Tony Visconti - Brooklyn Boy

Despite getting 'Tony Visconti _ Bowie, Bolan and the Brooklyn Boy' by Tony Visconi for Christmas I've only just got round to reading it and a jolly good read it is too. Well, for anyone with an interest in music, that is, and particularly David Bowie, Marc Bolan and all the other musicians Tony worked with over the years.

It's a chunky book with a chronological narrative and lots of details of recording techniques and people who played on particularly significant albums. Lucky for us, Tony is a lifelong photographer so there are some nice intimate shots of Bowie and Bolan in the studio, in his flat and elsewhere, as well as others. I didn't know he married Mary Hopkins (yes, *that* Mary Hopkins) and produced loads of folk albums as well as classic Bowie and Bolan records and, um, the Boomtown Rats (another 'B').

As with every autobiog or biog you've got to be aware that you're being told one version of a story from one perspective but I think Tony tries to tell us the truth, awarding credit where due to colleagues but also slightly irked that he wasn't always given full credit for his work (like Marc crediting Ringo Starr with that iconic 'top hat' photo on the cover of 'The Slider' or Paul McCartney not crediting Tony's string arrangements on 'Band On the Run'). I suspect it's not a full 'warts and all' telling of his life but there's definitely a scattering of warts, like his heroin addiction when he was 20 and an affair in Berlin while married to Mary (which inspired a verse in 'Heroes'). But we don't learn why his marriages failed, he doesn't talk about substance abuse of friends and colleagues other than to say they 'looked thin' and he seems to shrug off not talking to Bowie for 14 years for no apparent reason. So it's a mix of some cruel self-truths and some vagueing. But maybe being vague is his way of saying 'it's not for me to tell tales outside the classroom'...

It's a thoroughly enjoyable read, well written and kept me engaged to the end (which is why I'm blogging at this time of the morning since it's buzzing round my head having just finished it). It's a delight to read about how Bowie and Bolan's records were made and all the name-dropping is wonderful - I'm probably the ideal age to read it. He even mentions Cherry Vanilla who was occasionally mentioned in NME but I didn't recall that she was David Bowie's personal assistant. It's this kind of detail that makes it a great read.

Marc Bolan doesn't emerge as a very nice person (that's common knowledge really) but gets full credit for his creativity in the early 70s before blowing it big-time. David Bowie, on the other hand, comes across as a thorough gentleman, unfailingly polite and generous. Tony dedicates a lot of time to talking about their albums that he worked on but pays special attention to 'Scary Monsters' giving a track by track narrative of the songs, referring to it several times as Bowie's 'Sgt Pepper'. I'm listening to it at the moment.

His great works were when he was based in London from the late '60s to late '80s after which he moved back to New York where he still lives and still produces and writes. The book ends with a short chapter on how the music biz has changed over the years, the almost ceremonial nature of buying a new vinyl record and listening to it for the first time and how that's now changed in the digital age. I recall that ceremony, saving up for a new record, treasuring it, reading the lyric sheets and gazing at artwork. It's not the same today and he blames big business for much of what's wrong with music today, the blandness. He sees the internet as the way forward, where people can discover obscure music from the other side of the world that changes their lives. I think I agree but still revel in live music - that's a ceremony too.

At various stages in the book I wondered why he wrote it. Money? Certainly, he doesn't seem to have made it big-time rich though probably still gets a healthy cheque for his work with Marc and Bowie in the '70s. But he could probably make just as much by doing a book of his photos which would be a lot easier and quicker - a lot of work seems have gone into writing the book. For posterity? To illustrate aspects of the lives of legends he worked with that only he could know? Probably.

But I wonder if it's also to get down on paper the details of the recording process from the '60s through to the '80s and the rise of digital media that made it all obsolete. He clearly loves music and studios and he was the rebel producer in the '70s delighting in creating and discovering new sounds, as he did with digital equipment in the '80s and '90s and even has some drum machine programming named after him. What we can do with the press of a button on a computer now used to take a day of careful work back then. And he did it endlessly to give us the sounds we take for granted today. Credit where it's due.

If you're interested in music history at all, or especially in Bowie and Bolan, then this is the book for you. He talks about working with loads of others, from Joe Cocker in the '60s, Thin Lizzy in the '70s, Hayzey Fantazey (I never thought I'd name-check them in this blog!) in the '80s, U2 in the '90s and Morrissey in the '00s. But the core is his friendship with Bowie and Bolan and the wonderful music he helped them create.