Ken Scott recounts his transformative production of David Bowie's 1970s classics, highlighting how Hunky Dory shifted engineers into artistic roles. He praises Bowie's 95% first-take vocal perfection and the human imperfections in tracks like "Suffragette City," contrasting them with modern digital sterility. Scott critiques today's accountant-run industry, arguing that true talent requiring struggle will eventually rise again, preserving the soul of music over technical execution. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
Time
Text
From Beatles To Production00:10:07
Hi, this is Dark Journalist.
Recently, we lost a great musical talent when David Bowie passed away.
I was fortunate enough to meet Bowie on two different occasions, and he was always gracious and a great inspiration to his fans.
A few years ago, while working at a lifestyle magazine, I got the rare opportunity to interview Ken Scott, the producer of Bowie's classic 70s albums, like Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Aladdin Sane, and Pinups.
He had just written the book Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust, and the following is a deep discussion of Bowie's work creating those classic albums.
And Ken's recollection of how it all happened.
I hope you enjoy it, and may God bless David Bowie.
I've been going through the book.
It's a fantastic read.
Oh, glad you like it.
I'm very glad that you decided to put all these experiences down because it's just amazing stuff.
Cool.
Well, I'm going to go right into the sort of Ziggy era portion.
And we've got a 40th anniversary on that album.
And it's an incredible album.
Congratulations on it.
Well, thank you.
It's a nice album, yes.
But to be talking about it 40 years later, it blows my mind.
And you never thought when you were making it it was going to be the classic that it is?
Absolutely not.
We were just making records basically for ourselves.
If other people liked them, that was the icing on the cake.
That's very interesting.
But you worked with Bowie on a couple of albums even before Ziggy.
Yeah.
So let's talk about how we even got up to Ziggy.
I guess the first thing I see here is the Man of Soul of the World.
You were engineering on that.
Well, actually, before that, the Space Oddity album, I engineered a little bit.
Almost the first week, I think it was, that I was at Trident, at least very early on, one Saturday, Gus came in with this artist called David Bowie.
And this is Gus Dudgeon, who you worked with, who was producing Bowie's new single.
And it was engineered by one of the owners of Trident Studios, called Barry Sheffield.
And that turned out to be Space Oddity.
And once that was successful, Mercury, the record label, wanted him to do an album.
And Tony Visconti was supposed to have been his producer.
Right.
He hated Space Oddity and refused to record it.
Oh, really?
The record company loved it.
David loved it.
Gus loved it.
So that's how Gus got to do the single.
And then Tony was brought back in to do the rest of the album.
And I, along with a guy called Malcolm Toft, another engineer, worked on the production.
The album.
And that was my first dealing with David.
Then a little while later, it came in.
They'd started an album, Man Who Sold the World, at an outside studio, and I did the overdubs and mixing on it.
That's a very unusual album, Man Who Sold the World, I think.
It's a very interesting departure.
And, you know, where Space Oddity has almost like a folk singer quality to it, Man Who Sold the World is sort of almost like a heavy metal record.
Yes, absolutely.
I've come to sort of believe that one of the reasons that David broke away from working with Tony and moved to work with me was that Tony, as a musician, as a bass player, he was a member of the band and he was very much controlling the way the music was put across, David's songs were put across.
So, I think that could be one of more of a reason why Murder Saw the World was the way it was than necessarily anything to do with David.
So, he then being a musician himself, he sort of projected his will as a producer and was like, I'm going to produce this as the musician.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes, because as I say, he was the bass player on the album as well.
Right, right.
And the bass is really cranked on that album.
Oh, yeah.
You noticed.
Yeah.
Although I can imagine that Visconti probably kicks himself for not producing Space Oddity.
That must be a real faux pas.
Oh, I don't know.
I don't think he does.
I know that there have been things that I've passed on that I know exactly why I passed on them at the time.
I didn't particularly like them.
I never saw them necessarily turning out the way they did.
So I can never regret some of the things that I did, and I'm sure Tony's very much the same.
Wow, very interesting.
Now, the first production job that you did that was you as the producer was the Bowie album.
It was Hunky Dory?
Yes.
So that's interesting that that became the first, even though you've had all this experience and even worked with the Beatles.
Yeah.
Well, it's.
This was right at the beginning when engineers started to become producers.
Up to that point, the producers had been musicians or come from the publishing world, because if you think back to what producers were originally, they were the AR men.
And they basically would find the songs.
For the artist, that's why a lot of them came from the publishing field because most artists, up until the Beatles, recorded other people's songs.
Right.
So that was the producer's job find the material, one of the jobs.
And so, as I say, this was the start of engineers becoming producers, so I was one of the early ones, and hence I hadn't done it before, kind of thing.
I hadn't been interested in doing it before because I was learning my gig.
