Bowie's Astoria gig 1999

Interesting reading this.

My favourite band has always been The Damned - they were playing at the Forum around then, and I went to the ticket office in Oxford Circus - round the corner from the Astoria to pick up my tickets. As I waited for them to put together the tickets, I saw the office had a huge banner saying 'We have NO tickets for Black Sabbath and NO tickets for David Bowie, so don't ask!'

Just as a joke, I said 'I'm illiterate - do you have any Black Sabbath tickets at all?' and the rather stressed woman said 'Yeh - we got one just come in - do you want it?'

Assuming she was in on the joke, I said 'Well... that all depends on how much it is', so she took out a ticket and said 'It's £15.50 - d'ya wonnit?'

'Um...Yes?'

So I went to see the original lineup of Sabbath at the Astoria, a truly great venue with a capacity of 2000 fans, now sadly dismantled by 'progress'.

It was only years later that I realised I never said - 'Sabbbath and the Damned will do just fine - now how about some Bowie tickets?'

 

Reeves didn’t like the Hours album — he felt Bowie was moving too far toward the mainstream — and didn’t want to play those songs live. I don’t think there was any one incident that led to a big blowout, but Bowie felt hurt by Reeves’s snub, so they went their separate ways.

 

Manchester! The UK city in which I've spent the most time!

Though if you knew WHY I visited there, you'd probably try to get me banned from the SHF!

 

I am sure you’ve mentioned this previously. It is the Spice Girls, or some similar pop act, right?

Not sure why you think I would have an extreme reaction to that? My musical tastes are extremely catholic.

 

I read quite a lot into Bowie's performances around this time. The fact that he completely switched gears after Earthling reinforced the idea in my mind that he was still playing with personas.

My reading of the 1999 version of Bowie was that he was portraying a 50 something guy living in suburbia (the guy he might have been had he not escaped). It was quite interesting seeing how he used his old songs and fit them into this concept.

I had seen Pete Townshend perform in Shepherds Bush around this time too and it gave me the same thought - both these men had played with big ideas and concepts and were now bringing those songs back to the neighbourhood that they grew up in.

 

Well it was the 89 shows in london, so town and country club - later afternoon and soundcheck was due, lots of us hanging around or trying to get last minute tickets - Bowie must have sent a load of black cars as a decoy all in a row into the venue, loads of people rushed to see into them and or follow them and then he walked up kentish town road on his own into the venue, saying hi to us as he went along, cool as you like! I touched his neck and said something shmaltzy to him; he was delightfully gracious!
At the kilburn ballroom soundcheck around the same time we clustered outside and could just hear the soundcheck going on; as he came out with the band and his staff, i took nice calm pics of reeves and a couple of others, then the man came out and the camera shots go all fuzzy as we descend upon him and his van - kilburn high road doesn't care much for stars so he was literally trapped in the van for what seemed ages as we all took pictures and tried to get his attention. The photos really capture all this as described! Never did manage to get autograph though

 

Indeed.
And Ashes is awful too (the 4th song in the set).
Bowie is so disturbed he even f***s up the song structure and sang the same set of lyrics twice.

 

Yup - Spice Girls. Twice! 1999 and 2019!

Depressing to think that a year ago right now, I was gearing up for a big 10-day trip to the UK... and this year I have nothing more exciting planned than a visit to the grocery store!

 

Page Hamilton did indeed take that gig at the last minute, being a long-time Bowie fan and it's acceptable for what it is but in every performance you see with him, whether it's this show or a TV performance (which they did a bunch of, overseas), you can tell he's "off" and I'm sure DB noticed it.

Mark Plati deserves a lot more credit and respect than he gets for bringing the band into a more solid, cohesive unit as well as nudging DB into playing a lot of songs again he wouldn't have. I believe part of the reason Plati doesn't get more credit is because he's purposely low-key and under the radar. Very very good producer and musician.

Reeves left for a number of issues, it's slightly more complex than DB just going "mainstream"- the incident alluded to there is that Bowie was considering TLC to sing back-up on "Thursday's Child" and Reeves was like, "No, this is the problem you had in 1987" but he was also having issues with an affair and his own need to do his own thing. They had a very good run but I was excited to see Bowie start writing alone again and think his stuff after this is very, very solid although I do think Visconti's return on 'Heathen' really really diluted the songs and just threw a bunch of overblown string arrangements on them.

