1972 WAS A PIVOTAL YEAR FOR DAVID BOWIE. IT SAW HIM BEGIN TO SEDUCE, AND BE SEDUCED BY, AMERICA.

The ZIGGY STARDUST tour took Bowie and white-hot band The Spiders From Mars (with additional session recruit Mike Garson) from small venues to increasingly large concert halls. Energised by the success of their tour and aware of the need to maintain momentum during this explosion of Stateside popularity, a new album was recorded and released in 1973. The aesthetic of ALADDIN SANE could be described, to some extent, as an Englishman’s take on what an American Ziggy might sound like… But beyond that it was also the sound of Bowie – confidence electrified by fame, and imagination totally fired by the avant-garde versatility of Garson – beginning to not so much push his own creative boundaries as hammer at them. The pair continued to work together, on and off and through several band line-ups, for the rest of Bowie’s career. Garson was, in fact, the very last long-time Bowie associate to share a stage with him, in 2006. In the years between, he performed on the ALADDIN SANE, PIN-UPS, DIAMOND DOGS, YOUNG AMERICANS, BLACK TIE WHITE NOISE, BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA, OUTSIDE, EARTHLING and REALITY albums.

Now, in autumn 2017, Garson is about to tour the UK playing ALADDIN SANE in full at several shows, alongside a set of other Bowie material (for a full list of dates and ticket links go here). His band features Kevin Armstrong (who played with Bowie at LIVE AID) plus Terry Edwards (PJ Harvey and Gallon Drunk), Ben Ellis and Matt Hector (Iggy Pop), Gillian Glover and Latin Grammy winner Gaby Moreno. Special guests Steve Norman and Steve Harley will appear at selected dates. “Great songs and a bunch of great musicians,” Garson says, as we warm up in conversation, “for what I’m sure will be a very special night each time”… And “Really, it’s a pleasure to be able to celebrate my work with David in this way”.

In this new interview with The Mouth Magazine we reflect on the ALADDIN SANE album and, of course, on Mike’s other work with Bowie – plus, his friendship with the man…

HISTORY RECORDS YOUR FIRST INVOLVEMENT WITH BOWIE AS BEING DURING SEPTEMBER 1972, WHEN YOU JOINED THE SPIDERS FROM MARS FOR THE AMERICAN PART OF THE ZIGGY STARDUST TOUR. HOW DID YOU GET THE GIG?
It was very fortuitous. There was this excellent avant-garde singer called Annette Peacock, and I had played on this album of hers called I’M THE ONE. I’d played some really wild stuff on Annette’s album. In fact, Mick Ronson recorded some of it later on, on his album SLAUGHTER ON 10TH AVENUE (in 1974). He did a cover of the song I’M THE ONE. David and Mick Ronson happened to know Annette. They came to the States looking for a pianist for their forthcoming tour, and she suggested me. They actually offered her the gig but she had her own thing going on, her own career. So she didn’t want to do the tour, and she recommended me. I actually didn’t find that out for about twenty-five years, but that’s how it went down. I was hired for eight weeks and in the end they couldn’t get rid of me. I was initially supposed to do that relatively short American tour, that Spiders tour, but it just… extended. I ended up doing probably a thousand concerts or more with David. Plus many albums, y’know?

DO YOU REMEMBER MEETING HIM FOR THE FIRST TIME? DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS?
I sure do… I thought “What is this?”, ha ha… You’ve gotta understand, though, I was a jazz musician in New York City and I didn’t know David Bowie. I had no idea of who he was, at all. I didn’t know the man and I didn’t know a bar of his music. They asked me to come down to the recording studios at RCA in Manhattan. I was living in Brooklyn and I was actually in the middle of giving a piano lesson. My daughter was just a year at the time, and I had the piano student babysit her because my wife wasn’t home. So I zoomed down to Manhattan to audition… I went in there and they were in full Spiders From Mars gear. I sat down at the piano in the studio and Mick Ronson was in there with me. David was back in the control room, so he was through the glass. I saw him and the other guys through there. Mick gave me the music to CHANGES…

IT WAS ACTUALLY SCORED OUT?
Yeah. Of course I’d never heard the record before. I played for about eight or ten seconds or something. Mick Ronson looked at me and stopped me. He said “You have the gig”… and I said “Well, I haven’t even really started playing yet”… and he said “We can just tell“. And that was that.

