Earl Slick saw David Bowie through some of his biggest successes and most tragic moments, included the onstage heart attack that sidelined his touring career in 2004.

Still, nothing felt as seat of the pants as his first stage appearance alongside the glam icon for the Diamond Dogs tour in 1974, not long after Bowie parted ways with Mick Ronson, the charismatic and musically gifted guitarist from his band the Spiders From Mars.

The Spiders had been part of Bowie’s sonic identity for years, but as he looked to move away from the era and embrace a new character, he needed a new group. The Brooklyn-born Slick, then in his early 20s, got the nod after film score composer Michael Kamen recommended him. He also aced a blinder-than-blind audition.

But all the preparation didn’t relieve his jitters as the tour's first date, at the Montreal Forum on June 14, drew nearer.

“I wasn’t nervous about anything other than the fact I was replacing one hell of a guitar player, who I was a big fan of,” he tells NME. “Mick was a star, man. It felt like replacing Keith [Richards] or something.

“I shat my pants. I thought everyone was going to hate me, the crowd was going to try to kill me, and the press would murder me.

“One thing I’m really lousy at is that I cannot copy other people note for note, so I don’t really do a lot of sessions,” he develops. “I didn’t want him to want me to be Mick.”

Despite being fresh faced, he wasn’t afraid to address his concerns head-on.

“I said, ‘How do you want me to approach this?’ He said, ‘I hired you because I like what you do. Do what you do,’” Slick recalls. “Obviously, there are key things that Mick did that I couldn’t do any better, so I did those, but the rest of it I just did like me.

“The next day, we got the reviews and the reaction from the fans,” he says. “I was like, ‘Phew! I did it!’”

Slick’s first tenure saw him involved for two records – Young Americans in 1975, and Station to Station the following year. Their creation processes couldn’t have been more different.

Slick says he wanted to bring a “street sensibility” to Young Americans, but stylistically, they were at odds with one another. Bowie wanted to explore R&B, which Slick took to mean music in the vein of Eddie Floyd, Wilson Pickett and Steve Cropper. When he realized Bowie meant a more pop vein, he wasn't best pleased.

“I really didn’t enjoy making that record very much at all apart from a few of the tunes,” he sighs.

But Station to Station was “a whole new ball game,” he returns. “It was every man for himself with us all coming up with ideas, and it was very spontaneous. Going into the studio, half the shit wasn’t even written, so it gave me the opportunity to just play. Whatever came out, came out. That’s why I loved it so much.”

Although Slick and Bowie parted ways following Station to Station, they teamed up again for the 1983 Serious Moonlight tour, the 2002–’04 Heathen/Reality period, and the 2013 album The Next Day

Slick is currently set to reunite with the band members from Bowie’s 2000 Glastonbury show to mark the 10th anniversary of the performer’s death. The group — which includes keyboardist Mike Garson, bass guitarist Gail Ann Dorsey, rhythm guitarist Mark Plati, and drummer Sterling Campbell — will play in Loch Lomond, in Scotland, this November, to raise funds for Save the Children.

Stevie Ray Vaughan was still a studio greenhorn when David Bowie invited him to play guitar on Let’s Dance in 1982.

At the time, the Texas electric blues guitarist was largely unknown outside regional circles. Vaughan had begun attracting attention with his band Double Trouble, but he had yet to release the debut album — Texas Flood — that would soon make him one of the most celebrated guitarists of his generation.

“That entire recording experience helped a whole bunch, and in a lot of ways,” Vaughan told Guitar Player in 1983. “I learned a lot about playing—particularly in terms of recording techniques — and about business.”

As album producer Nile Rodgers recalls, Vaughan quickly figured out not only how to approach the music but — just as importantly — how to fit into the room when he showed up with his “Number One” Fender Strat and 1964 Fender Vibroverb amp .

Rodgers remembers the guitarist’s reaction the first time he heard the title track in the control room.

“The look on his face when he first walked into the control room and heard ‘Let’s Dance’ was like, ‘Oh my God — I’m experiencing something important and magical. What do I do? How do I fit in on this thing? I have to get out of their way and just add spice.’

“I didn’t have to tell him anything. He instinctively knew his role was like, ‘The meal is fantastic—now here’s the dessert.’

“And, bang, he nailed it.”

Vaughan also understood that relationships in the studio mattered. Seeing how hard the musicians were working — and how little time they had to step away — he found a simple way to show his appreciation.

“He wanted to bond with them so that he’d be accepted as family, too,” Rodgers says. “He also knew we were making Let’s Dance like a Black record. White bands would book the studio for months and months, but Black records only got a few hours. We’d work an eight-hour shift because we had lower budgets than rock albums.

“So we would order our food at the beginning of the day so it was here when we took a break for lunch. We’d eat and — boom — back to work.

“Stevie saw we were doing that, and he called Sam’s BBQ in Austin, Texas, to order lunch for the day he came in. We didn’t know this, so we started putting in our lunch order, and Stevie said, ‘Y’all, I got lunch today.’

“The next thing you know, all this BBQ came in. I was like, ‘Check this dude out. He’s right up on the vibe.’ And from that moment, Stevie and I became like brothers.”

The sessions for Let’s Dance, released in 1983, would prove pivotal for both artists. The album became Bowie’s biggest commercial success, while Vaughan’s stinging blues guitar — heard on tracks like “Let’s Dance” and “China Girl” — helped give the sleek pop record an unexpected edge.

Within months of the album’s release, Vaughan issued Texas Flood and emerged as a major force in modern blues guitar — proof that the young musician who walked into Bowie’s studio eager to “add spice” was already bringing something special to the table.

Before Nile Rodgers recorded a single track for David Bowie’s 1983 massive seller, Let’s Dance, he made sure they spent time listening to music.

“We spent most of our pre-production in libraries,” Rodgers tells Vulture of his time with Bowie “going around looking at different artistic concepts. I’ve always wanted to do that with another artist, to get to know who they were as a person through their taste in art, and exchange albums.”

Rodgers had worked with artists ranging from Sister Sledge and Debbie Harry to Daft Punk. But rarely has he gotten to know a musician on a such a deep musical and personal level as he did with Bowie. And he says that was largely down to the work they did before entering the studio.

The results speak for themselves. Let’s Dance was a global smash that turned Bowie into a superstar. Of his 26 studio albums, it remains his biggest seller.

Years later, when Rodgers had a chance to work with John Mayer, he thought he’d try his method again. It didn’t go as expected. And he blames it all on an album he shared with him.

“He turned me onto his favorite record, which was Coldplay’s first album, Parachutes,” he says. “I thought it was cool, but I gave him the Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request, which I think is the most underrated rock and roll album of all time.

“Those first two days we got along like brothers, but then after we did the album thing, it was like, ‘This isn’t happening.’”

Rodgers says the outcome surprised him. “It didn’t work with John. It’s weird, too, because John might be one of the smartest people who’s ever walked this Earth.”

Granted, Their Satanic Majesties Request has never been short of critics. Released in 1967, it was born from a turbulent time and saw the band diving into the heady waters of psychedelic rock.

“None of us wanted to make [the record],” Keith Richards wrote in his memoir, Life. “But it was time for another Stones album, and Sgt. Pepper was coming out, so we thought basically we were doing a put-on.”

Drug use in the band was also rife at the time. Bass player Bill Wyman recalled in his memoir that it was a “lottery” who would turn up to sessions. Like many critics, he’s said he “hates” the record.

However, prog legend Peter Gabriel is among those who believe there is merit in the record.

Speaking in a 1983 issue of Trouser Press (via Furious), Gabriel said “the album is far more interesting than [their] other albums because they were trying to do something a little different. But they got so slagged off by the press and avoided by the public that they decided, I think, never to take such a risk again. That's a pity.”

Decades on, Their Satanic Majesties Request continues to divide opinion, and ruin potential collaborations too.

Elsewhere, Rodgers says that David Bowie wrote one of Let's Dance's biggest songs on a 12-string acoustic, which featured only six strings during a writing process that helped reinvent the lauded Englishman as a songwriter and cultural icon.

Of all the guitars Robert Fripp has played, one stands out: the now-iconic 1959 Gibson Les Paul Custom he played across King Crimson’s classic works and his collaborations with artists that include David Bowie.

In 1967, a young Robert Fripp responded to a newspaper advertisement from Bournemouth-based brothers Michael and Peter Giles. They were looking for a singing keyboardist for a new project. Fripp could neither play keyboards nor sing, but he applied anyway and got the gig. The resulting band, Giles, Giles and Fripp, established an iconic songwriting partnership that laid the groundwork for prog-rock progenitors King Crimson.

A year after that advert went to print, the trio released their only album, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp. Its hazy blend of jangling psychedelic pop, jazz, and classical music failed to find an audience, but it made a fan of a businessman by the name of Angus Hunking, whose generosity would make it possible for Fripp to buy the ’59 Custom.

“I bought it when Giles, Giles and Fripp were just about to become King Crimson,” Fripp tells Guitar World of the Les Paul’s origin story. “King Crimson were lent £7,000 by a businessman called Angus Hunking. He took an interest in us, and I believe £2,000 came in cash in a briefcase.”

Soon after, Fripp and Michael Giles, with whom he would form King Crimson, were shopping for a guitar in London’s West End.

“We went to a music shop on Shaftesbury Avenue,” Fripp says. “In the window was this Les Paul for £400.

“I asked for a cash discount. The shop assistant, a young man I disliked because of his attitude, said, ‘I could phone up Eric Clapton, and he’d come and buy it.’ And I thought, Then why haven’t you phoned him already?”

Fripp called the clerk’s bluff from a mile away.

“This young man was lying to me, and I didn’t like him,” he quips, before haggling a deal for £380.

According to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator, £380 in 1968, the year King Crimson formed, is equivalent to around £5,900 (approx. $8,000) in today’s economy. It wasn't an insignificant amount of money, even if it only made a small dent in their briefcase. Realistically, though, it would sell for far more than that were he to pop it on eBay.

“I went online today, and I found a pristine model the same as mine, advertised at $139,000,” Fripp gasps. “And that was an instrument without provenance.”

As he explains to GW, the guitar proved to be a workhorse. It featured on the band’s first seven records, breaking sonic ground again and again between 1969’s In the Court of the Crimson King and Red five years later. It would also be used to record his “celestial” guitar parts on David Bowie’s “Heroes,” which has sold 2.3 million copies worldwide.

The album’s title track has gotten a new lease of life in recent months thanks to its inclusion in the smash TV series Stranger Things.

Beyond that, the guitar would also be used during his collaborations with synth wizard Brian Eno.

After decades of toil, his staple guitar caught a break when a second ‘59 LP, bought in New York in 1978, took its place. Had he not stood his ground against that snarky guitar shop clerk, Robert Fripp’s story might read rather differently.

In related news, Fripp has laughed off rumors that King Crimson were back in the studio, while his interesting comments on Jimi Hendrix’s guitar playing have piqued the interest of many.

“Did I ever think that one day I’d get good enough to play with John Lennon?” Earl Slick asks. “Of course not. The idea still blows my mind. Lennon was this huge guy; he was a hero. A little kid from Brooklyn doesn’t get to be in a room with him.”

Famous for his nearly career-spanning work with David Bowie, Slick rose through the New York music scene in the 1970s before becoming the heir to Mick Ronson as Bowie's foil for the Diamond Dogs tour in 1974. The straight-talking guitarist would help usher in a new, post-Ziggy Stardust era for Bowie, and would later feature on two ‘70s LPs, Young Americans (1975) and Station to Station (1976).

He would be return to Bowie‘s orbit over the following decades, perhaps most famously when Stevie Ray Vaughan quit the band on the eve of the Serious Moonlight Tour. But Slick was also present when Bowie had his career-changing onstage heart attack, and would ultimately play on five of his studio records, ending with 2013‘s The Next Day.

Asked which records were the most challenging to make, Slick tells Thinking About Guitar, “The ones I don't like!

“I can't name names, but I've been hired by people who hired me because of the name value, but not what I did,” he explains. “So when I got there, they expected something completely different.

“And most of the time I ended up working for a day and leaving, not because the guy was being an asshole, but because [the music] is so out of my range that it ain't gonna sound right. I'm deadly serious; sometimes, they'd call the wrong guy.”

Working with John Lennon, however, proved to be very different for Slick. The former Beatle hired him for his and Yoko Ono‘s 1980 album, Double Fantasy, which also featured Tony Levin on bass a year prior to his joining King Crimson.

“I know why John hired me,” Slick says. “[Album producer] Jack Douglas told me it was because everybody else in that room could read [music]. Hugh McCracken — I love Huey, he was so good, man — Tony Levin and all these guys could read. I knew as much as John did.”

In other words, not much.

“He wanted a street rock and roll player that didn't know any of that shit,” Slick continues. “That’s why I got the gig. And I had pretty much free rein on that thing. John was just looking for a good take.”

Double Fantasy would prove to be the last record Lennon made before his death in 1980.

A year later, Slick would unite with Ono, Lennon‘s wife and musical partner, to play on Season of Glass, her highest-charting solo record.

Speaking to Guitar Player in 2021, Slick says he wasn't sure how many people he had to compete with to get his gig with Bowie, but once he did, he “was off and running.” It certainly helped bring him to Lennon’s attention.

David Bowie had an uncanny talent for picking guitarists. He worked with numerous greats over the course of his long career, including Mick Ronson, Carlos Alomar, Earl Slick, Adrian Belew, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Reeves Gabrels.

But he never got the one player he always wanted: Jeff Beck. Reportedly, the guitarist was at the top of Bowie’s list in 1969 when he was selecting members for a band in the wake of his success with the single “Space Oddity.”

As Beck told Guitarist magazine, “Bowie originally wanted me to be in the band, but he got Mick Ronson, who he always said was his own Jeff Beck.”

Bowie considered a few players, including Tim Renwick, before deciding on Ronson. The two connected through John Cambridge, who played drums on “Space Oddity” and performed with Ronson in the Rats, a rock group from Hull, fronted by the singer Benny Marshall.

“He was the bloke who went back to Hull in January 1970 with the brief to find Ronson and bring him to London,” Marshall recalled of Cambridge. “He found Mick marking out the lines on the municipal football pitch.”

Bowie and Ronson met the next month at London’s Marquee club, where Bowie was playing, February 3, 1970. As it happened, both men were fans of Beck’s 1968 album, Truth.

“[Mick] knew all the licks,” Marshall said, “except ‘Beck’s Boogie,’ which he dissected but couldn’t master. It infuriated him.

“In 1968, the Rats had supported Beck at the Cat Ballou in Grantham, and afterward Ronno asked him to show him the fast run at the beginning. So Beck plays it, and Mick says, ‘No, play it slower.’ Beck said, ‘If I play it any slower, I’ll stop!’ But he was patient, and Mick learned that riff.”

Although Bowie wasn’t able to get Beck as his guitarist, he did secure him for one very important gig at London’s Hammersmith Odeon on July 3, 1973: the last night of the tour for his breakout album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.

It was Bowie’s first major tour, taking place from January 1972 to July 1973. Initially intended to promote Ziggy Stardust as well as its predecessor, Hunky Dory, the tour eventually included songs from Ziggy Stardust’s follow-up, Aladdin Sane.

Beck came out for the encore at the Hammersmith show, playing his Oxblood 1954 Gibson Les Paul, and adding his own electric guitar stylings to those of Ronson, who was playing his modified 1968 Les Paul Custom. The group performed “The Jean Genie,” the debut hit single from Aladdin Sane before segueing into a snippet of the Beatles’ classic “Love Me Do” and concluding with Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around.”

The concert was filmed by director D.A. Pennebaker for the documentary Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.

“I remember they were filming, and the cameras panned in on my wah-wah pedal during The Jean Genie and I was wearing these dirty white platform shoes. I went ballistic when they said they were using me in the film, so I refused to sign the release.

“Bowie goes, ‘Oh, you might as well agree, they’re already showing a bootleg version at the XXX theaters on 42nd Street, and you didn’t look any dafter than me.’ In the end I agreed.”

Except he didn’t. When Pennebaker’s film was finally released in 1979, there was no sign of Beck or the songs on which he performed.

As the guitarist recalled, the Ziggy Stardust show was his first time playing before such a large audience.

“The pitch of teenage screaming at that gig was unbelievable. I’d never experienced that,” he said. “I recall it was someone’s birthday in the group, and I thought I was like a little mascot pressie [present]. But actually Bowie is a big fan, so…”

Beck’s performances were finally reinstated for the 4K remaster of the film released in 2023.

Bowie wasn’t the only artist who Beck rejected. He also passed up opportunities to work with John Mayall, Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones when they were seeking a replacement for Mick Taylor following his 1974 departure.

As Beck told Guitarist, “I’m not a ‘joiner,’ really. Pink Floyd wanted me but they didn’t have the nerve to pop the question.

“And then there’s the Rolling Stones. I told them I don’t do auditions. And I wouldn’t have fitted in. I never had any regrets.”

“I came very close to becoming one of David Bowie’s Spiders From Mars,” English journeyman guitarist Tim Renwick reveals to Guitar Player. “After playing on his Space Oddity album in 1969, I was in line to join him on his Man Who Sold the World album, but it didn’t work out.”

Instead, Bowie hired Mick Ronson, who had been in a rock band from Hull called the Rats. Together, they would record six albums that brought Bowie fame as glam-rock’s defining artist.

“I think the fact that David got together with Mick suited him better,” Renwick says. “They were very much a unit and good friends.”

Instead, Renwick — who recently told us about his experiences with Pink Floyd — became a prominent session guitarist, playing with artists like Elton John, Mike Oldfield, Alan Parsons and many others, including Al Stewart and Eric Clapton, whom he discusses here.

David Bowie

“We made Space Oddity at Trident Studios in London. David was very easy to work with, but rather nervous in the studio. At that point, I was in a band called Junior’s Eyes, and the main guitar player and leader of the band was Mick Wayne, who had been called up to do the guitar work on the ‘Space Oddity’ track.

“After a period of not performing, David was planning to try out some live shows and see what it was like to actually tread the boards again. He asked Mick whether Junior’s Eyes could back him on a tour of Scotland, and he agreed. We went out and did about six or seven dates in Scotland, miles from anywhere, in places like Dunfermline.

“It was quite an odd thing because the Scottish punters didn’t really know what to make of David. They only really knew him as a pop singer, but there was a lot more to him obviously than people realized at the time. We did several other things together too, including recordings for the BBC and a show on London’s South Bank, where he was incredibly nervous. I’d never seen anyone have such bad stage fright.”

Al Stewart

“I began working with Al in 1972 and spent the rest of the ’70s with him. Al was a very nice chap, very easy going and was interested in all kinds of stuff.

“He used to have this rather unfortunate habit of losing his voice on the road. And when he was losing his voice, he’d hit a note and he would just turn into a kind of high squeak, which was actually quite amusing. But obviously we didn’t tell him that.

“It resulted in us having like three or four days off till he got his voice back, so it made it quite a pleasant tour of America. We took a mobile home and drove around most of America while we played with him all over the place.

“When we did his big hit, ‘The Year of the Cat,’ I played both the acoustic and electric guitar solos. Al was very open to me and what I wanted to do, so he allowed me quite a lot of leeway with things like that solo.

“We spent a bit of time on it and put together the section where the acoustic guitar solo switched to the electric guitar solo, and then the sax played the final bit. It was about building an intensity. On the original album cut, the guitar solo was much longer than the single. I used Al‘s Guild acoustic for the lead and rhythm part then when it switched to the electric I used my old faithful ’62 Fender Strat.

“Al moved to Los Angeles after Year of the Cat. I did Time Passages with him in 1978 but then I felt it was time to move on. He wanted me to move to America to permanently join his band, which I sort of considered but never really fancied. But I did do another album with him in 1988, Last Days of the Century.”

Eric Clapton

“Eric and I played guitar together on Roger Waters’ Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking tour in 1984. We got along quite well, and Eric hired me for the tour for his 1985 album, Behind the Sun.

“What happened was, Eric started the tour with J. Peter Robinson on keyboards instead of having a second guitarist, but they didn’t get on. Peter was a great player, but a bit too jazzy for Eric. So I got called in on that and did about two thirds of the world tour with Eric.

“Our rehearsals basically consisted of just running one number twice, as Eric wouldn’t play a number more than twice. And if you asked him any questions about the technical side of things, he would shrug and say, ‘Well just play what you feel like playing, mate.’ He said, ‘I wouldn’t have hired you if I wanted you to play what I wanted,’ which was great. It was the same with all the guys in the band, so it was very relaxed.

“The tour was great fun, and a tremendous experience, though Eric was struggling at the time. He was still drinking a bit, and that was sort of taking its toll. Obviously, you’d notice if Eric had a few drinks, as the next day he’d be looking grey around the gills. And the thing was, on those occasions, he played better than he did when he was sober.

“He was very determined to prove a point that he could still do it, although that album is probably not the best example. But he was a very strong character, and a great player. People sort of criticize him, but he’s done some amazing stuff.”

David Bowie’s iconic track “‘Heroes’” has enjoyed a resurgence since its appearance in the final episode of Stranger Things on December 31. Rolling Stone reports that, according to entertainment data company Luminate, the classic track has enjoyed a 500 percent bump on streaming services since it was heard over the show’s end credits.

The title track from Bowie’s 1977 album, “‘Heroes’” is an anthemic work built on a simple, repeating five-chord structure. While Bowie’s impassioned vocals are the song’s focus, much of its soaring power comes from the sustaining electric guitar tones created by Robert Fripp, then with King Crimson, who guested on the album as lead guitarist.

Like most of the album’s songs, “‘Heroes’” was composed on the spot in the studio, with Bowie and his collaborator, Brian Eno, working together to develop the material. It was Bowie and Eno’s second album together following Low, earlier that year.

Producer Tony Visconti says the backing track — consisting of Carlos Alomar on electric guitar, George Murray on bass, Dennis Davis on drums and Bowie on piano — sat for about a week before they returned to it. Eno added some synthesizer lines, and Bowie overdubbed brass and string sounds using a Chamberlin tape sample-playing keyboard and an ARP Solina, respectively.

It was Eno who suggested they have Fripp perform on the track. He and Fripp had previously worked together on a pair of albums — 1973’s (No Pussyfooting) and 1975’s Evening Star — on which the guitarist used Eno’s tape delay system with a feedback loop to create a droning wash of sustained and evolving guitar tones. Fripp would dub the system Frippertronics and go on to use it throughout the 1970s.

Fripp’s schedule left him just one weekend free. He came to Berlin carrying his electric guitar and no amplifier.

“He recorded his guitar in the studio,” Visconti said. “We had to play the track very very loud because he was relying on the feedback from the studio monitors. So it was deafening working with him.”

While Fripp’s guitar has the droning sound associated with an EBow, Visconti explains that the guitarist was “playing” the feedback from the monitors.

“Fripp had a technique in those days where he measured the distance between the guitar and the speaker where each note would feed back,” the producer recalled in an article for Mixdown magazine.

“For instance, an A would feed back maybe at about four feet from the speaker, whereas a G would feed back maybe three and a half feet from it. He had a strip that they would place on the floor, and when he was playing the note F sharp he would stand on the strip’s F sharp point and F sharp would feed back better.

“He really worked this out to a fine science, and we were playing this at a terrific level in the studio, too.”

After Fripp recorded one track in this fashion, Visconti and Bowie felt it lacked something.

“And Fripp recorded a second time without hearing the first one,” Visconti explained. “It was a little bit more cohesive, but still quite wasn’t right, and he said, ‘Let me do it again. Just give me another track. I’ll do it again.’ And we silenced the first two tracks and he did a third pass, which was really great. He nailed it.

“And then I had the bright idea: I said, ‘Look let me just hear what it sounds like with the other two tracks. You never know.’

“We played it, all three tracks together, and you know, I must reiterate Fripp did not hear the other two tracks when he was doing the third one so he had no way of being in sync. But he was strangely in sync. And all his little out-of-tune wiggles suddenly worked with the other previously recorded guitars.

“It seemed to tune up. It got a quality that none of us anticipated. It was this dreamy, wailing quality, almost crying sound in the background. And we were just flabbergasted.”

Visconti dissects the song track by track in the video below.

David Bowie worked with many guitarists throughout his long career, from Mick Ronson to Carlos Alomar, Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew and Reeves Gabrels. But there was one player he returned to several times, from the 1970s to the final years of his life: Earl Slick.

What did the Brooklyn-born guitarist give him that no other player did?

“I have theories about that,” Slick tells Guitar Player via Zoom, from the kitchen of his home in New York City, while smoking a morning cigarette and opening a bottle of Gatorade. “One of the things was that, when it came down to needing that rock and roll guitar player, that was always me or Mick. And Mick left us a long time ago.” (Ronson died in 1993.)

As for the others?

“All those guys are wonderful,” Slick says. “But none of them are rock players. So he came back to me for that. That’s when I got called in.”

Earl Slick was not a constant in David Bowie’s universe. Few were. But the guitarist — born Frank Medeloni nearly 73 years ago — was a mainstay. He arrived in 1974, following the demise of the Spiders From Mars and Ronson’s exit, to perform on Bowie’s Diamond Dogs tour. He played on the Young Americans and Station to Station albums soon after, then returned in 1983 for the Serious Moonlight Tour as a last-minute replacement for Stevie Ray Vaughan, who famously lent his electric guitar stylings to Let’s Dance, Bowie’s 1983 commercial smash.

Nearly 20 years would pass before Slick came back once again on the tour for Bowie’s 2002 album, Heathen. That led to him working on its follow-up, Reality, and performing on the subsequent A Reality Tour, a celebrated groundbreaking global stint that was the biggest and longest of Bowie’s career.

It was there that he witnessed Bowie’s heart attack on June 23, 2004 while onstage in Prague, along with his subsequent decline.

“It was amazing how he went from looking great to looking pretty ill — like, overnight,” Slick says. “We were just a month shy of a year being out.”

Bowie recovered, but he canceled the remaining shows and never toured again. Slick returned for his penultimate album, 2013's The Next Day, making him the only guitarist to have worked with Bowie over such an extended range of the performer's career.

The music from Slick’s latter tenures with Bowie is generously chronicled on the upcoming box set David Bowie 6. I Can’t Give Everything Away (2002–2016), due out September 12. It’s the latest and, theoretically, last in a series of massive completist collections, and features Bowie's final albums, including Reality and The Next Day, as well as the A Reality Tour live album and a previously unreleased recording from the 2002 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

Also included is “Isn’t It Evening (The Revolutionary),” a track from Slick’s 2003 solo album, Zig Zag. Co-written with and featuring Bowie, it hit the Top 10 on several U.K. charts when it was re-released there last year.

It all serves to underscore the vital position Slick held with Bowie during the final era of his career, making this an apt time for him to weigh in on his impactful years with the chameleon of rock.

Was there much difference being Bowie’s “rock” guitarist compared to other things you’ve done?

Well, with David I did have to have a pedalboard to cover 40 years of recordings or whatever. And I hate pedals, especially overdrive pedals. But you needed certain things. You definitely needed two delay pedals just to cover “Heroes,” just to get it bouncing all over the place.

But I got a lot of free rein from David. I could literally change up bits and bobs during a show, and he liked it, actually. If you look through the concert videos, you’ll see really weird arrangements of songs and stuff. ’Cause you get bored if it’s the same song every night, so sometimes you change things up, and he liked that I did that. I had a lot of freedom to just ad lib, everywhere.

You’d been out of the Bowie orbit for about 15 years when he reached out to you around 2002. How did that come about?

Omigod. Reeves had left and David was looking for a guitar player, so his people tracked me down through a web site. It was called Slick-something-or-other, and it had all these old demos we kept putting out. That’s how he found me.

The webmaster called and said, “I just got this email. It’s a New York number and they seem to really want to get in touch with you.” He said it was from Isolar, and I said, “I know exactly who that is. It’s David.” [Isolar was the name for pair of Bowie’s tours in 1976 and 1978.]

The A Reality Tour was Bowie’s last and, many think, one of his best. What was your experience with it?

That was a fun record to play live, especially the rockers — the title track and stuff. It was the best touring band I ever played in with David. The combination of people — it was absolutely drama free, and I’ve never seen him that relaxed and happy on a tour, ever.

It was also the tour that was notoriously ended by his health issues. What do you recall from that Prague date when he had his heart attack?

It was a really weird gig. At first I couldn’t figure out what was going on. It was hotter than hell in the place, and I could see he was having a hard time hitting some notes. I thought he was just baked. We were all baked.

I think we were doing “The Jean Genie,” and he goes to me, “Keep vamping, just jam” — this, while he’s having a heart attack. Then he started grabbing his chest and the tour managers came over and dragged him off.

A few minutes later, he comes back and joins us. He lasted about a measure or two and then he walked off. They said that he had a blocked nerve, whatever that is, and that diagnosis was wrong.

We did the Hurricane Festival in Germany a couple days later; I went over to talk to him, and he was feeling horrible. We did the whole show and then we got a phone call saying, “Sit tight for a couple of days. David needs to rest. We’re gonna take a few days off.”

So we just hung out in Hamburg. Nobody’s saying anything to us.

And then we get phone calls saying, “Guys, we’re done. You gotta go home.” We didn’t get an explanation; we all knew he was probably getting some kind of surgery, but we weren’t getting any details about it.

When we did “Heroes” at the Hurricane Festival, I swear to God it’s one of the best vocal performances he ever did of it. Two hours later, probably, he was in the hospital.

Was the idea of him playing live again ever broached?

It was. We were working on The Next Day; just as I finished up my work on the track “Set the World on Fire.” We were listening back in the control room and he looks at me and goes, “This would just kick ass live.” I looked at him ready to say something, and he goes, “Don’t even think about it.” [laughs]

That was the discussion we had about going on tour again. That was the whole discussion, and he said, “Don’t think about it.” I could see it in his eyes. I’d been with him so long, I knew he was dead serious. He ain’t going nowhere.

It was disappointing, because I really thought we would have at least one good tour left in us. This was the summer of 2013, so it’s possible that he might’ve been ill already, with the cancer. We’ll never know, but I think it’s a possibility.

The Next Day was another kind of odd reconnection, wasn’t it?

Yeah, it was typical David. He started making that record around 2011, I think, and everybody who was brought in had to sign an NDA. I’m talking to some of the guys on the phone and nobody says a word.

In the meantime, this friend of mine, a surgeon, he built a car, a Cobra, and I had this blues gig I was doing near his house in Montclair, New Jersey. I go visit and he says, “Let’s go for a ride in the Cobra before we go to the gig.”

We drove for a little bit, and then the car started to do weird shit, like sputtering and stalling out. So he stops the car and two seconds later a big flame comes out of the engine. We call 911 and the fire department comes, and the cops come, and there’s TV. I guess one of the reporters figured out I was in the car and the word gets out on the Internet.

The next day I get a text from Bowie: “Oh God, I saw this accident. Are you okay?” I write back, “Yeah, I’m great, I’m fine. How are you?” “Good.” Then I get a few more messages over the course of the next day or two, like, “How you doin’? What have you been up to lately?” This is not a typical thing with him.

So finally I’m like, “Okay, are you trying to get to a point? What is it?” And he was, “Well, we’re making this record, and I need you to come in for a week or so and work on it.”

I swear to God, if we hadn’t blown up the car, I might not have been on that record. That’s just him: It’s out of sight, out of mind sometimes, and then it’s, “Wait a minute — Slicky could do this or that.”

Was there a standard operating procedure when you worked together?

We’d sit there and brainstorm, especially on the overdub bits. Both of us always like to have some kind of melodic lick in there somewhere, some signature in the song, and we’d just knock ideas around.

Like the lick on “Valentine’s Day,” the signature lick at the beginning, we sat there and bounced it around for about 10 or 15 minutes and that lick popped out and there it was. A lot of that kind of stuff was done on the fly; we never spent lots of time. As soon as we heard something that clicked, that was it. That’s the best stuff, when it just comes out from outer space or something.

What is your sense of the late-period Bowie compared to your previous years with him?

Well, back in the early days — this not speaking out of school, ’cause it’s pretty well known — a lot of drugs were involved, and a lot of cocaine. Between the drugs and him having management problems and all that, he was on another planet.

And then as the years went on he changed, like we all do. In the 2000s a sense of humor was there that was never there in the early days. He was funnier than hell, and he was more approachable. He turned into... I wouldn’t say a different person, but the real him came out.

How did you approach guitar choices for your work with Bowie?

I love Telecasters. I’ve always been a Tele player. But for the Heathen tour he said, “We do need a humbucker on some of this,” so I grabbed some Les Pauls, and by the A Reality Tour I was using pretty much my Les Pauls most of the show. I don’t think I used my Teles at all on that. I did have a Strat I used for a few things, but most of it was Les Paul.

Having “Isn’t It Evening (The Revolutionary)” on the box set is a nice postscript, especially after its success last year in the U.K.

That’s a weird one. I was living in Portland [circa 2002], and I just started to toodle around with my guitar, and all of a sudden I started coming up with stuff and recording bits and pieces. I ended up with a lot of them, so I called up Mark Plati and said, “When you get some time maybe we can cut an instrumental record. I got some good ideas.”

I didn’t realize he was in the studio when I called him. David was there, and David says, “Earl, I heard Mark say you guys were gonna do some recording. Maybe I’ll play some tambourine or something. Maybe I’ll even sing one, or we can write one.”

So I sent him a half-dozen bits and he picked the one that eventually turned into “Isn’t It Evening.” We recorded it, and we released it during the A Reality Tour, which turned out to be a bad idea, because my record got buried in there.

So I just sat with that track for years and thought, One of these days, I’ll release it as a single. Then Penguin Books approached me about the memoir [Slick’s recently published Guitar: Life and Music with David Bowie, John Lennon and Rock and Roll’s Greatest Heroes]. I said, “Ah, that’s the time to do it!”

So we rearranged it and it came out about two months after the book. It got on the charts and we had a hit single. Funny how timing works. And I’m really glad it’s on the box set, because it turned out to be his last hit.

After nine years away from the stage, guitarist Carlos Alomar is touring once again in memory of David Bowie and the D.A.M. Trio. Featuring drummer Dennis Davis, Alomar and bass guitarist George Murray — D.A.M. was an acronym made up from the initials of their last names — the trio backed up Bowie in the 1970s on critical albums like Young Americans, Station to Station, Low, “Heroes” and Lodger. on which the singer redefined his sound

Alomar has been working on the education side of things lately, but says the California wildfires of 2024 and the fact that he felt he could have lost his old pal in rhythm, bassist George Murray, influenced his decision to hit the road one last time. His celebration of life, family, and music is a reminder of his career recording and performing with rock and roll royalty, including Chuck Berry, David Bowie, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and many others.

To that end, Alomar dialed in with Guitar Player to dig into his memories of working with those greats.

“It’s fortuitous that it happened, but it never happened the same way every time,” he offers. “So I cherish the moments that we have, because those little moments in time should be cherished and shared, but never really repeated.”

Chuck Berry

“I got this phone call to do a job at the Rye Playland [in Rye, New York, north of New York City]. It was an amusement park, but they had entertainment there under the giant tent and everything. I get there and in walks Chuck Berry with his electric guitar. He walks right up to us and says, ‘When I do like this’ — and he takes his headstock and moves it sideways — ‘you stop.’

“‘And when I do like this’ — and he moves his headstock up and down — ‘you play.’ That was it.

“He turns around to walk out, and I said, ‘Come on…’ I was maybe in my early twenties and naive. I said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Berry, are we gonna rehearse?’

“That man turned around and looked at me and said, ‘Boy, I ain’t gonna rehearse rock and roll.’

“He turned around, walked out.

“We hit that stage in true form. And every time that headstock went up, every time that headstock went sideways — bam! I mean, it was amazing, and to this day, I still kind of conduct the same way that Chuck Berry did. [laughs]

“To me, the biggest lesson was you don’t rehearse rock and roll. You either know it, or you don’t.

“But I also learned that you did not talk to Chuck. Chuck talked to you. And how do I remember him? As a mean drunk. [laughs] You only remember your last experience with someone. It’s like a song: You can do a whole song, but if you mess up the ending, all you remember is the messed-up ending. Chuck Berry is like that song. It was great. But at the end, he came and stunk that up real good.”

David Bowie

“I was a session musician for RCA Studios when I got called to work on David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs album. I was in a session, and in comes this thin, 98-pound, translucent dude with white skin, orange hair, fedora — everything. I was like, ‘Whoa, dude, you look like crap. You need to come to my house and get a home-cooked meal.’ [laughs]

“Little did I know he would take me up on it. We got on really, really well. I took him to the Apollo Theater, and he met [comedian] Richard Pryor, of all people, who was opening for [soul group] the Main Ingredient, which I was playing with. And then, I took him to the Latin clubs to hear some Latin music. We just hung out. There was no work.

“His intelligence was really amazing. I started talking to him about the chitlin circuit and James Brown — man, I found out at that moment how much the Brits studied Black music. Not only was I impressed with his intellect and his knowledge, but I was also impressed with his accent. You gotta remember, I was a kid from the Bronx, and I’m speaking to a Brit with that weird accent. So I was very curious.

“Eventually, he told me he was doing his Diamond Dogs album, but there was no money. There was no way I was gonna drop my gig with the Main Ingredient for this gig with no-paying David Bowie. [laughs]

“So I turned him down. Then later, after the Diamond Dogs album and tour, I got another phone call, and I turned him down again. He was very disappointed. I told him, ‘I’m married. I can’t take a pay cut like this.’ David said, ‘I’ll take care of it.’

“And that was it. He took care of it. So from there we formed the band that relaunched his career with Young Americans.

“The last time I talked to David was at a birthday party. I didn’t realize that he was under the grip of his own demise. Although we had a good time, I didn’t realize that was our goodbye. That was it. Later on, I found out what was happening, and then of course, it affected me deeply. It was a pretty brutal year.”

John Lennon

“One day, I was in the studio, and in walked David Bowie with John Lennon and May Pang [Lennon’s girlfriend during his separation from Yoko Ono]. At the time, I didn’t really know who David Bowie was. But hell, I knew who John Lennon was. And John Lennon was a character who understood who he was.

“We had the groove down for ‘Fame’ [Alomar wrote the song’s underlying funk riff], but that was all we had at the time — not even the words. John came in with just an acoustic guitar, and they said, ‘Would you like to play?’ and he said, ‘Sure.’ And every time he would play, he would sigh the word ‘fame.’

“They left to go to dinner and invited me, but I decided to stay and put some parts down. But I kept hearing that sound that John had been making. So we isolated his track, and we could hear him playing the guitar and saying ‘fame.’

“And that’s how the song became ‘Fame.’ It was my first number one hit. I was young and sandwiched between David Bowie and John Lennon on the song.”

Paul McCartney

“I had just finished writing with Mick Jagger when I was invite to work with Paul on his next album [1986’s Press to Play] at his studio, Hogg Hill Mill, in England.

“He was just the most endearing individual, very self-effacing, and his family was just so inviting and friendly. We walked upstairs to a studio filled with equipment. There were the Vox amplifier, the Höfner bass, the Mellotrons… I was drooling, man. [laughs]

“As I’m taking all that in, the man proceeded to roll the biggest spliff I’ve ever seen in my life. [laughs] I thought I was back in Jamaica! We talked about all kinds of music, and the Black experience. Again, I was reminded of the way the British studied R&B music and their curiosity, and, with all due respect, the way they always give proper respect to the African-American experience, the blues, and all the music we’ve done. They really hold it in high esteem, and rightfully so, you know?

“So he played me his first track, and I said, ‘Oh, sorry, Paul, I like what I hear, but I don’t hear myself in that.’ Same with the second track. I said, ‘Respectfully, I think it’s just great, so that I wouldn’t touch that one.’

“When we got to the third song, I said, ‘Oh, yeah, I hear something in that!’ So I’m just practicing, you know, putting little things out there. Little did I know that Paul was recording all of that. The minute I got the record home, I listened to it, and was like, ‘Oh, my God, I thought I was just practicing!’ So it was just a wonderful experience.”

“A friend of mine, Steve Jordan, who now plays drums with the Rolling Stones, instigated my first meeting with Keith Richards,” Steve Bolton tells Guitar Player. “Steve liked to hang out with us while we were on tour, and we happened to end up in a hotel room in New York City, while the city was deep in winter snow drifts. Steve goes, ‘I'll call Keith,’ and my ears pricked up! So, he calls Keith, and Keith replies, ‘Sure, come around here!’”

Such is the ease with which Steve “Boltz” Bolton has made his way through rock and roll’s landscape. Often at the right place at the right time, the guitarist — who has performed since 2016 with a revised lineup of Atomic Rooster — has played with everyone from Pete Townshend (on the Who’s 1989 reunion tour) to Paul Young (as a fully paid member of the “Every Time You Go Away” singer’s band).

He’s previously regaled us with his tales of Townshend’s guitar-smashing exploits and Bob Dylan’s odd behavior on the set of his 1989 film, Hearts of Fire. Here he adds three more stories of his adventures with Ray Davies, David Bowie and Keith Richards.

Dave Davies and she who shall not be named

When the Kinks’ Ray Davies sought his guitar-playing services for his 2006 solo album, Other People's Lives, Bolton says friends cautioned him that Davies could be difficult. “They warned me to be careful with Ray as he was a really weird guy and didn’t suffer fools lightly.

“But I went up to his Konk Studios in North London to meet him, and he could not have been any nicer. Once he discovered I was a vegetarian too, like him, he would meet me at the studio with biscuits. He’d say, ‘Steve, have you tried these vegetarian biscuits?’ He was really sweet, and we got on like a house on fire after that.

“But with that said, there are certain things with Ray Davies you don’t ever talk about. And one of them is Chrissie Hynde from The Pretenders.”

From 1980 to 1984, Hynde and Davies were in a volatile relationship that produced a daughter. They subsequently broke up and were still feuding more than 20 years later when Bolton was working with him.

“So it was an unwritten law to not mention her name,” Bolton continues.

Which made it inevitable that he would say something he shouldn’t.

“I’m in a control room one day with a lead from my electric guitar going out into my amp in the studio and I’m doing an overdub for this track. I’ve got a really cool guitar part happening, and as I get around the chord progression, I do a couple of runs at it. One’s a kind of a more regular rolling arpeggio thing, while the other is a bit more way out there, where I’m taking more liberties with it.

“Later, we’re listening back to both overdubs and the producer, Laurie Latham, says to me, ‘Steve, I prefer the first one, the more regular approach.’

“Then Ray looks at me and goes, ‘Yeah, Steve, I prefer the more regular approach too. I agree with Laurie.’

“And I go, ‘Well actually, I prefer the more laissez-faire version because the more regular approach sounds a bit too much like…’

“And then, suddenly, a voice in my head goes, ‘Go on! Say it, say it!’

“I go, ‘It sounds a bit too much like The Pretenders!’

“And the whole room goes eerily quiet. I look at Ray and say, ‘No offense.’ And Ray goes, ‘No offense taken. I know exactly what you mean.’ Whew, I got away with that one!”

(For the record, Davies and Hynde patched up their differences and recorded a duet in 2009.)

Bolton believes that the rapport he developed with Davies proved pivotal to changing Davies’s approach to his guitar sounds on the recording.

“I would go up there most days during the week to do guitar overdubs. Ray would put a bit of guitar on as well, but his guitar parts would be all sort of like flanging and chorus-y, and very ’80s sounding. I said to him one day, ‘Hey, no offense, but go get that Telecaster out, and give the parts some guts like you do on “All Day and All of the Night,” where you do that counter-rhythm thing.’

“And he turned to me and said, ‘Really?’ And I answered, ‘Absolutely! That’s what people love about the Kinks — that old sound.’

“He was trying to follow the ’80s fashion at that point, but I fired him up after that.”

David Bowie concurs

“One day, I got a call from producer Tony Visconti who said, ‘I've got a session for you tomorrow,’” Bolton recalls. “‘It's with somebody really famous and you can probably guess who it is. So, can you be at my studio, Good Earth Studios in London’s Soho tomorrow?’

“When I get there the next day, of course, David Bowie was there. The recording sessions were for the television program The Kenny Everett Video Show. David had to remake a number of tracks because the union required that artists re-record their material for broadcast.

“So here I am, in the recording booth playing acoustic guitar together with David on ‘Space Oddity,’ and I go, ‘Oh my god, David Bowie!’ And he looks at me and replies, ‘That’s right.’

“And then we both just carried on strumming.”

Keith Richards vs. Dr. John

In 2001, Bolton would be called upon to join Richards onstage for a handful of Save the Rainforest concerts for the Rainforest Alliance. After performing a show with guest artists in Santa Monica, the musicians gathered to rehearse for the pair of shows coming up at New York City’s Beacon Theater. Among them were the Memphis Horns, Dr. John, Kim Simmonds of Savoy Brown, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. Steve Jordan was serving as music director.

“We're rehearsing this Dr. John song, ‘Right Place, Wrong Time,’ for the planned finale and Steve’s trying to juggle all these egos in the room,” Bolton recalls. “Steve says, ‘Let's sort this out by having different solos.’ He points to Kim Simmonds first, and says, ‘You do the first solo on harmonica, and then, Boltz, you do a solo.’

“And Dr. John goes, ‘Yes, Boltz, you do a solo.’

“Then he points at Keith across the crowded room and starts giving him daggers and this voodoo vibe. He points at him and says, ‘As for you, motherfucker, you can kiss my goddamn ass.’ And the whole room goes really quiet. Keith goes and hides behind me.

“Afterwards I said to Steve, ‘What was all that about?’ He says, ‘Well, there’s really bad blood between The Rolling Stones and Dr. John and Ry Cooder. Because not only did Ry Cooder play a lot on Exile on Main St., but he and Dr. John instigated a lot of the songs and never got a credit for it.’”

