bowie earthling tour

• David Bowie albums

Released: 3 February 1997

David Bowie: vocals, guitar, saxophone, samples, keyboards Reeves Gabrels: guitar, programming, synthesizers, vocals Gail Ann Dorsey: bass guitar, vocals Mike Garson: piano, keyboards Zachary Alford: drums, drum loops, electronic percussion Mark Plati: programming, samples, keyboards

Tracklisting

• ‘Little Wonder’
• ‘Looking For Satellites’
• ‘Battle For Britain (The Letter)’
• ‘Seven Years In Tibet’
• ‘Dead Man Walking’
• ‘Telling Lies’
• ‘The Last Thing You Should Do’
• ‘I’m Afraid Of Americans’
• ‘Law (Earthlings On Fire)’

Earthling was David Bowie’s follow-up to 1995’s 1.Outside . It was Bowie’s first self-produced album since 1974’s Diamond Dogs , and continued his exploration of industrial and electronic music.

I wanted variety on Earthling , industrial pop, drum ’n’ bass, an aggression. Techno and electronica [reminded] me of the German music of the mid-70s.

1.Outside was released on 25 September 1995, eleven days after the Outside Tour began in Hartford, Connecticut. Opening the US dates were Nine Inch Nails, whose set segued with Bowie’s via a crossover set. After Nine Inch Nails’ set had concluded, the two acts played several songs together – typically ‘Subterraneans’ , ‘Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)’, NIN’s ‘Reptile’, ‘Hallo Spaceboy’ , and NIN’s ‘Hurt’ – before Bowie’s own set began with ‘The Hearts Filthy Lesson’ .

Bowie’s choice of predominantly new songs was notably devoid of crowd-pleasers, a calculation which risked alienating fans of his older work as he tried to reach out to a newer, younger audience. As he told USA Today on the opening date: “How do you commit commercial suicide? Well, you do this: play songs from an album that hasn’t been released yet, and complement it with obscure songs from the past that you’ve never done on stage.”

I like a lot of what happened to us on that tour. It became progressively better as we continued. And both [NIN’s] Trent Reznor and I felt we had really accomplished something by the end of the tour. We got off to a very shaky start. But it did help me understand a certain aesthetic that was needed to do live performance in front of younger crowds. Especially ones who expect harder music. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to lose the people who have stayed with me for years. Because they’re pretty bright people as well. You’ve gotta find a balance between not seeming to harness a young crowd and not trying to appease the older crowd.

The Outside Tour concluded in February 1996, and was followed four months later with the Outside Summer Festivals Tour, which visited Japan, Russia, Iceland, and a number of European festivals. Bowie was road-testing new material in this time. The songs ‘Little Wonder’ , ‘Seven Years In Tibet’ , and ‘Telling Lies’ were often played during the tour, and gave an indication of where his sound was heading.

What I really wanted to do was not so very dissimilar to what I did in the ’70s – and something I’ve repeatedly done – which is to take the technological and combine it with the organic. It was very important to me that we didn’t lose the feel of real musicianship working in conjunction with anything that was sampled or looped or worked out on the computer.

In the years after the release of 1.Outside , Bowie spoke often about releasing a follow-up. 2.Contamination was to have been created from the many hours of recordings made in 1994, to be followed by at least one more album and even an operatic staging in Salzburg. However, the task of sifting through the tapes proved too daunting, and the project was finally abandoned after the release of 2002’s Heathen .

I can’t even get started doing the next stuff on it. All together we have 25, maybe 26, hours of recorded music from that period. I keep moving on too fast. Nobody would take Outside when we first recorded it. It was held back for a year until we could find somebody to distribute it in America and by that time my enthusiasm was pretty thin on the ground. By the time it did come out I’d already started writing for Earthling . My attention span is incredibly short.

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David Bowie 1997 Earthling Tour

Superb Bowie Performance From The Earthling Tour. David Bowie’s 20th studio album was originally released in February 1997 on Arista Records.  Earthling  showcased an electronica-influenced sound partly inspired by the industrial and drum and bass culture of the 1990s. It was the first album Bowie self-produced since 1974’s  Diamond Dogs .