And it was only once I sort of. things became straightforward.
I didn't really need to think about how to get the sounds anymore that I wanted to have more artistic say.
And that was what made me decide to move into the production area.
So it was about getting things to sound the way you wanted them to sound and having just a little more control.
And you said, I'm going to jump and go into this producer gig.
Yeah, yeah.
Basically.
You also.
a lot of.
Us engineers also found that what would tend to happen is we'd be sitting next to the producer and we'd suddenly hear that we'd have an idea, an artistic idea.
You know what would sound great here?
A 10 string banjo.
If there is such a thing, I don't think there is.
And the producer would push the button and he said, Okay, guys, let's try a 10 string banjo on this.
And if it worked, the producer would tend to take the credit.
If it didn't, it was, Oh, it was only Ken's idea anyway.
But I thought we'd give it a try for him.
And we'd Started to get fed up with that, and I think that was also part of the movement from engineers becoming producers.
Oh, very interesting.
Now, so you make the jump and you decide, I'm going to go and produce this album.
It's going to be my first production job.
Well, not quite that simple.
I'd spoken, well, actually, probably more simple than that, thinking about it.
I had mentioned to the owners of Triton that I wanted to get into production.
They were fine, said, okay, let's start.
Looking for stuff.
And it just so happened that David came in to produce a friend of his.
He'd taken a break because of the lack of success of the prior two albums.
Was this the Art of Forms stuff?
Well, that's what it finished up being, yeah.
It was Freddie Beretti who finished up being a designer for him.
I read your little portion about the book.
It's hilarious.
Oh, good.
Yes.
It wasn't quite so hilarious when we were going through it, scared the entire time, but.
So, yeah, because I'd worked with David before, I was put on the sessions, and I happened to mention in one of the tea breaks that I wanted to move into production.
And he said, Well, I've just signed with a new management company.
They want to put me in.
I was going to produce the album myself.
I don't know if I'm capable.
Will you co produce it with me?
And it was just that ideal situation.
It was, yeah, sure.
And at the time, I knew he had a certain amount of talent, and he was a very nice guy.
And I thought, unlike the Beatles situation, where it was sort of thrown in the deep end, I thought this would be a great way of sort of starting an album that probably no one will ever hear, so I can mess up without any problems.
And it wasn't until a short time later when going through the material, and suddenly it was David's ideas.
How he saw his music being done, I suddenly realized how talented he was and suddenly became scared because I realized I was in the deep end again.
Now, is he the actor that's listed in the credits?
Yes.
Okay.
I always wondered about that.
Yeah.
The Struggle In The Music00:14:38
That's very interesting.
And of course, on the Ziggy album, it says to be played at maximum volume.
Is that kind of just an off the cuff thing or is there a reason for that?
Well, I monitored very loud in the studio and it just sounded so great loud.
It was just determined, yeah, this happened.
To be listened to loud.
Definitely true.
So it's real synchronicity with you and Bowie talking, you saying, you know, I'm going to go into production, and he says, well, here's the perfect way to jump in.
Yeah.
My life has been that synchronicity.
Let's face it, the first session I'm ever a second engineer on is the Beatles.
First session I ever engineer is the Beatles.
Just being at the right place at the right time, or just you name it, it covers it kind of thing.
Wow, that's very interesting.
It's been amazing.
Well, it's funny because your career is so vast.
And the other reason I'm glad you put this book out is because I was aware of the Bowie era work, but there were things in there like Transformer that I wasn't aware that it was a part of.
And that's a really terrific album as well.
Yeah, well, for me, there's one great track on it.
The rest, yeah, it's okay.
Yeah.
But look, we all have our personal taste.
And can you tell me what track it is?
Oh, it's Walk on the Wild Side, without a shadow of a doubt.
That is a classic.
I have no qualms calling that one a classic.
Oh, it really has incredible things going on just crazy bass line and a very smooth sound.
That's Herbie Flowers.
Is it Ainsley Dunsbar?
Is he also.
Ainsley, he at one point, yeah, he was with Frank.
Zapposky?
He was then.
If I remember correctly, he was a drummer with Journey in the early days.
Okay.
He had his own band, Ainsley Dunbar Retaliation.
Now, when you work with so many of these musicians, and they've all worked on great things in the past, when you are working with an artist and you decide, well, they come in and they say, I have these great songs, can we put an album together?
Do you have the ability to sort of plug in these session people because you have such a vast repertoire?
At times, yes.
Yeah, I can imagine that that's very helpful.
Yeah, you know, interestingly enough, I. Prefer to veer away from session musicians.
It's they.
I would sooner have a struggling band that has to struggle to get what's needed rather than someone that can just come straight in and say, oh, that's what you need?
Okay, and just play it one sort of straight off kind of thing.
