Of course I'm listening to the new stereo mix of the White Album. You know me, folks! The Beatles did involve themselves heavily in the mixing process (at least from "Revolver" forward), but it was the mono mixes that took all their time and attention and were always done first. The stereo mixes were an afterthought, and were typically banged out in a couple of hours at some later date, by George Martin and the engineer. And because this would always represent an entirely new process (you can mix down from stereo to mono, but you can't do it the other way round) we often ended up with some very odd things. The most notorious of those would be the ending to "Helter Skelter" - the mono version, overseen by McCartney, doesn't have the track fade back in after the original fade-out, to conclude with Ringo's famous scream about the blisters on his fingers. That only happens on the stereo mix which was done three weeks later. Evidently Martin and Emerick had simply forgotten what they did on the original.
Giles Martin's work on the White Album isn't quite the stunning revelation his work on Sgt Pepper was last year - get it, now - but it's well worth while anyway. The sound seems crisper, especially the electric guitars, and it's startling to better hear some of the details on a record you've listened to for... well, for fifty freaking years. The piano on "Glass Onion," the acoustic guitar on "Piggies." It's the Beatles, it sounds great. What else do you need to know?
Saturday, September 21, 2019
Can't Help Falling In Love
Presley's talent was so vast that actually applying it seemed almost excessive. What did he have to prove? What material could possibly be worthy? And if this talent was actually applied, in all its force and power, the result would be utterly shattering, and probably lead to a total rupture of the space-time continuum. Which is pretty well what actually happened when he was 20 years old, with something to prove, and he did apply that talent.
So consider what he does here. The song is as lame a piece of cheese as could possibly be imagined and Elvis certainly doesn't apply himself to this. He merely breathes upon it, and creates a miracle, out of crap he found by the side of the road.
So consider what he does here. The song is as lame a piece of cheese as could possibly be imagined and Elvis certainly doesn't apply himself to this. He merely breathes upon it, and creates a miracle, out of crap he found by the side of the road.
Friday the 13th
I ain't superstitious, but...
I had a really shitty day on Friday the 13th once, and I've been just a little cautious the last 30 or so times it's rolled around.
And oh yeah. I must put my right sock and shoe on before the left. This is not negotiable. If my right shoe should fall off by accident, I must immediately remove the left one as well, so that the situation can be properly corrected. I've been doing this since I was a teenager, I'm still here, so obviously it works.
And I will leave the room if anyone proposes to read my horoscope. I don't think that's superstitous, though. I think it's just common sense.
But black cats? They're adorable. I love them, even if they are minions of Satan.
I had a really shitty day on Friday the 13th once, and I've been just a little cautious the last 30 or so times it's rolled around.
And oh yeah. I must put my right sock and shoe on before the left. This is not negotiable. If my right shoe should fall off by accident, I must immediately remove the left one as well, so that the situation can be properly corrected. I've been doing this since I was a teenager, I'm still here, so obviously it works.
And I will leave the room if anyone proposes to read my horoscope. I don't think that's superstitous, though. I think it's just common sense.
But black cats? They're adorable. I love them, even if they are minions of Satan.
She Loves You
The Beatles spent the first half of 1963 gigging relentlessly over the north of England, spending lots of quality time riding in Neil Aspinall's van. They had wrapped up their final Hamburg engagement at the end of 1962 and spent the first two days of the year travelling, from Hamburg to London, and from London to Aberdeen for their first performance of 1963. Their performance in Aberdeen on 3 January was the first of 137 live appearances over the first six months of 1963. They took a two day break in February - they drove down to London to record their first album, in a single 15 hour session. They took another day in March to record their third single, "From Me To You", and they took two weeks off for a breather at the end of April.
On 26 June, they were riding to Newcastle when Paul had an idea for a song. They needed a song. They already had a session booked for the following week to record their fourth single. Paul had one idea, something about voices answering the singer with "yeah yeah yeah." He and Lennon sat down in a Newcastle hotel room before the show to write it and it went off in a different direction, as often happens. The band did the Newcastle show and drove back to Liverpool the following day. After presumably getting reacquainted with the wife and his two month old child, Lennon came over to Paul's house on Forthlin Road. They finished the song there, and played it for Paul's dad, who thought it was nice although he wasn't too keen on the "yeah yeah yeah" part. The band had to head back up north to Leeds for a show the next day, and then it was down the coast for a show in Great Yarmouth two days later, on the 30th. From there it was down to London for the recording session on the 1st of July.