Indeed, Mick Jagger confirmed to The Face that Dr. John had offered him a tape full of songs at the price of $50 a tune. Jagger turned him down, but apparently the Dr. was convinced his tunes were appropriated for Exile.

Fortunately, Bolton says, Gatemouth Brown helped lighten the vibe. He’d just bought a WAP mobile phone — which gave users access to news, weather, and sports information in the days before smartphones — and was thrilled with his purchase. “Gatemouth was being absolutely hilarious and cantankerous,” Bolton chuckles. “He lightened the tension between Dr. John and Richards by constantly exclaiming, ‘I got myself a WAP phone!’”

While Beatles fans dreamed of the group reuniting in the 1970s, David Bowie once revealed that he nearly managed to get John Lennon and Paul McCartney back together in 1974 to form a supergroup with him.

It was the year Bowie moved to New York City, just three years after Lennon himself had emigrated there. Shortly after Bowie’s arrival, he met Lennon at a party hosted by Elizabeth Taylor. Of all the Beatles, Lennon was his favorite.

“He was one of the major influences on my musical life,” Bowie said in an interview recorded in the 1980s. “I mean, I just thought he was the very best of what could be done with rock and roll, and also ideas.

Although he was nervous when the two met privately, they quickly formed a bond that led to Lennon visiting Bowie one night, with McCartney in tow.

As Bowie explained to BBC 6 Music with Marc Riley, he was lodging at the time at the Pierre Hotel.

“I’d taken over a suite virtually for months and months,” he said. “I was kind of living there.”

Bowie explained that he was obsessed with the newly released Sony video recorder and would spend hours making his own films. “Fortunately, I was doing cocaine so I could stay up most of the night and complete these things,” he said, tongue in cheek.

It was on one of these late-night creative sprees that he was surprised by a pair of visitors.

“About three in the morning, there's a knock on the door. And John was there and he had got Paul with him. It was the two of them been out on the town for the evening.”

Lennon was in the midst of his Lost Weekend, the period from roughly early 1974 to mid 1975 when he and his wife Yoko Ono separated. The rocker was dividing his time between New York City and Los Angeles, and spent much of his time on a bender. It was also during this time that he began recording his album of rock classic covers, Rock ’n’ Roll.

Lennon, whose previous meeting with Bowie had lasted until nearly dawn, knew the singer would be up at that hour.

“He said, Can we come in?’” Bowie recalled. “He said, ‘You won't believe what I've got here!’

“And I said, ‘I thought you two…’, and he said, ‘No. All that's gonna change.’”

Bowie believed it was possibly the first time the two had been back together since the Beatles.

“It was great. We spent the evening just like rapping and talking. There was kind of a strange thing between them. There was a little bit of distance every now and again, but that must have been the first time they'd been back together for, you know, since the big bust up, you know.”

In the course of talking, the three music icons hit on the idea of working together.

“They actually asked me if I'd kind of join the two of them and become a trio with them, and we’d change the name to something else: David Bowie and the Beatles. They liked the idea there’d be two — like, DBB. I think they wanted to call it DBB.”

Sadly, it was all a long-night's pipe dream.

“The next morning, it just never came to anything,” Bowie concludes.

Soon after, however, Bowie and Lennon did go on to work together by recording a cover of the former Beatles’ 1968 song “Across the Universe” and co-writing “Fame.” Both songs would be included on Bowie’s 1975 album Young Americans, with “Fame” becoming the singer’s first number one song in America after it was released as that album’s second single.

Bowie wasn’t the only musician Lennon collaborated with at this time. He and Yoko Ono also performed with Frank Zappa and the Mothers at the Fillmore East. However, the couple ran afoul of the electric guitar virtuoso when they remixed their performance of Zappa’s song “King Kong,” released it under the name “Jamrag” on their 1972 album Some Time in New York City and claimed it as their own composition.

And in 1974, shortly before his sessions with Bowie, Lennon had piano rocker Elton John guest on his hit song "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night."

Considering all that, it’s not surprising Lennon would be open to a new collaboration with McCartney, his original writing partner. Unfortunately, it never happened.

It’s not uncommon for mammoth rock songs to have humble beginnings. David Bowie’s monster hit “Let’s Dance” is a perfect example. It came into existence on an acoustic guitar. By the time producer/guitarist Nile Rodgers was finished with it, the tune had turned into a funk-rock powerhouse .

Bowie had his first taste of success as a singer-songwriter in 1969 with "Space Oddity" helping him break into the U.K. charts. But his career was never monochrome, and he soon reinvented himself for the first time via his technicolor glam-rock alter ego, Ziggy Stardust. As the years rolled on, he continued to refine his sound and vision, chameleon-like, to remain relevant in the eyes of his contemporary audiences.

In the mid-’70s, he befriended John Lennon, who told him the “easy” thing about writing hit songs, before turning to King Crimson bandleader Robert Fripp’s guitar talents for the 1977 LP, “Heroes”. By the 1980s he was working with another powerhouse in the form of Rodgers — as well as a then-unknown electric guitar player named Stevie Ray Vaughan — for his 1983 album, Let’s Dance.

Rodgers explained the genesis of the album's title track to the Victoria and Albert Museum.

“I was staying at his house in Switzerland, and frankly, I was asleep,” Rodgers says. “He walked into my bedroom, and he said, ‘Darling, I think this is a hit.’ And I went, ‘Oh, cool man, let me hear it.’ And he starts playing it on a folk guitar — a 12-string guitar with only six strings on it.”

Rodgers was impressed by the song. After discovering its title, Bowie wasn’t reserved in telling him why he'd named it thus.

“He had this really complex concept of dancing — the dance that people do in relationships,” he explains. “I was like, ‘David, I come from dance music. Can I do an arrangement?’”

Rodgers was given free rein to do so. He believed that “if the funk was in the basic groove, we had something.”

The pair then visited Queen’s Mountain Studios, in the Montreux Casino, Switzerland, to put Rodgers’ revisions through their paces.

“I count the song off, and we do the little dominant pyramid thing [referring to the song's intro]. As soon as we played that pyramid and I played it first, I screamed and went, ‘Woo,’ or something like that,” he remembers. “And I could tell right away that it's a smash.

“David was really happy, and I remember this like it was yesterday. I said, ‘You think this shit is happening? Wait till you hear my guys play it.’ Because I knew once we got back home, and it was the people that I played with playing my arrangements, it was going to be killer.

“He gave me some of the best musical times of my life,” Rodgers, who’s worked with everyone from Madonna to Daft Punk and the Halo video game franchise, adds. “It was just a joy working with him. His unbridled enthusiasm for a project was contagious, to say the least, and his unshakable belief in the potential of the song, ‘Let's Dance,’ prophetic.”

Yet, the record’s commercial success belied Bowie’s original vision for it. The guitarist admits their relationship was “complicated.”

“All I wanted for him was super success, and David seemed to want me to work against that principle,” Rodgers says. “He wanted me to make a record that was not super accessible. He wanted it to be more avant-garde.

“David was paying for the record with his own money. He had no record deal. [I said] ‘David, please believe me, when these people who are going to come in and bid for this record hear it, we got to knock them off their seat.’”

Bowie retired from touring after suffering a heart attack onstage in 2004, but he continued making albums until his death in 2016. For his final album, Blackstar. he embraced a dark, jazz-laden sound and prophesized his death, which came two days after the record’s release.

“He always did what he wanted to do. And he wanted to do it his way, and he wanted to do it the best way,” his longtime producer Tony Visconti said after his passing. “His death was no different from his life — a work of art.”

Although Marc Bolan only scored the one U.S. hit — “Bang A Gong,” in 1971, with his band, T.Rex, his influence on the artists that followed him, particularly in the States and the U.K., was immense. From 1970 to 1974, Bolan became, arguably, the biggest act in the world, with a level of adulation that was the equal of Beatlemania. “T. Rextasy,” as it was nicknamed, saw Bolan score a run of 14 hit singles and six albums that generated worldwide sales of around 50 million in a four-year period.

America was strangely resistant to the charms of the “bopping elf,” perhaps unready to embrace the camp excesses of glam rock. Nowadays, Bolan’s image may seem a little tame, but back in 1970, male pop stars weren’t experimenting with glitter under their eyes, wearing feather boas and the occasional item of women’s clothing. As striking and revolutionary as his image was, the most crucial reason for Bolan’s success was the music. He created a body of work that transcends time and genre to sound as fresh as the day it was released more than 50 years ago.

Perhaps surprisingly, Bolan’s career trajectory was not unlike that of Bob Dylan, with the transition from acoustic folkie in Tyrannosaurus Rex, a duo that he had formed with Steve Peregrine-Took, to fully fledged electric warrior, with the inevitable accusations of sell-out and Judas from his original audience. Born Marc Feld, his first single, released under the name Toby Tyler, in 1964, was actually a cover of Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

The single was a flop, but Bolan was undeterred and recorded another single the following year, “The Wizard,” which included Jimmy Page among the studio musicians. Again failing to score much success, Bolan recorded some acoustic demos before joining psych-pop band John’s Children. The single that Bolan wrote for them, “Desdemona,” should have seen Bolan make the breakthrough in 1967, but was banned for ‘suggestive’ lyrics by the staid BBC.

Bolan’s unflappable self-confidence, and already fully formed ego, refused to allow him to countenance failure. The formation of Tyrannosaurus Rex in 1967, saw him achieve cult status, with a largely acoustic set featuring Tolkienesque lyrics and nonsense poetry in the spirit of Edward Lear. Although the band released three reasonably successful albums, Bolan’s love of rock and roll and the power of an electric guitar couldn’t be denied. Much like Dylan again, Bolan had already peppered his pre-T.Rex albums with enough hints that there was a six-string weapon of serious intent waiting to be unleashed.

The breakthrough came when the band shortened its name, ditched the acoustic/mystical dabblings and went for the throat with the release of “Ride a White Swan,” in 1970. A simple, straightforward rocker, with a riff largely based on classic Sun rockabilly singles and a devastatingly effective guitar solo, the record was a worldwide smash and saw Bolan transformed overnight into a fully fledged teen idol.

Bolan worked with producer Tony Visconti from 1968, when the transplanted New Yorker produced the second Tyrannosaurus album, Prophets Seers and Sages: The Angels of the Ages. Visconti produced every subsequent Bolan record until 1974’s Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow, and his string arrangements were a key part of the creation of the distinctive T.Rex sound.

Visconti occupied a unique position in that he was also producing David Bowie’s records over the same time period as he was adding his magic to the Bolan mix. Bolan and Bowie were both friends and rivals; Bolan hit superstardom before Bowie, but had to suffer the frustration of seeing Bowie’s career continue to boom as his own went into something of a decline by the end of 1974.

As Visconti remembers, “David was both Marc’s friend and his — as perceived by Marc — enemy.”

As Bolan’s star waned, and he started to chase trends rather than create them, it is tempting to wonder what might have been if he’d reunited with Visconti.

“That was almost on the cards, because right after David appeared on Marc’s weekly U.K. TV show, he took Marc to Soho to see my studio on Dean Street. Marc had never seen it before, and Marc said to David that it would be great to work there with Tony again.

“I would have encouraged him to think about experimenting with new sounds, new chord changes even. I would have encouraged him to be adventurous and to keep an eye on the top of the charts.”

Bolan made a string of great albums, and his best record for most of his fans is The Slider. Bolan was at the pinnacle of his success, and unsurprisingly was starting to become a little affected by it all.

“Yes he was. His ego was through the roof,” Visconti says, laughing. “As if it wasn’t bad enough when he was Tyrannosaurus Rex, now that he had validation with the run of hits, he was quite full of himself.

“It was often in an endearing way, though he could be quite vicious sometimes when he lost his temper, at other times he was very kind. People do often go through a mental upheaval when they become successful after years of struggle and rejection.”

Success may have altered Bolan’s ego, but he hadn’t lost his focus on his music. Visconti remembers that his work ethic was as strong as ever.

“He was very conscientious. He often recorded with the fans in mind; he wasn’t very concerned with getting the respect of other musicians — that didn’t matter to him, but he wanted to give the fans what he thought they wanted and that required a lot of work. All of us worked very hard on The Slider.”

Bolan was a fast worker, but first and foremost, he was concerned about the feel of a track.

“We were both on the same page with that,” Visconti explains. “We weren’t looking for perfection; we looked for mistakes that were really good, maybe kind of funky that would give a sense of immediacy and spontaneity. We always looked for that.”

Bolan was a prolific writer, and Visconti recalls some of his working processes.

“I never heard demos and I don’t think the band did either. They were learning those songs on the spot. Marc had written a lot of songs, but he didn’t make many demos. What he had was a school notebook, full of lyrics. I took a peek in there and he had about 50 songs written — just the lyrics, but I think he knew the chord changes for all of them in his head.

“When we started recording the album, he’d get the book out, turn the page and say, ‘We’re going to do this one.’ Then he’d sit there with his guitar and play the song all the way through to us. That was how they would learn it.

“Steve [Currie] would find a complementary part on the bass, Bill [Legend], would find the right groove pretty quickly and Micky [Finn] would weave his congas around what they’d created. I would already be thinking about string arrangements.”

As Visconti recalls. “He was faster than lightning. He was such a quick worker that he would declare the take was good, and the band would often complain, Bill in particular, that they’d only just learnt the song and they could do it better. If Bill said he thought he’d made a mistake, Marc would say not to worry, he’d dub a loud guitar part over it.”

Visconti laughs. “He would rather deal with things in that way, in his determination to get the songs down quickly. He would rather fix a mistake in the recording than scrap the track and start again.

“He was also motivated by the fact that when we were recording The Slider, Marc was paying the bills, and it’s perhaps not fair to call him a cheapskate, but he followed his own budget very carefully. At the studio, he had booked three days to get 18 songs done, whereas Bowie would book it for a month. The important thing for David was to record slowly, in comfort and in style. Marc was just crazy about getting as many tracks recorded in as little time as possible.”

Bolan is often overlooked or underrated in the pantheon of guitar gods, no doubt because the baggage of teen idol and pop superstar don’t sit well with the serious muso leanings of the rock cognoscenti. Bolan could rip out Hendrix-like solos back in his supposed folkie days — see for example a track like “King of the Rumbling Spires” or “Is It Love,” which both predated his chart stardom.

And he could quote classic rockabilly and blues licks on tracks like “Elemental Child” and “I Love To Boogie.” Bolan was totally hip to ’50s rock and roll, citing James Burton as an influence, name checking Alan Freed in his lyrics and copping the riff from Howlin’ Wolf’s “You’ll Be Mine” for his number one hit, “Jeepster.” Bolan even spent a weekend at Eric Clapton’s house watching him play and picking up tips.

As fast as he was laying the tracks down, it was never at the expense of a great guitar tone.

“He’d spend a lot of time tweaking sounds,” Visconti says. “He had a few pedals, not many — a treble booster and a slapback delay pedal — and he knew how to use them. He would tweak his sound and his tone, song by song.

“In terms of amps, in the Tyrannosaurus Rex days he’d be using something small, but by the time of The Slider, he’d be using Hi-Watts or whatever he was using onstage – his full stage stack. He was really good at finding the perfect tone, and if I sometimes suggested something to him he’d try it and be open and receptive to my suggestions.”

Bolan treated recording almost as a live event, even wearing his stage clothes in the studio and cranking the amps up.

“Oh my god, he was loud in the studio. It was deafening!” Visconti recalls with a laugh. “Sometimes I’d put on a pair of headphones to cut the sound down so I could be in the studio when he was playing, but he cranked it all up. His rock sound was hard and edgy and loud.”

As fiercely committed to his own vision as he was, Bolan was not dictatorial when it came to the recording process.

“He would always take input from the band. He didn’t write Steve’s bass parts and he didn’t tell Bill what to play. Mickey was a self-starter; he had a few beats. Marc might make a suggestion about what they played or the tempo or whatever, but usually he was very happy to accept what the guys came up with.

“With Marc’s songwriting, everybody knew when the verse or chorus was coming and where you might need a drum fill or something. Bill was like a pop music master — one of the best drummers that I ever worked with.

“However, when Steve Peregrine-Took said to Marc that he wanted Tyrannosaurus Rex to record his own songs as well, that was the end of Steve. He was just fired immediately. I think the band knew this, so there was no point in saying that they had some songs they’d like him to try.”

In Bolan’s incredible run of hit singles, there are several songs that particularly stand out: “Telegram Sam,” with its chugging, Chuck Berry–like rhythm guitar stabs and lyrics that reference Dylan; “20th Century Boy,” perhaps the hardest rocking of the singles; and “Hot Love,” which has a wordless chanting refrain that lasts longer than the main body of the song, coming in at five minutes of hypnotic grooving. This was no happy jamming accident.

“That was deliberate,” Visconti notes. “We intended it to run that way. We thought it was great and we made sure that we kept it interesting as it repeated itself. Flo and Eddie [the singing duo Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, formerly of the Turtles] were having a ball, screaming and keeping the excitement level up. It was certainly not boring. I think there was an edited version with an early fade out for DJs who didn’t have the time to play the full version.”

As the hits started to dry up, Bolan seemed to lose direction on both a musical and a personal front. He gained weight, and his music similarly became weighed down with endless attempts to channel a little funk or R&B, with female backing singers swamping the tracks. Bolan was losing the vibrancy and essence of the soul of rock and roll, which he’d epitomized since 1970. Enter punk rock in 1976. The punk litmus test created a “year zero” slash-and-burn evisceration of all the music that had gone before, with the notable exceptions of certain artists, Bolan being one of them, who were credited as major influencers on the movement.

Of course it was largely a pose, with all the major players later admitting that they loved the classic rock dinosaurs. Even Johnny Rotten claimed to like Pink Floyd. This new, febrile atmosphere energized Bolan. Thus by 1977, with a revitalized, slimmed-down look, hip haircut and weekly TV pop show, (which featured, incidentally, many of the key punk acts), he became the de facto godfather of punk.

Bolan even took the Damned out on tour with him in 1977, cannily drawing to his live shows, not only his old fans, but also the younger, newly minted punk generation who’d missed out first time. Dandy in the Underworld, arguably his best album in several years, was receiving positive reviews.

He seemed to be on the cusp of a return to his former glory when tragedy struck. Bolan was killed in a car crash, on September 16 of that year, while riding in the passenger seat of the car driven by his partner, Gloria Jones. He was only 29 years old.

For mainstream American audiences, Bolan remains something of a cult figure. America never replicated the scenes of hysteria, audiences of girls screaming louder than the music, the media intrusion into every aspect of his life which was accorded to Bolan by the rest of the world. Ringo Starr was not only a huge fan of Bolan but also a personal friend. Both Starr and Paul McCartney commented at the time that they wondered if the adulation for Bolan in the U.K. even exceeded that of the Beatles themselves.

As for why Bolan’s success didn’t translate into a wider American audience, it was undoubtedly a case of too much too soon, to borrow an album title from a band who were heavily influenced by Bolan, the New York Dolls. Had MTV been in existence, Bolan would have been filling football stadiums.

Whereas many artists’ songs are frequently covered and re-interpreted, Bolan’s work has never really received the same treatment. This is largely due to the fact that Bolan so completely inhabits every T.Rex song. His lyrics — often derided as inane nursery rhymes — are so completely in accord with the image, the voice and his unique guitar style. His distinctive vibrato on his solos perfectly matches the vibrato in his voice, ensuring that no cover could ever come close to the original.

Visconti agrees.

“I’m not a fan of anybody’s covers,” the producer says. “I would absolutely agree that Marc made the definitive versions of his songs, and it is really hard to better that or do something different. I’ve never heard a real good cover of Marc.”

Bolan is remembered as the creator of glam rock, but he was so much more than that. Unlike Bowie, Bolan never hid behind characters, or felt the need to reinvent himself. He was 100 percent Marc Bolan, the electric warrior. A poet, an icon and a hell of a great guitarist, with his low-slung Les Paul (Marc knew what rock and roll was supposed to look like, as well as sound like) and his patented Bolan boogie rhythm electric guitar style, with the subtle pulling and pushing of the beat that was his distinctive sonic signature, Marc Bolan is long overdue for recognition.

If you still need convincing, check out “Bang a Gong” and see if you can keep your feet still and the smile off your face.

In 1974, David Bowie was fresh off his reign as the glam-rock’s biggest act. After his breakthrough success that began with Ziggy Stardust and continued through Diamond Dogs, he was about to make a turn toward soul and funk with his next album, Young Americans.

Despite his success, he could still be in awe of his idols. When the opportunity to meet John Lennon arose that year, Bowie was beside himself.

Like millions of teens in the 1960s, he had been a Beatles fan. His own career began to take off in the mid 1960s, during which time he flirted with influences ranging from the Rolling Stones to the Who to Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd. But while Bowie never dabbled in the Beatles’ style of pop, but he was enamored of the group, and John Lennon in particular.

“Oh hell, he was one of the major influences on my musical life,” Bowie said in an interview recorded in the 1980s. “I mean, I just thought he was the very best of what could be done with rock and roll, and also ideas.

“I felt such kin to him in as much as that he would rifle the avant-garde and look for ideas that were so on the outside, on the periphery of what was the mainstream — and then apply them in a functional manner to something that was considered populist and make it work. He would take the most odd idea and make it work for the masses.

“And I thought that was just so admirable. I mean, that was like making artwork for the people and not sort of having it as an elitist thing. There was just so much about him that I admired. He was tremendous, you know?”

By 1974, Bowie had moved to New York, the same city to which Lennon had emigrated in 1971. It was perhaps inevitable the two would meet. It happened soon after at a party given by actress Elizabeth Taylor.

“I think we were polite with each other, in that kind of older-younger way,” Bowie recalled of their meeting.

As his longtime producer and friend Tony Visconti revealed in a 2021 interview with BBC Radio 4, Bowie was intimidated by the former Beatle.

“He was terrified of meeting John Lennon,” he recalled. When shortly after the party Lennon scheduled a visit to Bowie, the singer insisted Visconti come along “to buffer the situation.”

Bowie didn’t need to worry. Lennon was a fan.

"I must say, I admire him for the vast repertoire of talent the guy has, you know,” Lennon said in 1980. “I was never around when the Ziggy Stardust thing came, because I’d already left England while all that was going on, so I never really knew what he was… I think he’s great."

Visconti recalled that the meeting took place late in the day. When he arrived, he found Bowie on the floor sketching on an art pad with charcoal while Lennon sat nearby. Neither said much to the other for a couple of hours, when Lennon broke the silence by asking for a few sheets of paper so he could draw as well.

“So John started making caricatures of David, and David started doing the same of John and they kept swapping them,” Visconti said. “And then they started laughing and that broke the ice.”

Bowie recalled in a later interview how Lennon responded when he asked his opinion of glam rock.

“‘Yeah, it’s great,’” Bowie said, mimicking Lennon’s Liverpool accent. “‘But it’s just rock and roll with lipstick on.’

“And I was impressed as I was at virtually everything he said. He was probably one of the brightest, quickest witted, earnestly socialist men I’ve ever met in my life. Socialist in true definition, not in a fabricated political sense. But a real humanist.

“And a really spiteful sense of humor — which, of course, being English, I adored. I just thought we’d be buddies forever and we’d get on better and better and all that.”

The two artists collaborated soon after meeting. Bowie had just completed recording his album Young Americans in Philadelphia. But in January 1975, he and Lennon got together at New York City’s Electric Lady Studios to cut two more tracks for it: a cover of Lennon’s 1968 Beatles tune “Across the Universe” — included on the group's 1970 swan song, Let It Be — and a new song composed by Bowie, Lennon and Carlos Alomar, Bowie’s guitarist and the player behind the tune’s signature funk electric guitar riff. Titled “Fame,” it became Bowie’s first number-one single.

But Bowie got considerably more than a hit out of his collaboration. He got a friend for what little time remained in Lennon’s life.

And along the way, he picked up some priceless advice from Lennon about songwriting.

“I’ll never forget something John Lennon told me,” he recalled in a 1983 interview, in which he reflected on Lennon’s death three years earlier. “We were talking about writing, and I would always admire the way he used to cut through so much of the bullshit and just come straight to the point with what he wanted to say.

“He said, ‘It’s very easy, all this. All you have to do is say what you mean, make it rhyme, put a backbeat to it. I keep coming back to that principle.”

Bowie added that “Fame” came about in just that way.

“Yeah, absolutely. I mean it was so easy.

“John had an incredible charisma that made you cut through things. I can see the effect that he must have had on Paul McCartney. I’d imagine McCartney sorely misses that now.”

Reeves Gabrels has played guitar with David Bowie solo and in Tin Machine, and now performs alongside Robert Smith in the Cure. So when it comes to shows, he's has plenty of experience, both good and bad.

“Gigs are very funny and unpredictable things,” Gabrels says “You can plan everything out, the band will be well rehearsed, your gear is in perfect shape, and all it takes is one crazy moment to throw everything out the window.”

Of course things can always can go the other way. Gabrels recalls one of his first shows as a member of the Cure, in 2014, that was truly extraordinary.

“It was Robert Smith’s birthday, and we were about to play a gigantic show at a soccer stadium in Mexico City,” he says. “Minutes before showtime, the band lined up behind the stage for some photos. My wife, Susan, was the photographer.

"As she was snapping shots, we noticed something strange… She was rocking back and forth, as if she were on a boat. But we were also rocking back and forth, but in the opposite direction — she would go left, and we would go right. It was incredibly bizarre.”

That’s when the band realized they were in the middle of an earthquake.

“The audience started yelling and screaming, and for a moment it seemed as if things were going to get crazy,” Gabrels says. “But then everything calmed down, and we were faced with a decision whether we should play or not. The audience stayed in their seats.

"Robert looked at me like, ‘Reeves, you lived in California, so you’re used to this. Will there be aftershocks?’ I told him I didn’t know — you can never predict these things.”

The promoter asked the band to wait 30 minutes to see what was going to happen, and so they retired to their dressing room and hung out. After an unremarkable half hour, the group decided the worst was over and that the show would go on. “We walked out onstage and everybody started screaming again,” Gabrels says. “But this time it was because they were excited to see us.

“Despite the shaky — literally — start, the show came off without a hitch; in fact, the group turned Smith’s birthday into a true celebration and played for over four hours without a break. “We played every song we knew,” Gabrels says. “My attitude was, ‘If I don’t die having sex, I’m going to die onstage.’”

After the gig, the guitarist was informed that there were a few aftershocks while the band was onstage, but he never felt them. “It just goes to show you how things can turn on a dime,” he says. “I thought this could have been a bad show — or that it wouldn’t have happened at all — but it turned out great.”

Below, Gabrels recalls two other shows with radically different outcomes, though they share a common factor: a split-second onstage slip-up by the guitarist himself. “One gig became something special,” he says, “while the other ranks as one of my most embarrassing moments. But that’s what makes live shows so extraordinary — you’re always on the high wire.”

The Best

“This goes back to Tin Machine’s second tour in October of 1991, so I was still kind of finding my way through in terms of modifying my voice on the instrument and trying new things. I recall this one night at the Oslo Concert House, or it could have been the Falconer Center in Copenhagen — I can't remember which one it was.

“I was trying to push beyond ‘just electric guitar,’ as always. David was onboard with that; in fact, the only things he ever asked me to do were ‘turn up the volume’ and ‘don’t play solos like on the records.’ That was a dream come true for me.

"I was using a DigiTech IPS33B SmartShift harmonizer and would program all sorts of noises into it — it did sequential stuff and cascading harmonies. Really cool stuff. This was when I was playing Steinbergers. My guitar tech insisted that I have multiple spares, and as it happened, this one night I broke a string during the song ‘Heaven’s in Here.’

“I started to hand the guitar off to my tech during a quiet part in the solo — some nights that could have gone on for 20 minutes — but I pulled the cable out without thinking to mute it. The harmonizer was on, and it sent out these cascading buzzes and noises, but they had a sweetness to them instead of an abrasiveness.

"The second I heard this, I turned the harmonizer up, and while holding the cable I went out to the audience and was like, ‘All right, raise your hands!’

“I felt like a southern evangelist — one by one, I went to people, and I’d press the jack of the cable into their hands. I knew nobody would get electrocuted, but these crazy buzzing sounds were going off. Down the line I went — it was like I was baptizing people: ‘You’re healed!’ I actually felt like I was doing some sort of soulful service, or at least the best in atheist can do.

“The sounds were getting way out there; with each new hand that grabbed the jack, the sounds got more psychedelic. It was totally spontaneous. Everybody was caught up in it. This probably went on for on for four or five minutes before I went back to the stage and got down to business as usual.

"During all of this, Hunt and Tony [Sales] kept vamping. David sat down on the drum riser and had a cigarette — he was digging the fuck out of it. He had that grin on his face, so I knew he was thinking, ‘Keep going, kid.’ Afterward, he told me, ‘That was awesome. I didn’t expect that to happen.’

“For me, the moment became kind of revelatory in that it changed a bunch of things about my sonic approach. It meant that I didn’t have to get rid of anything else I was doing — anything goes, everything fits.” He laughs. “I’m sure it irritated even more people than I was already irritating.”

The Worst

“The most embarrassing moment that ever happened to me onstage was around 2006. This was when I moved from Los Angeles to Nashville. I had quit Bowie, but it was before I joined the Cure. I was pretty much hanging out in Nashville, playing with friends and songwriters. I had gained a bunch of weight, and I had a full beard and long hair. I looked like I could have been in the band Alabama, but without all the styling. Nobody recognized me from my Bowie days.

“I took a gig that lasted for a couple of years playing with a fellow named Brandon Giles. He had portrayed Jerry Lee Lewis in The Million Dollar Quartet. Playing with Giles was a fun and easy gig, and it paid. We would do a lot of songs from the Hank Williams songbook, but then we’d throw in things like ‘Funk #49.’

“We had a pretty rockin’ four-piece band, and one night were playing this huge barbecue festival in Arkansas, where Brandon is from. There was something like 50,000 people there — they’re eating barbecue and drinking Buds and Pabst Blue Ribbon. We came out guns a-blazing, doing this rockabilly with a weird ZZ Top edge. Brandon was totally into it — he’s singing and playing, all fired up.

"The time came for me to do a guitar solo, and Brandon yells, ‘Take it, Reeves!’ I stepped forward to hit my boost, and I was going to turn it into a big moment — you know, put my foot on the monitor and do this cool solo. That was the plan anyhow.

“What happened was very different: I got the straight cable caught in the treads of my boots, and I ended up yanking it right out of the guitar. And what made this worse was, I didn’t loop my cable through my guitar strap, something I’ve done my whole life.

"I didn’t realize I had unplugged myself at the time, and I must say, it’s a special kind of moment when you hit that first note of a solo, and instead of this awesome sound you literally get nothing — no sound at all. Everybody’s looking at you, and time kind of stands still.

"It took me a few seconds to realize what had happened. I bent over and popped the cable back into the guitar. We had a good laugh about it — ‘That’s rock and roll.’

“I take no responsibility for it, mind you. I blame the whole thing on the straight cable.”

From his time with Frank Zappa through his work with David Bowie, Talking Heads and King Crimson, Adrian Belew could be spotted onstage with a battle-scarred sunburst-finish Fender Stratocaster. Given its history, that electric guitar may be one of the most storied Strats in the history of avant-garde rock. How it came to play such a vital role in Belew’s career is a tale in itself, one that began in the 1970s, when the guitarist was still a young unknown from Covington, Kentucky, who was suddenly dropped alongside Frank Zappa, an unflinching perfectionist guitar virtuoso.

As Belew reveals to Guitar Player, his Stratocaster was certainly not the prettiest or most expensive example — just one that he could afford. And he rode it all the way to his breakout success as one of the premier Strat-slingers in history. Here, the guitarist talks us through his history with the Strat.

How did you come to own your first Strat?

I was in a band and had been playing drums, but I was starting to play guitar again. I’d always wanted a Strat, so I bought one with a natural wood finish at [Chuck Levin’s] Washington Music Center [in Maryland]. I drove up from Nashville and bought it off the rack — the plainest, simplest, cheapest Stratocaster that I could buy.

This was the same Strat you went to California with when you auditioned for Frank Zappa?

It was. I took it to California and auditioned with Frank. After I got the job, I used it during our three-month rehearsal and then on a two-month tour of the United States. But that Strat never returned to my house; it was lost in the shuffle. It’s out there somewhere.

How did you go about replacing it?

At the time, I was living here in Nashville. I went down to a little music store, and in the back they had a kind of really ugly Strat hanging on the wall. It was a brown sunburst, and it didn’t have a case. But that was okay, because with all the travel we were doing, I knew I would get a serious road case for it. I paid $285 for the Strat.

And that’s the guitar you ended up recording with while with Frank and beyond?

Yes. That’s the Stratocaster that I played on Frank’s records. And then I played it on David Bowie’s Lodger and toured the world with David with it. Then I played it with the Talking Heads, did the Remain in Light album with them, the Tom Tom Club album [with Talking Heads drummer and bassist Chris Frant\z and Tina Weymouth], Jerry Harrison’s solo debut, and so many other things.

Was that the same Strat you used in the 1980s with King Crimson?

It was. I played it with King Crimson on Discipline, and on my first solo record [Lone Rhino]. And then I finally switched to a guitar synthesizer. So that Strat has an amazing amount of history. It’s on a lot of records, and it only cost me 285 bucks!

What were some of the mods you performed on it?

When I first had one in the late ’70s, I put a [Alembic] Strat-o-blaster [preamp] in it. That really helped, but before that I just plugged the guitar straight into the amp. That’s the Stratocaster sound. It doesn’t have everything in terms of richness, overtones and sparkle... Well, maybe it does. It would depend heavily on the amp. But I’ve always gone into a compressor first, and that helped bring those sparkly notes and added sustain.

You found two winning Strats in succession in the 1970s. Is that indicative of the quality of older Stratocasters?

If you want to go right into the piece of wood called a Stratocaster, they’re different. You might pick one up and it seems flat sounding, but then you might try the one next to it and decide that it’s the one you should buy. I don’t know why that is. They’re made to the exact same tolerances, but they’re not the same.

What’s the key to finding the right one?

I think this is true for any guitar: It’s not about the sound coming off the guitar alone; it’s about how it feels under your fingers. Sometimes you pick up a guitar and it just feels right. I think that’s the Stratocaster you should have. For me, a Stratocaster is a fabulous tool. I think Leo Fender got it absolutely right, but there are other ways to go about it now and other improvements that have been made.

Do you prefer the depth of rosewood necks or the spank of maple?

I always loved rosewood necks. Recently I had some guitars made for the Talking Heads shows that I’ve been doing [Remain in Light] and I wanted to go back to Strats and get whatever was the best now. For example, I found a wonderful new tremolo to put on, and I went with a maple neck, thinking it was brighter for me. But I made a mistake; I think I’m a rosewood guy. I love the guitars, but if I had the chance to do it over again, I would have stuck with the rosewood.

You mentioned amps a moment ago. You’ve long championed the Roland Jazz Chorus. Is that what you’d choose to pair with a Strat, especially since it’s a great pedal platform?

Oh, gee. A Strat sounds great through a Fender amp. Now, with pedals… I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t play guitar — except acoustic guitar — without first putting it through a compressor. But that’s just me. Some people don’t like that sound. It seems to make the guitar hum a little better, and the notes have more sustain. I’ve always liked that.

But in general, Strats are really something. Once you have a good one and a good amp, you have 90 percent of the battle won. From there, it’s down to personal taste.

“Don’t get married to your effects.”

“Effects are no substitute for playing well.”

Over the years, guitarists have made these and similar comments in music magazines (even in the pages of Guitar Player). For his part, Reeves Gabrels is having none of it.

“Effects sometimes get a bad rap, and I don’t know why,” he says. “Effects can be marvelous tools to express yourself, but you have to use them creatively. I think the problem comes when guitarists don’t apply them with a sense of imagination. Copycat-ism is the real issue, and who wants to be a copycat?”

Thus far, nobody has had the nerve to suggest to his face that he relies too much on effects, but if such a scenario occurred, Gabrels imagines he would handle the situation in one of two ways: “If it was somebody I liked,” he replies, “I would say, ‘I think you’re wrong, but why don’t you watch the show tonight and tell me what you think?’ And if it was somebody I didn’t like, I’d say, ‘Well, then you must be a fucking idiot.’”

1. Your guitar and amp are one instrument

“People tend to spend a lot of time playing their electric guitars unplugged. I do it, too, but the fact is a guitar is designed to be put through an amplifier. Anytime you’re playing it unplugged, it’s calling out for its better half. It comes down to this: If you choose to play the electric guitar, play the electric guitar.

“There are practical reasons for this. How many times have you practiced something on an unplugged electric guitar, and the minute you plug in, it feels like everything is different? Until you’re plugged in, you don’t really know how the pickups will change the sound or what the amp’s speaker is going to do, how the notes will bloom and sustain. You might think you know how your pinch harmonics will sound, but you never really know until you run your guitar through an amp. Your electric guitar sound is something you should try to be familiar with.”

2. Look for effects and sound processing not made for the guitar

“I remember when the Korg Kaoss Pad came out in 1999. I had heard about it being marketed to DJs, and one day I read a review of it in one of the recording magazines. It said something like, ‘It’s really great. You can manipulate sounds and mix effects in real time. You can do all these things, and oh yeah – it has no application for guitar or bass.’

“I said to myself, ‘We’ll see about that!’ I went to 48th Street and bought a unit, and I immediately fell in love with it. I even used it at a gig that night. How wrong that reviewer was. I got a mic stand and built a little platform on it so I could put the Kaoss Pad right in front of me. It works on an X/Y axis, so you can move your finger across it and mix two different effects in different ways. You can make it sound like tape speeding up. It has random access, so it’s off when you’re not touching it.

“I figured out all kinds of things to do with the Kaoss Pad. It was so cool. That made me start to seek out more effects that were marketed for DJs and keyboard players. For a while, Alesis made these things called the Air Synth and the Air FX, and you could manipulate the sound by moving your hand around – there were no knobs. I had them both on my mic stand.

“With the Air FX I could do a ‘record slowdown’ thing, almost like a whammy pedal. They were in my guitar effects loop, and they worked great. Other people used them in the studio, but I used them live.”

3. Really get to know your effects

“Just like you need to practice your guitar and get to know everything about it, you should do the same with your effects. People tend to latch onto one or two things an effects pedal will do, and they use them for those things without exhausting everything they can do. The more you practice with an effect, the more it will become a musical instrument and less what a lot of people might dismiss as ‘noise.’

“Some effects pedals will surprise you. I remember, years ago, I bought a Univox Unitron pedal – it was like the poor-man’s Mu-Tron. When it was in bypass, it still went through a gain stage, so you could never get away from it. That disappointed me, but I used it in jams and I found a way to deal with the gain stage that I didn’t want but still use the pedal.

“Over time, I discovered that if I changed the settings to something that didn’t make any sense visually, it would do some really cool shit. I would hit a chord and nothing would come out of the amp at first, but then the sound would come out from the highest regions of space – the highest frequency of the chord – and then slowly it would reveal the full chord in all its weird, distorted glory. That was so cool.

“I think my playing had to catch up to what the pedal could do, but the point is, I never would have discovered that if I didn’t stay with it and discover what it was really capable of.”

4. A rant: effects aren't expressive enough. And where are the innovations?

“I’m going to disrupt the tips to vent for a few minutes. This is something I’ve said for years, actually, and it’s still the case: Effects are not interactive enough at this point in time, or at least I’ve not found them to be expressive enough. You turn an effect on or you turn it off. Even something as simple as a foot pedal to mix the effect in, it’s still a big deal. I’m talking about the commercially available stuff here.

“I would like to have the option of, say, plugging one or two volume pedals in and assigning them to any parameter I want per patch. That would be a simple one. I guess I could have a MIDI jack coming out of my skull, but we’re a long way from that. Well, maybe not. Whenever a new pedal comes out, it’s the same old shit and the same stuff we’ve already heard. The sense of adventure and discovery isn’t there. Maybe it’s because I’m old and jaded, but on the other hand, I’ve been feeling like this for a long time.

“People need to take more chances. Look how Eno ran Fripp’s guitar through the filter section of a synthesizer. Or the way Tony Visconti put drums through a harmonizer – that’s what I’m talking about.”

5. Anything can be an effect. If you don't mind looking silly

“When I was in Tin Machine, I wanted a certain texture that wouldn’t sound like a guitar or a synth. I got the idea: ‘What if I had something with a variable speed motor, like a Dremel?’ I mentioned it to my guitar tech, and he said, ‘Ohhhh.. You want a vibrator.’

“He went out and got one, and I tried using it with a Harmonizer. I discovered that if I put the vibrator back at the bridge, right where the string is, it would produce a sound like a slightly slowed-down violin or cello bow.

“By the way, in this case, size matters, because you need a vibrator small enough to hold in your hand. I also found that the further down I moved the vibrator on the string, it would create a pitch. I practiced with it and learned a bunch of things I could do with it. Anything can be a guitar effect if you’re inventive enough and don’t mind looking silly.”

The following interview with David Bowie and Reeves Gabrels was originally published in the June 1997 issue of Guitar Player. 

“You'll need headphones,” warns David Bowie. 

Is his band that loud? Far from it. There are no floor monitors or P.A. columns in this Manhattan rehearsal studio. Everything goes direct to a mixing board before returning to the band via hearing-aid-style in-ear monitors. The band plays along with taped tracks, dropping in and out of the mix. Without the cans, all you hear at times is Bowie's unamplified singing and a bit of Reeves Gabrels' mutant Parker Nitefly.

Unlike many who have gone the play-to-tape route (including, some would argue, the larger 1995 incarnation of the Bowie band that supported the Outside album and toured with Nine Inch Nails), Gabrels, bassist Gail Ann Dorsey, drummer Zachary Alford, and keyboardist/'70s Bowie vet Mike Garson create an exciting band feel, not only synching with the prerecorded tracks but stretching against them in dynamic, off-the-cuff fashion. Maybe too off the cuff?

“Reeves is giving all sorts of lovely lines to choose from today,” taunts David when Gabrels fails to render the exact part he played on Dead Man Walking, a tune from Bowie's new Earthling album. Reeves shrugs: “I thought the job description said 'loose cannon.'”

It's easy to understand why even a player with Gabrels' extraordinary technical skill finds it challenging to replicate the disc. Earthling, widely regarded as Bowie's best release in many years, is a high-tech tour de force that fuses over-the-top guitars with some of the electronic beats that have driven recent European pop, particularly the feverish collision of deep bass and hyperactive percussion known as 'jungle' or 'drum and bass.' 

Produced entirely on hard disk by Bowie, Gabrels, and engineer Mark Plati, the tracks shine with the clean edges and slap-your-face edits idiomatic to that cut/paste/loop medium.

Gabrels, too, has gone digital, abandoning his beloved Mesa/Boogie amps and overstuffed effects rack to record almost exclusively through a Roland VG-8 system. Bowie's main instrument was a Fernandes ZO3, a cheap travel guitar with a built-in amp and speaker. Gabrels shares writer's credit on most tracks.

The band launches into Scary Monsters, substituting a skittering groove for the ominous clank of the 1980 original. Gabrels provides a startling array of anarchic shrieks and scrapes, but caps the song with a high-precision shred solo as technically excessive as anything from the late '80s. 

The performance spans the paradoxical poles of the guitarist's musicianship: his phenomenal technique and his willingness to short-circuit it. He's brought the same technical ambivalence to every Bowie record since 1987, as well as his collaborations with Dave Tronzo and Modern Farmer, the 1995 solo album The Sacred Squall of Now, and an in-the-works project featuring Bowie, Frank Black, and Dave Grohl.

Bowie seems pleased by the performance. He adjourns rehearsal early, then scurries over to a large suitcase crammed with cassettes, CDs, videos, and magazines. He hums with excitement as he pops in a DAT of new Bowie remixes crafted by Moby and Mark Plati: “Isn't this wonderful? Isn't this great?” His conversation careens in a dozen directions at once – recent records, literary anecdotes, the current fashion collections, rock gossip.

The next morning the band performs on The Rosie O'Donnell Show. O'Donnell sets up a running gag about how Bowie never plays the old songs, particularly her favorite, China Girl. David emerges and serenades her, strumming an acoustic and substituting the word “Rosie” for “China.” The band plays Seven Years in Tibet, and tapes Dead Man Walking and Scary Monsters for broadcast later in the season.

After the show concludes O'Donnell asks David to repeat a filthy joke he'd told her. When he demurs, she shares it with the studio audience, adopting her best Bowie accent.

After the show David and Reeves meet at a nearby hotel to discuss their decade-long collaboration. The two have developed a near-psychic rapport, each completing the other's thoughts or amplifying his metaphors. When discussing music, both hasten to draw analogies from other arts, citing architecture, painting, fashion design, and theater. Sandwiches arrive. “Look, David – you got ham,” Gabrels says. “I'd rather be a ham than a turkey,” sniffs Bowie.

Making technique sound ugly

You've said you were drawn to Reeves for his ability to let go of his musicianship. Does a player need to have it to let it go?

Bowie: “Yes. There's a certain self-security factor involved. Musicians who are involved with their instrument to the extent that there are no thought processes involved in their playing have far less of a problem reducing down and deconstructing what they're doing, making technique sound ugly and rubbing it up the wrong way. 

“Guitar players who are less confident of their abilities are more likely to regard it as just sounding like noise if you ask them to do something that's not 'musicianly.' Guys who are really into it can let go more easily.

“[Robert] Fripp is like that. He seemed to enjoy the process, and I think he was quite bemused by some of the things I asked him to do – things like asking him to imagine he was playing a guitar duel with B.B. King where he had to out-B.B. B.B., but do it in his own way. That was on It's No Game, Pt. 1 [from Scary Monsters].

