Bowie before Tony Visconti:

Bowie before Tony Visconti:
>a literal who
Bowie after Tony Visconti:
>suddenly "gets" some music taste so he can rip-off some at least decent artists
>suddenly the music gets to at least the quality standard
>suddenly becomes a popstar

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bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/breaking-glass/
youtube.com/watch?v=9BBAEUOOFKQ
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k tony

I don't understand this obsession with trying to put down Bowie's work. He made incredible music, and it wouldn't have been possible without an incredible producer, both are great in their own rights

Only a philistine would believe such tripe. Bowie worked with talented artists like painters use colours; he was a meta-musician, a conductor. People attibuted Ronson to Bowie's success, Bowie shed him and reinvented. Bowie shed Visconti too and made the step into mega-stardom without him.

>Only a philistine would believe such tripe.
how is this wrong exactly?
>He made

bowie was literally the lady gaga of the 70s/80s

Visconti talked shit about the breakthrough single Space Oddity and palmed it off too someone else to produce. He produced MWSTW because he was in the band with Bowie but didn't produce any of these breakthrough albums:

>Hunky Dory
>Ziggy Stardust
>Alladin Sane
>Diamond Dogs

Visconti obviously lacked real vision, which is why Bowie probably dumped him for Let's Dance which was his biggest album by a mile.

Abit pretentious but okay.

Could argue the beatles relied on george martin just as much or more. Artists also rip eachother off all the time. Bruce springsteen is one of the biggest. He has stated before how hes explicitely takeb lines from other songs but hes still great.

Visconti worked on Diamond Dogs

Only minimally as an arranger, Bowie is credited as the only producer for this album.

he mixed it

Who's hyped for Visconti's Lodger remix next Friday?

So fucking what you homo? Still not credited for production so suck a fuck.

don't talk to me about credit

you're retarded my mang

Visconti is really underrated, co-produced the majority of Bowie's albums and he's not that well known, especially on here, lots of people still think Eno co-produced the trilogy when his input is really overblown, he only wrote a few songs and played synth in the studio.

Me. It's about time, he'd been talking about it for years.

What I really want is a Scary Monsters boxset with demos, there's snippets of them in an interview he did youtube.com/watch?v=2goIYDNfz5c

Totally ignores all the artists Bowie saved from the shitheap:

>Lou Reed
>Iggy Pop
>Tina Turner
>Nina Simone

He also was responsible for poaching Belew from Zappa and ultimately the best lineup of King Crimson.

>Lodger remix

Not particularly. Lodger's raw sound is what makes it good.

>demos

Would pay infinity bucks for that. Also a production breakdown of Ashes to Ashes which is the greatest rock song of all time.

Visconti's favourite Bowie song is Lady Grinning Soul, he's patrician as fuck

Tina turner and nina simone? Not sure you can attribute bowie to "saving them from the shit heap" but then again not sure whay you talking about.

You can definitely see enos influence heavily though so i disagree about it being overblown. Listen to another green world and youll here the building blocks of low plus the same treatments on instruments as both low and heroes. His influence is very very tasteable.

Oh I know that, it's just annoying that some people act like Eno did most of the instrumentals himself, and when people are listing favourite Eno albums I see Low come up sometimes.

femalefirst.co.uk/music/musicnews/Tina Turner David Bowie-902.html

>It was because of David that I got another deal, and everything else followed. I'll be ever thankful to him.

This deal saw the release of Private Dancer, which defined Turner as a pop queen for the 80s.

Completely irrelevant. This has nothing to do with music. Bowie made no musical or creative input. Jut the equivalent of a family friend helping you into an internship. Now nina simone?

>wouldn't have been possible without an incredible producer,

Nope. There are always people who want to deny that individual talent exists, but it seems absurd to me that people would miss how great Bowie records not produced by Visconti are. I mean, his key fame-cementing records - Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs - weren't produced by Visconti, and the first Visconti record was dirge-filled sub-metal with a couple of decent songs. After TMWSTW, the next Visconti record was Young Americans, where the operative element is obviously the musicians and arrangements. Later, the Berlin albums, while not produced by Eno, are shaped by his collaboration with Bowie - what Visconti was getting coming into the console had been tinkered with by Eno, so again, it's not Visconti.

The proof that Visconti's contribution is overstated: compare his work without Bowie to Bowie's work without him. Bowie without Visconti produced many classic albums. Visconti without Bowie produces a Morrissey album that sounds like every other Morrissey album, a Manic Street Preachers album that sounds like every other Manic Street Preachers album, and his girlfriend, whose records sound like her and her band playing in a room. Visconti finally isn't a producer, he's a recording engineer, and not in an interesting Steve Albini way.

