Bowie's Piano Man - The Biography of Mike Garson

by Clifford Slapper

  ‘Battle for Britain (The Letter)’

  Garson’s favourite piano part of all: ‘The solo starts a bit like “Time” on steroids, crazy! I feel I got a bit lucky on this piece, thanks to the inputs of Mark Plati, Reeves Gabrels, Zachary Alford, Gail Ann Dorsey and of course David.’

  Bowie asked him to listen to Stravinsky’s Octet for wind instruments before recording this.

  ‘Seven Years in Tibet’

  The organ solo uses a Farfisa sound accessed via a Kurzweil. ‘It had a very creepy, snaky kind of feel. Straight after I played it, David said it was the best solo I had played for him since Aladdin Sane.’

  ‘Dead Man Walking’

  Garson said this was the first time he played some fairly straight jazz on a Bowie track. He ended with a ‘funny little Latin thing’ in a bebop style over the long fade-out.

  VH1 Storytellers (recorded 1999, released 2009)

  Garson: ‘That whole show was totally miraculous, everyone was in the moment. Something about the way we were playing in that period, we all loved it.’

  ‘China Girl’ – live

  Garson: ‘I took it in a whole different direction, played a very different kind of piano part, but everyone seemed to like it.’

  ‘I Can’t Read’

  Garson played only strings from the Disklavier, by using a soft enough touch to bypass its real piano action, producing a subtle build in which the strings envelop the song and add dimension.

  ‘hours…’ (1999)

  Garson did not play on the album but can be heard on one bonus track on the 2004 reissue: ‘Something in the Air (American Psycho Remix)’. Piano had been added to this song for its use on the soundtrack of the American Psycho film (2000). It was also performed live with piano on various occasions.

  Bowie at the Beeb (2000)

  Bonus (3rd) CD on early editions, carried live show, BBC Theatre, 27 June 2000.

  Garson says that everything felt right that night, that he was inspired by the intimate audience, which included his old friend Lulu (with whom he had toured twenty-five years earlier) and Russell Crowe, who went to various Bowie shows.

  ‘Wild is the Wind’ – live

  This recorded live performance is a perfect example of the full range of Garson’s more tonal, less discordant playing with Bowie, with many of its greatest features distilled into one song. This was one of Garson’s favourite songs, since having heard Johnny Mathis, aged just twenty-two, sing the original as the theme music for the film of the same name in 1957. Bowie’s cover on his Station to Station album in 1976 had no piano. When they were going to start doing it live he asked Garson to listen to Nina Simone’s typically inspired version. As always, he did so but went on to do it in his own distinctive way, albeit with some subtle influence from her interpretation, and Bowie appreciated that. He says that his version has cleaner runs and steadier timing though he also loved her soulful, grittier feel: ‘Ultimately Bowie is enough of an artist to want me to get a hit on what she did and then obviously do my own thing.’ Some of his best memories are playing this (and ‘Life on Mars?’) for Bowie. He starts the song delicately, with a very romantic ‘less is more’ approach, but then gets bigger with block chords, double descending chromatic scales in thirds and a lot of cascading arpeggios, but still ‘staying out of the way of Bowie’s vocal, and leaving space for the guitar and everything’.

  Garson: ‘The perfect tune for me to open up on and support a singer like David, who just sings the hell out of that song! Every time we’ve done that song it’s been very special. I remember this like it was yesterday. Sometimes one knows they are in the magical zone. I knew it that whole night, and this tune sums it all up.’

  ‘Absolute Beginners’ – live

  (The original 1985 recording was produced by Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley and had piano by Steve Nieve and additional keyboards by Rick Wakeman.)

  This live version is another of the best showcases demonstrating the full range of Garson’s playing with Bowie. It does not have as much of his ‘outside’ playing as some others, but is replete with Gershwinian figures and motifs, fantastic poise, sweep and embellishment and pure lyrical musicality from the piano.

  Garson ‘Every lick I know – well, every lick that’s tonal! I loved playing this song live.’

