.
Speaker 2: We finally got Woody in the band. We had Mick
Speaker 2: Ronson in the band. He was heaven sent and Mick
Speaker 2: slowly got rid of everyone in the band that he
Speaker 2: had friends up in Hull, that he wanted to bring
Speaker 2: them down. So the first thing was he replaced all
Speaker 2: London drummer with Woody Woodmansey, who was in his band
Speaker 2: called the Rats back up in Hull, and I was
Speaker 2: the bass player. So Mick, Woody and myself and David
Speaker 2: on twelve string guitar formed a group which we went
Speaker 2: through many names, but one of the names that stuck
Speaker 2: with us was called the Hype. We were called Joe
Speaker 2: the Butcher at one point, and so we went into
Speaker 2: the studio and we said let's we liked. Mick Ronson
Speaker 2: loved Cream and he said, if you're going to play
Speaker 2: bass with me, he goes, I want you to listen
Speaker 2: to Jack Bruce and Cream. He goes, I want you
Speaker 2: to just that's the kind of bass player I want
Speaker 2: to work with. Because I was, up until that point
Speaker 2: of meat and potatoes bass player. I played funky stuff,
Speaker 2: but then I listened to Jack Bruce and he's playing
Speaker 2: bass like a lead guitar. He's bending all the notes
Speaker 2: and he's playing fast scales and going all over the place.
Speaker 2: I said, I went back to make I said, oh,
Speaker 2: I get it. You want me to play lead bass,
Speaker 2: which wasn't a thing yet. I mean, Jack Bruce was
Speaker 2: the only one doing that. So I started showing off.
Speaker 2: And I was also a guitar player, so this was
Speaker 2: easy to do this for me, just to play all
Speaker 2: over the place and play complicated stuff, and some of
Speaker 2: those parts like are iconic, like you hear Neirvada playing
Speaker 2: the Manusola World and playing my bass part, you know,
Speaker 2: and other people who ventured to play the title track
Speaker 2: that is some complicated bass part. I'm in a tribute
Speaker 2: band now where we do it play some of those
Speaker 2: songs on stage, and it takes me about two or
Speaker 2: three months to get back into shape again and remember
Speaker 2: all those notes again. But the Manusolda World didn't do
Speaker 2: what we thought it would do. We thought we were
Speaker 2: going to be the next We thought we were gonna be,
Speaker 2: you know, a really big prog rock band, but they
Speaker 2: didn't like us. You know, we did a big gig
Speaker 2: at the Roundhouse, and we were booed off the stage.
Speaker 2: Not off the stage, but we were you know, some
Speaker 2: of the some of the songs went down great, but
Speaker 2: some people were just booing us through throughout the songs
Speaker 2: and they couldn't get that basis he already had Space
Speaker 2: Oddity as a hit. They just wanted to, like, hear
Speaker 2: more Space Oddity. But he never did write those songs,
Speaker 2: those more than Space Ardity songs until maybe Ziggy started us.
Speaker 1: Okay, you part ways. He makes a somewhat acoustic album
Speaker 1: Hunky Dory, which is phenomenal, but the real breakthrough comes
Speaker 1: in seventy two, the same time as the Slider with
Speaker 1: Ziggy Stardust. You were not involved in those records. Yet,
Speaker 1: you're not involved with a Laddin scene, which I thought
Speaker 1: was a little bit of a disappointment, but you come
Speaker 1: back with Diamond Dogs. So what's your relationship with David
Speaker 1: and what's your observation of him during that period?
Speaker 2: Well, during his Ziggy days he made contact with me again,
Speaker 2: there was a little we didn't speak to each other
Speaker 2: for about a year after I left the Hype you know,
Speaker 2: the mansoulta world because it wasn't a hit, there was
Speaker 2: no point in staying together. He had to rethink his plan.
Speaker 2: I had to go back to Mark Bowling and make
Speaker 2: records like the Slider and get gainfully employed again. It
Speaker 2: wasn't making a lot of money and becking him. And
Speaker 2: suddenly then he said to me once like we should
Speaker 2: have dinner together, and I said, well, have dinner at
Speaker 2: my house. My mother's here and she's made, like these girls,
Speaker 2: great Italian food. So he comes in in all his
Speaker 2: ziggy regalia. He was ziggy off stage and when I
Speaker 2: say that, he had the like six inch heels, the
Speaker 2: spiked orange red hair and all that, and he's wearing
Speaker 2: you know, epaulets on his shoulders and he's iggy starred us.
Speaker 2: And we have this babysitter who was a Bowie fan,
Speaker 2: he later found out, and she's in the kitchen with
Speaker 2: holding a saucepan that had boiling water in it with
Speaker 2: the baby's bottle in it. We had an infant son
Speaker 2: at this time, and David walks into the kitchen and
Speaker 2: she sees it's David Bowie and she screams and drops
Speaker 2: the boiling water on the floor. And he had that
Speaker 2: impact on people. But anyway, she managed to recover and
Speaker 2: we had a lovely get together and then from then
Speaker 2: on we saw each other socially a lot and had
Speaker 2: dinners and restaurants. So by the time Diamond Dogs came around,
Speaker 2: he was, you know, working with other people, but he
Speaker 2: said he was making an album. He had been all
Speaker 2: over town with every engineer, every recording studio, and he
Speaker 2: just can't get a good mix out of the record.
Speaker 2: It was made under kind of horrible conditions. I won't
Speaker 2: go into the engineer who made the album, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't a well recorded album. You needed to do some
Speaker 2: serious repair jobs on the album. So I said, okay,
Speaker 2: And I had just built my first home studio. I
Speaker 2: had a sixteen track studio in an area called Shepherd's Bush,
Speaker 2: and I said, try out my studio. You haven't tried
Speaker 2: every studio in town because you haven't tried this one.
Speaker 2: So I do the first mix of Diamond Dogs with him,
Speaker 2: and he takes it home and phones me up at
Speaker 2: like five in the morning and says he thought I
Speaker 2: stayed up all night like he did, and he said,
Speaker 2: it sounds fantastic. Let's finish the album in your studio.
Speaker 2: So that's how he got back together again after all
Speaker 2: those years.
Speaker 1: Okay, Diamond Dogs, he's finally playing arenas in America. Rebel
Speaker 1: Rebel is a huge hit. But the critics start to him.
Speaker 1: They say, this is a little obvious. He's giving the
Speaker 1: people what they want. This comes a complete left turn
Speaker 1: with young Americans. Tell us how that happens.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, He's always start with a phone call from him,
Speaker 2: and after not hearing from him for ages, and he
Speaker 2: said that he's down in Philadelphia at Sigma Studios and
Speaker 2: they just started working on a new album. He goes,
Speaker 2: I want to make a soul album. He goes, but not,
Speaker 2: you know, it's not going to be like a sol album.
Speaker 2: It's going to be David Bowie singing soul. You know.
Speaker 2: I said, Okay, I'm game. You know, we knew, we
Speaker 2: knew our backgrounds. We knew I would fit in, and
Speaker 2: he knew I would fit in. And about two days later,
Speaker 2: I'm flying to Philadelphia from London and I had to
Speaker 2: show up for work. I just couldn't go to the hotel,
Speaker 2: not go straight to the hotel. The limo driver said,
Speaker 2: I have instructions to take you directly to the studio
Speaker 2: Sigma Studios in Philly. So I walk in there and
Speaker 2: it's about eleven at night, midnight something like that, and
Speaker 2: he's flying high, you know, little Peruvian marching powder was involved.
Speaker 2: And then the band is Carlos Alomar uh Andy Duncan,
Speaker 2: Andy Newmark on drums from Sly and the Family Stone,
Speaker 2: who I was supposed. I was surprised to find out
Speaker 2: he was a white guy because he's in the funkiest
Speaker 2: band on earth at that time. And the bass player
Speaker 2: was a bass player from Heaven, Willie Weeks, who played
Speaker 2: with Donny Hathaway and I had a band of Willie Weeks.
Speaker 2: He played on a song called Everything Is Everything where
Speaker 2: Willy Willy Willie Weeks takes about a five minute bass
Speaker 2: solo on that. So I said, Willy, I love you man,
Speaker 2: and he was like really playing it Dan. He wasn't smarting,
Speaker 2: he wasn't going out. He had this like kind of
Speaker 2: repressive personality at the time. So we started working immediately
Speaker 2: on the title track Young Americans. We start working on
Speaker 2: that and Willie's playing really simple. He's playing like one
Speaker 2: in five boom boo boom boo, boom boo, boom boo boom,
Speaker 2: like that, and I'm here, I know he can shred,
Speaker 2: so we let that go. It was too late, I think.
Speaker 2: The next day we wanted to move on to another
Speaker 2: song and he continues to to play this pedestrian these
Speaker 2: pedestrian bass parts, and he said, I said, Willie, I
Speaker 2: heard you play everything is everything on the Donnie Hathaway album.
Speaker 2: He said, why aren't you playing that way for us?
