Tony Visconti: The Autobiography: Bowie, Bolan and the Brooklyn Boy

foreword by morrissey

Copyright

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First published by HarperCollins 2007 This edition published 2007

Copyright © 2007 Tony Visconti

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Source ISBN: 9780007229451

Ebook edition © SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007343577

Version: 2017-01-03

Dedication

To Mom, Dad, Morgan, Jessica, Sebastian and Lara

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword, by Morrissey

Introduction

Prologues

Chapter 1 Birth, Bananas, Heroin and Marriage

Chapter 2 London Makes its Marc

Chapter 3 Variety is the Spice…

Chapter 4 It’s All Hype, Man

Chapter 5 Myths and Legends

Chapter 6 It’s the Same Ol’, Same Ol’

Chapter 7 Abroad and at Home

Chapter 8 The Low Down

Chapter 9 Ich Bin Ein Berliner

Chapter 10 All Change

Chapter 11 Modern Life

Chapter 12 Back to Basics

Chapter 13 Full Circle

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

Foreword, by Morrissey

Many of the early records bearing Tony Visconti’s name made me eager to get out into the world—if only to agitate. In 1971-72 the mighty blaze of T.Rex singles were beyond price to me. They had all the immediate eager motion of pop records, but were also strangely reflective—a mad stew of Englishness and worldliness with Tony’s name on each side of the label. If you enjoyed the music of T.Rex it seemed to prove that you were someone. Here, it seemed, was Art in motion: guitar savagery chopping up the soundstage; pop with intellectual distinction, using full orchestra—if only for a mere twenty haughty seconds.

Making the T.Rex soundscape both fantastic and naturalistic was an abrasive clash of non-traditional routes to the pop conclusion. The wealth and detail and contrast of layered orchestration wrapped around the unravelled riddle of Marc Bolan’s poetry (well, let’s call it that) worked so well that Bolan stayed beside Tony almost until Bolan’s life ended with death. At its highest artistic peak, with the strange flood of ‘Telegram Sam’ and ‘Metal Guru’ we are assaulted by the musical equivalent of secret stairways and false walls, and something enters into me which I can barely fathom. I wanted pop music to be true, and it was with David Bowie’s LP The Man Who Sold the World, which enlivened 1972 as a forgotten reissue, edging up to #;26 in the British charts. It is a soft sound, with luxuriant confidence from Bowie, whose imagination was served by the Visconti methodology. Still, today, it stands as David Bowie’s best work. The first side, especially, is musical literacy delivered.

With Bowie, the tone and cadence are all there: no sentimentalism. The instrumental textures are wispy and often child-like; acoustic and recorder sounds of turn-of-the-’70s dropout London. The Bowie-Visconti vision is concentrated. A good producer gets at something in a singer (or musician) and Tony was there to nail the gift of Bowie just perfectly—making suffering sound like a superior condition—live this life or don’t live any. Listen to the album even now and you are right back there. The mavericks are those who liberate themselves, and Bowie and Visconti did so with The Man Who Sold the World… and we played our part by listening.

The Mael machinery of Sparks utilized Tony for their 1975 surgical offering, Indiscreet. The versifying of Ron Mael introduced a new style of pop poetry, and the scattershot pace of Russell Mael’s vocals sounded like someone running out of a burning house. Russell had been a T.Rex fan, and by 1975 it was Sparks themselves who were shaking public tastes. Indiscreet was their fifth album of great resonance, lunging to #18 in the chart. The sound of this album is so chaotic that it often seems to play for laughs. Either the Maels, or Tony Visconti, were asking: What can we show them that is new? From a tipsy teatime waltz to unstoppable violins, the pace pulverized the listener, and Russell’s mouth seemed unable to close. There are so many latitude and longitude instrumental textures that the masterstroke was just almost overcooked. Since Ron and Russell Mael were obviously insane, Tony could only have walked into this session armed with a swirl of guesswork. The disorder lay in the electronic savagery of the Maels, who had spent their early lives strapped to an iron bed. Pulling them back from the edge, Indiscreet (somehow a commercial venture) produced two riotously diverse hit singles.