  ‘Ashes to Ashes’ – live

  This performance includes a great synth solo from Garson.

  Toy (2000)

  This album was not released, but was leaked on to the internet in 2011, and also generated some of the material which appeared on Heathen.

  ‘Uncle Floyd’

  This song was re-recorded for Heathen as ‘Slip Away’. Garson’s piano is on the ‘Uncle Floyd’ version.

  ‘Conversation Piece’, ‘Shadow Man’

  See below.

  Heathen (2002)

  ‘Conversation Piece’

  Extra track on Heathen limited edition bonus disc; written in 1969, recorded in 1970, this version re-recorded in 2001 for unreleased Toy album.

  ‘Shadow Man’

  Extra track on Heathen limited edition bonus disc; written and recorded c.1970-71, this version re-recorded in 2001 for unreleased Toy album. Also appeared as the B-side of the ‘Everyone Says Hi’ single from Heathen in September 2002, and on 2014’s retrospective, Nothing has changed – The Very Best of Bowie.

  These are two of Garson’s favourite Bowie songs and recordings, which he feels ‘have beautiful piano parts because those tunes of David were so gorgeous that I couldn’t help but find the right notes in that particular space’. Tony Visconti told Garson that he built the string arrangement for ‘Conversation Piece’ around the piano parts.

  Reality (2003)

  ‘The Loneliest Guy’

  Ominous, low, hypnotic, accompaniment-style piano.

  ‘Bring Me the Disco King’

  Garson: ‘Late 1950s jazz in the Brubeck tradition, but in my own style. There is a partly chordal solo towards the end. It is amazing how David, after the end of his vocal, had the meditative patience to allow me to play out my solo for nearly another two minutes.’

  A Reality Tour (recorded 2003, released 2010)

  Live double album, recorded in Dublin in 2003.

  ‘Battle for Britain (The Letter)’ – live

  Electrifyingly exciting live rendition of Garson duet with drummer Sterling Campbell, especially with the visual impact added on the DVD version which was also released.

  ‘Ashes to Ashes’ – live

  This version has an exciting jazz piano solo, rather than the synth solo which is heard on many of the other live versions of the song.

  ‘The Motel’ – live

  This takes the studio version even further.

  ‘Bring Me the Disco King’ – live

  Garson recalls that this was often an encore during the Reality tour.

  Nothing has changed – The Very Best of Bowie (2014)

  Major retrospective featuring two new songs alongside over fifty earlier recordings.

  ‘Shadow Man’

  See under Heathen, above.

  ‘The Hearts Filthy Lesson’

  See under 1. Outside, above.

  ‘Strangers When We Meet’

  See under 1. Outside, above.

  ‘Young Americans’ (2007 Tony Visconti mix single edit)

  See under Young Americans, above.

  Appendix 2

  Forensics: Analysis of Mike Garson’s techniques in playing, improvising

  and composing

  ‘Strong, muddy, prolix, gritty, Garsonic, modern…’71

  – Brian Eno, describing David Bowie’s 1995 album, 1. Outside, which has Mike Garson on piano

  AS A PIANIST IN ROCK music, Garson has the perfect kind of timing, sometimes choosing to sit slightly behind the beat, at other times sitting squarely on it. He makes use of the full range of the keyboard, more than many pianists, with the top two octaves of keys cutting nicely through the forbiddingly amplified sounds o
f the rest of the band. His playing also shows strong contrasts: extreme complexity and embellishment, with cascading arpeggios, is often followed by a slow and simple sequence of single notes within the middle octave. These simpler lines with which he reflects and reinforces the melody of the vocals are not unlike string-section lines in their phrasing. A further contrast within his playing is of course that of genre: classical arpeggios are freely mingled with jazz chords and blues notes. All of these striking characteristics are found in the songs which follow.