Bowie's entire 95-99 period is so vibrant, and it's amazing to me sometimes that all the things people in the press and other musicians always credit Bowie for... being bold, trusting his instinct, going against the grain, not repeating himself... they never gave him credit for his bravery as an artist during this period when he could have sleepwalked and collected a paycheck. His legit and genuine excitement and enthusiasm for what he's doing on 1. Outside, Earthling, Hours, etc.- it's palpable, tangible, and you can feel it. I'm so glad I was a teenager during that period and got to experience it; it was so inspiring.

 

Looks like Reeves and Page still had VIP access circa 2001-2004.


Tim Schmidt from the Eagles behind them?!? LA 2004.

On Earthling tour Bowie would hand his cigarette butts to front row fans and I'm sure they still have them. Kinda like Elvis's scarves or Willie Nelson's bandanas.

 

Reeves had strong opinions on a lot of things, and he carried a lot of ego around as well. I have a close friend who was matey with Reeves all the way through from Tin Machine to the end of his association with Bowie, but I just couldn’t bond with the guy on the same level.

The TLC thing was not the straw that broke the camel’s back, but just one incident in Bowie and Reeves drifting apart musically.

This interview is a fair summation of his time with Bowie:

David Bowie: A Look Back at His '90s Era - When He Got Weird Again

A few choice quotes to back up my point:

... the irony was, I wanted to do Earthling 2.0, because as we toured for that album, I thought of all the things we could have done differently and all the ways we could have made it better. But it was a case of him feeling like he’d done that. “Now I want to do something that’s more songwriter-ly.”

His circle of friends was more in his age group and they were listening to Luther Vandross and things like that… and I wasn’t. He actually made a comment to me at one point, “I want to make music for my generation.” And I said, “You always just made music that you wanted to make, and if you want to make music for your generation, you’re ten years older than me. So where does that leave me in this equation? I don’t know how to produce that. I don’t know how to help you if that is the new criteria.” The whole thing started to feel claustrophobic to me.
I knew from January of ’99 that there was a long road for me to leave him, without leaving him hanging.

I was David’s friend, and his guitar player, musical director, co-producer, but I was also a fan. I felt like I was protecting his “thing.” I wanted to make sure he stayed cool and stayed connected. He was a voracious chaser of new things. But not every new thing [should be chased].​

This last quote is very telling of Reeves’s ego issues. David Bowie knew his own mind, and knew what he wanted from his work. He didn’t need Reeves to hold his hand through life. He did pretty well before Reeves showed up, and he got along okay after he left.

There are also allusions in that interview about Reeves butting heads with Coco, and I can very much see that. On the occasions I met Coco she was always very kind to me, so I have nothing negative to say about her. But is is well known that she always put Bowie first. Always. She was 100% loyal to him, and only him, from 1973 all the way through to his death.

I met Reeves quite a few times, and I think I have a fair understanding of his personality. He was all right, never rude or anything, but he was an egotist. It was all about him, what he brought to the table, and he did tend to smother everything with his playing.

I find it odd that he claims to have been keen to do the Hours tour, as everything I heard at the time, from people within the Bowie organisation, is that he didn’t want to do it because he didn’t like the material. What he’s driving at, I think, is that he wanted to do a different kind of tour, and thought that he could force Bowie’s hand on that point. I can understand him not wanting to do the TV shows, some of which involved backing tracks (but usually a live vocal). There was nothing mimed about the actual gigs, though. As I mentioned upthread, I saw every gig on that tour bar one, and was present at several of the TV recordings.

 

Really interesting. Thank you. Another quote I also remember from Reeves which reinforces the points you made - he said retrospectively that he lost sight of whose name was on the records.

 

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. I was delighted when Reeves left, I too felt he smothered everything with his guitar noodling. On a track like “Survive” I managed to tune out and almost not hear that constant noodling between vocal lines, which imho was unnecessary and suffocated the song, no light and shade.

