THE ZIGGY FILES

It’s been forty years now since David Bowie’s groundbreaking album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars came to life—and EMI has just released a special 40^th Anniversary remastered edition. Ziggy was recorded at Trident Studios, in London, between November 8, 1971 and February 4, 1972, in a flurry of all-night sessions that resulted in one of rock’s most singular albums. TREATS! drops by the studio of Ken Scott, the legendary co-producer and engineer of Ziggy, to talk about making of the album, working with Bowie, The Stones, Pink Floyd & The Beatles—and his new memoir.

by Harvey Kubernik

 

 

What was it like working on the 40^th Anniversary remastered Ziggy after all these years? Did you enjoy the process?

 

You know, I always think I could do certain things differently, which is great because it always gives me something to strive for. So I always like re-visiting things or working on them because I say to myself, “I would have done that differently,” and it gives me more to do. Specifically with Ziggy some of the sounds I got I have no idea how I got them.

 

Listening to it again recently, Mick Ronson’s orchestral arrangements are really amazing.

 

Yes. Mick’s arrangements were amazing. He wasn’t trained so he didn’t know rules. So it was an ‘anything went’ kind of thing. If it sounded good that’s the way he wanted it. Which was very much like the Beatles. They didn’t know the rules, either.

 

You used lots of acoustic guitars, too.

 

Yes. I tended to use acoustic guitar instead of the hi hat. But to me the thing that makes the album stand up after all this time are Bowie’s vocals. Generally speaking, 95 per cent of them were first takes. They are real. They are human. They get to you. They pull you in. Let’s face it: If the vocal was bad we would have re-done it…. but we didn’t need to. That probably comes from a certain amount from him not wanting to do it again. He just put his heart and soul into it straight off. It was whatever felt right. There were no rules. I just did whatever I wanted to do.

 

 

As engineer and co-producer on Bowie’s previous Hunky Dory and then Ziggy, what was the one main thing you could now implement wearing both hats?

 

For Ziggy David told me going in, “I don’t think you’re going to like this one, it’s much more rock ‘n’ roll.” And there were only a few demos. We just flew by the seat of our pants. I was being able to make suggestions artistically and musically that would have previously had to go through a middleman—the producer. For me it made things easier and quicker.

 

In your new book, you reinforce the fact that Ziggy really was not a concept album.

 

Yes. When we first turned Ziggy in to the label, they didn’t hear a single. We removed “Round and Round,” a Chuck Berry song, and then David came up with “Star Man.” My favorite song on the album is “Moonage Daydream.”

 

What was sequencing the album like?

 

I can’t remember who came up with the final sequencing because it was on black plastic vinyl we were limited to how we could set up running orders. We had to try and keep as much as possible equal amount of time on each side. And so I would generally sit there and take songs, work out timings and say, “Ok, we can put these together and these together. Or we may be able to swop that song with that song. We certainly couldn’t swop that song with that song kind of thing.” I was constantly setting up what kind of songs we could have on either side.

 

 

One of many sonic innovations you integrated into the Ziggy audio experience, which perhaps made some of us feel it was sort of a concept album, was the way you spaced or limited the silences between tracks. Selections at times bleed into each other.

 

Right. One of the things for me that had been started and I wanted to fight against was the whole thing at Abbey Road where it used to be five seconds between every track. It had to be exactly five seconds. And there were times when having that five-second delay between first song and second song…felt right. There are other times when you wanted something to come in faster. When I was mixing, if I did one track and the one that was going to follow it, I would immediately put it in then if it felt right. Generally it would be on the beat. Sometimes a bit late and sometimes right on top. But I always tried to get it in time so your foot would be tapping and then you hit the first downbeat of the next track and carry on that way. But that was me fighting the establishment of Abbey Road.

 

Did David attend the mixing sessions?

 

David didn’t like going to the mixing sessions. That was amazing to me—the trust that David put in me. He just left me alone completely. But that trust was mutual. I attempted to allow him that same freedom in the studio. So it worked both ways. He had the studio to play with. I had the mixing room to play with. And we’re still talking about 40 years later.

 

Tell me about your new book?

 

I was flown back to Abbey Road for a 15-minute session with Duran Duran and I was talking with one of the maintenance guys who had been there at the time when I started, and he reminded me of some of the conversations we used to have with the old timers where they would tell us these amazing stories. And he said that we were now the old timers and the youngsters wanted to hear our stories. So that kind of got the wheels in motion a little. I’ve always been into the next project and didn’t want to talk about my past. Then I was working with George (Harrison) for a long time and doing the 5.1 mix of Ziggy Stardust and suddenly my past started to become my present again. And that opened me up more. Then I got approached by a publishing company and it all made sense.

 

 

Until fairly recently, why has the recording engineer often been viewed as a backroom boy?

 

It’s two fold: Number one, it’s just the way it was back then. For the longest time, even on the Beatles’ White Album, record companies didn’t give engineers credits. EMI certainly didn’t. And the other thing is I know one of my own original things going into engineering is that I wanted to be a backroom boy. I didn’t have the confidence or the desire to be in the public eye. I know it was a conscious effort on my part to do it that way.

 

The book is a terrific blend of the anecdotal, the technical and fantastic black and white photos to augment the journey.

 

I didn’t have a lot of artifacts and just trying to get pictures and finding them was really hard. Back in those days it wasn’t the thing to take pictures in the studio—like the schoolteacher would hit your wrists or George Martin would throw you out of the session. (laughs)

 

Your book also illustrates that you’ve had a re-evaluation of Sir George Martin’s role as the producer of the Beatles. You seem to further appreciate his work and vision even more since the late ‘60s when you worked under him.

 

Yes but not just the book—but in my life, too. I think it first started to change when I heard David had called me “his George Martin” on the BBC in England. And my first thing was, “I don’t know if I like that.” Then when I started to think about it I realized how much I had taken from George and just that whole thing of allowing the artistic freedom. And you’re there to give advice. To control if you have too but don’t overdue that control. Artists need to create. And that’s what you have to let them do. Creating is just like breathing for them. You can’t stop them breathing. And I got that from George. I was young and learning my gig so that didn’t quite resonate with me the way it does today.

 

 

Finally, didn’t George just present you with an award?

 

Yes, at The Sound Fellowship of the United Kingdom’s Association of Professional Recording Services. It was an absolutely astounding moment for me.

 

Harvey Kubernik has been an active music journalist for 40 years and the author of 5 books, including This Is Rebel Music (2002) and Hollywood Shack Job: Rock Music In Film and On Your Screen. In 2009, Kubernik wrote the critically acclaimed Canyon of Dreams The Magic and the Music of Laurel Canyon and in 2011 he co-authored the highly regarded A Perfect Haze: The Illustrated History of the Monterey International Pop Festival.