We have heard from the players who supplied David Bowie’s compositions with guitar. We’ve brought you firsthand testimony from the inimitable Robert Fripp about his longstanding Bowie collaborations.
Now it’s time to cast a critical eye across the Thin White Duke’s discography to draw up a shortlist of his greatest guitar moments.
1. The Width of a Circle – The Man Who Sold the World (1970)
With an ostensibly Buddhism-inspired, labyrinthine lyric that combines self‑analysis with the occult, Nietzsche with Kahlil Gibran, surrealistic Lewis Carroll whimsy with evocative Dylan imagery, The Width of a Circle was originally meant to be an acoustic piece until guitarist Mick Ronson got hold of it and turned it into Bowie’s most unashamedly heavy recording of the ’70s – even bordering on metal. But it was in the live arena that it always took flight.
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During the Ziggy Stardust era, Bowie would disappear offstage for a cigarette break and costume change while Ronson would wig out, Jeff Beck style, for up to 15 minutes.
At the dawn of the ’70s, everybody boogied, and Bowie was no exception. And no, we can’t move past The Man Who Sold the World without mentioning its fuzzed-out title track, the one that Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain would re-introduce to a new generation 24 years later.
Ronson’s insistent motif, swaying in its brilliant weirdness, fuels Bowie’s mysterious lyrics, resulting in a perfect theme song for that secret noir film in your head. – Henry Yates
2. Moonage Daydream – The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, 1972
![David Bowie - Moonage Daydream (Live) [Official Video [4K] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/6pXoQ6iYO1w/maxresdefault.jpg "“John Lennon laid down a simple guitar part. Then David asked me if I wanted to go to dinner with them!” The genius of David Bowie’s guitar collabs in 9 classic tracks 19")
Pure glam swagger from the mythical age of guitar gods, a time when now-legendary names – Beck, Page, Allman, Blackmore, Winter, Iommi, Felder – were trying to outdo each other with each new release. And they succeeded.
As Guitar World wrote about this song 10 years ago, Mick Ronson’s deafening bar-chord intro (“I’m an alligator…”) announces the introduction of Bowie’s most iconic creation. The song’s coda – a.k.a. its thrilling “freak out” – is supplied by an echo-drenched monolith of Ronson’s deeply emotive bends, proving that he was indeed Hull’s answer to Jeff Beck.
As L.A. Guns’ Phil Lewis told us a few years back, “Ronson’s wailing guitar solo at the end of that song? It still gives me chills just thinking about it. The guy was a genius.” – Damian Fanelli
3. Fame – Young Americans (1976)
We’ll let Carlos Alomar take this one (from our 2024 interview): “The riff I came up with became the backbone of the song. It was about creating something catchy yet intricate and continuing to follow the templates of funk. John Lennon laid down a simple guitar part; he was accommodating and didn’t try to disturb the groove.
“Then David asked me if I wanted to go to dinner with them! I had a big ‘dilemma’ moment; I was hearing certain [musical] things in my head, so I didn’t wanna start talking to John and David and lose myself in the drinks or conversation. I decided to exclude myself and return to my guitar parts.
“When they came back, David heard what I did and was impressed that I’d done so much in such a short time. He said, ‘Let me just put down this one little guitar part.’ It was a perfect Bowie part, this distorted guitar that cut through all that funky clarity.” – Andrew Daly
4. Heroes – Heroes (1977)
It could be Bowie’s crowning achievement, but Heroes wouldn’t reach such lofty heights without Robert Fripp’s subtle, yet essential, guitar work. Compared to the ornate Frippertronics or rapid-fire picking that define much of his catalog, the two-note phrase at this song’s core might seem pedestrian by comparison.
But it’s hard to imagine a guitarist drawing out more emotion from those two notes – sustained bursts of tone that are as famous as Bowie’s own vocal melody.
