by Paul Trynka
David had discussed the notion of a greatest hits stadium tour with Reeves Gabrels within the first few months of Tin Machine’s existence. But the guitarist believed ‘it didn’t feel like my place to do it’. Appearing on stage with David for a greatest hits tour would also make Tin Machine look like a mere side-project, so Gabrels suggested a musician he knew and respected, who also had a link with Bowie’s back catalogue: Lodger guitarist Adrian Belew.
Perfectly organised, impeccably choreographed – by Édouard Lock of La La La Human Steps – and presented with state-of-the-art video technology, Sound + Vision was another groundbreaking tour. An unadorned set was flanked by a huge screen showing video footage, much of it a giant moving image of David himself, with which the real singer would interact. Marketed as the first and last time David would do a ‘Greatest Hits’ set, the tour marked a period when ten of his reissued albums all entered the British charts. What would effectively be Bowie’s last grandstanding stadium tour was, says musical director Adrian Belew, ‘sensational’ for both the musicians and the crowd. ‘We’d walk out and start playing “ground control to Major Tom”, and it would overwhelm you, this emotional feeling, then there’s the video, the lights and all these huge images floating around – it would absolutely give you the chills.’
After eighteen years of touring, though, live shows felt anything but sensational for David Bowie, the artist who as a teenager had told his manager he hated ‘ballrooms and the kids’. Several times during the Sound + Vision tour, which ran from 4 March to 29 September, 1990, David would ask his MD, ‘Why do David Bowie and Mick Jagger both feel compelled to keep going out touring? Why do we do this? It’s laughable.’ The topic was raised several times, ‘but there was no resolving it’, says Belew.
David had once again deployed all his charm when he called Belew, even suggesting using Adrian’s own band: drummer Mick Hodges and Rick Fox on keyboards. For Belew it was like ‘a dream come true, to bring my band, childhood friends on tour I was like a kid with a handful of candy.’
For bassist Erdal Kizilcay, though, the tour was ‘horrible’. There was a simple reason for the conflicting account; it depended whether you were in front of, or behind the screen. For the stripped-down visuals, it turned out Belew would be Bowie’s main foil; the other three would remain invisible: ‘It was devastating for them when they heard,’ says Belew. ‘They get to play with Bowie – and nobody can see them.’
For Erdal Kizilcay, a sponsorship deal arranged for the opening dates in Canada exemplified the seemingly intractable problem of David’s desire both for cult status and mainstream income. David had attracted derision for accepting the Pepsi dollar in 1987. Labatt’s sponsorship of the opening Canadian leg of the new tour was more damaging. Proclaimed an industry breakthrough by the agency that brokered it, the deal included a gap for the sponsor’s message in the set, which fatally sapped away its momentum. ‘It was horrible,’ says Erdal Kizilcay, ‘people left the venue – and didn’t come back again. I don’t know how much money he got for it but it blew up the highest point of the concert, the middle fifteen minutes. You’d come back and have to start warming up the people again, and it was, No way.’
Belew doesn’t remember the sponsorship slot as the main problem; instead, the design of a clear metal stage, with amplifiers hidden underneath, together with the four-man line-up, meant the music would always come a distant second to the innovative visuals. ‘I was fairly disappointed musically throughout the tour, with myself and what we were able to do. We were under severe restraint with a small band – how do you play “Young Americans” without a saxophone? Mike, Rick and I had just come from a club tour where the sound is warm and everyone can hear you … here for us it sounded metallic, the guitar sound was thin. I wish I could have done a much better job.’
Despite the technical frustrations, David and Adrian were in good spirits throughout most of the tour; for the backstage boys, despite getting to use Chrysler CEO Lee Iacocca’s private jet for several dates, and the plush hotels, it was boring. During the performance, keyboardist Rick Fox was often restricted to simply pressing a button to play a sample or sequence; hence he’d munch on a sandwich or a burger if he was feeling peckish, mid-set. Then one night, Erdal saw David make a gesture in the middle of ‘The Jean Genie’, and thought he was being signalled to emerge from behind the curtain, which he did. Then: ‘David shouted at me, “Get off!” It was weird.’
