One of those whose names are evoked once someone utters the words “record producer” and those whose oeuvre defined the course of popular music as we know it today, Tony Visconti is much less known as a player in his own right, although everybody must be familiar with the master’s early appearance as instrumentalist – on bass and woodwind – on David Bowie’s second eponymous album in 1969, which included the groundbreaking “Space Oddity” single. Visconti’s solo career, however, has been rather low-key, with platters released few and far between – Tony’s issued his first LP back in 1977 and followed it up only in 2019. Yet the veteran’s latest offering, titled “Apollo 80” and put our fairly recently, is brilliant enough to become a game changer.
So let’s ask Mr. Visconti how did it come about.
“I seldom release albums of my own music, and ‘Apollo 80’ is only the third,” says Tony. “I am more pleased with it than with ‘Visconti’s Inventory‘ and ‘It’s A Selfie,’ even though there are some really good songs on the prior two records. For this new album I wanted as much live playing as possible; very little, but some programming was used. And I asked some favorite musician friends of mine, like Donny McCaslin, Bishi Bhattacharya and Alex Marchisone, to play and sing on this album, which was a great departure from the last one, its title ‘It’s A Selfie’ implying that I played most of the instruments. Titled so because I’ve just turned 80 years old, and the song ‘Brave Young Apollo’ is part of an autobiographical group of songs – including ‘I Tuned Her Violin’, a true story, too – ‘Apollo 80’ has not one embarrassing moment on it. I worked on my singing voice and improved my power and intonation. What I also did was to amalgamate all the styles of record production I structured after working with some really fantastic artistes over the past 55 years. So I might as well take the music on the road.”
Apollo 80
1.Here’s A Lick
2. Politics
3. 54321
4. Brave Young Apollo
5. I Tuned Her Violin
6. Haddon Hall
7. Ice Cream Truck
8. Love Falls
9. Smart Phone
10. If You Really Want To
11. Cold October Sun
12. A Minor Italian Tango (instrumental)
bonus track:
13. My Ukulele
