Bowie's Piano Man - The Biography of Mike Garson

by Clifford Slapper

  It is an interesting fact that the recollections they have all shared since then of what instructions they were given seem to differ markedly from what, according to Eno, was actually on their cards. Writer Chris O’Leary suggests this may be due to ‘the capriciousness of memory as well as the potential that Eno and the players altered the “storylines” during their recording’.37 Eno’s directions are imaginative, detailed and expertly futuristic, with something of an Afro-centric angle in several. Here is one example:

  It’s 2008. You are a musician in one of the new ‘Neo-Science’ bands, playing in an underground club in the Afro-Chinese ghetto in Osaka, not far from the University. The whole audience is high on ‘dreamwater’, an auditory hallucinogen so powerful that it can be transmitted by sweat condensation alone. You are also feeling its effects, finding yourself fascinated by intricate single-note rhythm patterns, shard-like Rosetta-stone sonic hieroglyphs. You are in no particular key – making random bursts of data which you beam into the performance…38

  Part of the idea of this was to clear people’s creativity by stepping out of themselves. The musicians were also given new names for the sessions. Mike Garson was called ‘G. Noisemark’, whilst Reeves Gabrels became ‘Elvas Ge’Beer’ and Erdal Kizilcay was ‘Azile Clark-l-day’. Garson says the results were ‘hilarious, as well as quite liberating’. He respected Eno’s intentions although he felt that in his own case it was less necessary since he had long worked specifically on the art of ‘not getting in your own way’ as he calls it. Even a cursory listen to the striking outcome in 1. Outside’s introduction of a narrative sequence (a possible four further albums were mooted but not produced), with its nerve-wrackingly brittle aural soundscape, confirms that Eno’s directed style of producing succeeded in drawing excellent results out of the ensemble, even though it seems one or two of the musicians may have had misgivings about some of Eno’s directions at the time. Meanwhile David Bowie had set up an easel and was creating charcoal sketches of the musicians too which only served to enhance the recording session as a piece of performance art in itself. His portrait of Garson was deeply expressive and really captured something about him. A further experimental feature used at the time by Eno was to play familiar songs through headphones to them (such as ‘Dancing in the Street’ by Martha and the Vandellas39) whilst asking them to play along with the spirit of the song but without any of its external features. All of these methods were used to prevent the group improvisation from falling into the twelve-bar blues jamming which is so often synonymous with that term.

  Bowie also returned to a technologically updated version of the Burroughs ‘cut-up’ method first used on Diamond Dogs to generate random lyrics out of his own writing, in the hope of revealing subconscious thoughts, for 1.Outside, by using a programme for his Mac which could randomise word order. (For the Earthling sessions in 1996 he took this a step further by creating his own ‘Verbasizer’ device for processing verbal raw material.) Garson reveals, however, that despite using this method on 1. Outside, Bowie did still refine the words which came back out of the computer, and Garson says that he respected Bowie for retaining this ‘human’ touch. Garson points out that both Bowie and Eno subscribed, like him, to some form of ‘chaos’ theory whereby there are subconscious and also apparently chance elements of human meaning, which nevertheless hold significance despite (or perhaps because of) their ostensibly random nature.

  As for the role-play games, it has been documented that Erdal Kizilcay, as a long-term Bowie collaborator, resented the antics of Eno as being pointless and unnecessary, without musical foundation, whereas both Reeves Gabrels and Garson found it fascinating. When interviewed about his choice of musicians at this time, Bowie commented that they all represented different points in the work he had done by then, and that they

  are the ones who are the most open to experimentation. With Mike Garson, for example, we could just say: ‘Mike, just be yourself,’ and it’s so nutty that there was no need to set parameters.40

  Garson was very much in his element as an avowed improviser himself, and recalls feeling able to take the lead in laying down many of the experimental musical frameworks within which Gabrels and the others would unleash their own expression. For David Bowie, these 1. Outside sessions saw him also revelling in the opportunity to give full rein to the artistic experimentation which had always been his starting point even as he made his first creative endeavours in the 1960s. In a personal journal note dated 3 March 1994, he wrote:

