Off the Record is the production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Off the Record. I'm your host, Jordan Runta. Thanks so much for listening. We're taking a quick midseason break from our story this week. Will of the next chapter of Bowie's life for you on Monday, March eight. But today we have something extra special in store, a conversation with Mr Ken's Scott, the man who co produced a string of Bowie's most beloved albums, Hunky Dory, Ziggy, Stardust, Aladdin, Saying, and Pin Ups. For most people, that's enough bragging rights to last a lifetime. Yet that's just a small part of Ken's legendary career. His life is almost as if the movie Almost Famous happened in a recording studio. His first job was at Abbey Road Studios in London. His first day as an engineer, he was enlisted to work with a little band called The Beatles No Pressure. As we'll see, Trial by Fire is a recurring theme in Ken Scott's story. He worked alongside the Beatles producer George Martin, learning his craft as the band recorded songs for classics like Magical Mystery Tour and the White Album. The list of other names he's worked with as an engineer, producer reads like a roll call for the rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Elton, John lou Read, Jeff Beck, Harry Nielsen, Super Tramp, Devo, Duran, Duran, Procohiram, and of course, David Bowie would characterize Scott as his own personal George Martin, helping him translate his abstract, creative notions into sonic reality. They were the perfect collaborators and co conspirators as David found his musical voice and evolved into a world class songwriter. Together with guitarist Mick Ronson and his unforgettable orchestral scores, How could they lose? Ken's twelve memoir Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust was a crucial part of my research for this season of Off the Record. We first crossed paths in at a listening event for the Beatles Mono box set. I've bombarded him with breathless questions about my favorite band, which he answered with grace and good humor. I'm extremely grateful that he agreed to a second round of my breathless questions, this time about David Bowie. Well, I guess it's the start. You've had, just an unbelievable career working with the Beatles, upon John David Bowie, procoha. I'm just to name a few, and it can really all be traced to nine days when you were sixteen years old. Take me back there. How did this journey begin for you? I realized what I wanted to do, what I had to do when I was twelve and a half. I received a granting t K twenty five tape machine for Christmas, and it became my life. I fell in love with type. I loved the smell of it, I loved the feel of it. I loved all that you could do with it, and I knew that somehow or another, I had to work with tape, and sort of checking around, I discovered that the best thing that I could do would be to become something called a recording engineer, which at that point, no one knew what a recording engineer was. One knew what went on in a recording studio, unlike today. But I knew what I had to do, so I kept going. It looked to me, with what little information I could glean at that point, it looks as if I'd have to go to university and get an electronics degree before I could go and get a try and get a job at the BBC. Who seemed to be the ones that you had to go through that I was sixteen. I was just fed up with school and I thought, there's no way I'm going to be able to keep going and go to university and all that. So one Friday evening I pulled out a phone phone directory and wrote to as many places as I could find that might need someone called a recording engineer. So that was the Friday. I mailed it out on Saturday. On the Tuesday, I received a letter from one of the places I'd written to saying that they would like me to come in for an interview. I called them up set up the interview for the next day, which was the way day. Took my first ever trip across London. I lived in southeast London and the place I was going to was in northwest London, so it really was straight across. I've never done that before. I've never been to a job interview before. It took place and on the Friday I received a letter from them asking me to phone them, and I found up and they said they wanted me to start the following Monday, So I left school that day and that it just so happened at that place that wanted me to start on Monday. At the time, it was known as the EMI Recording Studios. Of course now it's it's the Abbey Roll Recording Studio. Is probably the most famous recording studio in the world. As we'll see it again and again in your story, fate has a tendency of just sort of throwing you in at the deep end. I mean, you get your your first job at em I Studio's Abbey Road Studios, and your first job, as I believe an assistant engineer, was with the Beatles at the time. I mean, so you're really starting right at the time, Oh Gown, it was terrifying. Yeah, the first and the first time I'm ever on my own looking after the tape machine, which is all we as assistant engineers did that. Then we just looked after the tape machine and it was four side two of the Hard Days Night, the non film music sry and yeah, it was petrifying. I mean, how how did your experience working with Sir George Martin and the Beatles prepare you for for working with David, were there any lessons that you gleaned from from those early sessions that you worked on that that you incorporated later on, Oh, without a shadow of a doubt. Without at the time, I didn't realize it's it's only in hindsight I realized exactly what I learned from from George Martin and from another producer i'd work with who happened to produce Basondity that the single a gentleman by name August Argon. Both of them were very much that talent is in the studio to do one thing, and that's to create eight and you have to allow the freedom for talent to create, always knowing that you can maybe just go back if if you think it's going too far left field, you can say, you know what, guys, it was it was god girls, whatever you can it was better like five minutes ago. Let's go back to there and continue from there. That that kind of thing. And it was funny because at one point I did not realize I had got this from from George and Gus. And one day after the success of with David, David was doing an interview with the BBC and they asked him about working with me and he said that ken's my George Martin, and I hit the roof. I was I felt offended that he had compared me to George Martin, because what did George. I didn't see what George Martin really did? What he didn't tell him anything what to do, and it was it was something like that, and it was actually it's just I realized, but that is how I worked the same as George. It's I'm better. I know, I'm better at saying no than I am coming up with specific ideas and that with working with the Beatles, that was very much so. It became George's place as well. It was they had their own minds and you would go along with it. You'd allow them to try everything and then sort of cut back when it wasn't working. Was much the same with with Gus. Everything as a producer I learned from from George and Gus. As an engineer, the Beatles sessions were the greatest training I could possibly have because here I was working with the band. And I have to say you mentioned that my first job as an assistant engineer was with the Beatles. Well, my first job as an engineer sitting behind the mixing console was also with the Beatles. I never sat behind the console before, I'd never pushed up a favor before. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and I was there. I was with the biggest band in the bloody world. Yeah. I won't go any further as the feelings that were going on within my stomach at that point. But it finished up being the greatest training I could possibly have because here I was with a band that had no monetary problems. Thus they had no no sort of timing problems. It did. They could take as long as they wanted with everything, and it was a band that wanted everything to sound different every time. Uh So you'd get a piano sound on one for one track, and then then once it's sounding completely different on the next track. That that kind of thing, and that that gave you an amazing amount of freedom to experiment, and they had no problems with that. That's what they wanted. And there was always that thing at the back of your mind that you could completely screw something up, used completely the wrong mikes, the wrong eq it put it in the wrong place, just all of that kind of thing, and there was as much chance of them coming up the stairs and saying that sounds like shit, I don't like it. As there was them coming upstairs listening to it and says, m that sounds like ship. But I love it. We'll use it. And just just the freedom that gets that gives you as someone trying to learn their gig. It's incredible and no one will ever have the experience. I had to learn what they're doing. It was. It was just phenomenal. Your first song that you you engineered with them as a full engineer was I am a Walrus, right, which I mean is just all over the place in terms of all the different techniques and sounds flying in and having the third program from the radio come in with King Lear. I mean, it's just it. That's just such a prime example I think of all the different things you can try. Yeah, I didn't do the basic track on that Jeff Emrick did before he he quit. I did. I did the orchestral over dubber, mixed it and that side of it. Now, the very first session I did with them was to try and record your mother should know. They had already gone to another studio and would recorded a version of the song there, but Paul wanted to try a different arrangement, So that's what we did that particular day, my first ever session, and luckily the arrangement didn't work, So the fact that I didn't know what the hell I was doing didn't really matter that much of the first session. But then the next session was my first ever orchestral session, and that was im no worus And yeah, it was bad enough with the biggest band in the world. But when it's the biggest band in the world with a large orchestra in the studio, Ah yeah, yeah, no, better way to learn, I guess not. Yeah, be careful what you wish for, you might get it. It was one of those situations. You had worked as an engineer on David's earlier albums like The Man Who Sold the World and The Space Out of the Album, and they were produced by Tony Visconti, who, in addition to being the producer, was also sort of a musical director and David's bass player when he was putting together the team for Hunky Dorry. Do you think he was drawn to you because of your background working with George Martin and being more of a facilitator of sonic ideas rather than getting in the weeds about the music. Do you think that attracted you to Bowie at the time? Very very much. So it was when when I worked with David on the Space Odyssey album or Man a Man of Words, man of music, whatever you wanted to call it, uh, and then on Man Who Sold the World, I felt it Although it was down as being David Bowie's album, I didn't think that he had that much to do with it. He wrote the songs and he sang them, but everything else was very much Tony. And I think that it's a part of me that thinks that David had seen success with Space Oddity, which was with Gus and was very much David's ideas and it was successful. Then he went away from his ideas. It became more of Tonies and it wasn't successful. So I I think that David was I had put himself in the position it's either put up or shut up kind of thing. It's if I have faith in my in what I'm capable of doing and have faith in my own ideas, I've got to do it myself. And it was that thing that he said to me I was working with him doing a friend of his, which I think it may have finally came out as Arnold Corns. I'm not sure if that was one of the sessions or not, but during one of the breaks they happened to mention to him that I wanted to move more into production. I had it just as an engineer, and he said, well, I've just signed new management deal. They want to put me into the studio to record an album so that they can shop a deal. I was going to produce it myself. I don't know if I'm capable of doing that. Were you co produced with me? So an instantaneous yeah, of course. And we went in there neither of us having really done it before, and I think we were both very nervous. But as we did more and more, and as our ideas that sounds and everything were coming more and more together, it was giving us more and more confidence to go down much further. We were being proved right to ourselves, and I think it's one of those things. It didn't sell, but that didn't matter. We had proved to ourselves what we could do. And then it moved carried on into into Zigi, which was recorded a very short time after. I mean, it's really interesting to me to think that when you first started working with David as an engineer for the for the prior album. Your impressions of him, at least music weren't that great, A nice guy to some talent, but you know fair to say you didn't think that he was going to be David Bowie superstar. When did that change for you? After one of the reasons, I was so quick to jump on, Yeah, of course I'll co produce with you. That would be great. There I was thinking, well, this isn't now. My My prior experiences had been working with the biggest band in the world on the first off, and it was that, my god, every mistake I make might be heard by by hundreds and thousands of whatever. And so suddenly here I was being asked to co produce an album, and I thought, well, great, now I can make mistakes and no one's going to hear them because he's never going to be that big. And it was a couple of weeks later that he came round to my house with with Angie, his wife, and his publisher Bob Grace, and we were going through demos for what songs we would do on Hunky Dory, and it probably just two songs in Suddenly I realized that this guy was a hell of a lot more talented than I actually got from him on the first two albums that I worked with him on, and that this could be a huge album. He could be a superstar, and hell, here I go again. It's it's something that's possibly up to two thousands of people were here again. So yeah, it changed hearing a couple of demos. Now, who was David influenced by at that stage when you first went into the studio to work on Hunky Dorry. Was there a discussion of who he was listening to or what do he wanted? The songs that sound like none whatsoever totally fresh? Did that? Yeah? It was. It was just we were going into the chord of songs. And one of the great things with David was his ability to pick teams or put teams together that would give him what he was looking for at that given point. Musically, the team of Woody Woman's, Trevor Boulder, Mick Ronson and myself and on Hungry Dorry, Rick Wakeman then later Mike Garson, they were perfect teams for what he was after at that point. Just but he then towards the end, after Pinups, I did another session with him u supposedly for Diamond Dogs. It was never used for some for Diamond Dogs in the end, but it became obvious when we were finishing that off that he was already moving to more of an American sound, because when we were mixing it, he kept on influencing. My recollection is that it was Barry White, but it was it was that Philadelphia gamble half type of sound that he wanted to try and emulate, and he'd never do that with English musicians. And he realized that, so he formed a new team in the States to do the whole thing White Duke and the more American style of things. And he was so great at finding those those teams. And the way he would work is that he would play the song, teach you, just teach you the song, and then leave you all to to do what you do best. He felt totally confident in the team that he had put together to give him what he was looking for and if they were left to their own devices. Something I was surprised to learn about him for somebody who seems like such a perfectionist, that he wasn't a studio hound really like he had very short patients from what I read for forgetting only a couple of takes and having to get it right on those takes. Otherwise he would lose his patience for it, which is it's very fascinating to me. Well, you have to prepare into mind. He was, as far as I'm concerned, that the best studio performer I've ever worked with. Of