Tony Visconti

technician and a creative director. I think I qualify for the latter because I studied music I was like fifteen years old, and I play several instruments. I write orchestrations, and I understand how harmony and theory works. And I also understand rock and roll people too, because I'm one myself. I guess.

I made my first record with them. So that was a direct face used to face contact with a group.

The one of the girls came in with her guitar and just played about three chords and within an hour we had the structure of a song, the melodic and chord structure of a song, and then we chipped away at it for the past two days, so now I've actually recorded an entire song with them. It's just amazing how it works.

It's just no space that big. So it really I make these albums more economical by having my own facility. So what do we say, like twenty grand at the minimum, I would say that, Yeah, okay, So you know you talk about getting drums right, and certainly in the pre internet era that was a big thing. In the big studio could certainly take days just to get the sound right.

Many people today listen via earbuds. The goal in the seventies was to have the biggest stereo you could possibly have to get closer to the music, and now it's kind of the opposite. So how do you feel about this making records? Well, you know, I've got the Apple EarPods and they sound really great. They have the high end ones. You could hear a lot of low end on it. You could hear the width of a big stereo production. But you know a lot of kids can

only afford like cheap and nasty things with on them. Still, you know, they're not Bluetooth, so I have to listen to what I do on everything. I've got these big expensive speakers in my studio. I've got smaller ones at home, and I've got to hear the Apple buds and somewhere you can make a mix that's going to sound great on everything. In fact, that's the wholemark of a good mix. It should sound great on everything. It might not sound the same, but it has to sound great.

I'm always on one microphone, you know, with a singer or maybe a stereo output from a keyboard. It's easily manageable to do that and to give direction at the same time, So I don't. I don't need an engineer when I'm mixing, and I mix how they say inside the box. In the box, explain to my audience what that means. The means I do all the mixing in the computer itself. It never leaves the computer. However, I

do have sixteen analog outputs to do that. If I want to, if the project wants a more analog sound which kind of has all the little bit of bits of distortion and you know, overblown base, I could come through sixteen channels of this thing called dangerous audio two bus. It is a it's a real magic trick for anybody who works inside the box, which is the computer, but takes it out of the box just to get an analog flavor and then it gets recorded back into the

box again. The nice thing about digital, I mean, people say it's cold and all that, but digital is really true. What you put in comes out, it's not It doesn't color it in any way. So that's why we are now after we ask for this kind of magical recording all these years, now we'll finding we need all these techniques to mess it up again, to make it sound saturated and you know, blown out tape and all that.

capture the reflections, make note of the wood panels. And it's called t verb. So for all you recording enthusiasts made by the company called Eventide and Teaset TV verb, you know they named it. I didn't name it, but it's called t verb in honor of me. And you can get that Bowie's hero vocal sound with this app easily. It's very easy to do.

beginning of the record. So now, because of computer technology, even the cutting lathes are working at speeds that a human brain can't work at. Because in the old days, when you wanted to widen the groove, you had a little wheel and the engineer did it by hand to open up the groove for a very loud passage, and when it's quiet, he would close the groove by hand. And now the computer does this about ten times quicker, therefore optimizing the space between the beginning of a vinyl

and the end of a vinyl. So this is a good thing that's happened. I like new vinyls. They sound better than ever.

So one ninety two is got so many bits jammed into per second that it resembles a curve, very closely, so if you transfer one ninety two to vinyl, it'll probably be the same. But vinyl has the one artifact that it's a medium. It's got that plastic sound that you're not very aware of all the time. But analog sounds warm because of the vinyl itself. That's one of the reasons vinyl has a warm, kind of loose kind of sound to it. But if you listen to the

one nine two, it would sound incredible. I think from forty eight Killer Hurts Up A mix sounds pretty good if you're doing all the right things, if you're recording fat you know, nice pre am and nice bass sounds and all that. From forty a K, which is I think uh DVDs of forty AK it sounds good. It doesn't sound horrible. You know, who's got who's got these big like you said, Bob, who's got these big speakers

in the living room anymore? Who gets a shit? Really? Yeah? Well, even the older people are listening on on headphones and in near earbods, EarPods.

musical content is there. So that's the problem we have with vinyl. And if you keep your sides short, you will never hear surface noise. I recommend no more than eighteen minutes per side, because beyond that you will be losing a dB for every minute. That's actually a ratio, it's a law in vinyl cutting.

the record might give it away. But I you know, a well cut final that has an eighteen minute maximum side and a one ninety two file, it's going to sound pretty close to each other.

he put inside and it worked that. Actually, I was in my room. I used to listen to the Alan Freed Show, the Jocko Show on radio and all that, and I could really crank that ten inch speaker. Because of Bruce's intovention, my mom, My mom flipped out. She says, you broke my radio, you know, and in those days a home only owned one radio. My home did anyway, you know. But she was okay, she was happy I went into this career. So you know, I was okay after that.

I don't think I started on pro Tools. They they had only a four track thing called digit Design or something like that. They weren't they weren't pro Tools yet. And then there was this German company who made Logic. So Logic was the game changer from uh they went a track when pro Tools were still four track. So I switched over to the Logic brand and I started to make really good, good recordings at home and what I ended up doing was because I didn't have an

analog tape machine. I would do a lot of tricky stuff, a lot of editing the in the UH in pro tools or logic, and then I would there were some studios that already had it too. I would bring my files there and we'd lock them up with the twenty four track tape or the sixteen track tape that we had, so I could do a lot of work at home, which was inexpensive on editing, and then go with the edited files back and put it on the the tape that had the analog drums recorded on it and all that.

So I did this really quite early in the game seventies. I can't remember what year, but probably seventy nine around then, seventy nine to eighty.

wealthy to use it. And at the end of maybe two weeks of recording drums, et cetera and things like that, then we'll have the engineer put everything into pro tools. But we could work for an analog for like the two weeks time, and then once it's in pro tools, then I could do what I normally do.

It's a horrible medium, it really, it's archaic, But what studios do nowadays, this is a really nice trick. And you could do it with a machine called Stuoter. Because it's got three heads instead of the traditional two heads. You can actually record a session on tape and simultaneously play it back into a computer. And as soon as it comes off the record tape, it hits a playback tape and it goes into pro Tools like within a split second. That is quite a modern day of ing now.

So after you've got the drums and all that done, you could then open up pro Tools and listen to it and it just sounds fantastic. You can't get it fresher than that, you know, Okay.

He'd go off in his car and after the cement work has put down the foundation, he would put the timber and the lumber and start building the house. Quite often he'd build a house single handedly. One day he took me just he wanted me to hold up a beam while he nailed it on the other end, you know, and I had too. He wanted to make a man of me, he said. So it took two weeks of my life and my hands were full of splinters and cuts and all that. And I said, Dad, I'm just

not going to be a carpenter. You got to get used to it. But he was. He was a good guy. He taught me music. He taught me how to play mandolin and guitar, and he played accordion too, So we used to jam together. And thanks to him, I knew all the songs from the thirties and the forties, you know, the music that he grew up with, the nineteen thirties and forties.

Woolworth's piece of dung. But anyway, about three months later they went out and got me a wooden ukulele and I started really, you know, jamming on that thing. He was a good man, it was really. He knew I had talent, and he nurtured me.

far away. And our building had basically all Italians in it because my grandfather owned it, So we had Italians on We lived on the ground floor and we had Italians in the middle floor and on the upper floor, and next door we had a Sicilian family who owned that house, and you know, we were Neapolitans, not that I could speak any Italian, but there was like a lot of love lost between Sicilians and Neapolitans, so we

had that little battle going on, you know. But my mother made friends easily because on the other side of the street around the corner was Wykoff Street, which was all black, all black people, and my mother used to go to the end of the garden and she had a friend. I forget what her name was, but they addressed each other as you know, missus Smith and Missus Visconti, and they got on. They would chat for about an hour each time and wouldn't invite each other in each

other's houses, but they became good friends. Across the street, we had this crazy guy who had a junkyard. He just like was dangerous if you got close to his junk yard and you wanted to like peek in. And at once I went in and sat on a tractor. He nearly killed me, you know, chased me off the tractor and I ran back across the street to my home down the street. We had Irish people all on us the same street, and we had Hispanic people, and we all got along kids in the street, you know,

playing hopscotch, ring Aleivio, all these crazy street game. You can only play it in the middle of the street. And you needed a lot of chalk to make all the patterns. And all that. We weren't you know, I guess you can gather that we weren't wealthy. We were quite working class. But I got toys at Christmas. I got the ugulele. I got some fun stuff. And my mother was a fantastic Italian cook. She would cook and

sing in the kitchen at the same time. And her sauce or gravy with depending on your ethnic what you want to call it started two days before Sunday because she reduced that those jars of tomatoes to just liquid gold. It was just delicious. And she would sing Italian songs in the kitchen. She was a fluent Italian singer, and she had a voice like an opera singer. I heard. We had a friend who had a disc cutter in those days, in the late fifties. He cut these little

seven inch discs. So I heard my mother sing Italian songs on those discs in recent times, about twenty years ago, and I said to her on the phone, I said, Mom, you had an operatic voice. You are a contralto. Do you realize you could have sung an opera? And she goes, oh, she goes, all Italian women could sing. She was a great sobering influence on me. You know, I didn't grow up with any airs. The two of them kept me in check and themselves in check too.