COMING FROM YOUR JAZZ AND AVANT-GARDE BACKGROUND, WHAT DID YOU ACTUALLY THINK OF THE SONG? DID YOU SENSE THAT BOWIE’S MUSIC WAS SOMETHING YOU MIGHT GET SOMETHING OUT OF BY CONTRIBUTING TO – OR DID IT FEEL LIKE THIS MIGHT JUST BE ‘ANOTHER GIG’..?
I could feel it was good. As a songwriter myself I knew it was a great song, instantly. I had a company, at that point, of probably five or six hundred singers in my life (‘cos I did a lot of that kind of work). But nobody with the calibre of David Bowie, y’know? I had all the skills he wanted. I could read, I knew songwriting form and, as a jazz musician, I knew how to improvise. I’d also had a certain amount of classical training, for ten years. David was looking to add that dimension to what he was doing. Of course, that’s brilliant on his part. He was the ultimate ‘casting director’… The rest, as they say, is kind of history.

THE THREE OTHER MEMBERS OF THE SPIDERS FROM MARS WERE YORKSHIRE LADS, AND DAVID HAD YORKSHIRE ROOTS… SO THERE WOULD BE A PARTICULAR SENSE OF HUMOUR THERE. AS A NEWCOMER, WAS THAT CAMARADERIE DIFFICULT TO PENETRATE?
Well, first of all I had to take time to get used to the accent, ha ha! I gathered the sense of humour pretty quickly too, so that was okay. They were great chaps, all of them. We had a really wonderful time on that tour.

DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST GIG?
Yeah, clearly. I think I had one day of rehearsal with the band before it. Actually, just a few days ago was the forty-fifth anniversary of the first concert I played with Bowie [22nd September 1972 in Cleveland, Ohio]. Recently I found, on YouTube, a live version of LIFE ON MARS that I played with him back in ’72, which started for the first two minutes with the piano and then the band coming in. It was charming to hear it – and I realised that in 2004 he and I were doing something similar, arrangement-wise, with that song. But more sophisticated, I would probably have to say.

THERE’S A GREAT RECORDING OF A DATE ON THAT TOUR – SANTA MONICA 1972. IT CAME OUT AS AN UNOFFICIAL THING ABOUT TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO BUT HAS SINCE BEEN ‘TAKEN IN’ TO THE OFFICIAL CANON… I THINK IT’S ONE OF THE BEST LIVE RECORDINGS I’VE HEARD – THAT BAND WAS ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE…
Oh yeah. That’s right. They’d established their own groove for a couple of years, by that point. I felt honoured to be able to play with them because it was a real band, y’know? I guess you could say I was the whipped cream on that particular cake… He allowed me this wide vision of what I could do over this real solid machine, y’know?

THE TOUR SAW BOWIE EXPLODE IN POPULARITY IN AMERICA. THE VENUES GOT BIGGER AND, IN FACT, I THINK AS THE TOUR WENT ON YOU RETURNED TO SOME TOWNS AND PLAYED MUCH BIGGER HALLS… WOODY WOODMANSEY TOLD ME, NOT SO LONG AGO, THAT THE CHANGES IN DAVID BECAME MORE AND MORE APPARENT AS TIME WENT ON. FAME WAS AFFECTING HIM NOTICEABLY – AND BY THE END HE ALMOST WAS ZIGGY, NOT DAVID…
I wasn’t close enough to notice that change. I’d not known him as long as the other guys. I was hired as the pianist and that’s what I did. I think if it happened it was only a truly logical expansion. You go from ‘known’ to ‘very well known’ and then things change in your life. Finances change and fame changes – and so there’s an amount of power you accumulate, y’know? But in David’s case it didn’t seem extraordinary and it didn’t seem outside of anything that I’d seen before. I’d actually worked with other big artists by that point, and so it just seemed sort of… ‘normal’. Let’s put it that way. It wasn’t until a bit later on, when I was the Musical Director of PHILLY DOGS in 1974, that I was hanging out personally a lot more with David. So I knew him better by then and might have been privy to seeing glimpses of that personal or private sort of stuff…