The Earthling Tour started on 7 June 1997 at Flughafen Blankensee in Lübeck, Germany, continuing through Europe and North America before reaching a conclusion in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 7 November 1997. On August 14, ‘97, Bowie performed at Hungary’s Student Island Festival in Budapest, where he put on a quite extraordinary show, accompanied as he was by Reeves Gabrels on guitar, Gail Ann Dorsey on bass, Zack Alford on drums and Mike Garson on keyboards. Playing just a few tracks from the new record plus a fine selection of back catalogue gems, the entire show was broadcast, both across Eastern Europe and indeed in the US too on selected FM stations. Previously unreleased this remarkable gig is now available on this priceless CD for the first time.

The David Bowie Earthling Tour opened on 7 June 1997 at Flughafen Blankense – Lübeck, Germany continuing through Europe, North America before reaching a conclusion in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 7 November 1997.

Bowie and his band began rehearsing for the tour in April 1997, and expected the tour to last “from May through Christmas” (1997). Bowie expected it to be “really extensive, a long, long tour.

The original concept of the tour was to perform two separate set lists, one regular, and one dance-oriented set incorporating drum and bass. The two set-lists was abandoned, due to media critics and audience apathy, after the Muziekcentrum Vredenburg – Utrecht performance on 11 June 1997 with elements of each incorporated into the one set.

The 19 July 1997 Phoenix Festival performance, was billed as Tao Jones Index, in the BBC Radio 1 dance tent preceded the regular performance on the main stage the following day. The 14 October 1997 show at the Capitol Theatre – Port Chester, NY, broadcast on MTV’s Live from the 10 Spot, was added at short-notice due to cancellation by The Rolling Stones. The following show on 15 October 1997 at the Radio City Music Hall – New York City was as part of the GQ Awards. The set-list for the shows included a version of the Laurie Anderson work O Superman with lead vocals by Gail Ann Dorsey. Tour Publicist Tony Michaelides handled press, radio & television for Bowie.