the four albums I could co produced with him, of the vocals were one take beginning to end, uh, and that's it. I would get the level the sound at the beginning, having seen a little so I could get that. I then take the take back to the beginning hit recalled, and what he sang that one time through time is what you hear still here today and there Bear in mind there was no put auto tuning, there was no moving around. It was just a straightforward performance. Now, when when you know you're that good, when you know you can do that, I can understand why you might get a little touchy if the musicians you're working with are going take after take after take. So and he got bored in the studio. He wasn't over keen on being in the studio all the time. He get bored very easily, and so like Trevor and Woody, they were always on the edge of their seat. They knew, we've got to get this the next take. Otherwise he's just going to say forget it, it's not working and move on to something else. So that that, to me was great because it added a certain amount of excitement to the way they were playing, because they knew they had to get it right. Do you feel that the best singers almost have to be part actor in a way to be able to put that emotion across? I mean, I think of the opening track five years where, especially towards the end, and I know you've played during some of your speaking engagements, the the strip back just session of him singing and you hear him breaking down in tears. It's just incredible to hear. I mean, do you feel that those are the best singers have to have an element of the actor in them. I wouldn't say an actor as such. David was definitely an actor, uh, because I think you can you have to have something like that if you're changing your personalities around them. These different characters as much as he did, they were all part of him. But I think any great actor says that anything that any role they played, they're taking from from themselves a little. But I think there there are a lot of singers, great performers that it's them just wholeheartedly. It's not just a part of them, it's them giving. And in that respect, I don't think he's acting. It was. We just did what we did. We put it together slowly but surely, and we're not that slowly because considering it only took a couple of weeks to record the album, it was pretty damn quick compared to modern boy standards. It's amazing me not only the speed that you did that album, but just there was just a few weeks between Hunky Dory and Ziggy and yet they still to me, they sound, for the most part, dramatically different. It's it's so incredible just to speed that they were evolving. Yeah. Well, but the interesting thing I I just see them as part one and part two of one album. Yes, there is obviously Ziggy is is more rock and wrong than than Hunky Dory. But if you take Queen Bitch, which was on Hunky Dory, that fits perfect, that would have fitted perfectly on Ziggy Stardust, and you take it Ain't Easy, which we recorded to Hunky Dory didn't use it for that and then used it on on Ziggy. So it's to me that there all part of one thing, and they just came out as part one and part two. What do you think of the whole notion of Ziggy Stardust being, you know, a concept album with a storyline and so forth. Was that something that was discussed at all while you're working on it, or just something that's fell together outwards Now that that's people reading reading things into it, it's if you consider that the main thing really that holds a concept album together of that being a concept album was the track Starman, and that was thrown in later because we'd recorded Chuck Berry's Round, Round and Round and that was in exactly the same place on the album where Starman finished up, and we handed the album in with Round and Round there and our CIA the record company said they didn't hear a single, So we went back in recorded Starman and put it in exactly the same place, and then suddenly everyone once that happened, that was the basis really for being a concept album. Now that was never discussed. And this is going to sound like an obvious statement, but it blows my mind. Two there was no pro tools, no plug ins. You had to get the sound in the studio, which requires a degree of forethought and advanced decision making on your part, which is just really unheard of today. I mean, it's it's fascinating to think of what the album would have been like if if it if it had digital tools available. I don't think it would have been any better. Well yes, yes, quite possibly. But now I now, I'm a senior lecturer at a university up here in Leeds Leads Beckett University, and one of the things that I try and do with the students when I'm speaking with them is teach them what we used to do. And one of the main things was make decisions. No one these days wants to make a decision. They will record eleven guitar solos and leave it for someone else later on down the line to make the decision which one it's going to be. We couldn't work that way. We were working on sixteen track. We had to fit everything in on sixteen tracks, and so yeah, you you had to You had to make decisions as you were going. You couldn't leave it for later for other people to make decisions. And that that that led to albums being done much quicker and quite honestly, I think a lot of them much better. You mentioned guitar solos, which leads me right in to something I've been trying to ask a question for for all my guitarists gearhead friends out there, and myself. I'm dying a note too. What was Rono's guitar setup? Mcronson's guitar is just one of the great car sounds. Oh, it's very simple. He's Les Paul. He had a hundred what marshal and he went to a cry baby wah wah pedal. And the way we'd get his sounds is that he'd start off on with the wah wah pedal on the top and he'd slowly move it down and we okay, stop there, and that would be the sound that we we'd use. Dead easy. He's easy if you're if you're mcros it helps if you're micronson. I guess that's the guess the point. Yeah, tell me more about his role in the sessions, because it really seems like like the unsung hero in a lot of ways. Oh. Absolutely, I don't think he got the credit that he deserved. David was obviously an exceeding talent, and I think of he would have made it one way or another, but I don't think he would have made it quite as big, quite so soon if he hadn't had Rono by the side of him. I think Rono was that important. We were all sort of there's a there's a place that musicians get into where they're almost of one mind. They can be playing along and someone will make a mistake and everyone will go with the mistake. There is just one one mind, one brain, controlling all of them. And it was very much like that. I think in the studio we hardly had to say anything to each other. We knew what had to happen. And Rono especially he was it was really good. He was another one of those like much like David with his vocals, he was very much we could get it in one take, and he always knew what was required. And then of course on top of that, there was his incredible string arrangements orchestral arrangements. He came into that having never done it before, so much like much like past David and I with the production side of it, there were no rules, so he was coming up with things that I don't think more established arrangers would have come up with to me that a lot of them are brilliant. I love his arrangements so much. I got to ask you that the piano on Life on Mars and on Ziggy and Beyond is that the same? I think it's Beckstein that that Paul McCartney used on Hey Jude, and I think Neilsen used on Without You. That's the same as the Tried piano. Wow, that's that's a it is? Yeah, yeah, if only it was still around in its original form. I heard the story. It's second hand. I don't know if it's true, but I've heard it from several people connected with Tried, and that eventually they decided it had to be re strong, so it was be it was being carried out of the studio. Now to get out of the studio up it was basement level, so you had to climb upstairs. And the way I heard it was that one of the movers dropped it and the soundboard cracked. And yeah, yeah right, I'm actually doubled