 

When his playing worked, it worked very well. He could be an exciting guitar player, but what he wasn’t particularly great at was serving the needs of the song. The difference between a good musician and a great one is that the latter will always put his ego aside to better serve the material.

The peak of Reeves’s influence was 1995-97, and I enjoyed those albums and tours tremendously. I worked out the other day that I saw Bowie exactly 50 times in the 27 months between September 1995 and December 1997. Reeves’s guitar playing dovetailed well with Bowie’s vision in this period, and it was a joy to behold.

But I also enjoyed the Hours tour a great deal. It was a breath of fresh air after the previous few years, and a much needed change of direction. And I know for a fact that Bowie enjoyed that tour, too.

 

50 times!! I don’t know why it took me so long, but I saw him for the one and only time at Birmingham NEC on the Reality tour, though I have loved his work since 1972. He and the band were superb, it was an experience I will never forget.

 

Gabrels has been serving songs very well with The Cure on tour for quite a few years now, though it's all other parts by previous guitarists(minus a couple songs sometimes played.

Question remains if it's The Cure keeping him on a tight leash, Bowie pushing Gabrels to be "in your face" on most songs or changes in his life after the Bowie/RG period ended.

 

I thought RG didn't want to tour/travel and was maybe worried about 1999 being a repeat of the 1990 tour since Bowie was hawking a new round of CD catalogue reissues. RG turned down the 1990 tour.

RG is pretty invisible/miserable in the Storytellers 99 video, with the banter about Tin Machine lyrics being the only thing that sticks out. RG probably thought the direction would be closer "pretty thing are going to he'll", which was done at story tellers but is the only song missing from the official DVD. Another side note is I think Storytellers was shot on film, so a full HD version is possible.

 

I don’t think so. Reeves work on Hours album.

 

Fair enough, mate. You know best

 

Reeves has his moments for sure. I thought his guitar playing on the first Tin Machine record was a welcome change from the bland, studio players who had contributed to the post Let's Dance era. While I really like Earthling, I was starting to get tired of Gabrels sound. The split should have happened before Hours. If it's possible for a guitar player to sound bored on a recording, then Reeves manages to do it on that album. I thought Reeves was exciting in a live setting but there are songs from the Bowie catalog that his style just doesn't match up and there was a "sameness" to it. As others have mentioned, it didn't fit the song or he just "Gabrelsed" the heck out of it. To give the man credit, I absolutely love his take on Scary Monsters.

As a side note, I've always felt Earl Slick doesn't get enough credit for his contributions, particularly as Bowie's touring guitarist. He could play the licks originally laid down by Ronson, Fripp, SRV or Gabrels and it still sounded like a David Bowie song. I think if you play guitar you understand how hard that is to pull off.

 

Interesting. My take is that he wasn't playing a 50 something guy living in the suburbs but he actually was one. I always thought Hours was the time where he no longer felt he had to be "David Bowie." He thought of himself as David Jones, NYC resident who made music for a living but was the husband of Iman and then father of Lexi. I felt he still wanted to make creative and good music but domestic happiness was his main concern. When he disappeared for a decade after the heart attack I think that need to be husband and father (along with the reports he continued to suffer heart issues) just strengthened his need to be a family guy. I believe he even said in interviews Lexi gave him a chance to make up for not being a present father to Duncan. If you've ever looked at Iman and Lexi's Instagram accounts it's easy to see he accomplished his goal.

 

No. I don’t said so. But I know Reeves work on Hours. Many posters explain other reasons.

 

I like Reeves in first. But later i just don’t like his guitar playing.

 

The other interesting thing about the Hours tour was the inclusion of Can't Help Thinking About Me in the setlist and then in the Summer 2000 tour he performed a couple of other 60's songs.

I wonder at what stage the idea of recording the Toy album came up.

 

Yeah, I've met Coco several times and she was so warm and kind as well as a bit bashful- honestly, Bowie fans owe her a lot. Yeah, there was a lot Reeves went into (he was having an affair with Bowie's wardrobe head) that I didn't feel the need to bring up, but the point is that their creative relationship just ran it's course and I'm grateful for it as it was a wonderful period.