As the band sat on the plane at the end of the show, David ‘yelled and yelled’ at Erdal, says Belew, ‘and a quiet came over everyone. We just sat there on the plane. It was horrible.’
It was a one-off incident, but it showed how, for all the musicians, ‘You start with a lot of excitement and enthusiasm, then gradually you wear down,’ says Belew. ‘But that time with Erdal was the only scene – which is pretty good for a group of forty-five people travelling around the world.’
David himself made a good fist of enjoying the tour – he was more fun to be around than in 1978, and took Belew out for a memorable night in Paris, where he and Mick Jagger attempted to out-camp each other on the dancefloor, in that distinctive blend of friendship and schoolboy rivalry. Throughout, he’d vibe up Adrian, worked at stretching him as a musician, while trying to discuss ways he himself could tour and keep it from being routine. He didn’t complain, but it was obviously hard work for him, although the band did not quite believe his widely publicised statement that this would be the last time he’d play his hits live; rather, it seemed a good marketing ploy. David had introduced a telephone poll, asking fans to nominate their favourite songs for inclusion in the set, and as the tour reached Europe, the NME launched a campaign to lobby for the inclusion of ‘The Laughing Gnome’; he was unphased by their cheekiness (although, sadly, they never played the song). Even as the tour rumbled on through Europe before its conclusion in South America, he remained much less stressed than on the 1978 tour: joking throughout, talking about Marlon Brando, singing Beatles songs.
During the second half of the tour, it was obvious David was having problems with Melissa; it added to his rapport with Belew, with whom he’d chat about his problems – his openness, the fact he was still having girl troubles at forty-three, was endearing. The band liked Melissa – ‘She was a great person, but maybe not strong enough for David,’ says Erdal, who’d also seen her occasionally in Switzerland – but for the later European dates she sat on the bus by herself. Then she was gone. David was gracious about the split, commenting he’d worried it was becoming an ‘older men, younger girl situation’ and describing her as ‘such a wonderful, lovely, vibrant girl’. Some years later, Melissa married Patrick Cassidy, brother of seventies teen heartthrob David.
For the last few dates, in South America, there was no room for the staging, so half the crew were absent; together with an undercurrent of violence from the police, it made for an oddly anti-climactic finish for David’s last huge stadium tour. After the last date, David said he’d give Adrian a call – ‘And here we are nineteen years later!’ says the guitarist. ‘But he’s a fun person to be around. I miss him.’
Whatever the backstage frustrations, the end of the Sound + Vision tour marked a life-changing encounter for David, one whose significance he realised a couple of weeks after the final date at Buenos Aires’ River Plate Stadium on 29 September, 1990. A hairdresser friend, Teddy Antolin, had arranged a blind date for David, on 4 October. Later, David would comment it was love at sight, although in fact he been introduced to his date three or four times before, at the theatre and backstage at his LA show in May.
Iman Abdul Majid was an eighteen-year-old political science major at Nairobi University when wildlife photographer Peter Beard, a friend of the writer Isak Dinesen, happened to spot her in May 1975; she eventually agreed to her first photoshoot in return for having her tuition fees paid, and caused a sensation on her arrival in New York when she signed with the prestigious Wilhelmina Models agency. Iman worked closely with Thierry Mugler, a
nd became a muse for Yves Saint-Laurent. She established herself in the pre-supermodel era, when her main counterparts, says Marie Claire’s then-Fashion Director, Emma Bannister, were, ‘Christie Brinkley, of “Uptown Girl” fame, and Carol Alt – real American cheese. So Iman really stood out – she was striking, strong and African.’
Iman finally became a household face, if not a household name, through an advert for Tia Maria: she smoulders and smiles briefly, her cheeks striped in fluorescent green – a true world citizen selling ersatz exoticism and, by most accounts, reviving the brand. At her peak, her earning were exceeding $2 million a year, but by 1989 she decided she had outstayed her welcome on the modelling scene.
Nearly everyone who’s met Iman describes her using words similar to guitarist Eric Schermerhorn, who says, ‘She was very nice, quieter than you’d think – and also not as tall as you’d think.’ Iman was attracted to David straight away, but later said she truly fell in love when she found he adored reading to people, just like her father – who was the Somali ambassador to Saudi Arabia before his country was wracked by war – and was good at doing funny voices. As for David, he later said he started thinking of children’s names the night they met.