The most important feature of recorded noise is the pleasure it can bring to the listener. Tony has always—somehow—been a part of my life, but I didn’t ever imagine that his success-ridden career would lead him to me, nor I to him, yet in 2005 we recorded Ringleader of the Tormentors in Rome. As a non-musician/ skimmer-scholar, I’ve always known what I wanted without always knowing how to get it. Many years on from the escapist spirits of Bolan and Bowie…it is still there…in the Visconti walk. An actor would be thrilled to discover a new expression for the camera, as Tony Visconti is delighted to ambush the end of a song with a new musical twist. He has astounding recall of whatever it is he’s just heard, and he can talk and listen at the same time. The point of a good recording is to make us more aware of ourselves—as singers or musicians, and Ringleader of the Tormentors stands as a joy greater than pleasure for me. In several countries across Europe…it zaps to #1.

Tony understands the code of music brilliantly, and he is not authoritarian in the patronizing way that so many producers who have left their fingerprints on the 1960s and 1970s are. He is persuasive without ever making you need to disembarrass yourself; his role is complicity. There are many respected bores of Tony’s generation, nursing memories and resentments and never letting the trapped listener forget—but Tony isn’t like that. He doesn’t pick over the Saxon remains of T.Rex; the time is always now. He is a noble example of the self-flogger who knows that the song doesn’t end just because it’s over. Musical notations are images, and the Visconti style is timeless and lionized and is therefore forevermore.

MORRISSEY

October 2006

Introduction What is a Record Producer?

A group of musicians and a lead singer pour their hearts out into a handful of microphones. When the song finishes a cheerful voice from the control room booms over the speaker, ‘That’s it boys, it’s a take!’ and the band members slap each other on the back and run into the control room to their awaiting girlfriends who are, of course, all models and starlets. It’s a notion and an image that has Hollywood’s fingerprints all over it—reality is a little different.

On my first recording session, I was the bass player; I too heard that booming voice, only he said, ‘That wasn’t very good. You guys will have to keep going until you get it right. Bass player: your E string is flat!’ We were desperately bashing out this song for an hour or so under the audio equivalent of a microscope. The booming voice was right. The playback of our last take was sloppy and my bass was out of tune. Left to our own devices we would’ve given up and said that was the best we could do. But the booming voice was persistent, and the next few takes steadily got better, all the more so for checking the tuning of my bass before each take. The booming voice saved the day.

When I grew up I became a booming voice, well, actually a booming voice with the nasal Brooklyn accent. I wanted to be the lead singer or at the very least just one of the boys in the band, but circumstances put me in the director’s chair instead. The circumstances uprooted me from Manhattan and planted me firmly on British soil at the height of Swinging London. I took root and stayed there for nearly 23 years. In the end, I think it was a better deal.

The role of a record producer hasn’t changed much since Fred Gaisberg cut the performances of opera singers to wax cylinders in the 1890s. He instructed them to move closer or further from a horn; he was the voice of experience, helping the artists to get their performances to a high standard onto the recording medium.

The first time I heard the term ‘Producer’ was in the ’60s when a mad looking man on the Jack Paar TV show (one of the very first talk shows) audaciously proclaimed that he dictated the musical taste of teenagers in America. He was introduced as a record producer and his name was Phil Spector. I already loved his productions without really knowing that someone other than the artists and musicians were involved (I still melt when I hear ‘Walking In The Rain’ by the Ronettes). It was Spector who brought this role to the public’s attention, but most records of that time were still produced anonymously. It was many years later that the great Quincy Jones admitted to arranging and producing ‘It’s My Party’ for Lesley Gore in 1963.

When I heard a Beatles record produced by George Martin I began to understand that record production was an art form, not just an aural mirror of a live performance. Before those intricate Beatles recordings it was just that, a live performance captured on cylinder, disk or tape. It is said that once Bing Crosby, the legendary crooner, discovered that two performances could be edited together by cutting audio tape with a razor blade, he gave birth to the ‘art’ of record production.

