David Bowie's 'Width of a Circle': Everything you need to know about the new collection of rarities
Get ready to hear another side of the Starman.
"The Width of a Circle," out now, is a compilation of rare David Bowie recordings from the early 1970s. The set features 21 previously unreleased tracks, including live performances with his band, The Hype, on John Peel's The Sunday Show on BBC Radio 1, as well as Bowie's songs from his 1970 TV drama "The Looking Glass Murders," a filmed version of the mime improv play "Pierrot in Turquoise."
Bowie's longtime collaborator, Tony Visconti, talks to Paste BN about the new compilation and shares memories of working with the music legend, who died in 2016 at age 69 of liver cancer.
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Question: Are there any rarities in this compilation that you think fans are going to be most excited to hear?
Tony Visconti: So much of it is rare. When I got this set, I realized there are so many things I haven't even heard. I remember the live shows with John Peel quite well, sitting there playing it and listening to David speak. John Peel asked him, "Are you gonna take this band on the road?" And he said something like, "I don't think so," which cracks me up because he did eventually. It was so under-rehearsed – I think we only rehearsed for an hour before the show.
Then, of course, there's the five new remixes I did. There's always the fans that prefer the originals and feel they can't be touched, but I think I'm one of the few people in the world that David would approve of remixing. Certainly I was remixing things for him before he passed away. And they're not "remixes" – they're better mixes with newer equipment than I had 100 years ago. David always loved the the way technology improved things. He was one of the first people in the digital revolution.
Q: Although David found success with "Space Oddity," the John Peel session happened a year before things really took off for him with 1971's "Hunky Dory." At the time, did you have a sense that David was about to become a major star?
Visconti: Yeah, because we made plans to live together as a music commune, which we did in South London. So I was putting all my chips on David for a few years. This was the beginning of that period where he had an earnest bunch of backing musicians. We had just acquired (guitarist) Mick Ronson, who helped get the rest of the people involved. I mean, we knew David was going to blow up: It was just a matter of time and we wanted to be in at the ground level.
Q: Do you have a favorite performance from that show?
Visconti: Well, "Width of a Circle" was only half-written. We didn't do the second half of that until we actually went into the studio and that was written on the spot. So that's very interesting to hear it in its infancy. And "Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud," he could always sit down and do that with an acoustic guitar and make you cry, which he basically did on that recording. Later on, that became a full-blown orchestral piece, which was his favorite track on (his 1969 self-titled album). It's nice to hear these tracks in their naivete, when they were just about forming.
Q: What's different about David's cover of "Waiting for the Man" that's included here, compared to other versions he released?
Visconti: I think we were doing the straight-up Velvet Underground version. We were all hard-hitters: We played really hard and heavy in those days. It's great and he just loved the song. And he loved Lou – I did, too. We all knew he was quite an intimidating person. It took years before we could actually confront him. (Laughs.)
Q: Oh, yeah? Why's that?
Visconti: He's Lou Reed! He snarls and he's (no-nonsense). He didn't disappoint when you met him. For the last 15 years of his life, Lou and I were actually in the same Tai chi class. And Tai chi was a wonderful transformation for him – he's a real nice guy. He's got a Lou Reed face for the world, and then for his closest friends and his Tai chi friends, he's just a sweetheart.
Q: What's something most people may not know about David?
Visconti: One thing that was remarkable was his sense of humor. He was really a funny guy and very witty. He would come up with a double entendre when it was absolutely the perfect thing to say. And he was just such great company. I'm speaking to you from the studio where we finished "Blackstar," and my chats with him were just as valuable to me as the work we were doing. We'd have lots of philosophical talks – Tibetan Buddhism was a common interest. Until the end, we just had amazing conversation. He liked to break up the sessions with intervals of deep conversation and that would involve anyone in the room.
And it never took him a long time to do anything. If he did a vocal, he'd go in the vocal booth and do it twice and that was it, unlike some people who have to do 25 takes. So there was a lot of time to chat. (Laughs.)