So it's quite possible that George and Ringo had never even heard the song before they all assembled at Abbey Road at noon on this day in 1963. It's possible that Lennon and McCartney had shown it to them, before or after a gig, but unlikely. McCartney has said that in those days George and Ringo regularly heard new songs for the first time on the day of the session. They provided their input and made their contributions, which in this particular song were enormous, right there on the spot. "That's how great they were," said Paul. So the band went into the studio with the structure of the song, words and chords. But they had no arrangement. It had never even been played by the band, let alone rehearsed. They had three hours booked to sort all that out, for this song and for the flip side. "I'll Get You" was lined up for the flip side, a song they had already been playing live. They knew what to do with that one. It was this new one, "She Loves You," that they hadn't played. They needed to figure something out. They did.
Ringo kicks it off with a quick flurry on his toms and then... all hell breaks loose. It's like jumping off a cliff, or stepping onto a moving train. Three voices are bawling out the refrain, that unforgettable refrain. The drums are flying all over the place, as rather than lay down a backbeat Ringo responds to and urges on the singers with double hits at the end of each vocal phrase. The band charges through the refrain three times, and then throw in one final "yeah" with an unexpected harmony (George singing a sixth along with the third and the fifth - it was Harrison's idea, and while George Martin thought it was corny, the band insisted). On that last "yeah" Ringo heads for his open hi-hat and finally gives us a backbeat while Harrison sneaks in a quick and ratty little guitar lick. That's the introduction. Eight bars of music, twelve seconds of time. Holy shit.
John and Paul sing the ascending melody of the first line ("You think you've lost your love") in unison until the very last word, when McCartney suddenly switches to singing a harmony, the third above Lennon's line. George joins in on the harmony for the next line, which ends with the teasing, cocky "yesterday-yay" - and then they repeat this for the next two lines, Paul switching from unison to harmony. On the next line George and Ringo kick in an unexpected accent on the title phrase "she loves you" in the middle of the bar, which McCartney further emphasizes by hitting a low B on his bass (the chord for that bar is G). George ends that line with three carefully apeggioed chords (G, F# minor, and E minor), each just a hair behind the beat so they stand out more, and he ends the verse with a reprise of the guitar lick he'd used to end the introduction.
Second verse, same as the first. But not quite. We hear the same switch from unision to harmony and back, the same licks and accents - but all played just a touch harder, all leading up to something. Which it is, of course. That opening refrain is going to come back, and heaven knows we've been waiting for it - but just before tumbling into the refrain the three singers would shake their locks and give us that first "Oooh" that would send girls screaming like... nothing since Elvis, anyway. They do that for a full measure and Ringo backs it up with a quick tour of his entire kit. But they don't perform the full refrain - they run through two lines and change it up - "With a love like that" - and then the band stops, on a fucking dime. Absolute silence, for almost the length of a quarter note, and then the voices conclude this modified chorus.
No other band in the world was capable of this sort of thing, not then, and not for years and years afterwards. There were professional session players who could summon up that level of precision, there were other bands who could generate the same brute force, but there was no one, anywhere in the world, who could do both. At the same time. But why would there be? At this moment in history, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr were by far the most experienced, the most practised rock band in the world. They were inventing the music, and they were inventing the thing that performed the music. They had behind them already almost 300 shows at the Cavern in Liverpool, the five crazed pill-fuelled engagements in Hamburg playing six days a week for as many as eight hours a night, hundreds more shows all over northern England and Scotland. No one knew this kind of music better, no one had been playing it longer.
Lennon: "...we played straight rock, and there was nobody to touch us in Britain."