“Reeves is much the same. You can give him a mental trip and he will benefit from it and enjoy it, whereas a lesser guitarist is more likely to be worried by it. The most obvious example on Earthling is the solo from Looking for Satellites.

“I told him I only wanted him to play on one string at a time. He had to stay on the low E string till the chord changed, then he could go up to the A. When it changed again he could go to the D. He was hemmed in by the chord until it changed, and that made his run-up most unorthodox. He just loved it. Anyone else would say, 'Let me practice it a few times.'”

Gabrels: “When I got to the section where I was supposed to stop, I just thought, 'Fuck this!' and broke out of the rule, playing through the chorus. And David said, 'That's great.' Because of the restriction David put on me, it has a nice developmental curve, even though I'm overplaying. It has a nice orgasmic release.”

That ambivalence about “overplaying” is one of your defining traits.

Gabrels: “I want to have the chops to play what I hear, but I don't want technique to lead me by the nose. I suppose the ambivalence came with time, since by the time you acquire a skill, you might have outgrown the reason you wanted it in the first place. But there is also a competitive side to my personality. Not like I have to have what another person has, but in the late '80s, I needed to be able to do the Vai/Satriani/Yngwie thing because of my desire to be able to play whatever I wanted to play.”

You both tend to describe music in visual terms.

Bowie: “Ever since I was very young, I've seen music in visual terms. I see the textures that I'm hearing, and I equate certain sounds with the relative roughness and smoothness or density and transparency of color. I really see it in painters' terms. 

“The idea of, say, Rimsky-Korsakov developing a 'color organ' – a primitive thing with colored glass and candles – always made perfect sense to me. It always made perfect sense that you could go to, say, E minor, and it would have a particular hue.”

“I see the guitar neck as a landscape”

The guitar neck is also very graphic.

Bowie: “I see the guitar neck as a landscape. I see length and barrenness. I see each note or cluster of notes as objects within a landscape: a tree, a fence. 

“I describe instrumental parts in visual terms: 'The first part should be like a moor with a light fog. As we approach the chorus, it shouldn't emerge as a clear figure, but as an approaching object in a darker gray than the gray of the fog. It takes on recognizable features by the time it gets in close to you.' And then I'll make a hand gesture to indicate the sort of shape it should gradually take on. I just happen to be lucky to be working with people who understand what the fuck I'm saying!

“That's what I do as a producer. Give me five knobs and I'll hit the wrong two ones, but I am good at knowing exactly what the album looks like. I'm also good at opening musicians to areas of their own technique or creativity that they might not have looked at before.”

Gabrels: “The very first thing we ever did together was a remake of Look Back in Anger [now a bonus cut on the CD version of Lodger]. When I walked in you had keyboard pads at the beginning and end, but no guitar. Your reference was architectural. You said it should be like a cathedral.”

Bowie: “Right. I said the central part should have a spire, but it should have flying buttresses that are as strong, but not as emphatic, as the spire itself. We literally approached it that way. Reeves and I both have visual arts training, and that may be why I don't have the same problems talking things over with Reeves than I could with other guitar players. I can talk with Reeves at a very different level.”

Reeves says your Dead Man Walking riff is based on a pattern Jimmy Page showed you back in the '60s. There's an aspect of your own playing that's a throwback to the coffeehouse/garage roots of rock guitar, when technique was less scientific than it is now.

Bowie: “Completely! My guitar playing hasn't moved with the times at all. I use the same chords as always. But I do know a lot of them, and I'm able to put them together in interesting juxtapositions. Any time I did spend being disciplined was learning how chords work together. I spent a lot of time taking apart rock songs. I have no technique, but I have very good timing. 

“The guitar was my orchestra when I would play solo shows in the '60s. I'd set up two Selmer P.A. columns on top of my little bubble-shaped Fiat 400. I'd drive up and down the M1 doing shows with just 12-string guitar. But I was never interested in becoming a 'guitar player.'

“I have no lead guitar abilities. I can't play anything at a party. I don't know one of my songs unless I'm learning for a tour. I actually had to learn that little fragment of China Girl I played this morning. But Reeves can play anything. I expect he can play the entire Elton John songbook.”

Gabrels: “Yeah, Daniel, Rocket Man...”

Bowie: “'Daniel Rocket Man'? Sounds interesting!”

Gabrels: “Sort of a Charles Ives thing.”

As much as David disparages his own playing, Diamond Dogs was one of his great guitar albums. A lot of people assume it was a Mick Ronson record, but it was all David.

Bowie: “During that period when I left the Spiders [from Mars], I knew that the guitar playing had to be more than okay. That couple of months I spent putting that album together before I went into the studio was probably the only time in my life where I really buckled down to learn the stuff I needed to have on the album. I'd actually practice two hours a day. I knew the sound in my head, and at that time I didn't know musicians who could carry it off.”

And later you met such musicians and felt you could pass the baton?

Bowie: “I needed musicians to play Diamond Dogs live. Of course they played it differently. Some of my lines had sounded almost proto-punk because of my inabilities as a virtuoso. But by the time they took it onstage, they were playing it in a very musicianly style. Something was lost because of that. That album had a quality of obsession with what I wanted to get over. That's not there when I hear the gigs from that period. It was originally played with a singular vision, and that singularity is desperate, almost panicked.

“The vulnerability of playing something you think is important is very endearing. You'll never get that when you get proper musicians to play the stuff. They play it too well and with too much fluidity. There's not that sense of awkwardness about the structures. So to me, Diamond Dogs was never played well onstage, or at least never with the sensibility that the album had.”

The Rebel Rebel riff is so simple, but so perfect.

Bowie: “It's a fabulous riff. It is! Just fabulous! When I stumbled into it, it was, 'Oh! Thank you!' I've only ever showed one other person how to play it properly. I was in a hotel in London about 15 years ago. I was downstairs, and there was this awful row coming from upstairs, some guy playing electric guitar. He was playing dreadful heavy metal stuff, and then he started going into his version of Rebel Rebel. I went stomping upstairs, and it was John McEnroe.”

“I tried things until I found something cool”

Any kid could play the "Rebel Rebel" riff. The opening riff of [Earthling's] Little Wonder may be just as striking, but it is quite literally unplayable.

Bowie: “It's a synthetic piece of work. It was guitar sounds transferred to keyboard. It gets past the guitar, though Reeves can actually play it.”

Gabrels: “The three-note guitar figure is assembled from separate performances. The assistant engineer and I made up a DAT of a half-hour of guitar stuff I like to do, things like the whammy aspect of the VG-8. I figured if we were going to use samples, we might as well make our own. Then we loaded the samples onto the keyboard, let an eight-bar section of the rhythm run over and over on the computer, and I tried things until I found something cool.

“The first note is me popping a low E string with an envelope filter and distortion on the VG-8; the second part is the same sound, but playing another E two octaves up and hitting the whammy bar so it flutters. The third note is a high E at the 24th fret with the Fernandes Sustainer on my Parker set an octave above that. It gets squeaky up there – it sounds like two pieces of metal rubbing together.

“My playing on this record is like making head cheese: You put the parts in, boil it and scrape off the distilled thing that comes to the top. Now, of course, I have to learn how to play it live. My Nitefly only has 22 frets, so to get the high E I use the VG-8 to tune the G string up an octave, so I have that same high E at the 21st fret. Having to figure out how to play parts that have been digitally manipulated has definitely helped my playing evolve.”

Bowie: “Back when we did Outside we had the idea of transferring little bits of guitar to sampling keyboards and constructing riffs from those pieces. It's real guitar, but constructed in a synthetic way. But Brian Eno got in the way – in the nicest possible way – so we didn't get to that until this album. We want to go further with that, because it's a very exciting idea.”

Gabrels: “The middle section of Little Wonder is all sorts of shit. The bass track is Gail [Ann Dorsey] trying to get a sound from her pedalboard, not knowing it was being recorded. We constructed the track by grabbing bits of her bass line. We made up a word for the bits we collect from other tracks: 'obtanium.'”

So it's like working with found objects, except that the objects are all from your own closet?

Bowie: “Yeah. We do that an awful lot. The most exciting thing about the way we work is our ability to construct a song in maybe 15 minutes. It's extraordinary how we can develop something very quickly with almost no premeditated ideas about what we're going to do.”

Gabrels: “It's like making a fire with flint. You're huddled around, waiting for a spark. There's no judgment of the idea until it's brought to fruition. After that, you might decide it wasn't a good song after all. But the only way to get it to blossom is to not judge it until it does.”

Bowie: “I have two major approaches at the end of any sequence. If we have a completed section and it's time for the song to go somewhere else, I'll ask, 'What's the last thing you could possibly expect to happen?' and 'What is the one thing in the worst possible taste, so obvious and clichéd that it's laughable?' We try both, and one of the two generally works.

“There's good stupid – a certain Neanderthal quality – and there's stupid stupid. Seven Years in Tibet was a good example of something we started that seemed incredibly hack, with a very predictable, self-serious quality. I said, 'Dump this one, Reeves,' but he worked on it during my absence and turned it into something absolutely magical. It went from being something I wanted off the album to almost my favorite song on the album.”

More than any other new song, it has specific stylistic associations – a certain type of rock/R&B guitar playing. The other tracks exist in a more abstract realm.

Bowie: “Absolutely. What I find interesting in that track is the juxtaposition of a Stax influence with a late-'80s Pixies style. It's the sort of sound you might imagine behind Al Green or Ann Peebles, but set against something very late-'80s.”

Gabrels: “I deliberately evoked a Fleetwood Mac, Albatross feeling, but mainly so I could oppose it to the ton-of-bricks chorus. It's sometimes good to be able to conjure the emotions we automatically associate with classic guitar sounds, but all those tones are sounding more and more like beer commercials. Moosehead destroyed the sound of the Dobro for me! 

“I pride myself on being one of the people making the sounds that they'll use to sell sneakers and beer 20 years from now. If we don't do it, there won't be anything to rip off. There is a place in the world for the out-of-phase Strat sound, but it carries so much emotional baggage. I wanted to reclaim for guitar the visceral quality of the new electronic music. 

“As much as I love certain classic sounds, I'm not going to disappear up my own ass trying to get the perfect combination of '62 Strat through a Uni-Vibe and a Marshall Plexi and play only what Jimi would play – or what Stevie Ray Vaughan played in emulation of Jimi, or what Kenny Wayne Shepherd plays in emulation of Stevie Ray. I have no desire to be a tone librarian. It's about as interesting to me as the Dewey Decimal System.”

The technofied context in which you're currently working defuses some of the knee-jerk nostalgic associations.

Bowie: “Well of course! Anything out of its natural context will seem to be imbued with completely different information than what it had before. A girl wearing a red dress in a forest will be some strange vision of unexpected exoticism, but a girl wearing a red dress on a catwalk will be highly predictable.

“In art – the 'Big A' word – the information about how the subject is placed is half the story. Framing is terribly important. That's very much a Eno concept. He does more about framing than about actual construction.”

The cut-and-paste nature of the hard-disk medium seems to invite hard, stupid guitar sounds that slap you in the face and disappear before you have the chance to scrutinize them.

Gabrels: “I remember on a [Bowie and Gabrels' late-80s/early '90s band] Tin Machine track like Shopping for Girls where I'd put down track after track of guitar noise. I was always looking for that event, that shard of sound that would hit and then be gone. I was deeply into Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine at that time and I was looking for that industrial edge. So the ability to cut things up and move them where I wanted onscreen is what I wished I could have done then.”

Assembling digital shards

The digital format quite literally imposes edges. The hard hit or instant disappearance on the downbeat is very idiomatic, whereas Tin Machine-type rock has a lot of smeary, sustaining sounds – amp buzz, cymbal crashes, room reverb.

Gabrels: “Well, I was too stupid to understand that! But now if I'm trying to, say, record a track with a vibrator playing through the guitar pickups, I run the entire track and then go back to look at the sounds on the computer screen. I might think, 'That's a good one... that's good, but it's a beat late... that's a good one,' and throw out the rest. So the 'shard' aspect can be more fully realized this way.”

Has the hard-disk medium changed the way you see the instrument?

Gabrels: “Well, any improvisation is a series of ideas that you link together, and that's still true in a cut-and-paste situation. But you can be more economical, jumping from good idea to good idea without having to go through the less interesting series of notes that originally connected them. 

“You don't see me going through my pockets musically, looking for change. It's not, 'I need a quarter – let's see, here's a penny, here's a dime'; it's more like, 'I need a quarter – here's one.' At that point guitar is merely a sound source for me. It's not about how well I play; it's just sound and its attendant emotion. And this time my goal was to get the guitar into techno, jungle, and trip-hop in a way that doesn't have the cock-rock baggage of electric lead guitar. I think we did it.”

Bowie: “We're going in a different way from what everyone else is doing with drum and bass music. We're trying to give it a sort of complexity. I've not heard anything like the three examples we have on Earthling. It has an immediate aggression and vitality that reminds me of the earliest jungle records. Those guys didn't know much about what they were doing, but they had enough technique to put it together. 

“There's this incredible dynamic sense, like it's just coming out of them now. It was as aggressive as any punk thing. That spontaneous combustive atmosphere is terribly important to what we're doing.”

Jungle beats have super-fast snare patterns over a lumbering, half-time bottom end. Do you feel them at the slower tempo or in double-time?

Gabrels: “Well, I'm a pretty slow-moving character, so I always feel it in half-time. It's a lumbering beat with a lot of 32nd-note fills – just like heavy rock! I'm actually getting tired of drum and bass, and I'm interested in the current shift towards darker flavors. David and I felt differently at times about where we wanted this record to go.

“I leaned a bit towards the American industrial side, and he's inclined towards a more Euro sound. Just like some people prefer the Beatles to the Stones or Oasis to Blur, David is a Prodigy fan, while I'm more a fan of Underworld. Ironically, Carl from Underworld is using almost the same setup as me.”

David, on the other hand, played all his parts on a little travel guitar with a built-in amp and speaker.

Bowie: “It's all I need. It's all Reeves would give me! It's a self-esteem thing – I actually don't think I'm worth a better guitar. Why give me a nice Gibson? Give me something I don't feel so precious about. If it's a real cheap guitar, I can do what I want with it, fuck it up, make it do silly things. If you give me a real guitar that real musicians play, I'm suddenly very insecure. I much prefer a cheap Parker.”

Gabrels: “There's no such thing as a cheap Parker.”

Bowie: “In my case, there are. They give them to me. Or did I pay for that one?”

Gabrels: “That one's mine. It doesn't get much cheaper than that, does it, David?”

So a little stamped-out guitar is relatively free of psychological baggage. Does it ever work in reverse? Do you ever seek out a guitar that's rife with associations?

Bowie: “Maybe something like a Rickenbacker 12-string, a guitar that almost has a manifesto attached to it.”

Gabrels: “Or your one-string Flying V. One string, Floyd Rose, tuned to D.”

Bowie: “That one is beautiful. It's context, always context. For example, I have one of Marc Bolan's old guitars. If we have that in the studio, all the luggage of the guitar comes with it, and it definitely changes the attitude of what we're doing. I can't pick up a guitar and play just anything on it. Whatever guitar I'm given contextualizes the thought. 

“I'm sorry to keep using the word 'context,' but it's a governing principle. Context is almost everything. This is something too pretentious for words, but there's another attitude that's very much a part of what I do as a musician and performer. Brecht... [dissolves into laughter] Can you believe I said that?”

Gabrels: “I believe it.”

"You portray the emotion symbolically"

Bowie: “Bertolt Brecht [an early-20th-century German playwright and theorist] believed that it was impossible for an actor to express real emotion in a natural form every night. Instead, you portray the emotion symbolically. You don't try to draw the audience into the emotional content of what you're doing, but give them something to create their own dialog about what you're portraying. You play anger or love through stylistic gesture. The voice doesn't rise and fall and the face doesn't go through all the gambits you would portray as a naturalistic actor.

“I've done that an awful lot throughout my career. A lot of what is perceived as mannered performance or writing is a distancing from the subject matter to allow an audience to have their own association with what I'm writing about. That comes straight from Brecht, who was a major influence on me as a whippersnapper. It applies to any art form. It's a question of creating a space between your subject matter and yourself as an artist. I sing notes that stand in for emotion.

“I honestly couldn't care less about what the subject matter of Earthling is. I need lyrics; I write some lyrics. A guess a lot of subconscious things come through, and that probably says something about me. But it's almost like lyrics standing in for lyrics: [sings] 'Some words go here, and here's some more words.' That's enough. It's almost like when you do an undersketch for a painting. You sketch out what it looks like – a sun here, a house here. That's fine. The enthusiasm fleshes things out.”

Gabrels: “That works instrumentally as well. The undersketch is one of the things you can retain because of recording to hard disk. You can see the pencil line of the house that ended up getting painted. You don't have to lose it. You can make a glorious mistake, and then edit off the mistake, so all you have is the glory.”

Bowie: “Then you have the intrusion of the musicians' abilities. However principled and idealistic your vision, you can't help the intrusions of others. Intentions and expectations are very different for the artist. An artist may have an intention, but by the time he's applied himself to his work, that intention might have gotten lost. Certainly, an audience's expectations of the work are a million miles away from what the artist's intention was.

“It's the space in the middle that's actually the art – the mysterious, almost magical place in the middle where the receptions and intentions become something else.

“To my advantage, I haven't got a clue where we're going to take it. It may be the dilettante side of me, but when I know where things are going, I lose interest real fast. That's probably the root of the majority of the critical hostility against me. They don't like the fact that, one, I'm not a rock and roll person and don't care to be considered one, and, two, I treat most of what I do as an exercise in moving textures around.

“It's not my lifeblood or anything. The idea that I'm not honest because of that makes me seem offensive, and that's kind of cool, because I don't know anyone else like that. But not knowing where you're going is what makes it exciting for me. It leaves a permanently open landscape.”

“I’m not a rock star type; I’m a support musician,” begins Kevin Armstrong. “It’s about enjoying the whole thing and trying to bring something valuable to it. That’s why I’ve managed to survive this long, I guess.”

Kevin Armstrong may not be a household name, but the “sideman to rock royalty” has lent his talents to the likes of David Bowie and Iggy Pop whom he served as bandleader, not to mention Morrissey, Paul McCartney and Grace Jones.

Hailing from London’s punk/pub-rock scene, the self-taught guitarist and solo artist signed to EMI in the early 1980s, although his musical career took an unexpected turn when he received a call from the firm’s A&R man Hugh Stanley-Clarke asking him to attend a session at Abbey Road for a “mystery artist.”

The unnamed musician turned out to be none other than David Bowie, and during that afternoon’s session they developed a lasting rapport that saw Kevin later appear onstage at the historic 1985 Live Aid performance. Bowie then introduced Kevin to his friend Iggy Pop who promptly recruited the guitarist for his 1986 album Blah Blah Blah.

Beyond his association with David Bowie and Iggy Pop, Kevin has also had the pleasure of working with such legends as Sinéad O’Connor, Thomas Dolby and Brian Eno. Now, with over four decades' experience at the frontline of the music business, he is sharing some of his hard-earned wisdom about what it takes to survive in his new book, Absolute Beginner: Memoirs of the World's Best Least-Known Guitarist.

Guitar Player caught up with Kevin who gave us a rundown of his current rig before dishing out some essential advice for fellow guitarists.

How do you keep your chops up between gigs? Do you practice a lot?

“I just play free every day. I’m sure a lot of virtuosic musicians would say I waste my time, but it’s about the connection with the instrument and keeping my chops up. As you get older, if you don’t play for four or five weeks you can lose things physically. Or mentally, even. So I make sure I switch on an amp and play for a couple of hours a day. Even if I’m playing the same s**t I’ve always played, I just need to keep the connection going.”

Is there such a thing as too much practice?

“I have an array of electric guitars, plus amps and a pedalboard always ready to go, but I don’t think it’s good to become so obsessed with practicing guitar that you’re not relating to real life. But there’s a big spectrum of guitar players. You’ve got Keith Richards at one end and guitarists like Yngwie Malmsteen at the other. All of it’s valid. Whether you enjoy the sound of technical virtuosity or the sound of someone struggling manfully with one note, it says something if their whole life has gone into it.”

Having instant, easy access to your gear can make things so much easier…

"I just need to be able to pick something up and plug in straight away. I also have mics and recording equipment set up at all times. I didn’t always, however. And I would waste half a day hunting for a plectrum. But now I keep my gear to hand so I can always have an easy connection with it. If I wake up at two o’clock in the morning with an idea, I like to be able to noodle away immediately. Even if it’s just a Strymon Iridium and headphones.”

What amps do you prefer to use?

“The digital stuff is clever and convenient and a great way forward for some people, but I love my Hamstead Artist 60 tube amps. I met Peter Hamstead a long while back when he first started making amps and I’ve used them ever since. They also make nice pedals. I gave a Hamstead overdrive to Josh Homme.”

What pedals do you currently use and has it changed much over the years?

“Effects pedals have been a labor of love. I used mostly Boss pedals with Bowie and Iggy as a session man in the ‘80s. I had one of those plastic molded [BCB-6] Boss pedalboards and used a Boss Digital Delay, an overdrive, a compressor and some others. I also like the green [Boss PN-2 Tremolo/Pan] which is a very good stereo and tremolo effect.

“It’s only in the last 20 years that I’ve become a pedal geek. In fact, I’ve just had a new pedalboard built by Daniel Steinhardt’s the GigRig. My old ‘board was much bigger and heavier and the new one is about half the size in terms of real estate, which suits me better.”

What’s on your new pedalboard?

“It has a GigRig G3 Atom [switching system]. There’s a Wampler Tumnus Deluxe which is a Klon-type pedal, an Xotic EP-Booster and a Fulltone OCD for a little more saturation. In my one-man shows, I also use a Boss OC-2 [Octave] (which is a very clean octave pedal and nice for making basslines) and a Boss RC-30 Loop Station.” [Kevin’s new GigRig pedalboard also features the MXR M109 Six Band EQ, plus Strymon’s BigSky reverb, TimeLine delay and Mobius modulation units]

What guitars do you use?

“For most of the famous things I’ve been involved with I’ve used my 1954 Blackguard Fender Telecaster. It’s player grade because it’s got different tuners and the pickups are rewound, but it’s just a very nice Tele.

“When it became more difficult to transport guitars on airplanes, I bought a mid ‘00s ’52 RI Tele for about a thousand quid and spent another few hundred customizing it. It has a Seymour Duncan humbucker with a coil split switch (so you can switch between a single- and double-coil) and Trevor Wilkinson compensated saddles. That’s a nice Tele too. It’s starting to get some age and stank on it now because I play it a lot.

“I’ve also got a Gibson Custom Shop R8 [1958 Les Paul Standard reissue] which is nice. I’ve tried to make average ones into good ones in the past by swapping out pickups, but in the end, I wanted one with no weight relief and that had all the Custom Shop touches like hide glue and all that good stuff. These ‘58s can have chunky necks but I don’t mind that at all as I have big hands.

“I also have an Ernie Ball Music Man [Armada MM90] which I’ve used with Iggy Pop a lot. That’s a one-piece through-neck design with P-90s, which is pretty interesting. And I have an American Stratocaster that I’ve modded with Seymour Duncan pickups and a Trev Wilkinson bridge. I stripped the black finish off. It’s just a good workhorse Strat that I can carry on modding if I need to.”

Kevin Armstrong’s Top Tips for Guitarists

• Turn up on time reasonably sober and smelling good.
• Communicate. Start a WhatsApp group and use it.
• Learn the songs before you get to rehearsal. (I’ve actually met people who don’t do that!)
• Help others load and unload their gear. As opposed to the singer who says, “I’d like to help you with that but I’ve got a hole in my arse."
• Make sure your gear works and bring all your own cables, picks, strings, batteries et cetera. I can’t count the number of times I’ve turned up with professional guitarists who badger the soundman for a cable. You know, have one in your bag!
• If you’re the bandleader, listen. Also, if you’re not the bandleader, listen. Sometimes, the best way you can contribute to the music is by shutting the f**k up.
• Don’t upstage or play louder than the singer. When it’s your solo, turn it up! I’ve seen both of these things: guitarists who overpower the singer all the time, and guitarists who aren’t loud enough when it’s their solo.
• Don’t overplay. Nobody cares about your amazing technique but you.
• Enjoy it – it’s only music.
• Keep some money in your pocket for some lunch and enough for the c**t who’s forgotten.
• Don’t get fu**ed up until after the gig. I don’t have any position to take about people getting fu**ed up, as long as it’s not before the gig.
• Roadies and techs are people. Love them and they will love you back.
• Don’t be a twat to other bands – give respect.
• Dress sharp.

Read these tips and more in Kevin’s new book, Absolute Beginner: Memoirs of the World's Best Least-Known Guitarist.

Order Kevin’s 2019 solo album, Run, here.

Catch Kevin on the Lust For Life tour featuring fellow Iggy Pop band members Glen Matlock (the Sex Pistols) and Clem Burke (Blondie), plus Katie Puckrik (Pet Shop Boys, Sparks), Luis Correia (Earl Slick) and Florence Sabeva (Heaven 17).

Visit the Kevin Armstrong website for more information.

After 10 years of grueling one-night stands, forging a reputation as a one-of-a-kind new breed of electric bluesman, Stevie Ray Vaughan was poised to make 1983 his watershed year. Stevie’s Stratocaster sprayed blistering licks across David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, released that same year, punctuating the songs with a dose of Texas grit and primo blues flavorings and taking Bowie’s songs to a whole new level.

It was only half of the story, though, as shortly after the release of Let’s Dance, he delivered his startling, game-changing debut album, Texas Flood.

While Let’s Dance was a fantastic showcase for Stevie to sprinkle some of his Texas hot-sauce stylings, Texas Flood was the full-blown, no-holds-barred, real deal – arguably the greatest blues-rock album made since Jimi Hendrix and Johnny Winter were in their prime. Sure, there were plenty of great discs that might loosely fit the pigeonhole of blues rock, but their emphasis was always on the rock side of the tracks. With Stevie, blues was king.

At a time when there wasn’t too much to excite anyone looking for a hefty dose of full-blooded, ass-kicking, guitar-focused blues, Stevie brought not only outstanding guitar pyrotechnics but a sense of style and flamboyance that made his every performance an event.

Prior to his breakthrough, it had been his big brother, Jimmie, who, with his band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, had managed to revitalize a tired genre that was mired in predictability and clichéd, extended wig-outs. The T-Birds returned the blues to the juke-joint concept of short, sharp songs that got to the point and moved one’s soul via their feet.

Stevie opted for a different route to express his unique mojo, channeling the wild excesses of Hendrix, mixed with a big chunk of Albert King. While there have always been any number of great guitarists who can fire off Hendrix-inspired fusillades of killer licks, or cop Albert’s trademark moves, no player combined the essential elements of what made those two guitarists so important while retaining a strong sense of their own identity. The fact that Stevie was held in the same high reverence as his iconic influences is testament to the magic that he wielded whenever he broke out his succession of road-worn, battered old Strats.

While 1983 was the year of his big breakthrough, the events of the previous year set the stage for what was to come. The catalyst for everything that came to fruition was Stevie’s appearance at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival with his band, Double Trouble, featuring bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton. The trio played their usual blistering set, as can be heard on Live at Montreux 1982 & 1985, but what can also be heard is a section of the crowd who were booing Double Trouble’s ramped-up take on the blues.

If Stevie and his band were dismayed by the response, they put those thoughts behind them when they met Jackson Browne backstage. The folk-rocker was so impressed by what he had seen and heard that he offered the group free recording time in his California rehearsal studio, Down Town.

David Bowie was also in attendance, and what he saw stuck in his mind as he began recording his next album and needed someone who could really make an impact on his sound. “I figured that Montreux was the key to the whole thing, what with Jackson and Bowie,” Layton tells Guitar Player. “And I really had a strong sense that everything was about to change anyway after that.”

Stevie and the band made their way to Browne’s studio in November 1982, working through Thanksgiving to spend three days cutting the tracks that would, unbeknownst to them at the time, become their debut album. “We managed to get two songs down the first day and eight the second day of recording,” Shannon recalls. “We just set up like a live gig. We didn’t have isolation.”

Layton concurs. “We set up in a circle, just like we did onstage, put mics on everything and ran through the songs a couple of times,” he says. “Everything was a first or second take I believe.”

Stevie mostly played his “Number One” guitar on the sessions, an alder-bodied 1962 Fender Stratocaster he mistakenly referred to as a “’59” due to markings on the backs of the pickups. He also brought along Lenny, a brown, maple-neck Strat given to him by his wife, Lenora.

For amps, Stevie used two Fender Vibroverbs and Browne’s own 150-watt Dumbleland Special and 4x12 cab with Electro-Voice EV12L speakers.

While Browne’s gift was much appreciated, the band were unimpressed with the assistance they were provided. Down Town engineer Greg Ladanyi had kindly offered up his services for the ragged band of Texans over the holiday weekend, but he wasn’t interested in doing much more than capturing the group on tape. Stevie was unhappy with the sound he was hearing.

As it happened, Richard Mullen, a musician and friend who had run sound for them in Austin, was in Los Angeles. Over the group’s dinner break, Mullen encouraged Stevie to speak up and demand the sound he wanted. Returning to the studio, they found Ladanyi was gone and another engineer in his place. Newly emboldened, Stevie told the man that Mullen would be taking over the session. Within an hour, things were sounding much better.

As Mullen recalled to Guitar World in 2004, he used two Shure SM57s on Stevie’s amps: one on a Fender Vibroverb and one on the 4x12. “Stevie played through two Vibroverbs, but I only miked one of the speakers in one of them,” Mullen said. “I positioned the mics about three or four inches off the cabinet at about a 45 degree angle to the cone. The only effect he used was an Ibanez Tube Screamer.”

The band only cut the backing tracks at this point – the vocals would be tracked at Riverside Sound in Austin – but as Layton recalls, the plan all along had been to record the equivalent of a demo. “We weren’t making the tapes to make an album,” he says. “It was just to record our songs. It just turned into an album later.”

Double Trouble played a few dates in L.A. to help pay for their room at the Oakland Garden Hotel while they were cutting the record. Layton recalls being woken at 3:30 in the morning by a phone call. “I remember thinking that it was pretty strange to be getting a call from David Bowie,” he says with a laugh. The British musician had not forgotten Stevie’s performance at Montreux months earlier. Now in the middle of making Let’s Dance, he decided Stevie’s guitar work was the missing ingredient and tracked him down.

“He wanted to speak to Stevie, so I had to go wake him up and tell him David Bowie’s on the phone,” Layton says. “They seemed to be talking for quite a while. When he came off the phone he told me that Bowie wanted him to play on his new album.”

As it happened, he had never really been a fan of Bowie’s music. “Stevie never listened to David Bowie,” Shannon says. “The songs on Texas Flood showed you what Stevie loved, you know?” Adds Layton, “He respected Bowie, but he definitely wasn’t a fan per se. He thought he was talented, and he’d obviously had a great career.”

Regardless, no one could deny it was a great opportunity for Stevie. “Management told Stevie he really had to do Bowie,” Shannon says. “They didn’t anticipate that there would be a conflict with Texas Flood, because at the time we hadn’t even secured a deal or anything. We didn’t even know that we were making an album!”

Of course, with the recordings for Texas Flood completed, there remained the task of deciding what to do with them. “We called our manager, Chesley Millikin, and suggested that he call John Hammond to see if there was something we could do,” Layton says. An active musician, talent scout and producer since the 1930s, Hammond was behind the careers of countless musicians, including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Bloomfield and George Benson. “Apparently, when Chesley told John that we had a whole record’s worth of music ready, he said he’d get us a record deal with Epic. The deal was on the table before Stevie even started recording with Bowie.”

With things looking good on the band front, in January 1983 Stevie traveled to the Power Station studio in New York to begin working on Let’s Dance. Hearing him for the first time, producer Nile Rodgers didn’t share Bowie’s enthusiasm for the guitarist, whose solos he felt leaned too heavily on Albert King.

He soon changed his mind after Stevie loosened up and began to draw from his own unique palette of rich blues flavorings. Rodgers later admitted that he’d misunderstood Stevie’s intention: Where a lesser player would have unloaded licks all over the track, Stevie laid back, embellishing with just what the song required. He may have been a masterful exponent of the extended blues solo, but Stevie knew when to play and when to let the song breathe. He cut all his solos in a couple of days over the completed backing tracks, listening to each song once before adding his contributions in no more than two or three takes – although the first take was usually the one selected.

Stevie’s playing and tone on Let’s Dance was impeccable. Using a Strat and a Fender Super Reverb, he brought a richness of sensitivity and atmospheric depth to the songs that was transformative. Although Rodgers changed his opinion of his playing, Stevie himself joked that he basically played his favorite Albert King licks, and told one interviewer that Albert had ribbed him for doing so. But there is no doubt that Stevie’s mojo was all his own.

When Bowie’s album was released in April 1983, the reviews were uniformly strong. Stevie’s playing was often cited as a particular highlight, with good reason. It’s hard to imagine that the album would have hit home with such resonance without his dynamically sensitive Strat stylings.

Although Texas Flood was set for release, Stevie was scheduled to play on Bowie’s extended world tour to support Let’s Dance. Reportedly, Bowie’s camp intimated that Double Trouble could open for Bowie on selected dates, but Shannon and Layton have slightly different memories and perspectives on this.

“David definitely told us that we could open for him from the outset,” Shannon says. Layton, however says, “Bowie was actually a little vague about the prospect of us opening.” Although he acknowledges that the singer and Double Trouble agreed it would be great to tour together when they met at Montreux, “my instincts were that he wanted Stevie to play on the record, and having Stevie on that record was his prime concern, not what Double Trouble would do.”

As rehearsals for the Let’s Dance tour got underway in Dallas that April, it was evident Stevie was bringing an entirely new dimension – a cool blues-nuanced vibe – to Bowie’s older songs, something revealed in recordings that have surfaced over the years.

But as Shannon recalls, Stevie was out of his element. “He didn’t seem that happy about the music that he was playing with Bowie in the rehearsals,” the bassist explains. “He was really unfamiliar with Bowie’s material, and it wasn’t in his heart musically. Stevie always lived by what was in his heart, first and foremost. I don’t think he listened to anything before the rehearsals started. He just picked it up as they went along, same way as when he did the recording session with Bowie.”

As the rehearsals drew to a close, the question of whether Double Trouble would come along was finally decided by Bowie’s camp. Not only would they not open for Bowie but Stevie was not even allowed to discuss the band’s upcoming debut album in interviews.

For Stevie, this was completely unthinkable. “That really pissed Stevie off, because he didn’t want to leave our band behind,” Shannon says. “There was never any indication why Bowie changed his mind that we knew of. I wonder if it was possible that he was using the notion of us opening as some kind of persuader to make sure Stevie would do the tour. I’m sure he never expected Stevie to pull out at the last minute – to give up all the big touring lifestyle, the top hotels and whatever to go back on the road in our milk truck.”

Whatever the case, that’s exactly what Stevie did. “I really respected Stevie for that,” Shannon says. “He was just so into what we were doing that he just couldn’t leave it.”

According to Layton, the crux of the problem was that Stevie was not able to discuss the matter with Bowie. “I think Stevie had a good relationship with Bowie when they first spoke and when they did the album together,” he says. “But I think it suddenly started to turn into something else on Bowie’s part when the tour came into the picture.

“When Stevie wasn’t able to get a hold of Bowie to address the issue directly, I think he knew that he had to be true to himself. That was one thing about Stevie: He was one hundred percent natural. He couldn’t fake things. Stevie just said, ‘You know what? I’m going to stay with my band.’

“Who knows what would have happened if he’d done the tour,” he continues. “These were the conversations Stevie had with us: how he could do the tour and take care of us; how we could even get paid as a band. I said I couldn’t really see how that was even practical. How could it ever work out, especially if the tour went on for a couple of years, or even longer?

“But at the same time, I didn’t want Stevie to think he had to make us his main concern. Stevie always said that the thing that he wanted in life, when it came to his music, was for us to all have our own band and to play what he loved, and I wondered how that could ever have figured in the idea of going on tour with Bowie. It troubled him that he could even do the tour on that basis, and it troubled me and Tommy, as we wondered how we could even have a band if we were on hold for two or three years.”

Carlos Alomar, Bowie’s guitarist and band leader at the time, has recounted in interviews that he and Stevie discussed the tour’s potential to help promote Double Trouble and Texas Flood. He remembers cautioning Stevie that it was Bowie’s show, and as a band they were all there to play their role in that show; the chance that the tour could make a significant impact on Stevie’s fortunes as a solo artist were probably slim.

Unwittingly, perhaps, Alomar helped firm up Stevie’s resolve to abandon the tour, regardless of its immediate benefits for his career. Although Alomar was unhappy that Stevie left so close to the time they went out on the road, his departure opened the door for Alomar’s long-standing musical partner Earl Slick, a frequent contributor to Bowie’s albums and live show, to come onboard as Stevie’s replacement.

Before Stevie pulled out of the Bowie tour, Epic had been unsure how to make the most of his appearance on it. The label had even debated whether to hold back Texas Flood. Despite this, a couple of New York City showcase events to promote the record were held in early May 1983, and it was clear to those present – including many big names in the industry – that Stevie’s charisma and raw, unbridled access to the deep core of his soul had the ability to transform the face of blues guitar.

He was the ultimate crossover artist, a bluesman who could hold his own with any legend on the rock or blues side of the musical spectrum. Moreover, he commanded the respect from his peers that can only be earned.

With the Bowie matter now moot, it was all systems go. Stevie and Double Trouble threw themselves into the full-on promotion of their blistering new album. Released on June 13, Texas Flood received some surprisingly mixed reviews. Certainly, the climate was much friendlier to the kind of synth-driven, dance-oriented music featured on Bowie’s Let’s Dance than it was to Stevie’s more traditional blues-rock. Yet, against all expectations, Texas Flood started to pick up serious airplay.

Once the record’s two singles, “Love Struck Baby” and “Pride and Joy,” received heavy rotation on MTV, the die was cast. With his lean build and signature bolero hat, Stevie even had the visuals to compete with the style-obsessed bands that were dominating MTV’s scheduling. Together, they helped Texas Flood rack up sales figures that even the most optimistic execs at Epic couldn’t have hoped for.

The record’s huge success came as a surprise to the band. “Well, I know we were all real pleased with it when it was finished,” Layton says. “But of course, when you make a record, you live with it for a long time before the public ever hears it, so it’s not like, ‘Wow, that sounds amazing,’ if you hear it on the radio or something. But it was real satisfying to see that people picked up on that special thing that we had as a band, and Stevie’s genius. It happened so quickly for us though. When it was released and started selling right away, it was like, ‘Boom! Shit’s really happening for us now!’”

Forty years on, Layton still looks with pride upon the group’s achievement with Texas Flood. “The record is what it is,” he says. “I think everyone, to some degree, looks back at things they’ve done with a slightly critical ear, but I think it’s a real good picture of who we were at that time. It’s always too late to do what you could’ve done, and things are always what they are. From our way of living, it was an all-or-nothing kind of thing; our life was about the music and the band. It wasn’t like we had a big strategy, you know? We were a band, we played shows, made a recording and hoped to put a record out and see how things went. Everything that took off was almost a wonderful interruption of the basic way that we saw things going.”

Shannon echoes those sentiments. “We were real happy with it. We all thought it sounded like a great picture of what we sounded like live – it wasn’t a big production. Stevie was real happy with how it turned out. We didn’t really have any expectations that it would be successful – we were just doing our record, y’know? We loved what we were doing, and Stevie loved playing with us so much that we were all real happy with how it turned out. Stevie was real excited when the record came out, but like me and Chris, he had no idea it would become the big success that it did.”

Stevie and Double Trouble’s career trajectory was vertical, with a rocket. He became the hippest name to drop among a rapidly expanding cadre of established legends, with the likes of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Buddy Guy singing his praises. With the opportunities came the temptations that high-profile success brings, and Stevie developed some serious addiction problems that threatened to derail his career for a couple of years before he finally managed to put his dependency problems behind him.

Whenever an artist is taken before their time, the temptation to wonder what they might have gone on to achieve is irresistible. The fact that the last two albums Stevie worked on, Double Trouble’s In Step and Family Style – recorded with his brother, Jimmie – featured some of his finest playing certainly boded well for his future.

Once upon a time you needed the detective skills of Sherlock Holmes and some seriously deep pockets to track down live recordings and scratchy videos of Stevie and his band plying their wares around the world in 1983. Now all you need is YouTube and the ability to type “Stevie Ray Vaughan 1983” into the search to be rewarded with hours of astounding footage that will enthrall and amaze you.

Unsurprisingly, the surviving members of Double Trouble never expected to be discussing their music 40 years hence when they laid the tracks down. “I don’t even know what to think about that,” Layton says. “I definitely couldn’t have imagined we’d be here this far down the line discussing it.”

There are always the inevitable ’what if?’ thoughts when an artist is taken way too soon. “I’ve probably thought about everything a hundred different ways, a hundred different times,” Layton says. “But I stopped going down that path, because it didn’t really serve any real purpose, you know?”

Shannon believes that, had Stevie lived, their music would have continued to evolve. “I think Stevie wanted to get some horns in the band and we were gonna change the style a little with a horn section in there,” he says.

No doubt, Stevie would have been bemused to learn in 1983 that his music would be pored over and revered by blues fans and scholars alike for decades to come. It likely would have startled him to think future guitar greats would cite him as a primary influence, or to hear that he would be placed on equal standing in music history with the players he himself idolized.

Remarkably, it all began with an album recorded on gifted studio time. But the fact that it had any impact at all is down to the phenomenal talent that was Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Order Texas Flood here.

Growing up in classic rock’s golden years shouldn’t negate the possibility that you enjoy music made today. I may have an extensive vinyl collection of favorites dating back to my childhood, but I stream music everyday and constantly discover great songs by inspiring artists across the genres.

Yet, there are some who believe the modern music scene is a wasteland.

If you think that, you probably aren’t listening. But if one thing has suffered in the past two decades, it is the long-player. There are fewer epic albums being made today, and there is less reason to invest one’s time and ears in 40 minutes or more of an artist’s music.

Of course, I say this with the benefit – and certainly blessing – of having grown up at a time when the album was king.

Take 1973. A half century ago, we experienced one of the greatest years in rock and roll. It was a year that saw debuts from potent acts like Queen, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Aerosmith, and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, as well as from guitar heroes like Tony Rice and Lindsey Buckingham, making his nod with Buckingham Nicks.

From my youthful vantage point, 1973 was lived as 52 weeks of breathless Saturday trips to the record store, where we were tempted by such epic albums as Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions, Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and the Who’s Quadrophenia, not to mention prog monsters like Yes’s live three-album set Yessongs, Manfred Mann Earth Band’s Solar Fire, Todd Rundgren’s A Wizard/A True Star, Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Brain Salad Surgery and, the behemoth of them all, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon.

In 1973, we saw the last flashes of glam rock with Bowie’s Aladdin Sane and Pin-Ups, Rick Derringer’s All American Boy, Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies and the debut from the New York Dolls.

But it was a great year for art rock, with Fripp and Eno’s experimental tour de force (No Pussyfooting), John Cale’s orchestral pop masterpiece Paris 1919, Lou Reed’s dramatic Berlin, Camel’s brilliant self-titled debut, and a pair of landmark Roxy Music albums: For Your Pleasure and Stranded.

That was all but the tip of that year’s multi-genre, stylistically freewheeling musical iceberg.

For any album to stand out among this pack, it would have to be pretty freaking great. Which is the least you can say about Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, a compilation of eight wildly inventive songs that together serve as a cross-section of that year’s dizzying musical styles, including prog, reggae, glam, folk, funk and art-rock.

It was the first Zeppelin album I bought and the first – perhaps only – album they made that kept their bombast in check, served up an ear-catching range of styles and delivered with economical arrangements.

As Jimmy Page said: “You can hear the fun we were having.”

Indeed, we can, to this day. Here’s to singing in the sunshine and laughing in the rain.

Guitarists. David Bowie could pick them. His catalog is filled with the work of greats like Earl Slick, Carlos Alomar, Robert Fripp, Reeves Gabrels, Adrian Belew, Nile Rodgers, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Peter Frampton, David Torn and Ben Monder.

But might any of those alliances have happened at all were it not for Mick Ronson?

The guitarist from Hull’s impact on Bowie’s career has been well documented. Ronson was the first of his collaborators whose talents were equal to his own, if different by nature.

In Ronson, Bowie had a guitarist, pianist, arranger and musical foil who could give shape, form and massive guitar tone to his musical creations, turning them into hits and, fair to say, cultural movements.

Ronno’s distinctive work on Bowie’s early 1970s output remains for me some of that era’s most expressive and memorable guitar playing. If I could point to a favorite moment, I would choose the solo in Aladdin Sane’s “Time,” with its feral whammy-bar horse neighing and guitar-symphony harmonies, elements that bring to mind the work of, respectively, Eddie Van Halen and Brian May, who followed Ronson.

After Bowie split with Ronno, no guitarist would play as long and vital a role in his music for decades, until he teamed with Gabrels in Tin Machine and beyond in the 1990s.

His career suffered not at all from Ronson’s absence, nor should it have. Constant reinvention was the cog that drove Bowie’s career and lifetime of success.

Ronson, on the other hand, remains best known for his work with the glam-rock icon, despite making significant contributions elsewhere, including on Lou Reed’s Transformer, Morrissey’s Your Arsenal, and American Fool, John Mellencamp’s 1982 breakthrough album.

