Tony Visconti With Richard Havers
Bowie, Bolan and the Brooklyn Boy the Autobiography

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

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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.

H.M. Customs: | Why so many guitars, if you’re on holiday?
Me, the scruffy one: | Oh that’s easy. I’m a professional musician and all of these guitars are different types—electric, acoustic, a bass; I have to practice each one daily!
H.M. Customs: | You will not sell one of these instruments whilst you are in the United Kingdom. Is that understood? When you leave here you must be in possession of all of these instruments!
Me: | Yes, sir.
H.M. Customs: | Open this suitcase. (He eyes my black kimono, my bathrobe.) Do you intend to perform in this country?
Me: | No, sir.
H.M. Customs: | Ah ha! Got you! This is your stage gear. (He waves my kimono over his head.) Why did you bring this with you if you say you’re not performing (he was so ’66, kimonos were out, military clothes were in)?
Me: | It’s my bathrobe! I’m not performing.
H.M. Customs: | Your bathrobe? You mean your dressing gown?
Me: | What’s a dressing gown? It’s my bathrobe!
H.M. Customs: | Yes, that’s a dressing gown. But you wear it on stage, right?
Me: | No, only in my house, after I take a shower (it really was my bathrobe).

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.

To my ears, British pop seemed to hark back to the Elizabethan age, when major and minor keys weren’t as formalized as they are today. As a young wide-eyed musician this thrilled me to no end. I had forsaken the simplistic American pop styles of Chubby Checker, Bobby Rydell, Fabian and their ilk for the luscious harmonic unpredictability of jazz. My generation had been brought up on the likes of Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Buddy Holly, but they had all slipped out of fashion for one reason or another by the early to mid ’60s—of course poor Buddy had no choice. American pop had become bland and predictable. Nasty, cigar-chomping guys controlled the music industry, which proves that very little changes, except that I’m not sure they chew so many cigars these days.

I had read about British pop stars like Tommy Steele, Lonnie Donegan and The Shadows, but only heard snippets of their music; British Pop of the late ’50s and early ’60s was even blander than ours. After the Beatles told America that they wanted to hold our hand I intuitively knew that something was happening to me. My mind and body were responding to this first real wave of great British pop. Liverpool, London and Manchester were more important to me than the city of my birth. It seemed like nothing was happening in New York City while everything was happening over in England. By mid ’65 there was first The Lovin’ Spoonful, and then The Young Rascals, but as talented as they were they lacked that British mystique. No matter how hard we tried in New York, somehow the Brits always did it better; they seemed to possess ‘the knowledge’. Some inner voice was telling me that I needed to get myself over there to see how it was done, I needed to learn the arcane studio secrets that only the British knew.

In the months prior to my flight to London my life had taken such a strange turn. For about a year my wife, Siegrid, and I had been taking weekly acid trips. We were freethinking hippies that espoused the teachings of pop culture gurus—Tim Leary and Richard Alpert (now Ram Das). Our acid wasn’t bathtub street acid; it came directly from Sandoz, the drug manufacturer based in Switzerland, and at this time it wasn’t technically illegal. I don’t remember exactly how this came into our hands, but we were in possession of a jar labelled D-Lysergic Acid-25, with Sandoz printed in bold letters above that; we kept it in our refrigerator. While there was no recommended dosage on the label we managed to apportion out an entire year’s worth of trips from this bottle, about fifty each. One drop in a glass of orange juice (or placed on the tongue) was all it took to have a twelve-hour excursion into the psychedelic unknown. We stuck close to the advice of Leary and Alpert who had deduced that a trip had a shape very similar to the description of the Bardo, the after-death experience described in The Tibetan Book of The Dead.

After a year seeking enlightenment through chemistry, Siegrid and I hit a psychic barrier. For the uninitiated an acid trip is in a league of its own, it’s not a social drug or an addictive drug. There is an enzyme in our brain called serotonin. This keeps your sensory sections discreet. Acid is a catalyst that dilutes the serotonin, making all the sections of the brain merge together. LSD doesn’t create the experience, your brain does. This is why trippers used to say that they could ‘hear’ colours and ‘see’ music. Insight and confusion fluctuate rapidly on acid. Everything seems so awesome, so beautiful; it’s incredible (Man!). But there’s a dark downside. Sometimes a feeling of sheer terror came over me when I listened to what normally seemed harmless songs. I sometimes heard nefarious messages in the lyrics that conjured Bosch-like images of hell. I became very aware that certain types of music were not for my listening pleasure while on an acid trip. As acid became more widespread it was not surprising that a darker acid cult evolved—who hasn’t heard of Charles Manson?