that I hit her in the head. I don't know what I was taking my anger out on, but you know why I was doing this. But I really did not like being separated from my mother. And after that year, which I don't remember anything more about it, it was just kindergarten. We just played on the floor and drew, you know, pictures and all that. But the first grade was quite interesting. I was very interested in learning how to read and write,

and I was already my parents started me off. I could read basic words, I knew how the alphabet worked, and until I was about up until the third grade, I was a good scholar. I paid attention and it was good and kind of after that I lost interest. When I got up to fifth grade, I or sixth grade, I got a great teacher. He pulled me out of the doldrums of like, you know, just going to school and all that. His name was James Flanagan, and he was in World War maybe the Korean War. Probably maybe

the Korean War could have been World War Two. I don't know, but he told me like lots of stories and he took me aside. He so that I was like, like after class, we'd chat for about fifteen minutes and he was really good to me. And one day he said, when I was in Japan, I saw men who could break wood with their bare hands, and I said, that's it. I got to learn how to break with with my bands. He got me like going. And there was early karate schools in New York City at the time, which I

was too young to go to. But I bought a book and I did my own training in my backyard. And I have James Flanagan or Jim, you know, we could call him. He was cool. We could call him by his first name in the sixth grade, whereas before that you had to call the teachers by their surnames.

an only child. I had a cousin, a close cousin who used to come over to my house and we play for a while, and like around I guess twelve years old thirteen, we just kind of He became very religious. He became a religious Catholic and went to a parochial school, which I just couldn't handle it. I already knew something was wrong. I didn't want to learn any more religion. I didn't like it. I didn't like the nuns. I

didn't like the priests. The masses were nice if they had a nice organ playing, and some of the hymns, you know that. I like the musical part, but it just wasn't for me. And when I was fifteen, I totally left the church. I had a chiropractor who was a very modern thinker, and he was again like a father figure, like mister Flanagan was, and we were talking about religion one day. He goes, how do you feel

about it? And I go, I don't know. I said, it's kind of simple, and yet there's nothing there that entices me, like wants me to go to church. He goes, I stopped going to church too, and yah, he made me the atheist that I am today. I'm actually in touch with his sons now, who are like in their forties. You know, he's still alive, that guy.

and the Moon Glows, all those old doop groups. And then I discovered Jocko, who was a DJ. I don't know his full name. He just used to go like, I am your engineer, ooh, bop do, how do you do? This is your engineer Jocko. And I used to listen to him like one morning a week, and he would play the most insane he'd go much further with the R and B. He would find some music from the Deep South that Alan Freed wouldn't play because Alan Fee was catering mainly to a white teenage crowd and Jocko

was catering to a black crowd, black audience. So I had the best of both worlds. I can't complain. Was that so? Anyway? Alan Freed started the first rock and roll shows ever, like at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater, where you would have on one bill you would have Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Harvey and the Moon Glows, the Cleftones, Shirley and Lee, all singing two songs each and they would

work from morning to night. The first show was like ten am and the last show ended at midnight, and I would pay for the I would go in in Brooklyn. I would take the train to the Brooklyn Paramount, pay for the to get in, and then hide in the

bathroom in between shows and go back. And I'd stay till at least eight o'clock at night and see three shows and to see the people that I was hearing Alan Freed play on the radio, to see them live in color, you know, like the Cleftones would wear double breasted suits in shaw truce, you know, and shar truce loafers, you know, and they were the cool They would have

the coolest dand steps. You know. While the guy was singing lead, the other four guys would just drop down into a split and you can't see that on the radio, you know. To see these people actually perform these songs

live was incredible. The other thing I remember from this, Bob, is that they had one guitar amplifier in the middle of the stage, and that was to suffice for all the guitar players in the show, and the lead the guitar chord went all the way to the side of the stage, like it was about, you know, thirty feet thirty five feet maybe forty feet long, and only about half the had a guitar player. The rest was an

in house band. But all of a sudden you would hear the buzz of, say, somebody plugging it in, and that had to be either Chuck Berry or Buddy Holly or somebody like the I think the moon Glows had an electric guitarist in their band, and that's my heart would start beating. I said, who is it going to be? Is it going to be Buddy or is it going to be you know, Chuck Berry? And that was even The buzz of that guitar being plugged in was exciting for me. It made my heart beat quicker.

But he, you know, had Colonel Tom Parker, who if the money wasn't right, like he would want the money from the whole show if Elvis was to appear. So he never did shows like that, and I never saw him in person, Bowie said. He met Elvis in person, but I never did.

I studied with him for three years until I was fifteen fifteen and a half. That would take an hour both ways, and I would go in the middle of the winter if it was snowing, I would not miss a lesson. And it was all It was like three bus rides, you know, three bus changes, you get you what do you call it? Transfer? And after the three years, he said he taught me how to read and write music. He taught me how to play jazz guitar, classical guitar.

He pulled out some Bach duets. He would take a Bach two part invention and he would play the bass line on a guitar and I would I could already read travel Cleft, so I would play the top line and they were difficult gault. But you know, by after about two years, I was pretty good. And then he surprised me. He said, now we're going to swap. We've gone through the book. Now you play the bass line and I'll play the top line. I couldn't have asked

for a better teacher than him. That was three years of bliss, and I always loved him, and any assignment he gave me was never too hard. I would just practice because I wanted to impress him. But by fifteen and a half I started meeting local musicians who lived around me and from school and all that, and that's

when I formed my first band. It was actually a little earlier, but maybe fourteen, and that was with a sax player who was Mike Di Stefano and his cousin who was I forget his cousin's name, but he was a blind drummer and I was the guitarist. So it was guitar, sax and the drummer and we called ourselves Mike d and the Dukes. That was my first band.

I was a duke, obviously. So we went and started playing parish dances, like you know, Saint Bernadette's would have dance night for the kids, heavily supervised by priests and nuns. But we'd get up there and we'd play rock and roll, and then if we played a slow dance, they would start dancing cheek to cheek and the priest would say, stop the music. Stop the music. That's enough to get you know, kids who would fourteen and fifteen really get into it, you know, if you give him a half

a chance and from there. I played that for a while and I couldn't it was too young for nightclubs. But when I was seventeen, the most amazing thing happened to me. And I can't remember exactly how, but through a friend, there was this nightclub at the far end of Brooklyn called Ben Maxick's Town and Country. It was very close to Floyd Bennett Airfield, and Ben Maxick had this vision. He loved Las Vegas and he wanted his

was to bring Las Vegas to New York. And he couldn't find a space like those enormous you know places that you can build in the desert in Las Vegas. It couldn't build in Manhattan. But in Brooklyn there was real estate where he built like a I don't know, it's probably a six acre nightclub. He could have a capacity with two thousand people, and he pulled in acts like Milton Burle, Robert Goulay, Sophie Tucker, the last of the Red Hot Mammas. I played for all these people.

So through a friend I got the job. The bass player just quit his wife had a baby or something, and I was already another instrument I play is you know double bass? The upright bass, and Ned Harvey, the leader of the band, wanted a kid in the band.

He wanted a young person in the band. My job was to play the bass for the dance band and play the bass for the acts like Robert Gulay and people that, and then when it was dancing time, I would have to bring my guitar and play some rock and roll songs like Elvia songs so the kids could dance to it, and the kids and their parents could dance to it. It was a gig from heaven. I had that job for three years, and I made so much money I bought That's when I got my own instruments.

I didn't have to have my parents by instruments for me anymore. And I kind of you know, I was working till three am. So often my father would come home and find me. He come over from work, say at four thirty, and I would have my feet up watching television, and it made him so angry that I could just work seven nights a week and make all this money and he had to work like a dog,

you know. He would often come home at four thirty, have dinner, and then go out to someone's house and put up cabinets for them, you know, And one day he had we had a big fight about this. I said, Dad, I can't. What do you want me to do? Work during the day as well as six hours at night. I can't do it, you know.

Junior or I want Anthony Senior and all that. So we had a little problem with that, but it was fun. It was funny.

grades were music department grades and English. My English was good. I was always a good reader, a good speller. I like poetry, I like novels. I read Charles Dickens and all that. Had no problem with that stuff. But mathematics, forget about it. I was the worst, you know, and algebra I could barely understand. Then when it got up to trigonometry, I just totally flunked. And I couldn't wait till I hit sixteen because I could leave school, and

I did. I left school as soon as possible. I just kept getting gigs after gigs after that, and I never looked back.

