Hunky Dory: 'I said to David Bowie, you’ve got something unbelievable here'
David Bowie in 1971, the year he recorded Hunky Dory. Picture: Earl Leaf/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
David Bowie’s Hunky Dory sunk upon release in 1971 despite a flourish of critical acclaim. The album has since gone on to become one of his most influential long-players featuring jukebox gems and radio staples such as ‘Changes’ and ‘Life On Mars?’.
In the year in which the album celebrates it’s 50th anniversary the annual Dublin Bowie Festival has invited two of the record’s players, Rick Wakeman and Woody Woodmansey, as well as co-producer Ken Scott to take part in an online event that will discuss the much-loved work five years on since Bowie’s death.
As a musician for hire, Wakeman had been recording two or three sessions a day working on hundreds of tracks. Down the line from Suffolk, the former Yes keyboardist reflects on hearing those songs for the first time. “I told him: ‘David you’ve got something unbelievable here; you have something that will outlive us.’ He looked at me a bit strangely and said: ‘You think so?’ I said: ‘I’d put money on it but I haven’t got any.’”
Bowie would depart with Tony Visconti for the period, who had played bass, arranged and produced his previous album The Man Who Sold The World. The then 24-year-old would move a piano into his friend’s former room at Haddon Hall, Beckenham.
“I remember arriving at the house”, says Wakeman, “his lad (Zowie, later Duncan) had just been born. Angie was there and my wife at the time, they were drinking coffee and playing with the little one. He said: ‘Everything I’ve done up to now has been guitar orientated; I want the piano to be the catalyst on this record’.
“After listening to the songs I said: ‘where do you get your inspiration from?’ He played me Biff Rose’s ‘Fill Your Heart’ and it just sounded like David. He said: ‘I don’t know why this guy is not hailed as something special as regards songwriting and style’ but it never really happened for him.’”
Bowie’s version of Rose’s track and the playful ‘Kooks’ written for Zowie brought a lighter touch to ‘Hunky Dory’. ‘Andy Warhol’ had been inspired by a meeting with the pop-artist during a promo tour of America while a blithe nod to the Velvet Underground would feature as the album’s outlier ‘Queen Bitch’.
Bowie’s essential guitarist Mick Ronson and drummer Woody Woodmansey were coaxed into returning from Hull, this time with the addition of bass player Trevor Bolder. The Spiders From Mars line-up was now in place while Ken Scott would be invited to co-produce.
“Ken was one of the most famous engineers at [London studio] Trident,” says Wakeman. “He knew that studio inside-out and backwards, how to mike-up the famous Bechstein piano and create the sounds that David wanted.”
Scott says it was a perfect team for what Bowie wanted to put across at the time. “That whole thing of David and Ronno, then Trevor, Woody and myself - we never had to talk about it too much, it was all there.” Scott invited Bowie, his wife Angie and publisher Bob Grace to his home to hear early demos. The budding producer treated it as an opportunity to earn his chops.
“I thought David was a good singer and a nice guy. My feeling was it’ll be a decent album but no one will ever hear it, I never saw him being a superstar at that point. Then I heard the songs and it was like ‘Oh! f**k; he’s going to be huge’ and it terrified me. A lot was going on when we first started to record because David and I had never produced before. There was a lot in trepidation but as we were trying things and they began to work I slowly but surely gained confidence and it was probably the same with the other guys as well.”
Mick Ronson was about to leave his mark on a triumvirate of Bowie long-players that would flow in quick succession. On the back of engineering the Beatles, Scott quickly realised Ronson's talent. “I think the sum of all the parts was greater than the individual thing. David or I would start talking about what was required and Mick would immediately say: ‘I know’ and nail it instantly. Mick was up there with all of them. The Beatles would spend a lot of time getting everything right - Mick got everything right but he did it a lot quicker, he had to because they had no budget and time constraints.”
Ronson’s elegant arrangement elevated ‘Life On Mars?’ beyond a typical singer/songwriter ballad.
“The orchestra didn’t like longhairs conducting them,” suggests Scott. “He would arrive ten minutes before the orchestra was due at Trident and would run upstairs to the first-floor toilet and later come back down with a huge grin on his face having finished the arrangment.”
Despite a hitherto lack of success Woodmansey was also in no doubt that Bowie’s theatrical yet abstract songwriting had entered a new phase, explaining that the track “just cut through everything else that was going on — he was so far ahead of what was happening. There was a big shift in the quality of his songwriting, at one point I asked myself if I believed in this or not and the answer was yes. In the band, we were all on £7 a week but it was worth it.”
Wakeman says 'Life On Mars?’ was classic in every respect.
“When he played it through I said: ‘this is one of the most beautiful songs’. When recording at Trident it was clear that this was going to be an absolute classic. Even if you had this song alone on ‘Hunky Dory’ it would still be an album people talked about but the fact was it was full of gems makes it all the more unbelievable.”
There had been no chart success since the 1969 single ‘Space Oddity’ but another cut due to appear on Hunky Dory, ‘Oh! You Pretty Things’ saw Bowie return to the UK’s Top of the Pops studios backing Peter Noone on piano during two separate performances. The former Herman’s Hermits singer scored a U.K hit with his version in the summer of 1971.
Two years earlier Wakeman had been invited to record one of his first sessions with Bowie: “I remember clearly the first time I heard ‘Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud’ which I still think is one of the most brilliant songs. It was just on an acoustic and then Tony Visconti added an amazing orchestral arrangement; it turned into a serious production and that to me was an important transitional period much like ‘Space Oddity’ and ‘Memory of a Free Festival’ he was telling a story; that all led to ‘Hunky Dory’. David wanted to take his story-telling to a new level and to a place where there were no rules. ‘Hunky Dory’ came as shock; just how brilliant the songs were but it wasn’t a surprise how he had ended up there.” One of Scott’s fondest memories explains the uncanny sound of a distant telephone at the end of ‘Life On Mars?’.
“The phone rang randomly the one and only time we were halfway through a take of ‘Life On Mars?’. Ronno was really pissed off and we couldn't use that obviously so we recorded it again. We’d forgotten all about it until we got the master and started overdubbing strings. On the sustained bit at the end as it fades out, we suddenly heard the piano and the phone ringing, we knew we had to keep it in but we also had Ronno shouting ‘Oh! f**king bastard’ it’s very funny when you hear it on the multitrack.”
- Everything’s Hunky Dory - The Making of a Bowie Classic. Rick Wakeman / Woody Woodmansey / Ken Scott in conversation Jan 17, 6pm. For tickets and event information on the Dublin Bowie Festival between January 10-17 see dublinbowiefestival.ie
