Did Bowie do a session with Iggy and James?

So today I read somewhere that said Bowie did a recording session with Iggy and James, it isn't Kill City. Could anyone confirm if this is true or not? this is new to me anyway

Also, on another note I read in some old rock magazine (forgot it), in it, it stated Iggy was going to a Bowie show and got beaten up by surfers and Iggy had stated in magazine that Bowie was a "f*cking carrottop" for sabotaging his work around 1974.

I've only ever hear of Bowie, JW and Iggy being in the studio together during the Soldier sessions.

That's right Woody, and James and David did not get along at all!

Back in the Raw Power days, Bowie's only involvement was when he mixed the album with Iggy in late 1972. I don't believe James was involved in the mix at all. And Bowie didn't show up at the studios when Raw Power was being recorded.

I wonder what James' feelings on Bowie are these days?

From James's FB postings, he really dislikes David Bowie

You're indeed right about Soldier Woody. "Play It Safe" was also co-written by Bowie. Much chaos in those days, so the lyrics were sadly changed to a little duller than what could have been.


"Iggy had stated in magazine that Bowie was a "f*cking carrottop" for sabotaging his work around 1974."

Sound like a reference to Bowie's producing of RP.
The whole band hated Bowies work on RP. The truth were more like Iggy using 1 track for both the bass and drums, which is the reason we will never get to hear a proper mix of RP ever. In retrospect after hearing different mixes, it seems Bowie did a very good job, when having in mind what source he had to deal with.

Gotta wonder WHY he would use only one track for Ron and Scotty. These were not primitive studios.

Was it some sort of snide put-down? Was it an attempt to recreate some of the live spill elements of Fun House? I can't guess, but it seems like a bizarre thing to do.

It was Iggy who made that call? Not Bowie? Gee-whizz.

woody wrote:

Gotta wonder WHY he would use only one track for Ron and Scotty. These were not primitive studios.

Was it some sort of snide put-down? Was it an attempt to recreate some of the live spill elements of Fun House? I can't guess, but it seems like a bizarre thing to do.

It was Iggy who made that call? Not Bowie? Gee-whizz.

If you watch the DVD from the Raw Power boxset, you can see Iggy playing with the mix and listening to the bass and drums as separate tracks (solo bass), my guess would be that Bowie put the bass and drums on one slider and used one eq and compression setting for everything (bad idea), why he might have done that is only known to him I guess

So there are in fact separate tracks for bass and drums?

But Bowie said - "...the most absurd situation I encountered when I was recording was the first time I worked with Iggy Pop. He wanted me to mix Raw Power, so he brought the 24-track tape in, and he put it up. He had the band on one track, lead guitar on another and him on a third. Out of 24 tracks there were just three tracks that were used. He said 'see what you can do with this'. I said, 'Jim, there's nothing to mix'. So we just pushed the vocal up and down a lot. On at least four or five songs that was the situation, including "Search and Destroy." That's got such a peculiar sound because all we did was occasionally bring the lead guitar up and take it out."

I don't understand how Iggy can have been playing with separate bass and drum tracks for his remix unless they were somehow digitally separated years later. I haven't seen that DVD.

Anyway seems that it was Iggy not Bowie who originally chose to use only one track for both Ron and Scott. Has he ever explained why he did that?

My guess is that Iggy brought the wrong tape to the studio, from Bowie's description, it sounds like some sort of pre-mix master tape that was already sort of mixed into groups

The video above clearly has separate tracks. It sounds like an Iggy screw up to me, if David was telling the truth.

Bowie did record with Iggy in 1975 - you can read the full story here: http://bowiegoldenyears.com/articles/7602-rollingstone.html. No mention of James being involved though.

I've wondered about the conflicting stories about whether the multitracks of Raw Power have most of the music on a single track or not. I wonder if there were actually two sets of multitracks: the original one with everything separated, then a later bounce-down with the instruments crammed together as Bowie describes above.

True separated multitracks (at least, separated as far as bass, drums, guitars and vocals) for Search and Destroy definitely exist as they've been released on that Guitar Hero game. And then there's the unused overdubs, the extra HEY!s and the swordfighting noises, that were only on the rough mix.

true the proof of a multitrack for RP is in the dvd !
so why can't we get a " proper " mix ( and sound ! ) for this album ????????