If you play Hava Nagila at a Greek wedding, they'll dance to it. It's amazing, but it's the same beat. So I was doing club dates, club.

I was singing this time. I was singing duets with a guy called Carl, and we were singing like Everly Brothers songs, and he said, I'm going to make a record with you, guys. I can get you a deal, And he actually did get us a record deal, which got local airplay. In those days, there was not too much national radio. Everything was basically local. So he didn't work out, and I just went through a series of managers who I guess, you know, in reflection, they want

to be managers. We didn't get a big manager who could actually get us on a big label, but I ended up through these managers. I ended up doing a lot of recording sessions. So I stepped into the recording studio is early is like probably my sixteenth year, and started playing for demo sessions. They were quite lucrative, so a songwriter would come in and just say I've written

four songs. I need you guys to just give me some backing, and we could get that done in maybe two three hours, and I'd walk away with about you know, twenty five dollars in my hand, which was good in those days. Good pay.

You know, we started wearing buying these hip clothes that were being imported from from England and they were inspired by the Beatles. With the Beatles wore you know, collarless jackets and all that stuff. And I said to myself, somehow I'm going to get over to London. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but somehow I'm going to do that. And that took a while, but it happened. It really it happened. At one point. It was a keeper, another key person who came into my

life and I had to learn how. I said, okay, here's how it happened. I had a publishing deal. A talent scout saw me and my wife, who were doing a duet act by that time. We called ourselves Toni and Sigrid, and we were playing at the in the village, like at the Cafe Wi and all those village kind

of cool hippie places to perform at. And as a result of a talent scout seeing us there, he got a publishing deal with the Richmond Organization, which is a big publishing house in Manhattan and they've got branches all over the world. So Howie Richmond listened to my songs for weeks on end and brought me into his office one day and he said, Tony, I've got to have a serious talk with you. And I got terrified. He was the CEO. I got terrified, and I said, okay.

So I went to his office and he said, Tony, I've got to tell you you've put in a lot of songs. I've listened to everything. I've listened to your tapes. He goes, I don't like your songs. Got to tell you the truth, and I go and my face talk about crestfallen. I nearly my jaw dropped. I never was expecting that. So in the next breath he says, but I like your tape recordings. He says, I like you recordings very much. He goes, I would like you to

make the house record producer. I have all these kids here who write music and all that, but we don't have good recording facilities. I can't get decent demos. They sound horrible because your demos, what do you do? And all that? And I go, well, I've got two machines at home, and I do all this bouncing like Les Paul, does you know I have five guitars and two basses and things like that. I hit a pillow for a kick drum and things like that. So he set me

up with the studio in the Richmond Organization. This is a fifty ninth street in Columbus Circle. And I worked there for about a year. I was getting paid to do all this and not making any records of my own anymore. But at the water fountain, the water cooler, one day I happen to be there at the same time as this very tall, distinguished gentleman was. He had silvery curly hair. He was wearing a jacket and a soup and no tie. And he said, she said one thing.

He said, Hellaire an English accent, and I go, you're English. I was like, the first english person I ever met my life. He goes, oh, yes, I am. My name is Danny Cordell. I work in England. And I said, my gosh. He said what's your name? I go Tony Visconti, I said, and he says, what do you do here? I go, well, I'm Tony Visconti and I'm the house record producer. And he goes, ah, my American cousin. I go, what do you mean by that? He goes, well, I'm

the house record producer for this company in London. Same thing. It's the same job. And I went, that's fantastic, you know. And we sipped a few more cups of water and I said to him what are you doing here? And he goes, I'm recording a track for Georgie Fame. It's a big, big British artist at the time, very jazz orientated artist. And he said, I'm going to record at I've got a session book at A and R studios. The R was Phil ramon phil Ramone Studio, which was

Hallowed Ground. I had never been in there, but this is cool. I go, well, that's fantastic. Can I see the charts, you know. He told me he had Clark Terry on trumpet. I adored Clock Terry, one of the greatest jazz musicians ever, trumpeters who ever lived. And I said, can I see the music? And he said, I don't have any charts. I don't have any music. And I go, how do you do it in the UK UK? And he says, well, we booked the studio for three in

the afternoon. I hire a bunch of musicians and we play a demo and then we'd start rolling some spliffs, and we smoke some weed, you know, and we just work all day until maybe by eleven o'clock at night, we've got it, you know, we've got the track. And I said, Denny, this is New York City. We have the local eight oh two Musicians Union. You will be crucified if you ask Clark Terry to write down these trumpet parts that you're playing to me on this tape. He'll do it, but you get it. You'll get a

thousand dollar bill for it. You know, you can't ask Clock Terry to write the charts, because what am I going to do? I said, I can read and write music. So I wrote the chart. I wrote the chord changes indicated in which bar like in bar number thirty drum fill. I just wrote the words drum fill. I'm not going to write a drum fill. I'll leave it to the clever drummer who we booked. But I had to write Clark Terry's parts out. It was a very strict written thing.

This took me a good part of an hour. We slammed it on the Xerox. We had these new Xerox machines and ran down forty eighth Street in Manhattan with about eight eight parts, put them in front of all the musicians, and right away I saw clock Terry right away. He starts going up up, but he starts playing it off the sheet music, and I look at Danny, and Danny looks at me. Danny's got this big grin on his face. This isn't going to be like London. This

is we're going to get this done. When I told him he'd be crucified, he was very, very worried by the way. He had just produced a wider shade of pale and he was rolling, you know, pop success. But he didn't have a lot of money. So this session took all of forty five minutes and we had this fantastic tracts. The song was because I Love You. It's an early Georgie fame hit, and clock Terry was cool. Everybody was cool. They liked the fact that it was

well prepared. So a week two weeks later, he goes back to London and he phones me up and says, how soon could you get here? I go, Now, I'm not doing anything, so he said, okay, He goes, well, I'm gonna after I spoke to you, I went to I met a few other people, record producers, and I even spoke to Phil Specterer asking him to come and work for me. I said, oh, you'd be lucky. You've got Phil Specks that to work for you. He's not that kind of guy, you know, but anyway, he says,

you're the guy I want. He says, the way you work you did that session was great. I need someone to translate what I hear in my head into music into musical notes. And two weeks later I was in London and went to the studio, but my very first day I was terribly jet lagged. But then he took me to a Manfred Man session which he was producing. He was producing too many people, and he really did need an assistant, and after about two hours he left

me with Manfred Man on my own. Bob, I had no experience, no experience dealing with especially with British people who spoke a different language basically, so they hated me. They didn't like my American accent. So I thought I'll be a little cheerful. So I was in the studio and we did a lot of takes. We did up to six takes, and they were already in misery, these guys. They wanted Denny and they got this young American punk instead.

So I said, okay, here we go. We're going to do take seven, Lucky take seven, and they went oh, they all audibly groaned. I was like being a DJ, you know, Lucky takes seven. And so when Denny come back, came back, we finally got a good take and he listened to what we had done, and they did as well. They warmed up to me at the very very end, but that was was It was horrible. My first day

was so horrible. And the ability not to understand them, like, you know, they've got different words, like if they're happy about something, they're chuffed. I didn't know that word chuffed. I didn't know what chuffed meant. Sounds like a chimney going what the hell does that mean? You know? So that was it. That's how I got there, and that's basically the beginning of my career as what I do today.

regal Zonophone, all in one day. Denny was in awe of that. He came back, he goes, you did this all in one day? He was He was slow and I was fast. So after that I worked with his group called the Move, which was Birmingham's answer answer to the Beatles, like Birmingham was called the Birmingham Beatles at one point because they wanted they emulated everything the Beatles did, and I had had quite a few hit records with them,

both as a co producer and an arranger. The first record I did for them was a song called Flowers in the Rain, and I recorded, you know, everybody was doing Elden or Rigby. They wanted strings and all that stuff, and I thought it's time we got off the strings and onto some other classical instruments. So because it was Flowers in the Rain, I thought of Mendelssohn and I thought, I'm going to write something pastoral and for that you need a flute, you need an obo, a clarinet and

a French horn. That's that's a win combination that normally plays pastoral music. So it was a wacky arrangement I wrote. It was reached number two in the charts and when Radio one in England opened, you know they had these this corny radio before, but Radio One was the pop station. I listened to it at eight o'clock in the morning. I wanted to hear that this station opening up. The DJ Tony Blackburn the first record he played It was Flowers in the Rain by the Move, and I nearly

screamed and jumped off my couch. You know, it was just a fantastic experience.

any idea at that point in time? Was he just another guy in the band?

have to give up on that. So Jeff Lynn came in around that time, and you know they did a great job. Well that worked, but I gave birth to some of that. Some of my soul is in the In the subsequent things that Roy did, we always got on really great. He's a great guy.

