Their first meeting was in March 1994, at the recording sessions for 1. Outside in Switzerland. Gabrels had flown in a few days earlier, but Garson was still jet-lagged as they played on one of their first improvising sessions together. His eyes were starting to close whilst he played and Gabrels suggested he might have to return to his hotel and sleep it off. Garson said he would ‘go on autopilot – as long as you guys stick with the same key I’ll keep playing’ and, sure enough, his eyes fully closed and he appeared to be playing excellently in his sleep. Gabrels caught the eye of Erdal Kizilcay on bass and whispered, ‘Let’s move up a semitone!’ They did and, sure enough, Garson woke up abruptly and adjusted his playing accordingly.
Working in the 1990s before the development of notator programs for scoring, Garson would send recordings of possible piano parts to his copyist at the time, David Arana, back in LA to be manually transcribed so that he could read the music for the final recording. Gabrels recalls working on ‘Bring Me the Disco King’ during the Earthling sessions (in the end it was held over and finally appeared on Reality in a much stripped-down version). Garson played as many as five alternative versions of a piano part for the song. As a joke, Gabrels and Plati discreetly layered all five versions simultaneously in one single track and sent it to LA. When the resulting transcription finally came back, it looked like ‘The Black Page’ by Frank Zappa, a mass of notes. They handed it back to Garson and said, ‘This is the part we need you to play.’ That bizarre score, faithfully produced by Arana, was displayed on the studio wall for a while.
Garson played a Kurzweil keyboard on stage at that time and the band nicknamed him Colonel Kurtz-weil after the Colonel Kurtz character played by Marlon Brando in the film Apocalypse Now. Reeves Gabrels recalls that Garson could sometimes look intimidating: ‘Some people used to be scared of him, but when you get up close he’s a sweetheart. His upper body strength is phenomenal, from playing piano. If you want someone to crack your back for you, he’s your man!’
Gabrels explains some of the differences in how 1. Outside and Earthling were produced. The former was based on lengthy periods of improvisations by the musicians, whereas for Earthling the songs were more prepared, at least in their initial conception as basic structures, even if they were then embellished over. Also technology was advancing so quickly that for Earthling they were able for the first time fully to edit digitally, which had not been possible two years earlier. As musical director on live tours and television shows with Bowie during much of 1996 and 1997, Gabrels says that he and Mark Plati worked on a lot of the sequenced parts in a way which maximised the sonic possibilities:
We made sure everything had a very strong centre spine so that there was always some sort of pad playing the chord changes, and my reason for doing that was because I wanted Mike and I to be able to always have something to push against… something to hold it together between us and Gail Ann Dorsey, who was like a rock. You’d always be able to hear the harmony around David’s voice, no matter where Mike and I went.
This approach worked because David Bowie trusted the creative instincts of the highly skilled musicians he had assembled, and allowed them to sometimes ‘go on an adventure’ as Gabrels puts it – within certain limits. If something was played a new way once, it could be enjoyed as spontaneous expression. If it were played that same way a second time, then it would have to be questioned as either a recurring mistake or a rearrangement which had not been decided on. Gabrels’ regard for Garson as an innovator was clearly reciprocated. When asked by Q Magazine in 1997 whether Bowie’s music was very different to play compared with in 1974, Garson said:
Well, David’s music still has the essence of rock but it’s actually rather more advanced. There’s a lot of layers and complexity on both 1. Outside and the new album [Earthling]. Reeves, you know, views guitar playing almost like a reinventor of the instrument.43
The on-stage mischievousness of Gabrels and Garson was not always limited to wild improvisational creativity. Gabrels had noted Garson’s liking for always having his notes and scores in front of him on the piano. On the last night of the tour he walked across mid-song, climbed Garson’s keyboard riser, lifted the music book and took it back with him to drop it on top of his guitar speaker cabinets, as another practical joke. But no sooner had he arrived there than, looking over his shoulder, he saw the imposing figure of his pianist friend walking towards him promptly to retrieve the book and carry it back, to resume normal service.
