The Idiot (album) - Production

Production

The album's opening track, "Sister Midnight", was written by Bowie, Pop and guitarist Carlos Alomar, and performed live, on the Station to Station tour in early 1976. In July that year, following the end of the tour, Bowie and Pop holed up in Château d'Hérouville, the same locale where Bowie recorded Pin Ups (1973) and would soon record much of Low, and began putting together the rest of the songs that later became The Idiot. At the Château they were augmented by Laurent Thibault on bass and Michel Santageli on drums, who were required, with minimal guidance, to add to rough music tracks already taped by Bowie, their first takes often becoming part of the final mix.

Recording continued in August at Musicland in Munich with guitarist Phil Palmer, who found the creative collaboration with Pop and Bowie stimulating but disquieting, never seeing them around during the day ("Vampiric would be the perfect word", he said later). Overdubs by Bowie's regular rhythm section of Carlos Alomar, Dennis Davis and George Murray, plus a final mix by Tony Visconti, took place in Berlin at Hansa Studio 1 (not, as is often incorrectly reported, the bigger Studio 2 by the Berlin Wall). Given the almost demo quality of the tapes, the post-production work was, in Visconti's words, "more of a salvage job than a creative mixing".

Because of its ambiguous and in some cases non-existent credits, misconceptions have arisen over the years as to who contributed what to the album. Although the common belief that Pop wrote the lyrics while Bowie composed the music is generally accurate, their approach occasionally saw the positions change, with some music (such as "Dum Dum Boys") being Pop's and some lyrics (including the first verse to "Sister Midnight") being Bowie's. The album's cover photo, inspired by Erich Heckel’s Roquairol, is often assumed to be by Bowie but was in fact taken by Andy Kent. No instrumental credits were included on the sleeve, causing some speculation as to the musicians involved, however recent works by Hugo Wilcken, Paul Trynka and Nicholas Pegg have provided a generally-agreed list of the personnel involved.