over right now as you're telling me this, just like, oh my god, yeah, now that that was an amazing piano. Every did you say, Elton Queen Super Tramp, Beetle's go On and On, Carlie Simon, Harry Nielsen. Wow, I wonder where it is today? Yeah, I do. The thing is interesting enough. I did an interview the other day with Rick Wakeman, who played it, and he said that no one it was a rental piano. It wasn't owned by Tried, They rented it from somewhere else. And all of the files, I think he said, there was a fire and all of the files were were burned, So no one knows the number on that piano. So there are like three or four people at the moment that are saying they own that piano, and no one can prove if they're who's right and who's wrong because no one knows the the number of the piano. Wow, I think I think that's the plot of the next Indiana Jones movie. That's really Yeah, that's fascinating, Oh my gosh. I mean, just all the sounds you're able to get in that that Trident room. I mean, and and of course you know drums being you know kind of your your your hallmark, your trademark sound, which is one of my favorite sounds of that record. And it's funny to me that. What do you Women's E was not a fan of his drum sounds on those sessions, which still cracks me up. No, no, you, And look I I look back on it now and I know exactly what he means. But it's it's it comes down to what would work on that music at that time, and my my feeling at that time. It worked perfectly if the drum sounded was different, if the if the drum sound was more of what he was after, which I know exactly what he was after. No, I don't think the rest of it would have fitted together quite as well. Yeah, I agree, I mean it was, it was. It served the tracker perfectly. It's still funny to me. And what did he say? He sounded like um complex packets. Yeah, so that's what I gave him when we started Ziggy instead of a drum. Yeah. I when we were going going to start doing it, the roadie that brought in his drum kit, so I had to set it up. I said, okay, hold on, put it all away again, and I sent my assistant engineering out to buy as many different sized packets of corn flegs that he could find and come back and we set up a whole drum kit with symbols and everything. Everything was exactly right except for the drums. It was all complex packets. Did he did he? Did you get a kick out of that? Oh? Yes, oh yeah? What was that? Yeah? Well I wish I wish I'd got a picture of it. We didn't have We didn't have phones that you could take pictures with back then. Was there a good sense of camaraderie with with the guys in the band at that time around the Yeah? Absolutely, yeah, oh yeah. We were a team and we had we we worked hard, but it was a lot of fun doing it all. Absolutely. A little later when you worked with with David again on on a Laddin saying that was really uh his first album made when he was a bona fide superstar having just come back from America. What were those sessions like? Had he changed at all? Had the dynamic with the group changed at all? Because I know that was the last one that he made, but with the Spiders from Mars, Yeah, yes, there was a slight change. More. I think he just gained confidence than anything because of the success we started it off in New York and that that just in general was slightly different. It wasn't a situation that any of us were used to, especially for me, because I always engineer my own productions. Only the for the sessions in New York, I wasn't allowed to do that because our c A studios where we were working were heavily, really heavy union, and because of the union, I wasn't allowed to touch anything. So I had to sit at the end of the mixing console just as a regular producer, not as the engineer producer. And I found that a lot more, a lot harder, And so the New York sessions were slightly strange for me. But then once we got back to Triton and we got back working on it again and completing it, it was easy. And then pin ups in in France. What were those sessions like? They sound very it sounds fascinating. They were strange, most definitely. Let's say, said David had fired the spiders and then suddenly Ronald was still part of it all. Ronald knew what was going on when the firing took place. He knew before the other guys did that they were going to be canned. Uh. But what happened was David had to ask Trevor Boulder to come back because the original bass player suddenly pulled out of the project. So that was very weird bringing back someone that you just fired bringing them back in at the last minute. Of course that's going to be strange. Then with the new drum or, Gamesley, who great drum right worked with him in the past, great drummer. It was just different and there was very much. I my wife was my wife at the time was pregnant with twins and she was due to give birth whilst eyes over there, we took a day's break and I took a flight back to England for the birth and then flew back to continue work. Uh, so that there was very It was strange. There are a lot of things going on. David was already I think he wanted to move on to something completely different. So yeah, that not my favorite album. I think of all the albums that that you you've worked on with David either as an engineer, co producer, and then there's so many. What is it about Ziggy that you think just just gives it this longevity and gives it this this the sense that really makes it seem to stick out for most people. What do you think that is well, first and foremost that the thing originally is it? The album, the track Starman and the performance on top of the pops over here changed so much in people. In young people's minds, they suddenly felt that they could be different and it was okay so and that motivated so many musicians. Two, I can do that. I can be a musician. I think very much like the Beatles in the sixties that suddenly it was everyone wanted to form a band, and I believed that they could become as big as the Beatles. I think much the same way in the seventies with with David and it started. It all started with with Ziggy and with Starman uh And I think for me personally, I think Ziggy holds together as an album much better than any of the others, Although there are tracks on the other albums that I prefer to some of the tracks on zig I know that's that's such a boring question. But you but you have a favorite that you worked on with him? A favorite? No, I I would say there are. There are two very specific ones, and both of them come down to piano, and one is Life on Mars with Rick Wegman, and the other one is a Ladd Insane with Mike garson incredible piano parts. I just that and and so completely different. And that's that's part of David. What I was saying earlier about David putting together a team that would put across what he wanted to put across. Rick Weightman could never have done what Garson did on that album. And I don't know that Garson would have done what Rick Weightman did on the Huntry Dorry album. Yeah. I love Rick Wakeman's kind of broke style flourishes, and I love My Garson's like almost like cracked ymar Republic cabaret style twisted piano sounds. I mean, they're just totally unique and totally him and totally special. And you're right there, both brilliant in their own unique ways. Yes, Do you have a a sort of snapshot in your mind that kind of sums up your whole experience with David? Is there there are a moment or a memory that that comes to mind that always makes you smile, always makes you laugh, that makes me laugh. Yeah, This must have been when we were working on a lad inside and all of the fan mail has started to come in, and someone from from David's management office must have brought along a whole bunch of fan mails for David to go through, and he picked out one. He said, here, Mick, this is this is for you, and he started to read it and Dr Mick, I love you. I want to and starts to go through all of these lurid things that this person wanted to do to Mick Ronson. And as as as David is reading it to Rono, Rono was getting more Oh yeah, oh I like that, Oh wow, And then David says love Michael. Rono's George just dropped off. The record is a production of I Heart Radio. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Need Queen

