The other day I had the pleasure of hanging with producer/engineer's
Ken Scott and
Greg Penny to listen to some digital copies of
Elton John multitracks. It's always fun to hang with both of those guys, but on this particular day it was even better because of what we were hearing.
If you don't know the name Ken Scott you surely know his work. He was one of the four
Beatles engineers, produced four of
David Bowie's best albums (including the influential
Ziggy Stardust)
,
Supertramp, Jeff Beck, Devo, The Tubes, Marivishnu Orchestra, and
Missing Persons among others, and engineered for
George Harrison, Elton, America, Pink Floyd, Duran Duran and lots more.
Greg Penny has produced a couple of Elton albums and
KD Lang's biggest record
Ingenue
(one of my favorites). He's also done the surround mixing for every one of Elton's SACD and DVD-A releases.
Here are some interesting tidbits about Elton and Bowie from that day.
1)
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road 
actually
started in Jamaica but moved to France because the studio was unacceptable (no low end below 100Hz), and because Elton was freaked out by a near riot where the bus they were traveling in was rocked and nearly toppled over.
2) It's surprising how much the banjo shows up on Elton's tunes.
Davey Johnson never played it like a banjo though, so it simply blends into the track as another harmonic element. Below you'll see a track sheet from
Honkey Cat with the banjo track outlined. Also notice that it's 16 tracks, of which they only used 15!
3) Elton's early band of
Dee Murray, Nigel Olson and Johnson was great both musically and vocally. When these guys were working up a song, it rarely sounded ragged (from the tracks that I heard) like most bands sound in that mode.
4) The hit song
Rocket Man 
was written in 10 minutes over breakfast with the band.
5) Elton is very detached in the studio. Once his parts are complete, he's gone shopping and doesn't concern himself about the other parts (great for the producer though).
6) Elton was known by everyone in the London music circle by his real name -
Reg Dwight. It took everyone a long time to stop calling him "Reg" after he became famous.
And these Bowie tidbits.
7) Bowie broke up the
Spiders From Mars because they wanted a raise. This was mostly instigated by David's manager at the time,
Tony DeFies.
8) Like Elton, Bowie hates the studio and was never around for any of the mixes. Ken says that he mixed all four albums by himself.
9) Over four albums, every Bowie vocal except one was done on the first take. The one that wasn't was intentionally broken up to sound different in two different sections.
There were a lot more great trivia and behind-the-scenes tidbits but I think we'll save them for the upcoming book that Ken and I are planning on writing, tentatively titled "
From Abbey Road To Ziggy Stardust."
----------------------------------