The couple spent a few months together in LA, where they both owned houses, followed by an idyllic six-week trip up and down the Italian coast. If Iman had ever wondered what it would be like being married to a rock ‘n’ roller, she got a true taste of it that summer. After rehearsals in St Mâlo and Dublin, Tin Machine hit the road for another tour on 15 August, 1991, and continued playing, almost night after night, all the way through to the final show at Tokyo’s Budokan in February, 1992. Together with the first Tin Machine tour, and his huge stadium jaunt, it would be David’s longest period on the road since his Spiders days. Iman would travel with David for many of the shows in America and Europe.
By the time the second Tin Machine tour came round, Kevin Armstrong was booked elsewhere; Eric Schermerhorn, a friend of Reeves Gabrels from Boston, took his place. Seeing the band chemistry up close, he was amazed to see how laid-back Bowie was. But he also realised what it was like for the singer, with three opinionated, boisterous musicians in constant competition. Hunt Sales was a brilliant drummer; the hedonistic swagger of his drum intro to ‘Lust for Life’ would earn decades’ worth of royalty checks for both Iggy and Bowie. Schermerhorn found Hunt the most vibrant character in the band, but the most troublesome. It was obvious that David shared his opinion: ‘I think he watched Hunt self-destruct and I think it angered him, in that he was trying to help him. I think Hunt had a lot of resentment for his brother and David. Stay out of my business. It’s my life – so fuck off.’
Schermerhorn, as a neutral party, got to hear everybody’s complaints. ‘I was close to Hunt because nobody else was. I was the in-between guy with everybody. Between all three of them they would come to me telling me all different things. I wanted to keep it all running smoothly because I liked them all.’ Gabrels, meanwhile, had the thankless role of band manager: ‘The good news, and the bad news, was I was the guy who looked at the books every week with the tour manager and the office, keeping an eye on the money – so I was keeping the Sales brothers from renting limousines and the band from getting charged for David wanting a bigger hotel room because Iman was coming to visit, things like that. My sideburns actually went grey in three months on that tour.’
David remained generally oblivious of the band’s internal disputes. Only upcoming shows in the bigger cities worried him – he was surprisingly nervous, and gave better performances at the smaller venues. Even twenty-five years into his career, he still followed his press coverage too closely, but was relaxed about the increasingly vociferous critical drubbings the band were now receiving: ‘He understood it happens with everyone,’ say Gabrels, ‘that it cycles.’
It was not just the critics who were unimpressed. After promising early numbers for the Tin Machine debut, sales had tailed off rapidly, with none of its singles cracking the Top 40. EMI baulked at the prospect of another Tin Machine album; the band signed instead to Polygram offshoot Victory, the brainchild of Phil Carson, who’d worked with Led Zep at Atlantic. Ultimately, the public was as unenthusiastic as EMI; Tin Machine II boasted some wonderful songs, like Bowie and the Sales brothers’ translucently beautiful ‘Goodybe Mr. Ed’, and Gabrels’ ‘Shopping for Girls’ but, like the live dates, it didn’t quite gel. For Gabrels, the experience was frustrating: ‘I would have had one less Hunt Sales vocal on the record,’ but David seemed unconcerned. For him, playing and touring with Tin Machine allowed him to act like a ‘normal bloke’, says Eric Schermerhorn. ‘He’d be blown away by the most mundane things. One time in Minneapolis walking into a pawn shop, with loads of used radios and beat boxes, he bought a used boom box for $65. He was, “This is great!” It was like he’d never done that stuff.’
Travelling with a band – as opposed to with a bunch of employees, as on the Sound + Vision tour – brought out a side of him often hidden under The Dame’s snootiness. He was surprisingly open, trying to round up his bandmates for trips to local junk stores or museums – mates to keep him company and share the view; he was often emotional, especially after the occasional raid on his hotel minibar, and for a man who’d been so ruthless with himself, and his musicians, there were odd, nostalgic notes. His bandmates noticed how he seemed to keep and catalogue everything: drumsticks, clothing, guitar picks. The collecting demonstrated his odd relationship with his own past: often he’d be reluctant to talk about old works, yet once he started you often couldn’t stop him – then he’d reveal how many old features on himself he’d read, how many errors he wanted to correct.
