Customer Reviews

Tony Visconti: The Autobiography: Bowie, Bolan and the Brooklyn Boy

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Without sounding like an all-out fan (I most assuredly am!), Bowie, Bolan and The Brooklyn Boy mounts an incredible story beginning with Tony's days as a young boy in Brooklyn, to playing in the Catskills, to meeting the NYC music community, to his loves, to landing in London and meeting T. Rex, David Bowie, Joe Cocker, The Moody Blues, The Alarm, Mc Cartney, having children, getting married, building studios, the fun of it all, coming back to America and realizing great success on his home turf. A MUST HAVE for any music fan!

From documentaries and interviews, I have always felt that Tony Visconti is a very down-to-earth person and, as such, looked forward to a memoir that dished but showed restraint, objectivity and wasn't tabloid-esque. He came through on all counts with flying colours. His anecdotal tales are both amusing and insightful. His story and success will probably never be repeated. In that I mean, a producer starting today when the music industry is so about disposable talent without the willingness to nurture *real* talent, his is a wonderful tale of being in the right place at the right time and all the consequent talents coming to him when they were complete unknowns.

Thank you Tony for shedding so much light on two of my favourite musicians and sharing your story with us!

I first saw the name of Tony Visconti on a David Bowie album, as a producer, and of all the records he has produced, the Bowie records are the most well known. Though he passed on producing the single, Space Oddity, and didn't produce Bowie's breakthrough album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, he produced many of David's best albums, from the beginning of his career to more recent ones like Heathen. The Man Who Sold the World, Low, Heroes, Diamond Dogs, Scary Monsters, Young Americans and Lodger were all produced by Visconti. Eleven of David Bowie's albums were produced by Visconti, along with lots of other projects over the years. Visconti played various instruments and did string arrangements, all part of his job as record producer. He was friends with Bowie from the beginning, and even played bass in an early Bowie band that might have been the first glam rock band, The Hype. Visconti was just a fledgling producer, young and hungry, and he couldn't convince the suits at his label that Bowie was destined for stardom. Once he became Ziggy Stardust, rock star, he turned to his old pal Tony time and again.

One of Visconti's other projects that would one day bear fruit was Marc Bolan and his band T. Rex, which began as just Marc on acoustic guitar and Steve Peregrine Took on bongo drums. Soon Bolan would go electric, and not long after, just two weeks shy of his 30th birthday, he would die in a car accident on September 16th, 1977. Visconti worked with the creative but egotistical Bolan on most of his best albums, such as My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair... But Now They're Content to Wear Stars on Their Brows, The Slider, Electric Warrior, Tanx, and Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow (Bolan was tremendously jealous of Bowie, but was this last title a kind of tribute to Ziggy?).

While Bolan and Bowie were perhaps his best known clients, he produced an amazing variety of albums for other artists, such as Gentle Giant, Iggy Pop, Adam Ant, Badfinger, Morrissey, Linda McCartney, The Strawbs, Thin Lizzy, Osibisa, Mary Hopkin (who he was married to, and had 2 kids with), Rick Wakeman, and Sparks. His autobiography covers an amazing career, and also details Visconti's other interests, such as martial arts, Buddhism, The Alexander Technique, and reincarnation. As the book focused mostly on music, and music that I have loved and listened to for years, wondering how exactly it was produced, I found it to be hard to put down. For me, it was the ultimate page turner. I blazed through it in just a few days. When I was done, I felt like Tony Visconti was an old friend of mine, and I wished I could just call him up and talk to him. I found his website and joined his MySpace page.

Tony Visconti has been married four times and admits that music was his one true love, and that he bears most of the blame for the breakup of his relationships. He was married to Mary Hopkin, who was perhaps best known for her hit song, Those Were the Days. He loved her voice and recorded lots of material of her singing, but she hated touring, and no labels wanted to release her records if she wasn't going to tour in support of them. He had 2 kids with Hopkin, and he also had 2 kids with another wife, May Pang. May Pang was best known for being John Lennon's girlfriend during a turbulent period when he was separated from Yoko Ono, and Pang describes this in her book John Lennon: The Lost Weekend that she wrote along with Henry Edwards.

Tony's book begins with Tony as a boy in Brooklyn with a keen interest in music who worked in the Catskills and knew show biz people like Milton Berle, but when he heard The Beatles he knew that he wanted to go to London and learn the strange alchemy they used to get their sounds. Opportunity met preparation when he bumped into record producer Denny Cordell who was in New York to record with US jazz musicians for a track for singer Georgie Fame. Cordell didn't have any arrangements, thinking the jazz players could just wing it, but the eager young Visconti knew that wasn't the way it was done, and was able to sketch out some quick arrangements for the session. This led to his being asked to work in London in 1967, and soon he was assisting Cordell with groups like The Move, Manfred Mann, Joe Cocker, and Procol Harum. He was in the right place at the right time, and became one of the main movers and shakers during this fertile period.

While recording in Berlin with David Bowie he stopped by the Berlin Wall to kiss his girlfriend. David Bowie was watching from his window and was inspired to write the following lyrics:

I can remember
Standing
By the wall
And the guns
Shot above our heads
And we kissed
As though nothing could fall

1968: My People Were Fair And Had Sky In Their Hair...But Now They're Content To Wear Stars On Their Brows [Vinyl] - Tyrannosaurus Rex
1970: The Man Who Sold the World - David Bowie
1971: Acquiring the Taste - Gentle Giant
1972: The Slider - T. Rex
1977: The Idiot - Iggy Pop
1977: Low - David Bowie
1977: Heroes - David Bowie
1985: Vive le Rock - Adam Ant
2006: Ringleader of the Tormentors - Morrissey

Read all about it in tony visconti, the autobiography. Tony Visconti sums it all up with these three quotes from some of the artists he has worked with:

'Life's a gas.' Marc Bolan
'Life's a pigsty.' Morrissey
'We could be heroes.' David Bowie

I didn't realize what an important figure Tony was for Bowie, Bolan etc. Well written and I love his bitching about not gettting credit for so much...Marc Bolan.

This book is full of great rock and roll stories on Bowie, T Rex, Electric Angeles,D Generation and the swinging 1970's! Had a blast reading all that I missed out on and Tony had a great life to match his great talent. Best rock and roll book to come out in a long time, buy it quickly! (Teddy Heavens)

Great book!
At first I was looking for a book to give me a lesson as a music producer from the great Tony Visconti but in the end I got also a lesson in life. I suggest to make a movie out of it since the book could also made me cry :) There's only one producer - God..

I'll keep it brief, but yes, I love this book. Although it has rebuffed my offers for marriage, I will keep reading.

This book is recommended to any audio engineer or person who enjoys "behind the curtain" views of the process and personalities of the naissance of creative recording.

Ironically, the first discovery I made opening this book was learning Tony was from NY and not London. As a long time Bowie fan, I have only the hype music rag spins on Bowie's story, aside from a few other personal introspections that have been penned, yet nothing comes close to getting this intimate to the music and who better to tap than an engineer/producer POV. As a sound recordist with great appreciation for many forms of music, this book speaks to me and wish there were more like it, but then not everyone is T.Visconti. Other noteable producers who have left legendary music markers include G. Martin & P. Specter.