 and welcome. I'm Colleen Cosmo Murphy, founder of Classic Album Sundays, the platform and event series that tells the stories behind some of our favorite albums and the albums that have changed our lives. We've hosted many events here at the British Library and explored albums by Laurie Anderson, John Coltrane, Louis Vega, John Grant, or Kesshul maneuvers in the dark and many others and you can find the videos on the Classic Album Sundays website and YouTube channel. You can also hear the audio recordings of these interviews from the British Library Sound Archives, an amazing resource that has over six million recordings including one of Florence Nightingale and there's a brand new web sound portal coming this summer. Now it's great to be back here in the British Library Auditorium and thanks to all of you for joining us and a special thanks to the Classic Album Sundays Patreon members for our attendance and a big hello to everybody joining us from home. For tonight's full album playback we have a top-notch audio file sound system and I would like to thank Bowers and Wilkins for bringing these beautiful Diamond 800 series loudspeakers. We also have a Rotel Michi X5 integrated amplifier and a Riga P9 turntable and a Riga iOS phono stage and just a little housekeeping. When we do listen to the album I ask that you refrain from conversation and that you don't engage with your phone. In fact you should turn it off right now because we are listening to an album that you really need to sit back and close your eyes and immerse yourself into the music because this album really deserves your full attention. David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars was both a cultural and a musical milestone. The outrageous outfits and gender-bending behavior of Ziggy Stardust it was really an inspiration to so many especially to those who didn't quite fit in and when this album was released in June 1972 it really marked a musical turning point leaving the hippie flower power era and stepping into the world of glam rock. Joining us to tell the story about the recording of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars is the album's co-producer Ken Scott and Ken is a bit of a legend himself I have to say. He started at a very young age working at Abbey Road Studios working his way up until he was actually doing some engineering for the Beatles and for George Martin. Working on the white album and also the magical mystery tour he also engineered George Harrison All Things Must Pass and a bit on David Bowie's The Man Who Sold the World. And then he sat in the producer's seat for the first time when recording David Bowie's Hunky Dory. So he's a real legend and let's give him a warm round of applause to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. Thank you. Especially the questions at the end. I always love the questions at the end too because I don't have to do anything so it's great for me. Why don't you tell us how you first met David Bowie. I had been working at Abbey Road Studios. I decided to leave and went to work at an ever-growing independent studio called Trident and one of the first things that happened when I got there was one Saturday I believe it was this artist came in a young fairly young kid I guess and recorded something which became fairly well known it was a song called Space Oddity and the guy that came in to record it was one David Bowie. Now I didn't engineer that one of the managers of the studio engineered that but then because it sold the record company Mercury wanted an album so I as well as another one of the engineers Malcolm Toft were put on to record the album then when it was time for his second album well I guess third album really Man Who Sold the World they started off recording that at an outside studio came to Trident and I did the overdubs and the mixing and carried on from there. And what did he kind of personality did he have how did he what kind of impressions did he make on you at that time? Oh he was great I I really enjoyed working with him he he he was fun he was a sweet person he had a certain amount of talent but he was never going to make it, never a million years. And so when was the next rendezvous? I believe it was to record a friend of his called Freddie Beretti which I think it eventually some of it eventually came out under the name von Korn's but yeah Freddie was interesting we were petrified the day he came in to record because he was wearing the shortest hot pants we had ever seen in our lives and we were expecting anything could happen with those at any given time we were extremely worried about it but luckily luckily it went okay. In fact Freddie Beretti he was he was a fashion designer and I think his it was aka Rudy Valentino I think was his other name yeah and he David wanted him to sing and they tried and it was the results weren't uh to his satisfaction so Bowie ended up doing those songs was hang on to yourself I believe a Moon Age Daydream which eventually were recorded and made their way onto the onto the Ziggy Stardust album but I think Freddie Beretti ended up designing some of Ziggy's costumes so he did have a role to play in Ziggy Stardust um do you remember those recordings because I listened back actually to hang on to yourself I have it with me but we won't play it right now a Moon Age Daydream no they were actually I had the original boot I had the original boot leg I did have a boot leg from the 80s but I there was a box set called five years and they they uh put those on there yeah I mean Bowie's voice sounds so different it sounds so frail and thin it doesn't have that kind of full well I couldn't have recorded that one yeah it must have been someone else definitely that must have been why that couldn't have been you then yeah and then in case then you were brought on to become co-producer of Hunky Dory how did that all come about that happened during the Freddie Beretti sessions uh I had realized I wanted to have more artistic say there's a thing that engineers go through where you're sitting at the mixing console you've got the producer by the side of you and you have this feeling of something that would work musically and you go to you know it would work under this guitar solo a herd of trumpeting elephants the producer looks at you and he says you think so really I said yeah I think it'd be really good so we bring in the herd of trumpeting elephants we record them send them back on their way pay them their union views of course uh then if it worked it was the producer's idea if it didn't work uh it was only Ken's idea I didn't think it would work anyway you get fed up with that kind of thing after a while so I wanted to be that person that could come up with the ideas and sing or swim by them and during one of the many tea breaks on on the Freddie Beretti sessions uh David and I were talking and I happened to to voice my thoughts I wanted to do that and he said I've just signed a new management deal they want to put me into the studio to record an album so they can shop a deal a record deal and I was going to produce it myself I don't know if I'm capable of doing it will you co-produce with me now I had as Colleen said I I am the luckiest or the most blessed person in this world because the way my life has gone has been absolutely astounding starting off the first the first session I'm ever assistant engineer on his side two of a hard day's night the first session I ever sit behind a mixing console not knowing what the hell I was doing was for magical mystery tour and here I'd been thrown into fire on those ones it's yeah I can't explain how it felt going into those but here I was with this this guy that I really liked he was really nice he obviously had a certain amount of talent but no one was ever going to really hear the album that much so I could learn my new gig working with this slightly