There's.
The struggle gives it a certain sort of humanity, a certain feeling that I prefer to just that.
That technique that a lot of session musicians have.
There are some session musicians, most definitely, that have both.
They can put that feeling across easily.
Right.
There are others that it just, you can tell it's just, oh, it's that again.
Okay, fine.
And they just do it.
Now, yeah, well, they're sort of showing up, and it's almost like the job, in a sense.
Yes, absolutely.
Right.
But the struggling, what you're saying, it sort of cuts through on the creativity side.
You can hear the struggle in the music.
Hopefully, yeah.
Yeah.
Very interesting.
Well, like Woody and Trevor, the bass player and drummer of Spiders, they were always, like Woody says, how he was always on the edge of his seat because David got bored in the studio.
David didn't like being in the studio.
So we had to get sort of takes fairly quickly with them.
Otherwise, he'd just say, oh, it's not working, let's move on.
So they were always on the edge of their seat, sort of like third or fourth day.
I've got to get through it.
I've got to get through it.
And I think that adds to the excitement of it all.
Oh, yeah.
Well, I noticed in the book you said that Bowie doesn't really do second takes very often.
No.
95% of the vocals I did as co producer with him were first takes.
Now, would you call that unusual?
Slightly, yes.
Absolutely.
I've never worked with a vocalist like him before.
You might not sort of think he has the best sounding voice in the world, but as a performer, In the studio.
He is absolutely astounding.
So he comes ready to play.
He knows what he's going to do.
There's no messing around.
It's boom.
Right.
So it's that professionalism.
But wow, you know, this idea of a single take, I often imagine the vocals like that taking days and hours and weeks to play.
Yeah, they normally do.
Well, especially these days, because these days it's, if it's slightly out of tune, then they have to go in and they have to auto tune it and then move it about so it's exactly in time.
And oh, the singer refuses.
To sing the chorus more than once, so they'll copy it and paste it or wherever it's needed.
I'm sure that one of the main reasons that Ziggy, we're still talking about Ziggy 40 years on, is that it's human.
David's performances are real performances.
It's not put together in any way, shape, or form.
It's coming from within.
And it's not technically perfect.
There are some pitchy areas, there are some slightly out of time places, but it's real.
Right.
And we resonate to that realness.
I think that's one of the reasons that music these days, people aren't as interested in it.
It's because it's become robotic.
It's all the same, and it's just the soul's been taken out of it.
And is that, do you think, the influence of the digital technology on it?
Yes, because we as humans always take everything too far.
I remember I used the story of the Wawa pedal.
The first time I ever heard that, wow, what an amazing sound.
And then.
Within four weeks later, it was on every bloody record that came out.
It's that kind of thing.
Overuse.
Yes, the whole battle of analog or digital.
Well, they both have their good points, they both have their bad points.
Let's use the best of both.
But we as humans know, oh, we've got to go for the latest and the greatest.
We've got to go all digital.
Just that kind of thing.
Right.
Now, I will piece together vocals.
The way I like to record vocals is I'll do like six takes.
But they are complete takes.
And then I'm left alone, and I'll go through and I'll find the best parts, put it together.
And if there are some bits missing, then more often than not, I'll just do a couple more takes.
It's not just going for those single lines.
Because if you're only going for a small section, you tend to, once again, it's so concentrated on that, it loses the feeling.
Ah, yeah, absolutely.
Now, do you have a particular mic that you like to work with in the studio for a vocalist?
No.
I would generally, when it's a new vocalist, I will set up a row of mics and have them sing a bit into each one and then just decide which one sounds best to their voice.
So it has to do with kind of the imprint of their voice on the mic rather than any particular microphone?
Yes.
Oh, that's interesting.
It's almost like trying a new cologne or something.
You have to make sure.
Yeah.
Right.
Now, when you go back to the Ziggy album and you look at it, you know, for something, let's take a last track.
On the album Rock and Roll Suicide.
Yeah.
At the end, there's this gigantic orchestral swirl that comes in.
Now, how does recording that go along?
Because I imagine you're recording that some other time.
Yes, that was Novadel.
Because that was Ronno doing all of the arrangements for all of that.
Oh, really?
Okay.
Oh, yeah.
Ronno was amazing.
Not only was he an incredible guitarist, his arrangements, he was the arranger on Transformer as well.
Oh, wow.
There's great, great strings on Transformer.
Yeah.
And so he'll put together the arrangement, and what you'll just get the orchestra into the studio.
I'm trying to picture some of these things that go on because I can imagine the first parts of recording the album and the band in the studio, but then an orchestra is a different thing altogether.
Do you have to go where they are?
Do you call them in?
No, no.
It was all done at Trident.
Okay.
Because, yeah, you could fit.