Off the Record is the production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Off the Record. I'm your host, Jordan Runta. Thanks so much for listening. We're taking a quick midseason break from our story this week. Will of the next chapter of Bowie's life for you on Monday, March eight. But today we have something extra special in store, a conversation with Mr Ken's Scott, the man who co produced a string of Bowie's most beloved albums, Hunky Dory, Ziggy, Stardust, Aladdin, Saying, and Pin Ups. For most people, that's enough bragging rights to last a lifetime. Yet that's just a small part of Ken's legendary career. His life is almost as if the movie Almost Famous happened in a recording studio. His first job was at Abbey Road Studios in London. His first day as an engineer, he was enlisted to work with a little band called The Beatles No Pressure. As we'll see, Trial by Fire is a recurring theme in Ken Scott's story. He worked alongside the Beatles producer George Martin, learning his craft as the band recorded songs for classics like Magical Mystery Tour and the White Album. The list of other names he's worked with as an engineer, producer reads like a roll call for the rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Elton, John lou Read, Jeff Beck, Harry Nielsen, Super Tramp, Devo, Duran, Duran, Procohiram, and of course, David Bowie would characterize Scott as his own personal George Martin, helping him translate his abstract, creative notions into sonic reality. They were the perfect collaborators and co conspirators as David found his musical voice and evolved into a world class songwriter. Together with guitarist Mick Ronson and his unforgettable orchestral scores, How could they lose? Ken's twelve memoir Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust was a crucial part of my research for this season of Off the Record. We first crossed paths in at a listening event for the Beatles Mono box set. I've bombarded him with breathless questions about my favorite band, which he answered with grace and good humor. I'm extremely grateful that he agreed to a second round of my breathless questions, this time about David Bowie. Well, I guess it's the start. You've had, just an unbelievable career working with the Beatles, upon John David Bowie, procoha. I'm just to name a few, and it can really all be traced to nine days when you were sixteen years old. Take me back there. How did this journey begin for you? I realized what I wanted to do, what I had to do when I was twelve and a half. I received a granting t K twenty five tape machine for Christmas, and it became my life. I fell in love with type. I loved the smell of it, I loved the feel of it. I loved all that you could do with it, and I knew that somehow or another, I had to work with tape, and sort of checking around, I discovered that the best thing that I could do would be to become something called a recording engineer, which at that point, no one knew what a recording engineer was. One knew what went on in a recording studio, unlike today. But I knew what I had to do, so I kept going. It looked to me, with what little information I could glean at that point, it looks as if I'd have to go to university and get an electronics degree before I could go and get a try and get a job at the BBC. Who seemed to be the ones that you had to go through that I was sixteen. I was just fed up with school and I thought, there's no way I'm going to be able to keep going and go to university and all that. So one Friday evening I pulled out a phone phone directory and wrote to as many places as I could find that might need someone called a recording engineer. So that was the Friday. I mailed it out on Saturday. On the Tuesday, I received a letter from one of the places I'd written to saying that they would like me to come in for an interview. I called them up set up the interview for the next day, which was the way day. Took my first ever trip across London. I lived in southeast London and the place I was going to was in northwest London, so it really was straight across. I've never done that before. I've never been to a job interview before. It took place and on the Friday I received a letter from them asking me to phone them, and I found up and they said they wanted me to start the following Monday, So I left school that day and that it just so happened at that place that wanted me to start on Monday. At the time, it was known as the EMI Recording Studios. Of course now it's it's the Abbey Roll Recording Studio. Is probably the most famous recording studio in the world. As we'll see it again and again in your story, fate has a tendency of just sort of throwing you in at the deep end. I mean, you get your your first job at em I Studio's Abbey Road Studios, and your first job, as I believe an assistant engineer, was with the Beatles at the time. I mean, so you're really starting right at the time, Oh Gown, it was terrifying. Yeah, the first and the first time I'm ever on my own looking after the tape machine, which is all we as assistant engineers did that. Then we just looked after the tape machine and it was four side two of the Hard Days Night, the non film music sry and yeah, it was petrifying. I mean, how how did your experience working with Sir George Martin and the Beatles prepare you for for working with David, were there any lessons that you gleaned from from those early sessions that you worked on that that you incorporated later on, Oh, without a shadow of a doubt. Without at the time, I didn't realize it's it's only in hindsight I realized exactly what I learned from from George Martin and from another producer i'd work with who happened to produce Basondity that the single a gentleman by name August Argon. Both of them were very much that talent is in the studio to do one thing, and that's to create eight and you have to allow the freedom for talent to create, always knowing that you can maybe just go back if if you think it's going too far left field, you can say, you know what, guys, it was it was god girls, whatever you can it was better like five minutes ago. Let's go back to there and continue from there. That that kind of thing. And it was funny because at one point I did not realize I had got this from from George and Gus. And one day after the success of with David, David was doing an interview with the BBC and they asked him about working with me and he said that ken's my George Martin, and I hit the roof. I was I felt offended that he had compared me to George Martin, because what did George. I didn't see what George Martin really did? What he didn't tell him anything what to do, and it was it was something like that, and it was actually it's just I realized, but that is how I worked the same as George. It's I'm better. I know, I'm better at saying no than I am coming up with specific ideas and that with working with the Beatles, that was very much so. It became George's place as well. It was they had their own minds and you would go along with it. You'd allow them to try everything and then sort of cut back when it wasn't working. Was much the same with with Gus. Everything as a producer I learned from from George and Gus. As an engineer, the Beatles sessions were the greatest training I could possibly have because here I was working with the band. And I have to say you mentioned that my first job as an assistant engineer was with the Beatles. Well, my first job as an engineer sitting behind the mixing console was also with the Beatles. I never sat behind the console before, I'd never pushed up a favor before. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and I was there. I was with the biggest band in the bloody world. Yeah. I won't go any further as the feelings that were going on within my stomach at that point. But it finished up being the greatest training I could possibly have because here I was with a band that had no monetary problems. Thus they had no no sort of timing problems. It did. They could take as long as they wanted with everything, and it was a band that wanted everything to sound different every time. Uh So you'd get a piano sound on one for one track, and then then once it's sounding completely different on the next track. That that kind of thing, and that that gave you an amazing amount of freedom to experiment, and they had no problems with that. That's what they wanted. And there was always that thing at the back of your mind that you could completely screw something up, used completely the wrong mikes, the wrong eq it put it in the wrong place, just all of that kind of thing, and there was as much chance of them coming up the stairs and saying that sounds like shit, I don't like it. As there was them coming upstairs listening to it and says, m that sounds like ship. But I love it. We'll use it. And just just the freedom that gets that gives you as someone trying to learn their gig. It's incredible and no one will ever have the experience. I had to learn what they're doing. It was. It was just phenomenal. Your first song that you you engineered with them as a full engineer was I am a Walrus, right, which I mean is just all over the place in terms of all the different techniques and sounds flying in and having the third program from the radio come in with King Lear. I mean, it's just it. That's just such a prime example I think of all the different things you can try. Yeah, I didn't do the basic track on that Jeff Emrick did before he he quit. I did. I did the orchestral over dubber, mixed it and that side of it. Now, the very first session I did with them was to try and record your mother should know. They had already gone to another studio and would recorded a version of the song there, but Paul wanted to try a different arrangement, So that's what we did that particular day, my first ever session, and luckily the arrangement didn't work, So the fact that I didn't know what the hell I was doing didn't really matter that much of the first session. But then the next session was my first ever orchestral session, and that was im no worus And yeah, it was bad enough with the biggest band in the world. But when it's the biggest band in the world with a large orchestra in the studio, Ah yeah, yeah, no, better way to learn, I guess not. Yeah, be careful what you wish for, you might get it. It was one of those situations. You had worked as an engineer on David's earlier albums like The Man Who Sold the World and The Space Out of the Album, and they were produced by Tony Visconti, who, in addition to being the producer, was also sort of a musical director and David's bass player when he was putting together the team for Hunky Dorry. Do you think he was drawn to you because of your background working with George Martin and being more of a facilitator of sonic ideas rather than getting in the weeds about the music. Do you think that attracted you to Bowie at the time? Very very much. So it was when when I worked with David on the Space Odyssey album or Man a Man of Words, man of music, whatever you wanted to call it, uh, and then on Man Who Sold the World, I felt it Although it was down as being David Bowie's album, I didn't think that he had that much to do with it. He wrote the songs and he sang them, but everything else was very much Tony. And I think that it's a part of me that thinks that David had seen success with Space Oddity, which was with Gus and was very much David's ideas and it was successful. Then he went away from his ideas. It became more of Tonies and it wasn't successful. So I I think that David was I had put himself in the position it's either put up or shut up kind of thing. It's if I have faith in my in what I'm capable of doing and have faith in my own ideas, I've got to do it myself. And it was that thing that he said to me I was working with him doing a friend of his, which I think it may have finally came out as Arnold Corns. I'm not sure if that was one of the sessions or not, but during one of the breaks they happened to mention to him that I wanted to move more into production. I had it just as an engineer, and he said, well, I've just signed new management deal. They want to put me into the studio to record an album so that they can shop a deal. I was going to produce it myself. I don't know if I'm capable of doing that. Were you co produced with me? So an instantaneous yeah, of course. And we went in there neither of us having really done it before, and I think we were both very nervous. But as we did more and more, and as our ideas that sounds and everything were coming more and more together, it was giving us more and more confidence to go down much further. We were being proved right to ourselves, and I think it's one of those things. It didn't sell, but that didn't matter. We had proved to ourselves what we could do. And then it moved carried on into into Zigi, which was recorded a very short time after. I mean, it's really interesting to me to think that when you first started working with David as an engineer for the for the prior album. Your impressions of him, at least music weren't that great, A nice guy to some talent, but you know fair to say you didn't think that he was going to be David Bowie superstar. When did that change for you? After one of the reasons, I was so quick to jump on, Yeah, of course I'll co produce with you. That would be great. There I was thinking, well, this isn't now. My My prior experiences had been working with the biggest band in the world on the first off, and it was that, my god, every mistake I make might be heard by by hundreds and thousands of whatever. And so suddenly here I was being asked to co produce an album, and I thought, well, great, now I can make mistakes and no one's going to hear them because he's never going to be that big. And it was a couple of weeks later that he came round to my house with with Angie, his wife, and his publisher Bob Grace, and we were going through demos for what songs we would do on Hunky Dory, and it probably just two songs in Suddenly I realized that this guy was a hell of a lot more talented than I actually got from him on the first two albums that I worked with him on, and that this could be a huge album. He could be a superstar, and hell, here I go again. It's it's something that's possibly up to two thousands of people were here again. So yeah, it changed hearing a couple of demos. Now, who was David influenced by at that stage when you first went into the studio to work on Hunky Dorry. Was there a discussion of who he was listening to or what do he wanted? The songs that sound like none whatsoever totally fresh? Did that? Yeah? It was. It was just we were going into the chord of songs. And one of the great things with David was his ability to pick teams or put teams together that would give him what he was looking for at that given point. Musically, the team of Woody Woman's, Trevor Boulder, Mick Ronson and myself and on Hungry Dorry, Rick Wakeman then later Mike Garson, they were perfect teams for what he was after at that point. Just but he then towards the end, after Pinups, I did another session with him u supposedly for Diamond Dogs. It was never used for some for Diamond Dogs in the end, but it became obvious when we were finishing that off that he was already moving to more of an American sound, because when we were mixing it, he kept on influencing. My recollection is that it was Barry White, but it was it was that Philadelphia gamble half type of sound that he wanted to try and emulate, and he'd never do that with English musicians. And he realized that, so he formed a new team in the States to do the whole thing White Duke and the more American style of things. And he was so great at finding those those teams. And the way he would work is that he would play the song, teach you, just teach you the song, and then leave you all to to do what you do best. He felt totally confident in the team that he had put together to give him what he was looking for and if they were left to their own devices. Something I was surprised to learn about him for somebody who seems like such a perfectionist, that he wasn't a studio hound really like he had very short patients from what I read for forgetting only a couple of takes and having to get it right on those takes. Otherwise he would lose his patience for it, which is it's very fascinating to me. Well, you have to prepare into mind. He was, as far as I'm concerned, that the best studio performer I've ever worked