talented artist so of course I said yeah I'd love to co-produce it with you then two weeks later I guess David Angie his wife and his publisher Bob Grace came around my house with cassettes and started to play these demos and it was probably the second song that we played that suddenly I realized here I go again this guy has far more talent than I ever realized and people might actually get to hear this this record that was hunky dory what was your impression of working on a full album with David Bowie co-producing with him because now you're really working you know together for an extended period of time on an entire project well when we went in I think we were both nervous because we were we were attempting something that we hadn't neither was it done before and a certain amount of trepidation there but as we worked and things were working and it was sounding good our confidence was growing so we could be bigger and better just within our own minds as we're going so that part of it was amazing uh David was very much one of one of David's incredible talents was uh picking a team to give him exactly what he wanted at any given time and the the team of Ronno Woody Trevor at this point it was just it was just them David and myself we knew what it was supposed to be we didn't have to tell each other all the time we just instinctively knew this is what's got to happen here this is what's got to happen there so it was astounding there was no one telling us what to do we were just doing it and also you didn't have a record company breathing down your back no no you weren't signed by that time was he you know I I'm not sure when he actually signed the record deal to be honest uh I know I know RCA were interested after hunky dory but there was still that thing of we're gonna do another album immediately afterwards it was just a few weeks after finishing hunky dory that's incredible oh yeah because even exactly for you that's when incredible but also when you know as the listener and as a bowie fan you look at those two albums and you see oh wow look at this big dramatic change I mean there's a dramatic change with some of the music I mean I would say there's a lot more acoustic well I guess I could think of queen bitch going to suffrage at city so maybe there are there are a lot of likenesses but maybe it's more of the image itself because all of a sudden you have this more pastoral bowie on the on the hunky dory back cover of the album cover and looking like Marlena Dietrich in a certain pose long hair um and and then exactly and then yeah a whole different bowie yeah did you see I mean there was only a few weeks between recording both of these albums first all was there any visual changes to David Bowie when he came back into the studio there must have been some changes but I it's because they were so close together it it was like your kids growing up you see them every day kind of thing so you don't see the changes as much as other people that only see them every week or every month and it was very much like that because we were together so much there were changes but I they weren't as drastic to me as they were to people that saw him a month ago and then suddenly saw it god he's changed his hair is completely dead just it was one of those no I don't remember noticing that much was he in the press more at that time or is it still where people still do you still have a bit of a private life well I think his private life he they used as much as possible I remember when hunky dory came out there was on the front page of it was either the daly mirror or the male maybe in the sun actually thinking about it but the front page was you saw someone with very long hair and someone with very short hair pushing a pram and you instinctively thought the long hair was the female and the short hair was the male then they show exactly the same picture but from the front and you saw that the short hair was Angie and the long hair was was David and they were pushing Duncan so ahead of their time and I think Angie had a lot to do with that as well and you you got on well with her because there's a lot of horror stories about her sadly which I don't think is very fair in a sense but I think a lot of that happened later yeah she would drop by the studio every now and again and you knew she was there when she came you knew yeah but I guess one would classify her as the typical loudmouth yank I don't know anything about loudmouth yanks not as my wife Cheryl yeah right I know his wife very well we love to get together you can hear us in the next room yeah you you knew she was around when she came but luckily she wasn't around that much but when we got together outside of the studio kind of thing she was she was great she was fine and I think that whether it was jealousy of of his success whether it was jealousy of the other people that he spent time with I don't know but yeah she did get one hell of a reputation and she seemed like she almost helped him with his image from what I understand as well yeah absolutely yeah now we said he didn't look any different really from going that you remember but how about did he behave any any differently not not at that point no but other than when we started Ziggy we already had the confidence that we had got through doing hunky dory as I said we started off a lot of trepidation gained confidence and then we came into Ziggy and yeah we knew what we were doing we and once again it was that T we we knew what was needed right now to the point of there there was the only thing that I was told by David going into this was that it was going to be more rock and roll he didn't think I'd like it and he wanted it more like and I can never remember whether it was Iggy Pop or Velvet Underground and the fact that I didn't know who either of them were at that point didn't make much difference but I did like it he was wrong well it's interesting yeah I mean with the whole Velvet Underground because you could hear that when he's talking about Andy Warhol and that's you on Andy who yeah Warhol that's Ken that you can hear on the on the in the engineering room that that was take one we didn't actually use take one for the song but we all liked that so much we had to edit it on to the beginning well I mean there's so much theatricality on this album and that's more to do with the persona that he takes on his Ziggy Stardust and apparently he didn't tell you what any inspiration was for the character correct you have Davey Jones becomes David Bowie becomes Ziggy Stardust on this album and he had of course studied with Lindsey Kemp the Mime artist teacher dancer choreographer and then he was very interested in Mime and theatricality himself of course excuse me but you did leave off one other thing there gay icon yeah yeah that's true yeah Lindsey Kemp definitely was a gay icon as well but with Ziggy it kind of he you know the persona starts to take over him take him over as time goes on but not in these early days but there have been things that have been suggested that inspire whether it was the legendary Stardust Cowboy who was a more of an outsider musician who was also assigned to RCA there was also Vince Taylor who Joe Strummer said really started British rock and roll and who David Bowie ended up meeting when Vince Taylor was just kind of a shadow of himself he had done too many drugs and ended up I think on quite destitute and Bowie bumps into him in 90 you know much later and he's kind of half the man that he was before a quarter of the man but also if some people suggest it could be Iggy Pop could be a little bit of an influence in there as well because you know he had taken he was a big fan of the of the the Stooges and he ended up producing Iggy Pop and befriending him as well so there was a bunch of different people that may or may not have influenced the Ziggy Stardust character