I'm Tony Visconti, I'm a record producer, and I've been shopping today at Amoeba.
And I'm Daphne Guinness and I'm an artist and I've been shopping too at Amoeba.
And this is What's in My Bag.
First one is Jefferson Airplane, 'Surrealistic Pillow.'
I listened to it a lot when I was growing up
and I was particularly interested in 'An Embryonic Journey.'
It's got 'White Rabbit' on it.
Yeah.
'Somebody to Love.'
Yep.
That's two hits.
'She Has Funny Cars' is really, really good too.
Wow, yeah, quite a big record for them.
Yeah.
And for you.
I loved it.
I grabbed this one, a collection of Velvet Underground.
The first one, when it came out, the one with the banana on the front cover...
Oh, that's the one. That's the one I have, or had. I don't know where it's gone.
And Lou Reed was my friend until he died, sadly died
and I realized I don't have enough Lou Reed in my collection.
But this one's got such great songs on it.
'Sister Ray' for instance. I don't have the original of that, I don't think. 'Femme Fatale.'
And it's got 'The Murder Mystery' on it as well.
'The Murder Mystery,' yeah.
I won't listen late at night.
'Sgt. Pepper's.'
I love the remastered version.
Is this the one that Giles Martin mixed?
I think so.
Oh yeah, this is it. Giles Martin, who is George Martin's son, remixed this.
Now, in the old days, when they made 'Sgt. Pepper' they only had two four-track machines side by side.
And you'd fill up all the four tracks on one machine
and then you'd bounce it to a second machine, to one track of the other four-track
which would give you three free tracks.
Then when those four tracks filled up, you'd bounce it back to the original machine.
Meanwhile, you'd lose a bit of quality with each bounce.
It sounded like mud pretty much in the end.
Giles Martin found all those earlier four tracks.
Y'know they put all the drums on these tracks and then they put the guitars on these tracks
and then they put the vocals. He found them all.
And in a computer, in Pro Tools, he was able to line them up.
This earlier tape might have been a little faster or slower than this tape.
Oh, wow, yeah, of course.
It was a nightmare, but he literally remixed it
and brought out some hidden things that you didn't hear on the original.
This is one of mine, which I will put back on the shelf because I've got several copies of this
but I think it's worth talking about. This is my favorite David Bowie album.
"Heroes" would be my second favorite album.
But David and I, before every album, we'd say let's make this one our 'Sgt. Pepper.'
We're gonna take nine months, which they did by the way. That's a nine month album.
And we're gonna get everything right, everything we wanted to do.
And we always kind of backed off from that. We didn't do it with 'Lodger.'
We didn't actually do it with "Heroes," which was recorded in four weeks
and mixed in about two weeks.
This is the one we did it, this is our 'Sgt. Pepper.'
We recorded this in New York at the Power Station.
But we spent at least six weeks recording the backing tracks there.
And we had all kinds of guests, like Jimmy Destri from Blondie came in
and played a little bit on this album.
Roy Bittan from Bruce Springsteen's band, he played the piano that goes 'ding-ding-ding.'
They didn't have separate lounges in those days.
So we'd go out into the lobby and sit on like a little couch and all that
and then Bruce Springsteen's band would pour out and sit on the couch next to us.
So that's how we got to be on each other's albums. It didn't even involve a phone call.
And they had no lyrics.
Often we didn't know if a section of the song was the verse or the chorus.
That was for us to find out later on.
That's so cool.
This one.
Ah.
Now you're gonna get me going again.
So this is the first album I ever bought with my pocket money.
I loved Marc Bolan.
Yeah.
And I watched his TV show. He had a fantastic children's show called 'Marc.'
Were you infatuated with him, like most young girls were?
I was only sort of eight or nine.
But also I did see your name on it
and I'd think, who is this mysterious person with this incredible name?
And you thought I was an Italian count, right?
Yeah.
I'm just a guy from Brooklyn.
It's the most incredible album. 'Cosmic Dancer,' 'Life's a Gas,' 'Rip Off.'
I love that, it's just like a rap song.
People say that's the first rap record.