Much of the apparent contradiction was explained by the fact he was still a record nerd, who treasured the albums he’d bought thirty years ago from Medhurst’s or Dobell’s. He didn’t want to play ‘Space Oddity’ every night until he was an old man; yet he needed his own records to slot alongside those of Little Richard and Iggy Pop in some High Fidelity-style ranking of the rock ‘n’ roll greats. Later that year he’d venture to Llangynwyd in South Wales, telling locals he was researching the genealogy of the Jones family. It was not a mid-life crisis, but there was an overwhelming urge to work out how he’d got here, and what his legacy would be.
Over the autumn of 1991 that occasional vulnerability alternated with skittish excitement: mainly because he planned to ask Iman to marry him. He put the question twice, both times in Paris, around 29 October – the first on the Seine, to the strains of ‘April in Paris’; the second at the Paris L’Olympia, where he repeated his proposal on stage, in French, then played some saxophone as his fans cheered. It could have been hokey, ‘but he was pretty amazing’, says Schermerhorn.
It was just a couple of weeks later, in November 1992, that Bowie found himself in Brixton: looking out through the windows at Stansfield Road, wondering how life would have turned out if he’d been a shipping clerk or an accountant, crying. Then at the show at the Brixton Academy – David’s childhood cinema – that evening, Hunt Sales hogged the mic for at least two songs too many, and a third of the audience left before the end.
The journey with Tin Machine had been idyllic, in a fucked-up way, but it was coming to an end. ‘I remember once in the back of the bus, talking with the whole band and him saying, “Listen you guys, I’m getting older,”’ says Schermerhorn. ‘I heard David say, “I don’t want to be doing this for ever. I want to make one more record.” He didn’t want to fuck around.’
In public, David remained strongly committed to Tin Machine; he said at the beginning of the project that they’d produce three albums, and there was no sign of his reneging. But out in Japan, he gently asked Schermerhorn what he was planning to do next and offered to make a few calls for him. Soon, Schermerhorn would help Iggy Pop craft his last great record, 1994’s American Caesar; an album partly inspired by David’s suggestion that Iggy start reading history books. ‘They were amazing, complementary characters. The
y would each ask me about the other. It’s amazing: each one wants what the other has got. Maybe Iggy was the better front man. But David was a better boss – he wanted people to succeed after they’ve worked with him. He didn’t have to help me, but he did.’
The tour ended at the Budokan on 17 February, 1992. For the Sales brothers there were no regrets, says Tony, who ascribes much of the reaction to the band as down to fans’ conservatism. ‘People like the excitement of something different, but if you try to change, it terrifies them and they can’t accept it.’ Gabrels believes the project achieved David’s aims, if not the band’s. ‘Tin Machine fell on the grenade of not just Glass Spider but Never Let Me Down and Tonight. I think the intentions were good at the start and then … it got sidetracked.’
Reeves Gabrels was one of many people who, during their time with David, debated the nature of fame: like gold, or diamonds, it was seen as precious, but its inherent value was impossible to determine. Reeves’ conclusion was that it was ‘a pile of shit’; David, for all his contradictions, was addicted to it. Even if he abhorred the intrusions of the media, his insecurities demanded he court them, for his public persona – how he was perceived – was now an intrinsic part of his own self-image. Thus the most personal, anguished emotions were both something to be concealed and to be displayed – most famously at the memorial concert for Freddie Mercury, which took place a few weeks after the close of the Tin Machine tour, on 20 April, 1992.
The show was a strange mix, reflecting Queen’s quixotically diverse fan base: from heavy metallers like Guns N’ Roses, through to Liz Taylor and Liza Minnelli. David showed an effortless understanding of the event; for if Freddie wasn’t a truly close friend, their careers were closely intertwined, as two of the songs performed that night, ‘All the Young Dudes’ – a favourite of Brian May’s – and ‘Under Pressure’ illustrated. David looked composed and impossibly well groomed in mint-green suit and Action Man hair, next to Annie Lennox, who was seemingly made-up as Pris, the ‘pleasure model’ replicant from Bladerunner, and nuzzled provocatively against his cheek at the song’s climax.