Trident was big enough, I think, that.
Boy, going back some.
I think we actually managed to have a 45 piece orchestra in there at one point.
But that was sort of a little jam packed.
But you could fit people in there.
Wow.
Is Trident still around?
It's around, but it's been completely changed.
And now it's just like for voiceovers for ads and movies, that kind of thing.
They took the main studio and divided it up into five very small rooms.
And it's a shame.
I'm amazed they didn't save it, at least for its historical value.
Well, yeah, look, it's hard enough keeping Abbey Road for its historical thing.
So, to try and, no, look, Olympics, they're all going, slowly but surely.
Wow, unbelievable.
You know, you mentioned Ronald for a second.
I just want to follow up on him.
This is someone, when I think about the work that he's done, is he sort of unheralded?
Absolutely.
People don't seem to understand just the amount of input that he had on some of this.
Right, absolutely.
I really don't believe, as talented as David is, I don't think he would have been as big as he became without Ronno by his side for that period.
Now, why was Ronno so.
I mean, I know he was gifted musically, but was he a classically trained musician?
You know, I've heard mixed reports on that.
So it's not something we discussed.
So I'm not 100% sure.
For the longest time, I thought not.
But I've seen some other stuff that says he was.
So I don't know.
Did he ever.
He never really got to do.
You know, his own hit album in a sense.
No, he didn't.
It's very interesting.
But he wound up doing some production later in life before he passed away, right?
Yeah.
I saw there were a couple of albums like he produced Morrissey and things like that.
Yeah, well, he did a lot of work with Ian Hunter.
And he went with Dylan for a while.
What was it?
Rolling Thunder Review, I think he was a part of.
And yeah, he did some production.
There was.
I remember there was a Canadian singer, female, that he produced an album.
I thought she was amazing and really liked the album.
I don't know much else of what he did.
Did you ever work with him past the Bowie stuff?
No.
That was the end there.
Yeah.
And true with the other members of the band also.
Actually, I have worked with Woody since.
That's great.
Just relatively recently, I put together a computer software package of drum samples, drums.
And I got together with five dramas I'd worked with in the past.
And Woody was one of the ones that I chose because I wanted five dramas I'd worked with successfully that had, all of them had completely different feels and had completely different sounds.
And yeah, he was most definitely one because he's a great rock and roll drummer.
And what does he do now?
He's still playing.
He has.
He has this set up with one of his sons.
They play together, so it's two dramas.
Oh, that's great.
Yeah, and he does quite a bit in England.
Now, the follow up for this album, Ziggy, was Aladdin Sane.
Yeah.
Can you tell me anything about Aladdin Sane that you recall?
I mean, it has great songs on it.
Absolutely.
For me personally, there are tracks on there that are better than anything on Ziggy.
Okay, like which tracks?
Oh, I love time.
Time, yeah.
I always seem to go.
A lot insane.
Just the insanity of Mike Garson's piano on that is incredible.
There was this very strange thing that I've only noticed recently with David his music changed with his keyboard player.
You take Hunky Dory, which had Rick Wakeman on, and it's very sort of classical type piano.
Then Ziggy.
Was basically David and Ronno playing, and it's very simplistic because neither of them at the time were particularly good pianists.
Right.
Then you move into Aladdin's Sane, and it completely goes in a different direction with Garson playing.
I love each of them because of the difference between the keyboard players.
It's great.
Oh, that's a really excellent point, actually.
It seems like they had a big influence on the way he'd melodically structure the stuff.
Yeah.
Very interesting.
Well, Aladdin Fane has some very interesting and hard, hard tracks, like Panic in Detroit and Cracked Actor.
Yeah.
And I think that the other thing about that album is it's like a collection of very different work.
You know, like it's not, it's very eclectic sounding, to me at least, when I listen back to it now and I hear some of the songs on it, like Gene Genie is one kind of a sound.
Synth Influences On Structure00:07:50
Yeah.
That's the, to me, that's the strange one.
That was just done as a single mid tour.
Uh huh.
And so it's just sort of thrown together.
I wasn't even involved in the original recording.
I just mixed it for the album.
I gotcha.
Because RCA needed a single for England, basically, to make more money off of everyone.
Right, right.
So they were in the middle of an American tour and just quickly went into the studio one day.
David came up with that, and that was it.
And then it was put on the album later, just because you tended to put singles on the albums, unless you were the Beatles.
Do you remember them doing the Rolling Stone cover, Let's Spend the Night Together?
Oh, yeah.
That is a great version.
Yeah, a lot of people don't like it.
I certainly do.
It's David having fun.
Yes, exactly.
So you wrap up this whole enterprise with David Bowie on pinups.
Yes.
And anything about pinups?
There's, you know, Friday on my mind, there's some great tracks on that album as well.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was a strange, strange project because the breakup had started to happen.