  1. Creating piano parts for songs: example from work with Mick Ronson: ‘I’m the One’ (Slaughter on 10th Avenue, 1974)

  This cover by Mick Ronson of the Annette Peacock song displays many of Garson’s defining techniques, as well as his hugely expressive musical personality. For this song he plays electric piano as well as piano. He comes in dramatically with a glissando, followed soon afterwards by some syncopated chords, and then staccato pairs of blues chords with grace notes at 0.20 (0 minutes, 20 seconds).

  At 0.38 the vocal phrase ‘I’m here to fight for you’ is beautifully imitated and echoed by electric piano almost at the moment it is sung (as Ronson sings the word ‘you’, Garson plays the melody of ‘to fight for you’). This same melody is further echoed by Garson in the minor instrumental section, and at this point he starts to introduce some more ‘outside’ elements which reference the more avant-garde performance of the original by Peacock – on which he also played.

  At 1.28 there is a rapid multiple repetition of a five-note phrase against the modulating bass. Each time, a different note of the five is emphasised. That, plus the fact that the bass is changing, gives a different effect to each repetition. He relates to the singer’s phrasing by responding, imitating, harmonising, playfully dancing around the voice and yet never getting in the way of it.

  The song has a complete change of pace and mood at 2.20, reinventing itself as a plaintive gospel, and the piano adapts to this seamlessly with languorous, bluesy, seventh chords and jazzy acciaccatura notes, with a folksy feel. This is strongly underpinned by true gospel style, with big chords and a bass declension which features some inversions with the third as the bass note. The long play-out from about 3.28 features wonderfully rich piano chord runs and syncopations weaving themselves around Ronson’s powerful vocal, against a plaintive brass section crescendo.

  2. The fellow pianist-composer

  As a classically highly trained pianist-composer (who is also, like Garson, multi-genre or beyond genre in both his playing and writing), Kris Becker makes many acute observations about Garson’s ‘Now’ Music compositions:

  The jazz influences of the likes of Art Tatum can be heard in the animated bass movement, and the presence of Bach or Rachmaninoff in the great motion and interaction of lines overall. There are natural limits to the complexity of counterpoint and strata created through improvisation rather than writing, and yet there exist many instances of multi-layered voices, explicit or suggested, even in the faster pieces. Garson often employs a big, sweeping and robust sound, unleashing the piano’s soul in, for example, his Ballade in G-sharp Minor and a number of the Nowtudes, with the latter also in places exhibiting a surreal texture. Garson’s recently premiered Symphonic Suite for Healing likewise displays imaginative, emotionally penetrating, and mesmerising textures, with sheen and mystique.

  What other specific features can be isolated as hallmarks of Garson’s improvisations? A lot of his work is through-composed, partly as a result of its improvisational origins, and this can make it a stimulating challenge to learn. At the same time the pieces possess solid coherence and elements of cyclical return, which makes memorising them well manageable. Garson has a technique of quickly and subtly shifting the tonal centre, as if a focal point of gravity were arrived at and then rapidly transcended. His harmonies span from standard triads and extensions to polytonal, jazz, and experimental combinations and voicings. Melodies range from beautiful and expressive to more aggressive and avant-garde, with both long lines and short spirals.

  In the midst of all this diversity and complexity, there is always a definite coherence which elevates these creations ‘of the moment’ into more permanently rewarding and bona fide compositions. Regarding rhythm, Garson’s work occasionally features steady grooves that somehow evade the ready recognition of a regular meter, resulting in a modernist disjuncture which at the same time still hangs together. Serene and poignantly lyrical passages and pieces of melancholic or joyful contemplation abound in addition to Garson’s trademark frenetic and often discordant flurries and wildly disturbed arpeggios and rapid runs, all of which make such utterly full use of the instrument in every sense.

  3. The orchestrator

  Bruce Donnelly is Mike Garson’s orchestrator and copyist. He has transcribed 375 of his pieces; he has studied every note. He believes that even Garson’s most dissonant pieces are genuinely musical and coherent, and uncontrived in a way that a lot of twentieth- and twenty-first-century ‘progressive’ music is not. He attributes this to their extended harmonic language.