DID YOU FIND HIM EASY COMPANY, OR WAS HE ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE YOU ALWAYS NEED TO BE ON YOUR TOES?
No, he wasn’t like that at all. He was very easy to be with. He was very very warm and a gentleman. He was very humorous – he had a great sense of humour. He was very intelligent. He was very interested, too. He asked me a million questions about my piano teachers and my jazz studies and my classical and… Any artist of that magnitude, be it a Jackson or a Dylan or an Elvis Presley or a Rolling Stones or a Bono – anyone who hits that position, that status – they are in quite a rarified atmosphere. They live a different kind of a life to ‘us’, really… But (particularly thinking about the REALITY TOUR in 2003 / 2004, by which time he was so incredibly well known across the world and had been for many years, almost like a legend or something) when we were all together, whether we were travelling, or rehearsing and recording, whatever we were doing, David was just ‘one of us’. That was one of his strongest abilities, believe it or not. He was a real ‘team member’…

BETWEEN ZIGGY STARDUST AND DIAMOND DOGS / PHILLY DOGS WERE ALADDIN SANE AND PIN-UPS. OBVIOUSLY YOUR AMAZING CONTRIBUTION TO THE TITLE TRACK OF ALADDIN SANE, THIS AVANT-GARDE PIANO SOLO, TURNED OUT TO BE A MASSIVE RED-LETTER MOMENT…
That’s exactly right. It was just one of hundreds and hundreds of sessions that I did, but I’ve had hundreds and thousands of people talk to me about it ever since. Every day, from somewhere in the world there’s communication – a letter, an e-mail, someone on Facebook or whatever – specifically and only about that song. Go figure…

IT IS SOMETHING SPECIAL AND SOUNDS ‘LIKE IT SHOULD’, SO I GUESS PART OF THE MAGIC IS THE KNOWLEDGE THAT DAVID ASKED YOU TO TRY IT SEVERAL DIFFERENT WAYS, DIFFERENT STYLES, BUT NONE OF THOSE STYLES EVER QUITE CLICKED – UNTIL HE SAID “MIKE, PLAY YOUR OWN THING”…
I was a little reluctant to do it because I knew it wouldn’t be what you might think of as in any way ‘commercial’. But David didn’t care. He knew he would be framing it within the rock context, so I just had a ball. Music is self expression, for me, and I love the art of creating in the moment, and improvising. So, y’know, it was just the one take and it felt great – but that was it. When you play something in one take, it’s just five minutes of your life, right? At the time it was just another session. So it’s only history that’s pointed out that it’s a particularly interesting solo – and to be honest with you I didn’t hear the track, the studio version, for about fifteen years after we’d recorded it. So everyone loved it – but I hadn’t heard it back!

ALADDIN SANE CAME OUT WHEN I WAS, I THINK, FOUR OR FIVE. I HEARD IT ‘COS MY PARENTS OWNED IT – AND I REMEMBER BEING REALLY CONFUSED BY THAT SOLO… IN FACT, NO, NOT CONFUSED… I WAS TERRIFIED! I BET THAT’S SOMETHING YOU HAVEN’T HEARD BEFORE…
Okay! Well, this is actually very interesting because there is one other person… In the mid-’90s David’s son Duncan came to one of our concerts, and after the show he told me that when he grew up in the mid-’70s he used to have these terrible nightmares about that piano solo. So to hear that from you now is really odd and interesting…

THAT’S HILARIOUS!  
Apparently something was going on, there! I scared two people with piano! Ha ha…