The song is a twist on the form, of course. It's not a love song at all. It's written in the third person, it's a friend giving advice to a friend. It's good news, and the performance has more than enough joy and exuberance to make you feel the good news - but John Lennon's involved, and there's just an undercurrent of "if you don't appreciate this woman, I will." In the six years to come, the band would get much more sophisticated than this, they would get back to this mountain top and many more besides, but they would never get better. Because it doesn't get better than this.
July 1, 1963.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
On 26 June, they were riding to Newcastle when Paul had an idea for a song. They needed a song. They already had a session booked for the following week to record their fourth single. Paul had one idea, something about voices answering the singer with "yeah yeah yeah." He and Lennon sat down in a Newcastle hotel room before the show to write it and it went off in a different direction, as often happens. The band did the Newcastle show and drove back to Liverpool the following day. After presumably getting reacquainted with the wife and his two month old child, Lennon came over to Paul's house on Forthlin Road. They finished the song there, and played it for Paul's dad, who thought it was nice although he wasn't too keen on the "yeah yeah yeah" part. The band had to head back up north to Leeds for a show the next day, and then it was down the coast for a show in Great Yarmouth two days later, on the 30th. From there it was down to London for the recording session on the 1st of July.
So it's quite possible that George and Ringo had never even heard the song before they all assembled at Abbey Road at noon on this day in 1963. It's possible that Lennon and McCartney had shown it to them, before or after a gig, but unlikely. McCartney has said that in those days George and Ringo regularly heard new songs for the first time on the day of the session. They provided their input and made their contributions, which in this particular song were enormous, right there on the spot. "That's how great they were," said Paul. So the band went into the studio with the structure of the song, words and chords. But they had no arrangement. It had never even been played by the band, let alone rehearsed. They had three hours booked to sort all that out, for this song and for the flip side. "I'll Get You" was lined up for the flip side, a song they had already been playing live. They knew what to do with that one. It was this new one, "She Loves You," that they hadn't played. They needed to figure something out. They did.
Ringo kicks it off with a quick flurry on his toms and then... all hell breaks loose. It's like jumping off a cliff, or stepping onto a moving train. Three voices are bawling out the refrain, that unforgettable refrain. The drums are flying all over the place, as rather than lay down a backbeat Ringo responds to and urges on the singers with double hits at the end of each vocal phrase. The band charges through the refrain three times, and then throw in one final "yeah" with an unexpected harmony (George singing a sixth along with the third and the fifth - it was Harrison's idea, and while George Martin thought it was corny, the band insisted). On that last "yeah" Ringo heads for his open hi-hat and finally gives us a backbeat while Harrison sneaks in a quick and ratty little guitar lick. That's the introduction. Eight bars of music, twelve seconds of time. Holy shit.
John and Paul sing the ascending melody of the first line ("You think you've lost your love") in unison until the very last word, when McCartney suddenly switches to singing a harmony, the third above Lennon's line. George joins in on the harmony for the next line, which ends with the teasing, cocky "yesterday-yay" - and then they repeat this for the next two lines, Paul switching from unison to harmony. On the next line George and Ringo kick in an unexpected accent on the title phrase "she loves you" in the middle of the bar, which McCartney further emphasizes by hitting a low B on his bass (the chord for that bar is G). George ends that line with three carefully apeggioed chords (G, F# minor, and E minor), each just a hair behind the beat so they stand out more, and he ends the verse with a reprise of the guitar lick he'd used to end the introduction.
Second verse, same as the first. But not quite. We hear the same switch from unision to harmony and back, the same licks and accents - but all played just a touch harder, all leading up to something. Which it is, of course. That opening refrain is going to come back, and heaven knows we've been waiting for it - but just before tumbling into the refrain the three singers would shake their locks and give us that first "Oooh" that would send girls screaming like... nothing since Elvis, anyway. They do that for a full measure and Ringo backs it up with a quick tour of his entire kit. But they don't perform the full refrain - they run through two lines and change it up - "With a love like that" - and then the band stops, on a fucking dime. Absolute silence, for almost the length of a quarter note, and then the voices conclude this modified chorus.