This comradeship between Gabrels and Garson, based on a shared subversive disregard for form or expectation, is part of a long-standing mutual respect. In October 1996 at Neil Young’s Bridge School benefit concert, David Bowie played an acoustic set with just Gail Ann Dorsey on bass and Reeves Gabrels on guitar. Gabrels spontaneously recreated the Aladdin Sane solo on a guitar synth (with an acoustic transducer) which gave it a piano sound, with striking virtuosity. He refers to this now as a proud tribute to the pianist who inspired him all those years earlier.
On another occasion on tour with Bowie in Europe they ‘swapped parts’ whilst playing Aladdin Sane – Gabrels using his synth guitar to imitate the piano, whilst Garson accessed a guitar sound from his keyboard and played the guitar part for the song. Garson comments with dry humour, ‘The only thing I can tell you, my “guitar solo” was better than his “piano solo”!’
Since 2012, Gabrels has been a member of The Cure, alongside other projects. There is also the possibility of some improvisational live performances with Mike Garson in Los Angeles in future, with the promise of further joint subversion of expectations:
Mike and I – and I guess it’s Mike’s influence, too, to some degree – we’re hearing more than the limits of the harmony of the genres, and sometimes it’s hard to behave yourself!
10 - Reality, 2003
‘David Bowie has the ability to absorb art and be it, whether painting, sculpture, lyrics, song writing, singing, entertaining, acting. He is art and he knows how to become it, bigger than life. That’s not the kind of artist I am, but he’s got a ridiculous gift that’s probably been there all along: like a pool of creativity that, if he jumps in, he just comes out being it. It sits there, it’s available to him at any second.’
– Mike Garson on David Bowie
ONE FELLOW MUSICIAN WHO HAS worked closely with Garson, both via their joint collaborations with Bowie and also on a separate project of his own, is Irish guitarist Gerry Leonard. A genial and witty presence as well as a modest carrier of great musical talents, Leonard has spoken to me in detail of his work with Garson.
Leonard first played with Bowie in 2000, providing overdubs for the ultimately unreleased album Toy. Garson had already recorded his contributions to the same sessions, so the pair did not actually meet until two years later, at rehearsals for Bowie’s live 2002 performance of the Low and Heathen albums at New York’s Roseland Ballroom, and then at London’s Meltdown festival in the summer of 2002, which Bowie curated.
At this point Leonard was the newest member of the band and was therefore preoccupied with finding his feet and getting used to being part of this very high quality and high profile project. In one rehearsal break he introduced himself to Garson and complimented him on his legendary piano solo for the Aladdin Sane title track. Garson appreciated the fact that Leonard had been aware of this role of his on the earlier albums and they started to click. They both have a strong and sometimes mischievous sense of humour, and Garson has a great capacity for recounting interesting anecdotes in a highly entertaining way, which was not lost on Leonard. He recalls Garson’s illustration of the vicissitudes of a musician’s life: playing two nights at Madison Square Garden and being able to request a white grand piano one night and a black grand piano the next, then three nights later, back at home, being asked by his wife to take out the garbage.
The following year, as musical director on the Reality tour, Leonard was responsible for the band’s faithful recreation of a wide range of Bowie’s songs, whils
t at the same time wanting to allow for example Garson’s unique musical voice to be able to step forward at the right time and in the right way. Once a rapport was established, Garson was amenable to such direction, even where it might sometimes mean limiting himself to a one-note synth line, if that was what a song required.
Leonard was aware that Bowie’s earlier songs had been tinkered with at times over the years in terms of the arrangements, even though ‘the essential breadth of work that was there was so well sculpted’ that he wanted simply ‘to pare it back and let the songs breathe again’. Leonard was playing guitar in unison with that of Earl Slick much of the time in order to achieve a clean, bold sound. He made it part of his job to ensure that there would be places where Garson could ‘play the way that he plays’, and that there would be room in the music for that to happen, whilst maintaining the simple integrity of these great songs. This is evident on the Reality tour live recordings, both in Garson’s solos and his playing around the other instruments and Bowie’s voice, to complement them without intruding on them.