the problem is that whatever you whichever one you would say to David he would agree that that's what it was it's there's a track on Hunky Dory very briefly called The Beauty Brothers now that was recorded I think it was the last song we recorded we were just finishing up recording David came in one morning and said I got a new song well morning lunchtime kind of thing I've got this new song I've just written it we've got to record it I said great okay we'll do it he said but don't take any notice of the lyrics and I said okay why not and he said because I wrote it specifically for the American market and it doesn't mean anything but I know that they're going to read things into it now remember this was the time this was the era of Paul is dead when American DJs were finding every little thing they could find to uh say that Paul McCartney is dead and that's a stand-in that's it's not really him so it was all around that time and I know with David I've heard 10 15 20 different stories of what The Beauty Brothers is all about and David would have agreed with every single one of them that's interesting I remember Sheila Ravenscroft telling me a story about John Peele who was very close to John Lennon and John Lennon had a new album about and he was talking to John Peele on the phone and John Lennon says to John Peele I need to hang up now I need to read the papers uh there's reviews on my album coming out I need to find what out what my album is all about so similar similar kind of thing so he told you this could be more rock and roll now did he tell you there was any concept behind the album at all because a lot of these songs have been kicking around for a while hadn't they they had and if you think about it logically first off it ain't easy that was left over from the recording of Hunky Dory so we just we had to spare track we thought we'd throw it in there then the mainstay of the whole story is of the man coming from up there somewhere is the track Starman well that was the last thing recorded for Ziggy and the reason it was the last track was it was never meant to be on the album in place of that we had a cover of Chuck Berry's Round and Round that was that was in place of it and the album was sent into RCA and they said the album's great but we don't hear a single can you go in and record a single yeah right if everyone could write it just like that but of course David could yeah so he goes away comes back in with Starman we record it and put it in place of round and round and then suddenly the whole album is a concept album so did he have any idea that that this was going to revolve around a character or it doesn't every single song doesn't revolve around this character but yet you can piece it together in a way that it does absolutely you can piece together Paul is dead if you take all the individual pieces yeah true I mean Sergeant Pepper was again it wasn't a concept album it was very much you know they wasn't made to be a concept until the very end yeah oh here's a band that can tour for us so we don't have to tour and yeah you know they put on the reprise at the at the end as well so well let's go into some specific songs and I wanted to speak about the first song five years which is such a beautiful song and could you tell us what it was like working with David Bowie as a vocalist I said earlier on that one of David's greatest talents was his ability to put together a team well his greatest talent was his ability to perform in the studio I co-produced four albums with him and 90 to 95 percent of the vocals that we did on those albums was one take the first take from beginning to end I would run a bit of the tape just to get a level get the sound on him I'd go back I'd hit record and what he did that one time through is what you still hear today I have never come across another artist that can do that they'd have to punch in or something and remember this is before auto tune this is before being able to copy and paste and move things around and all that kind of thing this was straight from here straight from the soul from his heart five years you mentioned by the end of that he was bawling his eyes out there are tears pouring down his face he was so emotional about that song and performing it he was astounding was do you think that was a personal kind of feeling of emotion or was it a theatrical display I probably a combination of both it it was genuine but no I think there was a certain amount of theatricality but the problem is that when when you're mixing a song you want to get the power of the whole thing across especially when there's as much going on as there is at the end of five years so I mixed it to get the full power across as much as possible and some of the nuances from David get lost what I quite often do in talks we can't with this this particular occasion but I'll quite often I've got a mix that I did where it just of the end where it's the original record I fade that out to just acoustic guitar backing vocals and David's vocal and I've had members of the audience in tears when they they hear how he's actually performing it and the problem is it wouldn't be allowed today it'd be go back in or auto tune it or move it around because it's not perfect none of his vocals they're not all in pitch they're not all in time but god they feel amazing and and to me that's what makes a good vocal performance it's not whether every little nuances in tune it's that's robotic and I suppose since you're the one who's responsible for the technical side of the recording as well that you are not able to kind of immerse yourself into the actual like being an audience member watching this private performance did you ever succumb to that no you can't you when it's that easy it's if if you're having to listen out to everything trying to find mistakes trying to find areas that you're going to have to go back and patch up then yes it becomes more technical but I'd learn from from Bowie that just sit back and enjoy it amazing yeah now one take wonder yeah was he impatient in the studio did he want to get things done quickly is that part of the reason do you think well yeah when you're as good as he is you want everyone to be that quick as well you you get bored and like Woody and Trevor have always said that uh they they were nervous because if they took too many takes they knew David would turn around and say yeah it's not working let's move on to the next song so which I feel is great because they're always on the edge of their seat and it gives a nervousness it gives a humaneness to it well I've got to get this right I've got to they plow into it that much more because of it and uh all adds adds to it and was he very professional working in the studio did he keep regular hours or was like you know some some people recording in the late 1960s and early 1970s and late 1970s had full-on parties in the studio what was it like working with David and it was we had a lot of fun but it was professional we only had two weeks to record an album all of the albums at that point weren't like two weeks you had the artist contracts were that they had to come out with an album every six months so that includes touring writing recording everything in six months and I believe that hunky dory came out after you recorded this album as well so he didn't even know how it was going to do what hunky dory died you know it wasn't popular when it first when it came out so it was really ziggy that made it popular that reinvigorated sales it was the top of the pops that did it right well let's talk about that in a moment too uh let's go on to some other specific songs moon age daydream can you tell us a bit about the recording of that song David always considered himself like a chef he'd take a little bit of this a little bit of that or maybe a bit more of that and put it in and mix it all up and it would