An Interview With Woody Woodmansey (2/3) By Steve Rudd

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3).

You have worked with your sons Nick and Danny on the album. Is this the first time that you’ve worked together as an ensemble? No, not really. All I did was answer their questions, like What’s the name of that drum? or How do you make the bass drum pedal work? They were little at the time!! A good friend of mine, from Hull actually, told me a story about his son and daughter. He told me he’d always wanted his son to be a guitarist. He bought him an electric guitar for Christmas and showed him a couple of things.

He said every time he heard his son playing something wrongly or out of tune he would take the guitar off him, tune it up and then give it back or show him how to play something correctly. One day his son took off the guitar and threw it on the floor; he stopped playing that day. Then my friend’s wife asked him if he could make it to his daughter’s performance at her school. He didn’t know, hadn’t really noticed how into music she was! She had finished all her grades on piano and was really talented! I vowed I’d never do anything like that and that I’d let them do it on their own, if they wanted to do it! I guess being around drums and music had some effect but it was their choice.

Did the quality of the finished album in any way exceed the expectations that you had of it when you started recording? It’s always a consideration when you go in to a new studio, with unfamiliar engineers. You hope they can get you the sounds you want. At Mad Hatter Studios they really know their stuff so we could relax and get on with it. The sound they helped us achieve is amazing. In fact it’s the best sounding album I’ve ever done - especially the drum sounds.

You recorded Future Primitive in LA. How did that go? Doing the album in LA was fantastic. It was November, so we flew out on a cold, wet day and arrived to sunshine and heat! We didn’t take our kits with us (too expensive!) so we hired them out there. We spent the first day trying out drums, cymbals etc ‘til we had what we needed. We had just over 3 weeks to do everything and we only had one track together! We had to schedule the time well so we could pull it off. We did 10 days on basic tracks, about the same on production and other instruments, and did a week on mixing.

Mick Guzauski mixed the album for us. He’s mixed for so many people, from Clapton to Prince to Chick Corea!

We’d start each day about 10 a.m. and finish about midnight; sometimes it went longer! We actually wanted to do the whole thing under pressure. I think it pulls the best out of everyone. I learnt about that doing Bowie albums. For instance, we recorded the Ziggy Stardust album in about 3-4 days, then about 2 weeks mixing and we never did more than 2 or 3 takes of a song; often it was the first take! Jean Genie was a first take – Starman was a second or third take. Under pressure you find out quickly if something’s going to work or not!

Given that you were the drummer in the Spiders From Mars, do people still harp on about ‘the Bowie years’, or do you find that most folk are just interested in the vast body of work that you’ve produced since then? I think the albums I did with Bowie, Mick and Trev as a Spider are sort of timeless. For some reason some of the songs sound like they have just been recorded! Because of that and the whole Bowie phenomena people always want to know more about it from every aspect. I don’t think I’ve read many Bowie interviews since then that don’t mention those years and albums, even when he has something new out! I’m really proud of those albums so I never mind talking about them or answering questions.

Continued .... Next Page (3/3)

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