had a bit of an accent. So I made one record with Bido and I said, and then he said, well I'm not going to It didn't do anything, and we didn't leave acrimoniously. It just didn't do anything. So David dropped Bido and he said, you pick your band. You go out and pick your band. Who you want to work with? I said, okay. So I heard this band called Tyrannosaurus Rex played every weekend on John Peel's radio show, and I happened to see the Underground. I

got a copy of the underground newspaper. I forget what it was called now and Tyrannosaurus Rex we're playing right around the corner from my office on Tottenham Court Road in England. So after work, I noted the time it was seven pm. I left work at six pm, went to the corner pub, a pub called a Tutor. I fortified myself with a big pint of ale, and then I walked down to Tottenham Court Road and went to that nightclub where Tyrannosaurus Rex was playing. And I walked

down the steps. It was like red light, dim light dim, red lighted steps, and I hear the band playing coming up through the stairwell and it was dead quiet. And I'm used to going to gigs where the band the audience is clapping, singing along and all that, and I thought, no one's there. I walk in that room and there were about seventy five kids sitting on the floor, cross legged, listening attentively to Mark and Steve sing these songs. I

have never seen that in my life. They weren't singing along, they were just worshiping him. So I approached the group afterwards, and I approached the drummer first, because I didn't even know if Mark was like an alien. Mark Bowling was weird and he sang in this very affected voice, which I thought, maybe he's French. You know, I didn't know how to approach him anyway. Steve said, just don't talk to me, man, talk to him. He's the leader. So I gave Mark my business card and Mark followed up.

The next day. He came to our offices and he phoned from the street. He said, I just happened to be passing your offices and I'd like to come up an audition for Denny Cordell. So that's how it began. With my very first talent scouting produced came up with Mark Bolan and Tyrannosaurus Rex.

underground group. And already there was a very popular or in England, a band in England called the Incredible String Band, and Torontosaurus Rex were not unlike them, so there was a big market for this kind of rock folk early

you know, psychedelic folk people will call it. So we made these kind of psychedelic rock folk records for three albums with the acoustic instruments, and then by the end of the second album, Mark used to come around to my apartment and he would always pick up my Fender Stratocaster guitar and play it, and he ended up borrowing it on the third album, and then that's when we started going electric, but not the drum kit yet, except

everything had to be like miniature. So they did get a drum kit for the next album, where it was a toy drum set from Hamley's Toy Shop in London, so it's actually a drum kit for like an eight year old. But we detuned the drums and Steve played the hell out of these drums. So it's on especially on a song called Cat Black the Wizard's Hat, you can hear this full drum kit, but it's actually a toy drum kit called from a company called Chet, from a company called Chad Valley.

the guitar. And then when he borrowed my bass to play the bass part, he had to put the capo on the fourth fret of the bass, which I never saw a bass player do in my life, put a capo on a bass, but he played all the guitar and the bass. And by this time we had Mickey Finn in the band. Steve Peregrine took was fired unceremoniously fired and that record took about two hours to make, Right a White Swan, and we put it out. You know, we always put out singles as Tyrannosaurus Rex, but they

didn't do very well. It never did very well. We did a name change. We called a band t Rex. John Peel reluctantly played it. He thought that they had sold out and he was ready to discard them quickly because he defeated the underdog and now Mark was becoming popular. That was like, you know, an eth to John Field. But he played it and then Radio one took it up and that record was played night and day, and we sold We was selling upwards of about six thousand

a day. In those days. You know, there was no internet, so you had to go out and buy a record if you liked it, and maybe you taped it off your friend's record player. But basically record sales were enormous in those days. He was now he was a megastar overnight.

Sound in Manhattan. It was like a jazz studio, but we did Jeepster and Monolith. We did a couple of tracks that would later appear on Electric Warrior. Then the trip to La came up, because do you want to go with us? You want to go to La, I go. Of course I do. So we flew out to La Flowin Eddie arranged Wali Hyder's studio for us, which was like one of the best studios in La at the time, and that's how we recorded Get It on Bangagong and I got some lovely photos from there. And they made

the Jewish connection too. When Flo and Eddi, who were both Jewish, found out that Mark was Jewish, there's something deeper about that relationship took place, you know, it was really great. And then they started making Yiddish jokes. You know, I couldn't believe it. They grew up. Mark grew up with you know, he heard these words when he was growing up, and so did Flow and Eddie, you know. And if you live in New York, no matter if your Italian friend or Jewish, you learn Yiddish. That's one

of the languages you pick up the words. So we had sessions that were so funny and I left the tape running, you know, just cracking jokes all the time. And that's how we re recorded about four or five more songs at Wally Hiders studios with Flowin Eddi at their auspices because they made it really easy for us to work there, and then the rest of the tracks were on the flight back to London. We took up in Tried Studios in which was a great studio in

Soho and finished the rest of the album. It was like a Frankenstein album, all different consoles, all different sounds. But I mixed it in Tridon Studios so that in that way I made it a more cohesive, cohesive sounding record. But that was we were in Seventh HEAVENO.

the screaming bird put in the circuit. He got this crunchy sound, and then I would go up and you know, like let's make it loud, OR'd turn up the Marshall lamp and all that, and basically that was the sound. What I did add in the mixing, which he loved, was slapback. He was so keen on the you know, the Elvis Presley slap back, a Wop Boba loom up, the Little Richard's slap back and all that stuff, and he wanted on both his guitar and his voice, and

it became a signature sound. Having the kick drum to the four was another sound. We were one of the early doers of that, you know kick You listen to early R and B you can barely hear the kick drum. But suddenly in the seventies people were saying, what what what the kick drums a great thing? Why is it so quiet in the mix. So we had the drums up pretty loud. We even put slap back on the

drums too, for the tom phills. And I said, after about two years of this, I said, you can get me out of bed at five in the morning and put me behind a console. I'll get you that sound in half an hour. You know, it was a formula. We invented a formula and we were accused of formulizing the sound and I said, yep, that's what we're doing. You're absolutely Did you know.

That's the chorus. That's the shortest chorus he had written in his life. And that was the secret brevity. And the strings that was another thing. He got very superstitious about the strings. When we did our next single, gosh, I can't remember what it was, oh metal Guru, he said, let's go in, let's just mix it and I go, Mark, the strings, we've had the strings on ride a white Swan and get it on. I think it's part of our good luck. And he turned pale. He goes, you're right,

let's have strings on hot hot love. It was hot love. Let's have strings on hot love. So that was it from then to the very end. I did eight albums with him. I had to get down and write some pretty nifty strings every time we made an album.

We originally had them on one or two tracks, and then we went in on another day and he said, we're going to do backing vocals. I go, what happened to Flow and Eddie? He goes, they copped in attitude with me? I go, what happened? What did they say? He goes, they wanted to get paid honestly, so I'm looking at him. I am getting paid as the producer, but you know, not as a backing singer. So that was a shame, a real, real shame. I think later on, when he in his late late seventies before he died,

he got back. He got them on one of his self produced albums. He got them back again. I hope he paid him. I think he did.

of seven chords. But oh boy, what he did to some people say, oh but oh boy, what he did with those seven chords. But you know, he would slide his guitar up, his capo up and down the fret. He could play in any key he wanted. And some chords he obviously didn't know. And I wondered why he couldn't even figure that out. And I tried to teach him these chords. He wouldn't want to learn. He just had this. He was formulaic himself, and his records were

still sounding the same. But why not, because it was a really good formula we had going. But I'd say his talent was in the songwriting. He must have written over two hundred songs, maybe even more than that.

record's long been paid for. You know, it's sold, and we're not selling those those amounts of records anymore. Then the next album, Tanks, I worked without a contract. He his wife came to me and she said, you know, we feel We spoke to Mark's lawyer and we feel that you don't need a contract anymore. You don't need a royalty anymore. We're going to make a deal with you. We'll pay you ten pounds per annum something like for

the rest of your life. But maybe it wasn't. It was like for the next five years or something like that. So I did. I made the next album, zinc Alloy, under those conditions, the fourth album that was the big t Rex hit, and it did well. But then Mark started the cocaine and alcohol abuse started getting out of control and he was being really unkind to everyone. He was like he was a drunk, you know. He was

like cursing everyone out, being a very, very unruly. So I had a little talk to them at the end. I said, we're going to part company. I don't like the way you're treating people. And that was it. We parted under those conditions.

else it was called. But David Plattz, who was the publisher who owned all these companies, including our contracts, had all these writers. One of his main writers was Anthony Newley. And when he heard David Bowie sing, he saw a young Anthony Newley. He hired him on the spot. He signed him up for a publishing contract, and David had already made a record for d Ram Records, which is a Decca company, which tanked. It really didn't do very well, although it showed off his skills and it was all

over the place. So one day David Plattz calls me into his office after I had all these Tyrannosaur these, yeah, the Tyrannosaurus rex hits, and you know, I'm making money for the label. He said, I've got an artist I think would be a good match for you. And I said, okay, I'm listening. He goes, so he put on the d Ram album when he's saying like when I Live My Dream,

which sounded exactly like Anthony Nuley. Then he did another played Another song was the Laughing Postman, which was he did this chipmunk voice, you know, half speed voice where he started laughing like a postman but with a chipmunk. And then all the other songs bore no uh, there was no continuity in styles. So he said, what do you think. I said, he's great, He's got a great voice, he's a great writer, but he's all over the place.