come out his his own well one very basic thing that he he didn't mix too much else with it was the solo on moon age daydream there was a song a hit record by an american band called the hollywood argyles and i can't remember the name in a single was alley alley that was it yes thank you and the b side was it was sh it was sh o apostrophe so show know a lot about love and through the majority of it there was this line played which was played by a baritone sax and a flute and david loved that sound so we had to use that kind of sound for the solo on moon age daydream and it was it was a barry and uh but it was a recorder because no one could play the flute but david could play recorder and how about suffragette city with that great sax solo well i i have this uh the saying about how david would agree that 15 20 different versions of buley brothers i have this recording of a an american radio show that he did where they're playing ziggie it must have been the 30th anniversary or something like that and they're playing it and after after suffragette city the dj says and there's david playing those blaring baritone saxes and david agreed with him it's not saxes it's an arp synthesizer that we decided to throw on at the last minute because we knew it was lacking something so i sent the my assistant engineer upstairs bring this synth down we set it up i got a sound on it ronald played it now it's suddenly blaring baritone saxes now it's interesting to talk about the hollywood argyles before did he bring in different songs uh because you know he said he was a bit like a magpie in terms of oh i like the sound of that i like the sound of that also i think in terms of styles of music you can hear so many different styles of music that he also helped pioneer as well throughout his career um but did he bring in any other types of songs that he was interested in or did he listen to any music and you know when you weren't actually recording and taking a break it was it was just his material i i only found out about uh the moonish daydream solo later i didn't know at the time uh so no he never at that particular point in time he never brought anything in it was just we knew what we had to do right as such we i know for me i didn't want to be influenced by anything else i was just interested in what we were doing in the studio and was it a lot easier doing this album do you think than hunky dory they were both easy other than that initial trepidation once everything started to work it was easy because we all knew what we were doing we were having fun and we were making an album we were making albums for ourselves yeah and we weren't trying to make records that would sell a lot it was records that we would be pleased with and just hoped that other people would like them and as it turns out hunky dory to start with people didn't like then that all same now july 6 wasn't it i believe yeah 1972 yes that's when uh after the album comes the album has been out for a couple weeks and he does a legendary performance of star mount on top of the pops it's so many musicians site is this incredible turning point and an inspirational uh an inspiration to them to actually pursue a career in music or to you know become the kind of artist that they envisioned becoming but we're maybe afraid because of social conventions yeah and also that whole social conventions thing it which i don't totally understand but uh the whole thing of david putting his arm around ronald was that that suddenly made a lot of people that fell out of place suddenly feel comfortable with with their own body yeah and it's they were mates he put his arm around his mate but the audience took it a whole certain parts of the audience took it a whole different way and it started a huge change yeah and also the you have to say the costume as well he looked that was you know pretty incredible and shocking i think to many people of you know being beams into their living rooms so yeah yeah it's funny because that that first costume i don't find that it was a jump it was it was like a jumpsuit but it was padded yeah as opposed so later on yeah they did get a bit outrageous when it started no i i was around it so i i'm in a strange place to judge it but uh yeah i didn't see it that strange well let's talk about the band members to the spiders from mars and starting with mcrunson ronald how important was he both to the recording of hunky dory and of to for ziggie stardust oh he was exceedingly important to david's career in the early stages he he was a really nice guy once again uh incredible talented guitarist great arranger he had he always had this thing with his arrangements where he apparently fell asleep the night before he was writing the arrangement halfway through it and he'd come in the next morning into the studio uh about 10 15 minutes before the session is due to start and he'd immediately go running upstairs to the first floor bathroom and he'd lock himself in there and about 15 minutes later he'd come out with this huge grin on his face with this stack of uh manuscripts that he would take down and hand out to the orchestra to finish we never did quite discover why the grin on his face whether it was he finished the manuscripts or something else up there but so and he he's someone that wrote all those string arrangements that you hear only five years and everything else so he was much more than just a guitar oh yeah absolutely almost like a musical director would you say to a point yes to a point but it there was so much dare I say it there'd been a musical director before and now that was tony tony visconti because tony was the bass player he he along with ronoh he arranged most things and he i believe he did the orchestrations on most stuff as well most david stuff when there was one so i david david was the leader yeah but he was a leader that uh he knew his troops and didn't have to give them explicit orders right absolutely so he was definitely the musical director but we all followed suit and how about woody women see uh on drums now i know he wanted to change a little bit of his style or his sound from hunky dory to ziggy stardust yeah miserable so he is he decided he didn't like the drum sound on hunky dory he sounded like cornflakes packets so when we set up the drums for uh recording ziggy stardust i told the rody don't put up the drums i sent my assistant engineer out to buy as many different sized packets of cornflakes as he could find and we set up a whole drum kit just of kellox cornflakes packets did record anything on it they sounded too much like real drums also on this album it ain't easy because you said these that the recording of that took place during the hunky dory sessions that's rick wakeman it's an unharmed record yeah and dana gillespie yes do you want to tell people who dana gillespie dana dana was a very close friend of david nanges uh she was also managed by tony deep freeze yeah david's manager yeah and initially when shopping a deal for uh david right in the beginning they took some tracks from hunky dory they took some tracks by dana and made up a compilation album to go around record companies to try to do deals for both of them now when you look back at this period of this this early this first half of this period of recording with with david because you of course you did two more albums afterwards what's how do you how do you frame it this period and what's the kind of what's the lasting impression that you're left with at this point in time just grateful for being part of it yeah it was it was just an amazing time it really was you know look i i was in the center of of this storm that had been going since like the the early 60s through to the mid 70s and i was at the center of it for the entire time and just that and just getting better and better being more involved as it as it went on so it was it was