[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you're here. On today's show, we have a lot of music both from people who are on stage and people who work behind the scenes. We'll continue our series Silver Liner Notes with a look at Beck's mutations, which turns 25 this year.

The band Infinity Song is getting set up right now in WNYC Studio 5 and will perform live. Grammy-winning writer and producer James Fauntleroy will get us in the holiday spirit. He joins me for a listening party for his first work as a solo artist. It's called the Warmest Winter Ever. That is the plan, so let's get this started with legendary producer, Tony Visconti.

[Music - Zaine Griff: Ashes And Diamonds]

Alison Stewart: That was Dangerous 1980 single Ashes and Diamonds, mixed by record producer, Tony Visconti. It appears in a new four-CD box set alongside 76 other songs, all produced by Visconti. Hailing from Brooklyn, New York, and a musician himself, Tony began his career in the music industry as an in-house producer for the Richmond organization, where he met his musical mentor the British producer Jenny Cordell, and from then on, he worked with some of the best in music.

The new box set covers five and a half decades of work with T. Rex, U2, Difford & Tilbrook, Adam E., Perry Farrell, Luscious Jackson and Mary Hopkin, Elaine Paige [unintelligible 00:02:22] David Bowie. It also includes photographs that have never been seen before and track-by-track liner notes by journalist and author Mark Patras, alongside commentary from Visconti himself. The box that is titled Produced by Tony Visconti. It is out now. Tony joins us in studio today. It is such a pleasure to have you.

Tony Visconti: It's a pleasure to be on the show, which I listen to every day.

Alison Stewart: I'm so happy to hear that. Tony, what is the job of a producer? What is your take on the job of a producer?

Tony Visconti: Well, the producer is in charge of everything, on recording session, from booking the musicians, to the studio, to booking the engineer. That's like the nuts and bolts of it, then the serious side is wearing another hat, being a director, like the director of a film, where you'll be directing musicians and singers to get the most out of them, to get their sound onto tape. Not mine, by the way, I'm not that kind of a producer, I want to get their sound on the tape.

Alison Stewart: What are some of the skills one needs to be a really effective producer?

Tony Visconti: I think you have to be a musician. I think that's very, very important that you understand at least basic chord structure. You don't necessarily have to read and write music, which I do, but that has helped me along the way because I have so much diversity in what I produce. I can take on a big string section for a singer like Elaine Paige who was the first lady of British music theater, and then I could do a rock and roll band like The Damned. My background really helped me.

Alison Stewart: As you were thinking about this project with 56 years in the business, thousands of songs that you've worked on and produced, what was the guiding principle for what would be in this collection?

Tony Visconti: The company, record company, Demon, they put out compilations. That's what they do, and they do it very well. Prior to this, they put out a T. Rex compilation, which I had most of the tracks on there that I produced. When they approached me to do this, I thought about this about 10 years ago myself, but I couldn't get anyone interested in it. Quite honestly, in the last 10 years, I dealt with some newer artists that are now on this. I think the time is right. The first thing comes from 1967, the very first song, and the most recent is 2023, so this is probably the best you're going to get from me.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] That's funny. There's different formats, there's final, there's CD, how did you decide on the balance between-- There's some songs that you knew, "I probably have to put these on here because people will be expecting them," but then you have your personal favorites.

Tony Visconti: Well, Demon shows most of them.

Alison Stewart: Oh, really?

Tony Visconti: They did. Yes. They asked me if I would like to take some off or include some new ones and different ones. That's when I jumped in, and I did take some off because I thought it was maybe repetition or not the best representation of what I did. Then I got something like one of the new ones was Annie Haslam, who is in a group called Renaissance or a few British people, Rene songs, and she is got one of the best voices I've ever worked with, and we've got her on the album too. There are other people included.

Alison Stewart: I think actually, if we can pull up a three, we're going to talk about Annie later, but we do have a track from her. Again, can you share with people who Annie Haslam is before we hear? We're going to hear Blessing in Disguise.