There was one pioneering genius who stood the recording world on its head and changed everything forever—Les Paul. His name is on millions of the solid body electric guitars that he designed. But his greatest contribution was his concept of the multi-track tape recorder. With his wife, Mary Ford, he produced supernatural recordings of complex arrangements (supernatural in the sense that two people sounded like twenty). His guitar was used over and over again on a single song as he created a guitar orchestra. For very fast passages he slowed the tape down, played a phrase and then returned the machine back to normal speed. The result was impossible tinkling runs of demisemiquavers. Wife Mary was transformed into a very precise female jazz vocal quartet. At first his one-off 8-track tape recorder was considered a novelty, but when multi-track machines were mass-produced the world of making records changed forever. Since the ’60s most recordings have been made in assembly line fashion, not all the sounds recorded at once, but in layered overdubbed sessions. Even in the sacrosanct world of classical music Maria Callas broke the rules by overdubbing a missed high ‘C’ in an otherwise perfect performance. There was a critical furore but since then classical record producers have been doing virtually what a pop record producer does.

A record producer is responsible for every aspect of a recording. In the early days the word ‘producer’ was more descriptive because the record producer put up the money for the recording and hired a team of experts to execute the various creative jobs. Eventually the role of a producer became more creative and resembled that of a ‘music director’. George Martin crossed the line and wasn’t shy about giving the Beatles positive feedback and suggesting changes in their musical arrangements. A straight up producer would not be qualified and certainly not welcomed to give such dramatic direction, but George Martin was a very accomplished orchestrator, pianist and oboist. I think his most glorious moment in the Beatles’ recorded repertoire was his stunning string octet arrangement for ‘Eleanor Rigby’. Equally stunning is the sheer wizardry of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. Of course the Beatles contributed greatly and John Lennon refused to take ‘no’ for an answer when he wanted two disparate takes, recorded on different days, in two different tempi and keys to be joined together. George Martin and their extraordinary engineer Geoff Emerick stayed up all night and made it work! There might have been four Beatles, but there were two more Beatles working in the shadows. Record production, as we know it today, started with George Martin and the Beatles. I make it no secret that I fashioned my style of production after Martin’s.

To be responsible for every aspect of a recording a record producer should have a working knowledge of recording techniques and music. Many modern record producers are experts at one or the other or both. I have read that we also have to be psychologists, but that’s a bit far fetched. I see us more as coaches, a job where some psychology might be necessary. My mentor, Denny Cordell, instinctively knew how to get the best out of an artist and the best sound out of a sound engineer. My policy is to interfere as little as possible, but to draw out the best in the artists I work with, especially the singers. Sometimes I offer advice for the substitution of a word or a melody (for which I don’t take a royalty); I’ve also sung backing vocals and played various instruments too. The best part is towards the end, when I sit at a mixing console and put it all together.

All in all it’s a very nice occupation.

Prologue Touchdown

BOAC Flight 506, April 1967

It’s been a long day.

I’m a night person, but I had to get up very early for my daytime flight and now it’s nearly 11 p.m., London time. The flight is about seven hours long; adding the extra five hours of time zones makes this day surreal. I had hardly slept at all the previous night, nor did I sleep on the plane, and with sleep deprivation comes a dream-like state. As the BOAC jet is landing at London’s Heathrow Airport I keep saying to myself, ‘Is this really happening to me?’ Some realities are evident, but this reality is yet unformed. I’ve been out of my country of birth only three times, once to play three weeks in a Toronto nightclub, a Far East tour with a ’50s revival group and to Paris for a week, with a side trip to Monaco, in a show featuring Liza Minnelli. But this was the trip to the Mecca of modern pop music. No one did it better than the Brits and no Brits did it better than the Beatles. I also had an eerie feeling that I was returning home. A week earlier I had turned twenty-three years old. This was some birthday present.

In a short time I would be going through British Customs and Immigration with four guitars and a lot of explaining to do. I didn’t have a visa that allowed me to work in Britain.