But this is a new subject........

The link you posted don't work, Mark..

I was about to post a long conspiracy-like post with some theories, but thought it would be a good idea to ask James Williamson what he recalled. He answered simply: "We had a full multitrack tape". I do indeed stand corrected, if Iggy didn't screw up in some way when delivering the tapes.

I've always heard for years that there were only three tracks, band,williamson, and Iggy ....
a link, you can hear the different tracks on search destroy (guitar heroes) and it's not perfect as the raw power's video

http://casseur.wix.com/searchndestroy

you can hear bass on the snare track
snare on cymbal tracks
iggy on the guitar track ...

i hope someone understand ..

There is mention of a recording session (74/75) with Bowie in this article.
It is near the end. Bottom of the last but one column.

https://stoogesforum.forumotion.com/t1828-1975-nme-article

It does mention James too.

mark wrote:

Bowie did record with Iggy in 1975

LuckyMonkey wrote:

There is mention of a recording session (74/75) with Bowie in this article.

Slipped my mind completely.
Bowie borrowed a studio in LA, 1975. Iggy, Bowie, Scott Thurston and James where recording "Sell Your Love", "Drink To Me" and "Turn Blue".
Due to Iggy and Bowie being out of it, the session was aborted. James had mentioned something about Bowie having a bad stick-insect paranoia at the time of the session.(no idea what that is, but it sound serious)
Bowie would record another song named "Moving On" alone, after the others had left

soldier wrote:

I've always heard for years that there were only three tracks, band,williamson, and Iggy ....
a link, you can hear the different tracks on search destroy (guitar heroes) and it's not perfect as the raw power's video

http://casseur.wix.com/searchndestroy

you can hear bass on the snare track
snare on cymbal tracks
iggy on the guitar track ...

i hope someone understand ..

Guitar hero tracks are always sub-mixed for the game to work correctly, so we have the same problem with those

I remember seeing Bowie on upright piano during Iggy's Masonic gig in Detroit for "The Idiot" release and thinking "what the hell is he doing here ... i can't hear him a bit".

Let's note, however, that it really was Bowie's band backing Iggy up.

Yeah, RP was CLEARLY recorded with everything on separate tracks.

studioguy wrote:

My guess is that Iggy brought the wrong tape to the studio, from Bowie's description, it sounds like some sort of pre-mix master tape that was already sort of mixed into groups

The video above clearly has separate tracks. It sounds like an Iggy screw up to me, if David was telling the truth.

maybe Iggy brought a tape of submixes from cbs london to another studio to do a quick rough mix for demonstration purposes

turdburglar wrote:

studioguy wrote:

My guess is that Iggy brought the wrong tape to the studio, from Bowie's description, it sounds like some sort of pre-mix master tape that was already sort of mixed into groups

The video above clearly has separate tracks. It sounds like an Iggy screw up to me, if David was telling the truth.

maybe Iggy brought a tape of submixes from cbs london to another studio to do a quick rough mix for demonstration purposes

Something was obviously already done to the tapes if they were in sub-mix format. Maybe whoever gave Iggy the tapes, didn't trust him with the all track masters. The mystery deepens!

R.e. "Bowie's" band. The Sales Bros. were Williamson and Pop's band initially, says the available literature. "F. Carrot Top" purloined same.

John Cale didn't get along with JW either when they met

i think the answer to the question posed in the original post is no apart from the soldier session when James threw his toys out of the pram when bowie turned up and injected some fun into the sessions during play it safe.

as to the recording of raw power, it is clear from the dvd that the recordings were done with separate tracks for drums and bass so I think bowie was taking the micky when he said only 3 tracks were used or he was trying to excuse his mixing work when the album got some stick later from others, including ron ashton, who were critical of it.

for my money the original mix is a work of genius as is iggy's later mix in 1997, only spoilt by the introduction of digital distortion at the mastering stage, the versions of gimme danger and your pretty face on the 3rd cd of the raw power box set are mastered without it and sound awesome