amazing for me absolutely absolutely and also at that period it was within my career it was spreading out there was david there were then a bit later came super tramp and but then there was the whole jazz fusion side that for some reason or another i was asked to start working on and it started off a whole other area area of my career amazing no it was brilliant well you were also asked to record his last live show at ziggy stardust on the third of July 1973 at the hammer smith odian can you tell us a little bit did he did he ask you to record that do you say anything special was going to happen that night absolutely nothing it was just another performance the only special thing was it was being filmed for a documentary or just a movie and so i went down the night before the first show just to watch it to see what was gonna how it was gonna be kind of thing and then the next night it i'm not sure if it's the rolling stones mobile truck or which one it was but i wanted to make sure that everything went smoothly from the technical end and so as well as me i got roi thomas baker an engine another engineer from trident eventually went on to become a successful producer he produced queen the cars a whole bunch of others a journey a whole bunch of others so it was he and i that were recording it and we're going through first off the first surprise was jeff beck we had no idea about that which was great because i knew jeff i'd worked with i did his first album and then he wasn't on a tour anymore and just roi and i just looked at each other and said what the fuck because he just announced that on stage completely yeah if it even floored woody and trevor let's face it they had no idea mick did oh did he oh he knew yeah he knew exactly what was going on oh so he knew oh yes oh that caused a bit of a rift yes so what happened there because there was a there was a really big after party just down over a cafe royal yeah cafe royal did the whole band go as well they all went in but there must have been such tension not oh yeah or did they think he was joking no one quite knew well woody and trevor didn't quite know what was going on i had no idea uh yeah it was weird yeah it was weird and i must have spent such a tense time but then he continues to work with you yes you were kept yes and so it was just a brief you know you briefly you then did pinups and a lot insane yeah and pinups with a land is well a land is same was that was before that because that was with woody trevor and uh that was before he quit oh really yes yeah because we started off in new york yeah it was that was the original band uh except with mike arson joining yeah then there was no more touring then it was pinups and that that was strange because ronald was going to do it because deep freeze had said that he's going to make him as big a star as david bullshit and just to get him to play on the album and uh there was supposed to be another bass player angely done barb was the the drummer and there was going to be another bass player who pulled out the last minute and so david had to go to trevor and say uh we're going to record this album would you play for me which made it all slightly weird oh my gosh that's yeah it was that was a strange one it's certainly not my favorite album i worked on there are some great tracks on it but uh it was weird my first wife was going to give births in the middle of it so i had to fly back to to england and i still even though i flew back the night before i still got to the hospital late and oh yeah just everything i got so drunk that night and i was phoning everyone until like four o'clock in the morning oh god yes i remember that just what is your favorite david bowie album as an album ziggy i think it holds together as a piece but i think there are better tracks on hunky dory and on alone soon yeah and maybe one track on i love sorrow yeah that's beautiful song how about on this album what's your favorite song on this album it changes it changes i've been listening to it a lot lately because of the the 50th anniversary and everything and it was for a long time it was a moon age day dream recently it's been five years now it changed to rock and roll suicide and the my least favorite just because i've heard it so damn much those blaring baritone saxes suffragette i don't care if i never hear that damn song again she'll be sitting in the green room in the album place well thank you anything else you'd like to share with us about the recording we are going to have a q and a after the album album plays but is there anything else you'd like to share with us off the top of my head i think i think we've gone through everything okay great well thank you can you can welcome yeah so with this album david bowie had ended up turning a very popular art form pop music into high performance art and he really lived and breathed the character of his own construction until it really nearly consumed him but ziggy start has inspired and continues to inspire people to enact their own vision of who they want to be and how they want to live their lives irrespective of social conventions of course the icon started to take over its creator's own personal identity and bowie became more and more consumed by ziggy and he realized he'd eventually have to kill him off he later said of that time everybody was convincing me that i was messiah especially on that first american tour i got hopelessly lost in the fantasy of course ziggy eventually succumbs to rock and roll suicide and david bowie was free to then pursue and create other personas and more importantly an amazing amazingly significant body of work but in another sense ziggy didn't die because he's locked into the grooves of this album which we're about to listen to so again i'm just going to remind you to please turn your phones off refrain from conversation and let's listen to the entire album of the rise and fall of ziggy stardust and the spiders are mars this is where i depart i'll see you after it how was the fun part in the evening for can and i because you got to ask the questions so we have a roving microphone we have two mics who would who would like to go first this gentleman right here in the middle there's a microphone where's the microphone who who has the microphones over there okay this well good evening and first of all thank you very much for doing this my pleasure you can tell it means a lot to uh to us i'd like to ask you mentioned that uh david bowie mc ronson came to your house with some cassette demos no i didn't say mc ronson all right david bowie came with david angine bob grace is right and they came with some cassette demos of the songs that went on to the album uh can you think of an example where you added some suggestions or ideas between what happened from that cassette demo that you heard and what we heard on the final record and a couple of quick supplementaries how many tracks were there at trident and did you keep any memorabilia or souvenirs from the session a hot pound let's go through i don't remember i don't even remember what demos we went through and the demos were of hunky dory they weren't of ziggy we just went straight in and did ziggy so there were other than what we're done with with um corns uh that was the only way i got to hear the songs before we went into the studio uh and david didn't play demos he just would go through a song for the for the guys and they'd learn it from that uh then there was what was the second one oh number of tracks was 16 uh yeah and memorabilia the this after we had done a lot of saying uh i was over at david's place and he got down on one knee and gave me this everyone was terrified he was going to ask me to marry him i knew he was already married so i knew he couldn't be that but there it isn't there's an inscription on the inside it it's uh db the lightning flash and ks and i've worn