Speaker 2: And he just crossed his arms and he said, because
Speaker 2: you didn't ask me to. I said, well, I'm asking
Speaker 2: you you. I'm asking you now. I said, you can shred, man,
Speaker 2: you can. So you could hear the difference on the
Speaker 2: rest of the tracks on the album. He starts bouncing
Speaker 2: around and he's taken all kinds of you know, playing
Speaker 2: all kinds of tricky stuff. Oh, he's a genius and
Speaker 2: genius bass player. I so much enjoyed working with him.
Speaker 2: And we were a mixed, racially mixed band too, which
Speaker 2: worked perfectly. You know, at first we were going to
Speaker 2: get those guys if they get gambling huff maybe who
Speaker 2: well they owned that. They that was their studio which
Speaker 2: they did a lot of R and B stuff in there,
Speaker 2: and David approached them first, I think, and they said,
Speaker 2: we don't want no blue eyed white boy stealing our music.
Speaker 2: They told him that it was an insult, you know.
Speaker 2: So when he hired the studio anyway, he brought in
Speaker 2: his own band, and it was we were a mixed band.
Speaker 2: That's the way you know, music should be played. You know,
Speaker 2: you don't have to be a certain race to place
Speaker 2: any kind of music. It's it's a different world now,
Speaker 2: and it was then too well, it was just turning.
Speaker 2: It was changing. Times were changing then.
Speaker 1: So how does John Lennon get involved?
Speaker 2: That was freaking, That was really freaking. This is a
Speaker 2: kind of not I could I could make a short
Speaker 2: story out of it. So we move operations. We do
Speaker 2: young Americans, We do as mess as we can in Philadelphia,
Speaker 2: and then we move operations to New York. He puts
Speaker 2: me up into like Sheraton Hotel Pierre or something like that,
Speaker 2: really expensive hotel and all that he had. He was
Speaker 2: just throwing money away in those days. And he hires
Speaker 2: a studio there and to do some further work in
Speaker 2: that studio. So we cut a couple of tracks there.
Speaker 2: We didn't cut fame, but one night he left the
Speaker 2: studio early. He says I'm going to go back to
Speaker 2: my suite. He was in a Hotel Pierre, and he said,
Speaker 2: Lenin is coming by tonight. He goes, I'm a bit
Speaker 2: I'm a bit frightened of him, a bit scared of him.
Speaker 2: He goes, would you mind coming after work, after you
Speaker 2: finish all your tidying ups and all that, would you
Speaker 2: mind coming over and kind of buffer the meeting? Exactly
Speaker 2: the word he used to buffer the meeting. I said,
Speaker 2: I would love to meet John Lennon.
Speaker 1: I will be there.
Speaker 2: So I finished. At about midnight, Limo takes me over
Speaker 2: to the Hotel Pierre. I go up to David's sweet
Speaker 2: and I knock on the door a lot and nobody answers.
Speaker 2: But I hear a lot of scuffling behind the door,
Speaker 2: and finally I don't know who answered, but I think
Speaker 2: it was Neil Aspinall, one of the minders of the Beatles.
Speaker 2: It was Neil Aspinall, and I said, it's Tony, Tony WISCONTI.
Speaker 2: David asked me to come by tonight. He goes, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: we were just a bit worried you might be the police.
Speaker 2: And I go, oh, well, no, it's me. So he
Speaker 2: invited me in and I walk into the main room
Speaker 2: and I saw a sight I'll never forget. On the
Speaker 2: floor was David and a beautiful Hispanic woman, really really beautiful,
Speaker 2: and between them there was like a mountain of cocaine.
Speaker 2: It was mount everst but about six inches high, you know,
Speaker 2: and with ski slopes, it was like the real deal.
Speaker 2: And on the couch is my idol, John Lennon. You know,
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it. And I go hello, John, and
Speaker 2: he goes hello. And next to him was this Asian
Speaker 2: girl who I found out was Maypang and she's with
Speaker 2: sitting with him. And then there's Neil aspinall sitting next
Speaker 2: to John. And I snuggle into between Neil and John
Speaker 2: and I'm watching David and the girl chopping out lines
Speaker 2: and John and I said to John, I said, do
Speaker 2: you mind if I ask you some Beatles questions? You
Speaker 2: know like? He goes, no, go right ahead, you know,
Speaker 2: ask me anything you like. And I go, okay, that
Speaker 2: first chord on a hard day's night, What what how
Speaker 2: do you play that chord? He goes, well, I know
Speaker 2: what I played. You know, George played the other guitar.
Speaker 2: I played this chord and he picks up a guitar
Speaker 2: and he goes and I think George played this chord,
Speaker 2: and what you hear is these two chords together. He says,
Speaker 2: it's a good clash. It works, It really works. They go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: it works very much. And then I got into like
Speaker 2: lyrics and I had him for a good hour. And
Speaker 2: then he's like looking over at David. You know, now
Speaker 2: David's being absolutely rude. He's not even he's so frightened
Speaker 2: of John. He's not even looking up at John. He's
Speaker 2: just in with this girl. They're chopping lines away. John
Speaker 2: had a few. And then David picks up a pad,
Speaker 2: a sketch pad, and he's got some charcoal pencils or
Speaker 2: something like that, and he starts, you know, he's a
Speaker 2: great David was a great artist, and so is John.
Speaker 2: So David starts sketching a lenin of a portrait of John,
Speaker 2: like a caricature, and John says, hey, give us a
Speaker 2: piece of paper and give me a pencil, and John
Speaker 2: puts it on like a tea tray or something like that,
Speaker 2: and he starts doing David. And from this point onwards,
Speaker 2: it broke the ice that I couldn't buffer anything. The
Speaker 2: drawing of each was very funny, and they picked it
Speaker 2: up and they showed each other the drawings and have
Speaker 2: a good laugh, and they'd start a few and then
Speaker 2: eventually David and John started talking to each other. And
Speaker 2: then like I realized that the hour was getting really
Speaker 2: really late. It was getting to about six pm, seven pm,
Speaker 2: and I said, you know, I got to go. It's
Speaker 2: like really late. I had a hard, long day. And
Speaker 2: John said yeah. He says, we can't go until the
Speaker 2: sun rises, and I go, why is that? He goes, well,
Speaker 2: he says, you know, I was busted, and I don't
Speaker 2: want to I want to stay here. I feel safe here,
Speaker 2: and I feel it'd be easier if I leave in
Speaker 2: the daylight. They'll think I'm just coming out of a
Speaker 2: hotel instead of staying up all night. If I leave now,
Speaker 2: I'll look suspicious and all that. So it was horrible
Speaker 2: to hear him say that. You know, from you know,
Speaker 2: his prior bust. He was a victim. He could have
Speaker 2: been victimized. So that was really sad that he had
Speaker 2: to leave under those situations. But at least I had him,
Speaker 2: I don't know, six seven hours. He was all mine.
Speaker 1: So how did he end up co writing Fame?
Speaker 2: Well, that's it. I went back. The idea was I
Speaker 2: would go back with the master tapes to London to
Speaker 2: start mixing it. That's where my home base was then,
Speaker 2: and David would later join me there. So he phones
Speaker 2: me up about he doesn't phone me, No, he did.
Speaker 2: He did because there was another incident like this where
Speaker 2: his assistant phoned me. He phones me up there after
Speaker 2: three days and he said, Tony, I did something like amazing,
Speaker 2: but I'm afraid it excluded you. He goes, John and
Speaker 2: I would just you know. He came back the next
Speaker 2: night and we started jamming. We had the guitars and
Speaker 2: all that, and then the next night he goes, we
Speaker 2: hired a studio and we wrote this song called Fame,
Speaker 2: and he says, I put it down. It didn't you know.
Speaker 2: We hired a drummer in New York. It wasn't even
Speaker 2: the Philly group of musicians anymore. I think they got
Speaker 2: Carlos because Carlos lived in Manhattan, or he lived in
Speaker 2: the Bronx, so they got Carlos in there and he said,
Speaker 2: it sounds really good, but but I wrote it with
Speaker 2: John and I have to put it on the album.
Speaker 2: I have to take something off young Americans put it
Speaker 2: on the album, I said, I said, David, I would
Speaker 2: have bought my own ticket on the concord if you
Speaker 2: had told I would have been there in five hours,
Speaker 2: you know. He says, well, it's done, and we did it.
Speaker 2: And he said, then while we were there, I felt
Speaker 2: we had to record another. We had to record one
Speaker 2: of John's songs. So we did Across the Universe. And
Speaker 2: I later met up with John Lennon at some event
Speaker 2: or something and and we were talking about then he goes, because, yeah,
Speaker 2: because it was good. It was fun recording fame. He goes,
Speaker 2: but Across the Universe was never one of my favorite songs.
Speaker 2: He says. It was a drag doing that one. You're
Speaker 2: singing that one, he goes, But it turned out okay,
Speaker 2: you know, very gregarious, very nice.
Speaker 1: Okay, those two are on the album. Did you have
Speaker 1: to take stuff off the album?
Speaker 2: Sure? Oh my god, it took They took off two songs.