Siegrid and I decided that we could no longer keep taking this particular path to enlightenment; it was too unpredictable, too dangerous. One of our favourite acid activities would be to read the great religious books of the ages, and not only the then-popular Eastern variety—the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and the Tibetan Book of The Dead. We also read aloud both testaments of the Bible—from cover to cover. Reading them was one thing, getting to understand them was quite another. What we really needed was a teacher. An artist friend of ours, Barbara Nessim, commissioned a spiritualist to make ‘soul charts’ for our birthdays, which were exactly one month apart. These were beautiful abstract compositions drawn with pastel chalks on coloured felt, in which the background colour of the felt was supposed to represent our essence. Red was earthy and passionate, blue was spiritual, and so on. These representations of where we were at spiritually almost needed no explanation, we immediately recognized our inner selves in those drawings. What was amazing to us was the fact that they had been done without the artist ever meeting us. It was her clairvoyance that enabled her to produce these first charts, and when we eventually met the artist she explained the symbolism in her drawings. We knew at once that Ellen Resch was the teacher we had been searching for. We never dropped acid again.

We began studying with Ellen, allowing her to take us through guided meditations. As part of her small group of followers we would try to make direct contact with our spiritual guides, mine was Rama. We were told to test our guides and ask them for evidence that they were there. I swear that on the rainiest, most blustery bleak nights in New York, every time I asked Rama for a cab one would turn the corner in seconds. Ellen would also give us direct messages from our guides whom only she could hear clearly. I remember so well the warmth of that group, which included others of our own age as well as people up to forty years older, all sharing this wonderful psychic experience together. Ellen, a short, dark, German woman, took on an aura of another person during these sessions: that of a solemn Indian guru from ancient times. Reincarnation was, of course, a strong tenet of our group. Siegrid and I were told that we were once brother and sister, temple dancers, in ancient India.

One day I told Ellen that it was my dream to go to London to work in the music industry there. Ellen predicted that I would, very soon, meet an Englishman who would change my life. As far as I was concerned if she could teach me how to get cabs to come by positive thought there was no reason why the Englishman wouldn’t. Two weeks later Ellen’s prediction came true.

I was working at The Richmond Organization (TRO) as a signed songwriter and was in the early stages of becoming a record producer. One day I was standing by the water cooler in Richmond’s offices when a tall, striking, grey-haired man walked up and poured himself some water. He certainly didn’t look like an American; he dressed differently—he looked like an outsider’s concept of a hippie. I introduced myself and he replied in a most beautiful accented voice, ‘Hello, I’m Denny.’

Bingo, an Englishman! He asked me what I did there and I told him I was the ‘house’ record producer. His face beamed as he exclaimed, ‘Ah, my American cousin.’ This was my introduction to Denny Cordell.

‘I’m a producer too. I’m working with Georgie Fame, and I’ve produced The Moody Blues and The Move,’ said Denny.

I was already a fan of Georgie Fame, and knew of The Moody Blues from their top ten US hit with ‘Go Now’, but I hadn’t heard of the Move. I was instantly captivated by that accent, so quintessentially posh English (not the monotone Scouse of the Beatles), his grey curls, the regal eyes. I later learned that he was in fact Denny Cordell-Laverack and had been born in Buenos Aires in 1944, but educated at a British public school. Nevertheless to this boy from Brooklyn he was like King Arthur. This man was a class act.

I’m not sure if Denny knew he had an ‘American cousin’, but Howard Richmond had certainly never told me that I had a ‘British one’. Denny talked about his work in London; he was in a far more advanced stage of his career than I was.

‘I’ve got something with me that you might like to hear,’ said Denny.

I took him into an empty office and from his briefcase he pulled out an acetate that he placed on the turntable. As he lowered the tone arm onto the grooves I had no idea what to expect. Instantly I was hit by the sound of a haunting organ played over a steady medium-slow rock beat. It was a sad, almost gothic composition, worthy of Bach, and I had heard it before. It was a variation of ‘Air On a G String’ (I had paid attention during music appreciation classes in high school). At first I was under the impression that this was an instrumental as the intro was so long. After almost thirty seconds my illusions were shattered when a voice, which I took to be a black soul singer—but was really Gary Brooker—began singing those surreal, but now immortal, lyrics: ‘We skipped the light fandango, turned cartwheels ’cross the floor.’ What the hell did that mean? Who cares? These disparate elements blended so incredibly well together.