“I owe Mick Ronson the hit song ‘Jack & Diane,’” Mellencamp declared to Sound on Sound in 2008, referring to the American Fool cut that put his career on firm footing. “Mick was very instrumental in helping me arrange that song, as I’d thrown it on the junk heap… All of a sudden, for ‘Jack & Diane,’ Mick said, ‘Johnny, you should put baby rattles on there…

“So he put the percussion on there, and then he sang the part, ‘Let it rock, let it roll’ as a choir‑ish‑type thing, which had never occurred to me. And that is the part everybody remembers on the song. It was Ronson’s idea.”

50 years ago, Ronson and Bowie played perhaps the most legendary gig of both their careers when they performed at the Hammersmith Odeon on July 3, 1973. Immortalized in the film Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars it marked the end of an era.

“Of all the shows on this tour, this particular show will remain with us the longest,” declared Bowie. “Because not only is it the last show of the tour, but it’s the last show that we’ll ever do. Thank you.”

In celebration of this historic concert’s 50th anniversary a digitally restored version of the film will be screening in cinemas worldwide this month.

Running one hour and 42 minutes long, the new 4K version comprises the full performance, including Jeff Beck’s celebrated “The Jean Genie” guest appearance (cut from previous releases). This golden anniversary edition also features a 5.1 mix by famed producer Tony Visconti.

Additionally, a special 50th Anniversary Edition of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars: The Motion Picture is available to pre-order now on vinyl and CD.

Visit the David Bowie website for more information.

Regarded as one of the most inventive guitarists in rock, Adrian Belew has worked with a host of stellar musicians including Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Talking Heads and King Crimson.

Having toured and recorded with Zappa (Belew appears on his 1979 Sheik Yerbouti album) he was recruited by Bowie for his epic Isolar II – The 1978 World Tour, a.k.a. The Low/Heroes World Tour.  

Consequently, Belew is credited as lead guitarist on Bowie’s 1978 live album, Stage.

Released in 1979, Lodger is the only Bowie studio album featuring Belew. Following 1977's Low and “Heroes” LPs, it is the final instalment in Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy recorded in collaboration with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti.

In 1990, Belew returned to the Bowie fold as musical director for the Sound+Vision Tour.

In this fascinating interview, the King Crimson virtuoso recalls how Bowie’s encouragement “to try wild and unusual things” assisted his development as a guitar player.

Brian Eno had an unusual idea for your parts on Lodger, where you didn’t get a chance to hear a song before you played on it, and he took elements of what you played and rearranged them into new composite guitar parts on the album. Do you think, with hindsight, that if you’d had the chance to hear the songs first, you could have come up with something you might have preferred, or thought was better?

I definitely think I could have come up with different things if I’d had the time to learn the songs and really work on them.

I do quite like the way that they turned out though because it was very unusual. In a way, it started me down that road of people thinking that that was how I played. So I did. [laughs]

When you heard the finished tracks played back to you, did you think it sounded like they might be a bit tricky to play?

I figured I could do it. [laughs] The funny thing is that they did something similar with [Robert] Fripp’s work on "Heroes" on a couple of songs, but when I joined the band, nobody told me that.

I managed to figure out a way to play those parts which the band thought were impossible to play. [laughs]

I have a theory that Eno wasn’t particularly a fan of the guitar, so he sought to undermine guitarists by taking them completely out of their comfort zones.

I don’t know if that’s his motivation, but he does think completely outside the box about things.

He does like to come up with ways to trick you into doing things that you wouldn’t ordinarily do. I like that though.

Why didn’t you do any further studio albums with David?

It was really a matter of circumstances and scheduling. I was trying to get my own record deal and then I had the offer to join Talking Heads on their world tour which took up a year anyway.

King Crimson came after that, so there really was no time to do much else. We reunited for the Sound+Vision Tour in 1990 which was a major undertaking. It was a world tour with the intention to play the massive catalog of hits for the last time.

He made me the musical director of what turned out to be a very small band, so we used a lot of samplers on that tour. We had to cover all kinds of orchestrations and line-ups, so it was a huge task. We did 108 shows which was a fantastic experience.

How long would you spend in rehearsal for a tour of that magnitude?

A lot of time was pre-rehearsal with me and Rick Fox, the keyboard player, where we had to work out how to cover all the bases on the songs with a four-piece band.

Once we actually started rehearsing, that’s when David would join in. He’d maybe suggest key changes or different arrangements for some songs but mostly he was kind of standing outside looking in and cheering us on.

He let me have my way, which I think is what he wanted – someone trustworthy to make it happen.

Did working with David change the way that you played and approached music?

I think, especially in 1978 and 1979, those tours were extremely important for my development as a player.

Prior to playing with David, I was playing with Frank Zappa, and in Frank’s band, you didn’t need to be creative – you needed to just play his music consistently correctly.

David was quite the opposite. He wanted someone to throw lots of color at the canvas and he just turned me loose. He told me that he just wanted me to go wild on the guitar.

That gave me the impetus to do exactly that, and I carried that over into Talking Heads and King Crimson.

I think David’s encouragement to try wild and unusual things really helped me to do the things that I did on the guitar.

Order David Bowie's Lodger here.

So many guitarists of the late ’70s and ’80s were using the Roland stereo chorus in the studio that it’s sometimes difficult to parse if the sound was coming from an amp (such as the JC-120), a pedal (like the CE-1, CE-2 or CE-3 Chorus Ensemble) or a Dimension D rack unit.

Regardless, “that sound” is all over countless classic recordings from the era.

When used in the studio, the JC-120 provided a meatier rendition of the tone that players had previously achieved by DI’ing their tracks.

As noted by Steve Levine, producer for Culture Club, China Crisis and others, “In the right hands it’s quite a tone palette, you can do a lot with it. It does bridge the gap between being a regular amplifier and a kind of DI’d monster.”

Billy Duffy of the Cult and other projects derived the clean, chorused element of his signature tone from a JC-120, often used in combination with a Marshall JCM800 or other tube amp.

Although the Cult hit “She Sells Sanctuary” has a heavy feel that helped lodge it as a classic rocker amid the British New Wave boom of the mid ’80s, the guitar tone on the song is clear and clean, and slathered with JC-120 chorus.

“The signature sound of the first two Cult albums was the Gretsch and a Roland JC-120,” Duffy explains on BillyDuffy.Com. “The Roland is great for the early, chimey stuff, because of that chorus sound – which I can really only get out of the combos. Some guys get a great sound with just one amp, but I’ve never been able to do it.”

Johnny Marr’s use of chorus with the Smiths was generally pretty subtle, but also an essential ingredient of his sound on many classic tracks.

“The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” and “I Don’t Owe You Anything” from the Smiths’ self-titled debut album reveal a nuanced chorus tone that might have been JC-120, CE-1 or Boss CE-2, while the swirl is a little thicker on songs like “The Headmaster Ritual” and “I Want the One I Can’t Have” from the 1985 follow-up, Meat Is Murder.

Marr turned to that sound again for his latest solo album, 2022’s Fever Dreams, where we hear it prominently on “Receiver,” “Ariel” and other tracks, shining through what is otherwise a denser mix than heard on early Smiths records.

“For this album, I also dug out my old Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus amp,” he told Rod Brakes in Total Guitar magazine. “Transistor amps have a sonic presence that puts the sound right in your face. It’s sort of an Ennio Morricone sound.”

While Andy Summers’ seminal swirl on early Police hit “Message in a Bottle” is purported to be a combination of pedals, he is also a long-time devotee of the JC-120, and often had one in his touring rig with the band.

“The Roland JC-120 has been a staple in my collection of amplifiers for as long as I can remember,” he told Roland.com, “probably from the day it came out! I have used it on many recordings for its distinctive clarity of sound and always-superior chorus. If I am playing away from home and amps have to be supplied, my first choice is always the JC-120. It is a no-fail amp in just about every situation.”

While it might sound counter-intuitive, heavy metal icons Metallica have often turned to the JC-120 for the clean tones tracked by guitarists James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett.

Several songs on 1988’s …And Justice for All feature the amp, likely heard most prominently on “To Live Is to Die,” but also apparent in the mellower passages of “One” and the intro to the title track.

It’s no surprise, however, that a creative sonic sculptor like Adrian Belew might have fallen in love with the JC-120’s sound, as he did from the very first listen. “I first heard a JC-120 at a casual party in L.A. in 1977,” he told Roland. com. “Someone was playing some chords and noodling around – not very well in fact – but the sound mesmerized me.

“I had never heard an amp sound so pristine and beautiful. There was a shimmering clarity to every note. Then the player turned on the actual stereo chorusing. Wow! What an incredible sound. I nearly fell off my chair! I sat there speechless until I finally asked if I could play through it. Within the first two notes I played, I was madly in love with the JC-120.

“To me, the stereo chorusing and vibrato were the single most beautiful guitar sounds I’d ever heard an amp produce. I was in L.A. at the time rehearsing with Frank Zappa, my first big break in the music business. I told Frank about the amp, and the next day one showed up for us to investigate.

“Frank liked it enough to advance me the money to buy my first JC-120. I still have it ensconced in my studio. I still love it and still record with it.”

Belew’s first prominent use of the JC-120 appeared on the 1978 Zappa classic Sheik Yerbouti, but he also plastered the amp – with and without chorus and vibrato effects – on several tracks of David Bowie’s 1979 album, Lodger, the seminal Talking Heads super-group affair Remain in Light from 1980 and King Crimson’s 1981 smash, Discipline, which reveals that crystal-clear shimmer on Belew’s tour de force “Elephant Talk,” “Frame by Frame,” “Thela Hun Ginjeet,” “The Sheltering Sky” and others.

Visit the Roland website for more information on Jazz Chorus amps.

Click here for info on Boss chorus pedals.

An electric guitar with a Jaguar-style, offset semi-hollow body and a Tele/Gib pickup setup could easily describe a pricey boutique affair that borrows from Fullerton and Kalamazoo designs of the ’50s and ’60s to create a cool modern-day hybrid.

It also describes to a tee the Slick SL56, which, besides being extremely affordable, goes all the way into boutique territory by featuring a P-90 in the neck position and a T-style single-coil sitting next to a custom solid-brass wraparound bridge with six chunky brass adjustable saddles.

Brass was deemed the “musical metal” in the days of yore, and its use is straight out of the playbook of Alembic and others from the late ’60s and ’70s, when brass was thought to equal greater sustain and generally better tone. Here it adds an interesting throwback twist that makes the SL56 a unique beast.

The Aged Crimson Ash finish (one of six available colors) looks neat in a raw sort of way, with the red and black shades highlighting the open-grain wood. Slick says no grain filler or polyurethane sealer is used, and that just a single coat of old-fashioned automotive paint is sprayed on and sanded back.

The process prevents the pores from becoming clogged, so the wood can breathe. It seems to work, as you can hear the acoustic resonance when tapping on the body.

The solid maple neck is attached with a milled-aluminum plate engraved with Earl Slick’s image, and carved in a comfortable C shape that feels awesome with its silky-smooth natural finish.

The headstock wears a black paint job that shows off the tuners’ brass buttons, themselves being Slick’s own design that features bronze crown and pinion gears. They’re smooth and precise, with no backlash, and the guitar stayed nicely in tune during testing.

A hand-slotted graphite nut fitted to the tilt-back headstock provides the correct break angle for the strings, further enhancing stability, and the factory setup made for low, buzz-free action and solid intonation.

My only ergonomic issue is the toggle switch’s location on the lower horn, which makes it easy to hit unintentionally.

The black walnut fingerboard has white position dots and carries 22 medium-jumbo frets that are lightly polished, evenly crowned and rounded off on the tips. It makes for a nice-playing guitar that sustains well – as might be expected with several ounces of brass onboard – and offers easy playability.

Another department where the SL56 stands out is its hand-aged Alnico-magnet pickups: an overwound Fullerton T-style in the bridge and a Slick Junior P-90 single-coil in the neck. They’re wired via a three-way switch (with rounded brass tip) to volume and tone pots that are also topped with knobs made of machined billet brass.

Tested on some gigs and plugged into a Fender Deluxe Reverb with distortion pedals from Warm Audio and Maestro for grind, the SL56 proved a good-sounding guitar that delivered the kinds of tones you’d expect from two very different types of single-coil pickups.

My only caveat is that the neck pickup is very round sounding and doesn’t have the top-end bite expected from a P-90. Perhaps that’s intentional, as the neck position sounded good for rhythm and slide playing once the amp’s EQ was adjusted accordingly.

However, because the bridge pickup was so much brighter sounding, it was necessary to fiddle with the tone control more to get a balanced sound with both pickups on, which is also noise canceling because the P-90 is reverse-wound, reverse-polarity.

In the end, it was simpler to go with the bridge pickup, taking advantage of its crispness and cool dynamics for rhythm, and rolling back the tone control and/or tweaking the pedals’ EQ for buttery high-gain sounds.

As such, the SL56 was somewhat reminiscent of playing a thinline Fender Esquire, where the slice of the back pickup is tempered by the airiness that the chambered body brings.

The bottom is that the Slick SL56 is a fun guitar that delivers the boutique-on-a-budget experience in spades. In fact, it has so much going for it, you can’t help being blown away by its crazy low price.

It’s a lot of guitar for the money and one that makes you appreciate this company’s dedication to building high-quality instruments that punch well above their price class.

Specifications

• NUT: Graphite, 1.693” wide
• NECK: Canadian hard rock maple
• FRETBOARD: Black walnut, 25 ½” scale
• FRETS: 22 medium jumbo
• TUNERS: Slick 14:1 with brass buttons
• BODY: Chambered solid ash
• BRIDGE: Solid brass billet wraparound with six adjustable saddles
• PICKUPS: Slick Junior Alnico V P90 8.0 kΩ neck, Slick Fullerton Alnico V 9.6 kΩ bridge,
• CONTROLS: Volume, tone, three-way selector
• FACTORY STRINGS: .010–.046
• WEIGHT: 6.75 lbs (tested)
• EXTRAS: Aged brass hardware. Finish options. Tweed hard case
• BUILT: China

Visit guitarfetish.com for more information.

I find it hard to imagine 1972 was 50 years ago.

This is in large part due to the fact that I was born on June 5th of that monumental leap year. What? You didn’t know 1972 is the longest year by the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) standard? With the added day, plus two seconds, the six-string purveyors of the day took full advantage of the extra time on both electric guitars and acoustic guitars.

As this new decade was still revving its engines, rock and roll was expanding in 1972. With the guitar at the forefront, there was glam rock, shock rock, prog rock, southern rock and even jazz rock. What’s more, there was the further development of soft rock and heavy metal alongside the burgeoning reggae and country rock genres.

Also on the rise was a reverence for the album format. Thanks to my older brother Louis and his well-fortified stereo system, our Jersey Shore home was consistently shaking at the rafters with all the rock 1972 had to offer. I soaked it all in from my very beginnings.

All things considered, it’s safe to say I was born into this collection of essential guitar moments from 1972.

Let There Be Rock

By the second year of the tumultuous 1970s, the world of rock had expanded into subsets that celebrated everything from platform shoes and glitter to fake blood and guillotines, and even included electrified southern-fried country and blues.

This trifecta of disparate approaches garnered a worthy collection of guitar moments, starting with David Bowie’s fab The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. 

Bowie’s brilliance is matched by the prodigious playing of guitarist Mick Ronson.

Ex. 1 shows something similar to Ronson’s opening salvo in “Ziggy Stardust,” where open chords and arpeggiation patterns combine to make the prototypical glam-rock arena riff.

Shifting to the dark side, Ex. 2 takes its cue from the title track of Alice Cooper’s School’s Out, highlighting the vibe of the incendiary E Dorian riff played by shock-rock stalwarts Glen Buxton and Michael Bruce.

Completing the trio is an iteration of the Am riff of “One Way Out” (Ex. 3), from the Allman Brothers Band’s quintessential southern rock album Eat a Peach, courtesy of Duane Allman and Dickey Betts.

All three original tunes are as celebrated today as they were in 1972, from arenas to local watering holes.

Opening Lines

The ’70s was the decade of Detroit Iron, when nearly everyone drove a hot rod. If they weren’t cranking an eight-track, they were listening to an FM rock station, which was in the beginning stages of a transformation to the album-oriented rock (AOR) format.

Nothing had you leaning over to pump up the volume faster than a great guitar intro. Elliott Randall’s opening A major pentatonic licks in the Steely Dan FM staple “Reelin’ In the Years,” from Can’t Buy a Thrill, was a top contender.

Ex. 4 is inspired by and loosely based on this classic intro solo.

Ex. 5 brings to mind the dreamy relative major and minor arpeggios and modulating bends immortalized in that track.

Another classic is the unforgettable opening of the Bowie-penned glam-rock anthem “All the Young Dudes,” recorded by Mott the Hoople.

These are just two of the many songs that reeled you in from the first notes and entertained every type of rock apostle, both young and old, as they cruised America’s highways.

Hammer of the Gods

Two of the three bands considered the creators of heavy metal released records in 1972. With Led Zeppelin between Led Zeppelin IV and Houses of the Holy, the void was filled by Black Sabbath’s Vol. 4 and Deep Purple’s Machine Head.

Ex. 6 closely illustrates what Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi laid down on Vol.4’s “Snowblind,” with his signature power chording and speaker-melting gain in check.

As for Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore, he was in his creative prime at the time that the group dropped its magnum opus, Machine Head. Much like Zep’s fourth outing, Machine Head featured timeless tunes that have proven their longevity to this day, including the venerable “Smoke on the Water.”

While the opening riff has ascended into a ubiquitity for rock guitarists the world over, Ritchie’s fiery solo over a power chord backdrop in the key of G minor showcases such signature Blackmore-isms as pre- (or “ghost”) bends, adjacent-string rolls and 16th-note linear flurries.

This is all on display in Ex. 7, which presents a reworking of some key licks from this solo.

Though in its infancy at the time, metal began with these pioneering bands and with albums and moments like these.

Everyone is Experienced

But 1972 wasn’t all about high-gain licks and riffs. The influence of Jimi Hendrix, who died in 1970, was felt across the guitar pantheon. Indicative of the time were a pair of low-gain opening riffs from two different worlds but in no less capable hands.

Ex. 8 is patterned after a moment from one of prog rock’s most endearing releases, Close to the Edge, where perpetual ambassador Steve Howe threw down biting Hendrix-like chordal comping ideas in the key of E minor at the top of “Siberian Khatru.”

Ex. 9 offers a taste of the kind of dynamic-duo guitar work of the Doobie Brothers’ Tom Johnston and Patrick Simmons on the endearing hit “Listen To the Music,” a moment that still motivates muscle-car drivers of yore to turn up the volume at the first hammer-on into that E/G# triad.

Groove Collective

But cleaner tones and booty-shaking grooves were also heard in 1972, thanks to the impact of a Jamaican film called The Harder They Come, which starred musician Jimmy Cliff. While the movie was released to much fanfare (on the very same day I started my journey to 50), it was the film’s soundtrack that made history, as it’s widely regarded as the world’s introduction to reggae.

Ex. 10 is inspired by the infectious opening groove heard in the Cliff classic “You Can Get It If You Really Want,” which features hallmark reggae rhythm guitar approaches with its tightly voiced top-string triads, anchored to the upbeat and treated with some staccato phrasing.

Back on the mainland, James Brown and Al Green were creating some of their most significant works. The Godfather of Soul put Hearlon “Cheese” Martin’s lock-tight precision into the limelight with “Get On the Good Foot” from the album of the same name.

An homage to Martin’s hypnotic single-note staccato phrasing is paid in Ex. 11.

Adding to the title tracks explored, the beloved gem from Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together features the sultry guitar of work of Mabon “Teenie” Hodges perfectly nested between Green’s enthralling vocal performance.

Looking at Ex. 12 reveals a remodeling of four bars from this treasured work.

Unplugged

Although the era of the chimerical Les Paul/Marshall monster had fully arrived by 1972, it didn’t quell the acoustic guitar’s substantial presence, which had solidified in the 1960s.

In fact, acoustic guitars were behind some of the most successful single releases of the year, including Paul Simon’s controversial “Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard,” America’s mesmerizing “Ventura Highway” and soft-rock troubadours Seals and Crofts’ irresistible “Summer Breeze.”

The main themes of all three songs have been reinterpreted in Examples 13–15.

Aside from Simon’s syncopated voice-led triads, the other two riffs make ample use of the acoustic guitar’s penchant for open strings.

Not to be outdone by his American counterparts, Canadian-born Neil Young released the best-selling record of the year with Harvest, which boasted the number one hit “Heart of Gold.”

A rendition of the perfectly sparse presentation of Em and D chords is found in Ex. 16.

Outro

With countless guitar moments still to gush over, it’s important to note that 1972 was also brimming with superbly constructed albums that had massive impact and further bolstered the emerging AOR radio format.

The year delivered classics that featured now-mythic guitarist pairings, including the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St. (Keith Richards and Mick Taylor), Jethro Tull’s Thick As a Brick (Martin Barre and Ian Anderson), Genesis’s Foxtrot (Steve Hackett and Mike Rutherford), and the Eagles’ self-titled debut (Bernie Leadon and Glenn Frey), which helped bring country rock to prominence.

Before the year was out, Deep Purple went on to release the Made in Japan live album, and Stevie Wonder released his own pair with Music of My Mind and the seminal Talking Book.

The latter gave the world the funk-rock classic “Superstition,” which features a punchy Hohner Clavinet keyboard riff that has been appropriated by guitarists in countless cover bands.

If all these moments and genre births are any indication of the benefits to an augmented leap year, I say bring on the next one UTC.

I was always intrigued by the look of the National Westwood, also known as the Map due to its upper bout, which resembles the U.S. Eastern coastline.

I imagined it would be unwieldy to play, and since the National guitar company practically went out of business in the mid ’60s, examples aren’t easy to find.

Plus, the numerous iterations of the National brand – including Supro, Valpro, Dobro, Airline and Valco – make it difficult to know which brand and model would be best.

I finally bought the Map shown here, which was being restored and modified by my friend Ardy. This electric guitar started out as a single-pickup model 75 but was modified with a second pickup, along with some practical, if not clever rewiring. (Visually, it looks to be a model 77, but that guitar has a third pickup, a piezo, hidden under the bridge.)

Part of the restoration included covering some badly engineered routing and removing bumper stickers, which necessitated the groovy grey pewter refinish.

Weirdo Factor

After the odd body shape, the Westwood’s weirdest aspect is an elegant black headstock with fancy script logo that, nevertheless, is shaped like Gumby’s head.

The guitar was offered in many finishes and was later made of Res-O-Glass, just like the Montgomery Ward Airline guitar Jack White played with the White Stripes. But the rest of this guitar is purely practical and quite musical.

Playability & Sound

Made in Los Angeles, this beauty has a solid maple body and neck with 20 low-profile frets laid into a nice slab of rosewood.

The C-shape neck feels friendly to my small paws, but it took me a while to get used to the nearly flat fingerboard. It was an easy adjustment, though, especially because it plays so darn fast.

The counterintuitive controls are another story. What looks like a three-way pickup selector on the lower bout is actually a three-way tone selector. The knob next to it is a master tone knob. The upper bout contains the volume controls for each pickup and a chicken-head pickup selector.

Don’t have this as a backup to your Les Paul, because the knob layout is more confusing than driving in London.

The hardware includes a screw to adjust the neck angle (why don’t all bolt-ons have this?) and Kluson tuners that still work smoothly.

While the neck pickup is warm, as expected, it can sound funky and skanky with the EQ selections. The bridge pickup is brighter than the neck, but never gets scratchy. 

Clean tone or with distortion, these old single-coils really rock and have a tone unlike any other I’ve heard.

Value

In its time, the Westwood sold for $175 to $225, about the same price as a Fender Stratocaster.

Their resale value hasn’t kept pace with the Strat, however. These beauties are still relatively affordable at $1,500 to $2,500.

Why It Rules

David Bowie, Jack White and Dan Auerbach have played the Westwood, but it’s still obscure enough to look like a custom build. 

It’s also lighter than it looks (7.2 pounds), plays great and sounds unique.

Thanks to Ardy for saving this beauty from the dumpster. Visit Eastwood Guitars to see the company’s great National tributes, and check out the new National Guitar here.

Got a whack job? Feel free to get in touch with me at rtcarleton@gmail.com. Who knows? Maybe I’ll write about it.

The purpose of the Celebrating David Bowie show is simply that – to praise Bowie’s music and rejoice in the joy of listening to some of his greatest songs in the rock canon.

The band is assembled from fans and former Bowie band members, who play with passion and verse as they aim to capture the essence of what made his music so iconic and influential.

The show has been put together by music business veteran Miles Copeland and guitarist Scrote, who has a long track record of producing shows celebrating landmark artists, including the Beatles and Miles Davis.

While the Bowie show has toured sporadically since 2015, this year sees the first full tour of North America and features the unique talents of Adrian Belew, who not only played on Bowie’s 1979 album, Lodger, but also toured extensively with him, acting as musical director for his global run in 1990.

Longtime Bowie admirer Todd Rundgren also features in the show, which covers material from the artist’s earliest days to the end of his career.

While all three guitarists are about to release new albums – Scrote’s Magnificent Bastard, Rundgren’s Space Force and Belew’s Elevator – and commence on intensive rehearsals for the Bowie tour (see clip below) they were happy to speak to Guitar Player about the project’s background and what audiences can expect from the upcoming shows.

What was the initial spark behind the idea of doing shows to celebrate the work of David Bowie?

SCROTE: I’ve been putting shows together for many years, working out of L.A. as a musical director.

Back in 2015, I was doing some dates on my own with some of the guys who played on David’s last album, Blackstar, and we actually heard that he’d died when we were in the break between sets at a show.

The next day I started talking to people about David’s passing, and they were suggesting that, given how much of a fan I was of his work, maybe I could put some kind of show together.

I reached out to a few people who’d worked with David, and the first show started to evolve, which ran at four hours with 70 performers. [laughs]

That project was so successful that I realized there was a lot of interest from Bowie fans for us to do more.

We did another really long show a few months later, and then I came up with a plan for 2016 to take the show on the road to seven cities around the world that were significant to Bowie.

In 2018, we lined up more dates around the world, including Iceland. Adrian came onboard after the second show, and Todd joined us when we went to Iceland.

TODD RUNDGREN: Yeah, the trip to Iceland was my first involvement, but originally it was only supposed to be that one event.

After that, I didn’t carry on with the rest of the tour, so I guess I wasn’t a permanent member of the entourage. But then, with the project kicking off again post lockdown, I’ve got back onboard.

ADRIAN BELEW: I first worked with Scrote on an event celebrating the Beatles. I watched the way that he put everything together, which seemed kind of haphazard at the time, but then it turned out to be really well planned, and I really enjoyed being a part of it.

When he told me about the Celebrating David Bowie idea, I knew he’d be able to put a great show together, so I really wanted to be a part of it.

Todd, I know you didn’t work with Bowie, but did you cross paths with him much over the years?

RUNDGREN: Yes, a few times. I actually met him on his very first American tour with the Spiders and then on various occasions over the years.

Ironically, just at the time that I moved from upstate New York to California, he moved to about a mile from where I’d been living, so I guess we’d have seen a lot more of each other if I’d stayed in New York.

I never really ever thought seriously about us working together. I know he had a core of people that he spent a lot of time working with.

I actually had a lot more contact with Mick Ronson, who also moved to upstate New York at the same time that I was living there, and I still see his wife, Suzi, occasionally.

BELEW: When I first met David, he was very different from all of the preconceptions that I had about him. I thought of him as an untouchable superstar. I was surprised to find that he was real down to earth and a fun person, with a great self-deprecating sense of humor.

He was always so interested in so many different things, not just rock music. We got on like a house on fire.

Todd, you and David both had very theatrical stage shows in the ’70s. Was there an influence going on there in either direction?

RUNDGREN: I had a permanent costume designer who traveled with me who would come up with weird ideas all the time, and I think his inspiration was what informed the theatrical things that I was doing to a degree. I know he was looking at things that David was doing and re-interpreting some of them for me.

I have no independent correlation of the fact that people David worked with may have taken some ideas from things I did, but it’s a possibility when you’re working with stylists and designers.

Adrian, were you already familiar with Bowie’s work before you first toured with him in 1978?

BELEW: Very much so. I’d been in a lot of cover bands, and I’d played a lot of his material.

A funny story is that I remember hearing “Heroes” for the first time when I was driving my broken-down Volkswagen. And then 18 months later, I was playing it live with David.

Given how many great guitar parts there are on Bowie’s records, is there much competition for who gets to play what?

SCROTE: Before Todd came onboard in Iceland, it was divided between Adrian and me, and things seemed to work themselves out naturally.

When Todd joined us, it was interesting, as I’d never worked with him before. He just naturally gravitated toward certain songs, but there was no ego from him or anyone else.

The whole set list is deliberately very guitar-centric. I think that Todd is kind of Mick Ronson meets Earl Slick, I’m kind of Reeves [Gabrels] with maybe a little Ronson and some Adrian.

And Adrian is Adrian too. [laughs]

Who’s Robert Fripp?

SCROTE: That’s a tough one. Maybe somewhere between me and Adrian.

RUNDGREN: Mick Ronson was such a great guitar player. I love to play some of the things that he did, and he was a really skilled arranger too. I think he’s always been very underrated.

I don’t think I’ll be doing a whole lot of shredding with Adrian in the show. [laughs]

David was a connoisseur of guitar players, so there’s certainly no shortage of great guitar parts.

BELEW: I really liked Mick’s playing too. I always thought David’s material was great for guitar players.

Are there any particular songs that you earmarked for yourselves?

RUNDGREN: I got turned onto David a little earlier than a lot of people, who probably picked up on him when Ziggy Stardust broke, but I’d been spending a lot of time in England before that and was already very familiar with Hunky Dory and “Changes” being on the charts in England.

That means that my leanings are very much toward the earlier stuff, and I get to do a lot of that, like “Life on Mars” and “Changes.”

I do some of the later songs as well, but I definitely have a soft spot for the earlier material. I really enjoyed the way he would change his sound from song to song.

SCROTE: I try to think of the show as a package and who suits what songs best. I don’t have songs that I have earmarked for myself as such, but I do like a lot of the material from the “Heroes” era.

RUNDGREN: I could take a pretty good stab at the Stevie Ray stuff. I started out as a blues guitarist, so I might make my case for “Let’s Dance,” although I’m not sure it’s in the set yet. [laughs]

BELEW: I tend to play a lot of the things that I was involved with when they were recorded, but Scrote will often make suggestions that turn out really well.

We have a lot of different singers and instrumentalists in the show, and we’re all very happy to share vocal duties or different parts.

How do you come up with the set list when there are so many great songs to choose from?

RUNDGREN: I think we’re not far from the set we did in Iceland. Scrote seems to have his finger on the pulse of what the fans want to hear.

It’s not like we’re going out there to deliver a college lecture or be comprehensive. We just want to do the stuff people want to hear, which is the guiding principle. There are songs that you know you have to play, so a good two-thirds of the set is pretty obvious.

BELEW: Scrote has a vision as the producer, and I have a lot of faith in his ideas. We work together quite closely, and we’ll suggest things to each other.

We have done some obscure things on previous shows, but I think we’re sticking to the more well-known songs for this tour.

What guitars are you using on the tour?

RUNDGREN: Things have been in a tizzy for me because my favorite guitar, Foamy, has disappeared. I’d just finished a Beatles tribute tour and was about to start rehearsals with Daryl Hall and the guitar just vanished somewhere between Missouri and Connecticut.

FedEx traced it and said it should have been delivered, but I haven’t found it. I suppose I can assume that it was stolen, but I can’t definitively say that. Maybe it will turn up at some point.

I was supposed to start rehearsals in Chicago, and I had to go to the store and make an emergency purchase of a new guitar. I ended up with a Schecter, which was laid out in the same way that Foamy was, which was one of my primary considerations.

Foamy was made by P-Project and given to me by the company in Japan many years ago. The Schecter has become my main guitar, but I think I might also take a vintage Telecaster that I spent a lot of money on as well.

I’ll probably also take my replica of the SG that I used to have called The Fool that I auctioned off because I owed the IRS a lot of money. [laughs]

SCROTE: I think we’re all thinking of traveling kind of light when it comes to gear. I’ll be taking a custom-made thinline Tele, a Les Paul with P-90s for the Slick/Ronson territory, a 12-string acoustic guitar and maybe a Strat, although Adrian has the Strat thing covered.

BELEW: I’ve had three new Stratocasters built for me by the [Fender] Custom Shop, so I’ll be taking those.

My live rig is very simple and fits in one case. It’s the first Axe-Fx built by Fractal. I’m not sure what the model’s name is. Other than that, it’s a couple of pedals and a Mastermind MIDI controller.

For a tour like this, where I’m playing the early music before I had the more complex equipment, I think it makes sense to try to use similar things.

What were your favorite albums from Bowie’s catalog?

RUNDGREN: Hunky Dory was the first record that I knew and one that I still really love, but there are so many great albums.

SCROTE: That’s a tough one. I guess I’ve always kind of leaned toward “Heroes”, but I also really love Hunky Dory.

BELEW: I really like Young Americans and “Heroes”.

There are going to be songs that Bowie never actually played live himself in the show, aren’t there?

SCROTE: Right. I don’t think he even toured for many years before his death. To do Bowie’s songs justice live, I think we need to bring everything to the table and cover as many bases as possible, to replicate things that happened in the studio.

There are no backing tracks anywhere; everything is live. We have a real pool of talent in the show, and everyone is really at the top of their game.

There’s a certain relaxed camaraderie, both personally and musically, with Adrian, Todd and the rest of the band that I’ve rarely found in anything that I’ve ever done before. It’s a real great fun hang when we’re together.

There’s a beautiful spirit about the show, and to be able to celebrate the genius of David’s work in such great company is a genuine gift.

BELEW: Everything is done on a much bigger scale than the tours I did with David, particularly in 1990. Whereas back then, we had to find ways to cover parts and even leave some things out, now we have the ability to reproduce everything.

It’s a lot easier for me these days, that’s for sure. I no longer have to try to sound like a saxophone or something. [laughs]”

Browse the David Bowie catalog here.

Visit the Celebrating David Bowie website for tour dates and tickets.

The recording of the Talking Heads’ epochal 1980 album Remain in Light marked a dramatic difference from how the band had previously operated.

On prior long-players, singer-guitarist David Byrne, guitarist-keyboardist Jerry Harrison, bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Franz began album sessions with fully or mostly finished songs.

This time, the quartet, with producer Brian Eno, spent weeks in Compass Point in the Bahamas creating loops out of improvisations without knowing what the arrangements would ultimately become.

“It presented challenges for David when he wrote melodies and lyrics,” Harrison says, “because there weren’t many chord changes to help him go somewhere. It really was a new way for us to record. And for any band, I think.”

When the Heads returned to New York City to finish the album, they reached out to a new friend, guitarist Adrian Belew, and asked him to play on the tracks. “All of my parts were done in one day,” Belew recalls.

“They basically said, ‘Go into the studio and wait around till you think there should be a guitar solo.’ I played and I could see everybody all excited in the control room. So I thought, What the heck? I’ll play a second one. All in all, it turned out quite well.”

Over the past four decades, Remain in Light has been hailed as not only the Talking Heads’ definitive musical statement but also a groundbreaker in terms of its fusion of African polyrhythms, funk, art rock and new wave.

It’s been nearly 25 years since Harrison played live on stage with Belew, when the guitarist was part of the Talking Heads’ expanded 1980-’81 Remain in Light live lineup.

But on September 29, the two musicians reunited for the Remain in Light celebration concert at the Wiltern in Los Angeles, where they performed music from the album and discussed the Talking Heads’ legacy.

Joining Harrison and Belew were members of the Brooklyn-based funk band Turkuaz, along with Julie Slick on bass and Yahuba Garcia-Torres on percussion.

“Jerry and I would run into each other over the years, and we would talk about how great the Remain in Light tour was,” says Belew.

“Finally, we talked about it enough ’til we said, ‘That’s it, we’ve got to do this.’ Jerry was producing Turkuaz and found them to be the perfect band for this. Otherwise, it might not have happened.”

When you hatched the idea for this show, did you consider Chris and Tina?

JERRY HARRISON: I talked to them about it, but they just couldn’t do it. They get offers to do Tom Tom Club shows, and there were some other conflicts.

Besides, once we had started going with Turkuaz, we realized half of that band wouldn’t work. And the great thing about Turkuaz is that they already did a number of Talking Heads songs in their set. We were one of their big inspirations.

Let’s talk about the recording of Remain in Light. Jerry, you play both guitar and keyboards. What specifically did you play on those original tracks?

HARRISON: Because these weren’t initially songs in the traditional sense, I would play a part for four or five minutes, and then the next person would go out and do something. The record was basically composed by using mute buttons on the console.

At what point was the decision made to bring Adrian in?

ADRIAN BELEW: I’d met Talking Heads on the Fear of Music tour. You guys played three shows in Illinois. I went to all of them.

I was just jumping around backstage when you were about to do your encore, and you guys said, “Come on out with us and play ‘Psycho Killer.’” I said I didn’t know the chords, and you guys said, “That’s okay. Just come out at the end and freak out like you do.”

HARRISON: Which you did. And then, when we got back from recording at Compass Point, I remember going to a club in New York, and I saw you there.

BELEW: Yes. I remember we were in a stairwell, and you were with David, and you both asked me to come play on the record. I had to tell my band they would be hanging out in New York an extra day.

But yeah, I went to Sigma Sound and jumped right in. I was super excited by the music. I was like, Wow, this is great. I can’t wait to play on this!

Let’s talk about some songs. “Born Under Punches” has a bonkers solo.

HARRISON: That’s David. He’s using a Lexicon Prime Time delay and working the hold button. You could record little bits and mess with how fast it played back. It was done piece by piece. But Adrian could pull it off live.

BELEW: Well, I didn’t do it exactly like the record, but I did similar things while playing it live. I used a similar effect on one of my songs, “Three of a Perfect Pair,” with a synthesizer guitar. You push this button and trap a tiny portion of the sound, and then you manipulate it.

You do play the solo on “The Great Curve” though.

BELEW: Oh, yeah. That’s me.

HARRISON: I consider that to be one of Adrian’s finest solos on any record.

Were you using a Roland guitar synth?

BELEW: Oh, no. I didn’t have one yet. I got one soon after, when the Talking Heads toured Japan. I came back from that tour with a GR300. I think I was the first person in America who owned one. Then we formed the new King Crimson, and Robert [Fripp] got his own guitar synth, and away we went.

But on “The Great Curve,” I’m using my battered old Strat through a Roland Jazz Chorus 120. I had three or four pedals. I think it was a Big Muff and an equalizer that I used to boost the midrange.

Also, my Stratocaster had a Strat-o-Blaster that really upped the output. I had an Electric Mistress, too, so when it starts doing all the crazy, weird sounds, that’s just me stepping on that and introducing it into the chain.

What’s going on in “The Overload”? The whole song is a sustained series of growling guitar atmospherics.

BELEW: That sounds like something I would do. It was so improvised. I remember when we were putting the live set together, we said, “This one won’t work so well because we’re trying to keep everything so upbeat.”

Adrian, beyond your solos, did you play any rhythm parts on the record?

BELEW: I don’t think so. I didn’t do anything on “Once in a Lifetime.” I think I played on “Crosseyed and Painless,” and I did some solo stuff on “Listening Wind.”

I used the Electric Mistress and bent the sound up and down while working a delay and the volume control on my guitar to make certain notes drift up and down. It’s a very interesting sound.

Adrian, seeing as your parts took one day to record, were you surprised when you listened to the final album?

BELEW: Oh, of course! You know, I considered myself a sideman at the time, so I had no idea how the record would turn out. Same thing with Lodger by David Bowie – I was very surprised at how he used my guitar.

Both of those things, of course, are connected to Brian Eno. He had his own taste and liked to use what I did. He was a big supporter.

The album was seen as being revolutionary. How do you two rate it within the band’s body of work?

HARRISON: Of course, I love them all, but I would say I take Fear of Music and Remain in Light, if I had to pick two.

Fear of Music is the culmination of the four-piece, and Remain in Light is the switch to when we thought about having an expanded format, and all of the influences that had begun with “I Zimbra” on Fear of Music came in. So I don’t quite go to one album; I go to those two.

BELEW: I agree with Jerry about those two. I’ve been fortunate to do a few albums in my career that have been called groundbreaking – Discipline, Graceland, The Downwards Spiral – and I put Remain in Light high up in there. I loved making it. I loved playing it live, and it’s still a record that stands up today, very, very well.

Browse the Talking Heads catalog here.

Let’s talk about the numbers first. Nile Rodgers, born 19 September 1952, turned 70 this week. AllMusic lists 5,568 credits to his name as a guitar player, producer, songwriter, and arranger. (To put that into perspective, 60s session ace and Led Zep main man Jimmy Page has 2,414 credits.) He’s sold over 500 million albums and 75 million singles, generating around $2 billion-worth of music created largely on one guitar, since nicknamed The Hitmaker, a second-hand Strat that cost him 150 bucks.

Behind the numbers, are the names of the artists he’s worked with: Chic, Sister Sledge, Diana Ross, Bryan Ferry, Mick Jagger, Robert Plant, INXS, Madonna, Peter Gabriel, Duran Duran, George Michael, Daft Punk, Christine Aguilera, Kylie Minogue, Dave Lee Roth, Steve Vai, Paul Simon, Grace Jones, John Mayer, Michael Jackson, Stevie Ray Vaughan – and on and on. 

He had a hand in some of the biggest hits of our time – We Are Family, Good Times, Le Freak, Like A Virgin, Get Lucky. He’s been copied, sampled, and has served as an inspiration to generations of players and pop stars.

And in 1983, he worked on a record that became David Bowie’s best-selling album: Let’s Dance. It went to no.4 in the US album chart, no.1 in the UK, and EMI claimed that it was their fastest-selling album since Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band. Yet Bowie never took Nile Rodgers out on the worldwide tour that followed, and didn't invite him to work on the eventual follow-up, Tonight. Why?

Nile Rodgers started like all of us, struggling over a chord book. The first song he learned was The Beatles’ A Day In The Life. “I convinced my mom to buy me a guitar,” he told Fender. “I used to look at this Beatles songbook and I used to study the positions and I kept trying to get it right and, no matter how hard I tried, it would never really sound like the song.”

Then his mom's boyfriend tuned his guitar correctly et voila: “All of a sudden, these positions that I had been practicing over and over and over again so diligently [suddenly] it was easy as pie. I didn't realize that I was learning barre chords which, to early guitar players, are pretty hard to do, because you have to build up the strength. 

“When I first played that song – I never had a feeling of elation like that. I mean, I've been chasing that high ever since I picked this thing up.”

With young parents who struggled with heroin addiction, Rodgers had what you might call a Bohemian upbringing. “It was very common for me to come home and find these wonderful jazz superstars like Thelonious Monk, Nina Simone, Miles Davis hanging at our apartment,” he said. ”I grew up with modern jazz, and these very wonderful intellectuals and poetry and the theatre.”

Culturally savvy and precocious (he claims to have read Moby Dick when he was 5), as a young player he started out loving Wes Montgomery and Django Reinhardt, the guitarists of Motown, and funk players like Eddie Hazel, Jimmy Nolen, Willie ‘Beaver’ Hale, but he sucked it all in like a sponge: rock, pop, soul, R’n’B, blues, jazz. 

Bandmate and bass player Bernard Edwards convinced him to get a new guitar and it transformed his playing: “Nard got me to trade in my prized jazz guitar, a hollow-bodied Gibson Barney Kessel, for a sleek solid-bodied Fender Stratocaster, the six-string equivalent of trading in a Range Rover for a Porsche,” Rodgers wrote in his biography Le Freak. 

Then Edwards gave him a brief guitar lesson: “He fingered the chords with his left hand, and his right hand would continuously play sixteen notes to the bar while accenting the main parts of the rhythm. He called it ‘chucking.’ Bernard used to be a guitar player before he switched to bass, and one lesson was all I needed. 

“For the next few nights straight, I was having a love affair with my new ax. In just a few days, I’d emerge as a chucking funk guitarist who knew more jazz chord inversions than most of my R’n’B counterparts.”

With Chic, Edwards and Rodgers took their cues from Roxy Music – “Bryan Ferry was suave and oozed elegance,” wrote Rodgers. “Their music was a diverse offering of eclectic rock with changing time signatures and ethereal textures” – and they suggested a lifestyle to go with the music: Even their record sleeves oozed sex and sophistication. Chic would do the same.

The hits came thick and fast: slick, funky, stylish tracks like Good Times, Everybody Dance, Le Freak. They inspired everyone from Queen to the Sugarhill Gang, The Clash to the Blockheads – astonishing basslines, mercurial guitar playing. Elegant and cool, with grooves that could raise the dead. Soon Rodgers became known as The Hitmaker, penning songs for Diana Ross and attracting the attention of David Bowie. 

Bowie had parted ways with his record company and management and was looking for hits. His musical direction to Rodgers was to show him a picture of Little Richard in a red suit, climbing into a red Cadillac: “This is what I want my album to sound like,” said Bowie. Uh, OK.

They listened to obscure psychedelic records by Hapsash and the Coloured Coat and Peanut Butter Conspiracy, to Mott The Hoople and big band records, to surf music by The Ventures, Duane Eddy’s Peter Gunn. And Bowie presented him with sketches of songs that Rodgers then took and arranged.

“I felt that a lot of his songs were lacking in ear candy,” Rodgers told Rolling Stone’s podcast Music Now. “And I explained to him that every song I've ever written starts with the chorus. He says, ‘Really? That's crazy – you build to the chorus’. I said, ‘Yeah, well, if you're white, you build to the chorus.”

