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

I immediately got the distinct impression that bringing me here was all Denny’s idea and that, perhaps, David had a ‘thing’ about Americans: a negative ‘thing’. This was confirmed later when I had one-to-one meetings with Platz. Ironically, as I was to learn, he wasn’t English at all, but came to England as a young Jewish refugee during the Second World War. He had tragically lost his parents in Germany, but his aunt, Mrs Harvey, the chief accountant at Essex Music, fostered him. Mrs Harvey was soon to become my ‘aunt’ too. But in every other way, David Platz was quite the upper-crust Englishman.

Our initial meeting was brief, just an exchange of pleasantries really, but it had an ominous feeling. He was a proud man, and it is no accident that the initials of Essex Music International are EMI, and that David Platz’s idol was Sir Joseph Lockwood, president of the other, iconic British record company EMI. To the young hippie I was, David Platz represented The Man, everything that was bad about the corporate world. It wasn’t an auspicious beginning.

Afterwards Denny took me to his small office, which was in stark contrast to the grandeur of the oak panelled walls of Platz’s huge office. Denny’s office was about 8 by 11 feet with walls that were a yellowish colour, which I assumed had once been white; it contained one, by necessity small, functional desk. Into this space of less than a hundred square feet were crammed Denny, his assistant and budding songwriter Richard Kerr, and a publisher who worked there part time called Jon Fenton. In a few months a record plugger and a team of African-American songwriters, including Richard Henry, joined us and somehow or another we all shared this space. As the day went by some of the other Essex Music employees poked their heads in the doorway to meet the new Yank on the block. Graham Churchill, David Barnes and Don Paul all greeted me warmly. They were all song pluggers (they pitched songs to singers and producers to record) and all three eventually went on to greater things in the British music biz. Don discovered the street busker Don Partridge, who had a big hit with ‘Rosie’. Richard Kerr went on to have a solo singing career and wrote many hit songs, included ‘Mandy’, a huge hit for Barry Manilow. Graham and David became big executives in the music business. They all made me feel very welcome, in contrast to my cool reception from Mr Platz.

Essex Music was described as the ‘sister’ organization of The Richmond Organization, but in actual fact I learned that Howard Richmond outranked David Platz; each company administered the other’s catalogue in their own country. Platz had some early success in the UK with songwriters that included Lionel Bart (he wrote the musical Oliver!) and Anthony Newley (‘What Kind Of Fool Am I?’). He also had the King of British Skiffle, Lonnie Donegan, who signed a young writer called Justin Hayward to his own publishing company. Justin, as a member of The Moody Blues, wrote ‘Nights In White Satin’ at the age of 19; we would later become firm friends. A year or so later Gus Dudgeon, a recording engineer, who after doing some satisfactory production work for Platz, was rewarded with a production company of his own, with Platz, again, the equal partner. Unfortunately for Platz, Gus moved on prior to producing all the early Elton John albums. Platz seemed incapable of holding onto his discoveries for more than brief periods in their careers. His excuse would usually be, ‘I’m only a publisher, and I don’t understand the record business.’

With barely enough time to acquaint myself with my new surroundings Denny announced that we had a recording session with Manfred Mann at 2 p.m. My first day. And I was about to meet my first famous British group. Denny had agreed to produce their next single and that’s why I had to be there. He was fully occupied working on Procol Harum’s debut album in order to satisfy the demand created by ‘A Whiter Shade Of Pale’, which was on its way to becoming a smash hit. Interestingly, the demo that Denny played for me in New York could not be bettered by re-recording, so they released it as it was. He also had to start work on the Move’s album, as their single ‘I Can Hear The Grass Grow’ was heading towards the top ten. While Manfred Mann was almost a burden on his workload he didn’t want to turn them down.

Denny drove to the Phillips recording studio, just off Marble Arch, like he was in a Grand Prix—we were travelling at dangerous speeds in this ridiculously small car, a ‘Mini’. To make matters worse, the steering wheel was on the wrong side AND we were driving on the wrong side of the road. The Mini’s tiny dashboard could, at any moment, have been the recipient of my head because there were no seat belts in this toy car—nor were there any seat belt laws. Instinctively my foot stamped down on a nonexistent brake pedal as Denny weaved in and out of traffic along Oxford Street. Finally we arrived, and to my disbelief Denny parked the car in a space the size of a yoga mat. My stomach was like a butterfly cage. I was not sure whether it was in anticipation of what was to come or what had just happened.

On the way there Denny announced, ‘I shall need to leave you in charge for a few hours after we get started.’