  What I like about this music so far is its clusters of jewels that pop up during the improvisations. Also, except when Brian [Eno] asked for a Bo Diddley beat on something there have been no back-references to other artists or styles.41

  He goes on to mention an idea he had ‘while recording “Buddha” in August’, to ‘resample and reconstruct the ingredients of the 1976-79 Berlin albums that I produced with Visconti and create a fourth so-called ‘Lost Tapes’ album. An album, in short, that was never really made.’ This period in Bowie’s work was extremely fertile and Garson was able to flourish in such an experimental environment. Brian Eno’s fascinating diary of 1995 which was published as A Year with Swollen Appendices in 1996 even refers to the whole 1. Outside album as ‘Garsonic’:

  Listened to D.B. disk (after swimming and park and lunch). Strong, muddy, prolix, gritty, Garsonic, modern (self-consciously, ironically so). Every rhythm section superb (even mine). Some acceptable complexity merging into not-so-acceptable muddle; several really beautiful songs (‘Motel’, ‘Oxford Town’, ‘Strangers’, others). The only thing missing: space – the nerve to be very simple. But an indisputably ‘outside’ record. I wish it was shorter. I wish nearly all records were shorter. Spoke to Damien Hirst. He will give some pics to PFW [Pagan Fun Wear – a fashion event for War Child]. He mentioned rolling in the gutter and barking with Gilbert and George, as though it was just another ordinary evening out.42

  By the time of 1. Outside, Bowie was starting to show his paintings around the world, and this album was conceived as a multi-media work of art. Garson was ideally suited to this with his jazz background, his passion for improvisation and his amenable and open-minded personality. Other musicians involved brought other qualities to this, such as Erdal Kizilcay with his multi-instrumental virtuosity or Brian Eno with his extraordinary intelligence and instinctive ability to subvert, to work outside of any expected framework.

  ‘Mike Garson is a cathedral of music.’ With these words Jérôme Soligny, who knows him better than most, sums up perfectly what has made Garson’s role distinctive. He describes Garson’s command of musicology as being key, with his ability to reference Frank Zappa as readily as Rachmaninoff, with both detail and integrity. The combination of this knowledge and technical analysis with the more intuitive and emotional expression in Garson’s playing and composing is what gives it a special power. There are many who excel in one or other of these two complementary dimensions of musical creativity, but few who excel in both, without allowing either to overpower the other.

  Most of the time he succeeds in keeping a fine balance between expertise and simplicity. It is the rarity of the exceptions to this which make them easy to enumerate. Just one example comes up, mentioned by drummer Neil Conti, who recalls playing alongside Garson for one of Bowie’s television appearances, the Channel 4 show TFI Friday with Chris Evans in 1999. They played some additional songs in the television studio which were not broadcast, including ‘China Girl’, on which Conti says Garson ‘nearly fluffed the intro, because he was trying to do something clever, again with some Latin theme… I think he was in the wrong key… David looked very amused… but at the same time he didn’t look surprised… he’s realised that Mike is what he is, and you get the best out of him if you just let him get on with it!’

  Young drummer Sterling Campbell lived in the same apartment block in New York as Dennis Davis, who played drums for Bowie on 1974’s Soul tour. One day in May 1978 Campbell bumped into Davis in the lo
bby and was invited to go with Davis to a Bowie gig he was doing at Madison Square Garden. He was fourteen at the time and this was the start of his friendship with Davis and his fascination for the music of Bowie. He loved the combination of ambient music with funk and rock which Bowie was creating at that time, and which would prove so hugely influential from the 1980s onwards. Fifteen years later he was playing with Bowie himself, having played with Nile Rodgers, Duran Duran and the B-52s.

  I interviewed Campbell about the many tours and recording sessions on which he has subsequently worked with Garson. He recalls Garson taking easily to the role-play and other experimental aspects of the 1. Outside sessions, that he was expansive, open-minded and spiritual. In the years that followed, the two of them would often spend the time after a show getting into deep philosophical and spiritual discussions. He is amused to recall that, even when their bedrooms were virtually adjacent on a hotel corridor on the Reality tour, they would spend hours chatting on the telephone.