He'd started to.
See, he was breaking up the band.
Right.
Woody was out.
Trevor was supposed to have been out, but Jack Bruce, who was going to be playing bass, pulled out at the last minute, so David had to sort of back down a little and ask Trevor to come back.
So it was just.
It was slightly more strained between David and I. There were legal things going on and all of that kind of stuff.
I read about that where his management company actually owed you royalties.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Unbelievable.
Oh, well, that's half of the course.
That happens all the bloody time in his business.
Yeah, it was just a strange time.
Well, you're making these classic albums and you're like, wait a minute, you know?
Yeah.
Like weird things.
We were all sort of following the different managers' directions.
My management, when I said that Lulu was over there, David was going to, because we were doing it in France, and David was producing a single for Lulu.
Right.
And it was being done in the midst of doing pinups.
And I had mentioned this to my management, and they said, oh, you can have nothing whatsoever to do with that.
You're not contracted for that.
So whenever she walks in, you have to walk out.
Which, that was kind of weird and absolutely ridiculous because I'd get the sound for a basic track, we'd record it, and then she'd walk in, I'd walk out, and they'd use exactly the same sound for her recording.
So I might just as well have stayed there the entire time.
But it was just such a weird time.
I think we were all, the success that had come from the prior albums, we were all sort of learning how to deal with it.
Yeah, well, I imagine.
It's not only Bowie who soared in this time period, but you must have gotten an incredible boost in your own name recognition from doing these fantastic albums.
Yeah, within the confines of the business, absolutely.
Right.
There's a track on Pinups which is See Emily Play, the Pink Floyd cover.
Yeah.
There's all sorts of interesting, strange, slowed down vocals and interesting.
Oh, we used to do that a lot with David.
Yeah.
Like on Beauty Brothers, there's all of these different.
Sped up and slowed down voices, which you hear very much at the end.
Right.
Are they his voices?
Yes.
Very interesting.
Probably him.
It could be Ronno as well, because they used to sing together quite a bit.
Right.
Yeah.
Something about that C. Emily play, what's interesting is I always knew that version, the pinups version, I'd never even heard the Pink Floyd one until years later.
Interesting.
Yeah, so I could see that you did all these very, very interesting and wild things with it.
When I listened to them side by side.
Yeah.
Of course, their version was pretty crazy, too.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, I have to ask you, because it's in thinking about the Ziggy album, going back to that for a second, there's two things on there.
One you mentioned in the book, actually, which is that very interesting sound that goes on during Suffragette City.
Oh, the supposed sex sound.
Yeah.
Yes.
Which is probably just guitar.
No, synth.
Op synth is synth.
It is synth.
Yes.
Right, right.
Okay.
Okay.
And that's a great sound.
It's great because my other love at the moment is going out.
I give audio visual presentations at schools, universities, and colleges.
And one of the things I do within all of this is I break down multitracks so that the audience get to hear some of the classic recordings just one instrument at a time as it was recorded in the studio, kind of thing before we did.
Put it all together to the final product, which they always seem to love.
But one of the things that I do is I start, I play one of the sort of sections from Suffragette City.
And then I play, it's an American DJ called Redbeard that did an interview with David.
And he announces, and that was David Bowie playing those magnificent baritone saxes on Suffragette City.
And then I say, and here's my sax section.
And I just start to play it, and there's a picture of the arp synthesizer comes up, and you hear just the synth.
And it's like, Oh my God.
It's great.
Wow, that's terrific.
Did they ever do kind of a behind the music on the Ziggy album?
No.
That's ridiculous, huh?
Well, I think one of the problems is you can't really do it without David.
And David won't do behind the music these days.
Yeah.
Do you think so?
Because they did one, they did a, what was it, a Transformer one.
Right.
That's right, yeah, and I remember that.
Yeah, because I went to New York to do it.
Lou was there, and they had to use just old interviews with David, done sort of more close to the time it was recorded, because he wouldn't do any interviews for it.
Now, that's interesting.
Do you think he has retired?
Because he hasn't put on an album in nine years.
Right.
The way I describe it is that David, whenever he's taken on a different personality, he's taken it on 110%.
And his personality at the moment is that of a loving father.
And now he has his daughter.
This is the ideal time for him to be the father and enjoy the growing up of his daughter.
And that's what he's doing.
And there's always the possibility that, I think with him, there's always the possibility that he might do something once she moves out, kind of thing.
David's Many Personalities00:09:06
Or she has less to do with her parents.
Then he might become bored and, well, you know what, why don't I do another album?
Second chance.
Yeah, maybe.
Now, you go past this era and you go into sort of the heart of the 70s.
So, tell me a little bit about your next moves beyond the Bowie scene.