Tony Visconti: Annie Haslam was in a group called Renaissance. I think she had a track or Mother Russia or something like that, which was so beautiful. She's got an incredible range. She's a coloratura soprano, which means she can hit the squeaky notes. Go way up there, like the same notes Mariah Carey can hit, and then she's got a good low range too. She's very versatile. I wrote some music with her on this album. I rarely write with my artists but I wrote two songs with her on the album that I produced, which is a solo album. Renaissance had been around for ages and they're all very accomplished British musicians, and she occasionally works with them till this day.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to Annie Haslam, Blessings in Disguise.

[Music- Annie Haslam: Blessing in Disguise]

Alison Stewart: Tony, tell me about the other voices we're hearing as well. That hymn whistle.

Tony Visconti: All those voices are me.

Alison Stewart: Those are all you?

Tony Visconti: Yes. [chuckles] There's eight of me, one of Annie.

[chuckles]

Alison Stewart: Do you mind if I asked you about the nuts and bolts of how that works? I think people might be interested.

Tony Visconti: Sorry, I should have pressed the cough button. We normally work with a band and the rest of the album I produced had a band, friends of hers, friends of mine, but this one I felt should be acapella. It was almost like a hymn, and this is one we wrote together. We had an acoustic guitar strumming it, we had a bass guitar, a little bit of percussion, and I just took it all off and I said the purity of the song is her voice and the choral effect. That made a perfect balance for me, and she totally approved. I listened to this track for pleasure. I love this track. It's so soothing and meditative.

Alison Stewart: Someone just texted in. "Annie Haslam, one of the greatest "unknown voices of rock and roll ever."" Thanks for texting in. My guest is Tony Visconti. The name of the CD box set is produced by Tony Visconti. Let's take you back to age 15 when you played in the Catskills, your band Ricardo & the Latineers. [laughter] You smiled when I said that.

Tony Visconti: That's a very funny name, Ricardo & the Latineers, we call it E-A-R-S at the end, Latinears. Yes, the Catskill Mountains is the only place a musician could get work in the summer in those days. It was all full of hotels that hosted mainly Jewish people, and you had to learn to enjoy kosher food, which I ate daily. It's lovely food. I love blintzes and knishes, and things like that. Because I played six days a week, sometimes in the afternoons we had to play by the pool with electric instruments, which was very dangerous. [chuckles] Anyway, that really got my chops very, very strong, playing every day, practicing every day, and just opening my eyes to the rest of the world. I was a kid.

Alison Stewart: You've had a couple of your albums on your own. Are you going to release anything new?

Tony Visconti: Yes, I am.

Alison Stewart: Oh, exciting.

Tony Visconti: I'm working on my third solo album right now, which is going to be a thousand times better than the prior two. I've learned a thing or two about making an album for myself, which is very hard to produce yourself, you know?

Alison Stewart: No doubt. When did you decide to make the turn into production?

Tony Visconti: Well, I didn't realize that I was producing, when I made my home demos I was playing all the instruments and using a couple of tape recorders like Les Paul used to do, and bounced back and forth between them. Then I got a bigger tape recorder, a four-track one, which is a lot of money in those days. Finally, I had a publishing deal and I brought my demos to my publisher who one day called me to his office. His name was Howard Richmond of the Richmond Organization, and he said, "Tony, I've got to tell you, I don't like your music." I thought, okay, I'm fired. Goodbye. Goodbye show business. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: I gulped for you.

Tony Visconti: He says, "But I love your demos." That was the, he just opened the door for me for a possibility that I'd never knew I could have. He said, "I'd like you to be the house record producer." Which meant I would originally record his other writers to make really polished demos to sell to bigger artists to. I went through that, and then at the water cooler one day, I met a tall, handsome British man called Denny Cordell. When he opened his mouth, I said, "My God, you're English., I never met an Englishman in my life." [laughs].