it almost every day since he gave it to me that's okay you can okay i'll catch both of you i have never um i've never seen you before ken but i have read your name on the album i'm one of these people like i serve an anorak who sits with the record but everyone used to be like that we were all like that back in the day it's a great it's a great pleasure to see you you know i like many people in this room probably know every single word on that album looking around during the the performance of it but i just wanted to ask you have you ever basked in the glory of being ken scott when you when when people come around to your house do you have hard days night people and ziggy stardust people who come around and if so which do you prefer i just with with basked in the glory no i i did i lived in los angeles for many many years and towards the end of that that time i was finding it hard to to get work and i decided what i should do is put together a like actors do put together a show reel of of what i've done it finished up being it was only one track off of various albums i've done finished up being three cds and i could not i'm sitting there putting it together and i did this keep on going through and that's the closest i think i've come to basking in the glory but it's because as i said i find it i do find it very hard to take in all all of this because i made records for myself so i it was very greedy i'm i it's all for me and so to get this kind of thing uh what what you give out i find it very hard to accept because it just feels hypocritical somehow because i didn't do it for you i did it for me so you can all disappear now thank you for liking it and buying it again thank you very much ken for what's been such a wonderful evening um i'm sorry i must say i'm i'm both of those most terrible of things both a journalist and a historian and so my question is sort of framed in both those contexts um but as somebody who's a sort of relatively young um apologies the rest of the audience very very fan um my my question is um you mentioned at points such as you know david considering how this is going to sell in america etc etc and i think especially for my generation the impression of bowie we get is that he's the great liberator he's the great free thinker etc he is the figure who sort of changed society in a way that nobody else could etc etc um but from your sort of personal experience of him and from your wider of observations etc to what extent in david bowie's mind were balanced the commercial sides the need to sell records and david bowie as poet artist etc all the rest and david bowie as we know him today to what extent is i guess that legend undermined by david as the man he wants to be famous uh there are two acts i've worked with that what impressed me so much about them was uh the heroism their bravery that's the Beatles and that's bowie and the the reason that i say the bravery is they like most acts do they changed every album they weren't out to make the same album again and again and just try and keep that small group of fans we've got to keep doing the same to please them uh it's if they don't like it it's fine these people will like it if they don't like it these people like it and they were constantly changing and that takes guts it really does because you've got all of the people around you the the staff the tour tour people management agents all of these people are living off of you basically and to be able to turn around and just i don't care if i don't sell another record it's this is what i want to do it takes a lot a lot of guts and both the Beatles and david had that the fact that david said at one point that his least favorite record was let's dance which happened to be his biggest seller i think shows where his head was more at it was the artistic statement and what pleased him more than the selling of records did that answer it okay john do we have a question from the online audience yeah we've got a couple of good ones here um oh we don't want good ones well all right here's a bit i'll give you a i'll give you an average one then okay do you play any uh this is from mick and do you appear on any of the other albums apart from uh the start of anti warhol do you play anything no i'm i'm i'm not a musician i have a musician soul uh i can play a few chords on guitar the the my biggest appearance on a record i played the solo on daniel elton johns daniel i played the the uh the art solo on it which was basically recreate just playing what david johnson had already played on mandolin but i still see money for it every six months so i'm not going to knock it that's correct do you want to ask another one all we have you sure um yeah so here's a question from graham this is a question about the vibe between david and mick ronson and and what was the vibe between the chemistry between them and did you feel you were in the presence of greatness was it more mundane and ordinary than we might imagine now i think it was them felt that they were in the presence of greatness at least they should have done uh look we're all buddies it was it were it they were great friends that they yeah they they had a great relationship for as long as it lasted and when it was over it was over i know for a while there was some resentment there but uh i think it got sorted out towards the end uh i'm not sure but no during that time we were all good friends and uh there was no we were in presence of greatness or anything like that we were just buddies now there's someone right there if you want to hands your microphone and then there's uh people on the back if you don't mind bringing the microphone to the back well yep exactly to the back thanks again ken for sharing your stories with us tonight that's been wonderful so far thank you and i just wondered if you could tell us anything about the sequencing of the tracks on the album because i always saw five years opening the album was very brave and unusual that sort of track and i wondered if david had a very clear idea of the track listing or whether you had any influence or input on that you know i've i've been asked about track running orders uh several times and i honestly can't remember much about it i know that during that period whether i was just the engineer or whether i was producer as we were recording the tracks i i would take the timings and work out okay we can have this because we we could only have like maximum 24 minutes per side otherwise the volume starts to come down so it was trying to match up and you wanted to really have the same amount of time on each side you didn't want one 24 and the other one 12 uh so i was constantly going through okay this song's gonna end there so that's two minutes 32 and then this one working out what would work in different orders kind of thing how we came up with the final running order i have no idea i can't remember i was told that's what it was going to be whether we worked on it together or i just threw a bunch of songs together it the one thing that i do know that i was very conscious of in doing in putting it together when i worked at abbey road as an assistant engineer or button pusher is we used to be called when we weren't on sessions one of the things we had to do was we'd get tapes of american albums come in and we had to put exactly five seconds of leader in between each title there had to be exactly five seconds and from the from the get go i thought well the five seconds works after this one but this one it should be much shorter and it was that kind of thing so when it came to putting the album together i purposely kept everything almost everything there was i think one occasion maybe two where i felt it should be slightly longer but i put it all on the beat so that even if the tempo changed you'd be tapping your foot and then you'd hit the first beat of the next song i think