Bowie's Piano Man - The Biography of Mike Garson

by Clifford Slapper

  Welcome to planet Earth! Doesn’t this also happen in actual exclusive clubs that you go to in New York? Doesn’t that happen in every religion on the planet? Doesn’t it happen in the classical world? I worked for the opera world for a while, forget about that! They’re like the ‘Opera Police’ or worse than all of them put together. They don’t even let some singers sing until their late thirties or forties – they won’t even put them in the good operas because they feel it might ruin their voice. There is some risk of that, but it is taken way out of proportion.

  Even in the alternative rock group he joined, Brethren, there were intimations that he was not ‘feeling the groove’ the same way they were. Such judgements have more to do with building group securities for the initiated by invalidating others, than with the exciting and collaborative project of exploring creativity. Some people have tried to use biological determinism to claim that such competitiveness is inevitable, but there is plenty of evidence showing how the human brain is capable of great co-operation and collective creativity. Every performance by every orchestra bears testimony to this.

  The great variety of human expression across the globe encompasses a myriad of different styles of music and beat. However deeply tied these may be to various groups or cultural strands of evolution, they can also all be learned. Whether or not there is any genetic component causing certain groups to feel more affinity with certain musical rhythms or styles, Garson is clear that this is an area which can be learned and developed, and has demonstrated this by successfully challenging himself over many years to enhance his own sense of timing. He has also taken this a step further by teaching it to others, and many of them have far surpassed what they had thought themselves capable of.

  The main factors here are environmental, social and cultural. Different types of musical understanding and feel can be learned or absorbed if we are steeped in them enough. The individual who grows up schooled in the rigours of classical music is less likely to be able to dance, sing or play with swinging rhythm than someone who was surrounded from birth by syncopated beats or soulful melody. When Bowie created his sound for the Young Americans album it was a distinctive amalgam because, although his voice remained unreconstructed, it was now embedded in the sound and feel of the soul tradition. Garson is positive about this:

  If you like something, you can get it – anything, if you’re willing to work at it. You might find you have your gifts here, and those people have their gifts there, maybe they meet in between… Bowie was listening to Aretha Franklin for the Young Americans tour; whilst we were driving around in a limo, he had the earphones on, going through America… and then he sang soulfully. He’s not Marvin Gaye, he’s not Ray Charles – but you could tell he had absorbed that music, and was great at it.

  Garson then also had to adapt to the situation. His playing on Bowie’s Soul tour in 1974 with The Garson Band and on the Young Americans album was soulful, bluesy and simpler by far than it had been on Aladdin Sane, because this is what the new genre required. Whilst he was working on this he found his fingers would not even go off in a jazz direction if he wanted them to, as he had reconditioned his mind to play in a different way for this project.

  Staying with the theme of adaptability, Garson has toured with Lulu, and her voice has a great black soul timbre and feel to it, regardless of her being Scottish and white, which is another demonstration that you can, if you choose, absorb the essence of whatever cultural and musical forms you find yourself amongst. By listening, imitating and incessant practising, Garson has also proved the possibility of mastering almost any other genre of musical expression.

  Garson was born in 1945. In 1973 he recorded with Bowie for the Aladdin Sane album. In 2014 he still receives communications almost daily on this; sometimes about tracks like ‘Time’ or ‘Lady Grinning Soul’, sometimes about his extraordinary playing on the subsequent Bowie album, Diamond Dogs; but the vast majority, and he has accumulated thousands of them, focus on one solo. Garson has created thousands of pieces of music and played on hundreds of albums for many different artists, some of which we explore elsewhere in this book, and yet huge numbers of people still want simply to compliment and discuss his playing on that one album by Bowie, and one track in particular (the title track) – and even more specifically the solo on that track. Even a live version of the ‘Aladdin Sane (1913-1938-197?)’ track (on the David Live album), with a very similar, Garson says possibly more complex, solo, still does not attract comment in the same way. Garson deals with this potentially frustrating situation both philosophically and patiently, by reflecting that ‘you have to say, at that moment, it’s bigger than me and everybody else connected with the project. And it’s crazy, it’s crazy.’