If I were to work with him, I would have to focus him he'd have to do one thing, and I think the op obviously obvious thing for him to do would be to be a rock singer. He's got the chops, he can do it. I'm sure he can do it. He goes, okay, I was thinking along those lines. He goes, would you like to meet him? I go yeah. He goes, step right this way, and he opened the door. It was a setup. He asked David to come in

that day to meet me. He opens the door to his like inner sanctum there and David's waiting for the meeting, and I the first thing I noticed were his eyes. You know, I thought he's a good looking boy, But what's he got these two different colored eyes for? You know, what's all that about? So he shakes my hand and he's very, very like excited to meet me. And I found out that he was a like I don't know how you said, he equivalent an Anglo file, an American file.

we said, oh wet, they were locking up. They kicked us out, so we walked down Oxford Street, which is one part of town, and we walked and talked for another hour until we got to King's Road in London and we were looking at all the windows of clothes we couldn't afford yet, and we came to the art theater they had there. Forget the name of the street, but they had They only played scratchy black and white films, which we said, we like scratchy black and white films.

Both of us liked those. And they had a Knife in the Water playing at one of these cinemas, and we said, shall we go in and watch it? So this is about eight eight in the evening, so we bought two tickets, sat down, we watched the Knife in the Water and we eventually said good night at about eleven thirty at night. From say three point thirty in the afternoon, that's We were such good friends by the end of the day. And then we started seeing each

other socially for quite a while. And then he said, Deco wants me to make one more record, and I made this record with him. It's kind of a It's a record called London by Tata. It was as close as it was pop record. It wasn't a rock record, it was a pop record. And they had another male artist. It was either they wanted to drop one of them. It was going to be Bowie or Kat Stevens. So when I I produced this less than you know, this less than kind of production, they kept Cat Stevens and

dropped David. But actually it freed him from that label. He would have they would never have seen him as a future rock star. I always did. I knew he was going to go places. So we kind of rambled around over the next couple of years. We never really did anything great until the Space Oddity album, which we worked on together, and then The Man Who Sold the World, which was the next one. Now he was a rock star.

I go, I think it is a hit record. But I said, in good conscience, I can't go this route with you. You know, go go it some Gus loves you, he adores you, and he he had already worked with When David used to be on Decka, the Deca label, Gus already had worked with him. So I went to Gus and I said, you like this? He goes, yeah, He goes, why don't you do it? He goes, you're crazy, Tony. I go, no, I don't like it. I can't rook. I can't produce something I don't like. And he said,

you're sure you're okay with this? I go, you got my blessings. So he finds Paul Buckmaster, who was also published by David Platz. It was all kind of in house, and when I heard it, I changed my mind. I said, shit, I should have produced that record, but I don't think I could have done Gus's job. He he threw the kitchen sink in it, and I wasn't yet a kitchen sink producer. I would have it would have been a

more subtle piece of work. But since then, with all these atmosts and all these surround sound mixing things, Gus Gus has passed away, had passed away years ago. I have been mixing Space Odyssey over and over again in new formats. So I'm quite familiar with the song.

It's got some really good tracks on great songs. And then Space Out Audity sticks out like a sore thumb. You know, it's clearly the best track on the album that you know, you live and you learn.

get the laundry done, things like that. So he found this big house in Beckenham, Kent, which is hat In Hall, which is you know everyone knows about had In Hall now. It's an old Victorian house. It was beautiful. It was like a film set from Hammer Films. It was just absolutely beautiful and eerie. It felt haunted, I believe it was.

So he lives there, and he and Angie, his wife, felt that it was just too big just for the both of them, and they asked myself and my girlfriend Liz, would they like to come and share the place with them. And we took one look at it and the real estate was huge. You know, there's a lot of apartment there. There was a wine cellar where we could set up

a band, a drum kit and rehearse. So Liz and I moved into Haddon Hall and it was like really great for a while until it became a kind of meeting place for all the young kids in the neighborhood. And there would be knights that'd come home from work exhausted. There'd be about twenty people in that apartment, you know, just hanging off the There was a beautiful balcony around around the apartment, you know, hanging out doors, smoking dope.

People would disappear into a bedroom upstairs. It was just like, this is getting like too hedonistic for me, you know, for a guy who just wanted to come home from work and chill, you know, So we still kept we still made the Mansoul the world. Under those conditions, I moved to a nearby town called Penge and we went down. We finally got Woody in the band. We had Mick

Ronson in the band. He was heaven sent and Mick slowly got rid of everyone in the band that he had friends up in Hull, that he wanted to bring them down. So the first thing was he replaced all London drummer with Woody Woodmansey, who was in his band called the Rats back up in Hull, and I was the bass player. So Mick, Woody and myself and David on twelve string guitar formed a group which we went through many names, but one of the names that stuck

with us was called the Hype. We were called Joe the Butcher at one point, and so we went into the studio and we said let's we liked. Mick Ronson loved Cream and he said, if you're going to play bass with me, he goes, I want you to listen to Jack Bruce and Cream. He goes, I want you to just that's the kind of bass player I want to work with. Because I was, up until that point of meat and potatoes bass player. I played funky stuff, but then I listened to Jack Bruce and he's playing

bass like a lead guitar. He's bending all the notes and he's playing fast scales and going all over the place. I said, I went back to make I said, oh, I get it. You want me to play lead bass, which wasn't a thing yet. I mean, Jack Bruce was the only one doing that. So I started showing off.

And I was also a guitar player, so this was easy to do this for me, just to play all over the place and play complicated stuff, and some of those parts like are iconic, like you hear Neirvada playing the Manusola World and playing my bass part, you know, and other people who ventured to play the title track

that is some complicated bass part. I'm in a tribute band now where we do it play some of those songs on stage, and it takes me about two or three months to get back into shape again and remember all those notes again. But the Manusolda World didn't do what we thought it would do. We thought we were going to be the next We thought we were gonna be, you know, a really big prog rock band, but they didn't like us. You know, we did a big gig at the Roundhouse, and we were booed off the stage.

Not off the stage, but we were you know, some of the some of the songs went down great, but some people were just booing us through throughout the songs and they couldn't get that basis he already had Space Oddity as a hit. They just wanted to, like, hear more Space Oddity. But he never did write those songs, those more than Space Ardity songs until maybe Ziggy started us.

wasn't making a lot of money and becking him. And suddenly then he said to me once like we should have dinner together, and I said, well, have dinner at my house. My mother's here and she's made, like these girls, great Italian food. So he comes in in all his ziggy regalia. He was ziggy off stage and when I say that, he had the like six inch heels, the spiked orange red hair and all that, and he's wearing you know, epaulets on his shoulders and he's iggy starred us.

And we have this babysitter who was a Bowie fan, he later found out, and she's in the kitchen with holding a saucepan that had boiling water in it with the baby's bottle in it. We had an infant son at this time, and David walks into the kitchen and she sees it's David Bowie and she screams and drops the boiling water on the floor. And he had that impact on people. But anyway, she managed to recover and we had a lovely get together and then from then on we saw each other socially a lot and had

dinners and restaurants. So by the time Diamond Dogs came around, he was, you know, working with other people, but he said he was making an album. He had been all over town with every engineer, every recording studio, and he just can't get a good mix out of the record. It was made under kind of horrible conditions. I won't go into the engineer who made the album, but it wasn't a well recorded album. You needed to do some serious repair jobs on the album. So I said, okay,

And I had just built my first home studio. I had a sixteen track studio in an area called Shepherd's Bush, and I said, try out my studio. You haven't tried every studio in town because you haven't tried this one. So I do the first mix of Diamond Dogs with him, and he takes it home and phones me up at like five in the morning and says he thought I stayed up all night like he did, and he said, it sounds fantastic. Let's finish the album in your studio.

So that's how he got back together again after all those years.

he knew I would fit in. And about two days later, I'm flying to Philadelphia from London and I had to show up for work. I just couldn't go to the hotel, not go straight to the hotel. The limo driver said, I have instructions to take you directly to the studio Sigma Studios in Philly. So I walk in there and it's about eleven at night, midnight something like that, and he's flying high, you know, little Peruvian marching powder was involved.

