SXSWorld
Issue link: https://sxsw.uberflip.com/i/654465
4 0 S X S W o r l d | F I L M / I A M A R C H 2 0 1 6 | S X S W. C O M n January, producer Tony Visconti scored another number one record. The record, Blackstar, was his 14th collaboration with friend and longtime creative colleague, David Bowie. Ask Visconti, who is the 2016 SXSW Music Conference opening Keynote Speaker, how many chart- topping albums or singles he's produced, and he doesn't know. Why? Because he never kept count; he just kept working. If you ask the 71-year-old whose record he'd like to work on, the answer comes qui- etly: "The big hurt in my heart right now is that before David [Bowie] died, he spoke of doing another album this year. Of all the albums, that is the one I really wish I could do." That heartfelt comment is the only time Visconti's voice doesn't sparkle with energy as he talks about his astoundingly rich career, which he captured in his 2007 autobiography, Bowie, Bolan and the Brooklyn Boy. That title points out where his first hits came from: glam rock kingpins Bowie and Marc Bolan's T. Rex. Visconti went on to work with artists as diverse as Thin Lizzy, Alejandro Escovedo, Angelique Kidjo and Morrissey. Then there is Bowie's fertile Berlin period, which included not only the late icon's lauded album trilogy, but also Stooges' frontman Iggy Pop's career reviving 1977 solo debut, The Idiot. Coincidentally, Pop performs at the 2016 SXSW Music Festival in support of his new record, a collaboration with Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme titled Post Pop Depression. "Iggy was a silent presence, kind of bemused by all the fuss over this record," says Visconti on his initial meetings with Bowie and Pop. Bowie had over- seen The Idiot's recording and then brought it to Visconti to mix, which he says was quite a task. "You can hear Iggy's blown out vocal on 'China Girl' when he sings very loud. It gave tape saturation a new meaning. I almost refused to mix the album, because it was more of a salvage job. It was hard to do creative mixing. But the energy in the music was irresistible and I was a Stooges fan. I gave it my best shot." Outside the studio, the three gathered in David's apart- ment, listening to records and drinking beer. One night Visconti was tasked with cutting their hair to lend ano- nymity on the streets of Berlin. "They wanted the equivalent of a buzz cut, which came off suc- cessfully in David's case. But Iggy kept imploring me to cut shorter and he ended up with uneven bald patches over his ears. I apologized profusely, but he said, 'That's cool, I like it.' " Music always fascinated Visconti. At age five, tutored by his father, an amateur accor- dion player and barbershop quartet singer, he began playing the ukulele before later switching to guitar and bass. He mostly grew up in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bensonhurst, listening to doo-wop, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley. "We were an American family. My mother spoke Italian but my father and I couldn't, and we didn't want to learn. I knew loads of Italian songs from my mother, which came in useful when I would play at an Italian wedding," he says. "The moment I got paid for playing a wed- ding I knew what business I would be in for the rest of my life — and it wouldn't be the wedding business, it would be the music business." When he was 13, he made his first recording. "I got my first taste of what a record producer was," he remembers. "He was a person I didn't like very much because he'd say you're out of tune, or you're not doing that right. I didn't think I'd end up as that person, but I did." Lifelong Passion For Music Still Drives Tony Visconti by LinDa Laban I To ny V i s co n t i ... I would see my life as not being worth living if I couldn't record and make new records, and work with great artists. H O WA R D P I T K O W