The First Ever David Bowie CDs (RCA 1984)

There is a great deal of forum talk about the RCA CD releases of the David Bowie catalogue back in 1984/5.  I coordinated the manufacturing of these releases so can give some insight into how they were put together. Firstly here's a definitive list with their corresponding catalogue numbers.

Cat No	Title
PD80998	Young Americans
PD81327	Station To Station
PD81732	Changesonebowie
RD82743	Peter And The Wolf (With Eugene Ormandy Conducting)
PD83647	Scary Monsters
PD83856	Low
PD83857	Heroes
PD83889	Diamond Dogs
PD83890	Aladdin Sane
PD84202	Changestwobowie
PD84234	Lodger
PD84623	Hunky Dory
PD84653	Pin Ups
PD84654	The Man Who Sold The World
PD84702	Ziggy Stardust
PD84792	Golden Years
PD84813	Space Oddity
PD84919	Fame & Fashion
PD89002	Stage (European version of David Live in Philadelphia)

The Catalogue Numbers

The PD indicates an RCA label, the RD prefix indicates a Red Seal label, RCA's famous classical imprint.  the 80000 number series indicates a US contracted artist (as Bowie was at the latter part of his RCA tenure).  an 89 number denotes it's a multi unit set (in the case of "Stage" a double CD).

Origin

These were all manufactured for European release.  A great number of forum posts I've read indicate that these are German releases only and that is not true, the same product was shipped to all RCA territories within Europe for release - therefore the UK, French, German etc products came from the same production runs.  The origin of this misconception I think is driven in some part by the copyright society badging found on each CD. BIEM (being the European body) and GEMA being the German one.  However, at that time it was agreed that the local society where the CD was manufactured was to collect the mechanical copyright fees.  Therefore on certain releases (as my Motown posts elsewhere) you have the odd situation of products being marked BIEM (Europe) and JASRAC (Japan) simply due to the location of the factory where the products were made.  I guess with CD it was the start of globalisation of products. Of the Bowie's above only 5 were made in Japan (see below).

Timing

These products were released by the RCA European Regional Office.  The European market was 6 months ahead of the US market as CD was launched in October 1983 in the US but in March the same year in Europe.  As with the first Elvis releases there was drive within the European office to get these out before the US company.Whilst Bowie was a US contracted artist we had to seek clearance to release his products on CD from RCA New York.  Once the clearances started coming through the task was to start collecting the component parts and scheduling the releases and plan when they could be made.  The catalogue numbers indicate the order we received clearances but not the order in which they were manufactured or released.  

Mastering

Here's where much typing has taken place debating the merit or disgust at the quality of these CDs.  These are not perfect even by 1984 quality (and pre the fad of "remastered" - whatever that means - there is no standard). I really I think it's down to an individual's ears and requirements. Tapes were requested from the US - who should have been holding the best masters available.  What we were sent (from memory) was digital tapes (U-Matics) of LP masters - but with no work done to clean them up or even clarity or indication of the original sources.

I used engineer, Ben Turner to make production masters, Ben and I had a good understanding and I had worked with him whilst he was at Tape One in Percy Street London, and later when he started his own business, Finesplice.  He was disgusted with the state of the tapes on such an important artist. Agreeing to do something about it I then gathered all the production masters we had within Europe (of which obviously the UK copies were important) and Ben set about making the best he could with what we had.  In hindsight the lack of an answer to the glaringly obvious question "couldn't someone talk to Bowie?" seems crazy. 

Nowadays the mastering/studio work would be commissioned from Tony Visconti and Ken Scott and the other producers of the original works.  This just wasn't done back then and the label wanted to simply push on. Frankly the studio time and the work we did wasn't authorised by anyone at RCA - and I went quietly beyond my remit but Ben and I felt that we could improve on what we had been given to work with.  I have read some forum comments stating the that the European CDs are better than the early US counterparts (which would have possibly used these original "masters" I was sent i.e. without our changes), and this gives me some comfort that we were right. As I say its totally dependent on your ears. I believe we made a small margin of difference. The hindsight of the later masters by EMI then RykoDisc show what you can do when the sufficient thought, funding and effort are used. If only I'd had the knowledge and power to make that call then...

In around 1986 Ben was asked to speak at a conference in London on Digital mastering and used the Bowie's as a case study of how easy it can go wrong.

Labels

Station to Station /German

Our standard RCA labels were used for the releases.  There are three differences.  Firstly the release of "Peter And The Wolf" was on the European Red Seal (classical) label.  This is very similar to the US version but with the BIEM/JASRAC legend as above and obviously European numbers. The standard label for pop/rock releases was different from the US counterpart having a silver starburst effect as seen here. The colour and texture of the printing differs between the German and Japanese versions with the Japanese being more grainy to the touch and in appearance.  The (P) dates reflect when the songs were first published (as in mechanically).  