And then the band is Carlos Alomar uh Andy Duncan, Andy Newmark on drums from Sly and the Family Stone, who I was supposed. I was surprised to find out he was a white guy because he's in the funkiest band on earth at that time. And the bass player was a bass player from Heaven, Willie Weeks, who played with Donny Hathaway and I had a band of Willie Weeks. He played on a song called Everything Is Everything where Willy Willy Willie Weeks takes about a five minute bass

solo on that. So I said, Willy, I love you man, and he was like really playing it Dan. He wasn't smarting, he wasn't going out. He had this like kind of repressive personality at the time. So we started working immediately on the title track Young Americans. We start working on that and Willie's playing really simple. He's playing like one in five boom boo boom boo, boom boo, boom boo boom, like that, and I'm here, I know he can shred, so we let that go. It was too late, I think.

The next day we wanted to move on to another song and he continues to to play this pedestrian these pedestrian bass parts, and he said, I said, Willie, I heard you play everything is everything on the Donnie Hathaway album. He said, why aren't you playing that way for us? And he just crossed his arms and he said, because you didn't ask me to. I said, well, I'm asking you you. I'm asking you now. I said, you can shred, man, you can. So you could hear the difference on the

rest of the tracks on the album. He starts bouncing around and he's taken all kinds of you know, playing all kinds of tricky stuff. Oh, he's a genius and genius bass player. I so much enjoyed working with him. And we were a mixed, racially mixed band too, which worked perfectly. You know, at first we were going to get those guys if they get gambling huff maybe who

well they owned that. They that was their studio which they did a lot of R and B stuff in there, and David approached them first, I think, and they said, we don't want no blue eyed white boy stealing our music. They told him that it was an insult, you know. So when he hired the studio anyway, he brought in his own band, and it was we were a mixed band. That's the way you know, music should be played. You know, you don't have to be a certain race to place

any kind of music. It's it's a different world now, and it was then too well, it was just turning. It was changing. Times were changing then.

that studio. So we cut a couple of tracks there. We didn't cut fame, but one night he left the studio early. He says I'm going to go back to my suite. He was in a Hotel Pierre, and he said, Lenin is coming by tonight. He goes, I'm a bit I'm a bit frightened of him, a bit scared of him. He goes, would you mind coming after work, after you finish all your tidying ups and all that, would you mind coming over and kind of buffer the meeting? Exactly

the word he used to buffer the meeting. I said, I would love to meet John Lennon.

And I go, oh, well, no, it's me. So he invited me in and I walk into the main room and I saw a sight I'll never forget. On the floor was David and a beautiful Hispanic woman, really really beautiful, and between them there was like a mountain of cocaine. It was mount everst but about six inches high, you know, and with ski slopes, it was like the real deal. And on the couch is my idol, John Lennon. You know, I couldn't believe it. And I go hello, John, and

he goes hello. And next to him was this Asian girl who I found out was Maypang and she's with sitting with him. And then there's Neil aspinall sitting next to John. And I snuggle into between Neil and John and I'm watching David and the girl chopping out lines and John and I said to John, I said, do you mind if I ask you some Beatles questions? You know like? He goes, no, go right ahead, you know, ask me anything you like. And I go, okay, that first chord on a hard day's night, What what how

do you play that chord? He goes, well, I know what I played. You know, George played the other guitar. I played this chord and he picks up a guitar and he goes and I think George played this chord, and what you hear is these two chords together. He says, it's a good clash. It works, It really works. They go, oh, yeah, it works very much. And then I got into like lyrics and I had him for a good hour. And then he's like looking over at David. You know, now

David's being absolutely rude. He's not even he's so frightened of John. He's not even looking up at John. He's just in with this girl. They're chopping lines away. John had a few. And then David picks up a pad, a sketch pad, and he's got some charcoal pencils or something like that, and he starts, you know, he's a great David was a great artist, and so is John.

So David starts sketching a lenin of a portrait of John, like a caricature, and John says, hey, give us a piece of paper and give me a pencil, and John puts it on like a tea tray or something like that, and he starts doing David. And from this point onwards, it broke the ice that I couldn't buffer anything. The drawing of each was very funny, and they picked it up and they showed each other the drawings and have a good laugh, and they'd start a few and then

eventually David and John started talking to each other. And then like I realized that the hour was getting really really late. It was getting to about six pm, seven pm, and I said, you know, I got to go. It's like really late. I had a hard, long day. And John said yeah. He says, we can't go until the sun rises, and I go, why is that? He goes, well, he says, you know, I was busted, and I don't want to I want to stay here. I feel safe here, and I feel it'd be easier if I leave in

the daylight. They'll think I'm just coming out of a hotel instead of staying up all night. If I leave now, I'll look suspicious and all that. So it was horrible to hear him say that. You know, from you know, his prior bust. He was a victim. He could have been victimized. So that was really sad that he had to leave under those situations. But at least I had him, I don't know, six seven hours. He was all mine.

I would just you know. He came back the next night and we started jamming. We had the guitars and all that, and then the next night he goes, we hired a studio and we wrote this song called Fame, and he says, I put it down. It didn't you know. We hired a drummer in New York. It wasn't even

the Philly group of musicians anymore. I think they got Carlos because Carlos lived in Manhattan, or he lived in the Bronx, so they got Carlos in there and he said, it sounds really good, but but I wrote it with John and I have to put it on the album. I have to take something off young Americans put it on the album, I said, I said, David, I would have bought my own ticket on the concord if you had told I would have been there in five hours, you know. He says, well, it's done, and we did it.

And he said, then while we were there, I felt we had to record another. We had to record one of John's songs. So we did Across the Universe. And I later met up with John Lennon at some event or something and and we were talking about then he goes, because, yeah, because it was good. It was fun recording fame. He goes, but Across the Universe was never one of my favorite songs.

He says. It was a drag doing that one. You're singing that one, he goes, But it turned out okay, you know, very gregarious, very nice.

man walks in like looking around. I know he had some experience in the studio, but this is big time, big star and all that. And he takes over as choir master almost immediately. When he hears how sluggish we were writing backing vocals, he goes, how about trying to this? How about trying this? Because young Americans didn't have the hook, He wrote the hook. So David wrote that whole song,

but there was no chorus. There was just a musical interlude, and Luther could sing he's singing over he goes young Americans, young Americans, She got the young American. That was Luther's input, and David was gobsmacked. That would not have been a single if Luther did not come up with that. So Fascination was Luther's song called funky Music. So Luther said, I've got David said, let me hear your music. So Luther played him funky Music and he goes, how about?

He said, I love the whole song, and I love most of the lyrics, but would you allow me to rewrite a few things about it. Luther couldn't believe his love, and he said, of course, you ken, David. So he changed Funky Music to Fascination, same melody. And it's so great to see all these young people for first time experiences, and you know, we're all kind of young ourselves, you know.

And David making a solo album took a lot of balls, really it did, and especially in Philadelphia, he was on their turf.

release this album. He goes, but he says, so, I can't promise you that it's even going to be released, But are you willing to spend four weeks in France in the Chateau d'arraville with Brian and myself? He goes. I said, are you kidding? Four weeks with you and Brian? That's a holiday, that's a vacation. I said, I'll happily do that. So we sequested ourselves. It was very far

from Paris. We really couldn't go out at night and get into trouble you know, we couldn't go to bars and clubs, and we just had you know, food brought in. It was at first the food was very bad. We were getting sick, sick of you know. We Cheese would be left out out and I would eat it and I'd get food poisoning for three days. Things like that were happening the past. Sometimes the power would go off at unexpected times, and the studio wasn't really it didn't

have a lot of microphones in outboard gear. It hardly had any outboard gear. But it was perfect for us. It was like making music in a monastery. And it was a great experience to wake up every day, have a bit of breakfast, and go and work all day long on getting the most far out songs sounds we could think of. And Brian was really like working that little beast. That that synthesizer in a briefcase. It's called the EMS SYNTHI and I David bought one. I got one.

In the end. It was very complicated to work because it had no keyboard. You really just you really just sat there and twiddl knobs and made it go wowow wow wow. Like things like that and buzz and all that. So with that we went to We did this experimental album. It was completely panned by the critics at first, but fans went even fans were worried about what's this B side business, But in the end it took. It was

a long cell, a long hard sell. Ossier rejected it at first, they said, this is not a David Bowie album. There are not enough David Bowie songs on it. And you know they wanted they were always He says, yeah, they want another Ziggy Star us. They've been wanting me to make a Ziggy Star this album for years. So that's how we got stuck into this thing. But then, you know, just to prove everyone that he was doing

what he wanted, then it was a clever thing. We moved to Berlin next and do a similar kind of album, except we had a good leadoff song on that album we had didn't have really We had sound and Vision on Low that was kind of a hit, but it wasn't a world wide hit. But Heroes, My God, we hit all the good points on that.

of it. He just stopped you. He just started parking the car in the street because he was always crashing. He was always crashing when he got his car out of that garage. But it became a metaphor for always doing the same thing and expecting different results.

it was matte paint. And the turrets, the gun start turrets were sticking right in the air and you feel you felt like they could shoot a huge missile out of it at any second if they wanted to. And that was hard. It was hard to see that every day. That was a hard thing to live with. David had been there for six months, but when I saw it, it freaked me out. When I first moved there to make the album. The second thing was which was weird was Checkpoint Charlie because we were in the the British.