  I would guess most musicians and critics familiar with Mike’s music would focus on his concept of improvisation as composition, and the incorporation of an encyclopedic variety of piano idioms and musical styles. There are two other aspects of his music, however, that stand out for me.

  The first stems from several conversations we had about learning styles. For example, he often plays ballads in what most people would consider a Tatum-esque style. Interestingly, he told me had only studied three or four Art Tatum arrangements and from those worked out a set of principles regarding right and left hand figures and patterns, chord voicings and so on. Similarly, although a number of his ‘Now’ pieces might be considered Chopin-esque, he only studied a handful of Chopin pieces in his lesson days. This approach has enabled him to avoid the trap many excellent pianists have fallen into of sounding derivative.

  For example, one might consider his Nowtude in F-sharp Major as ‘Prokofiev meets Eddie Palmieri’ but this breaks down quickly upon further scrutiny. It is not really possible to identify what is specifically from one artist or the other, or to figure out exactly where the styles meet or blend, or if those stylistic labels are actually valid as other elements begin to reveal themselves. This combining and sublimation of styles is a characteristic factor in much of his music.

  The other aspect is in his harmonic language. Many of his pieces are obviously tonal, but others take what he himself considers an atonal approach. Having edited a number of such pieces, however, I believe there is generally always a functional harmonic underpinning which is a major factor in the unity in his ‘Now’ pieces, for example Homage to Ligeti or Nowtude in A-flat Minor. These have an extended system of chord substitution where, taken to its furthest limit, almost any chord or series of chords can be substituted without disrupting the underlying harmonic structure. To my ear, even the freest of his pieces are coherent in a way many other ‘free’ or atonal pieces from other artists are not.

  4. Mike Garson on his own playing

  Garson has done thousands of hours of methodical practice – scales, sight-reading and experimenting, leading to an almost complete technical, harmonic and melodic fluency. He incorporates and fuses elements from the full range of classical music from the sixteenth century onwards, plus the whole repertoire of twentieth-century jazz. He plays truly how he feels in any moment, and says that his expression is helped by knowing ‘who I am and how I fit into the scheme of things’.

  He also stresses the importance, when improvising, of ‘trusting that it will sound good’. He knows ‘that we each have an individual voice and that if we keep searching, it will emerge. I also have a deep desire to interact and create with other musicians and singers, and know when to be supportive and when to stand out’, which he identifies as a test of real communication and connection. Finally, he gets ‘out of my own way’ and loves what he does. He adds that with all this, there is a ‘mystery element – and
only God knows what that is!’

  He elaborates very clearly on some of these points:

  The thing is, I’m obsessed with the piano. Some people, they orchestrate, they conduct, they play drums, they play guitar, they play bass, they sing, they write harmony parts. I hardly do any of that. My whole life has been dedicated to the piano, and it’s ongoing. So, I’ve looked at so much music and listened to so much music and sight-read so much music. I’ve composed over five thousand pieces for the piano, of which half are classical.

  I play what I feel in the moment. That’s really what I do with David Bowie on those albums, and I’ve had it on my mind for thirty or forty years. I learned it from Lennie Tristano. He told me he felt that true jazz was really playing what you hear on the spot, in the moment. A lot of guys play a lot of licks, and things they have memorised and worked out. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I certainly do a bit of that, but I like the concept of trying to play what you feel in the present time, and that’s what I’ve been developing for many years.

  Whatever I hear is what I play, whether I’m playing solo piano, jazz with my trio, or playing rock and roll with David. In other words, if I hear it, I play it. I don’t feel, Oh, I’m slipping out of rock, I’m playing jazz. If I hear it – inside, something more than just notes or rhythms – and it seems appropriate for that music, I’ll play it. At first that takes a leap of courage but then you start to trust yourself. Once in a while, somebody will say that didn’t sound right, but usually because I’m not in the moment. If I’m in the moment, I’ll usually make the right calculation.72

  Appendix 3

  Discography

  Solo albums

  Avant Garson

  Contemporary Records

  1980

  Jazzical

  Jazz Hounds

  1982

  Serendipity

  Reference Recordings