that the you get that very much from five years into uh into soul love uh it then i tried to do that all the way through so that was very much me putting it together in the end coming up with the running order because some of the song as you say it hangs together very well yeah yeah and some of the song segue together as well sorry some of the songs actually segue into the next song as such yeah interesting there's people back there oh yeah okay just a quick question um do you um see any echoes of um ziggy in uh a lot of davis later work at all do you like listen to anything oh yes i was hear myself my input into that do you hit seriously that at all if i did i tended not to listen any further it's i don't listen to much music these days because so much of it is a rehash of what i've looked i've been in the music business for 60 years now uh sorry 59 and uh 60 would make me so old so uh i've heard it all mostly and so it between having heard it before an autotune i find it very hard to listen to records these days and with with oh don't get me started i do a whole 15 minutes a half an hour bitch session at the end of my talks normally and i let me rip so i don't think we've got time for that today but uh where was i that's the trouble with old age you lose track don't you yeah i know if uh yeah so it's with with david if i got an inkling that oh that's him trying to recreate life on mars then it's i'm not interested i'll move off kind of thing so i i know that there were times when i did feel oh yeah that's whether it was trying to to do the same thing or it was just happening because you do tend to repeat yourself eventually i don't know but i i would zone out if i heard that hi uh peter um first of all it's a huge privilege and an honor to be in your presence and thank you so much for me to contribute to our happiness um i just wanted to ask you two questions one was can you just walk us through how a masterpiece like suffragette city was created why that one what you know david comes in he's got the chords he's got the lyrics he's got the singing and then he gets together with these other people and he creates something that's so perfect and so wonderful and so intense how does that magic happen and i've heard a little supplementary which is a bit cheeky but ringo plays on a hard day's night something on a three second grab on an old chap says don't play that what's that piece of music if you can remember don't remember that at all but how how did it happen it it did it was how does magic ever happen there's there's no way of of putting it out there it's just we were in the studio we knew what we had to do and we did it that that that was it of course it didn't really take off until the blaring baritone sax is that's when it became a masterpiece but uh no it i can't no it was it was very much he'd show the song and he had us all working on it because he knew what we would bring to it and that's what we all did we brought what what we knew what we knew was needed to it that i've heard for other musicians talking about david from much from later periods where they they say i think carles alamaro said it many times that david would come in play the song and they say okay do what you want because he put those musicians there because he knew what they could bring to it with garson uh i was telling someone in the audience earlier outside uh yeah he wasn't to blame i i i kept him out there okay with mike garson playing on the the track a lot insane uh david brought him in because of the avant-garde side of of garson's playing but garson didn't realize that and he went through several times of the piano solo and he i think he went through a salsa version he went through and all different kinds but much much more normal and david kept on saying no i want you to do what you do normally and he said you want it you got it and he played that amazing solo david brought him in precisely because of that but garson didn't realize it whereas with us we were there from the beginning so we knew he's got us here because he knows what we can do he never spoke to me about what what he wanted sound wise or anything like that he didn't come along to he came along to one two mixes during the entire time i worked with him he came along to uh what was it no i know i did now i can't damn well remember it was the the the the love song on the land insane lady green soul lady green soul thank you yes mike garson piano solo brilliant yeah i know he came along to that one so it must have been a very very personal song to him and he came along the last no not the last thing i did with david the last thing i did with him was a 1980 floor show but just before that we recorded a track which eventually got re-recorded and split up for diamond dogs it was dodo a 1984 dodo and he came along to that mix and when we were doing he kept on playing albums or bits of albums that were philadelphia sound like barry white and that kind of thing you say i want it to sound like that i want to sound like that he went on to that an album later the american yeah but he had to we couldn't give it to him he had to put together the team the americans they knew how to do it so he put that team together and did it that's why he was brilliant and he didn't have to show them what to do he just played them the songs and they did what came naturally the same as with us once again look everybody else can thank you so much for the music and thanks kaolin as well for the evening it's absolutely such a pleasure if it's all i can agree to a couple of questions first of all ken in terms of the technical mixing aspects of the album there's certain things of you know background vocals being like really in the distance with reverb on them and certain echoes and certain other reverbs that are there how much of that is you and how much how much input did david have into the mixing was it 100% you brilliant that's an easy one okay that's very easy um because it's just to listen to it through the the 800s is just it's such a stunning experience to to experience that um and second question is out of all the albums that you didn't produce a mix which one would you have liked to have oh god knows i i that one i can't answer at all and that's david barry albums not all albums just david barry yeah no yeah i i did understand that uh no i the album i would have loved to have done with david was never recorded and what both david and i were bad parents uh we were workaholics we were too busy he was he wasn't particularly a good father for for duncan and i wasn't a particularly good father for for my twins lorry and kim and and i always loved kooks which was written specifically for duncan and i i people said would you ever work with david again and this was much later of course uh and uh and it was like yeah but what i'd like to do we've both grown we've both experienced how we were bad in the past i'd love to do a kids album with him like kooks just a whole album of that that's the album i would have liked to have done with him but uh yeah and the other thing just with regard to reverb you said a great example of my use of reverb was on uh walking the wild side the the the colored girls doot-doot-doot i got so bored with hearing doot-doot-doot-doot i wanted to do something differently so what i i just set it up to try to try and emulate the girls walking forward as they sing it in a way i did it i just set the reverb when they're some way away and then just gradually made them louder without the reverb getting louder and to me it sounds as if they're walking forward which was what i tried to do so hopefully you'll go home you'll put on that record doesn't it oh yeah he did it right so right next to their hand up right there the cap on yeah thank you kim hi um if you're a musician you spend a lot of time listening to how about um musicians speaking about how