This comes up here from time to time - I think most recently @JonUrban 's post in the CBS mastered CD-4 titles for the WEA Group thread - in a late 1974 issue of Billboard, an RCA employee called Larry Schnapf said that they expected to release a David Bowie CD-4 (and one by John Denver) in January 1975 - presumably it would've been Diamond Dogs, which was released in 1974, and not Young Americans, which didn't come out until March, 1975.
Now we know this never came to pass, which is obviously a shame - and maybe even moreso that Young Americans didn't get the quad treatment, because it was recorded at Sigma Sound in Philadelphia, which did all the PIR (O'Jays, Harold Melvin, MFSB, etc.) quad mixes, which are some of the best the quad format has to offer. It's always been kind of a mystery as to why RCA wouldn't release quad mixes of one of their most promient rock acts, especially since almost every other big name from the label had one (or more) quad releases.
While looking for something else tonight, I came across an interview with Ken Glancy, the president of RCA Records, and a number of other top RCA execs in the July 31st, 1976 issue (pg. 26) of Billboard magazine. The interview covers a range of topics including quad, and it comes at an interesting time because it was right at the tail end of RCA's quad output - I think in 1976 they only put out one rock title (Jefferson Starship's Spitfire) and maybe a dozen other titles between easy listening and classical. It's a pretty candid interview, an Glancy mentions Bowie specifically with regards to RCA's failings in quad:
So there you go, there was no Bowie in quad, because he "takes an artistic stand against 4-channel." Kind of ironic, given how firmly he embraced surround in the DVD-A/SACD era.
Glancy is also equally candid about RCA's quad past and future later in the article - 'Shepard' is Thomas Z. Shepard, who was a co-director of CBS Masterworks (and a big proponent of quad in general) who left CBS in 1974 to head RCA's Red Seal classical label. I don't think it's any coincidence that the number of Red Seal quad releases went way up the same year he joined the company.
Now we know this never came to pass, which is obviously a shame - and maybe even moreso that Young Americans didn't get the quad treatment, because it was recorded at Sigma Sound in Philadelphia, which did all the PIR (O'Jays, Harold Melvin, MFSB, etc.) quad mixes, which are some of the best the quad format has to offer. It's always been kind of a mystery as to why RCA wouldn't release quad mixes of one of their most promient rock acts, especially since almost every other big name from the label had one (or more) quad releases.
While looking for something else tonight, I came across an interview with Ken Glancy, the president of RCA Records, and a number of other top RCA execs in the July 31st, 1976 issue (pg. 26) of Billboard magazine. The interview covers a range of topics including quad, and it comes at an interesting time because it was right at the tail end of RCA's quad output - I think in 1976 they only put out one rock title (Jefferson Starship's Spitfire) and maybe a dozen other titles between easy listening and classical. It's a pretty candid interview, an Glancy mentions Bowie specifically with regards to RCA's failings in quad:
So there you go, there was no Bowie in quad, because he "takes an artistic stand against 4-channel." Kind of ironic, given how firmly he embraced surround in the DVD-A/SACD era.
Glancy is also equally candid about RCA's quad past and future later in the article - 'Shepard' is Thomas Z. Shepard, who was a co-director of CBS Masterworks (and a big proponent of quad in general) who left CBS in 1974 to head RCA's Red Seal classical label. I don't think it's any coincidence that the number of Red Seal quad releases went way up the same year he joined the company.
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