David Bowie – vocals, guitar, alto & baritone saxophone

Reeves Gabrels – guitar

Gail Ann Dorsey – bass guitar, vocals, keyboards

Zachary Alford – drums, percussion

Mike Garson – keyboards

 Date – City – Country – Venue

 Warm-up shows

17 May 1997 Dublin ,Ireland ,The Factory Studios

02 June 1997 London ,England ,Hanover Grand

03 June 1997  London ,England ,Hanover Grand

05 June 1997 Hamburg ,Germany ,Grosse Freiheit

07 June 1997 Lübeck ,Germany ,Flughafen Blankense

08 June 1997 Offenbach am Main,Germany ,Bieberer Berg Stadion

10 June 1997 Amsterdam ,Netherlands,Paradiso

11 June 1997 Utrecht ,The Netherlands Muziekcentrum,Vredenburg

13 June 1997 Essen ,Germany , (Cancelled) Essen Stadium

13 June 1997 Dortmund ,Westfale ,Germany ,Westfalehalle

14 June 1997 Paris ,France ,Parc des Princes

16 June 1997 Rezé ,France ,La Trocadiere

17 June 1997 Bordeaux ,La Medocquine

19 June 1997 Clermont-Ferran d,Maison des Sports

21 June 1997 Leipzig,Germany ,Go Bang Festival

22 June 1997 Munich,Germany

24 June 1997 Vienna,Austria,Sommer Arena

25 June 1997 Prague,Czech Republic,Congress Centre

28 June 1997 Oslo,Norway  Kalvoeya Festival

29 June 1997 Turku,Finland,Ruisrock Festival

01 July 1997 Zagreb,Croatia,Dom Sportova

02 July 1997 Pistoia  Italy,Piazza del Duomo

04 July 1997 Torhout,Belgium,Torhout Festival

05 July 1997 Werchter,Werchter Festival

06 July 1997 Ringe,Denmark,Midtfyns Festival

08 July 1997 Brescia,Italy,Stadio Mario Rigamonti

10 July 1997 Napoli,Neapolis Festival

11 July 1997 Arbatax,Rocce Rosse Festival

13 July 1997 Frauenfeld,Switzerland,Out in the Green

15 July 1997 Madrid,Spain, (Cancelled) Las Ventas

16 July 1997 Zaragoza,Pabellón Príncipe Felipe

17 July 1997 San Sebastián,Velodromo De Anoeta

19 July 1997 Stratford upon Avon,England,,Phoenix Festival

20 July 1997  Stratford upon Avon,England,,Phoenix Festival

22 July 1997 Glasgow,Scotland,Barrowlands

23 July 1997 Manchester,England,Manchester Academy

25 July 1997 Malmö,Sweden,Mölleplatsen

26 July 1997 Stockholm,Lollipop Festival

27 July 1997 Gdańsk,Poland, (Cancelled) Stadion Lechii

29 July 1997 Lyon,France,Fourvière

30 July 1997 Juan-les-Pins,Pinede Gould

01 August 1997 Birmingham,England,Que Club

02 August 1997 Liverpool,Royal Court

03 August 1997 Newcastle upon Tyne,Riverside

05 August 1997 Nottingham,Rock City

06 August 1997 Leeds,Town & Country Club

08 August 1997 Dublin,Ireland,Olympia Theatre

09 August 1997  Dublin,Ireland,Olympia Theatre

11 August 1997 London,England,Shepherds Bush Empire

12 August 1997 London,England,Shepherds Bush Empire

14 August 1997 Budapest,Hungary,Student Island Fest

North America

06 September 1997 Vancouver, British Columbia,Canada,Plaza of Nations

07 September 1997 Seattle, Washington ,US ,Paramount Theater

09 September 199 7 San Francisco, California,The Warfield

10 September 1997 Los Angeles, California,Hollywood Athletic Club

12 September 1997 Universal City, CA,Universal Amphitheatre

13 September 199 7 Universal City, California,Universal

15 September 1997 San Francisco, California,The Warfield

16 September 1997 San Francisco, California,The Warfield

19 September 1997 Chicago, Illinois,The Vic Theater

21 September 1997 Detroit, Michigan,State Theater

22 September 1997 Detroit, Michigan,State Theater

24 September 1997 Montreal, Quebec,Canada,Metropolis

25 September 1997 Montreal, Quebec,Canada,Metropolis

27 September 1997 Toronto, Ontario,Warehouse

28 September 1997  Toronto, Ontario,Warehouse

30 September 1997 Boston, Massachusetts ,US ,Orpheum Theatre

01 October 1997 Boston, Massachusetts ,US ,Orpheum Theatre

03 October 1997 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,Electric Factory

04 October 1997 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,Electric Factory

07 October 1997 Ft. Lauderdale, Florida,Chili Pepper

08 October 1997 Ft. Lauderdale, Florida,Chili Pepper

10 October 1997 Atlanta, Georgia,International Ballroom

12 October 1997 Washington, D.C.The Capitol Ballroom

13 October 1997 New York City,The Supper Club

14 October 1997 Port Chester, NY,Capitol Theatre (MTV 10-Spot)

15 October 1997 New York City,Radio City Music Hall (GQ Awards)

17 October 1997 Chicago, Illinois,Aragon Ballroom

18 October 1997 St. Paul, Minnesota,Roy Wilkins Auditorium

23 October 1997 Mexico City,Mexico,Foro Sol

South America

31 October 1997 Curitiba,Brazil,Paulo Leminski Concert and Entertainment Hall

01 November 1997 Sao Paulo,Ibirapuera Arena

02 November 1997 Rio de Janeiro,Citibank Hall

05 November 1997 Santiago,Chile,Estadio Nacional de Chile

07 November 1997 Buenos Aires,Argentina,Estadio Arquitecto Ricardo Etcheverri

[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]

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David Bowie’s ‘Earthling’-Era Live Shows Coming to Streaming

By Brenna Ehrlich

Brenna Ehrlich

A trio of Nineties-era David Bowie live releases is set to roll out on streaming in the coming weeks, with LiveandWell.com set to drop May 15. Friday, Parlophone Records dropped a live recording of 1997’s “Little Wonder” (off of Earthling ) from Radio City Music Hall in New York, October 15, 1997.

The live album boasts 12 tracks recorded in New York, Amsterdam, Rio De Janeiro and U.K.’s Phoenix festival during the 1997 Earthling tour — it was previously only available to BowieNet subscribers. The record also includes bonus tracks “Pallas Athena,” off of 1993’s Black Tie White Noise , and “V-2 Schneider,” off of 1977’s “Heroes.”  Fittingly, that song was written for Kraftwerk’s Florian Schneider , who died last month at the age of 73. Both live cuts come from a show at Amsterdam’s Paradiso on June 10th, 1997 and were previously released as a 12″ single under the name The Tao Jones Index — Bowie’s code name when he played unannounced shows.