YOU MADE A GREAT CONTRIBUTION TO THE DIAMOND DOGS ALBUM – THE TRACK WE ARE THE DEAD…
Yeah. The best for me, though, is SWEET THING / CANDIDATE. That was my favourite track on the DIAMOND DOGS album. It was fantastic. And, before that, TIME and LADY GRINNING SOUL plus the title track on ALADDIN SANE. Later on, STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET (from OUTSIDE). That really is as monumental as any of the songs from the early days. THE MOTEL, too. And BRING ME THE DISCO KING on REALITY, which is just me and David and a drum loop… So, y’know, along the way I have my real favourite Bowie songs…

… AND, OF COURSE, PROBABLY YOUNG AMERICANS TOO? THE TITLE TRACK FEATURES YOUR PIANO IN A KIND OF JAUNTY SOUL STYLE… ALADDIN SANE WAS ALMOST AN ENGLISHMAN’S IDEA OF WHAT AN AMERICANISED ZIGGY WOULD BE – BUT BY YOUNG AMERICANS IT WAS AS IF DAVID HAD PROPERLY CHEWED UP TWO YEARS OR SO OF AMERICAN CULTURE. I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING AGAINST THE USA, OF COURSE, AND I LOVE SOME OF THE MATERIAL ON THE ALBUM, BUT FOR ME THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT YOUNG AMERICANS WHICH MAKES IT JUST ABOUT HIS LEAST SATISYING… MAYBE THAT’S BECAUSE DESPITE SOME MOMENTS OF ODDNESS AND SOME SUBVERSION IN THE ARRANGEMENTS, SOME OF HIS APPROACH FEELS AS IF HE’S TRYING TO SATISFY THE CONVENTIONAL TROPES OF THE GENRE, AND HE’S DELIBERATELY TRYING TO BE COMMERCIAL FOR AMERICA… IT DOESN’T FEEL ‘BOWIE’ ENOUGH. I DON’T KNOW – MAYBE THAT WAS THE POINT…
Hmmm, well… David was the ultimate chameleon. He was a sponge for music. He absorbed everything we listened to as we were travelling through America, and he really really got off on that stuff. It was so different from the other ones, but it just made total sense to me that he would do a soul album. The song YOUNG AMERICANS is me and also I played on, I think, CAN YOU HEAR ME and maybe more. I know I’m not on everything on that record. My playing is more conventional, less avant-garde, than on ALADDIN SANE because that’s what was required. I suppose all I can say is that what David was doing was not quite as far out this time. And so yeah, in some ways you might be correct… but he didn’t make ‘bad’ albums, y’know? He just didn’t. David sang so well on YOUNG AMERICANS, by the way…

THAT’S TRUE. THE VOCALS – AND THE VOCAL ARRANGEMENTS ON, SAY, RIGHT – ARE FANTASTIC…
Yeah, his voice is beyond belief on the YOUNG AMERICANS record, isn’t it? What a fantastic singer. I’ve played with hundreds of singers over the years (and by now it’s probably thousands, actually). David is right there on the top. The next person down would be hundred of miles below. So, you couple that voice with everything else he could do? Truly incredible… His ability was immense and his creativity was boundless. I loved him all along – when I joined the band I knew I was working with some sort of a genius. But, since he passed, my appreciation of his mastery has only increased. You could say I have been a late bloomer as ‘a fan’. But I’m able to be more of ‘a fan’ of David Bowie now…

I JUST REMEMBERED THERE’S A COVER OF THE BEATLES SONG ACROSS THE UNIVERSE ON YOUNG AMERICANS…
Yeah, that’s true. It didn’t matter if David wrote the song or not, quite often, because when he interpreted something he made it his own. He had that ability. Think of WILD IS THE WIND, say… We had a lot of versions of MY DEATH that we did in concert, and I always really liked that one. That was a cover, of course. LET’S SPEND THE NIGHT TOGETHER, the Rolling Stones song, was hilarious to do. And on PIN-UPS – the album that was actually all covers, and also great fun to do – my favourite was  Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd’s SEE EMILY PLAY.