  He was fascinated by the fact that Garson had been around in the 1970s, had seen such a lot, and had always been clear-headed and so was able to recall things properly, from the 1960s New York jazz scene, through the days of Ziggy Stardust. He wonders whether Garson’s disinterest in drink or drugs may even have prevented him from getting gigs with certain bands at times, since people who are using heavily do not like someone ‘straight’ around to reflect that back to them. In any case, from the late 1990s on, Campbell says, people in this circle had grown up and ‘the only drinking would be a glass of wine with dinner – in contrast to the 1970s, whose decadence has perhaps been matched only by that of the 1920s’.

  He describes Garson as a very gentle and caring family man, with a strong moral compass. He has seen how he has been able to respond to Bowie’s desire to bring some jazz-influenced complexity fleetingly into a song, then to have it fade away again, and compares this with Pink Floyd’s Richard Wright using one beautiful jazz chord from Miles Davis’ 1959 Kind of Blue album when writing ‘Breathe’ for Dark Side of the Moon. Garson is highly skilled at controlling the amount of complexity or jazz influence he allows through his ‘valve’ in meeting the requirements of Bowie’s music.

  Sterling Campbell observes that Bowie grew up against a background of Coltrane and Miles Davis being at their peak, along with James Brown, Bacharach and so many other influences, which he is a master of weaving into the fabric of his music, presenting it all through a pop sensibility. In this sense it is not so surprising that he was joined in the 1970s by a pianist from the jazz avant-garde. Moreover, jazz musicians have often moved into popular forms. Most of the musicians in Motown and early pop did come from a jazz background, and moved into pop out of necessity. Campbell condemns the snobbish attitudes and one-upmanship which sometimes creep into this situation.

  Above all what he recalls of the tours with Bowie in the 1990s and early 2000s is the humour. When he and Garson played ‘Battle for Britain (The Letter)’, he says they were often almost laughing at the incongruity of their situation, playing this ‘wacky duet’ yet again together. Paradoxically, at the same time, he says, they cared deeply about the music. They had worked it out and prepared it minutely and that is the point at which the laughter emerges – perhaps as a release of nervous energy. On one level, they were not taking themselves too seriously, at the same time as taking the music entirely seriously. Likewise, whilst recording 1. Outside they were always ‘having fun, having a laugh’.

  The greatest music has always had this humour, especially in a British context, and Campbell cites the infamous clowning of Keith Moon whilst drumming brilliantly on stage with The Who, and indeed the Beatles, with their taking of song titles like ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ from Ringo’s diatribes rather than some profound ‘shoe-gazing’ seriousness. That sense of comedy is a necessary companion to the tough side, the hard work and the years of effort that someone like Bowie went through before he got to where he is.

  In particular he recalls a running joke over Garson’s piano solo on ‘Life on Mars?’ Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s Bowie would do an arrangement which was just piano and voice until the last chorus, at which point the band would come in. There would be a piano solo after the first chorus, instead of (and longer than) the string-section bridge on the original. Garson would veer so far away from the key and the theme that it seemed impossible that he would be able to resolve and pull it back in time for the second verse. Each time he would veer further, and the band were thinking, how on earth is this going to resolve in time? They almost had a sweepstake. ‘We were all looking at each other and thinking, “No way is he going to get back…” Sometimes there was only a bar left and he still had not started doing the descent yet!’ and yet he always did it; from the very edge he would ‘find this chord to resolve it. It was one of the most amazing things to watch. He did a different solo every night. I was nervous at times!’

  On one occasion Garson was standing at his keyboards in a long black velour coat at an outdoor show at the Greek Theatre, Los Angeles in 2004, playing the intricate ‘Battle for Britain (The Letter)’ duet with Campbell. Campbell had learned the drum pattern in minute detail from the original recording on the Earthling album on which Zachary Alford had played drums, and Garson had likewise transcribed his own solo from that album, as they had agreed to recapture the recording perfectly. A breeze started blowing his coat against the screen of his MusicPad computer, however, resulting in the pages being rapidly turned. This caused much mirth amongst the band as Garson became flustered by this, but then gave up and created a new solo. Nature had intervened and the inventive muse had to respond.