Well, there were some things coming up that finished up not being successful.
RCA was throwing me quite a bit of stuff for a while there.
If you have success with a label, it always seemed that they would keep throwing things at you.
Exactly the same thing happened for me with AM after Crime of the Century, which was the next successful.
Project, I guess, or band after Bowie.
Right.
And that's amazing stuff.
And now, music itself is changing quite a bit in this period.
And when a lot of the stuff came in after the kind of heavy, heavily musically oriented 70s stuff, and you go into this punk stuff, how did that affect you?
When you looked at that, did you think I should try to get into this?
Or did it seem like it was something really out of left field?
You're talking about sort of early 80s?
Yeah.
The late 70s?
Yeah, I'd say late 70s, early 80s.
Yeah.
Well, the whole punk thing, I can't say I was particularly a fan of it.
It's not something that I thought about that much.
It's from a work perspective because there's nothing I could add to it.
It was so different to what.
The kind of music that I'd been working on and preferred to work on.
In fact, there was an AR guy that later moved on to become one of the.
Hello?
Yeah, I'm still here.
Oh, still there?
Okay.
An AR guy that later moved on to become one of the top managers of rock bands, he actually said that I was personally responsible for the whole punk scene.
Because my records were so perfect, everyone got fed up with that perfection.
So that's why punk started.
That's great.
Yeah, I wish I had that much bloody power.
It's a rebellion against you, right?
Yeah, fine.
I'll take that and run with it to the bank.
Thank you.
There's a few bands in your production list I'm not familiar with, but one of them is The Tubes.
Yes.
And I wanted to ask you about that because that album is kind of one of, it's almost considered like an early new wave type album.
Hmm.
But.
What do you remember about working with those guys?
Oh, crazy bunch.
I learned more about drug use during that period than at any other time in my life.
And it wasn't from me using it, it was seeing the drug deals and all of that kind of thing that were going on in the vocal overdub booth just sort of right of the mixing desk.
Oh, absolutely.
You had the vantage point.
Yeah, absolutely.
It was amazing.
They were such an incredible band, so talented, and so complete.
Completely different from anything else that was around.
And one of the most amazing things for me with regard to the album, normally with an act, you kind of find what they perceive themselves as being, what they want to put across to the audience, how they want to be seen.
And you sort of try and keep everything within that kind of area.
You can do a ballad, you can do something heavier, but it's still.
You can tell it's the band.
Whereas with the Tubes, you didn't have those restrictions because of their live act, which was all over the place.
They were a variety show.
They weren't a band, they were a variety show.
And so you could, we went from straight as disco as we possibly could on one track, then we'd go to like an early Presley thing, like the Jordanaires.
All of these.
We did a Spectre song that we actually brought in Phil Spectre's arranger to do the strings for it to make it close.
So it was amazing for that kind of thing.
Do you remember the name of the song?
Which one?
The Spectre?
Oh, yeah, Don't Touch Me There.
It was a single.
Okay.
Yeah, that's fantastic.
I'm going to have to check that one out.
I'm familiar with it, but I want to go back and listen to it now.
Oh, it's fun.
With that one, we had problems with the female vocal because Reece Styles, who was one of their Dancers was asked to do the female part of it, and she'd never sung before, and it was very hard for her.
We tried everything we could to get her comfortable, and we eventually got a good take from her, but it was a struggle.
Now, Hugh produced a Devo album.
Yes, I did.
Very, very interesting.
And this is a very early Devo album before they really exploded.
Yeah, it was their second album.
The first one was done by Brian Eno, then the second one was done by me.
Fascinating.
Do you have any memories of that?
What was it like working with those guys?
Kind of like the tubes in the respect that in the studio, completely professional.
You see them live and you get the impression that they're complete lunatics.
And it was the same.
The tubes were like that and Devo were like that.
But then in the studio, they're utterly professional.
And there was one situation with Devo where the studio owners, the studio we were using, Wanted to show someone around that wanted to book some time after we'd finished.
They came up to me and said, Would you mind?
I said, No, you can bring them in.
And as soon as this outside person walked in the control room, Mark Muddersbaugh became more his onstage character.
He was sort of running around, he was screaming, he was completely insane.
Ah, and he could just turn it on.
Yeah, the guy left very quickly.
And instantly he left.
Mark was back to, Okay, now let's work again.
It's very professional.
Wow, very interesting.
So he's got the performer persona ready at all times.
Yes.
Wow.
That's a fantastic album, also.
I really, it's got some very interesting points.
Yeah, it has some good points to it.
It's very unconventional.
And I guess if you're thinking about punk and new wave, that's probably where we could really say with you, like you're kind of deep into it there because they're now, in retrospect, they're regarded as a little bit of both.
Okay.