The record was produced by Bowie and features Zachary Alford on drums; Gail Ann Dorsey on bass, vocals and keyboards; Reeves Gabrels on guitars, synthesizers and vocals; and Mike Garson on piano, keyboards and synthesizers.

Liveandwell.com follows a glut of rare releases from the Earthling era that culminated in February’s Is It Any Wonder? EP . Key members of Bowie’s band (including Garson) were also set to head out on an alumni tour in the coming months, only to be waylaid by the spread of the coronavirus .

Liveandwell.com Tracklist

“I’m Afraid of Americans” (Radio City Music Hall New York, October 15, 1997) “The Hearts Filthy Lesson” (Long Marston, Phoenix Festival, July 18, 1997) “I’m Deranged”(Amsterdam, Paradiso, June 10, 1997) “Hallo Spaceboy” (Rio de Janeiro, Metropolitan, November 2, 1997) “Telling Lies” (Amsterdam, Paradiso, June 10, 1997) “The Motel” (Amsterdam, Paradiso, June 10, 1997) “The Voyeur of Utter Destruction (As Beauty)” (Rio de Janeiro, Metropolitan, November 2 , 1997) “Battle for Britain (The Letter)” (Radio City Music Hall New York, October 15, 1997 “Seven Years in Tibet” (Radio City Music Hall New York, October 15, 1997) “Little Wonder” (Radio City Music Hall New York, October 15, 1997) “Pallas Athena” (Amsterdam, Paradiso, June 10, 1997) “V-2 Schneider” (Amsterdam, Paradiso, June 10, 1997)

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David Bowie: "I've only ever showed one person how to play Rebel Rebel properly. I was downstairs in a hotel and there was some guy playing guitar – dreadful metal stuff. He started playing Rebel Rebel. I went stomping upstairs, and it was John McEnroe”

In this extensive 1997 GP interview, Bowie and guitarist Reeves Gabrels talk Parker Flys, seeing the guitar neck as a "landscape," taking riff inspiration from Jimmy Page, and that time Bowie showed a tennis legend how to play one of his most famous riffs...

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.”

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 David Bowie

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.”

I spent a lot of time taking apart rock songs. I have no technique, but I have very good timing David Bowie

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 Reeves Gabrels

“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.”

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Joe Gore is a guitarist and writer and a former editor for Guitar Player  magazine. He has played on albums by Tom Waits, PJ Harvey, Les Claypool, Mark Eitzel, Tracey Chapman, Courtney Love, Eels and more. His book, The Subversive Guitarist is out now and has been acclaimed by Vernon Reid, Gretchen Menn and Dweezil Zappa, among others. For more information, visit his website .

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David Bowie Concert

Blast off Hollywood Athletic Club for David Bowie’s Earthling’s Tour during the summer of 1997! The Rocker performed for a sold out crowd in the intimate setting exclusive to all of his classics-Quicksand, Jean Genie, Panic in Detroit, and the Velvet Underground’s Waiting for the Man. Regaling the audience with the mix of his hits and new material, a live album titled, “David Bowie, Hollywood Athletic Club” was recorded and produced from the show.

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David Bowie Earthling Tour Madison Square Garden New York January 9, 1997 (VHS Rip)

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David Bowie’s ‘Earthling’  1997 Tour Finds The Iconic Musician In Fine Form With a Stripped Down Outfit

by Hal Horowitz February 16, 2021, 9:28 am

David Bowie | Look at the Moon! (Live Phoenix Festival ’97) | (Rhino) 4 1/2 out of 5 stars

Videos by American Songwriter

There is no doubt that 2020 was a lousy year for almost everyone who didn’t own stock in Amazon. But there was a sliver of light for David Bowie fans. That’s due to the release of three excellent, often dynamic, full Bowie concerts from the ‘90s, in pristine sound and streaming on your favorite service. This was on top of four other shows made available in the preceding 2017-’19 period, all providing a rare glimpse into how powerful Bowie was on stage even when albums such as 1995’s Outside and 1997’s Earthling didn’t exactly light the charts on fire.

