Kaiser Chiefs have doubled down on the claim they turned down a suggestion made to them by David Bowie over lyrics.
Back in 2011, the Leeds band gave an interview to the News of the World, where drummer Nick Hodgson revealed that they managed to get in touch with David Bowie via a mutual colleague, none other than famous producer Tony Visconti.
Visconti who had previously collaborated on ten David Bowie albums in his time, including Heroes and Low, also co-produced Kaiser Chiefs’ 2011 album The Future is Medieval.
“Gutted!”
In 2011, Nick Hodgson had admitted that the band turned down suggestions from the music legend regarding lyrics.
“Tony texted David asking for his suggestions to finish off a verse [on ‘Man On Mars’] and he came up with a couple of lines,” Hodgson explained.
“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!”.
However, Tony Visconti denied these claims made by the Kaiser Chiefs’ drummer.
He said, “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”.
“I remember we text him”
But speaking in a recent Virgin Radio UK segment, Kaiser Chiefs’ pair Ricky Wilson and Andrew White once again reiterated that this Bowie snub did happen.
“Remember when we didn’t put in a lyric by David Bowie?”, Wilson asked White.
“I remember we texted him,” White responded.
“Yeah, well Tony Visconti, the producer, we were missing a lyric, this was an album a long time ago,” Wilson continued. “And we asked, ‘Can David Bowie think of one?’ And he sent one through, but it didn’t really go with the song”.
Kasier Chiefs’ lead singer Wilson then added that the line offered by Bowie was “Waters aren’t going to muddy themselves”, before joking that he might “save that for the next record”.
Ricky Wilson also responded to White’s claims that the lyric was “terrible”, by saying “You can’t say that it’s Bowie”.
Kaiser Chiefs released their latest album ‘Kaiser Chiefs’ Easy Eighth Album’ last Friday (March 1) via V2.
Last month, the iconic collaboration between Queen and David Bowie ‘Under Pressure’, featured as the soundtrack for the new Adidas advert. More on this here.