Rodgers’ theory was that radio stations gave black records less time to impress them, so you had to cut to the chase: don’t bore us, get to the chorus. The first words out of David Bowie’s mouth are “Let’s dance”. The single became Bowie’s only song to go no.1 in the US and UK. The parent album sold 11 million copies. It turned him into a star. 

Nile Rodgers didn't appear in the video for the title track or any of the follow-ups – China Girl, Modern Love – and Bowie didn't invite him on the road for The Serious Moonlight Tour. In fact, as Nile pointed out, “If you notice all the interviews that he did, very few of them talked about me.”

Bowie had form. In 1970, Bowie had been a struggling singer-songwriter with two novelty hits behind him – The Laughing Gnome and Space Oddity – watching with envy as his friend Marc Bolan reinvented himself as a glam rock superstar. A friend introduced him to Hull guitarist Mick Ronson, a classically trained pianist who loved Jeff Beck and Cream, and it changed everything. 

With their band the Spiders From Mars, they reinvented Bowie musically and created some of rock’s best-loved albums: The Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory, The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, Aladdin Sane. Ronson brought riffs, astonishing solos, string arrangements, and helped Bowie produce Lou Reed’s Transformer. And then? 

An argument over money spiraled (the band learned that new keyboard player Mike Garson was being paid $1,000 a week while they were on £30) and Bowie decided they had outlived their usefulness. Ronson’s solo career was short-lived, and Bowie moved on: to Philadelphia where he drafted in soul musicians for Young Americans, then to Berlin where he hung out with and then adopted some of the ideas of the Krautrock scene. 

On the one hand, Bowie was an amazing talent spotter, on the other, he could be cold and callous when it came to the people who helped make him. 

“I don't think that David had anything against me,” Nile Rodgers told Music Now. “I think that he had what I would call survivor’s guilt. Like: you're so successful you might be defined by this one record when your body of work is so vast.

“It always makes me feel uncomfortable to say stuff like this because a person could take it the wrong way. Looking at it from my perspective: that record [Let’s Dance], I made. Period. End of story. I mean, yes, David sang. Yes, he wrote songs, but basically, the way we made the album? Here's what we did. 

“We had a brand new studio and it had a really nice lounge. He went into the lounge, I made the record. He would walk in after we cut the track and he would listen and he give a nod of approval. I never once had him say, ‘Do that song again’. He never said that. If you look at all the years that have gone by, you've never heard any outtakes from Let's Dance. 

“We did it like a black record. The way that black records were done in those days is we didn't have studios locked out. We didn't have budgets like rock and roll bands had, like our albums would cost like $30,000 to make. So David came in, we played this song he listened to right good, great, next one. Played it. Listen, go right next one. Right. Next one.”

Bowie had worked the same way on Ziggy and Aladdin Sane, revealing sketches to the band on an acoustic guitar, leaving them to work them up into the rock songs we know and love. Jean Genie, for example, “was knocked out in an hour on the second or third take,” according to bassist Trevor Bolder.

“He didn't know one musician on that album,” said Rodgers. “Other than me and Stevie Ray Vaughan. He had never heard Omar Hakim, didn't know anybody.”

Maybe some of the critical response to the album stung Bowie a little. From being the arty outsider, he was now a global superstar. Critics sniped that he had sold out, as though Nile Rodgers had forced him into making some terrible disco album. Back then, the mostly white music press was sceptical about pop music and dance music, which meant a genuine talent like Nile Rodgers, could struggle to be taken seriously. Pop geniuses could look like Brian Wilson or Phil Spector, but not Nile Rodgers.

In fact, Let’s Dance helped break down divisions between black and white music. Famously, Bowie gave MTV a hard time for not showing enough black music on the channel. Let’s Dance was at the vanguard of that, pioneering a post-punk dance music that defined the 80s.

In fact, as Bowie himself commented, “At the time, [Let’s Dance] was not mainstream. It was virtually a new kind of hybrid, using blues-rock guitar against a dance format. There wasn’t anything else that really quite sounded like that at the time. So it only seems commercial in hindsight because it sold so many. 

“It was great in its way, but it put me in a real corner in that it fucked with my integrity! It was a good record, but it was only meant as a one-off project. I had every intention of continuing to do some unusual material after that. But the success of that record really forced me, in a way, to continue the beast. It was my own doing, of course, but I felt, after a few years, that I had gotten stuck…”

But it was his own doing. And it's revisionism to suggest that Bowie hadn't looked for hits in the past:  Space Oddity was designed to cash-in on the Moon landing. From Starman to Fashion and Ashes To Ashes, Bowie wrote hits. He wasn't some obscure avant-garde artist with no interest in the mainstream. 

“David said to me in no uncertain terms that he wanted me to make a hit album,” Nile told Fender. “Let's be very clear. A hit album meaning he wanted every song to be popping like a Chic record or Sister Sledge.” 

He got what he wanted and more. It's time Nile Rodgers got the credit he deserves.

Fender recently released a limited-edition replica of Nile Rodgers' Hitmaker Strat.

Happy birthday to Todd Rundgren!

Inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last year, Rundgren has performed numerous roles throughout his colorful career.

Recognized as a talented multi-instrumentalist, singer, composer, multimedia artist, engineer and producer, Rundgren first rose to prominence as a guitarist in the late ‘60s as a founding member of psychedelic rock band Nazz.

In the early ‘70s, Rundgren turned his hand to producing records while simultaneously striking out on a solo career.

Appearing in 1970, his debut solo record, Runt, was the first in a catalog of highly original and experimental releases spanning well over five decades.

“My latest record, Space Force, is all over the place,” Rundgren told Guitarist. “It’s another album of collaborations, so every song is different in terms of instrumental make-up and who’s playing on it. 

"I’m doing something of a ballad with Adrian Belew.”

In addition to their recent studio collaborations, the much-lauded Celebrating David Bowie tour featuring Belew and Rundgren is due to kick off again this fall with numerous dates scheduled across North America.

“This is Major Todd to ground control. I’m stepping through the door,” commented Rundgren. 

“In 1973, I met David Bowie and one of us ended up crying.

“I met David several times after that. Some of our phases, like glam, coincided. David had more of that Andy Warhol kind of sensibility, a pop sensibility.”

Speaking of Rundgren’s astounding fretboard prowess, David Bowie and the Cure guitarist Reeves Gabrels recently told Guitar Player, “Todd is strangely underappreciated as a guitarist.”

Referring to his guitar solo in the track “No. 1 Lowest Common Denominator” from 1974’s Todd album, Gabrel’s went on to say, “He conjures up a surreal sonic landscape whose visual corollary, for me, would be Dali’s The Persistence of Memory.

“Are psychedelics bad? Let Todd offer his opinion.”

Order the Todd Rundgren: Live in San Francisco DVD here.

Browse the Todd Rundgren catalog here.

Besides being known for playing a white Stratocaster for his entire career with Chic, Nile Rodgers has used the same 1960 Fender on nearly all the albums he’s produced for artists such as David Bowie, INXS, Duran Duran, Diana Ross, Madonna, the Vaughan Brothers, B-52s, Mick Jagger, Steve Winwood and many others.

Now Fender has announced a limited-edition replica of the iconic instrument – the Nile Rodgers Hitmaker Stratocaster – which will feature such NR touches as the mirror pickguard, Gibson “speed” knobs and, or course, the smaller-than-standard body that remains one of the guitar’s mystifying elements.

“There are all these different stories I get from people at Fender, who are pretty knowledgeable, but you know, they weren’t there when that happened,” Rodgers says.

“The person who put that guitar together may have had any number of reasons for making it like that, but my guitar is smaller than a regular Strat.

“A friend of mine, Richie Sambora, came up with a theory that it’s actually a Mary Kaye Strat [a style of Strat made in the 1950s featuring a blond finish/ash body and gold-plated hardware]. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me… Mary Kayes are like the most-prized Strats, and the guy screwed it up?’

“If it is a Mary Kaye, it would be funny because I also bastardized it. But it could have been the body mold for a Mary Kaye. Who knows?

“I know the neck is from 1959 because a person at Fender told me that one of the guitar-assembly people back then had written profanity on some necks – like every Strat has a person’s initials or some kind of identifier – and supposedly, as a disciplinary action, Leo Fender didn’t let them sign any ’59 Strats. So for a whole year the necks had no signature or “1959” inside.

“That may be the reason why as soon as they took my guitar apart they went, ‘Oh, it’s a ’59!’ But I didn’t know anything about that.”

You initially played an archtop, right?

Yes, I was initially playing a Gibson Barney Kessel. I had only played jazz guitars up until then. My mom bought me a Fender Mustang really early on, but a solidbody didn’t feel right to me, so I switched to a hollowbody.

I started out playing classical guitar almost exclusively, so I was accustomed to a big, fat body. When I started doing gigs playing electric, I just felt more comfortable with a big-box guitar.

What made you decide to switch to a Strat?

We were opening for the Jackson 5 on the American leg of their first world tour, and we were subbing for the O’Jays. The O’Jays and the Commodores were their legitimate openers, and I was in a group called New York City, and we would be a replacement for one of those groups whenever they got a gig paying more money or they were headlining.

So we were down in Miami doing our own gig, and we had a group that was our opening act. They had a kid playing a Fender Strat, and they plugged into our equipment.

I was playing my Barney Kessel though Acoustic amplifiers, like Sly and the Family Stone used. My partner, Bernard Edwards [bassist, songwriter and co-founder of Chic], would always say to me, “You should play a Strat.”

Anyway, when this kid plugged into my amp and sounded, like, 10 times better than I did playing the same kind of songs, because we were basically a covers band, I was going, “Damn, that’s how the song should sound!”

So I went to a pawnshop and I traded my Barney Kessel for the cheapest Strat in the store. I didn’t know anything about them, but I just knew Bernard wanted me to play a Strat, and I loved Hendrix. So they gave me $300 for my Barney Kessel, and I got the Strat. But I didn’t like the color.

I worked as a guitar repairman back then, so I put the finish on it and did this sort of yellowish antique white to make it look like Hendrix’s guitar.

Also, I needed Gibson-type knobs, because there were a lot of R&B songs at the time that used the volume-rising technique, like the beginning of “Let’s Get it On.” [sings the part] And the way to do that is with the pinkie – unless you had a volume pedal, which I couldn’t afford.

Being a guitar repairman, you must have been good at refinishing instruments.

Yeah, and I only used one coat of lacquer. And then I put the reflective pickguard on it, just ’cause it was a cool little thing to be onstage and be able to shine it in people’s faces in the audience. It was just some stupid idea I had, and it stuck.

And then, of course, I changed the machine heads so that the guitar would pretty much stay in tune. If you’ve ever seen me play live, I only play one guitar. I’d rather stop the show if I break a string. [laughs] In all of these years of gigging, I’ve broken maybe six strings.

When performing, you always have the switch in the forward position.

Correct. I’m always on the front pickup, although for recording I will use other pickup positions. That’s because, if you listen to my recordings, you’ll hear that so much of my stuff is doubled.

I’ll have two or three guitar parts, because I come from the era of R&B or pop records or what have you, and you had two or three guitar players on the record.

So I always have guitar arrangements, and I’ll change pickup positions. But I almost exclusively play with the neck position. You’ll rarely hear me go to the bridge pickup, ’cause my sound is already bright.

I have very light strings, and I play with a very light pick, and that’s because I want the sound to project, but I still want it to have body and roundness so the resonance will shine through on the lower notes. But with me it’s all about the first three strings and the middle three.

Your tone is warm compared to the skinny sounds some funk players go for.

It’s warm, but it still projects. That’s something that developed from me recording with [engineer/producer] Bob Clearmountain and always having a direct signal as part of my sound.

Blending the amp with the cleanliness of the direct has become a thing, and I’ve gotten used to it, and my technique exploits that sound.

As a producer, you’ve always played guitar on the records you produce. Is it fair to say, whether it’s Bowie, INXS, the Vaughan Brothers or Madonna, we’re always hearing Nile Rodgers?

All of them. I would have to say as a producer, even when I’m producing a band, I play with the band.

If you go way back to the beginning of my production career, when I produced INXS, I played in the band. When I produced Duran Duran, I played in the band. When I did the Vaughan Brothers, I played in the band.

It’s just part of my style of production, because I like guitar hooks. So I always try and have a guitar part that makes a person want to play it, or if you take that guitar part out of the song, you feel like something is missing. But I don’t force myself on the band at all. That’s not what happens.

Can you cite an example of how playing with the band helped turn a tune into a hit?

When we were doing “Original Sin” with INXS, for some reason they were having a difficult time playing the groove right in the pocket. I don’t know why. I felt like they were nervous for some reason.

So instead of just sitting in there at the desk, I decided to go out in the room and play with them. So that’s what I did, and what happened was, believe it to not, the drummer’s bass drum head broke after we did one take, and that take wound up being the record.

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In 1970, Mick Ronson changed the musical fortunes of David Bowie, a struggling singer-songwriter with two novelty hits behind him.

Together, and with their band the Spiders From Mars, they reinvented Bowie musically and created some of glam-rock’s best-loved albums: Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, Aladdin Sane and Pin Ups.

Afterward, Ronson struggled to match that initial success, despite a catalog of collaborations that included some of rock’s biggest names: Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Ian Hunter, Roger McGuinn, Morrissey, John Mellencamp and many others.

Although Ronson’s career was defined by his time with Bowie, there was a significant before and after.

In the 1960s, he played in various groups from his hometown of Hull, including the Mariners, who were advised by the Rolling Stones’ Bill Wyman to change their name to the King Bees around the time Bowie was fronting a group called Davie Jones and the King Bees.

He was also a member of the Rats, whose main claim to fame was the 1967 single “The Rise and Fall of Bernie Gripplestone.”

“Mick was the best guitarist in Hull, so when he left to head down south and join Bowie, I was pretty upset,” recalls Benny Marshall, the Rats’ lead singer and a close friend of Ronson’s.

“John Cambridge, our drummer, had played with Bowie on Space Oddity [his second album, a.k.a. David Bowie]. He was the bloke who went back to Hull in January 1970 with the brief to find Ronson and bring him to London. He found Mick marking out the lines on the municipal football pitch.”

Cambridge did as instructed, and Bowie and Ronson were introduced at the Marquee club, where Bowie was playing on February 3, 1970.

Two days later, Ronson had learned the riffs and song arrangements well enough to back Bowie, Cambridge and bassist/producer Tony Visconti for a John Peel Radio 1 show live in concert at the Paris Theatre in London’s Lower Regent Street.

They played 15 songs, including a new number, “Width of a Circle,” and plenty of material from Bowie’s recently released self-titled second album.

Reaction was positive, and Ronson moved into Bowie’s Haddon Hall apartment on Southend Road in Beckenham, becoming part of the family. The timing of his arrival was perfect: Bowie wanted to make a hard-rock album. 

As Visconti said later, “We respected groups like Cream, but we didn’t have that in us. We needed someone to be [that] important element, and that somebody was Mick Ronson.”

In terms of his personality, Ronson was a good fit. Everyone loved Ronson’s laconic Northern humor too, especially Bowie, whose father and mother came from Yorkshire and Lancashire, respectively. He’d tease Ronson and get just as good back.

But it was, of course, his guitar playing that stunned them.

“He floored us,” Visconti said. “When David and I met him, we knew he’d fit in looks-wise, but we had no idea what was coming until he picked up his Les Paul and played for us.

“He really didn’t have to be taught the few songs we’d already worked up with John Cambridge. Mick watched our hands on the guitar and bass necks, and he just knew what to play, but he didn’t say much.

“We thought he was just a cool, silent type. Later we found out that our apartment in Beckenham was very ‘big time’ for him, and he was simply overwhelmed.”

Visconti insists Ronson came to Trident Studio in September 1969, when the David Bowie/Space Oddity album was being finalized.

“Mick came to the mix of ‘Wild-Eyed Boy From Freecloud’ and was persuaded to play a little guitar line in the middle part and joined in the handclaps on the same section,” he says.

But if he did, he isn’t credited.

Ronno’s first recorded work with Bowie was on the remade and rocked-out single “Memory of a Free Festival Part 1/Part 2,” recorded in September 1969 and released to zero chart success in June 1970.

In April, sessions began for The Man Who Sold the World, featuring the core band of Bowie, Ronson, Visconti and former Rats drummer Mick “Woody” Woodmansey.

It was a brilliant album, full of Ronson’s crunching heavy-metal attack allied to arcane Wagnerian, dystopian lyrics.

His contributions to Bowie tracks such as “She Shook Me Cold,” “Running Gun Blues” and the epic “Width of a Circle” cemented his place in Bowie’s orbit, leading the singer to call him, with a smug smile, “my Jeff Beck.”

As it happened, both Bowie and Ronson were huge fans of Beck’s Truth album. Marshall says, “[Mick] knew all the licks, except ‘Beck’s Boogie,’ which he dissected but couldn’t master. It infuriated him.

“In 1968, the Rats had supported Beck at the Cat Ballou in Grantham, and afterward Ronno asked him to show him the fast run at the beginning. So Beck plays it, and Mick says, ‘No, play it slower.’ Beck said, ‘If I play it any slower, I’ll stop!’ But he was patient, and Mick learned that riff.”

The Man Who Sold the World had not been a commercial breakthrough, but it added to Ronson’s confidence.

Visconti and Ronson had masterminded the sound and dashed off the arrangements, while Bowie canoodled with his new bride, Angie. 

“She Shook Me Cold,” the dirtiest song he ever wrote, was directly about Mrs. Bowie, but it was Ronson who provided the Jimi Hendrix-style intro and the power-trio setting à la Cream.

Later, Angie lamented the fact that Ronson didn’t receive the publishing he deserved.

“In terms of kudos and feeling that one is valued, it would have been nice for Mick Ronson to have had publishing credits,” she said.

Visconti’s departure from the group saw the arrival of bassist Trevor Bolder. It also gave Ronson his in.

“[Visconti had] done all the string and piano arrangements, so it was my chance to fill the gap,” Ronson said.

“I’d never done it before, but I could read and write music, and I’d watched Tony at Haddon Hall, writing in the basement, saw how he did the charts, and I’d help out.”

Ronson had already written a mini-score for four recorders, used in the break of “All the Madmen.” It was a start.

“I thought, Well, if you can do that then so can I,” he said. “I went out for dinner with [singer] Dana Gillespie, who had tracks that needed strings, and David said, ‘Oh, Mick’ll do that!’ [Like Bowie and Ronson, Gillespie was managed by Tony Defries’ MainMan company.]

“I never had, but it was great. David pushed me forward. That was his thing. He made stuff happen.”

With Visconti gone, Bowie was now heavily reliant on Ronson. His next album, 1971’s Hunky Dory, saw the emergence of his new quartet, featuring Ronson, Bolder and Woodmansey, a taut group that gave his folkie tunes their strong rock underpinnings.

Ronson finally got his credit as the arranger of its songs “Changes,” “Life on Mars?,” “Kooks,” “Quicksand” and the Biff Rose cover “Fill Your Heart,” which was copied virtually note for note from the original.

In retrospect, many have noticed how similar the sound of Hunky Dory is to Michael Chapman’s Fully Qualified Survivor, the 1970 album on which Ronson had made his debut.

Ronson’s burgeoning role extended to instructing hired gun Rick Wakeman for his now iconic piano parts on “Life on Mars?” The Royal College of Music-trained keyboardist (and future Yes member) didn’t mind the input.

“He was a tremendous human being, with oodles of talent,” Wakeman said.

Bowie producer/engineer Ken Scott points to “the great orchestral versions that Ronno put together. [They’re] even more brilliant when you consider he had this habit of running out of time.

“I remember him rushing in 10 minutes before the session, running up to the bathroom and locking himself in so he could find the privacy to finish writing. He’d come out with a huge grin and a stack of charts.”

By the time the band assembled for the followup, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, Ronson’s talents were in full bloom.

On the epic “Five Years,” his string section whipped up the hysteria, while on “Suffragette City,” it was Ronno who came up with the funky, lurching ARP synthesizer sound that many mistake for saxophones.

But working with Bowie had its challenges for Ronson, a now 25-year-old who, until recently, had been a practicing Mormon.

In January 1972, shortly before the Ziggy Stardust sessions were complete, Bowie told Melody Maker he was gay, or, more accurately, bisexual.

Ronson admitted he found it hard to deal with at first. “It embarrassed me,” he said. “I wondered what people would say about me. I knew my family in Hull would get flak. I gave dad a car when I left for London, and people threw red paint over it.”

Aside from his own feelings about it, Ronson understood Bowie was playing with his image as a way to keep the media engaged. “Personally, it was a bit of a shock,” he admitted, “but Bowie manipulated the media again and again.”

Overall, Ronson approached the Ziggy Stardust project with slight suspicion. The explicitness of “Suffragette City” and the discarded track “Sweet Head” concerned him.

“He worried about the lyrics,” Angie says. “I told him. ‘Look, all these people are waving their arms in freedom thanks to you. It may not be what you’re used to in Hull, but accept it.’ Then he’d simmer down and be happy.”

If Ziggy Stardust was a Ronson tour de force, the follow-up, Aladdin Sane, was a mixed blessing for him.

His contributions were immense, but so were those of recently arrived pianist Mike Garson, whom Ronson had auditioned and later advised to “make yourself indispensable. That’s what David likes. Don’t just be a session man.”

Certainly, Ronson lived up that credo. His work on Lou Reed’s Transformer, produced with Bowie the August after Ziggy Stardust, effectively rescued Reed’s career after his debut solo album had bombed.

“It was a good experience for me,” Ronno said. “Lou’s guitar was always out of tune, so I’d kneel in front of him and tune it properly. He didn’t care, ’cause he was so laid-back.”

Without his contribution, Transformer might never have got off the ground.

“It came out pretty well,” Ronson said. “Though I didn’t know what the hell [Lou] was talking about half the time. He’d say stuff like: ‘Can you make it sound a bit more grey?’”

Fortunately the album was a roaring success.

“Transformer is easily my best-produced album,” Reed said. “That has a lot to do with Mick Ronson. His influence was stronger than David’s, but together, as a team, they’re terrific.”

By 1973, though, it seemed that Ronson had become dispensable, along with Woody Woodmansey and Trevor Bolder, both of whom had been dropped for having the gall to protest when they discovered that new arrival Garson was making 10 times their salary.

The guitarist’s relations with Bowie were frosty when, on October 20,1973, Ronson played with Bowie onstage for the last time in that decade.

Only 200 people saw the appearance in the flesh, shot for NBC’s The Midnight Special. Dubbed “The 1980 Floor Show,” the concert featured Bowie serenading French singer/actress/model Amanda Lear with “Sorrow,” a 1966 hit for the Merseys that Bowie would record for 1973’s Pin Ups, an album on which he covered songs from the Swinging London era.

He and singer Marianne Faithfull also duetted on Sonny & Cher’s “I Got You Babe.” But Bowie hated the end result, which he derided as “shot abysmally.”

This was the night Ziggy Stardust truly left the building, which may explain why a smiling Bowie ended each song with an affectionate pat on Ronson’s white satin-clad back.

As the wingman was increasingly sidelined, MainMan, his and Bowie’s mutual management company, promised him the earth.

He was to be the next superstar off the production line, said manager Tony Defries. In the summer of ’73, having finished his sessions for Pin Ups, most of which he’d arranged, as usual, Ronson returned to the Château d’Hérouville studios outside Paris and made his solo debut album, Slaughter on 10th Avenue.

Bowie chipped in from a distance, gifting the songs “Growing Up and I’m Fine,” “Pleasure Man/Hey Ma, Get Papa” and “Music Is Lethal.”

RCA weren’t overjoyed with what it heard, and the album’s release date was put back more than six months, to 1974.

Within months, Ronson was back in another band, joining Mott the Hoople for what would be their final single, “Saturday Gigs.”

Ronson and frontman Ian Hunter had bonded back when Mick had knocked out a string arrangement for Mott’s “Sea Diver,” but the other band members resented the arrival of this “rock star” in their midst, with MainMan and RCA sending limos for their boy while Mott traveled together in a bus.

Tired of the conflict, Hunter split the band.

Ronson went back to his solo career. Bowie didn’t take part in the follow-up album, Play Don’t Worry, but he allowed Ronson to use the backing track from their cover of the Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat,” which had been recorded for an American attempt at a Pin Ups album that was discarded soon after.

Play Don’t Worry was excellent in parts. Although he wasn’t a natural songwriter, Ronson did himself proud on the opening “Billy Porter,” “Empty Bed” and versions of two songs by Pure Prairie League, whose 1972 album Bustin’ Out featured his guitar and string arrangements.

While Slaughter on 10th Avenue was being mixed, Ronson returned to the studio with Bowie to create demos for the future Diamond Dogs tracks “1984” and “Dodo.”

His work wouldn’t appear on the finished album, a creepy, avant-garde affair, but his trademark guitar style did in the shape of “Rebel Rebel,” almost a Spiders From Mars pastiche riff, played now by Bowie.

According to Ronson’s wife, Suzi, “When Mick heard Diamond Dogs, he wasn’t exactly depressed. He just thought, Oh, that’s Dave going out on a limb. But he would have done that record like a shot.”

Instead Ronson embarked on a mercifully brief solo tour, including a show at London’s Rainbow Theatre in February 1974, where he had strings and woodwind sections and, on backing vocals, the Thunderthighs – Karen Friedman, Dari Lalou and Casey Synge – who famously appeared on Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” and Mott the Hoople’s “Roll Away the Stone.”

Cast into the spotlight, Ronson didn’t appear overly confident. The ultimate sideman was too modest to carry this off.

Bowie watched on from the wings and offered words of encouragement during the intermission, but decided against making a guest appearance.

After Bowie, where does one go? Ronson produced and played on Ian Hunter’s self-titled 1975 debut solo album.

That same year, he moved to New York City, rented a place on Hudson Street near the Meatpacking District and enjoyed the city with his best friend Hunter, who had provided safe haven via Mott the Hoople, Mott, and the Hunter Ronson Band.

This is where they met Bob Dylan, who invited Ronson to join his band of gypsies, the Rolling Thunder Revue, after a meet engineered by Dylan’s main fixer, Bob Neuwirth.

That evening began at the Bitter End, on Bleecker Street. “We weren’t Dylan fans at all,” Suzi Ronson says. “Mick thought he sounded like Yogi Bear. But Ian took us anyway, and Dylan played [his 1976] Desire album, and he was mezmerising, better than David.

“Then we went to the Bottom Line, where Mick got thrown out three times for being drunk and disorderly.”

Back at the Bitter End, Hunter recalls “the whole place going insane ’cause Dylan was singing with Neuwirth and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. And Neuwirth [sees] Mick and says to Dylan, ‘Go and ask him!’”

In Ronson’s version, “[Neuwirth] was with this guy,” he recalled. “And I looked at this bloke he was with and thought, Wait a minute, I know you! And, of course, it was Dylan. And we talked, and he said, ‘We’re going on the road. Why don’t you come with us?’

“I honestly thought it was a hoax. Then Dylan phoned me, said the tour was going to happen and would I be there? Like a shot!”

“That tour rescued Mick’s professional life,” Suzi says.

Ronson was soon back with Hunter, appearing on You’re Never Alone With a Schizophrenic and Welcome to the Club.

With his solo career on hold, he became a full-time producer. He worked with Van Morrison, John Mellencamp, Roger McGuinn and Meat Loaf backup singer Ellen Foley. He even contributed guitar to the title track from David Cassidy’s 1976 album, Getting It in the Street.

Despite his signature guitar style and tone, Ronson became engrossed in writing string arrangements.

“He lapsed into the language of strings,” Hunter says, “but he was a bit lazy, ’cause if it was interesting he’d do it using 15 tracks and one guitar track.

“He wrote arrangements on Marlboro Light fag packets. But he could be persnickety and picky if he was involved. He could have matured into a world-famous musician again, but he’d meet people on the street and, next thing, he’s doing a Mexican punk band.”

“But he was great with fans. He’d invite them back for tea, he’d return their phone calls. Sometimes he could be the big guy and show off, so he wasn’t perfect, gorgeous as he was. I considered him like family, so there were arguments.

“One time he disappeared to Sweden for a project when we were in the middle of something, so I had a go. And he just said, ‘Look, I’ve done Bowie and I’ve done you, so I’m allowed to fuck up,’ and we just collapsed into laughter.”

In the late 1980s, Ronson’s health began to cause concern. He was diagnosed with liver cancer, something he neither made a secret of nor chose to acknowledge as a threat. Instead he threw himself into projects such as Morrissey’s 1992 album, Your Arsenal.

Speaking with Classic Rock, Morrissey said, “Mick told me that he alone wrote the main guitar hooks for ‘Starman,’ ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ and others – not just hooks, really, but grand choruses in themselves – but a share of publishing wasn’t ever on offer for him.

“When you consider his solos in ‘Time’ and ‘Moonage Daydream,’ then you can guess that they were his own creations.”

A fan of both Ronson and Bowie, Morrissey was intrigued by letters Bowie sent to his old guitarist chum during the making of Your Arsenal.

“One day at breakfast, I asked Mick why Bowie wrote so often,” Morrissey recalled, “and he said, ‘He keeps asking me what you’re like in the studio,’ and then he exploded with laughter.

“I have no idea why this was so hilarious. I think Bowie had interest in Mick only as much as it was in his nature to like anyone.”

Certainly, Bowie was impressed by Your Arsenal enough that he invited Ronson to work with him on his 1993 studio album, Black Tie White Noise.

He also kicked off a fine version of “All the Young Dudes” with Bowie and Hunter at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium on Easter Monday, 1992, which was the last time his fans saw him onstage.

One year later, on April 29, 1993, Ronson died of liver cancer at age 46.

He spent his last hours in the company of Hunter, Suzi and sister Maggi at Tony Defries’ house on Hasker Street in West London.

Ronson didn’t die penniless, but he wasn’t wealthy by rock star standards.

“He bought the house in Woodstock on Glasco Turnpike [in New York State] because he made money out of my records and Ellen Foley’s Night Out,” Ian Hunter says. “His car was an old Toyota Corolla that sounded like a hair dryer.”

Hunter summed up the gloomy finale in his Ronno elegy “Michael Picasso,” from 1977’s The Artful Dodger: “You turned into a ghost surrounded by your pain/And the thing that I liked the least was sitting round Hasker Street, lying about the future.”

“As a rock duo, I thought we were as good as Mick and Keith.”

“What is remarkable is that he was so overlooked, and he still is,” Morrissey said of Ronson. “Has Mick ever been on the cover of a major British music magazine? Even when he died? He was by nature extremely humble. He was just happy to be there.”

Though he was the first of many great guitarists Bowie would adopt, champion and cast aside, Ronson continued to hold a place in his heart after their split, perhaps more than any other who followed him.

“Mick was the perfect foil for the Ziggy character,” Bowie admitted years afterward.

“He was very much a salt-of-the-earth type, the blunt northerner with a defiantly masculine personality, so what you got was the old-fashioned yin-and-yang thing.

For years after Mick Ronson’s death, the where-abouts of his stripped 1968 Gibson Les Paul Custom – the Ziggy Stardust guitar – were a mystery even to those who had been closest to him.

When Rick Tedesco asked Ronson’s friend and fellow performer Ian Hunter about it, the former Mott the Hoople frontman shrugged.

“God only knows where that went,” he replied. “Mick probably gave it to some guy walking across the street. He didn’t care about gear. It was just a tool to him.”

For Tedesco, finding the guitar became a mission.

A guitarist, producer and engineer whose credits include work with Hunter, Alice Cooper and former Cooper band members Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith, Tedesco had become a Bowie fanatic through the artist’s 1974 album, Diamond Dogs.

“I was a 13-year-old kid who was just obsessed with horror movies,” he recalls. “And then I saw that album cover. I just absolutely loved that album. I was like, ‘I’m done. That’s what I want to do.’”

Working his way backward through Bowie’s catalog, he soon discovered Ronson’s signature performances on the albums Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and Pin Ups.

Eventually he caught D.A. Pennebaker’s 1973 Ziggy Stardust concert film on television. “There was Mick,” he recalls. “And that’s what I wanted to be – David Bowie’s guitarist.”

Tedesco was particularly drawn to Ronson’s Les Paul Custom. Originally a Black Beauty, the guitar was stripped in 1970 after Ronson heard that removing the finish could improve resonance and high-frequency tone.

He subsequently used it on his first record with Bowie, The Man Who Sold the World, right through Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and Pin Ups, making it the vehicle for each album’s searing power chords, singing leads and lyrical solos.

For Tedesco, a hardcore Bowie and Ronson fan, the guitar was an indelible part of his own identity as a guitarist.

By the 1990s, he was working at a music store in Danbury, Connecticut, when one day Hunter strolled in.

“Ian happened to live about 45 minutes away at the time,” he says. “I was like, Holy shit, it’s Ian Hunter! I even had posters of him and Mick on my wall.”

Hunter made repeat visits, and a friendship developed after Tedesco helped him refurbish his studio with an ADAT system.

“Mick had passed, and Ian didn’t really know what the hell to do,” Tedesco says. “He didn’t have his right-hand man anymore. So he started asking me, ‘Do you want to put some stuff down on this song?’”

Before he knew it, Tedesco was working with Hunter, who also introduced him to some members of Alice Cooper’s camp.

Hunter still had several of Ronson’s guitars, which he was holding onto for Suzi, Mick’s wife, but the stripped Les Paul Custom wasn’t among them.

“Nobody knew where it was,” Tedesco says. “I did some research and talked to one guy who thought he remembered an interview where Mick said he’d given it to the Hard Rock Cafe.”

Tedesco began calling Hard Rock locations, asking if they had the guitar, but a sweep of the company’s database came up empty.

“They had nothing of his at all,” he says.

Afterward, Tedesco’s source confirmed that the guitar had gone to the Hard Rock, adding that the restaurant was located in Australia. Because that facility is licensed from, but not owned by, the Hard Rock, its holdings weren’t listed in the company’s records.

Tedesco felt a glimmer of hope.

One call to the restaurant was all it took. “I asked a guy there if they had Mick’s guitar, and he said, ‘Yeah, I’m standing right next to it,’” Tedesco says. “They had it hanging on the wall. I went through the roof.”

As it happened, the Hard Rock was open to a trade if Tedesco could give them a guitar to replace it.

“A lot of people like myself are huge fans of Mick’s, but he wasn’t a giant marquee name, so they didn’t really care about the guitar,” he explains.

He offered them a small collection that included some guitars signed by Hunter as well as some bearing Gene Simmons’ signature, and the deal was done.

It wasn’t without complications, though. In his excitement, Tedesco accidentally addressed his package to Newcastle, rather than Castle Hill, Australia. His guitars spent six weeks lost in a UPS lockup until the error was discovered.

Soon after, Ronson’s electric guitar showed up at his house.

“I had been out running some errands and got home to find this box leaning against my garage door,” Tedesco recalls. “I was so excited. And then I opened it up and saw a headstock. There was no case. The guitar came all the way from Australia covered in bubble wrap.”

To his relief, it made the trip unscathed, and with a bit of cleaning of its electronics, it was back in action.

For Tedesco, who’d purchased his childhood home after his parents retired, the coolest part of the experience was playing Ronson’s Les Paul in the very room where he’d first discovered the guitarist in the Ziggy Stardust film.

“It was such a weird cosmic circle,” he says.

Over the years, he put the guitar to good use. In addition to the Les Paul Custom, he’s owned Ronson’s Marshall Major tube amp head, among other gear, and two-inch tapes from the guitarist’s studio.

He made a video of his collection, allowing fans to see and hear these instruments for the first time in years.

He also loaned the guitar to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and shared it with fans who stopped by the Guitar Hangar, the musical instrument shop he opened in 1999.

Eventually, he offered a limited-edition Mick Ronson Tribute Guitar based on the Les Paul Custom. “I did all this with no intention of doing anything but sharing what I had with the Mick-loving world,” he says.

But eventually, Tedesco began receiving offers to buy the guitar. In 2014, he rejected one for $50,000 from producer Bob Rock, funneled to him by Suzi Ronson.

Soon after, a fan from England – Simon Dolan, the multimillionaire entrepreneur and race car driver – asked about buying both the guitar and Ronson’s Marshall Major head.

“‘It would have to be for stupid money, and I’m not looking to sell,’” Tedesco recalls telling him. “I said it would take at least 200 thousand, just for the guitar alone. And he goes, ‘Done!’

"And I thought, Oh god. Did I just sell my Mick Ronson guitar?”

Two days later, the wire transfer came through his bank.

“I cried,” Tedesco says. “I’d never been so sad and sick over selling something.

“I called Ian up, crying, and he started laughing at me,” he says, cracking up at the memory. “He said, ‘You silly bastard! Mick would tell you you’re a fucking wanker. That’s why you buy something like that. It’s an investment. And it paid off!’

“But I felt like I had sold my soul. It took me several months to get over that.”

In the end, the money went to good use. At the time, Tedesco was getting ready for the grand opening of a new and larger Guitar Hangar in Brookfield, Connecticut, the store’s current location.

“It allowed me to open in style, with tons of gear and without going into massive debt,” he says.

“But owning that guitar was never ever about money. I knew it was worth a lot, but I never envisioned parting with it. It was where I was forged. It put all of my parts together and made me go, Ah, there’s a place for me on planet Earth!

“And then it was gone.”

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Even a cursory glance at producer/engineer Ken Scott’s resume is bound to fill someone with a sense of awe. Among the iconic artists he’s worked with are the likes of the Beatles, Elton John, Jeff Beck, Lou Reed and Harry Nilsson.

During the early ’70s, Scott was the go-to man behind the console for the crème de la crème of British rock royalty.

George Harrison tapped him to engineer his classic All Things Must Pass, and John Lennon followed suit for his Imagine album.

Astonishingly, if one were to have told Scott in 1972 that a half-century later he would be reminiscing about any of the albums he was recording, he would have laughed his head off.

“I think I would have found the whole thing ludicrous,” he says. “We never thought anything we were doing had any kind of longevity,” he says. “It’s not that we didn’t think the music was any good; it’s just that we were constantly moving on to the next thing.”

Among the records Scott had a hand in during those heady days of the early ’70s are four epochal (and star-making) David Bowie albums that he engineered and co-produced with the singer-songwriter: 1971’s Hunky Dory, 1972’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and 1973’s Aladdin Sane and Pin Ups.

Viewed in the rearview mirror, the variety of musical styles that mercurial artist flirted with, absorbed and even pioneered on these records – there’s folk, dancehall, pop, art rock, glam, garage rock and proto-punk – now feels nothing less than remarkable.

But as Scott recalls, “The idea that we were doing something historic never entered our minds. Back then, recording contracts called for two albums a year. When we made a record, we thought, If this lasts for six months, then we’ve done our job correctly.”

Scott got his start at the age of 16 as a lowly tape logger at London’s EMI Studios and gradually rose through the ranks to second engineer and then full-fledged engineer, manning the board for the bulk of the Beatles’ sprawling 1968 self-titled double album.

He first worked with Bowie on the albums Space Oddity and The Man Who Sold the World.

“Quite honestly, I didn’t see David’s talent at the time,” he says. “I thought he was a really nice guy who obviously had a certain amount of talent. But from what I’d seen on those two albums I did with him as an engineer, I didn’t think he had it in him to be huge.”

Scott had yet to produce a record on his own, and he was itching for an opportunity to jump into the big leagues.

Ironically, that invitation came from Bowie, who had asked him to engineer a session that the singer was producing for his clothing-designer friend, Freddie Burretti, whom Bowie hoped would become “the next Mick Jagger.”

“Being British, we were taking a tea break in the studio,” Scott recalls, “and I mentioned to David that I wanted to start producing.

“That’s when he said, ‘Well, I’ve just signed a new management deal. They want to put me in the studio to record an album so they can shop a record deal. I was going to produce it myself, but I don’t know if I’m capable. Will you co-produce it with me?’”

It was an enticing offer, but Scott was still unsure that Bowie had the goods in him. However, his mind changed a few weeks later when the singer played him demos for what would be his next album.

“At that point, I suddenly realized there was a hell of a lot more to him that I’d heard from the previous two albums,” Scott says. “And it was then that I realized that he could be huge.”

From the outset, Scott adopted a “let David be David” ethos in the studio, which he says was a stark contrast to the production style of the singer’s previous co-producer, Tony Visconti.

“Tony was the bass player, the arranger and the producer, and I didn’t get the feeling that David had much say,” he offers.

“It was David’s songs and his vocals. He had a certain amount of input, but it didn’t go that far. I learned a lot from watching people like [producers] George Martin and Gus Dudgeon. They both had the mindset of ‘the talent is put in the studio to create, and you have to allow the talent the freedom to do that,’ knowing that you can always pull them back if they go too far afield.”

Hunky Dory was Scott’s and Bowie’s “getting to know each other” album, and as Scott notes, “We both went in with a lot of fear, because neither of us had really done what we were about to do. But as things started to happen, we gained confidence, and of course, David had some wonderful songs.

“As we worked together, we started to push the envelope a little further, and we saw that things were working, so we kept at it over the next few albums.”

It also helped that Bowie brought with him an ace band, the Spiders from Mars, consisting of bassist Trevor Bolder, drummer Mick Woodmansey and guitarist Mick Ronson, the latter of whom would soon become the singer’s flashy onstage foil and main studio sound architect.

“I already knew Ronno and Woody a little from their playing on The Man Who Sold the World, and I knew they would work perfectly,” Scott says.

“They were easy to work with, very professional and fun. Ronno was definitely the band leader when one was required, but generally the guys just knew what they had to do and what was needed.”

Ziggy Stardust is viewed as one of rock’s great concept albums, but you once said that it didn’t start that way at all.

I don’t think there ever was a concept to it, but somehow that became applied to the record. People find small things to put a story together.

One of the mainstays of the whole concept album thing is the track “Starman.” Without that song, the whole concept falls apart.

Originally, we had Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around” in that place. It was only when RCA said they didn’t hear a single that we went back in and recorded “Starman.” Had that not happened, the concept idea would’ve been out the window. They wouldn’t have had anything to pin it on.

Generally speaking, how did David present songs to you? Were they demoed? Were some cuts written in the studio?

Some songs were demoed, but nothing was really written in the studio. I remember on Hunky Dory, “The Bewlay Brothers” was the last track that we did.

It came together in the studio, but it wasn’t written there. David came in toward the end of the recording and said, “We’ve got to do one more track. I’ve got this song, but don’t listen to the lyrics.”

I asked him why, and he said, “Because they don’t mean anything. I just wrote it for the American market to see what they would read into it.”

This was during the “Paul is dead” period. David picked up on how people in America were reading into things that weren’t there, so he came up with lyrics specifically for that kind of thing, to see what would happen.

Over the years, I’ve heard many different interpretations of what it’s about, and I’m sure David agreed with all of them.

Was David generally efficient in the studio?

Are you kidding? [laughs] He petrified Woody, Trevor and Ronno. They were always on edge, because they always felt if they didn’t get the track quickly, David would just say, “It’s not happening. Let’s move on to something else.”

Bear in mind that, vocally, he was absolutely astounding. Of the four albums I co-produced with him, 85 to 90 percent of the vocals were first takes from beginning to end.

I would run the tape a little just to get him to sing so I could get the sound levels, and then once I hit “record” to get a real take, he would nail it.

A lot of those performances are what you hear today. He didn’t hold back. On the song “Five Years,” by the end of the take, he was bawling his eyes out. Tears were rolling down his face. He was amazing.

How was David’s relationship with Mick Ronson as guitar players? Did he give Mick guidance as to what he wanted, or did he let him come up with his own parts?

The feeling that I got – or I get in hindsight – was that David was very good at picking teams. He looked for people who could give him exactly what he was after without necessarily telling them what he wanted.

He would show them the song, and then people sort of worked out their own parts. But it usually would be exactly what he wanted.

There might have been times when something would’ve been said, but most of the time it was left up to everyone to sort of come up with their own parts.

With me, David never came to the mixes. He would leave me to get on with it and do what I did best.

What were your feelings about Mick as a guitar player?

Oh, he was great. He was also quick – one or two takes. Then we’d listen and decide what should be doubled or harmonized. He knew what a song needed.

Quite often I’d say, “Okay, Mick, it’s time to –” and he would say, “I know, the solo. I’ll do it right now.” And he would do what was needed right away.

David played a lot of acoustic guitar in the studio, but did he ever play electric?

I don’t remember David ever playing electric guitar, but there were times when Mick would play acoustic guitar.

What kinds of guitars would Mick bring to the studio? He liked his ’68 Les Paul Custom.

It would always be his Paul, his Marshall stack and his Cry Baby wah.

With the wah, he would park it to the one setting and leave it there, which made things very easy for us in terms of finding a sound. There was none of the messing around with the amp.

Keeping the wah at one setting gave him more of a unique sound because it was more compact. He just sounded different from everybody else who would go in and turn up loud.

On Ziggy Stardust, there’s a great marriage of electric riffs and solos with the sound of acoustics. Was that combination ever discussed?

It wasn’t discussed, really; it was just understood: “This is the sound for this song.”

For me, the acoustic thing served two purposes. All of those old rock and roll songs by Eddie Cochran, Presley, Bill Haley – all those guys – they had acoustic guitar on them. To get that early rock and roll sound, we needed acoustics.

There was that, but something I didn’t realize was how they took the place of cymbals. During that period, I didn’t like cymbals, so I would tend to keep the overheads down on the drums, but I also had a very bright sound on the acoustic, and that sound covered what cymbals would normally do. At the same time, we got a totally different feel than what cymbals would have achieved.