Add another stunning show to the list with this one from the Phoenix Festival (in the UK, not Arizona) on the Earthling tour. As usual, Bowie mixes oldies and familiar material, much of it drastically rearranged, with new music and a few rarities he seldom performed live. The night kicks off with one of those as he strums an acoustic 12 string on “Quicksand,” a deep track from Hunky Dory . Even though he is playing with a stripped down bass/drums/guitar/keyboard quartet, the muscular sound seems like it’s emerging from a much larger outfit.

Bowie was in his synth/techno/jungle phase on Earthling . That’s immediately apparent in the radically revamped reading given “The Man Who Sold the World” which, with its blips, bloops, bubbling keyboard bass and Reeves Gabrels’ stun guitar, is nearly unrecognizable from its original recording. He then digs back to his blues roots for an acoustic snippet of Charles Brown’s classic “Driftin’ Blues” before the rest of the group joins, seguing into a rugged and thrilling “The Jean Genie.”

Bassist/singer Gail Ann Dorsey handles Freddie Mercury’s part for a captivating “ Under Pressure ” that also allows Mike Garson to shift from his electronic keyboards back to piano, injecting his usual bits of creative, avant-garde, jazzy noodling. The band kicks into a furious “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)” giving Gabrels room to go full Adrian Belew as he also does on a tough, thumping “Fashion.”  

Bowie reprises a full six tracks (over a half hour of the 90 minute show), from Earthling , all leaner and meaner but not altered substantially from the studio versions. The Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat” gets a pulsating performance that rocks harder and with more abandon than the rest of the tightly arranged set. A closing nine minute cover of Laurie Anderson’s “Oh Superman” is a showcase for Dorsey who takes lead vocals. While it’s an interesting choice with an arrangement that features Garson’s skittering beats (which get repetitious over the song’s length) and displays Bowie’s dedication to experimental pop, he could have used that time to resurrect and/or reinvent and adapt some older work for this terrific band.

But a roaring closing “Stay,” clocking in at nearly eight minutes, ends the night on a spirited note as the band cranks out the funky yet artsy dance beats that defined Bowie’s Station to Station era. Even with the somewhat dated techno approach to some of the selections, overall it’s an energetic, exuberant performance from a largely neglected era of Bowie’s career.

(The Phoenix Festival ‘97 double CD is part of a six disc live album set titled Brilliant Live Adventures which includes the other 90’s shows and is available only from Bowie’s online store).           

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Earthling: How Electronica Set David Bowie On A New Trajectory

The ‘Earthling’ album saw David Bowie rejuvenated by his passion for cutting-edge sounds, and making ‘some of his finest music in a decade’.

Come February 1996, David Bowie could have been forgiven for slowing down a little. He’d spent five months on the road supporting his 1995 album, 1. Outside (his first tour since 1990’s Sound+Vision jaunt), using the opportunity to revisit edgier moments from his back catalogue (Joe The Lion, Breaking Glass, Look Back In Anger) while also leaning heavily on his adventurous contemporary material. The US leg of the tour was shared with US alternative/industrial act Nine Inch Nails, a choice that made Bowie even more determined not to rest on his laurels – and it all paid off. As Bowie told The Seattle Times in 1997: “We did an extremely hard year last year… We worked our way through Russia, Japan, Scandinavia and into Europe. We ended up doing the festival circuit there, which sometimes meant working with up to 14 other bands. We just got really good.” Keen to keep up the momentum, and with a road-hardened band able to switch gears as required, Bowie sought to capture what would become his new album, Earthling , in record time.

Listen to Earthling here .

“a sonic photograph of what we were like”.

“I really thought it would be great if we could do a photo, almost a sonic photograph of what we were like at that time,” Bowie continued. “So, Reeves [Gabrels, guitarist] and I started writing immediately after we finished on the road. We went in [the studio] about five days after we finished our last gig, and wrote and recorded in a two-and-a-half week period, frankly; the whole thing was put down that quick.”

Bowie had entered Phillip Glass’ New York studio, Looking Glass, with the core of his touring band – Zack Alford (drums, programming), Gail Ann Dorsey (bass, vocals), Reeves Gabrels (guitars, synths, vocals, co-production) and Mike Garson (keyboards) – and multi-instrumentalist and co-producer Mark Plati, but with little in the way of existing songs. He’d intended to revisit material that didn’t originally receive the attention he thought it deserved – I Can’t Read and Baby Universal, from his Tin Machine days, and Dead Against It from 1993’s The Buddha Of Suburbia soundtrack – as well as then unreleased songs he’d attempted at previous sessions, such as Bring Me The Disco King, which hadn’t made the cut for 1993’s Black Tie White Noise (but finally found a spot on 2003’s Reality ).