Leonard initially felt, however, that he would need to rein in Garson’s prodigious inventiveness and told him, ‘Mike, you can’t just improvise over David Bowie songs!’ and that sometimes something extremely simple was all that would be needed. On the Meltdown project, they recreated live the albums Low and Heathen and Garson’s skills were marshalled to that end. Then when the earlier songs were presented as part of the Reality tour, a lot of effort was put into finding the original keyboard sounds, with Mellotron or Jupiter patches being nailed down and old tapes scoured by producer Mark Plati and the programmers. As the tour unfolded, Garson was gradually given more expressive leeway to add his trademark twists and embellishments within the piano parts.
Leonard exhibited great skills in managing the artistic side of the production. He methodically ascertained for each individual band member ‘how they liked to do things, how they liked to be treated, communicated with and receive their information’. When it had come to Garson he had been keenly aware of the latter’s long years of service with Bowie. He had waited a couple of weeks and then called him, specifically to talk through how things might work. This, characteristically, became a lively and enjoyable three-hour philosophical discussion. Garson ended that call by reassuring Leonard, ‘You know, Gerry, in the past I’ve always fucked with MDs. But for you, anything!’ We see elsewhere how reluctant he could be to follow direction on those occasions when it seemed ill-informed or pointless, but given the respect he developed for Leonard and the way he had revealed his thinking, Garson became extremely amenable on this occasion.
One example of Garson’s genius being allowed to shine out in concert can be seen in ‘Battle for Britain (The Letter)’ with its complex dialogue between Sterling Campbell’s highly syncopated drums and Garson’s distinctively dislocated cadences in a skirmish towards the end of the song. Garson was ‘happy to know that he had a place in the orchestra that the band was’, according to Leonard. He adapted effortlessly to the new material, and showed the ability to supply the powerful quality of back-up that Bowie demands live on stage. In Leonard’s words, Garson’s ‘energy is a good match for David’s’.
He continued to be amazed by Garson’s skills in both improvising and sight-reading music: ‘He could read… flypaper! I got him to play different songs with different hands just to see if he could do it – and he could!’ To make this impression on the MD was all the more remarkable given that many of the other musicians involved were also highly extraordinary themselves. Leonard describes drummer Sterling Campbell as ‘a great musicologist’, bassist Gail Ann Dorsey likewise as having huge musical instinct, while guitarist Earl Slick ‘tore up the charts’ and played it anyway.
The great atmosphere amongst the band and crew on the Reality tour is quite evident from the backstage footage which was shot throughout the tour, intended to have been an extra on the DVD, though in the end not included. One practical joke stands out in particular. The way that Leonard recounts the story provides a fascinating insight into the camaraderie and spirit of fun which prevailed. Garson had a piano with little speakers set up backstage on which he would practise (as he always has) daily. On one occasion there was a dark curtain by the piano, behind which Leonard hid, having first arranged with Earl Slick to engage Garson in conversation about running through a song together. Whilst Slick and Garson were playing, Leonard from behind the curtain invisibly took away first one, then the other speaker.
We were a little slap-happy… Slicky was going to say, ‘Hey Mikey, let’s go over that new song?’ Whilst he was playing and not looking, the speakers would disappear… but Mike just kept playing, even though this mysterious mayhem was going on around him! There’s a lot about Mike in that.
The funny thing was, despite realising that something weird was happening, rather than stop and question how it could be that the speakers had ‘disappeared’, he simply carried on playing. This illuminates his open-minded view of mystery and the supernatural: he wore a slightly intrigued expression but seemed perfectly happy to press on with the music, presumably on the assumption that this was just some unexplained bizarre phenomenon. In addition there was an element of his commensurate professionalism in ensuring that ‘the show must go on’.