He told me what he did in London for the same company. He was the house record producer there, which led to me helping him on a recording session whilst he was in New York, I went down to A&R Studios with him. They had Clark Terry in the band. This was a session for Georgie Fame, a singer called Georgie Fame, a British jazz-rock star at the time. I wrote a simple piece of sheet music for him with Clark Terry's part on the top, the chord changes for the guitar and bass, and an indication for the drummer play a fill, drum fill at this point.

Instead of lasting, he said in England that would take 10 hours to do, and we got it done in 45 minutes. He looked at me with great respect and offered me a job on the spot to go over to London, and that's how I became a record producer by becoming his assistant.

Alison Stewart: What's something you learned from those early days, Tony, that you still use that still comes in handy, some lesson?

Tony Visconti: Well, in the early days when I was a musician, the record producer wouldn't even make an appearance. He'd be in the box, in the control room, and you'd hear, he'd press that button where he could talk back to us. He was always a nasty person. [laughter]. "Hey, you, your bass strings out of tune." Something like that real New York accent. "You're flat, you're singing flat." Talking like that.

I vowed if I ever get that job, if I'm going to be that magic voice in the booth, I'm going to be kind and sympathetic, because you get great nerves when you're sitting down in a recording studio, you see the microphones. It's not your parents' basement, it's serious stuff. That's what I learned how to not be Mr. Nice guy, but just to be sympathetic to what a musician, the nervousness they go through just before they're going to perform. That's what I picked up from those days, and I applied it immediately.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Tony Visconti. The name of the four-CD box set is produced by Tony Visconti, it is out now. We're going to get to T-Rex, let's start with T-Rex 1970, Ride a White Swan, one of the first singles you produce, hit singles. How did your relationship begin with Marc Bolan and T. Rex?

Tony Visconti: Well, after I worked with Denny for a year, he said, "It's time to go out and find a group of your own." I said, "Okay, I'll start tonight." I was listening to John Peel, who was a champion of Tyrannosaurus Rex and Marc Bolan. He said that they were going to play at a club around the corner from where I worked on Tottenham Court Road. I said, "Okay, I'll start with this band." I walked down the Tottenham Court Road, I went down the cellar, it was like a cellar nightclub basement. I heard some music, but silence, no rock and roll kids. I didn't hear any clapping or screaming or whistling and all that.

I walked down there and there were about a hundred young people sitting cross-legged on the floor, listening to every syllable Marc Bolan sang. I said, "What is going on here?" This is a phenomenon. It's not like all the girls screaming at the Beatles concert. This is serious music, and I'm a serious guy. I listened and I thought it was absolute poetry, it was like William Blake. The chord changes and the style was like the incredible string band, which was very psychedelic, the first psychedelic folk group ever. Marc was like second from them, the next psychedelic folk group.

I approached him and gave my business card, and he said he was full of himself, talk about chutzpah. He said to me, "You are the seventh record producer who came up to us this week, John Lennon was here last night. He wants us to be on his Grapefruit label or something like that." I figured I lost, I'm not going to argue with John Lennon or that. The next morning, I go to my office and I tell my boss who I saw and what I saw, and the phone rings, and it's him. It's Marc Bolan, he's out on the street on a phone box, call box, payphone.

He said, "I just happened to be walking past your office, could we come up and audition for you?" I said, "Of course you can." I put my hand over the receiver, I said to Denny, I said, "Denny, it's them, it's them." He said, "Okay, ask them to come up." I said, "Come on up." They auditioned for Denny, sat on the floor like they did the prior night. They sit on the floor, those two sat on the floor and played. They even brought their little carpet to sit on. We got a first class a real great little concert just for the two of us.

When they left, Denny turned to me and he said, "I don't really get them, but we will take them on as our token underground group." Those was his exact words, very condescending. I worshiped my boss, he was a great guy and I was happy with that. I would take that.

Alison Stewart: Got to start with something.