So, after just three hours in a New York studio with Denny, and with my limited experience, I was to be a ‘producer’. As a musician I had never been allowed inside the control room, as oddly it was forbidden in those days. I barely knew what to say let alone do. Walking from the car to the studio I began to feel queasier, like I imagined I’d feel if I were being led to my execution. I assumed that I was just going to watch and learn during the first few days.

The studio turned out to be clean and pretty, unlike the squalid ones I had worked in back home, and by the standards of 1967 the console was huge. The Manfreds were warmed up and had been waiting somewhat impatiently for Denny; I sensed an unmistakable hostility in the air. I was introduced but instantly ignored, probably regarded by them as ‘something the cat dragged in’. As a keen student of British bands the first thing I noticed was a change in personnel: Mike D’Abo had replaced Paul Jones (actually Mike was the kindest to me, maybe because we were the two new kids on the block). They had been rehearsing ‘So Long Dad’, a darkly humorous and cynical song by the American writer Randy Newman. Denny quickly changed the mood in the studio and started making suggestions. I quickly saw why this man was so respected as the group hung on his every word. King Arthur was in full swing; it was something that I’d only glimpsed in New York.

After a couple of hours of recording Denny was satisfied with a great take by the drummer and bassist. I must emphasize that it was Denny who’d decided what the best take was, after the group wanted to call an earlier attempt a great take. I could see that Denny’s standards were incredibly high. He was relentless as he made them play the song again and again until it had all the elements and subtleties he deemed perfect. He was super critical with the engineer, making him tweak the console controls and adjust the microphones until the sound was as perfect as possible. In fact the sound was amazing, even better than what I had heard on Beatles’ albums, my personal criteria of great sound. It was the confirmation I had been seeking—Brits did do it better. I was overwhelmed by this crash course as I watched Denny make his engineer jump through hoops; it was something you’d never have got an American engineer to do back then.

During a break Denny turned to me and said, within earshot of the band, ‘I have to go to Olympic Studios in Barnes for a Procol Harum session. I’m not sure about that take; I think I would like you to try for an even better one. When you’ve done that guide the group through the overdubs’, the ‘fiddly bits’ of guitar parts, keyboard parts and vocals.

‘No problem,’ said I. As scary as this all seemed I decided to ‘do or die’. If Denny thought I was up to it then I was determined not to let him down. This desire to live up to the belief people have in me has been running my life since.

With Denny gone the hostility returned—the Manfreds obviously felt that Denny was fobbing me off on them. In their minds they were paying for Denny Cordell but were getting Tony ‘Nobody’. However, they begrudgingly got behind their instruments and played six lacklustre takes; I could see I was in trouble. Having little experience with this kind of situation I drew upon that of one of my few recording sessions. As a 15-year-old bass player, when things had been going badly the mysterious voice coming from the control room would say things to cheer us up and put us at ease. I had to be cheerful in the face of adversity. Leaning into the talkback mic I announced, ‘Hey, this is take seven, lucky take seven. We’ll get it now.’

My ‘jolly hockey sticks’ tactic was received with audible groans and we never did get that ‘better take’; the magic created by Denny had left with him.

Undaunted we proceeded to use what Denny had considered the best take. We were using a 4-track tape and had used up two tracks for the backing. The entire drum kit and bass guitar were recorded on track one and a rudimentary keyboard part was on track two, which we replaced with a carefully played one. On the two remaining tracks we had to record the guitar solo, vocals and some special effects noises. Since the tracks had to be shared, the additional parts had to be carefully dropped into the same tracks. The guitar solo was recorded on the vocal track with fractions of a second to spare. Dropping in too early would erase part of the vocal, as would dropping out too late. In America, the same procedures are called ‘punch-ins’ and ‘punchouts’; no doubt a psychiatrist would find this mildly amusing.

Slowly the band dropped their hostility towards me, or maybe I had taken their comments too seriously. This was my introduction to ‘taking the piss’, or ‘taking the Mickey’. What I assumed to be very hurtful insults were just good-natured British sarcasm. We managed to get everything on tape: a guitar solo, coins jingling, hand claps, backing vocals, lead vocal, a second keyboard part—all on the remaining two tracks. Denny returned later in the evening and was thrilled with what he heard. The band was visibly relieved and I had a little invisible halo over my head. First blood. A few days later, after Denny mixed the track to mono, he said I’d done an amazing job with the overdubs, but left him with a very difficult mix because there were so many different elements on the two busy tracks. I think this was a compliment.

That was my first day under my belt. If this wasn’t exciting enough Denny told me I was going to meet, and work with, Procol Harum the next day. What I didn’t know was that I would bump into Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones in a corridor at Olympic Studios, and I would also see Jimi Hendrix jam later that evening at the Speakeasy in Margaret Street—a club that was the epicentre of the music industry during the early summer of ’67. God knows what would happen on my third day.

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