‘It’s a new group I’ve discovered and I took them into the studio for a few hours in order to make this demo. They’re called Procol Harum.’

The name was as strange as the music. Of course the song is now so famous, so a part of our collective consciousness, that it seems impossible to recall a time when it didn’t exist. But there was I, probably the first American to hear ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’. For many it’s one of rock’s most seminal songs, and for me, it literally changed my life.

Denny was not in New York just to play me ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’.

‘I’m working on a track called “Because I Love You” that I’ve already recorded with Georgie Fame,’ explained Denny.

‘I adore “Yeah, Yeah” by Georgie Fame. It always reminds me of my favourite jazz vocal group, Lambert, Hendricks and Ross,’ said I, hoping to impress Denny with my knowledge and sophistication.

‘I have already produced a British version of the song with Georgie but I want to cut it again with some of New York’s finest jazz players. I’ve booked what I’m told are some of the top session musicians,’ said Denny. He told me that he booked Clark Terry, a trumpet jazz icon, and booked A&R studios (owned by a young Phil Ramone) for three hours.

‘Wow! Can I have a look at the charts, Denny?’ (A chart is jargon for a musical arrangement.)

‘Charts!’ said Denny. ‘There are no charts. I’m going to ask them to “busk it”.’

For the first time in our conversation I looked a little bewildered. It turned out that this meant that they would ‘fake it’—it was the first of many lessons in British English.

‘You’ll be crucified financially if you expect an eight-piece session band to make up an arrangement. This is New York, and obviously things are different in London but here everything is “union this, union that”. Clark Terry will charge you a fortune to sit down and sketch out a trumpet part while the studio clock is ticking. Before you know it you’ll be paying overtime. Do you normally “busk it” in London?’

‘Well, I suppose you could say that. I’ll book the studio for a whole day and we’ll record an A-side and then do a quick B-side. Everyone will hang out, smoke a few spliffs, and then we’ll record it after each musician has kind of worked out what they’ll do. By midnight we’ll have our take.’

Oh, I loved this. It explained how, and why, the Beatles took nine weeks to record their album Revolver. In America albums were almost always recorded in less than a week, sometimes in one day. After this brief introduction to British recording techniques Denny became pensive. As he slowly turned a whiter shade of pale he said, ‘The session is taking place in an hour. What am I going to do?’

I felt responsible for delivering such bleak news so I asked to hear the demo of Georgie’s song. He put the acetate on the deck and I heard the British version of ‘Because I Love You’. It was good but Denny was correct in his hunch that a group of New York musicians could give it a more authentic feel. What irony, he wanted to record in New York and I wanted to record in London—for that ‘feel’ thing.

‘I think I can probably write a decent sketch of the arrangement in an hour.’ Denny looked very relieved.

All my years of paying attention in my high school music dictation classes paid off in that hour. I am fortunate that once I know the key of a song I can write out the notes without reference to a piano. I first transcribed the chord changes to the song and then added a guide bass part, a simpler version than the one on the record. I added a few indications for the drummer of where to play fills, and when to stop and start. Then I wrote the two trumpet parts on top of the same staff. With minutes to spare I had all the important ingredients of the arrangement written out on several pieces of manuscript paper. The same pages would suffice for all the different instruments. I rushed around to the Xerox copier—a cool new gadget in the ’60s—seconds later we were running down 48th Street, demo and charts in our hands.

When we got to the studio everyone was set up and waiting for us. Denny had asked Harvey Brooks, a member of the group Electric Flag, to help with the production. Harvey had the band playing some 12-bar blues to warm up, while at the same time giving the engineer a chance to adjust the individual microphone settings.

‘Can I have the charts?’ asked Harvey of Denny.

‘Well, Tony here wrote some parts out, I hope they’ll be okay.’

I knew they would be fine but I couldn’t help feeling very nervous—I had just crashed a party of musicians I had only dreamed about working with. I mean—Clark Terry. Come on.