Tony Visconti: Yes. It's like 200 pounds, which was in those days not a lot of money to make an album. I made an album with them in one day, and it was a hit. The second album I got 400 pounds. [laughter]

Alison Stewart: There we go. I want to play the 1971 song, Hot Love, which is featured on this In The Box Set. Let's play it, and we're going to talk about it on the other side. This is T-Rex produced by Tony Visconti.

[Music - Hot Love by T. Rex]

Alison Stewart: We only have a minute, 30, I picked minute. Thank you, though. I like Tony who's producing a segment. You're like, "Hey, this is a long song, just letting you know. [laughs].

Tony Visconti: I can't help it.

Alison Stewart: You jumped right in there. When you're working with an artist, Tony, how do you know when it's working, when you're getting what you want, when you're getting what the artist wants?

Tony Visconti: That's a good question. It doesn't always work out. I've had some artists backfire on me, we differed so much once we got into the studio, and sometimes, I would finish the project regardless of how that's going on. I just have to face the fact that we don't think alike, but the music is the most important thing rather than personal relationships. It's inevitable that any, if I record with four musicians, the bass player wants my job. That happens all the time, and then second to the bass players, the drummer, they want my job too.

I'm dealing with usually other people who want to be record producers, and of course, some of them might've eventually became a record producer. That's the hardest thing to work with, is the personalities. The music part is easy. I know what I'm doing, I've got good ears, and I've got a good sense of what's going to really be a good recipe for a hit record. We always try to make a hit record.

Alison Stewart: Back in the day when I used to have to interview bands, especially when they were at the height of their career, and if the lead singer was being standoffish, the joke was always; go talk to the drummer because the lead singer will down and start to talk to you the minute you start to show. [laughter].

Tony Visconti: That's great.

Alison Stewart: Talk to the drummer, lead Singer comes around. My guest is Tony Visconti. We are here talking about his career, the new four-CD box set, is produced by Tony Visconti. We'll talk a little bit about his work with David Bowie after a quick break.

[music]

You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest this hour is record producer, Tony Visconti. We're discussing his decades-long career, as well as the four-CD box set called Produced by Tony Visconti. Let's talk about David Bowie. How did you meet David Bowie?

Tony Visconti: I met David Bowie in my British publisher's office. Now I'm in London with Denny Cordell, and he said, "I'd like you to come into my office and listen to an artist that we've signed for publishing." He played me David Bowie's very first album for Decca Records is it the Deram label that was a side label. They have signed a David and Kat Stevens, that was their first to meet major signings. He put this album on and David in those days actually didn't know what he wanted to be.

He had a manager who encouraged him to be in British musical theater so he can get on a stage and sing What Kind Of Fool Am I like Antony Newley, and he had that voice so he had some of those songs on his album in that voice. Then he did a funny thing called The Laughing Gnome, where he sped up the tape and his voice was like a chipmunk. The needle comes off the vinyl and he said to me, "What do you think?" I said, "He's all over the place. He needs some focus, some channeling." He goes, "I agree, I agree, and I think you're the one to do it." I go, "Well, I'd love to meet him." He goes, "You really would?" He goes, "He's in the next room." It was a setup.

Alison Stewart: There you go.

Tony Visconti: He opens up his inner sanctum door and there's this guy with two colored eyes, which I found very disarming at first. He's grinning from ear to ear because he knew about the setup, that he knew he was going to meet me. By the way, in those days, it was my first few months, being an American in London in 1967 was being a very exotic creature. They didn't have as many Americans as they have now. I was getting a lot of doors opened to me just for that. I didn't know what I was doing half the time, but being an American, opened doors.

Alison Stewart: What was something that was the same about working with David Bowie from the first time you worked with him to the last time you worked with him, the way you two people specifically worked together?