No other band in the world was capable of this sort of thing, not then, and not for years and years afterwards. There were professional session players who could summon up that level of precision, there were other bands who could generate the same brute force, but there was no one, anywhere in the world, who could do both. At the same time. But why would there be? At this moment in history, Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr were by far the most experienced, the most practised rock band in the world. They were inventing the music, and they were inventing the thing that performed the music. They had behind them already almost 300 shows at the Cavern in Liverpool, the five crazed pill-fuelled engagements in Hamburg playing six days a week for as many as eight hours a night, hundreds more shows all over northern England and Scotland. No one knew this kind of music better, no one had been playing it longer.
Lennon: "...we played straight rock, and there was nobody to touch us in Britain."
The song is a twist on the form, of course. It's not a love song at all. It's written in the third person, it's a friend giving advice to a friend. It's good news, and the performance has more than enough joy and exuberance to make you feel the good news - but John Lennon's involved, and there's just an undercurrent of "if you don't appreciate this woman, I will." In the six years to come, the band would get much more sophisticated than this, they would get back to this mountain top and many more besides, but they would never get better. Because it doesn't get better than this.
July 1, 1963.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Friday, February 10, 2017
A Day in the Life, Fifty Years On
Fifty years on, still one of the most remarkable recordings ever made. Let's see how it happened:
Tues Jan 17 - In the Daily Mail, John Lennon reads the coroner's report on Tara Browne's car crash as well as a little piece about 4,000 holes in the road in Blackburn, Lancashire.
Thur Jan 19 - Lennon's written his part of the song, and brought it to Abbey Road. The first recording takes place, with Lennon singing and playing guitar, McCartney on piano, Harrison on marracas, and Ringo on bongos. They leave 24 bars blank for something - what it will be has yet to be determined - that will happen between the two sections of Lennon's song, and again at the end. Mal Evans counts these sections off, and sets off an alarm clock at the end of his count. There is no middle section at this point - after the mysterious 24 bar something the song goes straight into the final verse. The band does three takes, using just two of the four available tracks. Take four is Lennon overdubbing two more lead vocals on the two blank tracks.
Fri Jan 20 - A reduction mix is made of the previous days work, comping the three Lennon vocals to achieve a final - for the moment - lead vocal and creating available tracks for more work. McCartney's middle section, with a vocal and an instrumental section, makes its first appearance. It is placed between the first 24 bar section and Lennon's final verse. Paul overdubs a bass track, Ringo overdubs drums, and Lennon takes another crack at the lead vocal.
Mon Jan 30 - George Martin makes a rough mono mix for demo purposes. The band moves on to other material (a new one from Paul called "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and a new one from John called "Good Morning, Good Morning.")
Fri Feb 3 - Having presumably listened to the demo, Paul records a new bass part and Ringo replaces his drum part with a series of fills on his toms.
Fri Feb 10 - McCartney had hit on the idea of the orchestra buildup to replace fill the two blank 24 bar sections. George Martin had prepared a conventional score for the orchestra to link McCartney's section with Lennon's final verse. He had also prepared a decidedly unconventional score for the other parts - "Start on the lowest note of your instrument, arrive at the highest E major by the 24th bar, and pay no attention to how the fellow next to you is doing it."
On this evening, 40 musicians were hired to record this strange bit. In order to make the sound as massive as possible, Martin and his engineers (Ken Townsend and Geoff Emerick) ran two four track machines together. Such a procedure had never been attempted before, at least not at Abbey Road, but Townsend had figured a way to sync the machines together. It allowed them to record the orchestra four times, using all four tracks of the second machine, effectively creating a 160 piece orchestra. Martin would later note that the synchronization is a little off - "rather a hit and miss affair, and the orchestra is slightly out of time in places.")
Film cameras were there to record the fun, and many guests were invited as you can see from the video. The most recognizable would be Mick and Marianne, Keith Richards, Michael Nesmith, and Donovan.
When the orchestra had finished its work, the band attempted to record the song's ending, which at this point was going to be a long, loud "Hmmmm." They did 11 takes of this, and mixed it down.