Denny’s acetate played as the band scanned my instant all-in-one arrangement. No one questioned anything; they just silently imagined how they’d interpret the music as they listened to the British version. Leaving the control room they took their places in front of the microphones. The drummer counted in and I immediately heard the efforts of my dictation pulsing through the air. (God bless you Dr Silberman, head of the New Utrecht High School Music Department, your protégé is finally having his moment of glory.) It sounded okay, a little stiff maybe, but Harvey and Denny immediately began to refine the band’s interpretation. I was so impressed by their ideas and clarity. This was the first big time, class-A recording session I was really a part of. I had also saved Denny at least two hours of studio time and extra musicians’ fees and he was going to get a killer backing track in the three hours he had booked.

After an hour it became clear that things were not quite going to plan. It wasn’t in the total groove it needed to be. Turning to King Arthur I asked, ‘How do you feel?’ ‘Apprehensive,’ he pensively answered in a Shakespearian voice that would’ve impressed Sir Larry. While this kid from Brooklyn had seen that word in print, he’d never heard it uttered aloud. ‘Apprehensive’ was never in my spoken vocabulary and I had to think about its meaning in this context. Quickly I surmised that he wasn’t happy.

A break was called during which Denny and Harvey talked about what to do.

‘It’s the bass player,’ said Harvey, ‘I’ve not worked with the guy and to me he’s out of his league.’ Brooks suggested that he should play the bass instead. Denny and I (having written the ‘chart’ I now included myself in the production ‘team’) thought this would hurt the bass player’s feelings. Harvey ruthlessly waived our considerations aside. ‘Fuck that! I’ll play the fucking bass!’

Denny was getting the full-on New York City experience…all in one day. Brooks diplomatically told the bass player to sit it out, and asked if he could borrow the bass. The improved bass groove seemed to be what was missing after all! This was a big lesson for us, and even for the rejected bass player who sat in the control room as we were all caught up in the infectious groove. What was also so cool about this session was that everyone played at the same time. Shortly this ensemble method of recording would come to an end, the dawn of the ‘piecemeal’ approach was just around the corner; a method that continues to this day, for the most part. I was witness to the end of an era.

Denny was to take the backing track to London for Georgie Fame to record his vocal. This was like science fiction at the time—the music recorded on one continent and the vocal recorded on another.

‘Tony, you’ve done a great job. I’m impressed with your expertise. I’m looking for an American arranger to be my production assistant back in London. I’m very much in demand and don’t want to lose out on any opportunities because of the restraints of only being able to be in one place at a time.’

Denny went on to explain what the role of his deputized assistant would entail, which as far as I could gather was to do the basics when he was elsewhere. ‘I need someone who is an accomplished musician who can interpret my thoughts. I only know a few chords on the guitar,’ said Denny.

In the flush of today’s minor glory I told him to look no further, I was his man. But Denny had other plans. He wanted to lure a really big name to England, and then said the most preposterous thing I’d heard all day, or any day for that matter.

‘I’m flying to Los Angeles tomorrow to meet Phil Spector, to ask him to be my assistant.’ Given Phil’s track record of hits this put a whole new spin on chutzpah. I gave Denny my phone number just in case Phil Spector declined the job. Afterwards as I made my way home I tried to imagine the conversation between the two producers:

‘Phil, I’m a little apprehensive about asking you this, old boy, but would you mind coming back to London with me to work as my assistant?’

‘Denny, what are you smoking, man?’

My experience with Denny seemed like a dream; Siegrid could scarcely believe what I told her. Later I told Ellen about my Englishman and what had happened. ‘It was probably a false alarm because he was looking for someone with more experience than me.’

‘No!’ said Ellen very adamantly. ‘He’s the one! He’s the Englishman who will change your life. He will ask you to work with him in England.’

As much as I wanted to believe it, I felt that my psychic energy was only good enough to make cabs appear at three in the morning. What happened with Denny was a false start, a one-off experience at best, a good barstool story.

‘Stay hopeful,’ was all that Ellen would say.

A few days later our phone ringing at 11 a.m. interrupted our morning idyll, which was far from ideal as we had only got to bed at 6 or 7 a.m., as was our habit. Not just any call, it was a call from overseas, the first I’d ever received. The voice on the other end sounded like it was coming out of a short-wave radio, with whistles and pops as the backing track. ‘Phil Spector didn’t work out’ were Denny’s opening words, ‘I’ve also tried to get Artie Butler but he’s also said no.’

Artie was an old buddy of mine who had worked with the legendary producer Shadow Morton as well as playing the piano on ‘Remember (Walking In The Sand)’ and ‘Leader of The Pack’ by the Shangri-Las. ‘Who does this fucking Limey think he is?’ is how I imagine Artie with his Flatbush arrogance would have put it.