I still see them more to the new wave typey thing than punk, but I can understand where that would come from with some of Mark's vocals.
Yeah, absolutely.
You've got Missing Persons a little bit later, and they really came strong on the scene.
Great sound, terrific synthesizer sound.
Was this something that did they approach you to produce?
Were you looking out for bands or what was going on?
No, I got a phone call one Saturday afternoon from Gail Zappa, Frank's wife.
Telling me that Terry and Warren, both ex Zappa people, were there with Terry's wife and they'd formed a band.
Would I mind listening?
And I said, No, fine, send them down.
And they came down because we were just down the road from Frank at this point.
And they came down about 10 minutes later.
I listened to some stuff on a boombox and it was atrocious.
But for whatever reason, I. Can only believe it's because of my faith in Terry as a drummer.
He is so talented.
Yeah.
Just what I heard was not up to what he can do.
So it was, I guess there was that feeling of there's got to be more to this than I just heard.
So I said, let me go and see you live.
And they said, we only rehearsed, we haven't played out live.
And anyway, kind of long story short, we finished up going into Frank's brand new studio, which he allowed us to use, knowing that I would find every fault in the place.
Before he came back off the road, so he could go straight in and start work without having to worry about anything.
Majors Killing The Industry00:03:23
We went in, we recorded five songs and started to try and shop it around, find a label that might be interesting.
We got turned down throughout the world.
No one, no one wanted us.
Wow.
And it moved on.
We couldn't find a manager either.
We had one manager that was interested in the band.
That was interested.
He wasn't interested in the band, he was only interested in Dale, which was a no go considering Dale was Terry's wife.
Right.
And so I finished up managing them as well.
And we eventually, one of the tracks that we had done at Frank's became the most requested record of the year on an LA radio station called K Rock, which was a very sort of important, it wasn't the biggest radio station in LA, but it was a very, very important station for breaking acts.
Right.
And we became the most requested record of the year on that.
Around about the same time, we sold out Santa Monica Civic here in LA.
Unbelievable.
And at that point, Capital came up and offered us a deal.
And as no one else was around, we, yeah, sure, okay.
Well, you guys had already done it all yourself, it sounds like, and they just sort of came in to scoop it up.
Absolutely.
It's really interesting.
What do you think generally about labels now versus then?
Do you think there are any differences?
Certainly, the bottom line is a lot different, and so it seems that they don't really develop artists very much.
It depends what you mean by then.
Going back to the earliest time when I started, through to early, let's say mid 70s, back then it was music people that ran the record companies, basically.
In certain situations, the AR guys were the producers.
And so they would sign a band that they felt they could work with, that they saw the talent.
And it was very much that they might not have a hit record straight off, but give them time to develop, and I feel very strongly that they're going to sell very well.
That doesn't happen these days.
There are very few music people that are in the music business, or record labels, major ones.
Record labels these days.
It's more accountants and attorneys.
And they're killing themselves slowly but surely.
I don't think that they're killing the music industry, the music business, whatever you want to call it, because I think that once the majors have killed themselves completely, then suddenly talent will rise up again.
The cream will rise to the top, and we'll have another music revolution the way we've had in the past.
It will be different.
It will be a different type of music, but talent will win out.
Talent always does win out.
It always has done through the centuries, and it will again.
But it's just going to be hard until that time occurs.
Accountants Over Musicians00:08:52
That's very interesting.
Now, when you look out at the stuff that you may be doing in the future, do you see yourself, would you work with a new and upcoming band?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Oh, absolutely.
Look, I will work with anyone that I like their music.
Right.
That's what it comes down to.
It's.
If I like their music and if I feel I can add anything to what they're doing.
I actually haven't done that much lately, so in this business you're only as good as your last hit record kind of thing.
But I'm hoping the promotion side of all of this is coming to a close and hoping to get back into the studio again.
There's a possible project coming up which I'm really looking forward to if it does actually happen.
Yeah, no, I can't wait to get back into the studio.
Oh, fantastic.
It's with whomever.
Well, the book, I imagine, as it gets around, because there's so much great info in it, I mean, I have a feeling that people are going to sort of rediscover all the work that you've done.
Yeah, it's interesting.
I've been seeing online sort of people that pass comments on it and how it took.
They went back and got the recordings and they were listening to the recordings as they read it.
And I thought that.
That's really cool.
It's nice being able to picture people doing that, listening to the music again, which is always great when they go back to do that kind of thing, but also sort of reading the stories at the same time.
That's different.
I don't know how many sort of books you can do that with, really.
That's great.
I noticed that Duran Duran was in.
I wasn't aware that you worked with them.
Yeah, right.
Was that a pleasant experience or not?
Oh, yes and no.
Yes and no.
I was brought into it because.
Of Warren Cucurillo from Missing Persons.