You have that mix of acoustics and electrics on “Suffragette City,” which is now seen as a proto-punk song. The solo is one of Mick’s best. Did he just pull that out of the air one day?

Probably. Like I said, he was very fast. We had two weeks to make an album, so we had to do everything quickly, including solos. We didn’t micromanage anything.

Now Mick wasn’t just the guitar player; he did the string arrangements too.

He did. He was great with that. He had his way of doing things. He’d work on arrangements the night before a session, and apparently he would fall asleep before completing his work.

So he would run into the studio, lock himself in the bathroom and complete it there. Twenty minutes would go by, and he’d come out with a stack of music paper. He’d go into the studio and hand it out to the musicians.

At the point when you recorded Aladdin Sane, David was a star.

[laughs] Yes, very much so.

Did you notice any changes in him that made working with him different?

Working with him? No. There was a change, I think, for both of us: We’d gained confidence. Obviously, when you’re working on something and then it’s suddenly successful, that gives you a lot of confidence to try other things. But we basically worked the same.

The weirdest thing for me was recording some of the stuff at RCA in New York, because the studio was heavily unionized, and I had to play the typical producer, sitting at the end of the desk. I wasn’t allowed to touch anything.

I remember once when I pushed a button on the desk while the engineer and assistant engineers were out eating: I was just trying to make sure the band could hear themselves on their headphones and rehearse the next track.

When the engineer came back, he hit the roof. I could have taken the entire studio out. Everyone could have gone on strike because I pushed one button.

Aladdin Sane is a tougher-sounding album than Ziggy Stardust.

It is tougher sounding, and I think that’s a result of the band touring the States. It changed them in certain ways. They got a bit heavier and grew some balls.

It was recorded very much the same way as the others; we just went in and did what we did. But yes, David’s songs were heavier because of the American influence.

It’s there in “The Jean Genie,” which uses Bo Diddley’s “I’m a Man” riff as it was interpreted by the Yardbirds, but in a bluesier style.

Absolutely. David was picking up on all that stuff.

Because the band was touring so much, was it harder for you as a producer to get everyone’s attention? Their world was now moving a lot faster.

In some ways, but as I’ve said, we just went into the studio and did what we did. It’s what we knew. We didn’t think about the time frame. It’s not like nowadays, when people take two years to make a bloody record. They micromanage every single eighth note or whatever.

Do you remember what brought about the cover of “Let’s Spend the Night Together”?

Not really. David always liked to do covers. I guess he wanted to do a Stones song because of his friendship with Jagger.

You recorded a few amazing songs that didn’t make Aladdin Sane. There was “John, I’m Only Dancing.”

That was a very strange one. There are so many different versions of that, some of which I was part of and some I wasn’t. But they’re all almost identical.

There was also “All the Young Dudes.”

Oh yeah. I really enjoyed that one, but it just didn’t work for the album. That happens. When I worked with Supertramp, we had the song “Breakfast in America” for their Crime of the Century album, but it didn’t fit the record. It came out much later [as the title track] on what became their biggest album.

Finally, there’s Pin Ups. Is it fair to call that kind of a “stop-gap” album?

I think so. That was a strange one in many respects because David had just fired two members of the band: Trevor and Woody. In that respect, there was a lot of ill feeling.

The bass player who was originally supposed to be playing on the album pulled out at the last minute, so David had to go back to Trevor and say, “Will you play bass?” After you’ve just fired the guy, that’s a very hard thing to do. You can imagine how Trevor felt about it.

Ronno, I think, was in a difficult place because he knew that he wasn’t going to be doing much more with David.

Tony Defries, their manager, had said to Mick, “I’m going to make you a star just the way I did David.” Which was bullshit. Defries just wanted all of them out of the way, because they had threatened a strike when they were going over to Japan.

With Mick being fired before the start of the record, was he harder to work with?

He was fine. He was good. It was a very strange album, because things were changing and had changed.

My wife was going to give birth to twins while I was in France. I flew back the night before, but I still managed to get to the hospital late, after she’d already given birth. There were distractions for everyone.

Outside of the studio, did you and David socialize much?

We did, but not often. We were generally too busy.

As you were finishing Pin Ups, was there any indication where David was headed next?

Not at that point. It became more obvious a little later, because I continued working with him a little.

There was something called “The 1980 Floor Show,” which was for [NBC’s] The Midnight Special. I did that.

Just before we recorded it, there were two songs that David had put together that were on Diamond Dogs: “1984” and “Dodo.” They were one song.

That was one of the few times that David came to a mix, and he kept on putting on Barry White. It was sort of a Philadelphia soul-type sound. He kept on reverting to that, saying, “I want it to sound more like that.”

We could never get that, because the musicians were so totally different, but he was after the American feel.

He was getting into soul and funk, but certainly not the electronic music that he would help to pioneer later in the ’70s.

Oh, no, no. That certainly came about much later. But it was that shift to what he would call “plastic soul,” and that started to become obvious.

That was the last time I worked with him. There was that track, and then we did “The 1980 Floor Show,” and then we never worked together again.

Browse the David Bowie catalog here.

On this day, in 1993, Mick Ronson sadly passed away aged 46. Though he is remembered fondly for his stellar work with the likes of Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and Morrissey it was during his rock star-forging tenure with David Bowie that he shone most brightly.

Having been recruited by Bowie in 1970, Ronson entered the studio that spring to record The Man Who Sold the World. Together, the band created a new, often heavier sound infused with Ronson’s wild, Jeff Beck-inspired electric guitar wizardry.

Ronson’s playing techniques were eccentric, but they worked.

One unusual attribute was that, unlike most other guitarists, he kept his left-hand fingernails fairly long. He claimed that this enabled him to get his nails under the strings to create the kind of extreme vibrato that led some listeners to believe he was using a trem, or play extraordinary bends that sounded like he was deploying a slide.

This was shown off to devastating effect on The Man Who Sold the World’s epic opener, “The Width of a Circle.”

To this end, he kept his guitars subtly detuned, preferring to bend a slightly flattened string into pitch. His idol Jeff Beck used to do something similar during his Yardbirds years.

In this video clip from the David Bowie essential Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars: the Motion Picture, Ronson performs a jaw-dropping guitar solo during a rendition of “The Width of a Circle.”

While pulling out all the stops here, it’s easy to see why he is often considered to be the most iconic of Bowie’s guitar slingers.

Few major guitarists have ever seemed fundamentally less interested in gear than Ronson. Though he did indeed carry backup instruments on tour (and did occasionally use them), Ronno concentrated primarily on one main guitar at a time.

His most famous guitar throughout the Bowie years and beyond was his stripped 1968 Les Paul Custom which he had bought new in 1968 and played until it was literally worn-out – the neck had been broken and repaired one time too many – and Ronson eventually donated it to the Hard Rock Café in Australia.

Thereafter, he switched to a blue rosewood-’board Telecaster, which sustained him through the remainder of his career (though studio pics shot during the Heaven and Hull sessions show him with a white, Floyd Rose-loaded, maple-fretboard, single-humbucker Superstrat of unknown provenance).

He reverted back to Les Pauls, or other humbucker-loaded guitars, for his slide work.

From the Spiders era through his ill-fated solo career, his even more ill-fated tenure with Mott the Hoople, and during his first collaboration with Ian Hunter, Ronson’s guitar amp of choice was a 200-watt Marshall Major head (the same model favored by Ritchie Blackmore) through a single Marshall 4x12.

When he relocated to the U.S., he discovered Mesa/Boogie amps and used them for most of the rest of his life (apart from a brief flirtation with Music Man amps during the sessions for Hunter’s You’re Never Alone With a Schizophrenic album and the subsequent tour immortalized on the Welcome to the Club live album), preferring a combo for studio work and a Mesa head with Marshall cab for live work.

Despite using a Marshall Supa Fuzz and a Tone Bender fuzz pedal, owned previously – allegedly – by Pete Townshend to generate added grit during his tenure with the Spiders, Ronno’s main tonal “secret weapon” was his Vox wah pedal, generally left stationary somewhere near the midpoint of its sweep.

Don't miss the June 2022 issue of Guitar Player where we take a deep dive into the story of the man, the music and the gear, including the tale of Mick Ronson's lost Ziggy Stardust Les Paul.

For rock and technology, 1969 was a most transformative year. A stellar synergetic example is how the BBC included rising star David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” in its coverage of NASA’s Apollo 11 spaceflight to the moon. We’re still feeling the ripple effect trickling down to the present.

An iPhone packs more tech than it took to get to the Moon, and an app offers many more tracks than Bowie had at his disposal. I spent much of the past few years exploring digital audio and video possibilities, and have finally rendered the kind of modern/classic rock album I’ve dreamed of making since birth, in 1969.

I’m thrilled to share lessons learned about creating Spirit Hustler’s self-titled debut album, starting with the cosmic lead track, “The Spirit of ’69.”

Unbelievably, the first MP3 copy blasted into space with Dr. Chris Boshuizen sitting right alongside William Shatner.

Like each of the diverse 10 tunes, it has an acoustic guitar origin story.

UNDER THE INFLUENCE

Each instrument offers a unique creative opportunity and can have huge sway on how you play. Case in point, I wasn’t deeply tuned into the triple-0/OM body style until 2019, when Martin introduced the Modern Deluxe series and sent an MD OM-28 for review.

It’s a natural fingerpicker, and the fact that it has no cutaway, a shallow depth and a spacious fingerboard influenced my approach, especially higher up on the neck.

One day, I went to form a standard A chord at the ninth position with a pinkie on the root at the 12th fret of the fifth string, but the stretch was a bit much, so I used a simplified version with an open A root and left the high E string open as well.

The next move was a revelation.

The somewhat asymmetrical neck somehow invited me to form a slightly unusual A minor: Leave the index finger on the E at the ninth fret of the third string, and then find the minor 3rd (C) at the 10th fret of the fourth string with the middle finger. The ring finger then replaces the middle finger at the A on the 10th fret of the second string.

Enthralled by the ability to toggle between A major and minor, I soon developed a fingerpicking pattern.

The next realization was that I could slide the whole shebang down a step using the index finger to lead the charge.

The ringing open strings sounded even cooler surrounding G major and minor, and then again when I tried sliding the whole thing down another step, to F.

Sliding down another step didn’t work, so I found some weird diminished-sounding formation in the fifth position and landed on a low open E.

Then came a similar major-to-minor motif in E using a comparable chord fingerpicking strategy, again starting at the ninth position and using different formations to descend over a sixth-string root.

I followed up with an ascending progression starting on a standard E chord. It’s a continuous climb of various shapes using only the second-through-fourth strings, leaving the first string open while copping a bass climb on the sixth string with a wrapped thumb.

I realized I could “shoot the moon” all the way back up to an E power chord in the eighth position. It sounded classic yet modern, somewhat akin to “Hotel California.” And like the song says, “We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969.”

LIFT-OFF AT THE MARTIN MUSEUM

The 50th anniversary of the lunar landing was happening, and my generation was turning 50 as well. We’d lived half an analog life and were the first to come of age in the digital age.

That set the stage for the song’s lyrics.

When I took a tour of the Martin Museum in the fall, I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was the original 1930 OM-45 that set the mold for the neck on the MD OM-28 I’d been playing, as well as a custom HD-28 commemorating the 50th anniversary of landing on the moon!

They were setting up a video shoot and graciously allowed me to play both quickly for a soundcheck.

That rendered the first recording of “The Spirit of ’69.”

Jimmy Leslie has been Frets Editor since 2016. See many Guitar Player- and Frets-related videos on his YouTube channel, and learn all about his psychedelic folk-rock group at spirithustler.com

Reeves Gabrels has a long list of credits that includes stints with Tin Machine, David Bowie and, since 2012, the Cure.

The Dirtbike Royale is his latest Reverend Guitars signature model. It joins the clan as the only non-vibrato guitar among a group that includes the Dirtbike, Signature and Signature RG-SUS – all equipped with Wilkinson WVS50 IIK vibratos – and the semi-hollow Spacehawk, which has a Bigsby B-50 with a roller bridge.

Dressed in cool Feline Gray or Royale Red, and decked out with full binding, the Dirtbike Royale is a sleek guitar with an offset double-cutaway korina body, and a set, three-piece korina neck that carries a 24 ¾–inch scale (12-inch radius) ebony fretboard.

The neck’s medium oval shape has just the right amount of girth for a very comfortable grip, and the medium-jumbo frets are polished and evenly crowned. 

The nut is also very smooth on the ends and perfectly notched to route the strings to the pin-lock tuners without requiring a string tree.

The action on our review guitar was low and free of buzzing, and the intonation was tuneful throughout the span of the neck. This setneck design has a nice rounded heel for your hand to push up against, and the deep cutaways allow full and easy access to the high frets.

The Dirtbike Royale differs from the original model in two ways: It has a Wilkinson GTB wraparound tailpiece with an adjustable B-string saddle, which helps steer it in a Les Paul Junior direction, and to further the LP leanings it has P-90-style pickups, specifically a MojoTone Hot Quiet Coil P-90 Soapbar in the bridge and a MojoTone Regular Quiet Coil P-90 Soapbar in the neck.

It’s a combination that delivers the performance Gabrels has long sought.

“I wanted something that would bark when I wanted it to and also be low noise,” the guitarist says. “I had a band called Modern Farmer when the first Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier heads came out. I had a ’56 Gibson Les Paul Junior and a ’59 Les Paul Special, and my whole thing was, ‘The volume control is the noise gate!’  So the idea of having a good hum-canceling P-90 is something I’ve been trying to do for 25 years.

“These MojoTone pickups are stock, too. Sometimes you want to have a signature model pickup, and then you realize you’re just going to have them make the thing they’re already making. On the bridge pickup, with the bass full up, you get a cocked-wah sound, but not so much that you can’t use a cocked wah with it!”

The tones that the Dirtbike Royale dishes out range from very clear with a touch of twanginess to rich, mids-forward growl when you unleash the beast.

MojoTone’s patent-applied-for Quiet-Coil P-90 is a hum-canceling design that features low-gauss Alnico magnets to provide vintage tone without the noise. They’re an excellent match for this guitar, which delivers supremely cool clean and overdriven tones that have great dynamic sensitivity and clean up beautifully when the guitar volume is turned down.

Played though Fender Deluxe Reverb and Victoria Double Deluxe 2x12 tube amps, the Dirtbike Royale easily covered territory that ranged from James Brown funk to Chris Stapleton-style alt-country dirt to ’70s/’80s hard-rock grind.

The fact that Gabrels deploys this electric guitar onstage for all the textures that Cure tunes require is a testament to the DBR’s versatility.

The volume control preserves highs when rolled back, and the tone control is well voiced and can be run super low if needed, without muddying the sound. The bass contour control is highly effective too, as it allows you to get stringy single-coil tones at low settings and beefy, humbucker-like sounds when you turn it up.

It’s an extremely effective control that lets you very easily dial-in the guitar to your liking. Setting it about three-quarters up sounded great with our test amps, but there’s plenty of range to adjust for any rig you’re playing through.

The Dirtbike Royale is well crafted, lightweight and tuneful, and one of the best realizations of a modern P-90 axe currently available.

We’re giving it an Editors’ Pick Award and suggest you give one a spin.

Specifications:

• NUT: Bonite, 1.692” wide
• NECK: Three-piece korina. Medium Oval shape
• FRETBOARD: Ebony, 24.75” scale, 12” radius
• FRETS: 22 medium jumbo
• TUNERS: Reverend Pin-Lock 
• BODY: Korina
• BRIDGE: Wilkinson GTB wraparound
• PICKUPS: MojoTone Hot Quiet Coil P-90 Soapbar (bridge) and Regular Quiet Coil P-90 Soapbar (neck)
• CONTROLS: Volume, tone, bass contour. Three-way selector
• FACTORY STRINGS: D’Addario .009-.046
• WEIGHT: 7.5 lbs (as tested)
• EXTRAS: Available in Feline Gray and Royale Red
• BUILT: Korea

The Reverend Reeves Gabrels Dirtbike Royale is available here.

We recently we asked some of the world's top guitar players to choose their favorite solos. With one catch: They had to refrain from the obvious. No Hendrix. No Clapton. No Gilmour, et cetera.

Here’s what Reeves Gabrels – guitarist for David Bowie and the Cure – had to say…

1) Derringer | “Drivin’ Sideways”

From Sweet Evil (1977)

GUITARIST: Danny Johnson

“When I first heard Danny Johnson, in 1975, I felt like I had found a kindred spirit, someone like myself who, at 19, was standing on the corner at the intersection of Mahavishnu and Mountain. On this track, Rick Derringer generously pushes Danny out front in the dual role of lead guitarist and vocalist. Danny fearlessly tears at the seams of conventional rock harmony during his solos.”

2) Boxer | “More Than Meets the Eye” live radio broadcast

GUITARIST: Ollie Halsall

“Many of us first heard the late Ollie Halsall in the band Patto. With singer Mike Patto, he formed Boxer in 1975. As is the case with most of the guitar players I like, Ollie is at his best live, where he plays with the songs like a cat with a ball of string. It’s all here: Curtis Mayfield double-string slides, Tal Farlow-like arpeggios, blues guitar bends and chromatic runs.”

3) James Taylor | “Someone”

From One Man Dog (1972)

GUITARIST: John McLaughlin

 “I heard this song for the first time in 1972, when the only guitar I owned was a Harmony H-162 acoustic. This largely acoustic guitar recording blew my mind and exposed me to a level of communication and technique to which I still aspire. For years, I wondered what effect was on the guitar, until one day I was struck by the stupiphany that there was none – just John McLaughlin’s massive technique and deep soul that, for me, conjured up the sound of the flutter of dragonfly wings and the rolling of waves.”

4) Billy Joe Shaver | “Georgia On a Fast Train”

From Unshaven: Shaver Live at Smith’s Olde Bar

GUITARIST: Eddy Shaver

“The late Eddy Shaver kicked out the roadhouse jams Texas-style in 1995 with a Boogie combo, a ’50s Strat and some serious seat-of-the-pants high-level playing. Live at Smith’s Olde Bar is a good record to shake of the dust with, and this track can never be too loud.”

5) Todd Rundgren | “No. 1 Lowest Common Denominator”

From Todd (1974)

GUITARIST: Todd Rundgren

“Todd is strangely underappreciated as a guitarist. This is one of my favorite Rundgren guitar songs. He conjures up a surreal sonic landscape whose visual corollary, for me, would be Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. Are psychedelics bad? Let Todd offer his opinion.

In 1971, rock and roll guitar was barely in its teens. But, remarkably, what started as R&B- and western-swing-infused three-chord rave-ups had grown to incorporate elements of folk, Chicago blues, modal jazz, Indian classical music and flamenco. The music of the 1960s – especially that of the Beatles – proved that the pop charts could deliver expressive, high-quality artistry that rivaled that produced in jazz clubs and symphonic halls. The music of the time also became the de facto voice of one of the most significant cultural upheavals in American history.

As the new decade dawned, musicians were presented with a blank canvas on which they created what can rightfully be seen as the rock era’s belle époch. Indeed, many famous artists released their defining masterpieces during this fertile 12-month period.

Guitar Player has celebrated the 50th anniversary of this magic year with features on some of the greatest albums from 1971. Now, with it just about over, let’s have one final celebration of the albums, artists and guitarists that made the year so significant.

Power (Chords) to the People

The Who’s 1969 rock opera Tommy was an ambitious project that established them as major players, but it was 1971’s Who’s Next that is often considered their crowning achievement.

Ex. 1 is loosely based on the pugilistic power chords Pete Townshend delivers during epic anthems like “Baba O’Riley” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” The consummate rock rhythm player, Townshend didn’t merely “strum.” Rather, he attacked his strings with powerful percussive jabs, pioneering a style that would evolve into punk and metal in the hands of the next generation. When playing this example, try using a short, controlled wrist motion, striking the lowest strings with extra oompf! 

Going for Soul

A 2020 Rolling Stone poll cited Marvin Gaye’s 1971 release What’s Going On as the greatest album of all time, and though polls are subjective and art isn’t easily quantifiable, the album’s merit is unquestionable. Gaye’s emotive vocals and heartfelt lyrics are front and center on this song cycle about a Vietnam vet returning home to find his country in turmoil. However, the unsung heroes of this and many other great Motown releases are the Funk Brothers, a loose collection of studio musicians who played uncredited on dozens of hits.

Ex. 2 recalls guitarist Robert White’s pulsating chord work on the title track, a clever combination of jazz harmony and funk rhythm. To play the percussive “scratch” strums (indicated by Xs), simply loosen your fret-hand’s grip on the neck without taking your fingers off the strings. This will effectively mute the strings, so that, when strummed, they produce the hollow, pitchless “chick” sound that is a signature of funk guitar.

Sticking It to the '70s

The Rolling Stones were indisputably one of the most popular and influential musical acts of the ’60s. As the decade drew to a close, however, dark clouds seemed to be forming on the horizon. The band experienced the death of founding member Brian Jones and watched in horror as the Hells Angels security detail they hired for a 1969 concert at Altamont Speedway murdered one attendee and brutalized several others. 

They also sought to extricate themselves from management and recording contracts. Come 1971, the band returned with their own label, a new iconic tongue-and-lips logo, and arguably their finest record to date, Sticky Fingers.

Around this time, Keith Richards had fully embraced open-G tuning (low to high: D, G, D, G, B, D), and Ex. 3 takes inspiration from his clever riffage and chord voicings on such Stones classics as “Brown Sugar” and “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.” 

Meeting of the Masters

Miles Davis was a pioneer of multiple styles of jazz, including bebop, cool, hard-bop, and modal jazz, and when he incorporated electronic instruments and rock beats on 1969’s Bitches Brew, jazz-rock fusion was born. 

Two years later, former Davis guitarist John McLaughlin formed the Mahavishnu Orchestra, a quintet that blended jazz harmony and improvisation, Indian classical scales and rock instrumentation into an incendiary mix. Their 1971 debut, The Inner Mounting Flame, was a hit with rock audiences and established them as the premier fusion band of their time.

Ex. 4 is modeled after “Meeting of the Spirits,” a track that begins with McLaughlin’s hauntingly exotic arpeggiated chords before exploding into an impassioned exploration around the Phrygian-dominant mode (1, b2, 3, 4, 5, 6, b7). 

Tapping Into English Moods

Without a doubt, 1971 was a landmark year for progressive rock, a style of music that drew heavily on European classical influences.

Ex. 5 is an homage to guitarist Steve Howe’s use of classical guitar techniques to enliven songs such as “Roundabout” and the solo piece “Mood for a Day” that were featured on Yes’s brilliant album Fragile.

Another significant prog release from 1971 was Genesis’s Nursery Cryme. Although not as well-known as Fragile, the record did herald the debut of Steve Hackett, a guitarist who employed fretboard tapping several years before Eddie Van Halen.

Ex. 6 recalls his approach on “Return of the Giant Hogweed,” but unlike Van Halen, Hackett would tap the strings with the edge of his pick instead of using a fingertip. 

A Case of the Blues

Although often labeled as a folk artist, Joni Mitchell drew inspiration from many sources. Throughout her storied career, the eclectic composer has melded elements of jazz, pop, blues, and electronica in with her songwriting and has collaborated with artists as varied as David Crosby, Charles Mingus and Pat Metheny. 

Mitchell often wrote and performed in a wide variety of open tunings, many of her own design, but for 1971’s Blue, her instrument of choice was often a four-string Appalachian dulcimer.

Because of variances in string thickness, it’s impossible to match the dulcimer’s tuning and timbre on a standard guitar, but for Ex. 7’s approximation of “A Case of You,” we tuned the top two strings down a whole step, to A and D, respectively, and the G string up a whole step to A, resulting in two unison A strings. This makes our tuning, low to high, E, A, D, A, A D.

If you stick to the top four strings, it evokes the droning unisons, octaves and 5ths associated with dulcimer tunings. Perhaps the larger lesson here is inspirational and not technical. Mitchell’s fearless artistic exploration and constant experimentation is a beautiful reminder to step outside of our comfort zones. 

My Back Pages

As 1971 dawned, Led Zeppelin – the supergroup that Jimmy Page had formed in the wake of the Yardbirds’ dissolution – was already in full flight, but it was their fourth album (generally referred to as Led Zeppelin IV, but officially named by the four cryptic symbols that adorned a sticker on the album’s wrapper) that would cement their legacy as the greatest hard rock band of all time.

Ex. 8 is inspired by the outro to “Black Dog” and demonstrates Page’s clever appropriation of country and blues licks to extend rock’s lead vocabulary beyond simple pentatonic scales. Centered on an A dominant-7 tonality, it makes effective use of b3, b5, and b7 color tones (the C, Eb, and G notes, respectively).

For our final example, we’ve chosen to template what is perhaps the most culturally iconic and controversial guitar lick from 1971; Page’s intro to “Stairway to Heaven.” Recent lawsuits have pointed out a similarity to Spirit’s 1969 track “Taurus,” but to our ears, both songs are based on a common musical trope – an A minor chord arpeggio with a bass note that descends down in half steps. Its use in rock music predates Spirit (Google: Ace of Cups “Simplicity” 1968). And, like a 12-bar blues shuffle, it’s arguably fair game when songwriting.

What makes Page’s take on this cliché stand out is his incorporation of contrary motion between the outer voices, with ascending notes on top pitted against descending bass notes. This is a cleverly appealing compositional move, which we’ve also used for Ex. 9.

Although we’ve covered several albums with an enduring legacy, we’ve barely scratched the surface of the major releases that turned 50 this past year. David Bowie’s Hunky Dory, the Allman Brothers’ At Fillmore East, Jethro Tull’s Aqualung, Pink Floyd’s Meddle, the Doors’ L.A. Woman, Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain, Black Sabbath’s Masters of Reality, Elton John’s Madman Across the Water, Janis Joplin’s Pearl, John Lennon’s Imagine, Van Morrison’s Tupelo Honey, George Harrison’s The Concert for Bangladesh, Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells a Story, and Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On are among the many great albums making a compelling case that 1971 was in fact the guitar’s – and modern music’s – greatest year.

David Bowie’s landmark fourth studio album Hunky Dory turns 50 today. Often cited among fans as a firm favorite this all-killer-no-filler masterpiece is crammed with classics from cover to cover including "Oh! You Pretty Things,” “Life On Mars?” and the LP’s lead single “Changes.”

Co-produced by Beatles engineer Ken Scott and featuring arguably Bowie’s greatest band – the Spiders from Mars lineup of guitarist Mick Ronson, bassist Trevor Bolder, and drummer Mick Woodmansey – Hunky Dory marked a stylistic turning point.

“It was like, ‘Wow, this is no longer rock ’n’ roll. This is an art form,'” Bowie told one interviewer. “We kind of thought, cool, that’s where we want to be at. Fuck rock ’n’ roll! It’s not about rock ’n’ roll anymore, it’s about: How do you distance yourself from the thing that you’re within? We got off on that.”

Key to fulfilling the album’s disparate vision was guitarist Mick Ronson whose inspired playing and arrangements set him apart as a unique talent. “I would put him up there with the best I’ve ever worked with,” remarked Scott. “I think Ronno was better than any of the Beatles as a guitarist. His playing was much more from a feel point or melodic point of view.”

Famously using a stripped Gibson Les Paul Custom, Ronson’s trademark electric guitar tone was as much about his technique and approach as it was the equipment itself. “The equipment helps a little bit,” he points out in this interview, “but I think more often than not it’s in your own personality. It’s in your own makeup. It’s in your own fingers.”

In recognition of the album’s 50th anniversary Parlophone will be releasing a picture disc edition of the 2015 Hunky Dory remaster on January 7, 2022.

Pre-order it here.

Earl Slick can remember the last gig he played – right off the top of his head. “It was March 7th, 2020, with [former Sex Pistols bassist] Glen Matlock, in London,” he says. “Ever since then, I’ve been mostly on my own, like everybody. And let me tell you, you tend to go a little batty with so much free time on your hands.”

The veteran guitarist hasn’t exactly done nothing during the past year, and he says the period of relative isolation has been a blessing. It’s given him time to work on a memoir, which he says he’s close to finishing (“You keep thinking you’re close to being done, and then you go, Oh, wait, there’s that other thing!”), and it afforded him a clear chunk of time to record Fist Full of Devils, his first solo album in nearly 20 years.

Mostly, though, the extended lockdown has provided Slick with the opportunity to do something he rarely does. “I just sat around and thought a lot,” he says. “I’m always so busy doing this or that, and if I’m not doing something, my mind is on whatever I’ve got to do next. For the past year and a half, things kind of stopped, and I’ve had a lot of time to just think about who I am and what I’ve done.”

He pauses. “Funny things come into your head, like, ‘Did I just fake my way through it all?’” He laughs. “But then I go, ‘No, come on. That’s crazy.’ Some of the stuff I did, you just can’t fake it.”

Fakers don’t get to play with rock royalty like David Bowie and John Lennon, two of the more celebrated names on Slick’s star-studded resume.

Slick was just 22 years old in 1974 when he began what would become a 30-year, on-and-off association with Bowie. After hearing the “unschooled, street player” jam along to unmixed and unreleased recordings of songs such as “Rebel Rebel,” Bowie hired Slick to replace Mick Ronson in his band for the Diamond Dogs tour.

“I don’t know how many people were up for the gig, but I got it,” Slick says. “After that, I was off and running.”

Years earlier, like millions of other teens, the guitarist sat mesmerized in front of his TV set as the Beatles were introduced to America on The Ed Sullivan Show. The next day, he pestered his father to buy him an electric guitar – a $30 secondhand Danelectro.

“Did I ever think that one day I’d get good enough to play with John Lennon?” he asks rhetorically. “Of course not. The idea still blows my mind. Lennon was this huge guy; he was a hero. A little kid from Brooklyn doesn’t get to be in a room with him.”

Slick took all of three guitar lessons before embarking on what he calls “a dedicated period of musical self-education.” Instead of playing rudimentary exercises, he hunkered down with the radio and records.

At first, he picked along to the pop songs of the British Invasion bands, but soon he gravitated to the Rolling Stones and the Animals, and from them he learned about their roots – Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy and Chuck Berry.

“I got really into the blues and became sort of the outlier at school,” he says. “My friends were still learning to play pop songs, and I’m playing the blues.”

Moving to New York City in the early 1970s, Slick tried to make a go of it in bands. There was an outfit called Mack Truck, and for a short time he played in a duo called Slick Diamond (with Scottish singer-songwriter Jim Diamond).

Acing the Bowie audition changed everything for Slick, and together they changed music.

Their daring experimentation on the title track to 1976’s Station to Station, fueled by Slick’s ragged, at times atonal leads, combined funk, soul and art rock for an overall effect that became revolutionary.

Between tours and sessions with Bowie, Slick collaborated with artists such as Ian Hunter, John Waite, Tim Curry and David Coverdale, among others. After playing on John Lennon’s Double Fantasy (as well as tracks for a follow-up record, which was released in 1984 as Milk and Honey), he worked with Yoko Ono on her 1981 album, Season of Glass.

Along the way, he formed the band Phantom, Rocker & Slick with the Stray Cats rhythm section of Slim Jim Phantom and Lee Rocker, as well as the short-lived band Dirty White Boy.           

“I did a lot,” he says with a laugh. “That’s one of those things that has run through my mind during this whole pandemic. I don’t spend a lot of time on social media, but I recently hired a guy to work my web page and all that, and before I knew it, fans started popping up, and it reminds you of all the things you’ve done. It’s sort of mind boggling.”

Slick’s fans will find a lot to like about Fist Full of Devils, a diverse set of instrumentals that spans smart-alecky blues, poignant torch songs, white-knuckled rockers and a host of tracks that toss genres into a blender.

At age 68, the guitarist still has plenty of spunk in the trunk. He doesn’t so much strum an acoustic as dance with it, and his electric solos sing, swoon, sputter and roar.

“The funny thing is, playing solos is my least favorite thing to do,” he says. “I could play rhythm all day and be perfectly happy. When I was cutting these songs, I didn’t construct every note of the solos – I never do that. But I hear things in the chord changes and that guides me through a melody.”

He makes it clear that anybody expecting a record of guitar-clinic shred can look elsewhere. “The world doesn’t need another wanking guitar album,” he says. “Besides, I’m not proficient enough to pull that off. My whole thing is feel. Personality. It’s what’s carried me this far, so I’m sticking with it.”

What was it like in New York City for a young guitarist in the early ’70s? Was it a hotbed of players all competing for the same gigs?

At the beginning it was competitive, but not between players – it was competitive in terms of bands. This went on for a while, and then things started to change. As we started to play out more, that’s when people were being offered gigs as guitarists. At that point, it started to become competitive.

Did you have the mind-set of, “Well, if my band doesn’t make it, I could be a session guy”?

No, not at all. The only thought I ever had about anything – other than having my own band – was that, if the Rolling Stones ever needed a guitar player, I was their guy. I don’t even think the word sideman was coined yet. My idea was to stick with my band, get a record contract and have a hit record. I didn’t consider any other kind of career.

Which guitars and amps were you using at the time?

I had one guitar and one amp: my ’65 SG Junior and a 100-watt Marshall stack. And the cool thing was we had buddies who used to hang around, and the idea of being a roadie appealed to them. I was a smart little fucker, and I learned that I didn’t have to haul my own stuff around when I could get other people to do it.

You were only 22 and hadn’t been around much when you auditioned for Bowie. How did you not get rattled by his fame?

The funny thing was, I wasn’t too nervous. I mean, I knew David was a major star, but I only owned one David Bowie record – Aladdin Sane – and the reason why I bought that was because of Mick Ronson. I mean, “Jean Genie” is “Mannish Boy.” “Panic in Detroit” is Bo Diddley.

Mick’s guitar playing was a twist from the way it would normally be played, and I loved it. So I wasn’t nervous about the audition, but I didn’t tell anybody about it, in case I didn’t get it.

When Bowie hired you, did he ever verbalize what he liked about your playing?

In his own roundabout “David” sort of way. Once I got the gig, I got a little rattled because I didn’t know if I had to play and sound like Mick Ronson. Did I have to play the stuff note for note from the records? Quite frankly, I was terrified, so I asked David if that’s what he wanted. Thankfully, he said, “No. I hired you because I like the way you play. I want you to do what you do.” That was a big relief.

How did your experience with Bowie expand your playing beyond the blues rock that you grew up on?

It opened me up, but not so much at the beginning. At the very start, I was just doing what I always did. You can hear that on David Live. I was just playing how I played at the time. When we hit Station to Station, that’s when things changed.

You’re dovetailing into our next question.

Yeah, Station to Station – everything changed because he changed. In his own way, he would push me into new areas to get me uncomfortable. Even though he still wanted me to do what I did, there were certain things he wanted me to rethink. It opened me up, for sure. What was nice was that these ideas he had felt very natural to me.

So even the title track to Station to Station – which now sounds so trendsetting and prescient – it didn’t seem avant-garde to you?

I don’t think you can tell what’s trendsetting at the time you’re making something. Whatever we recorded, my attitude was, This is what we’re doing. I didn’t really think about the impact it would have.

The thing about that song – and the whole record, really – was that David didn’t bring in finished pieces. Take the title track: That was three pieces of music that he brought in. I thought they were going to be three separate songs. Somehow it glued itself together to become the epic that it is.

And that felt natural to you?

It just was what it was. The way we communicated was, “Here’s what we’re doing.” It didn’t seem weird. When you were around David, the process of recording wasn’t weird compared to the rest of the stuff going on.

Did he play you music he was listening to, bands like Kraftwerk, just so you could get an idea of where he was at?

No. No, he didn’t play me that stuff. He would try to feel me out in certain ways, though. Before Station to Station, he took me out to see Lou Reed and Roxy Music. He really liked what they were doing, and I think he was trying to feel me out and get my reactions.

What kinds of guitars were you playing on Station to Station?

I had an early ’70s Les Paul, a Strat from ’64 or ’65, and my SG. Oh, and my Gibson J-45.

John Lennon tapped you to play on Double Fantasy. The two of you had already worked together on David’s Young Americans album.

Yeah, it was at John’s request that I was on Double Fantasy, and it was based on us both doing “Fame” together. The funny thing is that I had no recollection of it – none – which was a running joke the whole time.

During our conversations, John would tell me the story of recording the track, and he knew that I was involved, but I couldn’t remember it at all. I was a little high back then, as we all were. But John remembered. I didn’t.

That’s so funny. Most guitarists would remember recording with John Lennon.

Yeah, well, they were strange times.

So you get a call to play on Lennon’s record, his return from retirement. That must have been pretty head-spinning.

It was way more head-spinning than Bowie because I was a real John Lennon fan. It was because of the Beatles that I was exposed to rock and roll and decided I wanted to get involved with it. And John was the guy that I gravitated toward. So yeah, it was a trip.

When John was in the studio with you, did he have firm ideas of what he wanted from you guitar-wise? Or did he just let you play to see where you were going?

He pretty much did the latter. What he would do with all of us as a group, he would go, “I want this kind of a feel.” He would guide you, but he didn’t dictate parts. I was the only one on the sessions that didn’t read charts, and apparently John remembered that from Young Americans.

He wanted one guy in the room who was more of a street player. The other people were the best session guys on the planet.

Did you ever play that crazy Sardonyx guitar that Lennon was using during those sessions?

Yeah. I even bought one. I wish I still had the freaking thing. I sold it to somebody, and I know who he is. Because it’s very important to the guy, I never offered to buy it back from him.

What did it sound like? Is there a track on Double Fantasy you can point to as an example?

I can’t mention a particular track. John used it a lot. It was a stick body with two wings on it, and it had a pair of humbuckers. I don’t really remember what it sounded like. I don’t even know why he bought it, because he still liked to play his Casinos.

A few years later, you stepped back into Bowie world after Stevie Ray Vaughan pulled out of David’s Serious Moonlight tour. How much time did you have to prepare before you hit the road?

I didn’t have any time at all. I mean, from the time they called me, I think I had maybe three or four rehearsals with the band. I had to learn the whole show.

Now granted, I’d either played or recorded half the show anyway, but there was new stuff I wasn’t familiar with, and I had to learn it. I sat with a cassette deck in my hotel room in Brussels and did the best I could to digest all the stuff.

Regarding the tunes he had recorded with Stevie, did David give you the same direction as he had when you first started working together – to just be yourself?

All he told me was, “We’ve got a big festival coming up really soon. Do you think you’ll be ready?” And little arrogant me said, “What, are you kidding me? I’ll be ready from the first gig.”

What was your relationship like with Carlos Alomar? You guys ended up as bandmates on that tour.

It was good. We had a good working relationship because our roles as guitar players were very defined. We didn’t play alike at all. He covered his bases, and I covered mine. There was no competition. Maybe if we played the same way it could have gotten strange, but that was never the case.

What’s the story with Mick Ronson showing up at a gig and trashing one of your guitars?

Oh, that’s a funny one. He sat in with us at an outdoor gig in Canada. I don’t know what song we were playing, but he borrowed one of my guitars – it was a custom-made DiMarzio – and he started swinging the thing around over his head and put some dents in it. I wasn’t even pissed off or anything, but I was a little terrified. [laughs] Now people pay a lot of money to get beat-up guitars.

You worked with Bowie on a series of his latter-day albums. Would you speak during those long times apart? Did you have to renew your relationship?

Funny thing about that was, it was seamless. When we started working together again back in the late ’90s or early 2000s, we hadn’t seen each other or had any contact in a long time. I was on the West Coast at the time, so I flew to New York to play with the band he had, and the first thing David had me play was “Stay.”

David wasn’t even onstage with us – he was sitting on a lounge chair or something – but the second he heard me playing, this big-ass smile came across his face. It was like a minute hadn’t even gone by between us.

Now, what’s interesting is, it became more of an open relationship. We really became friends. Back in the day, we weren’t really friends, maybe because we were both so out of it. We weren’t enemies; we just weren’t buddies.

But during the time we were apart, we both changed a lot, and our relationship grew tighter once we took up again. We talked a lot more about personal things, which we never did before. So that was nice.

Your new album is notable among guitar instrumental records in that there’s a distinct lack of noodling. It’s virtuosity without showboating.

Yeah, well, I don’t do the noodle thing – that was never my thing. Some of the songs are really based in the piano as far as the writing. Al Morris, who played piano on the record, he would come up with really cool, unusual stuff, and that pushed me into all sorts of atmospheres – not so much melodies.

Some of the tracks, like “Vanishing Point” and “Black,” sound like they could be film scores.

Yeah, yeah. “Vanishing Point” is something I started writing in the ’90s. Al helped me get it in shape. “Black” is pretty cool. It sort of came from the frame of mind I was in at the time – a little tortured – but the inspiration for the overall sound comes from Angelo Badalamenti, David Lynch’s guy. I’m a major David Lynch fan, and I love what Angelo does with him. In the movie Fire Walk With Me, there’s this really ominous bar scene. It’s shot with red backgrounds, and there’s all kinds of weird shit going on. I purposely tried to write something with that same feel.

What’s cool is, although it sounds like a score, parts of it also feel like a jam.

That was the idea. There was just enough structure in it, and then out of the blue, Al started to play this sort of ’50s piano thing, in a happy, major key. We jumped on that. It goes from this dreary, dark, echo-y thing into this really happy bridge. It was a great trick.

What are your main guitars these days?

I’ve gravitated right back to where I started – to the Teles. There’s a lot of Telecaster on the record. I used my famous signature model on it. Some of the little Hendrix-y rhythm things that you hear, these little double-stops that remind me of “Little Wing” – that’s not a Strat, although it sounds like one. That’s my signature model, with P-90s in it.

I also used my SG and an Eastwood Airline Tuxedo. The acoustics were mainly the two Gibsons and a Tacoma 12-string. That’s one of the best 12-strings I own.

Last question, and it sort of goes back to what we started talking about. Do you ever stop and ask yourself, “Why me? Of all the guitar players in the world, how did I manage to play with all these people?”

Oh, God, all the time. I mean, I look at a guy like Steve Lukather, who is just amazing. In my mind, he’s like a modern-day Tommy Tedesco or Steve Cropper. Steve Lukather is the only session guitar player I’ve ever heard who can convincingly play any style. If he’s doing a blues thing, he sounds like a blues player. If he’s doing jazz, he sounds like a jazz player. He doesn’t sound like a session guy faking it.

So this goes back to “Why me?” I mean, I’ve sat in with Steve, and I’m afraid to play around him. It’s like, holy shit. He’s embarrassing me. I can’t do what he does. Nobody can. I just do what I do, and people seem to like it. It’s always worked for me, so I can’t complain.

Grab your copy of Fist Full of Devils here.

While David Lindley could have played the most expensive guitars available, he regularly sported instruments by Teisco, National and EKO, to name a few. 

Since then, many other guitarists – including David Bowie, Jack White and St. Vincent – have followed in Lindley’s footsteps by playing off-brand guitars. 

Heck, even EVH played a ’60s Teisco.

All of which makes you wonder: Could this Japanese-made Norma EG-421 electric guitar help someone find his or her voice?

Weirdo Factor

The shape looks rather familiar, but check out the four volume knobs, four on/off rocker switches, three-position tone switch and additional rhythm/solo rocker switch. That’s a lot of controls by anyone’s standards. But when a guitar has four – yes, four – pickups, an embarrassment of switches may not be the weirdest thing it has going for it.

Playability & Sound

By the late 1960s, most of the guitar companies flooding the U.S. market with entry-level guitars began to figure out how to make a decent guitar and still undercut the American manufacturers. 

Enter the Norma EG-421.

Though some of its parts look similar to Teisco’s, it was made by the Tomba Company in Japan and imported through the Chicago distributor Strum ’n Drum. 

The guitar has a slim steel-reinforced maple neck with a fast 22-fret rosewood fingerboard. The mother-of-pearl neck inlays are shaped like the letter N or Z, depending on your viewpoint. The split pickups look like dominoes, and the headstock is large and stylish.

But of course, the burning question is, How does it sound?

Let’s just say that, when it comes to tone, the Norma EG-421 gives you a lot of choices. The pickups all sound rather thin, but in an interesting way. Each has a dedicated volume knob and kill switch and can be combined with the others in any configuration you want.

That’s where the fun begins.

For instance, turning a pickup’s volume up full and adjusting the volume of an adjacent unit will throw the first pickup out of phase in a grungy sort of way. The rotary tone switch offers three preset EQs that change not only the tone but also the phasing. On top of all that, the rhythm/solo switch can either boost or cut the level, depending on the pickup configuration.

The tremolo works nicely, dropping everything down about a half step. The bridge on this example has been upgraded to a Tune-o-matic style, and the previous owner added two string trees; the original “towel rack” string retainer didn’t offer enough tension for the higher four strings.

With clean tone or slight overdrive, this guitar is sparkly, fun and different. Unfortunately, the pickups are very microphonic and have difficulty at loud volumes.

Value

Back in 1968, this guitar, while not exactly cheap, cost a fraction of what you might have spent on an American guitar with many fewer features. A few years back you might have paid about $400 for one, but now they can fetch upward of $800.

Why it Rules

Like so many guitars, the Norma EG-421 plays great, sounds unique and looks dashing. And if it ends up providing you with your signature sound, so much the better!

We were always very forward-thinking about the music we made together,” Reeves Gabrels says of his 10-year creative partnership with David Bowie. Beginning in 1989 with metallic hard-rock band Tin Machine, their alliance continued into the ’90s, when Gabrels co-produced a number of Bowie’s solo albums.

