”My idea when planning to take Diamond Dogs on the road was to design a stage set that evoked ‘Metropolis’, ‘Nuremberg’, ‘Power’….all amidst a circus of curiosities and freaks – combining the influences of Orwell, Burroughs, Burgess and Walter Ross’s The Immortal.” – David Bowie, 2001
Bowie’s success as Ziggy Stardust in ’72 & ’73 allowed him the financial and artistic freedom to explore his fascination with American culture that had fueled his imagination since he was a child. Not only was he obsessed with the American Jazz and R & B that his brother Terry had introduced him to from an early age – he was also infatuated with dystopian literature, like Walter Ross’s The Immortal, a pulpy 1958 novel about the fast life and early death of Johnny Preston – “a combination of James Dean, Marlon Brando and the Devil”.
There is an interesting Warhol connection with this book in that Andy designed the cover of the first edition of the US version in 1958 – one of his first commissions – which he drew in the same rough pen and ink mode as his shoe designs at the time. This book, open at Bowie’s feet as photographed by Terry O’Neill for the Guy Peelleart Diamond Dogs artwork, used the British publication by Corgi books in 1960.
Although Bowie’s fascination with the 70’s downtown New York art scene of Warhol, Lou and Iggy was thrilling, he also became infatuated with another young singer/songwriter, who was the opposite of the hip young Downtown wannabes. At the legendary Max’s Kansas City on February 5 1973 David went to see Biff Rose, whose talent he admired and he had recorded Biff’s ‘Fill Your Heart’ on Hunky Dory. The support slot that night was a young New Jersey guy called Bruce Springsteen who was playing a set of songs from his debut album Greetings From Asbury Park NJ.
Bowie was so impressed by Bruce’s performance that he went out the next day, bought the album and later covered three tracks – Growin’ Up, Spirit In The Night and It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City, which David recorded several times over the years. When he began recording new music during a break in the Diamond Dogs Tour in Philadelphia in August, he attempted another version of It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City, which he’d first recorded back in ’73.
Despite several attempts, Bowie was still not happy with this latest version and decided to try again when he returned to Sigma Sound studios in November once the Diamond Dogs Tour was complete.
MainMan had informed Bruce that Bowie was planning to record one of his songs for his new album. Springsteen was still a relatively unknown songwriter at this point, so was very pleased that a successful Brit was going to be recording his material. Producer Tony Visconti called Philadelphia DJ Ed Sciaky at radio station WMMR and asked him if he could get Springsteen into the studio. Sciaky got in contact with Springsteen, who caught a bus from New Jersey to Philadelphia, where Ed found him “hanging with the bums in the station.” Ed and Bruce arrived at Sigma around midnight. But it took another hour for Bowie to arrive.
For the next few hours Bruce patiently watched the session unfold as Tony Visconti, keyboard player Mike Garson and vocalist Luther Vandross added some final touches to a few mixes. Bowie and Ava Cherry arrived at 1am and during breaks in recording Bruce and Bowie discussed a variety of subjects including Bruce’s Max’s Kansas City performance, fans jumping on stage, the audio quality at several US venues and even aliens and space ships – a favourite subject of Bowie’s at the time.
By 5am an exhausted Bruce and Ed leave the studio to head back to the bus station, without hearing any of Bowie’s version of It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City. Visconti later revealed that everyone that night agreed that the song still needed more work before it was deemed worthy for Bruce to hear. At the time Bowie was having a serious narcotics meltdown, which was a common occurrence during those recording sessions, so the time wasn’t right for Bruce to hear the work in progress.
In fact, Bowie’s version of It’s Hard To Be A Saint In The City remained unreleased until it surfaced on the Sound + Vision box set in 1989. His version of Growin’ Up (which featured Ronnie Wood on guitar) emerged on the Ryko reissue of Pin Ups and, subsequently, on the 30th anniversary reissue of Diamond Dogs in 2004.
A version of Spirit in the Night eventually saw the light of day when MainMan released ‘The Astronettes Sessions’ in 1995. These were the result of the sessions booked for the Ava Cherry solo album that David promised he’d produce for Ava. The first sessions were recorded in Philadelphia on July 9, during a short break in the Diamond Dogs Tour.