I THINK IT’S VERY INTERESTING TO UNPACK THE IDEA THAT DAVID WAS A GRAND ORGANISER (OR IN SOME INSTANCES DISORGANISER). YOU SAID IT YOURSELF EARLIER – HE WAS A GREAT CASTING DIRECTOR. HE ORCHESTRATED THESE AMAZING IDEAS AND ENCOURAGED THESE BRILLIANT PERFORMANCES OUT OF PEOPLE, AND SHAPED WHAT HE WANTED – OR MAYBE SOMETIMES WHAT HE DIDN’T KNOW HE WANTED UNTIL HE HEARD… THIS STUFF MIGHT FIRE HIS IMAGINATION AND HE’D BE OFF INTO MORE EXPLORATION… UNTIL HE ‘ARRIVED’ AT THE FINISHED RECORD. HE HAD GREAT MENTAL AND CREATIVE CAPACITY. I GET A STRONG SENSE FROM THAT, NOT JUST MUSICALLY BUT AS A PERSON, THAT HE WAS A REAL LIVE WIRE… 
Oh, God. Yeah. One hundred percent so. He was an extremely interesting individual. He had a real viewpoint, and he knew exactly what he wanted, and he knew exactly how to get it. Every musician he ever hired was great, and many of them went off onto their own successful careers. David just had this intuitive ‘third eye’ kind of thing, this ability, which was absolutely astounding to me. I recognised it way back in 1972 when we first started and I recognised it was still going on when I played with him at what turned out to be the last show he played (the Alicia Keys thing, in New York in 2006). So that never ever changed.

YOU PLAYED IN SEVERAL DIFFERENT BOWIE BAND LINE-UPS OVER APPROXIMATELY THIRTY-FIVE YEARS – SO WHAT YOU’RE SAYING ABOUT HIS ‘THIRD EYE’ IS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. HE TOTALLY TRUSTED YOU AND YOUR ABILITIES, YOUR JUDGEMENTS. HE TRUSTED THAT YOU UNDERSTOOD HIS INSTINCTIVE NATURE, AND HE TRUSTED YOUR INSTINCTIVE UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT HE WAS DOING AND WHERE THINGS MIGHT GO…
Yeah, he did. Between 1972 and 1975 I played in about five different bands with him, ‘cos he fired everyone from the four other bands – but not me. I was the only one that remained – and that was because I was able to change styles with him. The others were actually all great musicians but they tended to play one style, and he was shifting. I’d studied it all as a kid and he was able to see that facility in me. I’ve performed his music a lot in the last couple of years – whether that be my own jazz versions, or as a tribute, or whatever – and what can I say? I don’t think I’ve ever played with anyone that good. He was a joy to accompany, and from my point of view he gave me the flexibility. We must have played LIFE ON MARS together three or four hundred times over the years, but he gave me the freedom to make it a little different each time. Most artists are much more controlling – there are very few who would allow that. Most artists have a really fixed idea of what they want. It’s really linear. But David had this much more non-linear approach. That fit my abilities. And it fit my personality, too. Of all the musicians in all of his bands I worked with (which could have been as many as thirteen bands, by the end), he gave me the most freedom to improvise. I have so many pleasurable moments, pleasurable memories, of the projects I did with him. He took me with him through all those albums – ALADDIN SANE, PIN UPS, DIAMOND DOGS, DAVID LIVE, YOUNG AMERICANS…

YOU BOOKEND ALL THOSE WITH HUNKY DORY, ZIGGY STARDUST, STATION TO STATION, LOW, HEROES, LODGER AND SCARY MONSTERS AND THAT IS PROBABLY THE MOST CREATIVE ‘RUN’ FOR AN ARTIST, EVER…
Yeah! You know, it was an amazing period of music from him, that period. There was just something about the 1970s for David… The zeitgeist was going on around him. Just like The Beatles had their effect, David Bowie had his effect… He was absolutely at that level, and it was very very powerful. I just happen to have been blessed in that I was along with that ride.