with. Of the four albums I could co produced with him, of the vocals were one take beginning to end, uh, and that's it. I would get the level the sound at the beginning, having seen a little so I could get that. I then take the take back to the beginning hit recalled, and what he sang that one time through time is what you hear still here today and there Bear in mind there was no put auto tuning, there was no moving around. It was just a straightforward performance. Now, when when you know you're that good, when you know you can do that, I can understand why you might get a little touchy if the musicians you're working with are going take after take after take. So and he got bored in the studio. He wasn't over keen on being in the studio all the time. He get bored very easily, and so like Trevor and Woody, they were always on the edge of their seat. They knew, we've got to get this the next take. Otherwise he's just going to say forget it, it's not working and move on to something else. So that that, to me was great because it added a certain amount of excitement to the way they were playing, because they knew they had to get it right. Do you feel that the best singers almost have to be part actor in a way to be able to put that emotion across? I mean, I think of the opening track five years where, especially towards the end, and I know you've played during some of your speaking engagements, the the strip back just session of him singing and you hear him breaking down in tears. It's just incredible to hear. I mean, do you feel that those are the best singers have to have an element of the actor in them. I wouldn't say an actor as such. David was definitely an actor, uh, because I think you can you have to have something like that if you're changing your personalities around them. These different characters as much as he did, they were all part of him. But I think any great actor says that anything that any role they played, they're taking from from themselves a little. But I think there there are a lot of singers, great performers that it's them just wholeheartedly. It's not just a part of them, it's them giving. And in that respect, I don't think he's acting. It was. We just did what we did. We put it together slowly but surely, and we're not that slowly because considering it only took a couple of weeks to record the album, it was pretty damn quick compared to modern boy standards. It's amazing me not only the speed that you did that album, but just there was just a few weeks between Hunky Dory and Ziggy and yet they still to me, they sound, for the most part, dramatically different. It's it's so incredible just to speed that they were evolving. Yeah. Well, but the interesting thing I I just see them as part one and part two of one album. Yes, there is obviously Ziggy is is more rock and wrong than than Hunky Dory. But if you take Queen Bitch, which was on Hunky Dory, that fits perfect, that would have fitted perfectly on Ziggy Stardust, and you take it Ain't Easy, which we recorded to Hunky Dory didn't use it for that and then used it on on Ziggy. So it's to me that there all part of one thing, and they just came out as part one and part two. What do you think of the whole notion of Ziggy Stardust being, you know, a concept album with a storyline and so forth. Was that something that was discussed at all while you're working on it, or just something that's fell together outwards Now that that's people reading reading things into it, it's if you consider that the main thing really that holds a concept album together of that being a concept album was the track Starman, and that was thrown in later because we'd recorded Chuck Berry's Round, Round and Round and that was in exactly the same place on the album where Starman finished up, and we handed the album in with Round and Round there and our CIA the record company said they didn't hear a single, So we went back in recorded Starman and put it in exactly the same place, and then suddenly everyone once that happened, that was the basis really for being a concept album. Now that was never discussed. And this is going to sound like an obvious statement, but it blows my mind. Two there was no pro tools, no plug ins. You had to get the sound in the studio, which requires a degree of forethought and advanced decision making on your part, which is just really unheard of today. I mean, it's it's fascinating to think of what the album would have been like if if it if it had digital tools available. I don't think it would have been any better. Well yes, yes, quite possibly. But now I now, I'm a senior lecturer at a university up here in Leeds Leads Beckett University, and one of the things that I try and do with the students when I'm speaking with them is teach them what we used to do. And one of the main things was make decisions. No one these days wants to make a decision. They will record eleven guitar solos and leave it for someone else later on down the line to make the decision which one it's going to be. We couldn't work that way. We were working on sixteen track. We had to fit everything in on sixteen tracks, and so yeah, you you had to You had to make decisions as you were going. You couldn't leave it for later for other people to make decisions. And that that that led to albums being done much quicker and quite honestly, I think a lot of them much better. You mentioned guitar solos, which leads me right in to something I've been trying to ask a question for for all my guitarists gearhead friends out there, and myself. I'm dying a note too. What was Rono's guitar setup? Mcronson's guitar is just one of the great car sounds. Oh, it's very simple. He's Les Paul. He had a hundred what marshal and he went to a cry baby wah wah pedal. And the way we'd get his sounds is that he'd start off on with the wah wah pedal on the top and he'd slowly move it down and we okay, stop there, and that would be the sound that we we'd use. Dead easy. He's easy if you're if you're mcros it helps if you're micronson. I guess that's the guess the point. Yeah, tell me more about his role in the sessions, because it really seems like like the unsung hero in a lot of ways. Oh. Absolutely, I don't think he got the credit that he deserved. David was obviously an exceeding talent, and I think of he would have made it one way or another, but I don't think he would have made it quite as big, quite so soon if he hadn't had Rono by the side of him. I think Rono was that important. We were all sort of there's a there's a place that musicians get into where they're almost of one mind. They can be playing along and someone will make a mistake and everyone will go with the mistake. There is just one one mind, one brain, controlling all of them. And it was very much like that. I think in the studio we hardly had to say anything to each other. We knew what had to happen. And Rono especially he was it was really good. He was another one of those like much like David with his vocals, he was very much we could get it in one take, and he always knew what was required. And then of course on top of that, there was his incredible string arrangements orchestral arrangements. He came into that having never done it before, so much like much like past David and I with the production side of it, there were no rules, so he was coming up with things that I don't think more established arrangers would have come up with to me that a lot of them are brilliant. I love his arrangements so much. I got to ask you that the piano on Life on Mars and on Ziggy and Beyond is that the same? I think it's Beckstein that that Paul McCartney used on Hey Jude, and I think Neilsen used on Without You. That's the same as the Tried piano. Wow, that's that's a it is? Yeah, yeah, if only it was still around in its original form. I heard the story. It's second hand. I don't know if it's true, but I've heard it from several people connected with Tried, and that eventually they decided it had to be re strong, so it was be it was being carried out of the studio. Now to get out of the studio up it was basement level, so you had to climb upstairs. And the way I heard it was that one of the movers dropped it and the soundboard cracked. And yeah, yeah right, I'm actually doubled