Nobody has ever been able to tell me what Visconti added on a sonic level. There's nothing in his production where I think "wow". If it's a question of arrangements, again, Bowie didn't need him for that, however many of his suggestions may have helped.

Also, Visconti's appetite for self-publicity and self-mythologization is insufferable. It was his indiscrete recounting of stuff about Bowie's son that led to the severance in their relationship for years.

*indiscreet

Fripp and Belew's sounds are also very definitive of the respective albums they appeared on, as are Visconti's innovative drum treatments and the tight groove of the rhythm trio. But the reality is it was Bowie's incredible vocal presence and range, and production skill which defines those Berlin albums.

For Heroes, besides the bellowing power of his vocal, he also got Fripp to record three takes cold and then managed to mix all three takes upfront. He would have used Visconti's engineering skill as he would have used Fripp's guitar mastery. Bowie was something else man everyone who worked with him has always said so.

Fuck off dickhead, move the goalposts up your faggot ass.

>>suddenly becomes a popstar

Space Oddity was a hit before Bowie worked with Visconti. Then Visconti produced TMWSTW, and it killed his commercial momentum. Whatever Visconti added, it wasn't hitmaking ability.

>innovative drum treatments

Eno's.

Its nothint to do with the post though. Bowies influence helping someone through the door. I thought this post was about creativity and musoc quality


>btfo

Now retort in a balanced and reasoned way.

Same thing for Mick Ronson who I think was believing his own hype. Just listen to that pantsload solo album he put out and compare it to Diamond Dogs where Bowie fired him and played the guitar himself.

There's no denying that Ronno was an incredible talent, but that's like saying that red is a nice paint colour. Without Bowie wielding him what is he?

Maybe it was bowies choice of music style that killed it? Metal wasnt commercially popular then.

Viscontis... this is well known.

Tony Visconti's only irreplaceable contribution to David Bowie's work was conducting his extramarital affair directly outside the window of the studio under the shadow of the Berlin wall, which inspired that one verse of "Heroes". The rest is just competent engineering.

Lies.

bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2011/02/10/breaking-glass/

>The trick was Visconti’s Eventide Harmonizer, which Visconti legendarily claimed “fucks with the fabric of time.” For Low, Visconti used the Harmonizer to sample the drum audio and, an instant later, echo the sound, but with the drums’ pitch dropped a semi-tone. Then Visconti, in his words, “added the feedback of this tone to itself.” So when Davis hit his snare drum, he heard in his headphones the “crack” but the following “thud” never stopped, it just deepened and deepened in tone. Visconti described the latter as sounding like a man struck in the stomach (forever).

>At first, Bowie was unsure about the distorted drum sound, so Visconti sneakily turned down the effect in the control room but kept it on in Davis’ headphones. So on “Glass” (and other Low tracks) Davis is dueting with his echo, in real time. He’s varying the power and length of his snare hits, especially on the one! one! one-two! one-two! pattern in the intro, and seems to be creating the massive synthesized, gated drum sound of ’80s pop music in the process.

>Nobody has ever been able to tell me what Visconti added on a sonic level. There's nothing in his production where I think "wow".
The innovative microphone setup on "Heroes"
The harmonizer on Low
Those are the really massive ones, but I'm sure there are other crucial contributions I'm missing.
>compare his work without Bowie to Bowie's work without him
I'm not an expert on Visconti's work outside Bowie, but the guy is surprisingly prolific. He famously did T-Rex's big albums unless I'm mistaken. He produced Esperanza Spalding's latest album, which I personally love. Sure, he's not some kind of visionary or anything, but he does his job exceptionally well, which is a perfectly fine way for a producer to behave.
Great bass player as well.

Absolutely. This happens again and again, talented sidemen, overpraised, leave and find themselves exposed to the elements.


Either Visconti was solely responsible for Bowie's music or he wasn't, you can't credit him for the hits and Bowie for the flops. Visconti was so far from being an auteur producer that it's ridiculous, but still people talk this shit.


No, Visconti claims to have done it, and the microphone delay was his, but the sonics are essentially Bowie and Eno's. What has Visconti done without Bowie? I can wait all day, the answer is: nothing.

>prolific
Yeah, and you can name about five, in a fifty year career.

>not some kind of visionary
That's right, he's a nothing who gets overpraised by young men whose ambition is to be the guy who doesn't correct people when he's unjustly credited for something.

How are those contributions any more significant than Dennis Davis' drumming or George Murray's legendary basslines?

>What is T-Rex
also, people need to listen to Carmen. They're a GOAT flamenco rock band that Visconti worked with in the early 70's. Bowie was big into them.

He owned the equipment and set it up. All in a day's work, not authorship.