I don't say that, but people say it.
Well it happens to be one of my favorite albums too.
It's so great, this album.
Alright, well this the guy that started it off for me.
I found this beautiful new pressing, obviously, on 180 gram vinyl.
So it's gonna sound absolutely great, less surface noise.
These songs, like 'Blue Suede Shoes,' which was written by Carl Perkins
Elvis' version is, I think, better.
And look at that, the timing is 1:58. How many songs are under two minutes anymore?
But this is precisely why you would get your record played in those days.
'Tutti-Frutti' is 1:57. The DJs could talk more.
Like, for instance, if you had a record that was over three minutes
it would be the kiss of death. They wouldn't play it on radio in those days.
Oh, wow.
Just wouldn't play it.
But anyway here's an old friend and I'm glad to have it in my life.
So what else did I pick... 'A Clockwork Orange.'
For a long time I wasn't allowed to watch it.
I've only seen it once. I can't see it a second time. It's too brutal.
It is very brutal, but I tell you what drew me in was the music.
I know.
Wendy Carlos. I mean I know that it was Bach in the book
but the way that Beethoven is represented in this film
Yeah, the Ninth Symphony is the final movement.
So beautiful.
The first introduction of the synthesizer to the world was this record.
That's incredible.
And apparently the vocals, Wendy Carlos played with a series of foot pedals for the vowels
Oh, really?
There were no singers involved. So it'd be like all kinds of levers to get the vowels.
So even the voices are synthesized.
And the thing is, with this thing the size of two refrigerators, this instrument was monophonic.
You couldn't play two notes at once, or forget it, you couldn't play chords.
So Wendy did every note, every part, laboriously.
I have a lot of singles by this band and this man.
But here is a Buddy Holly album.
And it's got all my favorite songs on it.
'Oh Boy,' 'Not Fade Away,' 'That'll Be The Day.'
No flash was hurt in the taking of this picture. It's bright sunlight with people squinting.
But this is really great that remastering is coming out in such high quality.
These were cut from master tapes that still exist today
So this is gonna sound virtually as good as the master tape would sound.
The Small Faces.
Oh yeah.
When I started singing in a band, I would sing 'Tin Soldier' and 'Itchycoo Park.'
'Itchycoo Park' was one of the first pop records to have phasing on it.
Oh yeah.
So it sounds like the music is going through a time warp or something.
The engineer was Glyn Johns and when I first came to England in 1967
and I met Glyn Johns, I said, how do you do that phasing thing?
And he looked at me like I was insane and he says 'f off.' Just told me to f off.
And I realized in those days, technicians were very protective about their sounds.
And it took me about four goes, four or five goes, because I was really pestering him.
Now I wasn't afraid of him anymore.
So he told me very, very quickly.
He says, you need three machines. On this machine you play it back, on this machine you record it
on this machine you have a vari-speed, and you do this...
And I ran to a pad and I wrote it out exactly the way he said it.
But he thought I wouldn't remember anything.
And the very next time I was in the studio, I set that all up and lo and behold it's a real technical trick.
It's such a wonderful effect.
But if you want to hear what tape phasing is at its best, then listen to 'Itchycoo Park.'
Oh come on, talk about this.
Well, this is difficult to choose with Dylan.
But this one, it's so kind of evocative
and the songs, I mean, they conjure up all sorts of scenes.
'Idiot wind' and 'Tangled Up In Blue.'
'Lily, Rosemary And The Jack Of Hearts.' It's just brilliant.
Y'know, I don't know if I have this album. And I'm a big Dylan fan.
I love 'Blonde on Blonde.' To me that was that was his Sgt. Pepper.'
Do you listen to Bob Dylan on the radio? Have you heard his show?
Oh, his show, yes, absolutely.
It's a scream.
It's a scream. It's so brilliant.
Nowadays, laugh tracks aren't used that much.
Y'know, I wonder if canned laughter would sound good on Theme Time Radio Hour. Let's give it a try.
Hey not yet.
So there we go.
Alright, well, those are our picks.
Those are our picks.
Thank you so much for talking with us today.
Thank you.