‘Tony, I was wondering if you’re still interested in the job?’ This woke me up completely, but I still had to ask Denny several times if he was serious. He kept repeating, ‘Yes’.

‘How will we do it?’ I asked.

‘I’ve spoken with Howard (Richmond) and he’ll arrange the airfare,’ said Denny.

‘When do you want me over there?’ was all I could think of to say.

He explained how very overworked he was and that he needed me there as soon as possible. Somehow I came up with the arbitrary answer, ‘How about in two weeks?’ Quite honestly, if I didn’t have some explaining to do to Siegrid, I would’ve left immediately. I stared at my beautiful wife as she slept, seemingly oblivious to the phone call. With blinding insight it dawned on me that things would never be the same. This is the lucky break everyone dreams of, but it didn’t necessarily include her. For starters Denny didn’t even know I had a wife.

I gently woke her up. She asked who had been on the phone and I said, ‘It was the Englishman, the ENGLISHMAN. And we’re moving to London.’

‘Oh no,’ she groaned, and went back to sleep.

Later I went to see a sceptical Howard Richmond about my plans and to further convince him it was a good idea to let me go to London, ‘to learn how the Brits do it.’ His plan had been for me to develop local New York talent for his forthcoming label, but to be honest I really didn’t know how to do that. I explained that I needed to learn how the Brits did it and bring that secret knowledge back to TRO. Howard finally agreed that I could have two months of a recording education in London. Little did he know that I intended to stay longer; my fingers were crossed behind my back. The next day I called Denny and said I’d be there by the end of April, which pleased him greatly. I told him that I had just collected some car accident insurance money and I was going to buy some cool clothes for London. Unphased by that non sequitur, Denny just said to make sure I got there, and to bring my guitars. He’d supply me with an office and a demo studio.

In the two years Siegrid and I had been together we’d hardly spent any time apart. She understood how much I wanted to go to London, because as a little girl in Germany all she’d wanted to do was to live in America. We agreed that I should go to London first because it would take a month for Siegrid to get rid of our apartment, during which time I would find us a place to live in London. I couldn’t bear it if she didn’t agree to go to London. So I said goodbye to my longhaired beauty, my lover, my ancient Indian temple dancer, and my partner in virtually everything. Both excitement and gloom accompanied me on my flight to London.

In the morning after my ordeal with Customs and Immigration I met the rest of the Cordells: Mia, Denny’s wife, and his children Tarka and Barney. Wow, even the little kids had English accents. Like Denny, Mia was prematurely grey, but an English Rose, and Tarka and Barney were two of the cutest kids I’d ever seen. For breakfast, only toast with marmalade and tea was offered. That was fine by me, as I was not yet a coffee snob, but the marmalade was strangely bitter for a jam.

Soon we were motoring to 68 Oxford Street, to Dumbarton House, the office of Essex Music. It was also home to Denny’s boldly named company, New Breed Productions. The language confusion persisted when I tried to fathom why the suite of offices was on the first floor, when we’d clearly gone up one flight of stairs to get there. In New York, we’d be on the second floor. It was explained to me that the floor I took to be the first floor was called the ground floor in England. Fine! I’m getting it—the first floor is the ground floor, the couch is a settee and a bathrobe is a dressing gown. I expected to be told later in the day that a vest was an undershirt. It is: I was.

Denny introduced me to the girls at the reception desk—all ‘dolly birds’ in miniskirts—exactly what I expected from pictures in magazines, a pleasant surprise on my first day. Then I was ushered into an office, that of David Platz, the President of Essex Music International (Howard Richmond’s equivalent in London). He was also Denny’s equal partner in New Breed Productions Ltd and couldn’t have been any more different in appearance and demeanour. Denny Cordell might look and speak like King Arthur but he wore ripped jeans, moccasins and an Afghan waistcoat. David Platz was bespectacled, dressed in classic British tweeds, had a short conventional hairstyle and puffed on a briar pipe—a Basil Rathbone look-a-like. He spoke through his nose, or rather down his nose at me, and had a disarming way of invading one’s comfort zone as he spoke a few inches from my face. I had not encountered this nose-to-nose, smooth-talking, passive-aggressive style before but soon learned that, unlike a brash American big shot CEO, David Platz had developed subtle means to keep you in your place.

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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