It's not exactly news to long-time readers of this here blog that I'm hardly the biggest David Bowie fan in the world, but this clip is absolutely great.
Bowie and Reeves Gabrels with a live studio audience explaining how the songs "Supermen" and "Scary Monsters" were created. Yeah, it's your basic And Then I Wrote shtick, but Bowie is really a riot.
The bits about Johnny Cash and Chekov's The Seagull in particular cracked me up.
[h/t Steve Schwartz]
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4 comments:
Reeves Gabrel, I remembered that name.
He collaborated with Bill Nelson - Fantastic Guitars.
He was guitarist in Bowie's side project Tin Machine.
Had the good fortune to catch Bowie at the Hollywood Athletic Club in '97. Intimate show with full band and similarly uproarious humor on display. The place holds around 500 people. It was the last time I saw Bowie with longtime guitarist Gabrels. Great show.
Two years before I saw him at the Hollywood Palladium with Keanu Reeves' lousy band Dogstar opening. Bowie had Carlos Alomar and Gabrels as guitarists. Great band, but at that time the sound system at the venue left more than a lot to be desired.
It was a Halloween masquerade party. About a third of the people came in costume. I couldn't think of what to wear. Got out of the shower and told Sandy I had no costume. She told me to wear what I had on, which was a bath towel on my bod and another wrapped up top the head.
We devised a way in which my DAT recorder and mics could be hidden in head towel. Security was searching the fuck out of everyone upon entry. Shit, they wouldn't even allow sticks of gum. But none of them touched me.
When Bowie was doing "Under Pressure", which turned out to be his last number, some drunk bitch threw her drink in my face for no goddamned reason. A catfight and general mayhem ensued on the floor of the Palladium with my towel coming undone. A guy we were with broke up the fight and security arrived. One of them grabbed my towel from the hardwood floor and told me to put it back on. The drunk bitch told security that our guy friend had punched her. This wasn't true. Me and Sandy were the ones that beat the shit out of her. That lying cunt had the nerve to tell security that our boyfriend was worse than O.J. Both our friend and the drunk bitch were removed from the venue over our protests. All of this wonderment is captured on my DAT of the show. There was no encore and I think it may have been because of our incident near the stage. For better or worse, it was an unforgettable night.
That said, the 1997 show was much better, warmer, intimate and funny. The Palladium was businesslike. The sound was crumby too. Bowie was touring with NIN that year and they had just played the Forum for 2 nights prior to this Bowie only gig at the smaller venue. It held a lot of promise, but didn't deliver anything exceptional. Other than some of the costumes.
VR
Despite all the artifice that surrounded his music, and IMHO obscured his true personality, he seemed like a genuinely nice and funny guy you would want to have a pint with.
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