Speaker 2: Somebody up there Likes Me was taken off the album,
Speaker 2: and let It Be Me, which was a funky seven
Speaker 2: minute ballad which later when they reissued box sets, you
Speaker 2: now can hear those songs like let It Be Me
Speaker 2: is like a classic, like sounds like a Ray chall song.
Speaker 2: It's very slow and dirgy, and I wrote my best
Speaker 2: Quincy Jones arrangement for it as well. But you can
Speaker 2: now hear all those tracks.
Speaker 1: But oh, okay, but I have to I hate to
Speaker 1: correct you. You were there. But Somebody Up There Likes
Speaker 1: Me is the opening track on the album on the
Speaker 1: second side.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're absolutely right, so it's another track.
Speaker 1: The only reason I mentioned that is that's my favorite
Speaker 1: song on the album. Staying on the album, you ultimately
Speaker 1: hear and mix Fame, it becomes a gigantic kit. Did
Speaker 1: you expect that to be a hit?
Speaker 2: I I it likes Space Oddity. I knew it was
Speaker 2: a hit and I on the but you know, I
Speaker 2: could have done Space Oddity, like I said, you know,
Speaker 2: but I think Gus did a great job. I could
Speaker 2: have recorded Fame. It's like really simple and I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, the only thing about that album is Fame is
Speaker 1: not one of my favorites young Americans. Okay, but my
Speaker 1: two favorites are Somebody up There Likes Me in Fascination.
Speaker 2: Those two they're great.
Speaker 1: Never burnout on. Yeah, so and how did this is
Speaker 1: before Luther Vandrose is Luther Van Rose? I know, how
Speaker 1: does he end up? He's just in Philadelphia and he
Speaker 1: shows up. How does he get involved?
Speaker 2: Uh? Carlos and Robin went to high school with Luther.
Speaker 2: That's how he showed up. And they said, they said,
Speaker 2: you're gonna like Luther because they were looking for backup vocalists.
Speaker 2: Robin was already in. She was going to sing backing vocals.
Speaker 2: Ava Cherry, who was David's mistress at the time, was
Speaker 2: going to sing backing vocals. But we needed we needed
Speaker 2: more people. And so Luther comes in one day like
Speaker 2: like wide eyed, really innocent. You know, this tall, lovely
Speaker 2: man walks in like looking around. I know he had
Speaker 2: some experience in the studio, but this is big time,
Speaker 2: big star and all that. And he takes over as
Speaker 2: choir master almost immediately. When he hears how sluggish we
Speaker 2: were writing backing vocals, he goes, how about trying to this?
Speaker 2: How about trying this? Because young Americans didn't have the hook,
Speaker 2: He wrote the hook. So David wrote that whole song,
Speaker 2: but there was no chorus. There was just a musical interlude,
Speaker 2: and Luther could sing he's singing over he goes young Americans,
Speaker 2: young Americans, She got the young American. That was Luther's input,
Speaker 2: and David was gobsmacked. That would not have been a
Speaker 2: single if Luther did not come up with that. So
Speaker 2: Fascination was Luther's song called funky Music. So Luther said,
Speaker 2: I've got David said, let me hear your music. So
Speaker 2: Luther played him funky Music and he goes, how about?
Speaker 2: He said, I love the whole song, and I love
Speaker 2: most of the lyrics, but would you allow me to
Speaker 2: rewrite a few things about it. Luther couldn't believe his love,
Speaker 2: and he said, of course, you ken, David. So he
Speaker 2: changed Funky Music to Fascination, same melody. And it's so
Speaker 2: great to see all these young people for first time experiences,
Speaker 2: and you know, we're all kind of young ourselves, you know.
Speaker 2: And David making a solo album took a lot of balls,
Speaker 2: really it did, and especially in Philadelphia, he was on
Speaker 2: their turf.
Speaker 1: But then he's the so called thin white duke. And
Speaker 1: you DeCamp to Berlin. You're really the first act that
Speaker 1: does that. And you make Low, which is with Eno
Speaker 1: is considered to be an electronic album. How does that
Speaker 1: left turn happen and how does it end up? In Berlin?
Speaker 2: So David went to the Honky Chateau to do an
Speaker 2: album and he said, I've been Brian and I have
Speaker 2: been working for a couple of weeks writing some music
Speaker 2: this album, and he told me the concept. He said,
Speaker 2: the A side is going to be short songs, kind
Speaker 2: of brief songs, you know, like it's not going to
Speaker 2: be my usual set of lyrics. He goes, and the
Speaker 2: B side is going to be what Brian does best,
Speaker 2: his ambient music, And he said, would you He says,
Speaker 2: it's going to be very experimental and we might never
Speaker 2: release this album. He goes, but he says, so, I
Speaker 2: can't promise you that it's even going to be released,
Speaker 2: But are you willing to spend four weeks in France
Speaker 2: in the Chateau d'arraville with Brian and myself? He goes.
Speaker 2: I said, are you kidding? Four weeks with you and Brian?
Speaker 2: That's a holiday, that's a vacation. I said, I'll happily
Speaker 2: do that. So we sequested ourselves. It was very far
Speaker 2: from Paris. We really couldn't go out at night and
Speaker 2: get into trouble you know, we couldn't go to bars
Speaker 2: and clubs, and we just had you know, food brought in.
Speaker 2: It was at first the food was very bad. We
Speaker 2: were getting sick, sick of you know. We Cheese would
Speaker 2: be left out out and I would eat it and
Speaker 2: I'd get food poisoning for three days. Things like that
Speaker 2: were happening the past. Sometimes the power would go off
Speaker 2: at unexpected times, and the studio wasn't really it didn't
Speaker 2: have a lot of microphones in outboard gear. It hardly
Speaker 2: had any outboard gear. But it was perfect for us.
Speaker 2: It was like making music in a monastery. And it
Speaker 2: was a great experience to wake up every day, have
Speaker 2: a bit of breakfast, and go and work all day
Speaker 2: long on getting the most far out songs sounds we
Speaker 2: could think of. And Brian was really like working that
Speaker 2: little beast. That that synthesizer in a briefcase. It's called
Speaker 2: the EMS SYNTHI and I David bought one. I got one.
Speaker 2: In the end. It was very complicated to work because
Speaker 2: it had no keyboard. You really just you really just
Speaker 2: sat there and twiddl knobs and made it go wowow
Speaker 2: wow wow. Like things like that and buzz and all that.
Speaker 2: So with that we went to We did this experimental album.
Speaker 2: It was completely panned by the critics at first, but
Speaker 2: fans went even fans were worried about what's this B
Speaker 2: side business, But in the end it took. It was
Speaker 2: a long cell, a long hard sell. Ossier rejected it
Speaker 2: at first, they said, this is not a David Bowie album.
Speaker 2: There are not enough David Bowie songs on it. And
Speaker 2: you know they wanted they were always He says, yeah,
Speaker 2: they want another Ziggy Star us. They've been wanting me
Speaker 2: to make a Ziggy Star this album for years. So
Speaker 2: that's how we got stuck into this thing. But then,
Speaker 2: you know, just to prove everyone that he was doing
Speaker 2: what he wanted, then it was a clever thing. We
Speaker 2: moved to Berlin next and do a similar kind of album,
Speaker 2: except we had a good leadoff song on that album
Speaker 2: we had didn't have really We had sound and Vision
Speaker 2: on Low that was kind of a hit, but it
Speaker 2: wasn't a world wide hit. But Heroes, My God, we
Speaker 2: hit all the good points on that.
Speaker 1: Okay, before we get the heroes Breaking Glass. I always
Speaker 1: thought that was a commentary on Nick Lowe's I Love
Speaker 1: the Sound of Breaking Glass any insight there.
Speaker 2: I think it was a reaction to that song. I
Speaker 2: think David was going to having some fun with that
Speaker 2: song by calling that be calling, by writing a song
Speaker 2: called Breaking Glass.
Speaker 1: And then my favorite song on the album is always
Speaker 1: Crashing in the Same Car. Any story there?
Speaker 2: Oh, I love that. I love that song and it
Speaker 2: really did happen. He was in a hotel. He lived
Speaker 2: in a hotel in Berlin for a while, I think
Speaker 2: it was Berlin, and they was in the He kept
Speaker 2: his car in a sub basement, you know, in a
Speaker 2: car park, and he he couldn't see very well in
Speaker 2: dim light, and every time he decided to take the
Speaker 2: car out, he'd always always have a bumper accident with
Speaker 2: He'd hit another car in the in the uh in
Speaker 2: the garage, and he said he was sick and tired
Speaker 2: of it. He just stopped you. He just started parking
Speaker 2: the car in the street because he was always crashing.
Speaker 2: He was always crashing when he got his car out
Speaker 2: of that garage. But it became a metaphor for always
Speaker 2: doing the same thing and expecting different results.
Speaker 1: I guess, okay, you're in Berlin. Berlin, of course is
Speaker 1: a divided city. Then the wall doesn't fall for another
Speaker 1: you know, twelve years.