Looking like a nervous zombie I approach the long row of immigration desks. I’d been told to stick to my story, no matter how much I’m drilled: ‘I’m here on vacation.’ If I said I was going to do even one hour’s work in England I’d be sent back to New York on the next plane. Even in my zombie state, I’m repeating my mantra—vacation, vacation, I’m here on vacation. Oh God! I want to work in this country so bad. I want to learn how they do it. How did the Beatles make a record so clever, so profound as Revolver? And I’d recently heard that they’re finishing a new album, which took nearly a year to make. Tony, don’t blow it. Remember it’s a vacation.

As I stand in line at Immigration, I’m wondering if I made the right choice. What a pair of balls, the audacity. What right did I have coming here? As an arranger I’m not that good, I’m unproven I tell myself. I’m just an all-round type of guy, maybe clever but not great at anything, with just enough wits about me to survive in the music business. There are hundreds of arrangers Denny could’ve picked. I feel the sudden need to go to the toilet.

Customs! Immigration!…What the fuck do they think this is, the Garden of Eden? I couldn’t believe the ‘Gestapo’ waiting for me on this little island in the North Sea. Immigration wasn’t so bad, I asked for a six-month visitor’s visa. Then I was asked what I would live on and I had to show them all the money I had—four hundred dollars in cash (I wouldn’t have my first credit card for a few years). ‘I’ll give you a month,’ said Basil Fawlty (or his brother), ‘and don’t you even think of doing even a minute’s work whilst you’re here!’ File me under ‘apprehensive’. I was in trouble immediately. I thought I had failed Denny. I was going to be booted out in a month. Denny swore he would get me working papers, which takes a long time, but he needed my services immediately. I just barely made it through Immigration, but I still had Her Majesty’s Customs ahead of me.

Back then Customs and Immigration were a lot tougher. It’s a relative breeze through now; strangely so in these times of global terrorism. It wasn’t only me; every time I returned to Britain there would be a queue of woeful people sitting it out, waiting to be interrogated further. The Customs tables would be groaning under the weight of mountains of underwear and dirty laundry. Their cousins in Scotland Yard had busted Mick Jagger, Keith Richard and Marianne Faithful for having too much fun, with a Mars Bar so it was said. Swinging Londoners seemed to be in short supply at Heathrow. With my long hair down to my shoulders I was very much in the minority. I also had four suitcases and four guitars with me, and I expected Customs to believe I was coming for just a vacation. Luckily I was prepared for the worst.

This conversation preceded a complete search of my four suitcases. All my fellow passengers were long gone as I was grilled over and over again. I told them that Denny was waiting for me and he would verify my story (about coming for a vacation). So they found him in the Arrivals lounge and grilled him too.

At around 1:30 a.m. we pulled up to the door of Denny’s basement flat in the Fulham Road, his family (a wife and two small boys) asleep. He showed me to a couch, which I quickly learned was a settee. ‘That’s where you’ll sleep tonight. Would you like me to draw a bath for you?’ I declined, since I hadn’t had a bath since my mother last gave me one. I needed a shower, which Denny’s and most English homes didn’t have. But he had the biggest bathtub I had ever seen. This was awful. Even though I eventually succumbed to bathing in my body’s dirty water and rinsing myself with water from a cooking pot, I wouldn’t have an American-style high-pressure shower until I had one installed in my English home five years later. Nevertheless, despite my Heathrow ordeal, the alienation of alternative words, and the unfamiliar English customs, both at the airport and in Denny’s home, I still felt that I belonged.

Like many American guys my age, I grew my hair long, and learned the chords and lyrics to every Beatles record as well as many other cool British pop songs that were invading our airwaves. I even managed a wannabe Liverpool accent (only to amuse myself) as a result of going to see A Hard Day’s Night ten or twelve times during its first month of release. The Dave Clark Five, Freddie and The Dreamers, The Animals, The Zombies, The Who, and The Kinks were household names across America. But while British pop was similar, it was enigmatically different to anything that was being made in America.