Lots of discussion on ‘David Bowie Wonderland‘ message boards concerning the impending release of ‘A New Career in a New Town’ box set, containing a remix of ‘Lodger’. Was it remixed in 2011 or 2015? Should Bowie have been more hands on? (questions asked on message board).
After Visconti’s initial quote…
Visconti’s 2017 mix of Lodger is included in David Bowie: A New Career In A New Town (1977–1982), the third in a series of boxsets spanning Bowie’s career.
“I found some little gems on the tapes,” he reveals. “At the end of ‘Yassassin’, David does a little Arabic rap that didn’t make the record. I put it on the mix this time and it sounds wonderful. David was proud of these re-releases, but he didn’t want to get involved. There are so many capable people, including his own staff and myself, who could deal with it. He’d hear the final test pressing and say, ‘Great, it’s wonderful. Release it.’ But he always wanted to move on.”
Tony posted this to his personal Facebook page…
Bowiewonderworld post:
Are any of my FB friends active in the above Bowie group? There seems to be a lot of erroneous and egregious comments about the remix of Lodger. For the record, remixing began in the middle of 2015, never before. It has been well documented that David and I always wanted to remix Lodger but there never seemed to be a good time to do that. In 2015 we were making Blackstar together and David was also busy with his musical Lazarus. There were short periods when David wasn’t in the studio, yet I was in a high state of creativity. I opened up Fantastic Voyage and started to mix it and after a few hours I left it in a better state than I had found it (I did more tweaking later on). A few weeks later I tackled African Night Flight and Move On. Then I knew this album could sound great. After I had mixed Yassassin and Red Sails I surprised David with the results. He was extremely pleased and gave me the green light to finish mixing the entire album. Because we were still working on Blackstar that year I never got a chance to complete it until later in 2016 due to my other production commitments and Holy Holy tours. There you have it from me.
Tony added a reply to a question of other remixes…
Not really. I think Low, although very low-fi, is mixed well, as is Heroes. Only Lodger suffered due to the conditions we had for mixing it, basically a lack of outboard gear that was unobtainable. I wouldn’t touch Scary Monsters, I love how that sounds. I think I’d like to remix Reality.
Tony’s Facebook page here Photograph by Poppy Baker