Speaker 2: What was Berlin like? It was scary, honestly. When we
Speaker 2: were there, the streets were full of these huge, black
Speaker 2: armored tanks and I think they belonged to the American Yeah,
Speaker 2: they belonged to the Americans. They were not your World
Speaker 2: War two tanks. These were big, but twice as big,
Speaker 2: all black and with that paint that you can't detect.
Speaker 2: It didn't shine, you know. It was the first time
Speaker 2: it was matte paint. And the turrets, the gun start
Speaker 2: turrets were sticking right in the air and you feel
Speaker 2: you felt like they could shoot a huge missile out
Speaker 2: of it at any second if they wanted to. And
Speaker 2: that was hard. It was hard to see that every day.
Speaker 2: That was a hard thing to live with. David had
Speaker 2: been there for six months, but when I saw it,
Speaker 2: it freaked me out. When I first moved there to
Speaker 2: make the album. The second thing was which was weird
Speaker 2: was Checkpoint Charlie because we were in the the British.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, we were in the American zone. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And the checkpoint went into the into East Berlin, where
Speaker 2: I think the British had headquarters there. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: It was it just.
Speaker 2: Was it just the the communist Germans in that side
Speaker 2: the Russians. I know, Russians were in there. It was
Speaker 2: Russian occupied.
Speaker 1: Well East Germany was tied up with Russia, however you
Speaker 1: want to put it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we had a couple of experiences with them
Speaker 2: as well. So we would go in there and it
Speaker 2: was a different world. Everything was because it was a
Speaker 2: communist country. All their billboards had slogans on them, but
Speaker 2: it didn't advertise like a BMW car or Camel's cigarettes
Speaker 2: something like that. It was slogans like they like eat
Speaker 2: fish and they would have a big they would have
Speaker 2: a big picture of a fish and drink milk and
Speaker 2: they have a big glass of milk and somebody with
Speaker 2: a mustache, you know, a milk mustache on their face.
Speaker 2: But they couldn't sell products like they were driving around
Speaker 2: these little Russian cars, cars called Vatborg's and scoters. The
Speaker 2: cars came from Russia. Whereas on this decide the west
Speaker 2: side of Berlin people were driving Mercedes, Benzes and you know,
Speaker 2: all the German cars. So that was freaky to go
Speaker 2: into westo East Berlin and then when you came back
Speaker 2: your car was searched by Russian Russian guards and they'd
Speaker 2: put a panel a mirror under your car to make
Speaker 2: sure you weren't smuggling anyone's, any peaceeople who wanted to escape,
Speaker 2: and they had people who made special shoes and clamps.
Speaker 2: They could actually hold themselves underneath the car while they
Speaker 2: drove across the bridge into West Berlin, and then they
Speaker 2: released themselves. So people were actually smuggling bodies that way
Speaker 2: into West Berlin. And then then when they went through
Speaker 2: your stuff at customs, you'd, you know, they just throw
Speaker 2: everything out on the counter and everything you had, anything
Speaker 2: in your knapsack or anything like that. And then they
Speaker 2: when we went through the first time, Iggy Pop had
Speaker 2: platinum h blonde hair, and David's passport had him with
Speaker 2: the curly perm. He had his hair, had a PERM
Speaker 2: and he looked very weird. Now both of them looked different,
Speaker 2: completely different. But they looked at the passports and they
Speaker 2: looked at Iggy's passport had the actual blonde hair and
Speaker 2: now Iggy had dark hair. David had the PERM but
Speaker 2: now he had darker hair. So they would hold the
Speaker 2: passports up in the air and they'd yell, hey, Fritz
Speaker 2: come here, they get another god to come over, and
Speaker 2: suddenly all the gods would gather around the passports and
Speaker 2: die laughing. They'd be laughing in our faces, you know.
Speaker 2: Then they give that they have a good laugh, and
Speaker 2: then they gave the passports back and we could get
Speaker 2: back into West Berlin. But things like that have the
Speaker 2: weirdest things happened every day. Another one was we're making
Speaker 2: heroes in the studio which faced the Berlin Wall, so
Speaker 2: we're looking at East Berlin from our studio in West Berlin,
Speaker 2: and there was a big kind of like a castle,
Speaker 2: you know, there was a kind of a big turret.
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe you'd call it a turret. And
Speaker 2: in there every day there was a Russian god watching
Speaker 2: us with big binoculars. He was watching us make records
Speaker 2: and they would have you know, and we could see
Speaker 2: from our side. They were so close. We could see
Speaker 2: the red star on his fuzzy gray helmet that he had,
Speaker 2: and he's wearing that big Russian overcoat for like Siberian winters,
Speaker 2: and he's watching us. So we asked our engineer, who
Speaker 2: is a lovely man, we said, doesn't this freak you out?
Speaker 2: With Russian gods like looking at every day. It's freaking
Speaker 2: us out. He goes, nah, doesn't, doesn't freak me out.
Speaker 2: And he took the overhead light that was hanging from
Speaker 2: a wire and he aimed it right at the Russian
Speaker 2: God and he started sticking his tongue out and sticking
Speaker 2: up the middle finger. That's the Russian God. So David
Speaker 2: and I dove underneath the recording console. Who he said,
Speaker 2: don't fucking do that, you know, don't do it. And
Speaker 2: he said, ah, it's okay. They can't shoot us. If
Speaker 2: you know, if they did, it would be World War three.
Speaker 2: You couldn't exchange fire. If anything like that happened to
Speaker 2: Checkpoint Charlie, we would have been at war again in
Speaker 2: the seventies. So they could restrain themselves. And the other
Speaker 2: funny thing was David one night went by the wall
Speaker 2: on the west side West Berlinside. He was dating a
Speaker 2: girl and he just decided he dropped her off and
Speaker 2: he took his car right by the wall and the
Speaker 2: other side of where all the Russians are, and he
Speaker 2: lights up a cigarette and somebody taps on his window.
Speaker 2: It was a Red Guard from the from East Berlin.
Speaker 2: David found out there were other tunnels that nobody knew about.
Speaker 2: The Red Guard came into the west just for a
Speaker 2: little stroll. This is about three in the morning, and
Speaker 2: he said, do you have a light? He ysked David
Speaker 2: for a light, freaked David out. He soon got out
Speaker 2: of there. He never went back to that spot again.
Speaker 1: And so next comes Heroes, Yeah, which ultimately is a
Speaker 1: success then, but becomes legendary over the decades.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, that was taking Berlin for a place to
Speaker 2: live that was really good. He and Niggy had been
Speaker 2: living there for at least almost a good part of
Speaker 2: a year and they were used to this going back
Speaker 2: and forth. They knew all the local drink they knew
Speaker 2: all the local drinking spots, and we went out there.
Speaker 2: They would often dress with as working men, so they all,
Speaker 2: the two of them, had scarfs and they would wear
Speaker 2: these andy cap you know, these these hats that workers
Speaker 2: in the fruit markets where to keep that top of
Speaker 2: their head warm. So they thought they could pass as Berliners,
Speaker 2: and that they actually did, you know, until they spoke English.
Speaker 2: But we often ordered in German. It was easy to order,
Speaker 2: you know, si beer, you know, and then when you
Speaker 2: wanted to pay you would say, v feel how much
Speaker 2: things like that? We learned that, We learned a few
Speaker 2: good words. So maybe the Germans knew we were in German,
Speaker 2: but you know, they were trying definitely to blend in.
Speaker 1: So you continue to work with Bowie until all of
Speaker 1: a sudden there's a schism in his sound and he
Speaker 1: works with now Rogers on Legs Dance. How did that happen?
Speaker 1: How did you end up not being involved?
Speaker 2: Well, before that happened, we did an incredible album called
Speaker 2: Scary Monsters Right, which which was number one and most
Speaker 2: of the world. So that was I thought, well, we're
Speaker 2: going to make a great record after this. The next
Speaker 2: one's going to be killer. The next record was Let's Dance,
Speaker 2: and his instead of him phoning me, Coco phoned me
Speaker 2: his assistant and she said, David's very sorry, but he
Speaker 2: just met Nile and they got on really really well
Speaker 2: and they're going to make an album together. So he's
Speaker 2: very very He said, you know, you'll make the next one,
Speaker 2: he says, but he wants he wants to work with Nile.
Speaker 2: It's very important to him. They got on really really well.
Speaker 2: So I said, okay, and I was really crestfallen. I
Speaker 2: really was, but it turned out great. You know, Let's
Speaker 2: Dance is a big hit, and he said, that's why
Speaker 2: I did it. I wanted that sound, and I knew
Speaker 2: I was going to get a hit record with him.
Speaker 2: I needed another international hit, which Nile gave him. And
Speaker 2: I take my hat off to him.
Speaker 1: You know, although I do like modern love. If I
Speaker 1: never hear Let's Dance again, that's okay with me. Seemed
Speaker 1: a little obvious, but brought him back then he worked
Speaker 1: with you, pagem before he goes back to you. What's
Speaker 1: his explanation there?
