“Like that sailor leaves, come back again”
For today’s look at David Live (from the upcoming David Bowie - Who Can I Be Now? (1974 – 1976) we’re revisiting a part of Tony Visconti's sleeve notes from the revitalised 2005 issue of the album. Over to Tony...
“After all was said and done David and I were reunited on Diamond Dogs as a mixing project. I also contributed a string arrangement to “1984,” a track on that album. The following album was still about mixing (and a little overdubbing). I was asked to mix multi-track tapes for a live album recorded at the Tower Theater in Philadelphia.
This project started after we chose Electric Lady Studios in New York just to listen to what was on the multi-tracks. We loved the spirit of the concerts, the performances were lively and the vibe was right. But there were some technical problems, which were no reflection on the engineer, Keith Harwood.
Anything can happen during a live recording and it usually does. There is no luxury of a take two. We would have to make this album a mixture of both nights. The drums were sounding good, but the bass was very thin sounding. The percussionist’s microphones had picked up everyone else’s instruments and the backing singers and horn players were often sporadically off microphone due to excitement, I guess. But David’s vocals sounded wonderful, which was reason enough to make this project work.
It was obvious that some things needed fixing. There was too much instrument spillage on their mix and their blend could’ve been better (they were ‘locked’ on one audio track, so rebalancing was impossible). Geoffrey and Gui sang their original parts in a few hours, but we used as much as the original vocals as possible. Some of the horn parts were also re-recorded because of technical difficulties.
I have been asked if David’s voice had been overdubbed in some cases, because it didn’t always match up with bootlegs of the Tower show. We did not fix David’s lead vocals, so those bootlegs must be from an alternate night. DAVID LIVE is David – live!” - Tony Visconti April, 2004.
Aside from the wonderful DAGMAR photograph, we’ve used the credit page from the original The Year Of The Diamond Dogs tour programme today. Interesting to note how close it is to the David Live tracklisting, apart from the absence of the two cover versions: Knock On Wood and Here Today Gone Tomorrow.
Listen to David Live here,
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