Wait a minute, we were in the American zone. Yeah, And the checkpoint went into the into East Berlin, where I think the British had headquarters there. I'm not sure.

something like that. It was slogans like they like eat fish and they would have a big they would have a big picture of a fish and drink milk and they have a big glass of milk and somebody with a mustache, you know, a milk mustache on their face. But they couldn't sell products like they were driving around these little Russian cars, cars called Vatborg's and scoters. The cars came from Russia. Whereas on this decide the west side of Berlin people were driving Mercedes, Benzes and you know,

all the German cars. So that was freaky to go into westo East Berlin and then when you came back your car was searched by Russian Russian guards and they'd put a panel a mirror under your car to make sure you weren't smuggling anyone's, any peaceeople who wanted to escape, and they had people who made special shoes and clamps. They could actually hold themselves underneath the car while they drove across the bridge into West Berlin, and then they

released themselves. So people were actually smuggling bodies that way into West Berlin. And then then when they went through your stuff at customs, you'd, you know, they just throw everything out on the counter and everything you had, anything in your knapsack or anything like that. And then they when we went through the first time, Iggy Pop had platinum h blonde hair, and David's passport had him with the curly perm. He had his hair, had a PERM

and he looked very weird. Now both of them looked different, completely different. But they looked at the passports and they looked at Iggy's passport had the actual blonde hair and now Iggy had dark hair. David had the PERM but now he had darker hair. So they would hold the passports up in the air and they'd yell, hey, Fritz come here, they get another god to come over, and suddenly all the gods would gather around the passports and die laughing. They'd be laughing in our faces, you know.

Then they give that they have a good laugh, and then they gave the passports back and we could get back into West Berlin. But things like that have the weirdest things happened every day. Another one was we're making heroes in the studio which faced the Berlin Wall, so we're looking at East Berlin from our studio in West Berlin, and there was a big kind of like a castle, you know, there was a kind of a big turret.

I don't know, maybe you'd call it a turret. And in there every day there was a Russian god watching us with big binoculars. He was watching us make records and they would have you know, and we could see from our side. They were so close. We could see the red star on his fuzzy gray helmet that he had, and he's wearing that big Russian overcoat for like Siberian winters, and he's watching us. So we asked our engineer, who is a lovely man, we said, doesn't this freak you out?

With Russian gods like looking at every day. It's freaking us out. He goes, nah, doesn't, doesn't freak me out. And he took the overhead light that was hanging from a wire and he aimed it right at the Russian God and he started sticking his tongue out and sticking up the middle finger. That's the Russian God. So David and I dove underneath the recording console. Who he said, don't fucking do that, you know, don't do it. And

he said, ah, it's okay. They can't shoot us. If you know, if they did, it would be World War three. You couldn't exchange fire. If anything like that happened to Checkpoint Charlie, we would have been at war again in the seventies. So they could restrain themselves. And the other funny thing was David one night went by the wall

on the west side West Berlinside. He was dating a girl and he just decided he dropped her off and he took his car right by the wall and the other side of where all the Russians are, and he lights up a cigarette and somebody taps on his window. It was a Red Guard from the from East Berlin. David found out there were other tunnels that nobody knew about. The Red Guard came into the west just for a little stroll. This is about three in the morning, and he said, do you have a light? He ysked David

for a light, freaked David out. He soon got out of there. He never went back to that spot again.

They would often dress with as working men, so they all, the two of them, had scarfs and they would wear these andy cap you know, these these hats that workers in the fruit markets where to keep that top of their head warm. So they thought they could pass as Berliners, and that they actually did, you know, until they spoke English. But we often ordered in German. It was easy to order, you know, si beer, you know, and then when you wanted to pay you would say, v feel how much

things like that? We learned that, We learned a few good words. So maybe the Germans knew we were in German, but you know, they were trying definitely to blend in.

and they're going to make an album together. So he's very very He said, you know, you'll make the next one, he says, but he wants he wants to work with Nile. It's very important to him. They got on really really well. So I said, okay, and I was really crestfallen. I really was, but it turned out great. You know, Let's Dance is a big hit, and he said, that's why I did it. I wanted that sound, and I knew I was going to get a hit record with him.

I needed another international hit, which Nile gave him. And I take my hat off to him.

the other great band. You know, he wanted a bit of the modern sound, but he'd always come back to me and for another record, Like you know, Diamond Dogs was a comeback record. Heathen was a comeback record after he worked, Like after we didn't speak to each other for ten years, he comes back one day and he says, how'd you like to get together and make another record together? You know? So I ended up making his last four albums with no right other producer in between.

nine inch nails. He blatantly said, you know, I'll make a record with you and I I'm going to take your sound and I'll be your lead singer, so he would be Nile Rodgers's lead singer. That's he kind of spent that period being other group's lead singer, and he copped their sound. He'd steal their sound, but with their blessings. Because you know that by then, to work with David Bowie was like one of the greatest achievements in a producer's life or another rock star's life.

It had to he wanted to make it with jazz musicians, so he met this guy called Donnie McCaslin, who's an incredible sax player, and Donnie had a four piece band and he said, come, I want you to see this band because I'm thinking of using them. So we went down to the Blue Note in New York together, and I thought Donnie was fantastic. He just great. I loved him, loved all his players in the band, And when we got closer to Black Star, we had a couple of

experiences with them. We recorded with Forget her Name again. Anyway, we had a session we worked with Donnie prior to Black Star, and we knew he was going to work. Also, Mark Juliana, the drummer in his band, was absolutely unbelievable and like him, this guy was a loop master. You thought it was a drum loop, but it's a real musician playing the same pattern over and over again for

seven minutes. He was just a genius. So we had a pre production, was just one little rehearsal, and then David seeing me the day before and telling me that he was he was getting chemo treatment. So he said, I can't start this album with letting you know that, without letting you know that, And then the next day we started the album with the band, and he did the same thing. He gathered them all together in the studio and then he said, he told them the same

thing he told me the day before. So he wasn't dead beat about it. He was quite upbeat about it. He says, but we're going to make the best album ever. We're gonna just you know, I want you guys to do your thing, don't hold back. And he gave them. He gave Danny. He gave Donnie a handful of demos, which is the first time he never gave me a demo. I always had the demos before we started. But his idea was to not have my influence at all on

the creative part. At that level. He wanted this to be purely an album between him and Donnie and the band Donnie's band. So that's why it sounds so different and really really interesting and he's fulfilling his dream. He always recorded live in the room with them, and I have the master tapes and at the end you could hear him like laughing and cracking up talking to the band. These were his kind of people that he wanted to

work with. At last, his other musicians that he made albums with prior to this, they some of them could play jazz, but it would be rock musicians playing jazz. But he felt, let's get the real thing, Let's get real jazz musicians, and instead it would have been a different album. But the songs that he wrote for Black Star, which just broke my heart, some of them, they were so beautiful and telltale. I mean, he's telling you, he's wearing his heart on his sleeve on that album.

his absence. So Donnie would play four saxophones and build up a sack section, things like that, and we'd play it to David the next day and he'd like what we had done. But he never never wore a gloomy face. He was absolutely smiling from ear to ear whenever he came to the sessions. He was in a great mood.

to her. He phoned me up and he said that he was He said he was going to become a grandfather. He's very proud of that. And I kept that secret. He said, this is a secret. Don't tell anyone. I kept that secret, and that he said he was going to resume some therapy. Afterwards, he says, everything's going great. I'll be fine, everything's going great. But you know, it wasn't going great. And he phoned up a lot of people in that month, so he was kind. It was kind of a goodbye. I heard from a lot of

my friends. He was making phone calls to everyone he worked with, old friends, and he never actually said anything. He was just like getting up to date, probably telling them the same thing. He was going to become a grandfather. Don't tell anybody things like that. So I went on tour with my band, Holy Holy. We were doing a Bowie tribute tour and I was in Toronto and something.