Speaker 2: He we had a thing like we came together and
Speaker 2: we worked a part many times, and I by then
Speaker 2: I couldn't blame him. He's, oh, he's looking for a
Speaker 2: new sound. He thought, maybe when he works with me,
Speaker 2: it's going to be predictable, it's going to be another
Speaker 2: the man who sold the world or heroes and all that.
Speaker 2: So he would love to like pay a producer to
Speaker 2: get a new fresh set of sounds. I think you
Speaker 2: page him worked with the Police or something. I don't know,
Speaker 2: the other great band. You know, he wanted a bit
Speaker 2: of the modern sound, but he'd always come back to
Speaker 2: me and for another record, Like you know, Diamond Dogs
Speaker 2: was a comeback record. Heathen was a comeback record after
Speaker 2: he worked, Like after we didn't speak to each other
Speaker 2: for ten years, he comes back one day and he says,
Speaker 2: how'd you like to get together and make another record together?
Speaker 2: You know? So I ended up making his last four
Speaker 2: albums with no right other producer in between.
Speaker 1: But before we get there, he is legendary for changing direction.
Speaker 1: Was that very conscious you were?
Speaker 2: There?
Speaker 1: Was he saying I did this, I need to do
Speaker 1: something different, or it's just in retrospect, it was different.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, he didn't get that name chameleon for nothing.
Speaker 2: It also referred to his change of musical tastes and styles.
Speaker 2: He constantly listened to new music. He would bring a
Speaker 2: stack of records with him whenever we we'd meet up,
Speaker 2: and we would go through the latest releases, and he'd
Speaker 2: want to make sure that I was up to date.
Speaker 2: And I would be with him and he could take
Speaker 2: someone's sound like oh what was that other one? Oh gosh,
Speaker 2: nine inch nails. He blatantly said, you know, I'll make
Speaker 2: a record with you and I I'm going to take
Speaker 2: your sound and I'll be your lead singer, so he
Speaker 2: would be Nile Rodgers's lead singer. That's he kind of
Speaker 2: spent that period being other group's lead singer, and he
Speaker 2: copped their sound. He'd steal their sound, but with their blessings.
Speaker 2: Because you know that by then, to work with David
Speaker 2: Bowie was like one of the greatest achievements in a
Speaker 2: producer's life or another rock star's life.
Speaker 1: And you you know, you talk about the last four records, Okay,
Speaker 1: we have The Next Day in two thy thirteen. Then
Speaker 1: of course the final album Blackstar. At this point in
Speaker 1: time was so much changing. Is he just want to
Speaker 1: lay down what he wants to lay down or is
Speaker 1: he still conscious of what's going on in charts, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Oh, he was forever interested in the charts. And the
Speaker 2: Next Day was on purpose. It was a retro look
Speaker 2: back at his other styles. So The Next Day is
Speaker 2: done in a lot of different David Bowie styles. But
Speaker 2: for Blackstar, he wanted to do his dream record that
Speaker 2: he never really achieved. He made a few attempts in
Speaker 2: the past, but he wanted to make a jazz based album.
Speaker 2: It had to he wanted to make it with jazz musicians,
Speaker 2: so he met this guy called Donnie McCaslin, who's an
Speaker 2: incredible sax player, and Donnie had a four piece band
Speaker 2: and he said, come, I want you to see this
Speaker 2: band because I'm thinking of using them. So we went
Speaker 2: down to the Blue Note in New York together, and
Speaker 2: I thought Donnie was fantastic. He just great. I loved him,
Speaker 2: loved all his players in the band, And when we
Speaker 2: got closer to Black Star, we had a couple of
Speaker 2: experiences with them. We recorded with Forget her Name again. Anyway,
Speaker 2: we had a session we worked with Donnie prior to
Speaker 2: Black Star, and we knew he was going to work. Also,
Speaker 2: Mark Juliana, the drummer in his band, was absolutely unbelievable
Speaker 2: and like him, this guy was a loop master. You
Speaker 2: thought it was a drum loop, but it's a real
Speaker 2: musician playing the same pattern over and over again for
Speaker 2: seven minutes. He was just a genius. So we had
Speaker 2: a pre production, was just one little rehearsal, and then
Speaker 2: David seeing me the day before and telling me that
Speaker 2: he was he was getting chemo treatment. So he said,
Speaker 2: I can't start this album with letting you know that,
Speaker 2: without letting you know that, And then the next day
Speaker 2: we started the album with the band, and he did
Speaker 2: the same thing. He gathered them all together in the
Speaker 2: studio and then he said, he told them the same
Speaker 2: thing he told me the day before. So he wasn't
Speaker 2: dead beat about it. He was quite upbeat about it.
Speaker 2: He says, but we're going to make the best album ever.
Speaker 2: We're gonna just you know, I want you guys to
Speaker 2: do your thing, don't hold back. And he gave them.
Speaker 2: He gave Danny. He gave Donnie a handful of demos,
Speaker 2: which is the first time he never gave me a demo.
Speaker 2: I always had the demos before we started. But his
Speaker 2: idea was to not have my influence at all on
Speaker 2: the creative part. At that level. He wanted this to
Speaker 2: be purely an album between him and Donnie and the
Speaker 2: band Donnie's band. So that's why it sounds so different
Speaker 2: and really really interesting and he's fulfilling his dream. He
Speaker 2: always recorded live in the room with them, and I
Speaker 2: have the master tapes and at the end you could
Speaker 2: hear him like laughing and cracking up talking to the band.
Speaker 2: These were his kind of people that he wanted to
Speaker 2: work with. At last, his other musicians that he made
Speaker 2: albums with prior to this, they some of them could
Speaker 2: play jazz, but it would be rock musicians playing jazz.
Speaker 2: But he felt, let's get the real thing, Let's get
Speaker 2: real jazz musicians, and instead it would have been a
Speaker 2: different album. But the songs that he wrote for Black Star,
Speaker 2: which just broke my heart, some of them, they were
Speaker 2: so beautiful and telltale. I mean, he's telling you, he's
Speaker 2: wearing his heart on his sleeve on that album.
Speaker 1: You know, he tells everybody involved that he has is
Speaker 1: being treeated. Was he optimistic at that point and then
Speaker 1: had to face the fact that it was terminal or
Speaker 1: was he hiding it from you?
Speaker 2: He was optimistic because he was going for the treatments.
Speaker 2: He wouldn't have gone if if he wasn't optimistic, and
Speaker 2: it happened. You know, his death was almost a year
Speaker 2: later from from that, and you know, he was good.
Speaker 2: Sometimes he had to leave early because he was a
Speaker 2: little tired, and so our days would end around five o'clock.
Speaker 2: But there were there were always things to do in
Speaker 2: his absence. So Donnie would play four saxophones and build
Speaker 2: up a sack section, things like that, and we'd play
Speaker 2: it to David the next day and he'd like what
Speaker 2: we had done. But he never never wore a gloomy face.
Speaker 2: He was absolutely smiling from ear to ear whenever he
Speaker 2: came to the sessions. He was in a great mood.
Speaker 1: And when the record was done. You know, interesting thing
Speaker 1: is it was released serendipitously just about when he died.
Speaker 1: Were you in contact with him in the ensuing months
Speaker 1: subsequent to the completion of the album, and how did
Speaker 1: you find out that he passed?
Speaker 2: Well? When the album ended, he was in great health.
Speaker 2: He was really fit. He was doing exercises. I didn't
Speaker 2: I stopped asking whether he was doing chemo or not.
Speaker 2: And because it was just such a regular thing. I mean,
Speaker 2: you know that was interesting. At the beginning of the album,
Speaker 2: at the end of the album, we were just a
Speaker 2: bunch of musicians making records. I saw him for lunches again,
Speaker 2: things like that. And then closer we got to Christmas,
Speaker 2: he had his family over and he was so pleased
Speaker 2: to her. He phoned me up and he said that
Speaker 2: he was He said he was going to become a grandfather.
Speaker 2: He's very proud of that. And I kept that secret.
Speaker 2: He said, this is a secret. Don't tell anyone. I
Speaker 2: kept that secret, and that he said he was going
Speaker 2: to resume some therapy. Afterwards, he says, everything's going great.
Speaker 2: I'll be fine, everything's going great. But you know, it
Speaker 2: wasn't going great. And he phoned up a lot of
Speaker 2: people in that month, so he was kind. It was
Speaker 2: kind of a goodbye. I heard from a lot of
Speaker 2: my friends. He was making phone calls to everyone he
Speaker 2: worked with, old friends, and he never actually said anything.
Speaker 2: He was just like getting up to date, probably telling
Speaker 2: them the same thing. He was going to become a grandfather.
Speaker 2: Don't tell anybody things like that. So I went on
Speaker 2: tour with my band, Holy Holy. We were doing a
Speaker 2: Bowie tribute tour and I was in Toronto and something.
Speaker 2: My alarm went off at eight in the morning and
Speaker 2: my watch, I didn't see my clock my iPhone and
Speaker 2: I looked at it and I saw David Bowie passed
Speaker 2: at eight o'clock in the morning. I saw he passed.