  He maintains an admirable poise in fielding patiently the endless questions he faces about this, even when they misguidedly concern parts of Bowie’s work which Garson did not happen to play on. This attitude is founded on his recognition that Bowie’s decision to bring him on board in 1972, and at various times since, did indeed transform his profile and life. For that he remains steadily and genuinely grateful, whilst at the same time pointing out that the musical credit for his contribution rests with himself, in that Bowie knew why he wanted Garson’s input. Bowie’s genius for selecting, combining and absorbing artistic influences has never been doubted, and Garson’s own unaffected and inspirational brilliance has proved a key ingredient in much of Bowie’s output.

  Garson believes that Bowie’s music will outlive him by possibly as much as a hundred and fifty years, whereas the Beatles may be remembered ultimately more for their social influence than their music. We struggle to think of many other names from the popular music of recent decades whose music is likely to be remembered so far ahead. Songwriters like Bacharach and David, or Stevie Wonder, perhaps? But there is undeniably something unique about the range of influences, musical and otherwise, which have rippled out from Bowie’s ground-breaking artistry over the past forty-five years or so; and Garson’s combination of wild and avant-garde unpredictability with soulful and mellifluous musicality has been a significant part of Bowie’s accumulation of work. Given David Bowie’s prolific ability to absorb influences on himself as well as to influence others, the success of his art can be seen as a measure of his extraordinary ability to filter cultural inputs and convert them into something new, which in turn becomes seminal itself. He is like a highly conductive substance.

  Garson recalls occasions when he was there and various other stars and acclaimed artists came to meet David Bowie, and was always struck by the awe in which they all held him. For example, Elizabeth Taylor, during the Young Americans period: ‘Her beauty was breathtaking, she just sat there and she loved his music.’ Paul and Linda McCartney visited the rehearsals in London in 1973 and stayed for a couple of hours. Blondie, Billy Corgan, Trent Reznor, Russell Crowe, Dave Grohl and many others all clearly regarded him with huge respect. Garson says that these stars would be standing and chatting, looking at him ‘and they can’t say what they want to say, which is, “Oh my God, you are the greatest innovator in rock and roll ever!” ’ Even Lou Reed, ‘who in some ways was senior to Bowie and had inspired him in the early days’, showed that respect as ‘David overtook him with his extraordinary brilliance.’

  Bowie has never lost this childlike fascination for the culture around him and those who shape it, whether Anthony Newley, Bertolt Brecht, Jacques Brel or George Orwell. In terms of Garson’s own panoply of available musical styles they have always had a good working relationship, in which Bowie has been the consummate producer and director:

  With Bowie I know exactly how far I can go with my jazz and my classical, my harmonies, my pop and my avant-garde. I know what he doesn’t like and what he likes, so I play within that window and I am narrowing it down. He doesn’t like to hear bebop and jazz lines, but he likes classical things, he likes avant-garde sounds and he likes to hear interesting chords and harmonies, and he likes ‘less is more’ at times, just
simple little motifs; other times he likes some of my wilder stuff. But he doesn’t want to hear familiar jazz or anything like that, that was all done in the 1950s, so why do that. So, I know his ‘window’.

  Garson is indeed sensitive to the people he works with, which has made him very much in demand as a session player. He is able to bring elements out of his own musical personality to match their styles and their needs, and is very good at feeling where the spaces are which might be filled – and where they are not. But he does this without losing his integrity or his own sense of identity, because he is

  able to be them as much as I’m able to be me. Others find it a threat to be someone else, insisting ‘this is what I do, this is my territory and I won’t ever cross the line’, but I love people and I want to interact with them so, you know, why would I start talking Polish when they’re speaking English?

