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What Working With David Bowie Taught Me About Imperfection
Ken Scott worked with some iconic artists — including The Beatles, David Bowie and Duran Duran — and he learned a valuable lesson from them
“Great creativity comes from mistakes,” says Ken Scott, legendary engineer of The Beatles and producer of David Bowie. “That’s the way it should be.”
Regarded by many as one of the most significant recording industry figures in the past five decades, Scott worked with some of the biggest artists ever. The impressive list of his collaborations reads like the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Pink Floyd, Elton John, Supertramp, Jeff Beck, George Harrison, Procol Harum, Devo, Lou Reed, Frank Zappa and more.
He worked with Sir George Martin on some of The Beatles albums in Abbey Road before taking a job at Trident Studios where he worked on David Bowie’s early albums, including The Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory and The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. He wrote a book about it all called Abbey Road To Ziggy Stardust.
In 2016, I went to see a talk he did with Guardian journalist Dave Simpson at Headrow House in Leeds. Here’s what he had to say about the value of mistakes, what music has lost as a result of the development of…