ChangesTwo/Japanese

I had a real bug about timings.  As CDs are digital products I felt that it was laughable that many companies simply carried forward inaccurate timings from the equivalent analogue releases.  The LC number was a code used in German (then West Germany) radio stations to identify the owner of the recordings - RCA's code being LC0316.

Artwork

All European RCA pop CDs at that time had a graded blue stripes on each spine of the inlay card.  Red Seal had red ones.  I broke the rules with 'Peter and the Wolf 'and added the blue to a Red Seal release (I've seen it quoted as a mistake).





All releases had the RCA CD spectrum logo added to the front cover.  There's a whole debate to be had here about branding - were buyers of Bowie CDs (or of any other popular artist) actually interested in the corporate logos of the label being all over the original artwork - already reduced in size in the new format? But it was the company line. 


The general supply price from PolyGram (our main supplier) was for a CD in a jewel box with a single four page booklet with inlay.  The label colours had to be chosen from a palette that they provided of (say) 30 colours.  Anything differing from this cost more and provided a delay.

Most of the CD booklet covers came from films we were provided from the US company. These had simple 4 pages with little or no track details included and the inside back cover blank.  It was agreed (not by me) that this blank page would be used to advertise other RCA CD releases.  All of the timings noted on the covers and inlays were wrong (no one had referenced the timings listed on the masters).  We had to add European barcodes and price codes (QB/RC650), distribution details and a "printed in..." legend.

The films supplied by the US were "combined" meaning you could not make changes to them - this led to some really bad amendments (see the "Hunky Dory" back booklet where we had to add a white box to include the catalogue number).  Where we could we removed the "digitally remastered" logo as it meant nothing and was misleading (see FAQ below) - we couldn't do this on "Fame and Fashion" so it remained.  We added our version of the RCA spectrum CD logo which we had reshot (the US films were simply repeatedly duplicating the logo so the resolution deteriorated with every release until we did our own).

I no longer have a full set of these but from what I have and from my memory we made a number of other changes.  For "Changestwobowie" - we added the sleeve colour to the inner pages. We reshot, re-touched or masked areas of the covers of "Young Americans", "Diamond Dogs", "Lodger" and others where the US source films were awful. We added the lyrics to the booklets for "Aladdin Sane", "Hunky Dory", "Young Americans" and others. We created all the materials for "Space Oddity" from album artwork etc as the US films took too long to arrive.  

On some releases (see below) the additional pages were helped by the fact that the inlays and booklets could be printed in Germany whilst the CDs were being pressed in Japan (for those manufactured by PolyGram pressing would not commence without all the parts being present, including finished booklets). The additional time allowed for the required typesetting and printing to take place simultaneously with the CD being pressed in Japan by Nippon Columbia (part of Denon). For these releases packaging took place at Bertlesmann's Sonopress factory in Gutesloh, West Germany (where all RCA vinyl was made by then). This accounts for the mix of BIEM/JASRAC on a label and "printed in Germany" on the inlay and booklet.

What Was Manufactured Where?
All of the list were manufactured at PolyGram's Hannover plant except "Peter and the Wolf"; Aladdin Sane"; "Changestwobowie"; "Pin Ups" and; "Golden Years".  These were all pressed by Nippon Columbia in Tokyo.  The European masters for these releases may have been used for the US versions of the same titles later.  The US pressed all their initial CDs with Nippon Columbia with New York providing them with masters (I assume the same ones I had been so disappointed with) which is possibly why some listeners beleive there are soud quality differences between the US and German pressed versions.  I do not know if they ever thought to use the European masters we had already lodged with Nippon Columbia - clearly if there is a difference in the sound quality they did not and we have a straight comparison with what they all could have sounded like (the US ones) and how much difference our work in London made (the European releases).

Release Dates
Again a subject of a great deal of debate and I cannot give you the definitive answer but can give you the background.  Firstly all but one of the titles were manufactured during 1984.  I would guess later in the year.  I suspect also that "Stage" was manufactured in early 1985 but would stand corrected if anyone knows differently.  Due to the huge success of CD in Europe we were constantly in a short supply situation.  With PolyGram being the first (and for some time, only) manufacturing plant in Europe, each major was given a monthly manufacturing allocation often only three months in advance. When I arrived at RCA in June 1983 we could make between 20-30,000 per month (and remember this was for the whole of Europe). 

To give it some context the last month I worked there in January 1987 we made 1.6 million.

There was a very long lead time from the initial idea to release a back catalogue item to actually getting it to the shops.  This was due to the legal requirements of clearances (approval to pay artists royalties based on LP and not CD prices) through to the actual manufacturing process itself.  With the lack of pressing capacity we would then often have a number of products ready and have to choose to delay them simply because we couldn't make all we could sell.