Once the sessions started, however, new songs began to flow so quickly that Earthling became an album of mostly new material, apart from Dead Man Walking, based upon a guitar riff that Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page had taught Bowie back in the 60s; I’m Afraid Of Americans, which Bowie and Brian Eno had started during the 1. Outside sessions; and the doomy drum’n’bass of Telling Lies, three versions of which had been released on Bowie’s official website the previous year, making it the first ever downloadable single by a major artist.

“People like myself move with the way life flows”

With his 50th birthday approaching, Bowie found himself more venerated than ever – his impeccable run of 70s albums had proven hugely influential on both the Britpop acts then in their pomp ( Blur , Suede, Pulp) and a new generation of US alt-rock acts (Pixies, Nirvana, Sonic Youth). The obvious thing would have been for him to produce a guitar-heavy record that evoked his past and chimed with the times. Typically, however, Bowie looked instead to fresher developments in the experimental electronica and jungle music scenes. As he told Q ’s David Cavanagh, he was more interested in following his muse and making music that excited him most: “It’s unfortunate when musicians qualify their work with, ‘Now that I’m married, now that I’ve got kids, I’ve got to be more creatively pedestrian’… Whereas there’s people like myself, Neil Young and Scott Walker who move with the way life flows.”

Released on 3 February 1997, Earthling was anything but pedestrian. Opener Little Wonder doesn’t waste a second before crashing from the speakers in a Prodigy-influenced barrage of blistering beats, heavily distorted guitars and electronic squall. Looking For Satellites, meanwhile, sees Bowie having a bit of fun with his past, unable to resist delivering the “satellite” of the chorus lyric with an obvious nod to his backing vocals on Lou Reed’s 1972 classic, Satellite Of Love (produced, of course, by Bowie himself). Similarly, the thrilling, jet-propelled Battle For Britain (The Letter) is interrupted halfway through by some gloriously free-flowing jazz piano from Mike Garson, calling to mind his solo on Aladdin Sane ’s title track.

“Some of his finest music in a decade”

For all the high-octane thrills, Earthling is especially effective when the tempo slows. Seven Years In Tibet begins as a sultry slow-burner before coruscating guitars pile on for a raw and grungy chorus. Like all the best moments on the album, it’s the sound of Bowie forging ahead and embracing the most exciting music of the day, while sounding like nobody but himself.

Unsurprisingly, Earthling lent itself incredibly well to live shows, and Bowie and band wasted little time in hitting the road. Reissued in January 2021, as part of a Brilliant Live Adventures series focusing on 90s concerts, the visceral performances captured on LiveAndWell.com , comprised of tracks from 1. Outside and Earthling , underscores Rolling Stone ’s assertion that, with Earthling , Bowie had hit another purple patch, resulting in “some of his finest music in a decade”.

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Earthling by David Bowie

Album Reviews 1997 Albums , Album Reviews by J.D. Cook , British Artists , David Bowie 0

Buy Earthling

The 1990s were the decade when Stomp and raves rose to prominence. Stomp ushered in a fascination with industrial music, while raves brought electronica to public consciousness. Bowie tapped into these two music trends when creating Earthlings. As a result, the album functions well as a time capsule for that type of music. Unfortunately, this is also what limits the album. If you’re not nostalgic for the late 90s or in the mood to take some drugs and dance, Earthling quickly gets repetitive.

Before I get into the songs, I wanted to discuss the cover. Bowie is standing in a Union Jack themed coat, turned away from the viewer, staring out at England. It’s a cool piece of pop art. The album starts with “Little Wonder,” which lets the listener know right away that this album will be focused on electronica and industrial sounds. The song starts well before getting repetitive and going on a bit too long. In “Looking for Satellites,” Bowie’s lyrical nonsense acts as a musical instrument, which is fun. There’s little to note about “Battle for Britain (The Letter),” it’s essentially club music. After this is “Seven Years in Tibet,” which is one of the best songs on the album. Bowie gets away from electronica and industrial and opts for a more traditional tune, while his lyrics evoke emotion instead of being used like a sampling device. This song also previews the musical direction Bowie would take on his follow-up album.