Speaker 2: And this is December tenth. And later there's a knock
Speaker 2: on my door. In the group. They come in my room.
Speaker 2: They say, Tony, I'm sorry to tell you something terrible
Speaker 2: has happened. I go, I know, And we had another
Speaker 2: show to play in Toronto that night, and said we
Speaker 2: had to have a group meeting. What are we going
Speaker 2: to do about this? And I said, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think David, you know, without sending code, I think
Speaker 2: the show must go on. We have this is our
Speaker 2: last date. These fans are going to want to mourn
Speaker 2: his death. They're going to and we're going to celebrate
Speaker 2: his life. Let's go and do the show. And even
Speaker 2: the promoterst begged, I just would I hope you're not
Speaker 2: going to cancel the show. I said, no, we'll do it.
Speaker 2: We'll do it. So we played seven of us. We
Speaker 2: played to you know, a rows and rows of people
Speaker 2: crying their eyes out, and then it was infectious. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm playing I'm crying my eyes out, playing bass, lead singers,
Speaker 2: choking on the words. And finally it's settled down. By
Speaker 2: the second half of the show, we all calm down
Speaker 2: with saying nice things about David. What else can you do?
Speaker 2: You know? And that was the end of the tour
Speaker 2: and I went back and none of us, nobody, there
Speaker 2: was no funeral that I knew of, you know, it
Speaker 2: was just a family thing. I have no idea how
Speaker 2: it went after he died, but he said it's goodbye
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Subsequent to his passing, there been you're let's just use
Speaker 1: the term Bowie tribute tour, but there's been another Bowie
Speaker 1: tribute tour with Adrian Blue. Are you fine with that
Speaker 1: or are you unhappy with that? Here's the difference. There's
Speaker 1: a tour now with all of them that the Bowie
Speaker 1: people who came at the afterwards, they Adrian actually played
Speaker 1: on an album, he played on larger, but a lot
Speaker 1: of the people were just his live people, his live
Speaker 1: show people, and some of them played on their albums
Speaker 1: and all that. It's just an alumn that's called an
Speaker 1: alumni tour. The reason I did that tribute Ben Woody
Speaker 1: Woodmansey and I played on The Man Who Sold the World.
Speaker 1: It started as a Man Who Saw the World tour.
Speaker 1: We are the original musicians and we felt that we
Speaker 1: had the right to do this to form this band.
Speaker 1: We always the tribute was to David, and we always
Speaker 1: had a pause in the middle of the show saying
Speaker 1: a nice little anecdote about David. And we felt that
Speaker 1: it was our right to do this without feeling bad
Speaker 1: about it, that we're just capitalizing on his death.
Speaker 2: He actually didn't. He died after we started this tour.
Speaker 2: We started it as a Bowie tribute show, and he
Speaker 2: asked me, he said, why are you doing this? And
Speaker 2: I said, because when we finished The Man of Soul
Speaker 2: the World, you split up the group. We went four
Speaker 2: different ways. Mick and Woody went back to Hull and you,
Speaker 2: you know, did your thing. You were doing your thing.
Speaker 2: He goes, oh, that's right, I said, he forgot. I said,
Speaker 2: that's why we're doing this. We do you feel we
Speaker 2: could do this? And we got a guy who sings
Speaker 2: very well. Would you like to see a video of
Speaker 2: one song? So I played the width of a Circle
Speaker 2: to him and he sat just behind where I'm sitting
Speaker 2: now and he said that's really good. At the end
Speaker 2: of he gouse, that's really great. You guys did a
Speaker 2: great job, because he says, if we stuck together, we
Speaker 2: would we would have sounded that good. You know, you're
Speaker 2: better rehearsed than we were at the time. I said,
Speaker 2: would you put that in writing? He says, no, absolutely not.
Speaker 2: It would have been nice if you endorsed the tour.
Speaker 2: But he died after this.
Speaker 1: You have these incredible highlights with David Bowie and t Rex.
Speaker 1: But you also did records with General Giant, the Moody
Speaker 1: Blues Bad Finger when it was still called the Ivy's.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of stuff there. But before we go,
Speaker 1: one thing you mentioned. You said you were writing songs
Speaker 1: with your wife. So when did you get married and
Speaker 1: did that wife go to England with you?
Speaker 2: That was nineteen sixty seven. That was her name was
Speaker 2: Sigrid and she was in a German America. That was
Speaker 2: the wife. Then I was married to Mary Hopkin.
Speaker 1: Well before we get to marry Hopkin. Yeah, your first wife.
Speaker 1: Did she go to London with you?
Speaker 2: Yes, she did, and she left after about seven months
Speaker 2: without me knowing it. I got home from work in
Speaker 2: the apartment, all her clothes were gone.
Speaker 1: Whoaha, whoa whoa, whoa, whoa who Did you have any
Speaker 1: idea and what did that feel like?
Speaker 2: Well, we were a singing duo and in New York,
Speaker 2: but that never continued when we moved to London. All
Speaker 2: of a sudden, my career was taking off and Segur
Speaker 2: was a stay at home wife and I didn't know
Speaker 2: how to deal with that. I invited her to come
Speaker 2: to the recording sessions and sit in but there was
Speaker 2: nothing for her to do, so she left me. She
Speaker 2: went back to her to live with her mother for
Speaker 2: a while. And by the way, like today, she's a tycoon.
Speaker 2: She builds, she builds office buildings in Manhattan.
Speaker 1: She Wow, did she get remarried?
Speaker 2: Yeah, a couple of times. But you know I met
Speaker 2: I met up with her a few years ago, and
Speaker 2: she's dressed to the nines. You know, she's dressed so beautifully,
Speaker 2: just for a chat. It was her idea. So she
Speaker 2: looks at me, and I'm already a successful record producers.
Speaker 2: So she looks at me and says the first thing
Speaker 2: out of her mouth, so do you need any money?
Speaker 1: First thing?
Speaker 2: There was the one upman ship. She just had to do.
Speaker 2: She just had to do that.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're making record with the ivs, become bad Finger, Magic, Christian, etcetera.
Speaker 1: How do you meet Mary Hopkins?
Speaker 2: That was interesting because I did work with the Ivy's
Speaker 2: and I was in and out of the Apple offices
Speaker 2: all the time. You know, you could anyone could walk
Speaker 2: in off the street. You've heard about this, whether Hell's
Speaker 2: angels could walk in anything, you know, And so I
Speaker 2: met a lot of people around the offices and they
Speaker 2: knew me, they knew I was working with t Rex,
Speaker 2: things like that. And I just got a call out
Speaker 2: of the blue from Mary's manager who said, we like
Speaker 2: Mary wants to make a folk album. She's doesn't want
Speaker 2: to be a pop star anymore. She doesn't she had
Speaker 2: the big hit with Paul McCartney and all that, and
Speaker 2: then she feels like people used her voice in the
Speaker 2: wrong way. She wants to make a folk album and
Speaker 2: she loves the music that you made with Ralph mctel
Speaker 2: and the Strawbes, to two folk artists that I've worked with.
Speaker 2: She says, I want that sound. So I said, well,
Speaker 2: I can do that for her. I can get Ralph
Speaker 2: mctel playing one guitar and Dave Cousin's playing the other
Speaker 2: and Danny Thompson in the middle on a double bass
Speaker 2: who played with Pentangle. And so I met Mary and
Speaker 2: told her all this, and she looked at me like
Speaker 2: I was like Jesus or something like that. This is
Speaker 2: exactly what she wanted to do. And she was thrilled
Speaker 2: as somebody was listening to her, you know, because Paul
Speaker 2: McCartney just thought she was going to be a pop star,
Speaker 2: you know, like he thought that was everyone's goal. But
Speaker 2: her roots were always folk music. She played in folk
Speaker 2: clubs in Wales and she was bilingual. She used to
Speaker 2: sing in Welsh to all these men's clubs. You know,
Speaker 2: they'd be drinking, knocking back pints of ale and singing
Speaker 2: in Welsh and all that. She was great, you know,
Speaker 2: but she wasn't a pop singer. So that's how it happened.
Speaker 2: I made her this album, Earth Song, Ocean Song. I
Speaker 2: spent at least two or three months looking for music
Speaker 2: she wasn't writing. Then I found some good songs for
Speaker 2: her in New York and brought him back to London
Speaker 2: and she was so thrilled. I mean, that was for her.
Speaker 2: It was the best thing she ever did.
Speaker 1: So how did it turn into a romance?
Speaker 2: That happened during the making of the album to get
Speaker 2: a lift home with her one night? And she had
Speaker 2: a limo in those days, a big Bentley limo, and
Speaker 2: you know, would you come in for like would you
Speaker 2: like to come in for a cup of tea? That's
Speaker 2: how it happened.
Speaker 1: Okay, you get married. She does not have another hit,
Speaker 1: does she care? Or is she done? Now?