The band members on that tour really gelled, whilst at the same time feeling that they each had a musical space in which to breathe. Bowie was very positive about it and set them the task of learning a large number of songs from which the nightly sets might be chosen: a list of options which reached at least sixty-four songs at one stage, to Leonard’s recollection. This included a ‘killer’ version of ‘Win’, close to the original but with an even greater feel, which was only ever rehearsed but never played on stage. Regarding Garson’s own work in the recording studio for Bowie on the Reality album, Leonard confirms that he is always both very quick and very amenable.
Earl Slick is a great rock guitarist who, like Garson, comes from Brooklyn. He is of Italian origin, and he speaks with the down-to-earth honest style for which that borough is famous. He is the only person, aside from David Bowie himself, with whom Garson has toured in both the 1970s and the 2000s. He also played on John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy and more recently has toured with the New York Dolls. I had a long conversation with him about his experiences of working with Garson and he was very helpful and candid about his recollections, opening with the statement that ‘Me and Michael are the Bowie dinosaurs!’
He first met Garson when Michael Kamen brought him (together with David Sanborn) into Bowie’s band for the Diamond Dogs tour in 1974. Slick was just twenty-one when he began the tour, and was tasked with reinterpreting the guitar parts which Bowie had played himself on the album. He had not been very familiar with Bowie’s songs until then, with one exception: ‘Aladdin Sane blew my fucking mind when I bought it. In hindsight a lot of it had to do with this weird mix of rock and roll and this insane piano player. That piano got my attention… I loved acoustic piano, but I’d never heard anything like that before.’ He continues to be impressed by Garson’s authenticity in any genre:
Michael can do any fucking thing, and he can do it convincingly. If I try to do certain genres of music, I’m fucked, that’s why I’m not a session player; but Mike, what he can do is he can go from classical jazz and then he can sit down and play raucous barrelhouse piano like a real guy, he’s not faking it – that’s a rare bird. I worked extensively with Nicky Hopkins back in the day. What Nicky did is what Nicky did, and he did it better than anybody, but Mike, it’s way broader. Of any piano player I’ve ever played with, Mike has definitely got the broadest range. His blues playing would be just as fucking convincing as his jazz.
In 1974 Bowie’s fame in the USA was huge. As Slick puts it, in the States, with Diamond Dogs ‘that’s when he just really exploded… being in Bowie’s band was like a notch right behind being in the Beatles’. After touring together through most of the second half of 1974, the
y would not both be on the road with Bowie at the same time again for some years. Garson played on Earl Slick’s Lost and Found album of material recorded in 1975, which was later retrieved and released in 2000. They would not have the chance to play together again until 2000 to 2004, when once again they were both playing for Bowie, live and in the studio, as well as on many television shows.
This time round they quickly became much closer friends than they had in the 1970s. Slick had given up drink and drugs in the intervening years, and feels that he was able to relate better. In addition he and Garson were now bonded by the shared experiences and memories of having played together for Bowie in the 1970s: ‘We had a connection that the rest of the band didn’t have.’ They both played on 2003’s Reality album, though by then the older approach of having the whole band in the studio together had been updated, with many of the parts being recorded separately.
There is great respect as well as rapport between these two musicians, and Garson also speaks with affection of his old bandmate: ‘Slicky is the real deal, and a real character. He tells it like it is, a man of integrity. You know where you stand with him. He also happens to be an amazing rock guitarist.’ He jokes that Slick is like one of the more likeable characters from The Sopranos or Goodfellas. Nicholas Pegg, author of The Complete David Bowie,44 kindly sent me this recollection:
Generous performer that he is, David Bowie has always made a point of introducing his band members one by one during a gig – and on at least one occasion, I’ve seen Mike Garson spontaneously breaking into a piano rendition of the famous theme from The Godfather to accompany Earl Slick’s introduction – much to the delight of the band and the audience! You can really sense the affection between those two great players. It comes off the stage in waves.
Bowie's Piano Man - The Biography of Mike Garson Page 17