It's a shame because Trev Bolder and Woody knew the score and were pretty upset about the band going away. They were also great definitive musicians in their own right who contributed to that ripping sound. I would hve been chuffed to even do one song with Bowie. ;w;

1. I know T-Rex, there are no more than four big albums by them, their time at the top was brief.

2. Don't resort to nobodies, admit it - Tony Visconti has achieved nothing without Bowie, other than telling anecdotes that usually don't check out (he once claimed to have taught Dennis Davis how to play reggae).

It's true, it's a pity people have to shit the bed, but that's human nature, I guess.

He is bowies cuck, his penis is smol

I don't think it's overstated, he's understated if anything. Not saying Bowie isn't talented or his other producers aren't, it's obvious Bowie does the majority of the work.

Also, as much as I love 'Hours...' (I must be one of the few people that do) and Toy there must be something Visconti was doing right production-wise when you go from those to Heathen/Reality/TND/Blackstar, it's a massive difference. Plati's and Gabrels' production wasn't very good and I'm glad he and Visconti got back together in the end.

Ask yourself why nobody was queuing up to work with Visconti after Bowie. People who've produced that many hit records usually have more success to show for it afterwards. With Visconti, the pickings are incredibly slim. Probably because people within the industry knew who did what, and only a bitter outsider like Morrissey, who refuses to acknowledge any talent in Bowie, or total hicks like Manic Street Preachers, would think that Visconti could make their records sound like Bowie's.

No, it's massively overstated.

"Hours..." is a really interesting album. It's shocking MOR, but that being a deliberate choice is interesting.

Heathen and Reality are atrocious, let's be honest. A lot of the meat of TND is also sonically indistinguishable from what any Loudness War-era guy would do with a rock setup. Blackstar's greatness is down to the arrangements and players - Visconti can't fuck up those horns + James Murphy beats.

*shockingly

Hours wasn't a real strong album, Earthling is a solid album but a little mid-life. It may be that Heathen was Bowie getting over that hump and owning his maturity. He did some pretty wild stuff like that cover of Gemini Spaceship, perhaps he was having trouble getting that kind of idea across. I think it's because he dumped Reeves Gabrels that was a pretty worn out collab.

Saw Reeves touring with The Cure last year pretty good show too.

What Visconti added.

- good bass player
- a mate, so not the record company's man
- ... did an interesting mic placement once
- set up some kit he owned to do something interesting when asked

I love Dennis Davis and that whole rhythm section to pieces but... I mean
the sound of Bowie's vocal is one of the main reasons that song is so gargantuan
and the gated reverb drum sound is one of the defining sounds of the latter part of the 20th century.

I think Visconti had a good working relationship, he knew what Bowie wanted and what he meant when he asked for something way out. I think later producers second-guessed him or underminded Bowie's creativity.

Absolutely.

That sound emphatically isn't the gated reverb sound. It doesn't even sound that much like it.

>it doesn't even sound that much like it
empirically false

Did anyone do more collaboration with Bowie than Carlos Alomar?

Nope. He wasn't special. He was useful. He worked well. Bowie got rid of him for years because he told a story about Bowie's son in a press interview.

The only Bowie producer responsible for virtually everything about the sound of the (first) album he worked on is Nile Rodgers, but young white men don't say shit about that for some reason, I WONDER WHY

I miss bowie. ;_____;

Get your ears cleaned.

Don't think so.

Oh come on now, that's a killer record. I remember when it came out it was something else.

Me too. ;_;

because it sounds bad

>Popular consensus is wrong and should change to align with my perspective

I'm not saying it isn't killer, I think it's great, and find the snobbery about it from Bowie fans tiresome, my point is that Nile Rodgers has openly been acknowledged by all involved as being responsible for practically everything but the vocals, but nobody wants to emphasize the fact, because he's black and too talented for thier sadsack asses to identify with. The fact that Visconti WASN'T the defining contributor to the Bowie albums he worked on is exactly why they try to claim that he was. I was once in a band with one of these people - they play the passive role so that they can claim the credit later. See also John French and most former members of The Fall.

Wrong, it's a pop masterpiece.

It's not the popular consensus, it's extremely metaphorical listening by one blogger.

Remember when Let's Dance was supposed to be a melancholy downbeat number but Nile Rodgers made Bowie change it because of white privilege ?

I wouldn't consider it any more than a pop 6/10-sterpiece, but to each their own

Music historians and casual listeners alike have all independently observed the same thing as me

I'm talking about observable facts, not SJW attitudinzing. Nile Rodgers did it all, nobody cares, Tony Visconti was a recording engineer, everyone claims he WAS Bowie. Why? They're white losers who project their egos onto the lieutenants and also-rans of culture, and are intimidated by real authors.