And it’s not like Fripp just tossed off his cameo; as producer Tony Visconti told Sound on Sound, he used a “fine science” to craft his part, measuring the distance between his guitar and the speaker to create a perfect feedback for each note he played. – Ryan Reed
5. Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) – Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)
Briefly readopting the caricature cockney of his earliest Anthony Newley-inflected vocal incarnation, Bowie recounts the tale of a woman whose eyes “were blue but nobody home,” touched by an insanity that manifests itself in “a horror of rooms.”
So far, so Dave. But what nudges Scary Monsters’ title track from greatness to true genius is Fripp’s truly astounding atonal guitar work, mirroring the lyric’s madness, set against a bass riff that pumps along with Visconti’s era-defining gated bass drum beat. – Henry Yates
6. Cat People (Putting Out the Fire) – Let’s Dance (1983)
![Cat People (Putting Out Fire) [2018 Remaster] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/m0ODoeBc04g/maxresdefault.jpg "“John Lennon laid down a simple guitar part. Then David asked me if I wanted to go to dinner with them!” The genius of David Bowie’s guitar collabs in 9 classic tracks 21")
Let’s Dance served as the world’s introduction to Stevie Ray Vaughan, who, with Bowie, invented something new by adding Strat-fueled Texas swagger to contemporary, dance-based pop – raising eyebrows, expectations and bank accounts for everyone involved.
Vaughan plays on several tracks, including Let’s Dance and China Girl, but the song that truly kicks collective ass is the far less-celebrated Cat People.
Basically, it’s got the album’s healthiest serving of SRV; he solos in the middle, adds Albert King-style bends throughout and solos near the closeout. Bowie recorded two versions of this song in the early ’80s; just be sure to seek out the Let’s Dance version.
Of course, we’d be remiss to not suggest that you give SRV’s dramatic China Girl solo another spin. Talk about a perfect introduction to his style. – Damian Fanelli
7. Hallo Spaceboy – Outside (1995)
![David Bowie, Pet Shop Boys - Hallo Spaceboy (Official Music Video) [HD] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/91efm5G8OVk/maxresdefault.jpg "“John Lennon laid down a simple guitar part. Then David asked me if I wanted to go to dinner with them!” The genius of David Bowie’s guitar collabs in 9 classic tracks 22")
With the spirit of Tin Machine proving hard to exorcise entirely, Bowie rekindled his relationship with old compatriot Brian Eno set to work with Tin Machine/Outside guitarist Reeves Gabrels on the latter’s Moondust, a hitherto instrumental composition that rapidly mutated into a pounding “this chaos is killing me” sound collage of wildly panning guitars, punishing drums and claustrophobic industrial-rock devices.
On the U.S. leg of 1995’s Outside tour, Bowie and his band would share the stage with Nine Inch Nails for Hallo Spaceboy. As if his of-the-moment approximation of “the metal Doors” didn’t sound cutting-edge enough, he then gave it to Neil Tennant for a Pet Shop Boys remix. – Henry Yates
8. The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell – Hours (1999)
This track is thematically pessimistic and, tragically, probably more pertinent to our unfolding future than it was at the dawn of the millennium.
The pretty things of the song’s title are the spiritual progeny of Evelyn Waugh’s “bright young things”: carefree youth, the likes of which Bowie celebrated on Hunky Dory, yet that he now imagined were facing extinction in the “tough times” of the contemporary zeitgeist.
Allied to an engaging Reeves Gabrels guitar hook and a propulsive, driving chug, Pretty Things sounds less like a requiem for doomed young dudes and more a brooding rock monster. – Henry Yates
9. Dancing Out in Space – The Next Day (2013)
Guitarist David Torn first performed on Bowie’s 2003 album, Reality, where he was teamed up with Earl Slick. He was also featured on 2013’s The Next Day, where he added ambient guitar work that, at times, recalled the lush wash of sound created by Fripp on Heroes.
“[Torn] comes with huge amounts of equipment… He creates these aural landscapes,” Visconti said of Torn in a Rolling Stone interview about The Next Day. “He uses them in a rock context with all that ambient sound, and he’s bending his tremolo arm and all that. It’s just crazy, completely crazy sound on that track.” – Christopher Scapelliti