  This is a refreshingly well formed and humane approach to collaboration, in which the individual ego is strengthened rather than threatened through joining with others.

  In 1975 Garson had a call at home in Brooklyn from the producer of The Rocky Horror Show, asking him to play piano for the Broadway production starring Tim Curry. At the first rehearsal he sight-read the whole show and they were delighted. On the second day he started to improvise on the score. They were still pleased, and interested to hear him putting his stamp on it, but there was a ripple of concern in the room that this was not The Rocky Horror Show. By the third day, he says, he really went to town with the improvisation so that ‘it was a Mike Garson score, I was turning it all around and inside out’. There was no fourth day. Once again he was discovering how alien it was for him to play the same notes each time, whether on Broadway or on a pop stage.

  In 1976, Garson was told that Stevie Wonder was looking for a keyboard player, and despite some misgivings about whether this would be right for him or allow him to express himself in the authentic way he had been able to in working with Bowie, he did go to the audition and ended up spending a week in the studio with him in New York. He recalls of Stevie Wonder that

  from the moment he stepped out of his limo and into the studio with his headphones on, he was just flowing with the music, he was music, he is music! Drummers were coming in: if they couldn’t get it he would sit down at the drums himself and show them; it was just scary, music comes out of every bone in his body.

  More than ten keyboard players passed through. The job went to a young latecomer to the sessions who was a huge Stevie Wonder aficionado and had recorded instrumental versions of all his hits. Garson could see immediately that this was his gig. This was Greg Phillanganes, who later went on to play for Aretha Franklin, George Benson, Eric Clapton and Michael Jackson, amongst others. However, Garson stayed on and jammed jazz with Wonder, who loved Garson’s jazz interpretation of ‘You Are the Sunshine of My Life’.

  Prefab Sprout drummer Neil Conti, who played with Bowie at Live Aid in 1985 and contributed to the same year’s recordings of ‘Absolute Beginners’ and ‘Dancing in the Street’, has some telling reflections on working alongside Garson. In 1999 Conti briefly replaced Bowie’s then regular drummer, Sterling Campbell, for an appearance on Chris Evans’ TFI Friday on Channel 4 television. He recalls Garson’s reluctance to rehearse a song repeatedly in the same arrangement, as his spirit of invention and improvisation was always active.

  He’ll never play the same song twice! Even when you’re at rehearsal, and you play it twice in succession, he’ll suddenly go completely off-track, and start playing a kind of Latin piano part over a rock song… it’s fantastic, because he’s so talented he always manages to find a way to make it fit, and to keep throwing ideas out!

  He loved to experiment and the band came to expect that each performance of the piano part for a particular song might differ slightly from the last, which Conti found both likeable and amusing. He describes Garson as ‘relaxed, friendly and yet intense, musically – and from the technical point of view, astonishing’. What sets Garson aside is that in addition to having the technique to master and fuse classical, jazz and rock styles he has the flourish to be expressive through these vocabularies:

  There are some musicians who have a lot of technique, but don’t really know what to do with it, and that’s what’s so great about him, the way he… he’s got a lot of humour in his playing. That’s so important in music. There’s not many… there’s a lot of musicians who have got great technique, but they’re very serious. And, Mike realises the value of humour, he throws in things when you’re playing live, keeps everyone on their toes, and keeps it fresh. And that’s great!

  Conti further recalls how Garson gave him a copy of one of his albums of improvised classical music, and told Conti ‘this hilarious story of how he had once played it to a professor of classical music by whom he had been taught, who said, “Oh, that’s great! Who wrote it?” and on hearing that Garson had improvised it himself suddenly changed his mind and dismissed it as worthless!’ This terrible snobbery threatens to fossilise and marginalise the classical and jazz establishments. Garson’s love of making music regardless of labels or categories ‘shows when he plays – he’s got a lot of feeling when he plays,’ says Conti, who compares him in this respect with Weather Report keyboardist, Joe Zawinul (who also played with Miles Davis). When asked whether jazz was the highest form of musicianship, Zawinul once responded that it is not, but that being able to compose while you play is the highest level of musicianship. Garson also epitomises this free combination of performance and creation, summed up well by Conti:

  It’s not to do with what style of music you’re playing, it’s to do with being able to almost step outside of what you’re doing, and hear the whole thing and, actually, come up with melodies and ideas, instead of being stuck in your technique.

