Tony Visconti: The Autobiography: Bowie, Bolan and the Brooklyn Boy. Morrissey
To be responsible for every aspect of a recording a record producer should have a working knowledge of recording techniques and music. Many modern record producers are experts at one or the other or both. I have read that we also have to be psychologists, but that’s a bit far fetched. I see us more as coaches, a job where some psychology might be necessary. My mentor, Denny Cordell, instinctively knew how to get the best out of an artist and the best sound out of a sound engineer. My policy is to interfere as little as possible, but to draw out the best in the artists I work with, especially the singers. Sometimes I offer advice for the substitution of a word or a melody (for which I don’t take a royalty); I’ve also sung backing vocals and played various instruments too. The best part is towards the end, when I sit at a mixing console and put it all together.
All in all it’s a very nice occupation.
BOAC Flight 506, April 1967
It’s been a long day.
I’m a night person, but I had to get up very early for my daytime flight and now it’s nearly 11 p.m., London time. The flight is about seven hours long; adding the extra five hours of time zones makes this day surreal. I had hardly slept at all the previous night, nor did I sleep on the plane, and with sleep deprivation comes a dream-like state. As the BOAC jet is landing at London’s Heathrow Airport I keep saying to myself, ‘Is this really happening to me?’ Some realities are evident, but this reality is yet unformed. I’ve been out of my country of birth only three times, once to play three weeks in a Toronto nightclub, a Far East tour with a ’50s revival group and to Paris for a week, with a side trip to Monaco, in a show featuring Liza Minnelli. But this was the trip to the Mecca of modern pop music. No one did it better than the Brits and no Brits did it better than the Beatles. I also had an eerie feeling that I was returning home. A week earlier I had turned twenty-three years old. This was some birthday present.
In a short time I would be going through British Customs and Immigration with four guitars and a lot of explaining to do. I didn’t have a visa that allowed me to work in Britain.
Looking like a nervous zombie I approach the long row of immigration desks. I’d been told to stick to my story, no matter how much I’m drilled: ‘I’m here on vacation.’ If I said I was going to do even one hour’s work in England I’d be sent back to New York on the next plane. Even in my zombie state, I’m repeating my mantra—vacation, vacation, I’m here on vacation. Oh God! I want to work in this country so bad. I want to learn how they do it. How did the Beatles make a record so clever, so profound as Revolver? And I’d recently heard that they’re finishing a new album, which took nearly a year to make. Tony, don’t blow it. Remember it’s a vacation.
As I stand in line at Immigration, I’m wondering if I made the right choice. What a pair of balls, the audacity. What right did I have coming here? As an arranger I’m not that good, I’m unproven I tell myself. I’m just an all-round type of guy, maybe clever but not great at anything, with just enough wits about me to survive in the music business. There are hundreds of arrangers Denny could’ve picked. I feel the sudden need to go to the toilet.
Customs! Immigration!…What the fuck do they think this is, the Garden of Eden? I couldn’t believe the ‘Gestapo’ waiting for me on this little island in the North Sea. Immigration wasn’t so bad, I asked for a six-month visitor’s visa. Then I was asked what I would live on and I had to show them all the money I had—four hundred dollars in cash (I wouldn’t have my first credit card for a few years). ‘I’ll give you a month,’ said Basil Fawlty (or his brother), ‘and don’t you even think of doing even a minute’s work whilst you’re here!’ File me under ‘apprehensive’. I was in trouble immediately. I thought I had failed Denny. I was going to be booted out in a month. Denny swore he would get me working papers, which takes a long time, but he needed my services immediately. I just barely made it through Immigration, but I still had Her Majesty’s Customs ahead of me.
Back then Customs and Immigration were a lot tougher. It’s a relative breeze through now; strangely so in these times of global terrorism. It wasn’t only me; every time I returned to Britain there would be a queue of woeful people sitting it out, waiting to be interrogated further. The Customs tables would be groaning under the weight of mountains of underwear and dirty laundry. Their cousins in Scotland Yard had busted Mick Jagger, Keith Richard and Marianne Faithful for having too much fun, with a Mars Bar so it was said. Swinging Londoners seemed to be in short supply at Heathrow. With my long hair down to my shoulders I was very much in the minority. I also had four suitcases and four guitars with me, and I expected Customs to believe I was coming for just a vacation. Luckily I was prepared for the worst.
| H.M. Customs: | Why so many guitars, if you’re on holiday? |
| Me, the scruffy one: | Oh that’s easy. I’m a professional musician and all of these guitars are different types—electric, acoustic, a bass; I have to practice each one daily! |
| H.M. Customs: | You will not sell one of these instruments whilst you are in the United Kingdom. Is that understood? When you leave here you must be in possession of all of these instruments! |
| Me: | Yes, sir. |
| H.M. Customs: | Open this suitcase. (He eyes my black kimono, my bathrobe.) Do you intend to perform in this country? |
| Me: | No, sir. |
| H.M. Customs: | Ah ha! Got you! This is your stage gear. (He waves my kimono over his head.) Why did you bring this with you if you say you’re not performing (he was so ’66, kimonos were out, military clothes were in)? |
| Me: | It’s my bathrobe! I’m not performing. |
| H.M. Customs: | Your bathrobe? You mean your dressing gown? |
| Me: | What’s a dressing gown? It’s my bathrobe! |
| H.M. Customs: | Yes, that’s a dressing gown. But you wear it on stage, right? |
| Me: | No, only in my house, after I take a shower (it really was my bathrobe). |
This conversation preceded a complete search of my four suitcases. All my fellow passengers were long gone as I was grilled over and over again. I told them that Denny was waiting for me and he would verify my story (about coming for a vacation). So they found him in the Arrivals lounge and grilled him too.
At around 1:30 a.m. we pulled up to the door of Denny’s basement flat in the Fulham Road, his family (a wife and two small boys) asleep. He showed me to a couch, which I quickly learned was a settee. ‘That’s where you’ll sleep tonight. Would you like me to draw a bath for you?’ I declined, since I hadn’t had a bath since my mother last gave me one. I needed a shower, which Denny’s and most English homes didn’t have. But he had the biggest bathtub I had ever seen. This was awful. Even though I eventually succumbed to bathing in my body’s dirty water and rinsing myself with water from a cooking pot, I wouldn’t have an American-style high-pressure shower