Bowie's Piano Man - The Biography of Mike Garson by Clifford Slapper

Author:Clifford Slapper [Slapper, Clifford]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fantom Publishing
Published: 2015-06-14T23:00:00+00:00

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, whilst 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’.

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