  Although quiet during rehearsals and calm on stage, Garson would open up and become quite sociable after the gigs. During the performance itself it was always his musicality which took over. According to Conti, ‘When he really gets going on the piano he’s capable of lifting a whole band… an endless stream of ideas… a throwback to a different era where every night was different, they just played what they felt. That’s what I love,’ whereas increasingly the tendency now is for all variables to be ironed out and for live shows to be programmed and standardised to within an inch of their lives.

  This complete spontaneity of expression is part of an outlook which fosters creativity without boundaries. It signposts the future freedom with which new generations of performers and creative producers may increasingly cross-fertilise between disparate fields of music and art. Any truly great musician does not baulk at classifications. After years as a jazz master, Herbie Hancock went on to record a Ravel concerto and has collected the scores of the complete Beethoven symphonies and Tristan and Isolda, saying that he felt like a kid in a candy store. He is another great instance of a truly creative musician moving comfortably around and through the artificial barriers of musical genres.

  Jim Merod is Professor of American Literature at Soka University of America in Orange County, but is also a renowned jazz recording engineer who has recorded Tommy Flanagan, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Stan Getz. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of jazz and has worked with Garson many times. In the cover notes for Garson’s 2012 album Wild Out West, he said that he saw Garson as having arrived ‘within the circle of genuinely masterful jazz pianists’ including Bill Evans, Art Tatum and Thelonious Monk. A couple of years later he tells me that in his experience only André Previn and Herbie Hancock match Garson’s range of artistic expression across jazz and classical idioms. He says that there is undue social pressure towards specialisation within one genre – whereas in fact ‘too much grounding in a particular genre… can limit a musician’s access to other modes of expression’.

  Like drummer Joe LaBarbera, quoted above, he clearly sees working across genres as musically enriching rather than diluting. He describes Garson’s ‘artistic ubiquity’, and beli
eves that whereas he has been especially acclaimed by the rock world in earlier years, his status as ‘maestro’ in jazz is just beginning to be acknowledged.

  8 - From Lulu to Liberace

  ‘I was surrounded for so many years by so many cults – not only religious churches but the jazz cult and the classical cult, all these snobby, intellectual, brilliant, scientific people; consequently, it’s only been in the last ten years that I’ve been able to peel these things, and it always fascinates me that every day I find a lie connected with some bizarre belief system that came across as total truth, and turned out to be just bullshit.’ – Mike Garson on belief systems

  IT WAS IN FRANCE IN 1973 that Lulu recorded David Bowie’s ‘The Man who Sold the World’, taking it to number 3 in the music sales charts in England on 16 February 1974. It was recorded as part of the Pin Ups sessions, with the same line-up, and Garson contributing some gentle electric piano. The song was later also covered by Nirvana and many others, including live performances of it by Nine Inch Nails, with whom Garson would also play. His electric piano on Lulu’s version is not very prominent but can be heard on close listening. Bowie and Ronson produced it for her, with Bowie contributing sax and backing vocals. Garson was a fan of Lulu and her British television show (It’s Lulu, 1970-1973) and the two of them became good friends.

  She did a UK tour soon after. She had lined up a good pianist previously but now wanted to work with Garson and he proceeded to tour with her, also taking on the role of musical director. The pianist he replaced complained to the Musicians’ Union, and since at that time USA citizens were supposed to live in the UK for one year before being entitled to work there, Garson was forced to step down from touring with her. He says that he does not blame the other pianist, even adding that perhaps Lulu should not have replaced him in the first place, as it was his gig.