Wed Feb 22 - A new idea for the song's ending, probably from McCartney who leads the session. He, Lennon, Ringo, and Mal Evans gather round three pianos and attempt to bash out an E major chord simultaneously. It took nine takes to get that right (bear in mind that two of the participants were a drummer and a roadie), and Geoff Emerick then played all kinds of games with his faders to squeeze every last second of dying sound out of chord as it faded. Once that was done, the remainder of the session was devoted to making mono and stereo mixes of the song.
Thu Feb 23 - The final stereo mix was finished.
Wed Mar 1 - Although the final mixes were in the can, McCartney records a piano overdub. It would never be used.
Thu Jun 1 - Album released in the UK.
Tues Jan 17 - In the Daily Mail, John Lennon reads the coroner's report on Tara Browne's car crash as well as a little piece about 4,000 holes in the road in Blackburn, Lancashire.
Thur Jan 19 - Lennon's written his part of the song, and brought it to Abbey Road. The first recording takes place, with Lennon singing and playing guitar, McCartney on piano, Harrison on marracas, and Ringo on bongos. They leave 24 bars blank for something - what it will be has yet to be determined - that will happen between the two sections of Lennon's song, and again at the end. Mal Evans counts these sections off, and sets off an alarm clock at the end of his count. There is no middle section at this point - after the mysterious 24 bar something the song goes straight into the final verse. The band does three takes, using just two of the four available tracks. Take four is Lennon overdubbing two more lead vocals on the two blank tracks.
Fri Jan 20 - A reduction mix is made of the previous days work, comping the three Lennon vocals to achieve a final - for the moment - lead vocal and creating available tracks for more work. McCartney's middle section, with a vocal and an instrumental section, makes its first appearance. It is placed between the first 24 bar section and Lennon's final verse. Paul overdubs a bass track, Ringo overdubs drums, and Lennon takes another crack at the lead vocal.
Mon Jan 30 - George Martin makes a rough mono mix for demo purposes. The band moves on to other material (a new one from Paul called "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and a new one from John called "Good Morning, Good Morning.")
Fri Feb 3 - Having presumably listened to the demo, Paul records a new bass part and Ringo replaces his drum part with a series of fills on his toms.
Fri Feb 10 - McCartney had hit on the idea of the orchestra buildup to replace fill the two blank 24 bar sections. George Martin had prepared a conventional score for the orchestra to link McCartney's section with Lennon's final verse. He had also prepared a decidedly unconventional score for the other parts - "Start on the lowest note of your instrument, arrive at the highest E major by the 24th bar, and pay no attention to how the fellow next to you is doing it."
On this evening, 40 musicians were hired to record this strange bit. In order to make the sound as massive as possible, Martin and his engineers (Ken Townsend and Geoff Emerick) ran two four track machines together. Such a procedure had never been attempted before, at least not at Abbey Road, but Townsend had figured a way to sync the machines together. It allowed them to record the orchestra four times, using all four tracks of the second machine, effectively creating a 160 piece orchestra. Martin would later note that the synchronization is a little off - "rather a hit and miss affair, and the orchestra is slightly out of time in places.")
Film cameras were there to record the fun, and many guests were invited as you can see from the video. The most recognizable would be Mick and Marianne, Keith Richards, Michael Nesmith, and Donovan.
When the orchestra had finished its work, the band attempted to record the song's ending, which at this point was going to be a long, loud "Hmmmm." They did 11 takes of this, and mixed it down.
Wed Feb 22 - A new idea for the song's ending, probably from McCartney who leads the session. He, Lennon, Ringo, and Mal Evans gather round three pianos and attempt to bash out an E major chord simultaneously. It took nine takes to get that right (bear in mind that two of the participants were a drummer and a roadie), and Geoff Emerick then played all kinds of games with his faders to squeeze every last second of dying sound out of chord as it faded. Once that was done, the remainder of the session was devoted to making mono and stereo mixes of the song.
Thu Feb 23 - The final stereo mix was finished.
Wed Mar 1 - Although the final mixes were in the can, McCartney records a piano overdub. It would never be used.
Thu Jun 1 - Album released in the UK.