My alarm went off at eight in the morning and my watch, I didn't see my clock my iPhone and I looked at it and I saw David Bowie passed at eight o'clock in the morning. I saw he passed. And this is December tenth. And later there's a knock on my door. In the group. They come in my room. They say, Tony, I'm sorry to tell you something terrible has happened. I go, I know, And we had another show to play in Toronto that night, and said we had to have a group meeting. What are we going

to do about this? And I said, I don't know. I think David, you know, without sending code, I think the show must go on. We have this is our last date. These fans are going to want to mourn his death. They're going to and we're going to celebrate his life. Let's go and do the show. And even the promoterst begged, I just would I hope you're not going to cancel the show. I said, no, we'll do it. We'll do it. So we played seven of us. We played to you know, a rows and rows of people

crying their eyes out, and then it was infectious. You know, I'm playing I'm crying my eyes out, playing bass, lead singers, choking on the words. And finally it's settled down. By the second half of the show, we all calm down with saying nice things about David. What else can you do? You know? And that was the end of the tour and I went back and none of us, nobody, there was no funeral that I knew of, you know, it

was just a family thing. I have no idea how it went after he died, but he said it's goodbye to me.

and all that. It's just an alumn that's called an alumni tour. The reason I did that tribute Ben Woody Woodmansey and I played on The Man Who Sold the World. It started as a Man Who Saw the World tour. We are the original musicians and we felt that we had the right to do this to form this band. We always the tribute was to David, and we always had a pause in the middle of the show saying

a nice little anecdote about David. And we felt that it was our right to do this without feeling bad about it, that we're just capitalizing on his death.

very well. Would you like to see a video of one song? So I played the width of a Circle to him and he sat just behind where I'm sitting now and he said that's really good. At the end of he gouse, that's really great. You guys did a great job, because he says, if we stuck together, we would we would have sounded that good. You know, you're better rehearsed than we were at the time. I said, would you put that in writing? He says, no, absolutely not.

It would have been nice if you endorsed the tour. But he died after this.

to be a pop star anymore. She doesn't she had the big hit with Paul McCartney and all that, and then she feels like people used her voice in the wrong way. She wants to make a folk album and she loves the music that you made with Ralph mctel and the Strawbes, to two folk artists that I've worked with. She says, I want that sound. So I said, well, I can do that for her. I can get Ralph mctel playing one guitar and Dave Cousin's playing the other and Danny Thompson in the middle on a double bass

who played with Pentangle. And so I met Mary and told her all this, and she looked at me like I was like Jesus or something like that. This is exactly what she wanted to do. And she was thrilled as somebody was listening to her, you know, because Paul McCartney just thought she was going to be a pop star, you know, like he thought that was everyone's goal. But her roots were always folk music. She played in folk clubs in Wales and she was bilingual. She used to

sing in Welsh to all these men's clubs. You know, they'd be drinking, knocking back pints of ale and singing in Welsh and all that. She was great, you know, but she wasn't a pop singer. So that's how it happened. I made her this album, Earth Song, Ocean Song. I spent at least two or three months looking for music she wasn't writing. Then I found some good songs for her in New York and brought him back to London and she was so thrilled. I mean, that was for her.

It was the best thing she ever did.

You know, we did a few gigs together with Dave Cousins and Danny Thompson and the Royal Albert Hall, and the audience you could see them float up in the air. She saying like an angel, you know she had, there's no voice like hers. And she said no. She says, what's the use of having children if you're just going to go out and work and do gigs. She says, I'm finished, I'm done. I don't want to do it anymore.

So she used our kids. But you know, quite rightly, I think she did that made the right decision because she turned out to be the best mother to my two oldest children. You know who I am still in touch with constantly, and Mary and I are friends.

would you like to be a father? Again? I go, what are you trying to tell me? She says, you're going to be a father. If you don't want to be a father, let me know, I'll get rid of it. But what do you want to do? And I thought for a minute, and this is now. I didn't live with kids for at least a decade by this point, and I made up my mind on the spot. I said, have the baby. And she goes and I said, and everything that goes with it. What do you mean by that?

I said, will you marry me? I was in a session. I was in a recording session, and then I come out of the wherever I was taking the phone call and I told everyone I was working with, I'm going to be a father. It sounds flippant, but it was really romantic in a way. I mean the way she asked me, the way she kept rephrasing it and rephrasing it was very interesting, but it was. It was a great you know, I think all my marriages were great

up to a point. I'm not a good husband. That's a conclusion I came to.

and John Lennon on the wall. And I said, may you know this is a little bit ridiculous. I feel like there three of us in bed. And she goes, she said, well, you should have known this when you took it on, when you married me, you should have known this would happen. I go, no, I thought you married me, you know, and then we split, you know, I lived, We lived apart for a while and we never got back together again, and finally got divorced.

Mary just made a duets album. They sound like sisters. They have the identical voice. My daughter has a voice from heaven just like Mary has. And she does gigs got She and her man who plays bass, they go out and do regular gigs all over England and they write songs, they release records. So that's side of the family is very musical. Now I'll move on to May. My two children with May are gifted as graphic artists.

My daughter Lara is the youngest child. She's about thirty two or thirty three now, and I should know her rage really, but she does graphic work for many, many different companies, from designing their websites to actually if they have a new brand of talcum powder, she'll design the box and all the artwork that goes in. You know, this is a big job, you know, to make an iconic thing that'll catch the eye in a shop that'll sell. So she loves graphic art. And then my son Sebastian

does his. He's got like the only one who does a normal nine to five job, but he does also he's into maga manga the Japanese are from and he does little comic books like that for his friends and sells them and stuff like that. But they're all autistic kids, and I love them all. I'm in touch with all of them.

They just couldn't get any any clients. And then there was a guy called doctor Death who came around to my studio tried to get me to close my studio because he he did close the others. And he says, well, how about sell me some of your gear instead? You know, maybe do you need all your gear? I can, I'll take your microphones from you and things like that. And I told him to get lost. But the writing was on the wall. I knew that I had about bookings

for the next two months. Besides myself, I would use it for my own productions, but I didn't work world, I didn't produce all the time, so I had other people come in and use a studio. Quite a few hit records. We made this in Lizzie and people like that. And I found a buyer who wanted to buy the whole studio, lock stock and barrel. He was a jingle guy, jingle house guy, and they called it Joe and Co.

I just learned yesterday that Joe passed away. But they bought the studio for me and they turned it into the one of the biggest jingle houses in London. In fact, it was the big biggest jingle house in London. And even my son Morgan started working with them first and he got into the rhythm of writing jingles and what it takes to do that. But the studio still lives today. The studio that was came perilously close to closing. It's

now owned by the Alvin Lee family. Alvin Lee blues guitarist, his daughter, his daughter and his wife owned the studio now and they run it like a really good business, and I'm entitled to use it anytime I want. Anytime I go to London, I can go in that place and it's it's walking through my history.

You know, there were's quite a few Good Earths in the world, restaurants that call themselves good Earth, the Good Earth.

I said goodbye to my house, my studio and moved to New York. At first in her place, she had a controlled rent place in Manhattan on eighty ninth Street between Third and Second Avenue, Manhattan, So we lived there for a while until children started to come from that marriage, and then we had to move to other places. But

it was great. It was great to be back. I had to literally start all over again because most people didn't know who I was with whatever great reputation I had made in London and the rest of the world. Americans just you know, oh oh you did Bangagong that one, you know, that was it, you know, And so that's how I ended up back there, and you know, my career did pick up afterwards. I'm still making records all the time, working with some great people, discovering new artists.

Did you know about my box set?

made about five hundred albums. I've must have produced over two thousand songs, individual songs, and now's the time. I'm really proud of this album. It's got some iconic records that Americans might not have heard. But I had a big spate of hits in the eighties in Britain with Adamant Altered Images, a lot of British and my studio we turned into a literally a hit factory. I was there every day, new group, every day, Dexi's Midnight Runners like. I did a lot of stuff in the eighties and

that's well represented on this box set. And then someone pointed out to me, but you left this off, you left that off, you left that off, and one group I'm very proud of was Ossi Bisa. It's the first Anglo African group ever. It came from Kenya and we made the first two albums we made were massive hits for them in the UK and also in America. There's not one Osibisas song on this album. So now I have to go back to demon Now they don't know this, but I want to do a volume two and make

sure you know. There's plenty of other records to get on there, but I want to make sure Osibisa gets on the next one because I'm very, very proud of that work. It was groundbreaking work. You never heard of an African rock band before until Osibisa.

And that's just the way things were in those days. And the freakier album you can make, the better. The freaky of the album was, the better. They wanted new sounds, different things. Bowie could be as radical as he could, and you know, Mark Bowling could do say outrageous things in the press. They loved all that stuff because it was a culture move. Speed up these days. The difference between these days is the bottom line is money right now, it's really money, money, money, and they have to make

a sound alike records to get that money. So the hire producers very very clever young people who work from laptops mainly. And everything's in the everything's in the box now, like you would probably The only human being on today's records might be just the singer. Everything else is programmed, you know, a fake guitar, a fake bass, fake drums, a swirling synthesizer sounds, and a chorus that goes on forever until you're sick of it. You know, Oh my god, what can I say?

a great artist can sell a lot of records. It doesn't have to be a Beyonce kind of record or a Taylor Swift kind of record. It could be a record of extreme autistic merit and it could sell. And I'm that kind of a producer. I'm this is my sixth decade and I learned a lot of shit in my life By six decade, I could still pull rabbits out of the hat for people.