I met David socially in 1972 a couple of times. When we played the first King Crimson show at the Speakeasy in London in April 1969, I was told afterwards that David and [his then-wife] Angie Bowie were jiving.
I also saw the Ziggy Stardust show at the Rainbow Theatre in Finchley when Roxy Music were in support. I was very impressed with the Ziggy show. It was one of the finest rock concerts I’d been to, which I mentioned to David in Berlin during Heroes. His comment was something like, “You saw what we were doing. You saw what was going on. You got it.” It was a perfect show.
When I got the phone call for the Heroes session in 1977, I was in New York. I didn’t view myself as a working player at that time, having just been in retreat for 10 months with no intention of going back to anything like that, so when David asked me to provide guitar, I said, “Well, I don’t know, but if you’re prepared to take a chance, so am I.”
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I packed my Les Paul and a pedalboard by Pete Cornish, which had a volume pedal, wah and fuzz box, and flew to Frankfurt, where I was transferring to Berlin. It was the first time I had flown first class, which was wonderful.
Those were the days of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist gang, so going through German immigration and customs with this box of wires and wood was difficult. They had to go through all the pedals to make sure they worked and that everything was legitimate before I flew to Berlin.
The person who was supposed to meet me at the airport didn’t arrive, so I caught a cab to the hotel and then to Hansa Studios. I arrived about half past six in the evening, plugged in my guitar and we were away. One, two, three, four, and off we went.
I don’t remember any direction from anyone on Heroes, although I’m not saying it didn’t take place. The recording lasted three days, I believe, and it was very ‘in the moment,’ because it was spontaneous and really without thought. It was about immediacy, play and laughter, which are ideal working conditions for an improvising, creative person.
At the same time, we were in a liminal zone, by which I mean an in-between space, whether in time, in people or in places. We were in a liminal space geographically within Berlin; although we were technically in West Berlin, it was an in-between zone between East and West Germany.
In David’s life, too, it was a time between what was happening and what was coming next, and as for me, I had just moved to New York, so it was a liminal period in my life. With Brian Eno, I think he was in between as well, because he was out of Roxy Music but not quite the Brian that we know today. So it was a liminal zone in time and place and persons.
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David was in New York toward the end of ’77, and he invited me to his hotel, so I went along. He asked me to go on tour as his live guitarist, and I said, “No. I’ve just come off the road after six years of touring.”
I remember I asked David, “Any suggestions?” because there’s any number of ways you can go. He said, “Think Ritchie Blackmore”
He was very charismatic. That’s the first word I’d use to describe him, but it wasn’t right for me at the time. Would I have been a good live guitarist for David? I don’t know. I think his live guitarist probably did a far better job of covering his catalog than I would have ever done.
In 1980, I was invited to play on Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), and now I was on the other side of the liminal zone, so I was a working player and ready to go. I was a focused rock player and I recorded for two nights, beginning at midnight, at Trident Studio at St. Anne’s Court in London.
I only had chord sheets, and the advantage of that is that you don’t have to sit down with a manuscript book and listen through the songs a few times until you have the map. You have the map in broad outlines and you just go.
I remember I asked David, “Any suggestions?” because there’s any number of ways you can go. He said, “Think Ritchie Blackmore.” I didn’t expect that, but I understood what he meant.
Did I sound like Ritchie Blackmore? No. But I’d seen Ritchie in the Outlaws in Poole when I was 17, and his playing was phenomenal. He had all the moves. So I’d seen Ritchie, I’d heard Ritchie, and I wasn’t going to play like Ritchie would, but I knew what David meant.
How should we remember David Bowie? Simply as we knew him. Some people knew him personally, other people knew him through his work, and still other people will remember David as the person who said to them very directly, “You have permission to be who you are.”