  Campbell also loved watching how one of Garson’s runs could encompass ‘four hundred years of music’, from baroque to modern classical to Coltrane. He says that Garson was coming across as a ‘mad scientist’. He would look over and Garson would catch his eye and smile, and ‘it was funny! There was a real sense of humour to it. I used to love that.’

  This humour and mischievousness is not just a key part of Garson’s personality – it can also be heard in many of his improvisations and solos, which often end with a signature playful little exclamation from the very top and/or bottom of the keyboard. This calling card was first noted at the very end of the ‘Aladdin Sane (1913-1938-197?)’ track, but is in fact an integral expression of the humour and humanity he brings to his music.

  After recording on 1. Outside, Sterling Campbell was unable to do the Outside tour because of scheduling conflicts and his place was taken by Zachary Alford, who also played on the Earthling album and tour a couple of years later. Alford, who had been playing for Bruce Springsteen prior to that, soon formed a bond with Garson on tour too. Although he had not really played jazz, he had met many jazz musicians at Berklee:

  I knew how stand off-ish some of them could be. Mike wasn’t like that. He was very encouraging and smiled when he played. But the first time he really blew my head off was our first Saturday Night Live performance. We played ‘The Hearts Filthy Lesson’ and when he came to the piano solo he just killed it. There was blood on the walls. I was like, ‘Damn, this guy’s an animal!’ From then on I knew it was on. We were taking no prisoners. It was really exciting!

  On the Earthling sessions, he recalls Bowie wanting something quite specific from Garson’s organ solo for ‘Seven Years in Tibet’, and so he took him through it in detail and Garson followed this direction, whereas he gave him more free rein on ‘Battle for Britain (The Letter)’ – other than the suggestion of Stravinsky as inspiration – so that ‘Mike got to put his personal signature on it as only he could’.

  I asked Alford whether he felt that Garson’s jazz background meant that he had to adapt when in a rock context, and his reply was revealing:

  Well, Mike didn’t have to adapt. He was creating a new vocabulary… he is exceptionally gifted at playing all styles. He’s not a jack of all trades but more a master of all trades. So if you want stride, you get stride. You want bo
ogie-woogie, you get boogie-woogie. Mike is a musician’s musician. He’s an artist. What drives him is pushing the limits of his own musical abilities and the harmonic possibilities of music and how that can enrich people’s lives spiritually and emotionally.

  Also working alongside Garson with David Bowie for the recording of 1995’s 1. Outside and 1997’s Earthling and subsequent tours through the second half of the 1990s was guitarist Reeves Gabrels, whose fondness for Garson and his music had begun twenty years earlier. As a teenager he used to put Bowie’s David Live on his parents’ stereo system and try to play his guitar along with then Bowie guitarist, Earl Slick. He noticed that sometimes if he played a wrong note it would match the note that the pianist was playing – which was Mike Garson’s dissonant improvising around the guitar line. He started asking, if it is wrong for the guitar to be playing that note then why was it okay for the piano to be playing it? ‘It set me on a whole slightly more twisted path,’ he tells me now, indicating that Garson had influenced his playing long before they met: ‘In many ways, Mike taught me that you could play “outside”… I tried to figure out how he got away with it, and why I liked it.’ As a young session musician, he took some lessons from jazz guitarist John Scofield, and went to study at the Berklee School of Music in Boston.

  He bought a copy of Garson’s 1980 solo album Avant Garson, as he liked Gershwin, which was featured over one side of the album, and had enjoyed his playing on Mick Ronson’s solo albums too: ‘I kept getting these tastes of much more interesting chords than the guitar players were playing.’ When they finally met, he told Garson, ‘You’re like my uncle!’ On tour in the 1990s the rest of the band would refer to ‘the Garson faucet’ because of the way the music just pours out of him like water from a tap. ‘You just turn him on and what was going to come out was pure Garson. You just had to turn it off when the water was hot enough!’ Just as you cannot get the same water twice out of a tap, so you are unlikely to get the same notes in the same order twice from Garson.