“Our whole thing was very much rooted in being in the moment. There wasn’t a lot of looking back going on between us.” Even so, Bowie told Gabrels he’d like to return to the studio and redo some songs from his 1987 album, Never Let Me Down. “The record seemed to gnaw at David a bit,” Gabrels recalls. “He’d had such a big hit with ‘Let’s Dance,’ and I think he felt obliged to follow up that success on Tonight and Never Let Me Down, but I think he did so half-heartedly. He told me that he’d kind of checked out mentally during the recording of Never Let Me Down, and he wanted a chance to take a mulligan. He would always say, ‘I just know there’s some good songs on it. I wouldn’t mind redoing some of them.’”

Gabrels knew what he meant. When he first heard the album, before working with Bowie, he and his “smart-ass musician friends” compared notes on the record. “We were like, ‘Gee, it’s 1987, but this seems a little 1985,’” he says. “It was very synthy, a little too Duran Duran-ish, if you will. But when I saw David perform tracks from the album on the [1987] Glass Spider tour, the music came off more muscular live than on record. It had grit to it. So I could see where he was coming from about revisiting those songs. It just wasn’t something I thought I should be a part of, and I always shot it down.”

Much to his surprise, and delight, Gabrels later took part in reworking not just a few songs from Never Let Me Down but the entire album. Titled Never Let Me Down 2018, the disc is part of the elaborately packaged box set David Bowie: Loving the Alien (1983–1988), the fourth in a series of retrospectives spanning the singer’s career from 1969 forward.

Guided by producer/engineer Mario McNulty, who had collaborated with Bowie in 2008 on a remix of the album track “Time Will Crawl,” Gabrels joined guitarist David Torn, drummer Sterling Campbell and bassist Tim Lefebvre – all selected by Bowie, in notes written before his passing in January 2016 – to breathe new life into the tracks that had plagued the singer over the years.

Recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York City, the resulting album is a punchier, far more guitar-heavy affair than its synth-laden original. Gabrels feels that Bowie would approve. “We absolutely tried to respect David’s wishes with this new version of the album,” he says. “What’s kind of funny is, we sort of went into this process with a veil of secrecy about what we were up to. I think the label people believed we were doing more of a remix than a whole re-imaging of the album, and we totally blew their minds when they heard it. David would be pleased by that, I think.”

So how did this project come about, and what led to you finally saying yes?

According to everyone involved in the Bowie estate trust, when David knew that he was dying, he left a five-year plan behind of what he wanted done with his music. From what I understand from Mario, he wrote out instructions to remake this record, and there was a list of musicians that he wanted. All of the people are post-1987 musicians. They’re the next gen.

Mario explained this to me. We met at Dean & DeLuca and talked for five hours about it. At first, I still felt like it wasn’t my place to get involved with stuff I hadn’t been a part of. Now, there is some precedent for this: The first thing I did with David was a remake of “Look Back in Anger,” but that wasn’t supposed to appear on a record, though it has subsequently appeared on [the 1991 reissue of] Lodger. My rearrangement of it was for a dance company presentation that David did.

So when this idea was presented to me, my reaction was, ‘Ah, this is rich! This is David’s final practical joke on me for all the times I said no. He knows I’m not going to say no to a dead man.’” [laughs] But then Mario played me the remix of “Time Will Crawl,” and I saw what the approach was – stripping it back, recording brand-new guitars, bass and real drums, and then getting rid of everything except what David played. So I came around and said, “I’m in.”

How did you and David Torn divvy up your guitar duties? You two had never worked together before, right?

No. We tried to recognize each other’s strengths and not get into any overlap. Torn was more the “clouds of frozen remorse” guy, whereas I was the “bull in the China shop, foot on the monitor” kind of guy. We did a lot of stuff independently, but there was one day we both recorded together at Electric Lady. We improvised textures simultaneously, trying to wrap ourselves around each other. I think I did more of a metallic kind of groove, and Torn did a sort of reverbed, tape-manipulated texture.

Did you keep any of the original guitar tracks by Carlos Alomar and Peter Frampton?

On "Zeroes" we kept Peter’s sitar, because to me that part was so ingrained in the song. If I had played it, I would have done something pretty much the same. And Carlos played a gated rhythm part on “Never Let Me Down” that just moved the song in the same way that Johnny Marr’s part on [the Smiths’] “How Soon Is Now?” does for that song, so it made sense to keep it. We weren’t trying to be cruel or destroy the original document, but this was David’s wish, so that absolved us from any guilt we might have had.

The synths are de-emphasized on “Day-In Day-Out,” but there are some parts that sound like keyboards – although they could be electric guitars.

Yeah, I know what you mean. We didn’t really keep any of the original synth stuff from the album. A lot of those textures are guitar-played or stuff that Mario did after the fact. The part you’re talking about – it sounds like a baritone sax or a synth – that’s actually an Alexander Syntax Error pedal. That just came to me, and it sounded right. You see, I didn’t listen to the original album before I went in the studio; I wanted to treat the whole thing like a demo. I didn’t want to be too married to what had been done before, because then I’d just try to re-create new versions of what had been done.

How did you approach “New York’s in Love”?

That one was interesting. Peter Frampton’s playing on the track had a certain pentatonic blues foundation. Now, I love Frampton. His live album with Humble Pie is one of my all-time favorites. But when I listened to what he did with the song, it got me thinking about how New York isn’t really about the blues anymore. It’s more multicultural, and there’s a definite Asian and Middle Eastern thing going on. You walk down the street on a Saturday night, and you see this new wave of immigrants, and you hear sirens going by.

I wanted to reflect that change with what I did. I wanted police sirens to come out of the guitar. I told Mario, “Put up that song and let me see what happens.” I figured out where the harmony was, and I just stretched it. I soloed through the whole song and tried different things, and I reacted to what was going on. When the song ended, Mario looked at me and said, “Well, that one’s done then.” [laughs]

Bowie’s big acoustic guitar sound that was featured on the remix of “Time Will Crawl” is still way up in this new version.

That was David’s thing at the time – an Ovation Adamas through a [Scholz] Rockman into a Fender Twin. You notice how gloriously ratty the acoustic is, which is exactly the same tone you hear on the first Tin Machine record. That was his sound for that album, which also points to the fact that, in lots of ways, it was a transitional record.

You added quite a lot of guitar to “Zeroes.” Toward the end, it’s a veritable guitar symphony.

Yeah, I built that up in the end. That song kind of took me by surprise. It was the first track that I worked on at Electric Lady. Mario and I listened to it, and we figured out what sounded really good and what could be different. The first thing we did was strengthen the acoustic guitar. We miked up my Breedlove acoustic, and I got the headphones on, and I realized that I had the same separation in my head that I used to have with David. His guitar would be in one ear, and my guitar would be in the other.

We used to cut acoustic guitars together like that. Often he’d play 12-string, and we would sit facing each other – two mics, headphones on. David felt things on the one and three, and I kind of sat more in the two and four, so we had a little push-pull thing going on. He would move his shoulders a certain way. He would look at me, but it was like he wasn’t there – he was somewhere else. He would cross his legs and one of his feet would bounce. I would take cues from his body language.

Anyway, at Electric Lady, I played the track with my eyes closed, and I would see him. But then when the track was done, I opened my eyes and he wasn’t there. [sighs] I was glad that I was in the live room all by myself. I had about 30 seconds to wipe the tears away before anybody came in. [pauses] It wasn’t always like that. Most of the time, it was like when we were working together, meaning he wasn’t always in the studio. He would say things like, “I’ll see you Friday. You know what to do.”

What was your guitar and gear setup for the sessions?

I have three signature models with Reverend, so I brought what I consider to be my “desert island” guitar, the Spacehawk. It works so well in most any situation but particularly when I’m playing at high volumes. I also had my original RG model, which has a Sustainiac in it, and a Trussart Steelcaster. During the sessions, I bought an R7 Les Paul, which ended up on “Beat of Your Drum.” So it was those four electrics and the Breedlove acoustic.

I’m always hesitant to discuss non-tube amps, but I really like the Yamaha THR100H [modeling amp], and I’ve found that I can use it in a number of ways. And it weighs about 10 pounds, which is always handy. I ran one side of it like it was a Fender Deluxe, and the other side like it was a Hiwatt.

My effects chain was basically what I use live with my band, the Imaginary Friends: an Ibanez Weeping Demon Wah, a Source Audio Multiwave Distortion, a modified Boss GE-7 EQ, an MXR Phase 90, an SIB Varidrive, a Line 6 M9, and then a Barefoot Pale Green Compressor and a Meris Ottobit Jr. pedal. Oh, and there was also the Alexander Syntax Error and a Korg Kaoss Pad. That’s it for pedals on the floor, but I also used the Line 6 Helix for recording direct.

You mentioned cutting acoustic guitars with David before. Nobody really talks about him as a guitarist. What kind of player was he?

David never identified himself as a guitarist, but he was quite good. For him, the guitar was a tool. I always liked for him to track an acoustic rhythm part, because he had a certain feel and a lope to his playing. When you see old pictures of him as David Jones the folk singer, or when he did “Space Oddity,” he was a 12-string guy. He’s one of the few people I ever knew who could tune a 12-string. [laughs]

Barre chords weren’t his thing. When you think about the chord voicings on “Space Oddity,” where he’s playing a sliding E form but he’s letting the open E and B strings ring out, that’s a byproduct of discomfort with playing barre chords. But it became a stylistic thing that worked for him.

David always picked such distinctive guitarists to work with. Did he ever tell you what he liked about your playing and why he chose you?

This is interesting. I met David during his Glass Spider tour. My ex-wife, Sara, was doing press for the tour, so I hung around backstage a lot and talked to him. He didn’t even know I played guitar, and I never told him. He just thought that I knew a lot about music and art. But Sara gave him a tape of my band, and he listened to it. So one day I’m at home and he called me. I thought it was a practical joke, and I said, “All right, who the fuck is this?” And he goes, “It’s David. Sara gave me the tape, and you sound like the guy I’ve been looking for. Why didn’t you tell me you play guitar?”

So I flew to Switzerland and went right to the studio with him. The first thing we did was work on the remake of “Look Back in Anger.” He said, “I need you to do stuff on the beginning and end, and then play guitar through the song.” And I said, “Well, what are you thinking?” And he goes, “This should be like German gothic cathedrals.” And I said, “All right…”

So I guess that was my audition with him. I went to stay at his house in Switzerland. I ended up being there for a month, but I remember at the end of the first week, I said, “Why am I here?” Because it wasn’t really clear what we were doing. And he laughed and said, “Basically, I need somebody that can do a combination of Beck, Hendrix, Belew and Fripp, with a little Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert King thrown in. Then, when I’m not singing, you take the ball and do something with it, and when you hand the ball back to me, it might not even be the same ball.”

And you were like, “I can do that.”

More or less. [laughs] That was the start of it.

Buy David Bowie: Loving the Alien (1983–1988) here.

On this day, in 1977, David Bowie released his “Heroes” single. While the song was not a smash hit at the time, it has since become one of the late, great man’s most beloved tracks. Adding to the magic of this classic ‘Berlin period’ number are its “celestial” electric guitar tracks, courtesy of King Crimson’s Robert Fripp.

Bowie and synth pioneer Brian Eno were already several days into recording the song that would soon be called “Heroes” when Fripp got the call asking him to fly to Germany and join them in the studio. Fripp and Eno had already released two albums together under their collaborative Fripp & Eno moniker, namely (No Pussyfooting) and Evening Star in 1973 and 1975, respectively. 

These experimental, ambient works were a sign of things to come when the pair linked up in the studio again to record the title track of Bowie’s new album.

“I was at home in my apartment in New York, Waterside Plaza, in July 1977 and the telephone went,” recalled Fripp. “It was Brian Eno calling from Berlin. He said, “Hang on, I’m here with David Bowie. I’ll pass you over.” And David Bowie said to me, “Do you think you can play some hairy rock ‘n’ roll guitar?” I said, “Well, I haven’t played guitar for a while. I’m not sure. But if you’re prepared to take the risk, so am I.” Shortly afterwards, a first-class ticket arrived on Lufthansa to Germany.

Though Fripp’s sustained guitar parts may sound as if they were generated using an Ebow, they were in fact the result of some carefully controlled feedback. Using plenty of volume, the guitarist measured various distances from the amplifier denoting points at which certain notes would feed back.

Leaning on Fripp and Eno’s tried and tested method of treating the guitar signal with a synthesizer the team laid down three distinctive-sounding tracks full of shifting tones and pitches. And when layered together that good old studio magic came into play as they fitted together perfectly, giving the song a unique identity all its own.

Buy Heroes here.

A 1964 Fender Vibroverb amp once owned by Stevie Ray Vaughan and used for his legendary guitar work on David Bowie's 1983 blockbuster, Let's Dance, is up for sale.

The amp was acquired by Nashville vintage guitar dealer Rumble Seat Music and arrived with a number of pieces of documentation, which included a handwritten note, a Double Trouble poster, photos of the amp, and more.

Vaughan first met Bowie after his set at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival. Bowie immediately took a liking to the Texan – who at the time was still largely unknown – and invited Vaughan to the studio contribute to Let’s Dance.

Vaughan lent an incendiary outro solo to the hit title track, and memorable six-string contributions to "China Girl," "Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)," and three other songs on the album. Let's Dance – which topped charts around the world – was the first exposure millions of listeners had to Vaughan's unmistakable, always-moving and melodic lead work.

Vaughan would go on to accept a slot in Bowie's touring band, but his resistance to the stage choreography Bowie desired and the refusal of Bowie's management to allow Vaughan and Double Trouble to open select dates on the tour – or promote their forthcoming debut album, Texas Flood, at all – led Vaughan's management to sever his relationship with Bowie entirely before the tour even began.

Though this particular Vibroverb's role in Vaughan's sound beyond Let's Dance is unknown, it's rumored that its spectacular condition is due in part to Vaughan setting it aside for the Bowie tour, and never bringing it back to his rig after he pulled out. 

Vibroverbs in general were one of Vaughan's favorite amps, and were one of the main sources of his trademark sound. 

Like some character out of an Oscar Wilde fantasy, Mick Ronson was damned to be beautiful, and the fact that he gained fame as David Bowie’s foil during the loud glittery mess that was ’70s glam rock in no way diminishes his awesome prowess as a guitarist.

Just listen to the greatest six-string moments in his solo work, with David Bowie and elsewhere and you'll experience his raw power, beatific melodicism and thoroughly modern application of noise.

Sadly, Ronson died too young, succumbing to inoperable liver cancer in 1993, while working on his final solo album, Heaven and Hull (released posthumously in 1994).

Here are five of this perennially under-appreciated glam-rock pioneer's greatest guitar moments.

David Bowie - "Moonage Daydream"

I was around 17 years old when I was first exposed to David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert late one Saturday night. 

I had, of course, known that I wanted to be a guitar player since seeing the Beatles in 1964 on The Ed Sullivan Show, and, later, the early Who on the Today Show. Growing up near San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love was an inspiration, as well. But this barrage of noise, riffs, licks, lights, costumes and rather strange and unsavory staging showed me how powerful and dangerous and euphoric rock music could be, and I was a true goner thereafter. 

I ditched the acoustic guitar, the frustrating "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore" lessons with the 90-year-old Swedish guitar teacher employed by my mother, and went searching for a Les Paul and the biggest amp I could find. 

I ended up with a horrifically bad Japanese copy of a Les Paul and a towering solid-state amp that sounded like crap, but I had cracked the code. Thanks for the push, Mick...

"Slaughter on 10th Avenue"

I hadn't taken much of an interest in instrumental guitar in the '70s. I liked Duane Eddy, the Ventures and Dick Dale - and I had a major love thing for Link Wray's "Rumble" - but I was still focused on singers and pop songs. 

I bought the album Slaughter on 10th Avenue solely because Mick was in the Spiders From Mars and I adored David Bowie. I wasn't ready for the title song's almost cinematic evocation of moods. This performance was the one that taught me a guitar could be as expressive as a vocal, and also that solos and guitar parts could be "arranged" as beautifully as orchestras.

"Angel No. 9"

Mick's voice kind of let him down on his solo projects. It was weird, because all the passion and energy he pumped into his guitar playing kind of evaporated when he opened his mouth. 

No matter. The intro lines and solo that starts around 3:20 are, to me, some of the most brilliant, soaring, emotional and edgy examples of "arranged" guitar melodies I've ever heard. I learned a lot from these two parts, and they still make me shiver and miss Mick when I hear them today.

The Rats - "Telephone Blues"

This track is from 1969, with The Rats from Mick's hometown of Hull. It's a pretty typical rude and rough '60s Brit blues romp. On the surface, nothing much special here, but I love that I can hear Mick's vibrato and bends coming alive so early in his career, as well as experience his fearlessness about pushing the excitement of the music at all costs - even if it meant sounding a bit uncomfortably out-of-the-box.

 David Bowie - "Heroes" (Live in 1992)

This performance from the 1992 Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert with Queen was more about seeing Mick onstage with David Bowie again. It was also about strength and guts and an enduring and transcendent love of music and the guitar, because Mick was already fighting the cancer that would kill him in 1993. 

He hits a few clams here and there, but it was great to hear him add some gristle to the Bowie hit. This also inspired me to dig out the EBow that Greg Heet sold me from his NAMM booth way back when. I've been a devotee of the EBow ever since - a tool that has gotten me many session gigs and provided me with tons of enjoyment. Gotta thank ya for that one, too, Mick.

David Bowie always had a keen ear for a great guitarist. From Mick Ronson in the early Seventies to Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1983 to Reeves Gabrels in the Nineties, some of music’s most distinctive guitarists played a role in shaping and creating the sound of Bowie’s stylistically fluid music.

As we look back at the long career of Bowie, who died January 10, we celebrate both his music and the guitarists who created it with him. Here are nine of the greatest, along with signature tracks that exemplify their contributions.

1. Mick Ronson

Bowie’s association with guitarist Mick Ronson was without a doubt the most prolific of his career. The two met in 1970 when Ronson was recruited to play in Bowie’s band. That same year, they cut The Man Who Sold the World. Ronson would go on to perform and record with Bowie through 1973, a period that includes Bowie’s breakthrough classic albums, among them Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Aladdin Sane. His stinging signature tone, achieved with a 1968 Les Paul Custom, became a hallmark of the glam era and inspired guitarists like Randy Rhoads in terms of technique and image. “Suffragette City,” from Ziggy Stardust, is a classic example of Ronson’s style and tone.

“Suffragette City”— The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)

2. David Bowie

Following Ronson’s exit from his band, Bowie surprised everyone by assuming guitar duties himself. Though he’d shown himself to be a fine rhythm player—mostly on acoustic and acoustic 12-string—he always left the deft lead work to Ronson. For 1974’s Diamond Dogs, Bowie handled guitar duties for the album almost exclusively. (Earl Slick performed the Ronson-like lead work on “Rock ’n’ Roll with Me,” and Alan Parker guested on the hit “1984.”) “Rebel Rebel,” the album’s breakout hit, featured Bowie playing what would become a signature riff of the era. In the video for it, shown below, he mimes using his Kent-branded three-pickup Hagstrom.

“Rebel Rebel” - Diamond Dogs (1974)

3 & 4. Carlos Alomar and Earl Slick

The guitar tandem of Alomar and Slick leant a particularly unique rock-funk sound to Young Americans and Station to Station, Bowie’s mid-Seventies excursions into soul. Slick had first joined Bowie in 1974 for the Diamond Dogs tour, which produced the David Live album. While Alomar handled the bulk of guitar duties on Young Americans, Slick teamed up with him for the funk workout “Fame,” a hit written by Bowie and John Lennon.

“Fame” - Young Americans (1975)

5. Robert Fripp

Though not a member of Bowie’s band, Robert Fripp earned a significant place in Bowie’s catalog with his droning lead guitar playing on “Heroes,” the title track from Bowie’s 1977 album, his second collaboration with ambient/synth pioneer Brian Eno. Fripp achieved his long-sustaining notes through his “Frippertronics” analog delay system, in which two reel-to-reel recorders were used to create dense, sustaining tones.

“Heroes” - “Heroes” (1977)

6. Adrian Belew

Thanks to Brian Eno’s advice after seeing Adrian Belew onstage during a Frank Zappa concert, Bowie offered to hire Belew once the Zappa tour was finished. Belew recalled on his Facebook page how he met Bowie in Berlin during one of the shows. 

“So I walked over to David Bowie, shook his hand and said, ‘I love what you’ve done, thank you for all the music.’ And he said, ‘Great, how would you like to be in my band?’ I motioned back towards Frank and said, ‘Well, I’m kind of playing with that guy.’ David laughed and said, ‘Yes, I know, but when Frank’s tour ends my tour starts two weeks later. Shall we talk about it over dinner?’”

Later, he said, “We arrived at the restaurant, went in the front door, and who should be sitting at the very first table but Frank Zappa and the rest of the band! So the three of us sat down with Frank and the band. David, trying to be cordial, motioned to me and said, ‘Quite a guitar player you have here Frank.’

“And Frank said, ‘Fuck you, Captain Tom.’ (Note: Frank had demoted David from Major Tom to Captain Tom.)

“David persisted, ‘Oh come on now Frank, surely we can be gentleman about this?’

“Frank said, ‘Fuck you, Captain Tom.’

“By this point I was paralyzed. David said, ‘So you really have nothing to say?’ Frank said, ‘Fuck you, Captain Tom.’

“David and Coco and I got up and went back out the front door. Getting in the limo David said in his wonderfully British way, ‘I thought that went rather nicely!’ ”

“Heroes” on 1978 Tour with Adrian Belew

7. Stevie Ray Vaughan

The soon-to-be guitar hero was spotted by Bowie after Vaughan and Double Trouble performed at Montreux Jazz Festival in July 1982. Bowie tapped him to perform on his 1983 album, Let’s Dance, which produced the smash hits “China Girl” and “Let’s Dance,” both of which featured Vaughan. Bowie wanted the guitarist to join his group for the subsequent support tour, but Vaughan was reluctant to leave Double Trouble, who had just finished recording their debut, Texas Flood. He changed his mind when Bowie’s management offered to let the group open on select tour dates. When the offer was subsequently pulled, Vaughan’s manager took him off the tour, leaving Bowie to rely on his longtime guitarist Earl Slick to fill in.

“Let’s Dance” - Let’s Dance (1983)

8. Reeves Gabrels

Gabrels met Bowie in 1987 and subsequently joined forces with him in Tin Machine from 1988 to 1992. Following the group’s breakup, Gabrels continued to work with Bowie from 1995’s Outside through 1999’s ‘Hours.’ Among the best examples of Gabrels’ breakthrough guitar work can be heard on 1997’s Earthling. The album is full of his beautifully noisy guitar squawks and squeals, which at times recall the digital chatter of a 56k modem. The sound was perfect for an album awash in technological isolation, despair and paranoia.

“Little Wonder” - Earthling (1997)

9. David Torn

Torn first performed on Bowie’s 2003 album, Reality, where he was teamed up with Earl Slick. He was also featured on Bowie’s 2013 release, The Next Day, where he added some ambient guitar work that at times recalled the lush wash of sound created by Robert Fripp on 1977’s “Heroes.” “Dancing Out in Space” is representative of this. “He comes with huge amounts of equipment that he creates these aural landscapes,” producer Tony Visconti said of Torn in an interview with Rolling Stone 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.”

“Dancing Out in Space” - The Next Day (2013)

David Bowie’s death from liver cancer on January 10, 2016 - just two short days after his 69th birthday - was a shock and a blow to the world’s music lovers. 

But perhaps missed by much of the culture at large was how epic his influence was on the guitar. Bowie worked with some of rock’s most transcendent guitarists, and he gave them the space to expand their techniques, tones, and creative concepts through his music - all while maintaining their individual imprints and approaches. A stylistic chameleon of the highest order, Bowie also gave us an opportunity to hear the guitar raging unfettered in a number of musical genres, from experimental to pop, new wave to industrial, R&B to funk, and beyond.

Getting the guitar story behind all of Bowie’s artistic shifts and evolutions was a rather significant undertaking, and we can’t offer enough appreciation and thanks to the guitarists who shared their memories of recording sessions, live shows, signal paths and gear, production concepts, songwriting, and more - even as they were grieving over losing a friend, peer, collaborator, and/or mentor, and were already being barraged by the mass media. I was so grateful to reach so many Bowie guitarists and superstar producers Tony Visconti and Nile Rodgers, while Michael Ross was able to talk to David Torn, as well as get a little more “Bowie info” from Ben Monder, who he profiled before the music legend’s passing in our March issue.

As our own small tribute to David Bowie, we’d like to treat this cover story as he typically directed his many exceptional guitarists by staying out of the way and letting the players do their thing. We hope you enjoy reading how this ever-curious, buoyant, and restless artist was aided by the players he trusted to interpret his work through six strings and ecstatic tempests of glorious noises.

“He Put No Limits on His Imagination”

By Tony Visconti

My job as a producer is to always interpret the ideas of my artistes. I love challenges. I work in a very unorthodox way—I start each new album as if it is my first. No presets. No assumptions. As my productions will be heard in the future, I think in the future.

David and I always had preproduction meetings to discuss new ideas, listen to records for reference, and sketch out the outcome we wanted to achieve. I was always consulted about the choices of guitarists. We would sit down and listen to a potential guitarist, but David and I were always on the same page when it came to session musicians. Some came from him, and some came from me. Because we worked with such talented guitarists, the basic process for album sessions was to let them come up with the first idea. Then we’d start bringing the player around to the way we heard things. I’m pretty good at dictating parts and calling out the notes by name. I rarely notate, because that makes the guitarist turn down (hardy, har, har). I never touched the amp settings on any of the guitarists—except for David—but I’m pretty good at describing what I want in very specific terms. We would also record lots of alternative parts that we would edit at the mixing stage—even back in the analog days.

I worked with a lot of great guitar players during my time with David. Here are some notes about each one…

MICK RONSON

Picking the guitarist kind of set the tone for each album. It started with Mick Ronson. When his friend, drummer John Cambridge, introduced us, and we had a jam with him, The Man Who Sold the World almost wrote itself. I can’t emphasize enough how much Mick was the missing link. He was a super rock-god player, and an aficionado of Jeff Beck - who was one of our gods, too. He also could read and write music - a bonus for me.

I also remember being completely free to do whatever we wanted on The Man Who Sold the World. We never saw an A&R man during the entire recording, so we let our imaginations soar - all of us. We were David’s session players. We were a band. And we played loud! We played heroically - as if it was a live gig. Mick’s three knobs on his Marshall were usually at 10, and he used his wah pedal as variable midrange EQ.

CARLOS ALOMAR

When Mick left, the vacuum was filled by Carlos. Like Mick, he brought something extremely new and important to the next major direction. Carlos is an all-around genius player. He plays every genre really well - he is probably David’s most versatile guitarist, comfortable from funk to the avant garde - and he was always at the forefront of guitar-pedal technology. David liked the guitar playing on a demo he was sent, and he called for the guitarist to audition for the new “blue-eyed soul” record he was recording at Sigma Sound Studios in Philly. I was there the day Carlos walked in with his Gibson ES-355 and a small amp, accompanied by his wife Robin and their friend Luther Vandross. That ES-355 was wired for stereo, and each pickup always went to a separate amp with separate effects. When you hear Carlos on record, those “two” guitars you’re hearing are actually one live take. I would pan each amp to the extreme left and right, respectively.

EARL SLICK

Earl plays with the most swagger and the highest volume of all of Bowie’s guitarists. Like Ronson, he has created some very iconic guitar parts.

RICKY GARDINER

For Low, David really wanted to go “out there,” and I was working with a husband and wife duo in London, Ricky and Virginia Gardiner. Ricky was—and still is—the most adventurous guitarist I have ever worked with. He defies description. He was a resounding success for Low, and he took us to unexpected places. Bowie loved his input. Ricky would have stayed with us except for a strange illness he developed—an electromagnetic hypersensitivity allergy irritated by radio waves, microwaves, air pollution, etc. He and Virginia live in the Welsh countryside away from big cities, and Ricky still records and composes.

ROBERT FRIPP

Give Fripp a chance to plug into Brian Eno’s Synthi—the briefcase synth with the joystick—and all hell breaks loose. Mixing Heroes was no picnic. A lot of Fripp’s parts were ecstatically out of control, and a lot of it would have to be tamed with judicious comping and submixing. His choice of notes were always the ones you never expected. To watch the two well-spoken Englishmen in action was like being in an episode of The Twilight Zone.

ADRIAN BELEW

Adrian is a rock guitarist with great taste in notes, great technique, and great ideas… on acid! This is only a description - no acid was ingested on Lodger. His solo on “Boys Keep Swinging” is very bizarre, but completely accessible - very Zappa, in fact.

CHUCK HAMMER

The man showed us the first guitar synth we had ever seen and knew how to play the damn thing! We thought we were in the future the day he played the lush strings on “Ashes To Ashes.”

REEVES GABRELS

I regret that I never got to work on more than one song with Reeves. He’s a great guy, and he can play anything. For example, just when I thought I was getting something great out of him on “Safe (In This Sky Life),” David said in Reeves’ presence, “Take him out of his comfort zone. Take that Parker Fly and give him the Les Paul Junior to play,” or something like that. He played brilliantly.

MARK PLATI

Mark is so extremely talented. He plays everything on guitar well, and he’s a killer bass player, too. He had a good long run with David as a co-producer. We worked together on Reality and Toy. His guitar playing was always the right thing to do.

DAVID TORN

Dr. Ambient Guitar. He comes to the studio with a 16-space rack of some heavy-duty effects and cooks up loops on the spot. What he did on the opening track of Heathen, “Sunday,” is something completely different. I should say here that we never typecast our guitarists. For instance, with David, we once told him to turn off the ambience, and just play a rock solo that you would expect Earl Slick to be called in to do, and Torn shredded. We did this part experimentally, but mainly because we were often too impatient to wait for someone else to come the studio. If an assistant engineer was a guitarist, we’d ask him to play something if we couldn’t. This happened during The Next Day with engineer Brian Thorn from The Magic Shop studio in New York City.

GERRY LEONARD

David’s last musical director. His approach is similar to Torn’s, but Gerry is more of a rocker. He manages to add a kind of Celtic yearning in his playing.

BEN MONDER

Ben and I worked alone most of the time on Blackstar. David had a few guitar ideas he couldn’t play himself—although he did play a good deal of guitar on the album. After Ben worked with David present, we were left to add whatever I felt needed to be done. Ben definitely has his own sound—dark and ambient—and he played a couple of blistering solo parts on Blackstar, much to our delight. I look forward to working with Ben again sometime.

DAVID BOWIE

David was the type of musician who would pick up any guitar in the room and start playing cool riffy things. He came up with great hooks for his songs. Over the years, David often played a lot of riff-based lines himself, including most of the guitar on Diamond Dogs—though he did not play the “Rebel Rebel” riff. He was not a virtuoso, but his feel was so on the money. He had no problem with me tweaking his amp settings—“whatever works” worked for him. He would describe an effect, and I would come up with some plug-in alternatives, or just stick his guitar through my extensive pedals—which are mainly from Roland/Boss.

From Heathen onwards, he started to collect some cool guitars. He bought some Supros from EBay, and had them restored to new—including the electronics. He was fond of an old headless Steinberger guitar that he played on Heathen and Reality. For Blackstar, he started to make some very detailed demos at home, and he asked if I could use the guitars he recorded on a 24-track Zoom deck. For example, the heavy power chords on “Lazarus” are played by him. The bpm matched up perfectly, but I moved the parts around so they matched the playing of Donny McCaslin’s quartet. As very proficient jazz musicians, they were very complimentary about David’s playing. If David had a part he couldn’t play easily, he would delegate it to me. We had a very egoless relationship in the studio. We just did what worked.

I don’t think there will ever be anyone like David again. He put no limits on his imagination, and he recognized that in me. We were like two kids in a toy factory. I think he has made a point with Blackstar that it’s possible to make great art that will also be liked by the general public. He wasn’t about recycling rock and roll, or using analog tape, or getting a Top Ten single. He was all about art.

Jeff Beck Meets Ziggy

Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture, D.A. Pennebaker’s celebratory film of the band’s July 3, 1973 concert at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, documents the murder of Bowie’s beloved alter ego by Bowie himself (“Not only is this the last show of the tour, but it’s the last show that we’ll ever do,” he says from the stage). The film also features Jeff Beck trading solos with Mick Ronson on “Jean Genie,” a bit of “Love Me Do,” and “Round and Round”—not that anyone who saw the flick in its original theatrical release would know this. Beck asked to have his performances removed in the final cut of the film, and the alleged reasons for his action have passed into Bowie myth: He didn’t know the concert was being filmed, or he was disappointed in his solos, or he hated his clothes. Your call. However, the late Mick Ronson cast his vote for Beck’s wardrobe.

“I was too busy looking at his flares,” Ronson said in an interview about performing onstage with his personal guitar hero. “Even by our standards, those trousers were excessive.”

“Plug In, Turn Up, and Away You Go”

By Mick Ronson

David wanted to put a band together, and I happened to be there. I used Fender amps in the beginning, but for the Ziggy Stardust days, I switched to Marshalls. That’s when it started getting noisy! But, often, I wouldn’t even think of what I was plugging into. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter to me at all, as long as it works.

I remember playing on the road once with a guitar that had a cracked neck, and we got gaffer’s tape to fix the thing up. So there I was onstage playing this axe with gaffer’s tape. I don’t know how the hell I did it. If something went wrong with the guitar, I’d just ignore it. I’d sort of bash it about a bit, tune it up, and never bother with much more than that.

Ziggy was a very quick album to do - which made for great energy. You had the song down, you’d go in, record it, do a couple of overdubs, and it was done. That was the essence of it. We didn’t do too many takes.

A lot of the guitar sounds on the records were played with a Les Paul. I’d also use a CryBaby wah pedal. I’d set it on a sound and leave it like that to get a very midrange, honking tone. The rest of it was basically plugging in, turning up, and away you go. The equipment helps a little bit, but, more often than not, it’s in your own personality and your fingers.

It doesn’t matter what the public thinks about my playing, as long as I’m enjoying myself. Some people will probably think to themselves, “Why is he playing that hillbilly stuff? Why doesn’t he just go back to what he was doing?” And that is a good thing to do now and again. It’s always good if you can keep up what you’ve done in the past, as well as develop yourself in the present. You never know when you’ll want to use what you’ve learned before some time in the future. Of course, I hope everyone will like my music, but, either way, I have to keep moving on.

Quotes from the great Mick Ronson were culled from Steve Rosen’s December 1976 Guitar Player article - the only time we talked to Mick - and the 1996 BBC documentary, Hang On To Yourself.

“If It Felt Great, It Was Done”

By Earl Slick

It’s funny. When I did David Live, all I had was my ’65 Gibson SG Junior, an MXR Phase 45, and a late-’60s Marshall half-stack. That was it. I used, abused, and cast off tons of gear as my time with David continued, but my 1968 Gibson J-45 - which I bought new from a mom and pop music store in 1970 - is on every Bowie record. It’s also on [John Lennon’s] Double Fantasy. It’s just a magic piece of wood, and it feels and sounds great.

David never asked me to play certain things. It was always, “Slicky, do what you do.” And this is where part of David Bowie’s genius lies - when he picked musicians to work with, he picked them because of what they did and how they sounded. He didn’t want to turn an apple into an orange. He’d often bring in skeletons of the songs. Very rarely did he have the whole thing written. So we’d sit on a couch or on the floor and fiddle around. I’d say, “Let me hear the song.” He might want me to take one of his ideas and mess with it until I got it where he wanted it.

Slicky and the Boss during A Reality Tour, 2004

As far as my full body of work with David, Station to Station is my favorite record that I ever did with him. I’ve always loved Carlos Alomar’s playing, and we had a very good musical relationship. We played so differently that our parts interweaved like a perfectly made puzzle. I’d say that Young Americans is Carlos’ album - even though I’m on there. Station to Station, on the other hand, is me doing most of the guitars. For example, David wanted to redo “John, I’m Only Dancing,” and he asked if I could come up with a riff for it. Well, the riff I wrote was meant to freshen up an old song, but David decided to write a brand new song around it, and that song turned into “Stay.” “Golden Years” - which is my riff, as well - is a combination of two riffs that I stole from other guitar players. I adapted the main theme from Cream’s “Outside Women Blues,” and there’s also a hint of Wilson Pickett’s “Funky Broadway” in there.

When we were working on material for Station to Station, David and I would stand in front of a wall of Marshalls at the far end of the studio, with everything feeding back, and [producer] Harry Maslin looking cross-eyed and wondering, “What the f**k are these guys doing?”

We would usually track basics exclusively live until Reality. That album was done in pieces. I remember playing on the title track, and David didn’t have the key or the chords or anything, so I was running through the thing, just fiddling around trying to find out what to play. And you know what? Some of that stuff is on the record. I guess I hit a couple of sweet spots here and there while I was learning the song. That’s how loose David did things. Perfection had nothing to do with anything. If it felt great, it was done.

One of the funny things about David is that he would get so involved in what he was doing that he’d forget about some of us. I don’t mean this in a bad way at all. He was just so focused. When he started The Next Day, I didn’t know anything about it. The band was sworn to secrecy. About that time, I got in this car accident, and within the hour, it hit the web like crazy. So I get an email from David asking if I’m all right.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

An hour later, he emails, “So I guess you’re okay.”

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing? Are you busy?” This goes on for 48 hours—blah, blah, blah.

Finally, he says, “I’m making a record and you need to come down and play.”

I think he was just completely focused on making the album, then, all of a sudden, my name comes up in the news, and, bingo, I’m on the record. I’d expect nothing else from him. If he acted normal, I probably wouldn’t have lasted with him for so long.

I had a chance to work with Mick Ronson when he produced the demos for my first album in 1976 [Earl Slick Band]. He didn’t get the nod to produce the actual release - which is a shame - because Capitol Records didn’t think he had the experience. They didn’t know all the arranging and producing he had done with Bowie and for Lou Reed’s Transformer. Mick was great at “hearing” the end of the song almost before you did the beginning. He could envision what a song could be even in an extremely raw form. He was such a great arranger. I loved Mick to death. We were good old drinking buddies.

Mick was probably one of the few guitar players I’ve heard who could come across with that angst and aggression, but be melodic at the same time. He wasn’t a wanking player, either. Every note Mick played meant something. Out of every guitar player that David ever had, I think Mick Ronson is better than all of us put together. 

“He Was Always Curious About the Way I’d Come Up with Crazy Arrangements”

By Carlos Alomar

Young Americans was actually my second collaboration with David Bowie. I was 23 years old and working at RCA Studios as their in-house guitarist, and I was contracted to work on a session he was producing for the British singer Lulu. We hung out together. We went to the Apollo theater and other nightclubs, and we just had a great time. He’d come to my house for dinner and we’d exchange R&B and rock and roll stories. Later, he called me to do the Diamond Dogs album, but I was unavailable, as I was touring with the Main Ingredient (“Everybody Plays the Fool”), and that’s when he got Earl Slick.

Ultimately, David asked if I would do the Philly album - Young Americans - and he said we’d really have a good time at Sigma Sound. At this point, I really wanted to work with him, but as I was married, he’d have to match my price. We negotiated, and I left the Main Ingredient and I went with David. (Here’s a little-known fact: I was to be Luther Vandross’ bandleader - which we had dreamed about since we met in our teens. But we never realized our dream, because I decided to tour with David.)

For the next album, in order to achieve the rock/funk/electronic hybrid David was looking for on Station to Station, I knew that the rhythm section had to change [The main Young Americans rhythm section was Andy Newmark on drums and Willy Weeks on bass]. I really wanted to use Dennis Davis and George Murray. I had already worked with Dennis in Roy Ayres Ubiquity, so I knew what he could do, and George Murray played the most melodic bass lines I’d ever heard. David was delighted with this arrangement, because we were able to immediately create two styles that were basically mixed into being one. We were also able to flip the beat around, and hold down the slow, dredging tempo. Plus, I found out from the Musicians Union that, because of disco music, if a song is over four minutes long, you can get extra money. So I made the introduction super long for this reason. David and I would laugh about this for years to come, as that song was about ten minutes long!

Earl Slick’s power and expression is always reminiscent of the great rock and roll power players. When Slicky came in to do his part for “Station to Station,” his challenge was to hold feedback notes for a ridiculously long time. I helped him with the chordal transitions, and I thought it worked out great, as Slick and I always complement each other. He’s lead, I’m rhythm, and I can clearly state for the record that, although I play lead as a melodic expression sometimes, my heart and soul truly lie in the path laid before me as a rhythm guitarist. It’s like, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.

Obviously, I was able to work with a lot of David’s guitar players, but here’s another little-known fact: I have never met Robert Fripp or Chuck Hammer, as they did overdub sessions. It’s regrettable, because I am a big fan of both of them - Robert Fripp because of his innovative techniques and the ways that he looks at the fretboard, and, of course, Chuck Hammer because of his work with his synthesizer guitar. Ricky Gardiner is a lovely, sensitive man. I enjoyed my time with him immensely. His technique is extremely melodic - almost like a vocalist would sing. Adrian Belew is a hammering monster and his whammy bar technique is unequaled. I cannot say enough about Reeves Gabrels’ musical expression. Not only does he have awesome chops, his innovative use of pedals and effects illustrate his total mastery of his sonic palette. Peter Frampton is indeed the Rock God that everyone claims. He understands rock, blues, jazz, and tone, and he can play endlessly without ever repeating a line.

Needless to say, I learned a lot from their techniques. Thanks, fellas!

My stereo Alembic guitar, “Maverick,” was my inspiration for all my Bowie sessions and touring. It was made for my hands, and it allowed me to play effortlessly, and joyously create my arrangements. I have never used it for anything other than David Bowie music. David always gave me free range, and he was always curious about the way I’d come up with crazy arrangements and alternate chording and rhythms. He never really addressed his musical or stylistic evolutions with me. He simply understood that I could change and be the chameleon he knew I could be. I feel that our friendship, fellowship, and camaraderie helped guide things. There’s a certain comfort we shared that allowed David to feel that everything would be all right. So much so, that he became my next-door neighbor.

As musical director for David, I paid personal attention to the musicians to make sure they were having a good time and felt comfortable. Also, I didn’t tell them exactly what to play. I liked to say, “It would be like having Jimi Hendrix as a guitar player and telling him what to play. That’s not a good idea, as it breaks the musical flow and would not allow him to express himself within David Bowie’s music.” Anyway, David would later tweak their performances according to his needs. My rules were very simple: Play it like you wrote it, be yourself, and have fun.

Overall, it is extremely important for musicians to listen to each other. There is a big difference between overplaying and listening for the holes. Create that groove, lay that pocket down heavy, and don’t fill it up. If you can’t create a good song with just four instruments, then maybe it’s not a good song. No additional production is going to make it any better. My methodology is simple: Write the song, decide on an arrangement, start the production, and respect each other.

FRAMPTON’S COMEBACK

Peter Frampton declined to do a new interview for this article, but armed with his Suhr guitars, he was a rocking presence on 1987’s Never Let Me Down and the massively theatrical Glass Spider Tour - exposure that couldn’t have come at a better time for him. “The ’80s were a difficult period for me,” Frampton told Eric R. Danton of mmusicmag.com in 2012. “It was my dear friend David Bowie who got me out on the road and reintroduced me as a guitar player around the world. I can never thank him enough for believing in me.” In 1987, Frampton gave journalist Steve Newton a peek into the studio process for Never Let Me Down. “The most frustrating thing about doing sessions for other people is when they don’t know what they want,” he said. “David is the first person I’ve worked with who has a picture of exactly the way he wants it to go. If I was slightly off the direction he wanted, he’d just get his demos out and play them for me.”

“The Tape Would Start Rolling, and I’d Take It from There”

By Ricky Gardiner

David phoned me about coming over to Paris to play lead guitar on his latest album. I had just finished touring for many years with Beggars Opera [a progressive rock band Gardiner founded in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1969], so I readily agreed. By that time, I had been playing professionally - meaning “for money” - for 15 years, ranging from the music of Henry Mancini to Hank Williams. Back then, my own preference, with regard to guitarists, was Hank Marvin. He had immaculate timing, and I used to play most of his recordings after school. First, on an old acoustic, and then on a Futurama III - which was basically a Stratocaster copy with the advantage of independent pickup selection. In all other respects, it was inferior to the Strat.

When I eventually got my Stratocaster, it had an alder body (which is brighter than ash) and a one-piece birdseye maple neck. These attributes contributed to a lightness and brightness that allowed a singer’s voice to emerge in a performance or mix. This really mattered if one was playing in larger ensembles - as I occasionally did - where brass instrumentalists took solos. I played the Stratocaster on the Low sessions, and a young Seymour Duncan - he worked in London at the time - had sorted out the difficulties I had been having with the tremolo arm bending and breaking, together with the humming from the single-coil pickups. While he was at it, he added a midrange boost and toggle switches for each pickup.

During the sessions David and Tony [Visconti, producer] left me to it - although David sang the first few notes of what he wanted in “Always Crashing in the Same Car.” Tony would start the tape rolling, and I would take it from there. I tracked both live with the band, and on overdubs, and I thought Tony did well getting a clear sound out of the very small amplifier that was available to me. I was used to stacks and the like.

I wasn’t there from the start, so I don’t know if there were any pre-production talks about Bowie’s musical direction and stylistic shift - which happened mostly on side two, in which I did not take part. It was business as usual for me. I played the songs as they came along, together and separately with Carlos [Alomar], who is an innately musical person. He approaches a work with a view to practically solving that which he encounters, in a definite way, and consistent with his experience, abilities, and technique. Carlos and I explored many subjects, but guitar playing was not one of them.

Guitars and the musical life that follows have changed a lot over the years - mostly for the better. For example, when I started playing guitar in 1959, actions were very high, strings were only heavy gauge, and gigs were long. But the only gigs we did for free were for charity, or at a party. We needed a broad repertoire, which was good training. The advent of the long guitar solo - up to half an hour - was also good training. After all, a solo is nothing more than spontaneous composition. 