Oh, yeah.
Because he became a member of the band for a while.
And they were in the midst of doing the thank you album.
And they had started it themselves, needed help, so he called me up and got me involved.
And in many respects, working with Warren again was great.
We had a lot of fun.
Nick was very nice.
The biggest problem was Simon.
Or Charlie.
Yeah, precisely.
And just.
Now, what was that all about?
The lack of respect for anyone around was just unbelievable for me.
It's.
Yeah, I didn't like it.
Now, is that something by reputation you think happens as well?
Or was he just having a bad session?
No, look, when he is supposed to turn up to do vocals.
And we're waiting around for hours, and then we find out he's gone away for four days to a superstar's birthday party on some tropical island, and he didn't even bother to tell any of us.
That to me, that's down to him, and it's total lack of respect for anyone around.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, it's very immature, it seems like, for a guy who's been in the industry for a while, too.
Yes.
Unbelievable.
Now, but working with Nick and some of the other guys was a better experience.
Yeah, absolutely.
And they had quite an impact when they first came out.
And I remember thinking, this is kind of a Roxy Music.
When I listen back to it now, it feels like a next generation Roxy Music kind of thing.
Certainly much more commercial.
Oh, yeah.
Certainly.
You know, it's funny, did Roxy Music ever come up in your early career?
Were you aware of them?
Oh, of course I was aware of them, yeah.
Yeah, no, I liked a lot of their early stuff.
Yeah, like Stranded and some of those early albums.
Absolutely.
Fantastic.
Very different.
And not very often do you get that many good musicians in one group.
Right.
Well, you have to think of the time that it was occurring in England.
There was.
So, there was a period of time in England that the talent that was coming out was unbelievable.
From the baby boomers, basically, because around my generation, it was you've got the Beatles, slightly older, the Beatles, the Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, you've got Roxy, Elton, Bowie.
It was astounding.
Yeah, it's amazing, explosion all at once.
Yeah.
Mark Bowen's another one.
Yes, of course.
And, you see, now, did you work with Mark?
I did one session with the original Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Peace, Love, and Happiness version of the band.
Right.
With him playing acoustic guitar and I can't remember the other guy's name playing bongos.
I did one session with them, but then I didn't work with Mark as T Rex.
Wow.
Although a lot of that was done at Trident, it was done by Roy Thomas Baker.
And now, is he somebody who, you know, when you look at it again, he had this incredible impact?
I know there's just been a huge thing in England because it was the anniversary of something.
I'm not sure if it was his birthday or the anniversary of his death or something.
There was a big anniversary.
Okay.
Because I know that Tony Visconti did some orchestra arrangements for this big show that was just done.
And it was nothing but, as far as I know, it was nothing but like Mark's material.
Oh, great.
Fantastic.
I can't remember what it was called.
But I was seeing about it just on Facebook a lot because there are a lot of people that I'm Facebook friends with.
Great.
We're connected with it.
And is your Facebook just Ken Scott?
Yes.
Okay.
I'm going to definitely get up there so I can keep track.
Okay.
But yeah, I love the Mark Boland work, and it's so extensive that sometimes I feel he should carve out sort of a bigger liner note in the past.
But maybe, like you said, in England, it's a much better thing.
Yeah, I think so.
And I guess the only other wrap up questions I have for you is when you're looking now at the way the music industry is done, you still feel that with the problems, et cetera, that good talent could ride to the top, and it's still something that you want to engage with and get out there and produce and work with?
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
It's, you know, when I was working on Epic Drums, the drum project, I was basically editing all of these grooves done by these five amazing drummers.
And there were times, because it went on for so, so long, I was just, what the hell did I get myself into?
And I'd be going and going, and then suddenly I'd come across this one sort of fill, this one lick that one of them played, and it was amazing.
And my face just lit up, and I realized this was why I got into it.
And it's very much the same.
There's a lot of crap music out there, but then suddenly you'll hear.
One very talented artist, and it's the grin will come on my face, and it's that's why I got into this business.
That kind of thing.
It's that moment where you just are impressed or surprised.
Yeah, yeah.
It just moves you.
It's harder for that to happen, it doesn't happen as much these days as it used to.
Two reasons.
One, I've heard it all before, kind of thing.
Yeah.
And the other thing is, the people that could do that for me.
They're not being pushed as hard as they used to be, kind of thing.
So it's harder to find those people.
And what is the name of that software with the drum licks?
It's called Epic Drums, and it's Epic with a K. I'll have to check that out.
Fascinating.
And, well, Ken, I really appreciate amazing, amazing stuff, and I really appreciate the work that you've done and spending time with me today talking about it.
Oh, you're very welcome.
My pleasure.
You produced really great music.
Thank you very much.
And I'll be following all your stuff now on Facebook too.