Graham Reid | | 4 min read
Like most people I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news. My phone rang just as we were about to go in to dinner at a North Wharf restaurant with my son and his wife over from London for a holiday.
They were leaving the next day but what should have been a happy occasion was pretty quiet as I remember.
I was thinking of what I'd said in my review of Bowie's blackstar album which had just been released.
I think the following morning I managed to tweak it a bit before publication, and later had a little more to say when I had room to breathe.
Since his death there has been a lot of David Bowie in the world, not the least the touring Bowie Is exhibition which I saw in Melbourne in 2015.
Some of it is on permanent display in the David Bowie Centre at the V&A East in London.
As much as he was a musician, Bowie was a style icon from the androgyny of his “man dress” through Ziggy's catsuits to Yamamoto's ballooned-out jumpsuit, the frayed Union Jacket on the Earthling album cover to the bespoke suits of later years.
And there was music, lots and lots of it now having been progressively reissued.
There have been five enormous, career-covering box sets (each of 10 or 11 CDs), big collections of demos and live recordings, songs for his intended musical Lazarus, Record Store Day special releases and more.
He just keeps giving and, for some, taking away huge wedges of the credit card.
But the career overview series ends with the 12 CD set I Can't Give Everything Away (2002-2016) which covers the studio albums Heathen (2002), Reality (2003), The Next Day (2013) and Blackstar (2016).
This was a late career purple patch for Bowie – The Next Day a global chart-topper – and Blackstar remains, alongside Low and “Heroes”, as the most bold directional shift of his career.
These albums are remastered by producer Tony Visconti, there are two discs of Bowie live at the 2002 Montreux Jazz Festival, two live from the Reality tour and much more, notably three discs under the heading Re:Call 6 of what we'll call bits'n'bobs.
There you'll find Bowie with Lou Reed (on Hop Frog from Reed's Edgar Allen Poe concept album The Raven), Arcade Fire (on their Wake Up and his Five Years), David Gilmour (live on Pink Floyd's early single Arnold Layne) and others.
Want a new mix of Bowie singing Neil Young's I've Been Waiting For You, the Kinks' Waterloo Sunset and the 2003 remix of Bring Me the Disco King with Tool's Maynard James Keenan and Red Hot Chili Pepper's John Frusciante?
Or Bowie covering Sigue Sigue Sputnik's annoying Love Missile F1-11?
Here they are.
Setting aside obviously outstanding songs – the moody original and dramatically overhauled Disco King, the desperate The Stars (Are Out Tonight), Everyone Says Hi, Where Are We Now?, Blackstar and Lazarus – we chivvy out five songs of the 163 collected we think worth investigating.
I'M AFRAID OF AMERICANS
Live, at the 2002 Montreux Jazz Festival
One of Bowie's greatest songs – co-written with Brian Eno for 1997's Earthling -- gets a menacing reading by Bowie who introduces it as “an old 90's song”. With its Golden Years-type 1970's soul-funk elevated a couple of notches, guitarist Earl Slick getting away scouring, claustrophobic noise-core and pianist Mike Garson pounding a single note it is disorienting, oppressive and impressive.
THE LONELIEST GUY
Live, on the 2003 Reality tour
It's a measure of Bowie's ability to command a crowd that he could drop this tear-jerker into a crowd-pleasing set of his pop and rock standards. A musically spare ballad in which the character lives in emotional isolation, Bowie's voice quivers through the denial when he sings “I'm not the loneliest guy, I'm the luckiest guy”. The crowd in Dublin is hushed. You will be too.
EVERYONE SAY HI
A remixed radio edit of the Heathen song
Not many in this huge collection could grab those weaned on dancefloor pop, but this electronica remix by UK's Metro aims squarely at phone wavers with its steady pulse, glitter-ball dynamic and Bowie's echoed vocal. Could have been longer for the full light-stick effect, but it neatly leads into the handclap energy of Heathen (The Rays) live in Berlin.
LOVE IS LOST
The Hello Steve Reich remix by James Murphy
This 10 minute remix by LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy -- only available if you but the whole box set, you can hear it at Spotify here --will make you smile if you know minimalist composer Steve Reich's Clapping Music. Murphy opens with random applause which devolves into Clapping Music, then Bowie's chugging rock from The Next Day enters in stripped-back fashion. Later Murphy weaves in subtle samples from Ashes to Ashes and it gets funk-to-funky. From The Next Day Extra EP (so only Bowiephiles probably heard it).
SUE (OR IN A SEASON OF CRIME)
The seven minute-plus 2014 version of the Blackstar song
This majestic, cinematic collaboration with a jazz orchestra lead by Grammy-winning composer Maria Schneider – originally on 2014's Nothing Has Changed compilation – was the starting point for Blackstar.
The short, re-recorded version on Blackstar with different musicians is more aggressive and approachable, but this huge, swaying version where the players improvised around Bowie's vocal hints at where he might have gone if he'd had more time.
He probably wouldn't have taken too many with him on the journey though.
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There is a considerable amount about David Bowie at Elsewhere including a number of interviews over the years.
Start here.
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