Speaker 2: She did what she wanted to do. She didn't have
Speaker 2: another hit, because that would mean the public wanted her
Speaker 2: to be that Mary Hopkin, the one who sang those
Speaker 2: were the days. And she was eighteen when she did that.
Speaker 2: Now you know, she's a twenty two year old woman
Speaker 2: married to me. She has kids. And she said, you know,
Speaker 2: I said, are you going to go back on the
Speaker 2: road or what are you going to do? Do you?
Speaker 2: You know, we did a few gigs together with Dave
Speaker 2: Cousins and Danny Thompson and the Royal Albert Hall, and
Speaker 2: the audience you could see them float up in the air.
Speaker 2: She saying like an angel, you know she had, there's
Speaker 2: no voice like hers. And she said no. She says,
Speaker 2: what's the use of having children if you're just going
Speaker 2: to go out and work and do gigs. She says,
Speaker 2: I'm finished, I'm done. I don't want to do it anymore.
Speaker 2: So she used our kids. But you know, quite rightly,
Speaker 2: I think she did that made the right decision because
Speaker 2: she turned out to be the best mother to my
Speaker 2: two oldest children. You know who I am still in
Speaker 2: touch with constantly, and Mary and I are friends.
Speaker 1: Now. By the way, well how did it end with
Speaker 1: you and Mary?
Speaker 2: I cheated on her. She would to stay at home.
Speaker 2: Mom was not what I married. You know, I was
Speaker 2: this wild guy. I was a wild, crazy young man
Speaker 2: and I wasn't a very good husband. That's it. I
Speaker 2: have nothing to say in my defense.
Speaker 1: I think that kind of says it all. Then you
Speaker 1: get involved with me. Pang, who came up earlier in
Speaker 1: the podcast, how did that happen?
Speaker 2: Well, that was under the friendliest circumstances. I'm I met
Speaker 2: her when she left John. After she left, I met
Speaker 2: her at some kind of do and we went out
Speaker 2: on a date. I was single. I didn't cheat on
Speaker 2: any wife to go out with me. Pang, I was single,
Speaker 2: and we had a little romance in New York and
Speaker 2: then when I went back to England, she phoned me
Speaker 2: up one day after that little romance and said, how
Speaker 2: do you feel about babies? And I said, I like babies.
Speaker 2: I've got two kids already. I love babies. Because how
Speaker 2: would you like to be a father? Again? I go,
Speaker 2: what are you trying to tell me? She says, you're
Speaker 2: going to be a father. If you don't want to
Speaker 2: be a father, let me know, I'll get rid of it.
Speaker 2: But what do you want to do? And I thought
Speaker 2: for a minute, and this is now. I didn't live
Speaker 2: with kids for at least a decade by this point,
Speaker 2: and I made up my mind on the spot. I said,
Speaker 2: have the baby. And she goes and I said, and
Speaker 2: everything that goes with it. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: I said, will you marry me? I was in a session.
Speaker 2: I was in a recording session, and then I come
Speaker 2: out of the wherever I was taking the phone call
Speaker 2: and I told everyone I was working with, I'm going
Speaker 2: to be a father. It sounds flippant, but it was
Speaker 2: really romantic in a way. I mean the way she
Speaker 2: asked me, the way she kept rephrasing it and rephrasing
Speaker 2: it was very interesting, but it was. It was a
Speaker 2: great you know, I think all my marriages were great
Speaker 2: up to a point. I'm not a good husband. That's
Speaker 2: a conclusion I came to.
Speaker 1: So how did it end with me? Pang?
Speaker 2: Well, how do I put this? We started arguing a lot,
Speaker 2: and she was reliving her life again in the John
Speaker 2: Lennon Years a lot. She wrote that one book, Loving
Speaker 2: John or something like that, and started going out on
Speaker 2: a book. You when you promote a book, you know,
Speaker 2: going to different towns, and all that, and I felt like,
Speaker 2: at one point, I said, we had John Lennon's photos
Speaker 2: all over the wall. She said, one by one, I
Speaker 2: come home from work and there'd be another photo of
Speaker 2: John Lennon on the wall, or a photo of her
Speaker 2: and John Lennon on the wall. And I said, may
Speaker 2: you know this is a little bit ridiculous. I feel
Speaker 2: like there three of us in bed. And she goes,
Speaker 2: she said, well, you should have known this when you
Speaker 2: took it on, when you married me, you should have
Speaker 2: known this would happen. I go, no, I thought you
Speaker 2: married me, you know, and then we split, you know,
Speaker 2: I lived, We lived apart for a while and we
Speaker 2: never got back together again, and finally got divorced.
Speaker 1: So how many kids do you have and what are
Speaker 1: they up to?
Speaker 2: Oh? I've got great kids. My two oldest kids are
Speaker 2: from Mary Hopkin. My son, Morgan is Morgan Visconty. He's
Speaker 2: a film composer and he owns this company I'm sitting
Speaker 2: in right now. This is a whole bunch of recording
Speaker 2: studios where the people write jingles and film scores. And
Speaker 2: Morgan doesn't come in anymore. He's kind of semi retired
Speaker 2: at fifty one years old, but he likes to keep
Speaker 2: his hand in and write film scores. My oldest daughter,
Speaker 2: Jessica is living near Mary in England and she and
Speaker 2: Mary just made a duets album. They sound like sisters.
Speaker 2: They have the identical voice. My daughter has a voice
Speaker 2: from heaven just like Mary has. And she does gigs
Speaker 2: got She and her man who plays bass, they go
Speaker 2: out and do regular gigs all over England and they
Speaker 2: write songs, they release records. So that's side of the
Speaker 2: family is very musical. Now I'll move on to May.
Speaker 2: My two children with May are gifted as graphic artists.
Speaker 2: My daughter Lara is the youngest child. She's about thirty
Speaker 2: two or thirty three now, and I should know her
Speaker 2: rage really, but she does graphic work for many, many
Speaker 2: different companies, from designing their websites to actually if they
Speaker 2: have a new brand of talcum powder, she'll design the
Speaker 2: box and all the artwork that goes in. You know,
Speaker 2: this is a big job, you know, to make an
Speaker 2: iconic thing that'll catch the eye in a shop that'll sell.
Speaker 2: So she loves graphic art. And then my son Sebastian
Speaker 2: does his. He's got like the only one who does
Speaker 2: a normal nine to five job, but he does also
Speaker 2: he's into maga manga the Japanese are from and he
Speaker 2: does little comic books like that for his friends and
Speaker 2: sells them and stuff like that. But they're all autistic kids,
Speaker 2: and I love them all. I'm in touch with all
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 1: Okay, you started in Brooklyn, you ended up in London.
Speaker 1: Why are you in Manhattan now?
Speaker 2: Good question. In eighty nine, there was a huge recession worldwide,
Speaker 2: but it was very, very bad in the UK, and
Speaker 2: the studios were dropping like flies. And I had a
Speaker 2: really big studio. I had a responsible business that I
Speaker 2: was running, and I was in a neighborhood that had
Speaker 2: about maybe eight or nine recording studios and I saw
Speaker 2: them one by one. They were just closing shop forever.
Speaker 2: They just couldn't get any any clients. And then there
Speaker 2: was a guy called doctor Death who came around to
Speaker 2: my studio tried to get me to close my studio
Speaker 2: because he he did close the others. And he says, well,
Speaker 2: how about sell me some of your gear instead? You know,
Speaker 2: maybe do you need all your gear? I can, I'll
Speaker 2: take your microphones from you and things like that. And
Speaker 2: I told him to get lost. But the writing was
Speaker 2: on the wall. I knew that I had about bookings
Speaker 2: for the next two months. Besides myself, I would use
Speaker 2: it for my own productions, but I didn't work world,
Speaker 2: I didn't produce all the time, so I had other
Speaker 2: people come in and use a studio. Quite a few
Speaker 2: hit records. We made this in Lizzie and people like that.
Speaker 2: And I found a buyer who wanted to buy the
Speaker 2: whole studio, lock stock and barrel. He was a jingle guy,
Speaker 2: jingle house guy, and they called it Joe and Co.
Speaker 2: I just learned yesterday that Joe passed away. But they
Speaker 2: bought the studio for me and they turned it into
Speaker 2: the one of the biggest jingle houses in London. In fact,
Speaker 2: it was the big biggest jingle house in London. And
Speaker 2: even my son Morgan started working with them first and
Speaker 2: he got into the rhythm of writing jingles and what
Speaker 2: it takes to do that. But the studio still lives today.
Speaker 2: The studio that was came perilously close to closing. It's
Speaker 2: now owned by the Alvin Lee family. Alvin Lee blues guitarist,
Speaker 2: his daughter, his daughter and his wife owned the studio
Speaker 2: now and they run it like a really good business,
Speaker 2: and I'm entitled to use it anytime I want. Anytime
Speaker 2: I go to London, I can go in that place
Speaker 2: and it's it's walking through my history.
Speaker 1: Believe it.
