Some of the biggest stars in music are sexual predators and pedophiles. Most don’t even deny it. Some even wrote songs about it.
Source: 24 Musicians Whose Legacies Could Face A #MeToo Reckoning
Tag: bowie
JEFFREY MORGAN : biographer of ALICE COOPER and THE STOOGES
SIZZLING–geddit?–PLATTER OF THE WEEK: David Bowie – Blackstar (ISO) :: You’d think that suffering a heart attack after recording the less than holy holy Heathen would’ve warned him to resist the dark side, but nooooooooooooo.
Various Artists – Moogfest 2006 Live (MVD Visual DVD) :: When it comes to aural affection, Moog synthesizer adherents are the most avid. Jan Hammer hurts ’em with a solid set that spans his solo career, from his work with Steve Kindler and Jeff Beck to his Miami Vice days. Meanwhile, an unrecognizable Keith Emerson knifes away through a marathon performance of “Tarkus” using his trademark 15-foot-high patch board. Both lads still have their speed freak chops intact; close your eyes and you’ll swear it was 1973. If you still delight in the classic Moog “bee-yow” synth sound, then this DVD’s for you.
Rick Wakeman – Amazing Grace (MVD Visual DVD) :: Wherein the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll keyboardist sits down at the grand piano for an acoustic interpretation of the world’s greatest rock of ages hymns. This one features live and studio performances along with-don’t laugh-some truly evocative scenes of nature. Rick also personally introduces each hymn with an educational historical overview. And since his speed freak chops are still just as fast as Emerson’s, it’s interesting to compare Rick’s reverent rendition of “Jerusalem” with Keith’s electronic one on Brain Salad Surgery.
Read it all at Source: JEFFREY MORGAN : biographer of ALICE COOPER and THE STOOGES
Carlos Alomar’s Golden Years with David Bowie (Interview)
I saw Carlos Alomar play with Iggy Pop in a couple of different venues. Always so cool and conscious of the impact he made on stage with his instrument. This is a great read.
Station To Station and the Berlin Trilogy
When we went to California to do Station to Station, and we did the other albums later, the Brian Eno stuff and even beyond that, as musicians we had to listen. We were making tracks before we knew what David’s lyrics or melodies were. But there’s music in the holes. I got that from James Brown, when I was playing guitar for him. He was like, ‘Son, calm down. Why are you playing so much stuff?’ And really, when you’re playing with three guitar players, it’s easy to calm down. They’ve got it covered. Less is more.And David liked to put things together like a jigsaw puzzle, so we couldn’t put too many notes in there. That’s why I asked him, ‘Please, no keyboard players. Keyboard players have two hands, and they’re constantly playing full chords, two or three inversions. It doesn’t leave anything to the imagination.’ So when I played with David, instead of playing one guitar that’s got five fabulous things in it, I’d play one guitar that played only one part of it. Then later I’d play the other part, so one was on the left side and one was on the right side. Then, if he wanted, I’d do another one on the upper right side, and then the upper left, so that all together in the stereo placement it might be four or five guitar parts.It ends up so awesomely cool that you’re going, ‘Dude, that is awesome and cool!’ That’s the way we kind of worked together. Less is more in the case of trying to construct songs. Otherwise you get so heavy-handed that you can’t do arrangements like there were on Station to Station. You can’t do these songs like Wild Is the Wind or Word On A Wing. Those are somewhat classic songs for a guy like David to tackle, but he wanted to do them with a skeleton crew of musicians, so it wouldn’t be too heavy-handed. So the parts were really developed, but who shines? David. With such simple arrangements, David’s got to carry that. And he did.
read it all at Source: Carlos Alomar’s Golden Years with David Bowie (Interview)
Heroes by David Bowie: The Story Behind The Song | Louder
Heroes was released as a single in September 1977. It only reached No.24 in the UK, and didn’t chart at all in the US. But the emotional power of the song would continue to resonate, as it became one of Bowie’s theme songs, along with the likes of Space Oddity and Changes. Its most memorable moment would come 10 years later, when he performed it live at the Platz der Republik Festival, right across from the studio in Berlin where it was conceived.
“I’ll never forget that,” he recalled. “It was one of the most emotional performances I’ve ever done. I was in tears. They’d backed up the stage to the Wall itself so that it was acting as our backdrop. We kind of heard that a few of the East Berliners might actually get the chance to hear the thing, but we didn’t realise in what numbers they would. And there were thousands on the other side that had come close to the wall. So it was like a double concert, where the Wall was the division. And we would hear them cheering and singing along from the other side. God, even now I get choked up. It was breaking my heart. I’d never done anything like that in my life. And I guess I never will again.
“When we did Heroes it really felt anthemic, almost like a prayer,” Bowie continued. “I’ve never felt it like that again. However well we did it later, it was almost like walking through it compared to that night because it meant so much more. That’s the town where it was written, and that’s the particular situation that it was written about. It was just extraordinary.
“In 2002 we did it in Berlin again. This time, what was so fantastic – it was in the Max Schmeling Hall, which holds about ten to fifteen thousand – is that half the audience had been in East Berlin that time way before. So now I was face-to-face with the people I had been singing it to all those years ago. And we were all singing it together. Again, it was powerful. Things like that really give you a sense of what a song and performance can do.”
read the whole darn thing at Source: Heroes by David Bowie: The Story Behind The Song | Louder
Space Oddity by David Bowie: The Story Behind The Song | Louder
It’s a classic story of songwriting.
“When I originally wrote about Major Tom,” Bowie said, “I thought I knew all about the great American dream and where it started and where it should stop. Here was the great blast of American technological know-how shoving this guy up into space, but once he gets there he’s not quite sure why he’s there. And that’s where I left him.”
And that’s where he remains, an icon of rock music, and a glittering star in the firmament of Bowie’s legacy.
Read the whole article at Source: Space Oddity by David Bowie: The Story Behind The Song | Louder
David Bowie TVC15 1979 with Klaus Nomi on Vimeo
The Sacred Triangle; Bowie,Iggy & Lou Reed – YouTube
Why composer Philip Glass viewed David Bowie’s ‘Lodger’ with skepticism – Los Angeles Times
Searching for a connection he could nurture, Glass focused on Bowie’s words, and ultimately discovered the seed of his symphony. “The writing was remarkable,” Glass concluded. “It was someone who had created a political language for themselves.”
So Glass stripped “Lodger” of its music until only the lyrics remained. Then, Glass says, he “reset the words.”
Describing it as “a different kind of collaboration” than those for his first two Bowie symphonies, Glass added, “What I was going to do on ‘Lodger’ had nothing to do with the music that was on the record.”
The music on the record wasn’t actually recorded in Berlin but across two 1978-1979 sessions in Montreaux, Switzerland. Featuring Bowie, Eno and a half-dozen players including Carlos Alomar and Adrian Belew, for “Lodger” the team experimented with compositional styles.
They employed Eno’s famed “Oblique Strategies” cards to spark creativity, rotated instruments and drew on unlikely sources including Turkish sounds and Chinese propaganda music.
“This was an album of many experiments that for the most part worked really well,” wrote Bowie’s longtime producer Tony Visconti in the liner notes to his 2017 remix of “Lodger,” which was approved by Bowie before his death and released as part of the 2017 box set “A New Career in a New Town: 1977-1982.”
Source: Why composer Philip Glass viewed David Bowie’s ‘Lodger’ with skepticism – Los Angeles Times