Longtime David Bowie producer and general music industry big-cheese Tony Visconti has strongly denied the claim by the Kaiser Chiefs that they rejected Bowie’s help for some lyrics on the their new album The Future Is Medieval.
As previously reported, drummer Nick Hodgson told the News of the World that the Chiefs approached Bowie through Visconti asking for some ideas to finish of their song Man On Mars. However, the band didn’t think the resulting lyrics were quite right, moving Hodgson to say, “I’m such a big Bowie fan I can’t believe I’m saying this, but they just weren’t right, so I’ve missed out on a Hodgson/Bowie writing credit. Gutted!”
Now, Visconti has emerged to pour water on the story. The producer told NME that such a claim was ‘absurd’, saying “I have never asked David Bowie to write lyrics for the Kaiser Chiefs. I was hired for the production job because of Nick’s obsession with Bowie and T. Rex, and I freely shared some of my production secrets with them, but that did not include getting Bowie to write lyrics for them. That is absurd.”
The Kaiser Chiefs’ album is available on the band’s website now, the idea being that fans choose 10 out of 20 available tracks to ‘make their own’ album.