different producers um get different things yeah so um this is really weird because we're discussing iconic music and you're the iconographer as it were including the other guy who's not present unfortunately um could you talk us through how you um get a quality satisfactory hand clap i have never recorded a good hand clap in my life i hate recording them no i can't they're just so percussive i've never got a good one as far as i'm concerned it is difficult that person right there i can uh hi kaleen um what do you think the most important takeaway for a young creative would be looking at david bowie as a young creative in how he operated and who he was do your own thing i i tell my students that uh don't try and make records for other people because you'll you'll finish up probably falling down at doing it there are very very few people that have the ability to make records purely for people to buy not necessarily ones that they feel i think stuck waterman and whatever it was they were very good at just creating a hit record that they didn't necessarily feel they didn't necessarily feel anything for uh at least if you if you make something that you're happy with if your if your career within the music industry doesn't happen you'll be able to look back on it and say at least i made something for me i i made something that i'm happy i was happy with i am happy with because if you try and do it for someone else and then it doesn't happen it's very much why why did i do it kind of thing if you're making it for yourself you know why you're making it it's because you need to put that piece of music out there you know in a way that pleases you thank you so much so gentlemen waiting patiently over here right over there thank you okay brilliant night um just one question do you think it will be possible to get that energy that you've got in the modern digital studio where everything's edited and you have all the effects on all this i mean i'm in a studio and you just listen to these old recordings and there's such an intensity there and i just don't think you have that in modern recordings to the you're you're pushing me to a bitch session aren't you you really want that now of course you can it's we as human beings that can't and what i mean is we had to make decisions back in the day we we had to work fast uh first off we had two weeks to make a record so we had to move fast we only had 16 tracks so we couldn't record 22 sacks blaring sax solos uh and just make leave the decision to someone else to make later which is going to be we had to make the decision then and there and it just moved along like this these days it's what three years between albums it's uh you have 199 tracks and no one wants to make a decision and the worst thing that i'm getting caught up on because i've been doing some stuff i can't say what it was but i've been doing some stuff uh mixing at home in the box and i always tell my my students that go for the first mix it it we it used to be a performance that a bunch of us would take care of on the desk i'd be looking after something the producer would be looking after something the lead guitarist would be looking after something everyone would be taking care of something we all had to perform that mix these days it's all automated and i i say just go for the first thing and then that's it put it away i have fallen foul of what you can do i'm now going in three days later and putting up half a db in that high hat in the third chorus because i think it really makes a difference i'm stupid i'm a human i'm doing what every human does if we can change it we will and it when we the the limitations make it so great it's because we can't spend lots of time because we have to make decisions that we got those records that we did back then now it's auto-tuned to death it i i lived in Nashville for two years and they have some absolutely amazing musicians there and even those session musicians weren't giving their best because they were so fed up with at the end of the them playing something they would hear okay guys we've got enough to cut and paste it together thanks why do you bother giving your best if you're gonna get we can cut and paste it together thanks you don't bother that's where we're at people don't have to give that performance at that time it can all be cut and pasted and auto-tuned and moved around so they don't bother that's where we stand i'm sorry folks let's try to enter the positive question and then let's let's face it the other thing with streaming musicians aren't getting paid these days except for a very the one percent point zero zero six to point zero zero eight yeah hence per stream yes it's obscene yeah it's absolutely obscene and unless that's changed i i i'm getting into my bitch and i shouldn't be i i will not stream anything i i pay for amazon prime just to get the things quickly i will that gives me that entitles me to use their streaming system i won't i won't be the hypocrite that will bitch about streaming because of the payment and then listen to it i i refuse it's that's enough let's have another question please we have time for one more the gentleman raising his hand right there please and then can we have one more from the internet no no more the answer web hi there thanks for a great evening like everyone else has said and i want to reverse that to a more positive aspect it was great listening to that record on these speakers with that setup and if you're looking for a home for it afterwards i can on that note technology has massively advanced in the last 50 years and the way that we make music has improved as well as you know deteriorated and with the various reissues remixes i'm sure you've got some examples of the the most horrendous reissues that have happened with horrendous compression etc etc i would love to hear an example where you have perhaps heard something that's been reissued redone it's thought about in a different way where you've thought wow i wish i'd been able to do that at the time i'm i might get blasted for this because this is something i was involved in and uh it i asked to have my name taken off it and it's this album uh i did uh five point one surround sound mixes 2000 something like that 1999 2000 around that that period and i i loved it i i thought that the whole surround sound thing it was great where you could do things that you couldn't with just straight stereo the the record company or someone connected with the record company may be david's management or whatever wanted something new out there we we couldn't do another reissue of a remaster or something like that we've got to get something new so what they did they took the five point one and they put it down into stereo and it sounded i hated it it was awful so that to me is is the worst example because it's something that i did that i enjoyed when i did it and then it got used badly as far as i was concerned but that hasn't happened nothing like that has happened since luckily so has there been any anyone that you've worked on subsequently where you felt you were able to improve i can't talk about that we'll leave that one there yeah all right well i think we've gone a bit over the time here so thank you so much um first of all i want to thank uh bowers and welkins for bringing these wonderful 800 series speakers this is thank you so much it's wonderful to listen to the album on these loud speakers i want to thank the british library for having us back it's always a pleasure to do it host our classic album sunday's events here of course i want to thank ken scott thank you thank you i want to thank all of you for coming along and for listening it's been a real pleasure to listen to this album together all seated together in a room listening to one of our such an amazing album celebrating its 50th anniversary so thanks to all of you thank you for listening