The Astronettes were three of Bowie’s backing singers – Ava Cherry, Geoff MacCormack (billed as Warren Peace) and Jason Guess.
Most of the technical aspects of the Diamond Dogs stage design were covered in Episode 66, but there are some production tales that Bowie fans will find interesting. Like Toni Basil’s involvement. To choreograph the complex dance scenes on stage, MainMan employed Toni, who was a dancer and choreographer who had built a reputation in the late 60’s and early 70’s working on a US rock ’n’ roll TV show called Shindig! Toni had also worked on films with The Monkees, Elvis Presley, Peter Fonda and Grace Kelly.
After the Diamond Dogs Tour Toni worked with Talking Heads and also scored her own huge hit with Micky (her version of the Chinn/Chapman song Kitty, originally a hit for Racey in 1979) and returned to work with Bowie again on his Glass Spider Tour in 1987. Toni is an example of many people in the 70’s who worked with MainMan as a stepping stone in a hallowed career.
Toni’s work was very important in helping the audience witness Bowie’s Dystopian vision back in the days when there were no huge video screens. The design experts created a fantastic shadow effect using very powerful spotlights, which cast gigantic shadows on to the back wall. That enabled the audience to view the drama, calamity and cataclysmic destruction of Hunger City – all represented in a huge shadow show. These were effects that had been used very successfully in opera productions, but this was the first time anything like this had been attempted in a rock ’n’ roll show.
It was Defries job to convince RCA to fund the full cost of the Diamond Dogs stage show. Armed with a small mock up of the impressive stage design Defries met with RCA executives and persuaded them to fund an initial approx sum of $US850,000 in tour costs – over $5.6million today. RCA had enjoyed fantastic sales on Bowie’s records since they signed their initial deal in 1971, so although the investment was seen as a huge risk, RCA did ultimately earn their investment back and the result was a major resurgence for the label and ushered in a new era of massive success for them. The standard they set with Bowie would become the template for the future of rock ’n’ roll live performances.
The very complex technical designs and innovative new effects – all presented huge problems – and its fair to say that not everything went smoothly every night, but then nothing as adventurous as this ever did. Hunger City presented many hurdles to overcome and there was a lot of tension on tour – the performers often blamed the engineers and gremlins appeared most nights. There were no computers in those days. All the effects were controlled manually. And on the nights when Major Tom was stuck in space and Bowie had to be helped down by ladder – most of the audience thought it was all part of the act!
The July 2 concert in Tampa was an interesting one for fans. The driver of the truck containing most of the set was stung by a bee, as he had his arm resting out the window. He swerved and crashed the truck into a swamp. Since there wasn’t enough time to recover the truck from the swamp and compete the stage build the show had to be performed without the sets. David explained the situation and invited the audience to move as close to the stage as possible and performed the entire show without ‘Hunger City’. The fans that night were the only ones ever to see Diamond Dogs performed ‘naked’. It was a marvelous example of David’s talent and his ability to give the fans a great show, turning what could have been a disaster in to a huge success.
During the breaks in the US tour in 1974 while Bowie was working on the new tracks that would become Young Americans an interesting situation arose regarding songwriting. One of the first tracks David recorded was a song called ‘Fascination’, which was based on a track called ‘Funky Music (Is a Part of Me)’ which was a Luther Vandross song that Mike Garson and his band played each night prior to the full concert. Bowie re-worked the song in the studio – and supplied a new set of lyrics, turning it to Fascination. He credited Luther as co-writer – just as he did with John Lennon and Carlos Alomar on ‘Fame’. He had also credited Geoff MacCormack for his contribution to ‘Rock ‘n Roll With Me’ from Diamond Dogs.
And he would continue to credit songwriters he collaborated with for the rest of his life. But interestingly that is something he didn’t do with Mick Ronson, even though Ronno had stated on many occasions, right from the original sessions for Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust that he clearly co-wrote many of the songs he and David worked on.
Why was that the case?
Why did David not give Mick the credit he deserved?
It’s a very complicated tale, but one that Defries will explore in detail in forthcoming episodes of the MainMan podcast series.