over right now as you're telling me this, just like, oh my god, yeah, now that that was an amazing piano. Every did you say, Elton Queen Super Tramp, Beetle's go On and On, Carlie Simon, Harry Nielsen. Wow, I wonder where it is today? Yeah, I do. The thing is interesting enough. I did an interview the other day with Rick Wakeman, who played it, and he said that no one it was a rental piano. It wasn't owned by Tried, They rented it from somewhere else. And all of the files, I think he said, there was a fire and all of the files were were burned, So no one knows the number on that piano. So there are like three or four people at the moment that are saying they own that piano, and no one can prove if they're who's right and who's wrong because no one knows the the number of the piano. Wow, I think I think that's the plot of the next Indiana Jones movie. That's really Yeah, that's fascinating, Oh my gosh. I mean, just all the sounds you're able to get in that that Trident room. I mean, and and of course you know drums being you know kind of your your your hallmark, your trademark sound, which is one of my favorite sounds of that record. And it's funny to me that. What do you Women's E was not a fan of his drum sounds on those sessions, which still cracks me up. No, no, you, And look I I look back on it now and I know exactly what he means. But it's it's it comes down to what would work on that music at that time, and my my feeling at that time. It worked perfectly if the drum sounded was different, if the if the drum sound was more of what he was after, which I know exactly what he was after. No, I don't think the rest of it would have fitted together quite as well. Yeah, I agree, I mean it was, it was. It served the tracker perfectly. It's still funny to me. And what did he say? He sounded like um complex packets. Yeah, so that's what I gave him when we started Ziggy instead of a drum. Yeah. I when we were going going to start doing it, the roadie that brought in his drum kit, so I had to set it up. I said, okay, hold on, put it all away again, and I sent my assistant engineering out to buy as many different sized packets of corn flegs that he could find and come back and we set up a whole drum kit with symbols and everything. Everything was exactly right except for the drums. It was all complex packets. Did he did he? Did you get a kick out of that? Oh? Yes, oh yeah? What was that? Yeah? Well I wish I wish I'd got a picture of it. We didn't have We didn't have phones that you could take pictures with back then. Was there a good sense of camaraderie with with the guys in the band at that time around the Yeah? Absolutely, yeah, oh yeah. We were a team and we had we we worked hard, but it was a lot of fun doing it all. Absolutely. A little later when you worked with with David again on on a Laddin saying that was really uh his first album made when he was a bona fide superstar having just come back from America. What were those sessions like? Had he changed at all? Had the dynamic with the group changed at all? Because I know that was the last one that he made, but with the Spiders from Mars, Yeah, yes, there was a slight change. More. I think he just gained confidence than anything because of the success we started it off in New York and that that just in general was slightly different. It wasn't a situation that any of us were used to, especially for me, because I always engineer my own productions. Only the for the sessions in New York, I wasn't allowed to do that because our c A studios where we were working were heavily, really heavy union, and because of the union, I wasn't allowed to touch anything. So I had to sit at the end of the mixing console just as a regular producer, not as the engineer producer. And I found that a lot more, a lot harder, And so the New York sessions were slightly strange for me. But then once we got back to Triton and we got back working on it again and completing it, it was easy. And then pin ups in in France. What were those sessions like? They sound very it sounds fascinating. They were strange, most definitely. Let's say, said David had fired the spiders and then suddenly Ronald was still part of it all. Ronald knew what was going on when the firing took place. He knew before the other guys did that they were going to be canned. Uh. But what happened was David had to ask Trevor Boulder to come back because the original bass player suddenly pulled out of the project. So that was very weird bringing back someone that you just fired bringing them back in at the last minute. Of course that's going to be strange. Then with the new drum or, Gamesley, who great drum right worked with him in the past, great drummer. It was just different and there was very much. I my wife was my wife at the time was pregnant with twins and she was due to give birth whilst eyes over there, we took a day's break and I took a flight back to England for the birth and then flew back to continue work. Uh, so that there was very It was strange. There are a lot of things going on. David was already I think he wanted to move on to something completely different. So yeah, that not my favorite album. I think of all the albums that that you you've worked on with David either as an engineer, co producer, and then there's so many. What is it about Ziggy that you think just just gives it this longevity and gives it this this the sense that really makes it seem to stick out for most people. What do you think that is well, first and foremost that the thing originally is it? The album, the track Starman and the performance on top of the pops over here changed so much in people. In young people's minds, they suddenly felt that they could be different and it was okay so and that motivated so many musicians. Two, I can do that. I can be a musician. I think very much like the Beatles in the sixties that suddenly it was everyone wanted to form a band, and I believed that they could become as big as the Beatles. I think much the same way in the seventies with with David and it started. It all started with with Ziggy and with Starman uh And I think for me personally, I think Ziggy holds together as an album much better than any of the others, Although there are tracks on the other albums that I prefer to some of the tracks on zig I know that's that's such a boring question. But you but you have a favorite that you worked on with him? A favorite? No, I I would say there are. There are two very specific ones, and both of them come down to piano, and one is Life on Mars with Rick Wegman, and the other one is a Ladd Insane with Mike garson incredible piano parts. I just that and and so completely different. And that's that's part of David. What I was saying earlier about David putting together a team that would put across what he wanted to put across. Rick Weightman could never have done what Garson did on that album. And I don't know that Garson would have done what Rick Weightman did on the Huntry Dorry album. Yeah. I love Rick Wakeman's kind of broke style flourishes, and I love My Garson's like almost like cracked ymar Republic cabaret style twisted piano sounds. I mean, they're just totally unique and totally him and totally special. And you're right there, both brilliant in their own unique ways. Yes, Do you have a a sort of snapshot in your mind that kind of sums up your whole experience with David? Is there there are a moment or a memory that that comes to mind that always makes you smile, always makes you laugh, that makes me laugh. Yeah, This must have been when we were working on a lad inside and all of the fan mail has started to come in, and someone from from David's management office must have brought along a whole bunch of fan mails for David to go through, and he picked out one. He said, here, Mick, this is this is for you, and he started to read it and Dr Mick, I love you. I want to and starts to go through all of these lurid things that this person wanted to do to Mick Ronson. And as as as David is reading it to Rono, Rono was getting more Oh yeah, oh I like that, Oh wow, And then David says love Michael. Rono's George just dropped off. The record is a production of I Heart Radio. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Need Queen