There isn’t a great deal to say about the next several songs. They all sound similar and work off repetition. “Dead Man Walking” has a fun piano outro. “Telling Lies” features an intro that sounds virtually identical to three of the previous tunes on the album. “The Last Thing You Should Do” changes into a fun rock jam near the end but primarily includes the same faults as the previous songs.

“I’m Afraid of Americans” was the big hit single off this album, and it is fine, but not great. The last song on the album “Law (Earthlings on Fire)” manages to change up the electronica patterns used throughout the album and as a result, sounds more enjoyable than a lot of the songs in the same vein, despite still heavily using repetition and sampling.

Out of 25 David Bowie albums, I’d recommend at least 19 before mentioning Earthling . It’s not that Bowie’s 1997 effort is a particularly bad album, but it just doesn’t rate highly in the Starman’s stellar discography. None of the songs are particularly memorable. Thankfully, starting with his 1999 album Hours , Bowie would embark on a string of excellent albums leading right up to his untimely passing in 2016.

Part of Classic Rock Review’s celebration of 1997 albums.

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• Tour Statistics
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All Setlists

• All setlist songs  ( 1340 )

Years on tour

• 2007  ( 1 )
• 2006  ( 1 )
• 2005  ( 1 )
• 2004  ( 81 )
• 2003  ( 42 )
• 2002  ( 58 )
• 2001  ( 2 )
• 2000  ( 6 )
• 1999  ( 27 )
• 1998  ( 1 )
• 1997  ( 107 )
• 1996  ( 61 )
• 1995  ( 52 )
• 1993  ( 4 )
• 1990  ( 112 )
• 1987  ( 102 )
• 1985  ( 1 )
• 1984  ( 1 )
• 1983  ( 100 )
• 1980  ( 1 )
• 1979  ( 1 )
• 1978  ( 79 )
• 1977  ( 2 )
• 1976  ( 66 )
• 1975  ( 3 )
• 1974  ( 79 )
• 1973  ( 97 )
• 1972  ( 98 )
• 1971  ( 7 )
• 1970  ( 37 )
• 1969  ( 60 )
• 1968  ( 28 )
• 1967  ( 6 )
• 1966  ( 15 )
• 1962  ( 1 )

Show all tours

• A Reality  ( 118 )
• David Bowie Tour  ( 2 )
• Diamond Dogs  ( 76 )
• Earthling  ( 98 )
• Glass Spider  ( 99 )
• Heathen  ( 48 )
• Hunky Dory  ( 4 )
• Isolar  ( 64 )
• Isolar II  ( 79 )
• Man of Words/Man of Music  ( 61 )
• Outside  ( 106 )
• Pierrot In Turquoise  ( 22 )
• Serious Moonlight  ( 100 )
• Sound + Vision  ( 111 )
• Summer 2000 Tour  ( 4 )
• The Hours...  ( 22 )
• Ziggy Stardust  ( 188 )
• Avg Setlist
• Concert Map

Average setlist for tour: Earthling

Note: only considered 85 of 98 setlists (ignored empty and strikingly short setlists)

• Quicksand Play Video
• I'm Afraid of Americans Play Video
• The Jean Genie Play Video
• The Man Who Sold the World Play Video
• Battle for Britain (The Letter) Play Video
• Seven Years in Tibet Play Video
• Fashion Play Video
• Looking for Satellites Play Video
• Look Back in Anger Play Video
• The Last Thing You Should Do Play Video
• Fame Play Video
• Under Pressure ( Queen  cover) Play Video
• The Hearts Filthy Lesson Play Video
• V-2 Schneider Play Video
• Hallo Spaceboy Play Video
• Stay Play Video
• Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) Play Video
• Little Wonder Play Video
• Dead Man Walking Play Video
• White Light/White Heat ( The Velvet Underground  cover) Play Video
• All the Young Dudes Play Video
• O Superman ( Laurie Anderson  cover) Play Video

Show Openers

Main set closers, show closers, encores played.

This feature is not that experimental anymore. Nevertheless, please give feedback if the results don't make any sense to you.

• Apr 8, 2024
• Apr 7, 2024
• Apr 6, 2024
• Apr 5, 2024
• Apr 4, 2024
• Apr 3, 2024
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