Speaker 2: When I walk down those steps, I'm like hearing hazy
Speaker 2: fantasy thin Lizzie, all the things I recorded, all the
Speaker 2: great records I made. And the name of the studio
Speaker 2: when you owned it, it was called good Earth. And
Speaker 2: you know, Good Earth is a pearless buck pearlss buck
Speaker 2: book about China. And ironically I lived my studio was
Speaker 2: a block away from Chinatown in London, so we got
Speaker 2: a lot of calls at one in the morning for
Speaker 2: people wanting a late Chinese meal. There was another Chinese restaurant.
Speaker 2: You know, there were's quite a few Good Earths in
Speaker 2: the world, restaurants that call themselves good Earth, the Good Earth.
Speaker 1: So how do you end up back in the US?
Speaker 2: Well that was because of the recession. I sold my
Speaker 2: studio and got out and I went back. I was
Speaker 2: with May then. She always was good with money, and
Speaker 2: she realized, she says, that's the best thing you could do,
Speaker 2: because you'll be broken six months. You're not going to
Speaker 2: get any more clients, that studio is going to shut down.
Speaker 2: But for a jingle house, it was perfect. He didn't
Speaker 2: rely on clients like musicians, you know, he just wanted
Speaker 2: people who wanted adverts made. And we got on a plane.
Speaker 2: I said goodbye to my house, my studio and moved
Speaker 2: to New York. At first in her place, she had
Speaker 2: a controlled rent place in Manhattan on eighty ninth Street
Speaker 2: between Third and Second Avenue, Manhattan, So we lived there
Speaker 2: for a while until children started to come from that marriage,
Speaker 2: and then we had to move to other places. But
Speaker 2: it was great. It was great to be back. I
Speaker 2: had to literally start all over again because most people
Speaker 2: didn't know who I was with whatever great reputation I
Speaker 2: had made in London and the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: Americans just you know, oh oh you did Bangagong that one,
Speaker 2: you know, that was it, you know, And so that's
Speaker 2: how I ended up back there, and you know, my
Speaker 2: career did pick up afterwards. I'm still making records all
Speaker 2: the time, working with some great people, discovering new artists.
Speaker 2: Did you know about my box set?
Speaker 1: Yes? I did. That's what inspired me to do this podcast.
Speaker 2: But you can do a little commercial, Oh well, I've
Speaker 2: got a box set of six vinyls or four CDs,
Speaker 2: whichever one's you want to buy. But I was approached
Speaker 2: by Demon Records about a year ago saying they would
Speaker 2: like to do this, and I had this idea about
Speaker 2: five or ten years ago. But the time is right now.
Speaker 2: It actually never came off before, but by now I'm
Speaker 2: seventy nine years old. I had to have a pretty
Speaker 2: dense history behind me. I've worked with I must have
Speaker 2: made about five hundred albums. I've must have produced over
Speaker 2: two thousand songs, individual songs, and now's the time. I'm
Speaker 2: really proud of this album. It's got some iconic records
Speaker 2: that Americans might not have heard. But I had a
Speaker 2: big spate of hits in the eighties in Britain with
Speaker 2: Adamant Altered Images, a lot of British and my studio
Speaker 2: we turned into a literally a hit factory. I was
Speaker 2: there every day, new group, every day, Dexi's Midnight Runners like.
Speaker 2: I did a lot of stuff in the eighties and
Speaker 2: that's well represented on this box set. And then someone
Speaker 2: pointed out to me, but you left this off, you
Speaker 2: left that off, you left that off, and one group
Speaker 2: I'm very proud of was Ossi Bisa. It's the first
Speaker 2: Anglo African group ever. It came from Kenya and we
Speaker 2: made the first two albums we made were massive hits
Speaker 2: for them in the UK and also in America. There's
Speaker 2: not one Osibisas song on this album. So now I
Speaker 2: have to go back to demon Now they don't know this,
Speaker 2: but I want to do a volume two and make
Speaker 2: sure you know. There's plenty of other records to get
Speaker 2: on there, but I want to make sure Osibisa gets
Speaker 2: on the next one because I'm very, very proud of
Speaker 2: that work. It was groundbreaking work. You never heard of
Speaker 2: an African rock band before until Osibisa.
Speaker 1: Well, they have the covers by Roger Dean, the same
Speaker 1: guy who did the Yes covers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those are great, those covers. They are iconic covers.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you have this long history, but you have
Speaker 1: a similar perspective that I have, except even more information
Speaker 1: from the fifties and early sixties. You're excited about these
Speaker 1: women you met at Weeperbond, But are as you as
Speaker 1: excited about the music as ever? And what do you
Speaker 1: think about music and its power and influence and where
Speaker 1: it's going today?
Speaker 2: Well, Back in my day, music was a culture and
Speaker 2: record labels they couldn't wait to be invited to the
Speaker 2: recording session and sit in and watching a hit being made,
Speaker 2: watching an album being made. Even you know, even though
Speaker 2: money was to be made by these records, even the
Speaker 2: executives felt like they they would be attending ay a
Speaker 2: history making recording session. They used to come to the
Speaker 2: sessions and then when the record it came time to
Speaker 2: promote it, they would put a huge budget in the promotion.
Speaker 2: And that's just the way things were in those days.
Speaker 2: And the freakier album you can make, the better. The
Speaker 2: freaky of the album was, the better. They wanted new sounds,
Speaker 2: different things. Bowie could be as radical as he could,
Speaker 2: and you know, Mark Bowling could do say outrageous things
Speaker 2: in the press. They loved all that stuff because it
Speaker 2: was a culture move. Speed up these days. The difference
Speaker 2: between these days is the bottom line is money right now,
Speaker 2: it's really money, money, money, and they have to make
Speaker 2: a sound alike records to get that money. So the
Speaker 2: hire producers very very clever young people who work from
Speaker 2: laptops mainly. And everything's in the everything's in the box now,
Speaker 2: like you would probably The only human being on today's
Speaker 2: records might be just the singer. Everything else is programmed,
Speaker 2: you know, a fake guitar, a fake bass, fake drums,
Speaker 2: a swirling synthesizer sounds, and a chorus that goes on
Speaker 2: forever until you're sick of it. You know, Oh my god,
Speaker 2: what can I say?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 2: I mean, I kind of within this climate, I still
Speaker 2: have people who want to work with me. I wish
Speaker 2: I could tell you the name of this famous jazz
Speaker 2: pianist player that I'm making a record with. She swore
Speaker 2: me to secrecy, but I just gave away thee to you.
Speaker 2: But I'm making a fantastic record with this person. And
Speaker 2: there's still that market. There's people who love great music,
Speaker 2: and people who are true artists are still being supported
Speaker 2: by their fans and by labels too, because you know,
Speaker 2: a great artist can sell a lot of records. It
Speaker 2: doesn't have to be a Beyonce kind of record or
Speaker 2: a Taylor Swift kind of record. It could be a
Speaker 2: record of extreme autistic merit and it could sell. And
Speaker 2: I'm that kind of a producer. I'm this is my
Speaker 2: sixth decade and I learned a lot of shit in
Speaker 2: my life By six decade, I could still pull rabbits
Speaker 2: out of the hat for people.
Speaker 1: This has been utterly fantastic. I could talk to you
Speaker 1: for another three hours.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 1: I can see why you're successful. You're a very charming guy,
Speaker 1: very friendly. It's funny you just see a name on
Speaker 1: a record cover, you have no idea who the person is.
Speaker 1: And you're great rock and tour. Really, you're just fucking great, Tony.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not blowing smoke up your ass because
Speaker 1: you never really know. And I said, you know, like
Speaker 1: after like five bits ago, this guy is great. It's like,
Speaker 1: well it stay this good, and it did. So I
Speaker 1: want to thank you for taking the time to talk
Speaker 1: to my audience.
Speaker 2: Well, if you're a sweetheart, I love you.
Speaker 1: It's all true. That's one reputation I have. I speak
Speaker 1: by truth.
Speaker 2: They said, be careful what you tell him. He's going
Speaker 2: to ask you these questions. I said, well, I've got
Speaker 2: nothing to hide.
Speaker 1: You know this is you know, Mike, the whole thing
Speaker 1: with this is not gotcha anyway, not that I would
Speaker 1: I would even know what gotcha to ask you? As
Speaker 1: you say, you have nothing to hide, but you know
Speaker 1: you were there and you've told some of those stories
Speaker 1: that people don't know. Not to mention your history.
Speaker 2: People need to know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can see why you connect with BOYD.
Speaker 1: People want to work with You're a good guy, good hang,
Speaker 1: irrelevant of your talent. Yeah, that guy is fun to
Speaker 1: have around. And he's not like a Sicka fan either.
Speaker 2: I always love your podcast. I listened to you you bought.
Speaker 2: Podcasts are great. You know they're so different from others.
Speaker 2: You know that you don't have one. You're the only
Speaker 2: string running through everything you know, and you do great interviews. Bob,
Speaker 2: I'm a fan.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. I'll just leave it at that, So Tony,
Speaker 1: I want to thank you again. Till next time. This
Speaker 1: is Bob left Sets