The national marketing companies became reluctant to advertise and set up marketing campaigns only to find that the CDs were then not available.  They therefore adopted a process where they only embarked on marketing and setting release dates once they had the stocks.  Whilst all companies received each title at the same time the dates they actually were released country by country may well differ. If anyone has more details on this aspect I'd be pleased to hear from them.

Deleted
the whole series of releases were deleted when his RCA's rights to Bowie's works expired in 1988.

Q&A

Q. Who did the artwork for the additional parts you added to the films? I used a London based design house called Ranel (later called Pointbanc).  This wasn't really design as such on these titles, just really using the collateral from the albums and trying to incorporate it where and if we could.
Q. Can I determine the order of release from the advertised titles in the back of each CD booklet? No you can't as some artwork came together earlier than others and a simple inclusion of a page with other titles will only be an indication of when we had the artwork ready but certainly not proof of an order of release.
Q. What about the catalogue numbers? The catalogue numbers were allocated as we received the legal clearance to go ahead with the releases. But only then would we go about collecting the component parts (masters, artwork etc) and the delays and timing after clearances to manufacture varied wildly.
Q. What's wrong with "digitally remastered" and why did you want to remove the logo? The logo was misleading. Remember this is in 1984.  My feeling was that a CD is digital - To make the best possible CD you have to convert from best tapes you have to digital at some stage.  Later, after my period of doing this (and currently) artists and producers use new technologies to improve the sound or to give it clarity.  To do this they go back to the source - this is true remastering.  It certainly wasn't happening then to my knowledge.  Simply taking an LP or cassette production master and making a digital copy certainly isn't re mastering it's simply making a perfect copy. (and I had to try to educate people of that premise).  If you copy the output from an LP to your PC or Mac and produce a CD of it - does that make you a remastering engineer? There was an industry attempt to clarify this using the AAD code (Analogue or Digital) referring to recording, mixing and mastering.  For CD the last one will always be D.  but if the original tape is awful you will only make a true copy - therefore an awful CD.
Q. Why does the "David Bowie" on the cover of "Aladdin Sane" appear on the left hand side when on the LP cover it is o the right?  I have no idea - I hope its a mistake rather than a decision I made.  It could be from an art error (here or in the US) but there is no real way of knowing.  The only clue is the RCA CD logo going in its place.  Worth checking a US japanese manufactured one from the 1984/5 - if it's like it there then it happened in the RCA New York art department (or their film supplier) if not then it happened on my watch and i'm horrified.
Q. Why do some titles have (c)1981 as the artwork copyright date and not the year of the original release? This is basically a mistake, and one I realised after my time at RCA. I suspect this happened at film separation stage (post artwork approval) where the wrong line has been added into the combined films. That said it was my job to do a final check before they went to the printer so it really down to me.  This seems to be on the titles where we created (re-created) the artwork from the beginning (that is definitely true of "Aladdin Sane" and "Changestwo").
Q. How much are these worth? I've just reviewed these titles through ebay and some of them are up for around as much as £100 (priced in 2010).
Q. (from Jens Doepke) We've recently found an old RCA Europe 1984/85 CD catalogue. Is there any reason why the Bowie CDs are presented in that particular order? Could it reflect the (actual or intended) order in which they were released or is it just arbitrary? No this catalogue (see here) was originated by the team at RCA and the order of titles has no relationship to when they were released (sorry).
Q. (Jens) You wrote that the Red Seal releases ("Peter and the Wolf", as far as Bowie is concerned) had red stripes on the spine. I know that such copies of "Peter and the Wolf" exist, but they are very rare. My copy and, in fact, all other copies I've personally seen have blue stripes - just like the other Bowie CDs. Could it be that only the early copies of that CD had red stripes, and that the design was soon changed? (Which would also explain the rarity of red stripe copies). Any copies with blue shading are the European relase - see my comment above. any Red shading is a US or other territory. (i have amended this answer in October 2024 after obtaining a copy and reaslisingmy original response was incorrect).
Q. (Jens) "Ziggy Stardust", "Young Americans" and "Fame and Fashion" have "Printed in West Germany" on the artwork, whereas the other CDs have "Printed in Germany". Was there any reason for this difference, and was there any particular point of time when this changed? I'm not sure on this - and I would remember if there was a conscious change - we probably made the change on one release then carried it forward but i'm not sure whether "West Germany" or "Germany" came first. Again if an error its sloppy!
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I'll like to add to these as they come up so feel free to add your observations, comment or ask a question.

Many thanks to Jens Doepke for prompting the post in the first place and for asking the questions above - anyone who can help with Jens' quest to establish the actual release dates can contact him via the comments here.