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

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.