Recording: Aladdin Sane

David Bowie and the Spiders From Mars were on day six of a week’s recording sessions for the Aladdin Sane album on 9 December 1972.

The sessions took place at RCA Studios in New York City, with Ken Scott producing.

Since the tour was extended and David and the band wouldn’t be back in the UK for some time, it was decided that I should come over to the States to begin recording their next album. We started recording tracks, some of which would eventually become part of Aladdin Sane, in New York City at RCA Studios, such as a version of ‘All The Young Dudes’ that was never used until various releases a lot later, ‘Drive-In Saturday’, ‘The Prettiest Star’, and another that we started but didn’t get very far with. Everything else on the album ended up being done back at Trident. The only change in the band was the addition of Mike Garson on the piano.

The main focus of the sessions was ‘Drive-In Saturday’, which was recorded on 9 and 10 December.

We recorded ‘Drive-In Saturday’, which Bowie had written somewhere mid-tour and had already performed acoustically at one of our concerts. It’s one of my favourite Bowie songs from this period. It tells of a time in the future where people have lost the art of making love and have to resort to reading books and watching films to remind them.