“He Was An Easy Person to Collaborate With”

By Adrian Belew

Right Track Recording was on a typically worn-down part of 48th street in Manhattan. From the outside, it could have been a shoe repair shop. It was there on a cold night in January 1990, I found myself standing on one side of an AKG C-24 microphone, headphones on, and about to sing the first verse of a song called “Pretty Pink Rose” [from Belew’s solo album, Young Lions, released in 1990 while he was guitarist and musical director for Bowie’s Sound + Vision tour]. On the other side of the microphone was another singer with his headphones on. It was at that very moment my mind and body chose to fully realize I was about to sing a duet with David Bowie! Blood rushed to my face like an acute case of embarrassment. I felt flushed and momentarily uncertain how to make my voice sound. The long lead-in to the track began, and, suddenly, David launched into his first line. I followed. It didn’t take long before we had the song complete, and we began working out an idea for backing vocals (“Take me to the heart, to the heart…”). Phew! I did it. For me, David was an easy person to collaborate with. If he liked something, he would be very encouraging - even excited. If he didn’t like an idea, he would calmly start out saying, “I’m not quite sure...” There was no sense of pressure, and, usually, a good dose of humor. We had fun together. After completing the “Pretty Pink Rose” vocals, I had the engineer put up another untitled track I had recently recorded. The idea was for David to write words, and perhaps record a vocal. I was very hopeful it would work out, and did it ever! To my amazement, David sat on the studio couch with a yellow legal pad, listening to the track over and over. Sometimes, he’d instruct the engineer to go back to a certain section, and then he’d busily scribble away. In just 30 minutes, he had written the words for “Gunman”  - our second collaboration. He allowed me to “produce” his performance. At one point, I asked if he would mind talking through the lyrics. It was probably an uncomfortable idea, but he gracefully gave me two takes. “Graceful” is a term I would use for everything to do with David Bowie.

I toured the world with David two times and about a decade apart. On the first go-round in 1978, my guitar rig was a model of simplicity - a pedalboard with a single row of eight off/on switches that controlled whatever boxes I patched into a mixer. The stompboxes were an MXR Dyna Comp, A/DA Flanger, Electro-Harmonix Echo Flanger, an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff run through an MXR 10-band Graphic EQ, Electro-Harmonix Graphic Fuzz, and a Roland DC-30 Analog Chorus/Echo. I had one battered Fender Stratocaster that I played through a Roland JC-120 amp.

In 1990, I did the second, much bigger Sound + Vision Tour that included 108 shows in 27 countries. By that time, my guitar set up was housed in a rack the size of a refrigerator weighing 500 pounds - and there was a duplicate rack, as well. The stage was a completely flat 60’ by 60’ metal grid. My MIDIgator pedalboard was flushed mounted into the stage, and my two Fender Twin amps and monitor cabinets were hung beneath the stage and facing up at me. Each “refrigerator” contained massive amounts of MIDI gear that included Roland GR-50 synthesizers and Korg AC3 multi-effects processors as the main ingredients. I had a bespoke box that housed many of my older stompboxes, including a Foxx Tone Machine and some of the Electro-Harmonix gear. I played three Fender Custom Shop Stratocasters with Lace Sensor pickups, Kahler tremolos, Bowen locking tuners, Roland synth pickups, custom finishes, and a ridiculously long MIDI cable that could stretch the width and depth of the stage.

Only David and I were allowed on the huge stage. The band was closeted off in a back corner behind an opera scrim. On our first night of the tour in Quebec, during one of my lengthy guitar solos while David stood in the middle of the stage watching, I ran from one side to the other back and forth like a good show-off rock guitarist is supposed to do. Only when I stopped did I realize I had roped David legs together with my ridiculous MIDI cable. He introduced me then as the “Fred Astaire of electric guitar.”

I’d like to think that playfulness and a boy-like spirit is what I brought to the Bowie shows. As I said, we had a lot of laughs. On his records, I was more than willing to be adventurous, which is what he wanted. He never instructed me, but instead gave me free rein to go wild. David Bowie was free-spirited, intellectually curious, utterly unique, and wealthy and superstar famous, yet down to earth to those around him. He was an incredible person to know. I am a lucky boy.

“He Pushed Me to Never Hold Back”

By Reeves Gabrels

In the best possible way, my role never seemed clearly defined. It was co-writer, co-producer, confidant, and, of course, guitarist. Being art-school boys, David and I settled into a conspiratorial friendship early. Throughout the following 13 years and the 40+ songs we wrote together, the studio was our Buckminster Fuller sandbox - our safe place to create where time stopped and art was made. There was no careerism - or attention to a “marketplace” - but, instead, a desire to tell a story and to leave a trail of good work. During our time together - contrary to the conventional view of David as a calculated manipulator of image - we felt more kinship with various art movements (the Beats, Fluxus, German Expressionism, the Constructivists, etc.) than we did any competition with the music being made around us. The big lesson we took from these various art movements was the concept of the “manifesto” - the idea of what we wanted the music to be, which was as much defined by what we would not do, as it was by what we could do.

What would always happen in the space between the end of a tour and the point where he and I would get together to start “making stuff,” is that, in the time apart, we would individually and separately discover different things. For example, between Tin Machine and Outside, I got bitten by the industrial-music bug, and sent him NIN, Pigface, and Ministry. Before we began Outside, he was sending me drum & bass cassettes (Roni Size, Goldie). Before Earthling, we both stumbled across Photek, Squarepusher, and Underworld, and we pushed those influences through our brains/ears/filters.

My involvement as co-writer and co-producer meant I was also trying to get the sounds to - as Vernon Reid once said to me - “shake hands with the songs.” That, in turn, played a major role in the guitars I played, the gear I used, and how I used it. Here are some highlights…

TIN MACHINE

In 1988, I went to David’s house in Switzerland for a weekend. I ended up staying for a month. We realized we both had been listening to similar things: Glenn Branca, John Coltrane, Hendrix, Cream, Led Zeppelin bootlegs, Stravinsky, Miles, the throat singers of Tuva. Freaky. Manifesto in place, we began recording at Mountain Studios, Montreux, Switzerland in earnest - a song a day, top to bottom - and we knew we were making a snotty, f**k you rock album. I adjusted my gear accordingly: Steinberger GL-2T (on every track), 1962 Stratocaster (that Marc Bolan had given David, which I found in a flight case in David’s basement), 1963 refinished Stratocaster (used on half the album’s solos), 1956 refinished Les Paul Junior, 1962 Gretsch Nashville, and a Gibson SG that had belonged to Angus Young.

I ran four amps at all times - a plexi Marshall and 4x12 (David claimed it had been one of Mick Ronson’s spares - I also found this in David’s basement), Mesa/Boogie Mark III (the same amp Brian May used on Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”), Vox AC30, Fender Princeton. Effects included a Chandler Tube Driver, Dunlop Fuzz Wah (with Roger Mayer upgrade), Ibanez HD1500 Harmonizer/Delay, Ibanez UE405 Multi Effects, and a Pro Co Big Box Rat.

BLACK TIE WHITE NOISE

After Tin Machine disbanded, David decided to do a “Let’s Dance, Part 2” with Nile Rodgers, and he was recording a song I had originally written for Tin Machine entitled “You’ve Been Around.” I went to the studio with my live rig for the scheduled two-day session for my parts, and I had a little chat with Nile about how to record my amps. He insisted that I record direct using a rackmount ART guitar preamp. I resisted. Unless I was playing clean parts, I felt my rig was the way to go. We miked up my stuff, and I reluctantly agreed to try the ART unit the next day. Well, for the next two days, Nile did not come to the studio. Oops. So I tracked using my amps with David and engineer Richard Hilton, and I had a great time with David, as usual.

I played on “You’ve Been Around,” did wah and power chords on “I Feel Free” (which Mick Ronson did the solo on), and wah on “Nite Flights.” Sadly, I am only credited with guitar on “You’ve Been Around,” which was disappointing, as Mick was such a huge hero and influence, and the fan boy in me just wanted to have proof I was on a track with Mick Ronson. And so it goes...

OUTSIDE

It was March 1994, and in the days of faxes, David, and Brian Eno, and I were continually faxing back and forth regarding the “what if’s” and “how’s” of the record that would become Outside. We went into the studio with written songs, a lot of pure improvisation, and three pieces where Eno wrote out sci-fi scenarios to influence the improvisations. At the end of five weeks, we ended with what I think of as a two-hour, double-album “improvised opera.”

I knew I would need a versatile rig for all of this improvisation. I had been good friends with genius guitar maker Ken Parker for years, beta testing his designs (“Here, Reeves, take this and see if you can break it”). So I took one guitar - a white, tremolo- equipped Parker Fly Deluxe with a piezo bridge. The electric pickups were plugged into a Mesa/Boogie TriAxis, Mesa/Boogie 2:90 stereo power amp, two Mesa/Boogie 1x12 speaker cabinets, DigiTech IPS-33B, Eventide H3500, Rat distortion, MXR Phase 90, Roger Mayer Axis Fuzz, Dunlop wah, DigiTech DL-8, Univox Unitron 5 Envelope Filter, Electro-Harmonix Frequency Analyzer (that once belonged to Jake E. Lee), and Fulltone DejaVibe (serial number 003).

 The Parker’s piezo pickup was routed to a Prescription Electronics Experience Fuzz, DigiTech DL-8, DigiTech Whammy (after the DL-8 looper so that I could change the pitch of the loops), a DigiTech IPS-33B, and everything running in stereo to two Fishman acoustic-guitar amps. Of course, the whole rig was operational and ready at all times. For example, while tracking live, there are instances where you’d hear a mangled electric-guitar loop, and, then an acoustic guitar sound would suddenly appear over the electric loop. I have to thank my guitar tech at the time, Andy Spray, for helping to “make it so.”

It is also important to note that this record was done before we had Pro Tools. All we had was a 48-track Sony digital machine, a Studer 24-track deck, a half-inch stereo reel-to-reel, and a razor blade - amazing in its comparative primitiveness now; state of the art then.

The key to knowing which of the Outside songs were generated in which manner is in the writing credits. If there are six writers, it was improvised - such as “The Hearts Filthy Lesson.” Less writers than that means the piece was written in advance of hitting Record - “The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (as Beauty),” for example. This was DB at his finest Miles Davis/art director approach - getting a bunch of highly capable players together (each with their own evolved vocabulary), and letting them react to stimuli. Unfortunately, when it came time to get a record deal, the business people wanted a hit single and a single disc. For a long time, I couldn’t listen to the album, because what it became was not it was intended to be.

THE ROLAND VG-8

The Outside tour started in late August 1995, and in April 1996, the production manager and the “counters of the beans” asked that we cut back on gear. It was suggested that I use a pedalboard and a hired backline. Instead, I decided to use the new Roland VG-8 and S-1 upgrade card that allowed for altered tunings and Whammy-pedal-style effects. In the meantime, Ken Parker built me a Fly Deluxe with a single Roland hex pickup. As a result, several reviewers decided that I was miming my part because my guitar didn’t have any visible pickups on it. That was hysterical. Then, while touring Japan, Japanese guitarist Hotei gave me one of his signature Fernandes guitars for my birthday. Suddenly, I had the perfect combination for where I was at back then - a Sustainer- equipped guitar and the VG-8.

EARTHLING

This was my favorite album and tour of anything I did with David. Before going into the studio to work on this album, we had seen Prodigy, Massive Attack, and Tricky at the festivals, and the combination of elements in their music impressed us. I had been writing on my laptop with a small Yamaha General MIDI synth, so I had the early crumbs of what became several songs on Earthling, and the Roland VG-8 let me get away from traditional guitar tones. I could sound like an Akai sample of a guitar, but actually play guitar.

We booked Philip Glass’ Looking Glass Studio in New York, and by good fortune got Mark Plati as our engineer. Mark and I fell in love right away. He loaded my scraps into the computer, and David and I would jam out chord ideas against the tracks I had started. We would sit around one mic with two small Fernandes Elephant guitars that had built-in speakers. One of the fun sounds - and you can hear it on “Dead Man Walking” - is the natural phasing from our strumming hands waving over the onboard speakers. It became clear that the three of us - DB, Mark, and I - were writing and co-producing the album. By the time we were done, I ended up co-writing seven of the nine tracks - one of which, the aforementioned “Dead Man Walking,” earned a Grammy nomination in 1997 for Best Rock Song.

“The Last Thing You Should Do” was written by Mark and me using the process we came to call “obtainium.” We would look through other tracks and find bits and pieces of ideas gone wrong and make something new from them. I even made a 45-minute DAT tape of me playing all kinds of stuff on my rig. If we needed a guitar hook, we loaded my ideas into an Akai sampler and I played them from a keyboard. The guitar stuff was all done with an unfinished mahogany Parker Nitefly - called “Brown Dog” - that become an art project. If someone threw a bracelet or ring onstage, I would inlay it into the raw wood. It was my main guitar for years - always changing as I stuck more sh*t to it - and it’s the one I’m holding on the cover of the June 1997 issue of Guitar Player.

‘HOURS...’

When we started writing this album in 1998, David’s idea was, since we had been at it for ten years at that point, we should consider all the songwriting as a co-write and the production as a co-production. My mind was blown.

We debated quite a bit about direction. I wanted it to be like Earthling 2.0, and David wanted something different - something I assessed as more of a singer/songwriter album. So, once again, I adapted my guitar gear and approach to suit. This was about real amps for the most part, along with vintage pedals and vintage guitars. I had 1956 and 1957 Les Paul Juniors, a 1960 Les Paul Custom, an ’80s Les Paul Custom, a mid- ’60s Gibson Trini Lopez, a 1963 Stratocaster, and a 1966 Telecaster. I also used a sparkle-pink PRS with P90s and a Parker Fly “Brown Dog” with Sustainer and hex pickups. Acoustics were a Gibson Hummingbird, a Martin D-28, and a Takamine 12-string. The amps were an old Gibson Skylark, a Mesa/Boogie Heartbreaker, a plexi Marshall, a Vox AC30, and a Fender Princeton. One thing I did with the Princeton was mic it up, and then on multiple inputs combine the miked sound with an Amp Farm Princeton, a Roland VG model of a Princeton, and a Tech 21 SansAmp “small Fender” setting. I just wanted to see if I could make the “World’s Biggest Princeton” and spread it across the stereo field.

ONWARD…

It was a dream come true that I found myself standing next to one of the world’s greatest singers and frontmen. This allowed me to push myself and the music without any worry of overshadowing the singer, because, to state the obvious, no one could beat DB. David was a force of nature. I loved that man, and I loved the times we had. He gave me the greatest gift - the confidence to be myself as a musician and as a man and to never hold back. I am proud to say he was my friend.

David never told me what to play, but he did enjoy pushing me out of my comfort zone. For example, I didn’t think that “Looking for Satellites” from Earthling needed a guitar solo. His solution was to say, “Okay. Play only thirty-second-notes and stay on one string per chord change. Stop when you get to the chorus.” I was so bugged that I was being made to play a solo that I did what he asked, but I blasted through the verse and continued through the chorus to the end of the song. One take. It is now one of my favorite solos.

I hope that David is remembered as a real person and as an artist, and that he is not turned into a once-upon-time symbol of controversy by the media - a saucy sound bite by the tabloids, or a silkscreen on a t-shirt worn by baby boomers and hipsters alike trying to create the appearance of cool without ever looking below the surface.

It would be wonderful if music fans took this opportunity to listen. Now is the time to go deep. His life’s work is waiting there to be heard - as well as the contributions of all of us that he championed.

ROBERT FRIPP IS MIA

Yes. There is no new Robert Fripp interview in this cover story. There’s also no old Fripp interview. It’s somewhat baffling that Mr. Fripp was intervi - but nothing exists from Fripp’s own mouth about his work on Heroes and/or Scary Monsters. 

“He Had a Deep Interest in Experimental Guitar Textures”

By Chuck Hammer

I met David Bowie In October 1979, while on tour with Lou Reed in London. During that tour, I was using a Roland GR-500 guitar synth as my main instrument. David attended one of Lou’s concerts at the Hammersmith Odeon and expressed interest in working together. In late 1978 through 1979, I had been recording experimental tapes with the idea of layering sustained guitar tracks to build up textures. I referred to this idea of multitrack layering as “guitarchitecture.” The core idea was to extend the guitars sonic vocabulary. Soon after meeting David, I sent him a cassette with four experimental guitarchitecture tracks. A few weeks later, I received a phone call from David’s assistant asking if I would be interested in working on David’s next album, Scary Monsters, which was to be recorded at the Power Station in New York City during February and March 1980.

RECORDING “ASHES TO ASHES”

Chuck Hammer

The session was done privately with just David, Tony Visconti, an assistant tape op, and myself in the studio. Throughout the session, David and Tony were intensely focused. Upon entering the control room, David mentioned that he had listened to the earlier cassette tape extensively. They began the session by playing the basic track that would eventually become “Ashes To Ashes.” The submix they chose to play was a sparse basic instrumental track containing only bass, drums, rhythm guitar, and a minimal keyboard without vocals. Because this basic track was intentionally sparse and open, it allowed room to imagine adding a wide range of possible guitar textures.

After listening to the initial playback, neither David nor Tony said anything, politely waiting for my reaction. I noticed a few similarities to one of the experimental tracks from my cassette tape as a reference point. Certain sections within David’s basic track seemed like they could be developed with layered guitar-synth textures. Those sections would later turn out to be the vocal chorus sections of “Ashes To Ashes.” As mentioned, there were no vocals on the submix track at the time - or at least David chose to not let me hear any vocals as reference.

I suggested that we try to multitrack the GR-500 as a textured guitar choir with stacked, sustained chord inversions. David was very open to the idea, and he simply nodded his head in agreement. They had already prepared a basic chord chart for the song. I began to overdub a series of four discreet stereo tracks of layered chord inversions with the GR-500. Each layered track of chord inversions was voiced as widely as possible across the fretboard, and each pass was recorded with slightly different tape echo, Harmonizer, and GR-500 settings. As the sustained tracks were being built up, they began to sound like a guitar choir. Between takes, both David and Tony walked into the main studio from the control room. Tony made a few tonal adjustments to the Roland JC-120 amp settings prior to each take. I recorded a few additional takes with different GR-500 parameters, running the song down from end to end.

Both Tony and David tended to work quickly, and they committed to ideas early in the process. During the second playback, for example, Tony had already subgrouped the guitar-synth tracks on the studio’s Neve console so that he could test a fade across all of the guitar tracks simultaneously, treating it as a unified guitar choir. I was stunned when I heard the playback. It was an ethereal wall of guitar texture that none of us had ever heard before. We all looked at each other realizing that we had something very solid on the tracks.

TRACKING “TEENAGE WILDLIFE”

The second song we recorded was “Teenage Wildlife,” and it was much more complex. During the initial playback, I was again given a very sparse and open basic track without guide vocals. The chart for this song was complex in terms of containing multiple song sections. Tony suggested that we actually record each section separately - like a suite - using different GR-500 and Harmonizer tones. Their basic track already had a solid chordal presence, so I began to build up layers of single-note lines using the GR-500 set to Solo Mode. Robert Fripp also appears on the track in a major way, but, at the time, his tracks were not played or mentioned. It was a bit of a clever production strategy on their behalf, as they simply left it open for me to build as much density in the lines as I wanted. Because I had no idea that Robert’s brilliant tracks would also be in there, I just kept developing and layering the lines as we worked through the discrete song sections. Tony made extensive Harmonizer adjustments about three quarters of the way through the song where he wanted more density. He was deeply involved in guiding me through each section. Eventually, they mixed our guitar tracks together varying the density of the layers - like a small guitar orchestra - depending on how thick they wanted it to sound for each section.

THE SIGNAL PATH

For both “Ashes to Ashes” and “Teenage Wildlife,” my rig was as follows: 1977 Roland GR-500 Guitar Synthesizer (GS- 500 Controller with GR-500 module) into Roland RE-501 Chorus Echo Tape Delay (only tape echo engaged) into Eventide Harmonizer (set to full-octave up, 20-percent Regeneration, 20-percent Harmonizer mix blended under main tone) and out to a 1978 Roland JC-120 combo (no overdrive, no reverb, and no other pedals). The tracks were recorded in stereo to a Studer 24-track tape deck.

SOME NOTES ON THE GR-500

It’s worth noting that, although the GR-500 had a huge analog tone and a unique sustain technology, it’s intermittent tracking made it notoriously difficult to play. As a guitarist, this really forced me to rethink and modify my technique - making me think more as a composer in terms of layers and stacking textures rather than linear lines.

Let me elaborate on the GR-500’s simple- but-effective infinite sustain system: The frets in the GR-500 are connected to its electrical ground. When a player fretted a string, an electric current passed through the string. The electric signal passing through the string is a greatly amplified version of the string signal detected by the divided hexaphonic pickup. Large magnets replaced the traditional “neck pickup.” As a result of Fleming’s Law, the alternating electric current in the string passing through the strong magnetic field caused the string to vibrate and create a feedback loop and infinite sustain. The GS-500 used a bridge with plastic saddles to electrically isolate each string.

INSIGHTS & INSPIRATION

Bowie’s Scary Monsters arrived at a point in his discography that was very experimental. It was the first record he made after his trilogy of albums with Brian Eno, and Bowie asked me to step in and extend those sonic directions to the guitar tracks. The layered GR-500 tracks on Scary Monsters were the first use of guitar synthesis within Bowie’s catalog.

Although David was highly organized during the recording sessions, he was very open to experimenting. One of the first things he did during the “Ashes To Ashes” session was to walk into the main studio room where my gear was set up, and ask me to show him the range of tones that I was able to achieve. Experimenting with new tones and textures had become a hallmark of his recorded work - it was almost a prerequisite - and Bowie had a deep interest in new sonic terrains and experimental guitar textures. He also had a deeply keen understanding of how these tones could work within the wider context of his own music. One of the key insights I gained from working with Bowie on Scary Monsters was to always follow your own instincts and your own sonic language.

Because Bowie’s recordings were so widely listened to, it was not necessary for much verbal direction. Scary Monsters was one of the albums where all the ideas he had been developing on the previous three albums were extended into something new. The sense of sonic exploration and the high quality of the previous work was the inspiration.

David was an extremely polite person, and he went out of his way before, during, and even after the recordings to accommodate anything I might need - including giving me a listen to a pre-release, vinyl test pressing of “Ashes To Ashes.”

Finally, when you have musicians at the level of Carlos Alomar, Carmine Rojas, and Dennis Davis at the heart of a basic track, their musicianship brings the recording up to such a high level that it becomes essential to reach for something new in your own playing - something beyond what you might normally play. Otherwise, quite simply, your own track won’t cut it. 

“I Was Basically Free to Do What I Wanted”

By Stevie Ray Vaughan

The entire recording experience of Let’s Dance helped a whole bunch, and in a lot of ways. I learned a lot about playing - particularly in terms of recording techniques - and about business. It was real fun doing the record, trying to see where my style would fit in. It was a pretty open thing, and more an experience of looking at music in different ways - of looking at big arrangements and fitting the parts in. I learned a lot about how songs are built. But the Bowie sessions were easy, because I was basically free to do what I wanted.

From what I understand, Bowie was looking for somebody who played this style anyway, and I was the one he picked. Most of the time, he just told me to plug in and play. He’d say, “Plug that blue guitar in!” I cranked it all the way up, and other effects were added later.

Nile Rodgers and David gave me some input on what needed to be done, but it was real relaxed. Most of the songs were cut in one or two takes. There was no worrying over the parts. I probably played only two or so hours over the three days it took to do the thing.

Quotes pulled from Bruce Nixon’s interview in the August 1983 issue of GP.

PETE GETS CRANKY

David Bowie and Tony Visconti had a grumpy guest star in the house when Pete Townshend was invited to play guitar on “Because You’re Young” during the 1980 sessions for Scary Monsters. Visconti remembered Townshend being in a “foul, laconic” state who barked “Chords? What kind of chords?” when asked by Bowie to play his signature rhythm-guitar style on the track. Visconti bravely answered, “Er, Pete Townshend chords,” to which the Who mastermind calmly responded, “Oh, windmills.”

“David Didn’t Hold Back From Giving Me Truth”

By Nile Rodgers

My personal technique of producing - no matter who it is - is to focus on the artist’s direction first, and what I’m supposed to achieve. I lock down the “DHM” - what my partner Bernard Edwards [Chic bassist and coproducer] would call the “Deep Hidden Meaning.” Once I know what the song is really trying to say, then I switch from that super-focused guy, and I become like an entertainer. I’m trying to have fun, to be your coach and your rooting section, and make you feel comfortable. So David would have an idea of what he wanted, and then it would be my responsibility to make sure we got that.

I always record live in the studio, and David would sing a scratch vocal, or he’d have an idea of the song that he’d talk us through. Every now and then, he would do something very funny. In those days, he’d have a little cassette recorder, and he’d play the tape while the band was playing. He’d say, “I heard this while I was walking down the street,” or “I started singing this thing to the groove in the background -listen to what it sounds like.” He used to kill me with that. It was amazing. When I was younger, I had these brilliant music teachers, and they would say things like, “Art is all around us. You just have to look for it.” And David Bowie was always looking for it. He just seemed to see it and hear it. It was like, “Okay, now let me share it with you guys.” He was an extraordinary man - a great artist.

Everybody’s performances on Let’s Dance were basically one take - including Stevie Ray Vaughan’s solos. Let’s Dance was the easiest record of my entire career - 17 days from start to finish. David did all of his vocals in less than two full days, and Stevie Ray Vaughan did all of his guitar solos in a day and a half. We walked out on day 17 and never touched the record again.

This was possible for a couple of reasons. He didn’t have a record deal, so he did Let’s Dance purely on his own. He also did some cover tunes, rather than write everything himself. And I think he was coming off an odd period in his life, and he wanted to trust me. I said, “Hey David, let me do the arrangements,” and I changed everything. There’s nothing he gave me that appeared the way it was when he submitted it to me. That’s why we went so fast. Most of the time, he wasn’t even in the studio with me. He was in a lounge watching television. He’d come out and go, “Wow, that’s great,” or he’d criticize something and we’d change it. Everything he heard, he heard with fresh ears.

For example, when I came up with the riff for “China Girl,” I thought I was going to get fired because it was so corny. I played it for him by myself, and I said, “David, the reason why I’m doing this is because this song doesn’t have a hook. It doesn’t sound like a hit, and you told me you wanted to have an album with hits, so let me put this hook in.” Happily, he said, “I think it’s fantastic.”

I also changed “Cat People” from the dirge-like version he had done with Giorgio Moroder [for the film of the same name]. I said, “David, what if you sing it exactly that dirge way, but the band plays double time, and then I play jazz-type guitar -double-stops with thirds?” We made it into a rocker. He trusted me to do that stuff.

We had so much fun, and Stevie became my best friend for life. The look on his face when he first walked into the control room and heard “Let’s Dance” was like, “Oh my god - I’m experiencing something important and magical. What do I do? How do I fit in on this thing? I have to get out of their way, and just add spice.” I didn’t have to tell him anything. He instinctively knew his role was like, “The meal is fantastic - now here’s the dessert.” And, bang, he nailed it. We couldn’t believe how quickly he would whip through those solos. He could just hear the music, feel it, and understand we were all supporting David Bowie. We were making David’s pop record.

And I’ll tell you, he didn’t know anyone in the band except for me and David, but he knew they were my friends. He wanted to bond with them so that he’d be accepted as family, too. He also knew we were making Let’s Dance like a black record. White bands would book the studio for months and months, but black records only got a few hours. We’d work an eight-hour shift because we had lower budgets than rock albums. So we would order our food at the beginning of the day, so that it was here when we took a break for lunch. We’d eat and - boom - back to work. Stevie saw we were doing that, and he called Sam’s BBQ in Austin, Texas, to order our lunch for the day he came in. We didn’t know this, so we started our lunch order, and Stevie said, “Y’all, I got lunch today.” The next thing you know, all this BBQ came in. I was like, “Check this dude out. He’s right up on the vibe.” And from that moment, Stevie and I became like brothers.

When David called me to do Black Tie White Noise, I was thrilled to work with Mick Ronson - a bit of hero worship for me. I dug his playing for so long, and now I get to become his coach. How cool is that? He was really easy to work with, and we got what David wanted. The album itself was a whole different mindset from the compositions on Let’s Dance. This was originally music that was going to be played at his wedding. He was very aware of his own life - his past and the journey he’d taken to get to where he was. He would talk about his fear of death, his brother committing suicide, and other things. So in those kinds of intimate situations, you get truth, and David didn’t hold back from giving me truth. For a producer, these relationships are incredibly special. 

“He Really Wanted What You Had to Offer”

By Mark Plati

David decided he wanted to play Low in its entirety on the 2002 Heathen tour, and, as musical director, it was my job to arrange its presentation for the stage - as well as helping with the set list, running the rehearsals, making sure everyone had charts or the necessary gear, cueing endings and transitions during the show, and so on. As Low was such a dense record, I decided the most accurate and expeditious way to figure out how to represent it live would be to get the original multitrack masters and transfer them into a DAW. Then, I could isolate individual tracks and decide how to divide up parts based on each guitarist’s style, technique, and use of effects. In this case, those guitar players were Earl Slick, Gerry Leonard, and myself. Initially, I was concerned about having three guitarists on the tour. David was really into it visually, but I knew it would be a train wreck if I wasn’t extra mindful of how all the parts interacted, or if I didn’t orchestrate everything properly.

For Low, there would sometimes be four or more guitar parts on a track, which I needed to distill down to three separate parts and sounds. Then, I would make an individual mix for each player. I’d solo their part on the right side of the mix, and put the rest of the track on the left side, so that they could hear their part in context if they summed to mono. (I did this for the rest of the band, as well, which was time consuming, but it made it a breeze for everyone to home in on their parts and sounds.) Fortunately, the three guitar players had very different styles that complemented each other well. I started by taking Carlos Alomar’s rhythm parts for myself, and then I divvied up the lead and ambient parts according to whose style - Slick’s or Gerry’s - I felt fit better. I threw Gerry the most oddball parts. He made it his business to really cop the sounds - especially Ricky Gardiner’s phase shifting and dirt on the solo from “Always Crashing In the Same Car” and the warbly ska-like vibe from “A New Career in a New Town.”

The go-to gear for each of the albums I played on revolved around a generally small collection of guitars, basses, and amps. On ‘Hours…’, I played bass, and my involvement on guitar was limited to 12-string acoustic (David’s Takamine). My parts were done at the end while I was mixing the album, as there were spots on a few songs that we all felt needed it, and David and Reeves [Gabrels] told me to go for it on my own. This led to me being involved in the VH-1 Storytellers show. I knew they would need an extra guitarist for that gig, so I went ahead and asked! For that show, I primarily played the Takamine 12-string—though I also used a 1978 Gibson 355-TD (a gift from David and Reeves) and a ’67 Rickenbacker 12-string. My amp was a ’62 Fender Princeton, and I used a Korg AX1G for reverb and modulation effects. After the VH-1 gig, I stayed in the band and became musical director.

The next album I was involved in as a guitarist was the unreleased Toy—which I produced with David right after the Glastonbury mini tour in 2000. We came straight off the road, and recorded most of the album live. For my parts—usually rhythm against Earl Slick—I used a 1999 Roadhouse Stratocaster, a ’61 reissue Gibson SG (Gibson gave one to Slick and me for the Glastonbury tour), and my ’67 Rickenbacker 12. Again, I used David’s Takamine for acoustic work, occasionally mixing it up with my Martin HD-28. My amp was a Fender Hot Rod DeVille 2x12, which offset nicely against Slick’s Ampeg Reverbrocket. We ended up doing an additional session, and I added what came to be known as the “Mini Strat” - a small practice guitar given to me by guitarist Marc Shulman that tech Flip Scipio hot-rodded and brought up several notches to a truly usable standard. David loved it, and he used it to write the song “Afraid” [Heathen].

On Reality, I was again serving as bassist, but I played some guitar using my road instruments at the time: the ’99 Roadhouse Strat, an ESP Vintage Strat-style, and an ESP Ron Wood Signature Tele. My amp was a Matchless DC-30, although I remember we had a lot of fun messing about with a Korg Pandora - most notably on “Never Get Old.”

David didn’t direct me all that much. I’d often be left to my own devices, whether it was guitar, bass, or even synth programming. David would always have the big picture - the artistic overview - and then he would let us do our thing as far as how we’d interpret that overview. He really wanted what you had to offer, but, at times, he’d feed somebody a specific idea or line to play, or take a part somebody was trying out and suggest a way to twist it around - always one of the funnest parts of any Bowie session. As most of my parts were fairly meat-and-potatoes, I didn’t get a lot of that unless I missed the mark completely.

In the live context, his vocal was a prime source of direction. Not only because of the dynamic you’d follow, but just the joy of playing with a vocalist who was at the top of their game. I think that brought out the best in all of us.

During my time with David, I prided myself on being as “Bowie-esque” of a collaborator as I could be. David knew I had a musically open mind, because to be young and coming-of-age as a musician in New York in the 1970s was a special experience. We had so much thrown at us - rock, funk, disco, electronic music, and all the combinations thereof. Bowie was a big part of this, as his music crossed many of these boundaries during those years. Part of the reason Station to Station became my favorite Bowie album was that its melding of rock and soul made perfect sense to me. David changed direction several times while I was with him. I always eagerly anticipated where the adventure was going to go next, and the smartest thing I did was to roll with it. 

“A Boundless Love For Pursuit of the Inexpressible”

By David Torn

Wow . David ’s gone. I can barely speak about the years during which I worked on countless tracks with Mr. B., but I’ll say what I can. First and foremost, David was a man whom I really loved and respected, and who was my friend. There are the richest of colors there that can’t ever fade.

David first invited me to work with him in 2000, and Heathen began in summer 2001. From the beginning, he was open to whatever sounds and parts I thought suitable for most of his music. If he had direction to offer, it would be simultaneously quite clear, emotionally speaking, and yet highly interpretable - which I believe was his intention.

The creative doors opened between David and me during one of the first tracks I worked on, “Sunday.” I took a few improvised passes, getting some ideas about the song’s arc, adjusting my sounds, etc. I then recorded an improvised pass exemplified by the textural bridge that occurs between 2:15 and 3:10. That is a backwards melody I recorded with a Teuffel Tesla guitar into my Echoplex Digital Pro. It was manually faded in and out in real-time against a 20-second-long, harmonically dense, polyphonic ambient loop that blooms around the appearances of the reversed melody. The ambient loop was recorded on my Lexicon PCM42, and processed in real-time with my original octave-like reverb program on a Lexicon PCM80. I mixed them with my modified Rane SM82. There were three Rivera amps set up in three-point-stereo: wet/dry/wet. I was mixing in the wet amps with expression pedals while playing, so I could add expressive effects.

After recording that, I listened to the track a couple of times, and I asked David if I might have a bit of time to work out an unusual rhythmic part - which, if it worked, would be pre-looped, yet actually performed. While no one in the studio likes to wait while insane strangers work hard, but waste time failing at so-called “great ideas,” David and Tony [Visconti] guardedly agreed, and left me to go at the part.

I set my Electrix Repeater to match the tune’s click, and played along with the piece, working out my ideas and techniques, and recording the first track into the Repeater. When I had the ideas for each section mostly worked out, I recorded those parts to each of the remaining three tracks on the Repeater. Then, with David and Tony’s enthusiastic approval, I practiced triggering, stuttering, mixing, and performing the part.

I’d used the Repeater’s four loopable tracks to build a single guitar part—one track contained tones common to all the harmonic changes within the piece up to 2:00, and from 3:10 forward. The other three tracks were suited to specific harmonic regions. In order to make the transition into the bridge, one track was set up so I could manually transpose it via a small keyboard. I had assigned a volume fader to each of the four tracks, and I programmed a knob on the keyboard to stutter the start of each phrase, or wherever I felt a stutter/glitch might be useful. I think the entire process - including coffee - took about two hours. This multi-voiced rhythm part begins the song. It’s just my part and then David’s synth.

David also had a great love for old Supro amps, and, while we were recording “The Next Day,” he presented me with Marc Bolan’s Stratocaster - which Marc had given to David - to play. Amazing! It was amazing to work with David for 15 years, knowing that someone I respected so much enjoyed, encouraged, trusted, and reveled in this kind of work process, and in endless travel through the imagination with a boundless love for pursuit of the inexpressible. Excelsior, DB. 

“He Loved the Guitar and Understood Its Complexity”

By Gerry Leonard

Working with David was the highlight of my guitar-playing career without a doubt. He taught me so much about how to play rock and roll by being by his side. It was almost like getting a transmission from a higher being. He taught me to stay rooted in the storm, but also how to soar and drive off the cliff at full speed, and even land safely. I did two big tours with him over the years. One tour was where we played the Heathen and Low albums back to back, in their entirety. This was a real challenge and an education to decipher, as well as execute those wonderful guitar parts live, from the unmistakable Brian Eno processed sounds to complex loops from David Torn.

I ended up then becoming his musical director for the 13-month Reality tour, taking over from Mark Plati, which was a great honor. This was a huge undertaking with full production and crew, eight trucks, nine buses, and an airplane. Even our repertoire was huge - it grew to more than 65 songs. All throughout, David was the best boss you could have asked for - clear about what he wanted, and yet flexible to allow the band to contribute and shine.

I got to be involved from the ground up on The Next Day. He called me early on to help flesh out his demos. I brought a small rig and two small amps to this tiny rehearsal room in Manhattan, and with Tony Visconti on bass and Sterling Campbell on drums, we dug in for the week. At one point, I was embarrassed as David was singing in front of my amps, which were cranking. I asked him if it was too loud, and he just grinned and said, “Nah, I like a bit o’ loud.” This reminded me of when we were in rehearsals for the Reality tour, and he stood in front of me and said, “Sounds great, Gerry, but can you turn it up?” David was probably the only singer I have ever worked with who told me to turn up!

Whenever I got to record with David, I liked to pick out some special and esoteric gear. When we recorded “The Next Day,” we had constraints in regard to separation, as David wanted everyone to play live. I called up Mesa/Boogie and got two small 1x10 cabs that we stacked up facing opposite directions. We put a Shure SM57 on one side, a Potofone ribbon mic on the other, and we locked up the cabs in a giant road case. I drove the cabs with a Mesa/Boogie TA-15 and a Sommatone Roaring 40. It was a really killer sound - super punchy and yet spacious. I also brought my EMS Synthi Hi-Fli - a rare effects console from the ’70s with faders to dial in sounds, and its own chrome stand, like a piece of furniture.

Over the years, I have amassed quite a collection of odd but interesting effects, including vintage Ibanez, Z. Vex, Electro- Harmonix, and Lovetone pedals - all wired into a custom switching system that I built. I used combinations of the pedals for distortion and color, depending on the song and the part. In the studio, I needed to work fast and play takes very much in the vein of a live performance, and, this way, I could go from a dry, straight-amp sound to super-wide cinemascope by clicking one button. For playing live with David, I built a complex system using the Voodoo Labs GCX Guitar Audio Switcher, which gave me scenarios such as using an Eventide H3000 as a stompbox.

For guitars, it always felt best to pick ones with personality—like my trusty, threepickup ’69 Gibson SG Custom (that I’ve had since I was 16 years old), or my ’65 Firebird with P90s. I also have some lo-fi guitars - like a Teisco Del Rey with gold-foil pickups and flatwound strings - or something like my ’60s Rickenbaker 360/12 to help change the mood on a session. Or, sometimes, I’d just play my white Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul with nickel hardware and a Bigsby. David dubbed it the “Liberace Guitar.”

Working with David on guitar parts was a very dynamic thing. Sometimes he would have the riff, but he’d hand it to you to develop it. The insistent riff in “Love Is Lost,” for example, is a David riff played by me. The kind of “Peter Green” lead lines are played through a rig David and Tony [Visconti] put together from a photo of Mick Ronson’s setup back in the day. David had found a Ronno Bender pedal - a copy of the old Tone Bender Mick used - and they sourced a Marshal head and a huge 8x10 Marshall cab. I had to stand well back from that rig, and even then it would fry your eyeballs.

Mostly, David would just want you to come up with your own parts, and if he liked where you were going, he would be really encouraging. He loved to see it all take shape quickly, right there and then. “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)” is a good example of a guitar part that was pretty much my first instinct back at the demo stage, and I went on to develop it around his evolving vocals. It was always a treat to do some ambient things around his voice. I would try to find the key harmonic sense of the piece, and then build some loops and lines using an EBow or a volume pedal. I would normally use a combination of distortion, delay, and pitch shifting, and find the right sonic space for it all to exist in the track. These soundscapes would range from dark and ominous to celestial and spatial, and it was extra special to do them whenever David Torn was also on the session. After a while, it got to be confusing as to who was playing what, but what a glorious racket!

When I worked with Earl Slick, David would call us “bookends,” referring to our disparate styles. But he loved the two-guitar thing, and he would encourage us to go all the way. Slick is a fantastic old-school lead-guitar player, and that left me free to be spacious and ambient.

I think David loved the guitar and understood its complexity. He was not afraid to put it front and center, and there was no better place to be a guitar player, but by David’s side [BREAK]

“The Songs Dictated Which Approach Would Work Best”

By Ben Monder

Bowie didn’t really have any gear at the studio - except for one electric guitar and one acoustic. I used the acoustic - I think it was a Yamaha - on “Dollar Days.” I know he played those bizarre “shrapnel” guitars on “Lazarus,” but I don’t know what he used to get that great sound. He mainly sang with us in the live room, which really helped the energy of the performances.

My guitars for the session were my Ibanez AS-50 semi-hollowbody and a Fernandes Strat body with an ESP neck, as well as pre-CBS Fender pickups in the middle and bridge positions. I ran my 1965 Fender Deluxe Amp and 1967 Fender Princeton - modded with a larger transformer, 6L6s, and a 12" Electro-Voice speaker - in stereo. I split the signal with my Audio Upgrades-modded Lexicon LXP-1 reverb. I also had an MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay, Ernie Ball volume pedal, Keeley-modified RAT, Walrus Mayflower Overdrive, Walrus Deep Six Compressor, Fulltone Deja Vibe, and a Strymon BlueSky Reverb. I don’t think they did anything to my guitars during the mix. They didn’t seem to touch anything.

David was very open to everyone’s ideas as far as parts and sounds. I just experimented with what I thought would work. I also had a couple of demos to listen to at home so I could prepare a little bit. There wasn’t a ton of direction per se - although, at one point, David wanted an “atmospheric” pass over the tune “Sue,” so I turned my reverb and just about everything else up to 10 and played sounds over it. That seemed to do the trick. He was very enthusiastic, and when something didn’t work, it was obvious to everyone.

The songs were well thought out and structured before I got there, so they largely dictated which approach would work best. But the atmosphere was very positive and supportive, and he seemed generally very happy with the way we were interpreting the material.

Of course, I have been listening to Bowie since I was 12 years old, so it was not unfamiliar ground.

WORDS ON A WING

Bowie talked to GP readers for the one and only time as part of Joe Gore’s June 1997 cover story with Reeves Gabrels. Here are a few gems from that conversation…

Embracing Error

“There’s a certain self-security factor involved. Musicians who are involved with their instrument to the extent that there are no thought processes involved in their playing have far less of a problem reducing down and deconstructing what they’re doing, making technique sound ugly and rubbing it up the wrong way. Guitar players who are less confident of their abilities are more likely to regard it as just sounding like noise if you ask them to do something that’s not ‘musician-ly.’ Guys who are really into it can let go more easily. Fripp is like that. I think he was quite bemused by some of the things I asked him to do—such as to imagine he was playing a guitar duel with B.B. King where he had to “out B.B.” King, but do it in his own way. That was on ‘It’s No Game, Pt. 1’ from Scary Monsters.”

Sound & Vision

“Ever since I was young, I’ve seen music in visual terms. I see the textures I’m hearing, and I equate certain sounds with the relative roughness and smoothness, or density and transparency of color. It always made sense to me that you would go to, say, E minor, and it would have a particular hue. ”

Guitar Style

“My guitar playing hasn’t moved with the times at all. I use the same chords as always, but I do know a lot of them, and I’m able to put them together in interesting juxtapositions. Any time I did spend being disciplined was learning how chords work together.”

Groove

“I have no technique, but I have very good timing.”

Unfettered Composition

“The most exciting thing about the way we work is our ability to construct a song in maybe 15 minutes. It’s extraordinary how we can develop something very quickly with almost no premeditated ideas about what we’re going to do.”

“Rebel Rebel”

“It’s a fabulous riff. When I stumbled into it, it was, ‘Oh, thank you!’ I’ve only ever showed one other person how to play it properly. I was in a hotel in London years ago, and there was this awful row coming from upstairs. It was some guy playing electric guitar—dreadful heavy metal stuff. Then, he started going into his version of “Rebel Rebel.’ I went stomping up there, and it was John McEnroe.”

Outside Forces

“However principled and idealistic your vision, you can’t help the intrusion of others. Intentions and expectations are very different for the artist.”

Ghosts

“I have one of Marc Bolan’s old guitars, and if we have it in the studio, all the luggage of the guitar comes with it, and it changes the attitude of what we’re doing. I can’t pick up a guitar and play just anything on it. Whatever guitar I’m given contextualizes the thought.”

The Unknown

“It may be the dilettante side of me, but when I know where things are going, I lose interest real fast. Not knowing where you’re going is what makes it exciting for me. It leaves a permanently open landscape.”

Guidance

‘I’m very good at opening musicians to areas of their own technique or creativity that they might not have looked at before.”