Tony Visconti: Well, the first thing I realized was he was an unfaltering singer. He never made a mistake, never forgot his words. His distance to the microphone was always measured. Even at that age, I was 27, he would have been 24. He had a lot of experience in recording studios. Till the last album I made with him, which is Black Star, he still had that discipline that singing microphone discipline. He always sang in tune and he rarely sang a take differently from the prior take. In the early days, what's typical is you do about five or six takes. With some artists you do 20, but David would go through that ritual.

Then in his later years though, that changed, because when we were doing The Next Day, an album called The Next Day, he did a new single called Where Are We Now, which took the world by surprise, because they thought he disappeared. We did Where Are We Now and I said, "Could you give me another take?" He turned to me and he said, "Why?" [laughter] I said, "Yes, this is a new one." No one ever did a take one and said, "I don't want to do another one." That changed a little bit, but what was consistent was his professionalism, which there really was no reason to do a take-two.

Alison Stewart: Want to play the track, I Would Be Your Slave, from his 2002 album Heathen. What would you like people to listen for?

Tony Visconti: This is a radical departure from even him. He did a track that had no rock guitars on it. There might be a little bit of a guitar on this, but it's basically a string quartet called the Scorchio Quartet, which I wrote the arrangements for at the kitchen table in the studio with David. We sang the parts to each other. Then I'm the only other musician, I'm the bass player on the record. It's such a radical difference. He wanted to break a lot of rules the older he got.

Record companies constantly said, "If you can give us another Ziggy Stardust, we'll sign you." Honestly, he heard that more times than we've had hot breakfasts. He said, "I want to make my album my way. I want to be radical. I want to be different. I don't want to repeat myself," and this is a perfect example of that.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a listen to this. This is David Bowie, I Would Be Your Slave.

[Music - David Bowie: I Would Be Your Slave]

Alison Stewart: So pretty. Before we wrap up, I have a couple of questions. I want to ask you about your thoughts about AI, about artificial intelligence in music production. When you sit and talk to your friends about this, what comes up?

Tony Visconti: Well, I actually haven't used it yet, because my intelligence is quite intact and still works very well. I don't need an A in front of it. I don't know actually what you do with it. I know people are doing mixes, and some computer listens to your mix and tells you what mistakes you've made, and how to improve it, and all that. Honestly, it's not useful for me. I've done pretty well without it for 56 years. [laughs] I don't know. If young people are doing it, I shouldn't put this down.

This is a new tool and a lot of my sound effects were new tools at one time. The drum sound on low, for instance, was a new tool called a harmonizer. I had the first one in Europe, and I used it to make all that wacky drum sound on larger. New tools are to be explored and used, and you shouldn't condemn them because you don't like the sound of it. I personally don't like the sound of artificial intelligence. I'm thinking of 2001.

Alison Stewart: How? [laughter] Tony, you're done with the record, Tony. Who is a young artist that you admire or an artist that you haven't worked with yet that you'd really like to spend some time with?

Tony Visconti: Honestly, I don't know. Unless I find it on YouTube, I don't really know who the new artists are. I know all about Beyonce and Taylor Swift. They are going strong and they are strong women who write great music, and they've proven themselves over and over again. Maybe they get a little too much exposure and the new ones who want to get in the limelight don't get enough exposure, which I do my best to do that. I work with young people all the time and I push them forward. I would say anyone who's in the charts now, they're doing great.

I would have liked to have worked with Tina Turner, but that ship has sailed. A lot of people I would have liked to work with, but everyone had their own team in those days. Sometimes it's hard to take someone out of their comfort zone. They have a team that made them hit, so why would they want to work with me?

Alison Stewart: There's a lot of reasons they might want to work with you. The name of the CD set is produced by Tony Visconti. Tony Visconti has been my guest. Thank you so much for coming to the studio.

Tony Visconti: Total pleasure, Alison. Thank you.

Alison Stewart: We're going to go out on one of the songs included in The Box Set. This is a 2016 remaster of David Bowie's Young American from the album of the same name.

[Music - David Bowie: Young American]

 

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