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
Fifty Years Ago Today
January 17, 1967. A Tuesday, like today. John Lennon was sitting at his piano with the Daily Mail propped up in front of him. The Daily Mail was and remains a right-wing tabloid rather like the Toronto Sun, but the Beatles didn't much care for Harold Wilson's Labour government anyway. The reasons why were explained by George Harrison in "Taxman" - with Wilson's 95% supertax ("one for you, nineteen for me"), the Beatles were taking care of the UK's balance of payments problem almost single-handedly.
The Mail that day had an article on the death of Tara Browne in a car crash a few weeks earlier. A week before Christmas, Browne had run a red light at high speed in South Kensington and crashed into a van. Browne was the heir to the Guinness fortune on his mother's side. His father Dominick Browne, the 4th Baron Oranmore and Browne, had sat in the House of Lords since 1927.
Browne was just 21, rich and handsome, cool and charming, in the centre of the social life of Swinging London. He liked to party, he liked to consume drugs, he liked to drive very fast. His chums were Terence Stamp and David Hemmings, Michael Caine and David Bailey. Lennon knew Browne slightly, but didn't much like him just on general principle. Lennon, a kind of reverse snob, had little use for anyone with Browne's upper class background. McCartney knew him much better. It was Tara Browne who introduced Macca to acid. It was Tara Browne with whom Paul went out riding mopeds while high as kites. Macca crashed, broke a tooth, split his lip, and grew the first Beatle moustache while it healed. The Rolling Stones knew Tara better still. Brian Jones was especially close to Browne, and Keith and Anita named their third child Tara in his memory.
Lennon and McCartney had been wondering a few days earlier if Tara would have inherited his father's seat in the upper House. He wouldn't have - Tara had three older brothers, one of whom would inherit the peerage, while another would eventually become one of the founders of the Chieftains. Anyway, the elder Browne lived to be 100 and held his seat until it was abolished in 1999. Even so, he had served in the upper chamber for 72 years, longer than any other peer. In all that time, the old man never once made a speech to the House.
The Mail article that day reported on the coroner's verdict on Browne's accident. He was driving much too fast. He missed the light. Sources disagree as to whether he was high or not.
"I saw the photograph..."
Also in the Mail that day was a short piece on the sorry state of England's roads.
The Mail that day had an article on the death of Tara Browne in a car crash a few weeks earlier. A week before Christmas, Browne had run a red light at high speed in South Kensington and crashed into a van. Browne was the heir to the Guinness fortune on his mother's side. His father Dominick Browne, the 4th Baron Oranmore and Browne, had sat in the House of Lords since 1927.
Browne was just 21, rich and handsome, cool and charming, in the centre of the social life of Swinging London. He liked to party, he liked to consume drugs, he liked to drive very fast. His chums were Terence Stamp and David Hemmings, Michael Caine and David Bailey. Lennon knew Browne slightly, but didn't much like him just on general principle. Lennon, a kind of reverse snob, had little use for anyone with Browne's upper class background. McCartney knew him much better. It was Tara Browne who introduced Macca to acid. It was Tara Browne with whom Paul went out riding mopeds while high as kites. Macca crashed, broke a tooth, split his lip, and grew the first Beatle moustache while it healed. The Rolling Stones knew Tara better still. Brian Jones was especially close to Browne, and Keith and Anita named their third child Tara in his memory.
Lennon and McCartney had been wondering a few days earlier if Tara would have inherited his father's seat in the upper House. He wouldn't have - Tara had three older brothers, one of whom would inherit the peerage, while another would eventually become one of the founders of the Chieftains. Anyway, the elder Browne lived to be 100 and held his seat until it was abolished in 1999. Even so, he had served in the upper chamber for 72 years, longer than any other peer. In all that time, the old man never once made a speech to the House.
The Mail article that day reported on the coroner's verdict on Browne's accident. He was driving much too fast. He missed the light. Sources disagree as to whether he was high or not.
"I saw the photograph..."
Also in the Mail that day was a short piece on the sorry state of England's roads.
Monday, January 9, 2017
Another Reason to Love David Bowie
Yesterday would have been Bowie's 70th birthday, and I thought I'd mention just one more reason why we should all love David Bowie.
In June 1972, Bowie released his fifth album - Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. It quite suddenly made him an enormous international star, after years of trying. Did he take advantage of his sudden fame, and go berserk on all the drugs and sex that were now at his fingertips?