No they haven't, though some of them may have failed to observe the invalidity of such a statement. If all drum treatments=the gated reverb sound, Lennon and Spector invented it.

Normies love Nile Rodgers and I see him referenced way more often than Tony Visconti outside of the echo-chamber.
My opinion is that he had a mostly detrimental effect on the music of that album. ...

and put Bowie into a funk it took him roughly an entire decade to get out of

>Heathen and Reality are atrocious, let's be honest

Reality is one of his best albums.

Except of course that bowie is a legend and has decades of material that is great. Gaga in her first decade of her career released maybe 1 album that was mediocre

Let's Dance is an amazing song. You can put all that disco funk production you want it's Bowie's vocal style that sets it apart. That album has a real edgy dark undertone like the ambiguous and powerful China Girl which would just sound like banal trash if anyone else sang it. Also a nice touch slipping the subversive Criminal World on there which was banned from radio play a few years earlier.

He did something similar with Tonight and took Iggy's remorseful junkie dirge about his dead girlfriend and turned it into a schmaltz reggae duet with Tina Turner. I think he was being a bit cheeky with that one.

>China Girl would sound like banal trash if anyone else sang it
>He doesn't know
>youtube.com/watch?v=9BBAEUOOFKQ

Didn't Lady Caca kill herself after that woeful "tribute" shit inflicted on us after Bowie died? And if not, why not?

>I think he was being a bit cheeky with that one
>Implying 1984 Bowie was anything more than a creatively bankrupt husk of a man

Your point?

>implying that Loving the Alien and BlueJean aren't two of his best singles

No, of course he didn't, that album was exactly what it was supposed to be. Bowie's shitness afterwards was lack of inspiration and economic need - the Tony DeFries situation had made regular turnover crucial up until shortly before Let's Dance.

No, it's absolutely dreadful. It means nothing, it's just depressive dad-rock.

The production is superb. Really, it's a dance album of sorts, in that the songs wouldn't be there without the specific way they were produced. Let's Dance is almost unimaginable on a piano or guitar, the arrangement and production is the body of the track.

Criminal World wasn't subversive once he'd straightened out the lyrics. That's not a criticism, just an observation.

With Tonight he had little voice. He wanted to help Iggy out, plus pad out an album he had no material for, and there are very few Iggy songs that are suitable for normal people to sing.

Meant to put little *choice.

Slightly revisionist, Bowie was a phenomenon in the 80s. Check out this, I remember this he absolutely owned it. A man on top of the world.

youtube.com/watch?v=bDQkaI6DT3s

>No, it's absolutely dreadful. It means nothing, it's just depressive dad-rock.

Not true. Some of his best stuff is on there.

Bring Me The Disco King is a classic.

What the fuck are you talking about? I didn't deny he was successful, but he was pretty shit. Tonight isn't a good album. Never Let Me Down is less bad than sometimes made out but much less good than Let's Dance, and Tin Machine were fucking woeful.

I will say this, though - Let's Dance is a better album than Scary Monsters. Scary Monsters is a step down from Lodger.

I actually really like Time Will Crawl, Bowie did a remix of it in 2008 without the 80s production that's pretty good. It has great lyrics imo.

youtube.com/watch?v=Faix1BsVx_A


I agree with you though, 80s was his worst period creatively. [spoiler]90s was one of his best[/spoiler]

I agree with everything you've said there, though I don't mind the original production too much, it all hangs together well there.

Why did Bowie stop making music for so long after Reality? Was it because of the heart attack?

I can always listen to Let's Dance but I have to be in the mood for Scary Monsters. Ashes to Ashes is still my favourite Bowie song though.

I think it has a better reputation than Lodger only because the singles are better, but the album tracks on Scary Monsters are a lot more samey than those on Lodger. It's No Game Part 1. is great, though, one of his finest moments.

Yeah, I think he wanted to enjoy life for a bit, he started out in music in his mid-teens, time for a break.

Anyone other than Bowie would have ended up touring as a Ziggy tribute band for the rest of his life. Can you imagine an old Bowie in Ziggy outfit like KISS still do with their gimmick?

bowie has one of if not the best discography of any artist. tonight and never let me down are only his only bad albums, and both have some good songs on them. that's 2 out of like 30 or something albums.

Im no viscontifag.

Good, well we can both accept the real reason - Bowie hadn't written any hits that year. I was just wondering how people who say Bowie was a failure, then Visconti gave him the magic touch, reconcile the fact that Bowie had the first hit of his career not working with Visconti, then had a flop with him.

Tony Visconti married John Lennon's gross used goods.

I like both of those albums and they were very popular when released, in fact they are his second and third best selling album ever. I liked them then too.