Recording: Janine, An Occasional Dream

The second recording session for David Bowie’s second album took place at London’s Trident Studios on 17 July 1969.

The album, called David Bowie but sometimes known as Space Oddity, was released on 14 November 1969.

On this day work continued on two songs started the previous day: ‘Janine’ and ‘An Occasional Dream’.

‘An Occasional Dream’ was one of two songs on the album on which Visconti played bass guitar, the other being ‘Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud’.

I must confess that my work was naive (bordering on sloppy) on this album. It was my second album production, and I really didn’t know too much about the quality control of sound and how to turbo-charge the sound of instruments for rock – I always left it up to the engineer, and this young Visconti couldn’t attract or afford the talents of the Geoff Emerick or Glyn Johns yet. I am, however, proud of several tracks where I felt more comfortable in my capacity of bass player and recorder player, as in ‘Letter To Hermione’ and ‘An Occasional Dream’.

The song also featured a jazz drummer whose name was not documented.

We can’t remember the drummer’s name on this, he was an older jazz musician and I don’t know how we came to meet him. It could’ve been through an agency. He was a good drummer, but he counted off in a military squadron sergeant’s voice (as in ‘hup-two-three-four’) which set us giggling before one take and he knew we were laughing at him. Let us just say we never really bonded. I played bass and recorders along with Tim Renwick who also played the clarinet. It’s lovely when you discover that a rock guitarist like Tim also studied ‘serious music’ and could read off a written page. Tim also played guitar and David is on 12-string.

This was the final album session until 5 August 1969.