Well, yeah, of course he did.
But not right away. There was a band called Mott the Hoople who were on the verge of breaking up. Bowie discovered this when Mott's bass player, Pete Watts, made enquiries about joining Bowie's band. But Bowie was a fan, and very much wanted to see them to stay together. So he offered to produce a single for them and even gave them a song. It was called "Drive-in Saturday" and - amazingly - Mott turned it down. (Can't you just hear Ian Hunter singing that? What were they thinking?) Undaunted, Bowie offered them another song. This one was called "Suffragette City," and Mott passed on that one too. They were clearly all quite eager to go back to their factory jobs or whatever it was they had in mind. But there was no way they or anyone could resist "All the Young Dudes." Bowie spent June and July 1972 in the studio with them, recording the album that would save their career.
That done, in August 1972 Bowie and Mick Ronson went into the studio with Lou Reed. Big Lou was one of Bowie's idols. His solo career was floundering after his first album had disappeared without a trace. And he was Lou Reed, of course. Lou was a notoriously difficult person to work with, and often enough he was just a difficult person to be in the same room with. But Bowie found a way. This collaboration produced Transformer and "Walk on the Wild Side" gave Lou the only thing resembling a hit in his long career. Lou Reed on AM radio? That actually happened? Yes, David Bowie made it happen, and Transformer is still one of the great Reed records, full of great songs like "Perfect Day" and "Satellite of Love"
Finally, in September and October 1972, Bowie breathed life back into Iggy Pop. The world's forgotten boy had been shooting heroin and living on the street since the demise of the original Stooges after 1970's Fun House. The first record they made together, Raw Power, revived Iggy's career and while it sure has a funny mix it also has some of the definitive Iggy songs: "Gimme Danger," "Search and Destroy," "Penetration."
These months of public and artistic service behind him... yeah, then I guess Bowie went nuts with the drugs and the sex and all that. But you sure have to appreciate his priorities.
In June 1972, Bowie released his fifth album - Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. It quite suddenly made him an enormous international star, after years of trying. Did he take advantage of his sudden fame, and go berserk on all the drugs and sex that were now at his fingertips?
Well, yeah, of course he did.
But not right away. There was a band called Mott the Hoople who were on the verge of breaking up. Bowie discovered this when Mott's bass player, Pete Watts, made enquiries about joining Bowie's band. But Bowie was a fan, and very much wanted to see them to stay together. So he offered to produce a single for them and even gave them a song. It was called "Drive-in Saturday" and - amazingly - Mott turned it down. (Can't you just hear Ian Hunter singing that? What were they thinking?) Undaunted, Bowie offered them another song. This one was called "Suffragette City," and Mott passed on that one too. They were clearly all quite eager to go back to their factory jobs or whatever it was they had in mind. But there was no way they or anyone could resist "All the Young Dudes." Bowie spent June and July 1972 in the studio with them, recording the album that would save their career.
That done, in August 1972 Bowie and Mick Ronson went into the studio with Lou Reed. Big Lou was one of Bowie's idols. His solo career was floundering after his first album had disappeared without a trace. And he was Lou Reed, of course. Lou was a notoriously difficult person to work with, and often enough he was just a difficult person to be in the same room with. But Bowie found a way. This collaboration produced Transformer and "Walk on the Wild Side" gave Lou the only thing resembling a hit in his long career. Lou Reed on AM radio? That actually happened? Yes, David Bowie made it happen, and Transformer is still one of the great Reed records, full of great songs like "Perfect Day" and "Satellite of Love"
Finally, in September and October 1972, Bowie breathed life back into Iggy Pop. The world's forgotten boy had been shooting heroin and living on the street since the demise of the original Stooges after 1970's Fun House. The first record they made together, Raw Power, revived Iggy's career and while it sure has a funny mix it also has some of the definitive Iggy songs: "Gimme Danger," "Search and Destroy," "Penetration."
These months of public and artistic service behind him... yeah, then I guess Bowie went nuts with the drugs and the sex and all that. But you sure have to appreciate his priorities.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