IT MUST HAVE BEEN AMAZING, WHILE YOU WERE TRAVELLING AT LIGHT SPEED, TO BE AWARE OF TRAVELLING AT LIGHT SPEED…
In hindsight you realise things you didn’t realise when somebody is alive, yknow? That’s just the nature of being human. You realise that life is short. You realise you took things for granted and you realise you should have appreciated the ride even more…

YOU MUST BE VERY PROUD OF YOUR EXPERIENCE, YOUR EXPOSURE, YOUR CONTRIBUTION TO HIS WORK, ACROSS SO MANY YEARS AND SO MANY GENRES…
When you’re doing it you don’t think that way. When you’re in the moment doing it, you’re just there to serve the music. It’s one of the greatest things you can do in life. You’re enjoying the jam of it, the co-creating, you’re not thinking about the broader thing. In some way it’s only with hindsight that I can connect with what you’re saying, and feel that sense of pride about it. I don’t know what landed me there, with David, really… You’d imagine it was the fact that I’d practised the piano a lot and got good at it – but there’s a lot of great pianists. So there’s other factors there that I don’t have a clue about – especially since, in the beginning, I didn’t even know who the guy was, y’know?

YOUR ASSOCIATION WITH BOWIE SEEMINGLY CAME TO AN END AFTER YOUNG AMERICANS – BUT IN THE EARLY 1990s YOU WORKED TOGETHER AGAIN. YOU’RE ON BLACK TIE WHITE NOISE, BRIEFLY, AND YOU’RE ON THE ‘FORGOTTEN’ ALBUM THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA… IT’S NOTIONALLY THE SOUNDTRACK TO A BBC TELEVISION DRAMATISATION OF HANIF KUREISHI’S BOOK. I DON’T THINK THERE’S VERY MUCH ANECDOTE ABOUT IT OUT THERE – AND, INDEED, DAVID HIMSELF CONSIDERED IT TO HAVE BEEN VASTLY OVERLOOKED… IT’S ‘VERY BOWIE’: BRILLIANTLY ATMOSPHERIC; QUITE AN AVANT-GARDE PIECE OF WORK…
I do remember THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA quite well. It’s a really good record. I’m on a couple of the tracks – BLEED LIKE A CRAZE, DAD and SOUTH HORIZON. David had already done a lot of the work, and brought the tapes to California (we still used tape at that time). He asked me to meet him in a very good recording studio, so we went in and… I just improvised. I played lots of piano and a lot of it ended up on the record. I remember SOUTH HORIZON very well. He just let me go wild on that. He loved what I did, and then he thanked me and then he left. All in three hours. My contribution to that, all of it, was done in three hours.

THE OUTSIDE ALBUM, IN 1995, TOOK THE MOOD OF THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA AND KIND OF INDUSTRIALISED IT. THERE WAS A MUCH HARDER SOUND TO IT, BUT IT STILL HAD THAT RATHER EERY ATMOSPHERE. IT’S AN AMBITIOUS AND FANTASTICALLY IMAGINATIVE RECORD…
Yeah. I do think people will eventually realise that OUTSIDE is comparable to anything David did in the 1970s. All I can tell you is what he told me before we did the album. He needed to do OUTSIDE for himself. He felt, to a certain degree, that he’d sold out in the ’80s. He said to me that he was gathering together the musicians who’d had the biggest effect on his life and his work. There was Brian Eno – of course… Reeves Gabrels, Carlos Alomar, myself… We went into the studio and basically we improvised for a couple of weeks. Then David and Brian went away and formed all of that into tunes. I really enjoyed playing on OUTSIDE, although actually I didn’t ‘get it’ for a little while…

I SAW ONE OF THE SHOWS ON THE VERY LONG TOUR THAT FOLLOWED THE RELEASE OF OUTSIDE, AND I REMEMBER IT BEING AS CHALLENGING AS ANYTHING DAVID HAD DONE, I THINK. THE TOUR WAS MADE UP OF SHOWS IN THESE VAST ARENAS, SO THERE’S A CERTAIN EXPECTATION ATTACHED… BUT THEY DEFINITELY DID NOT PANDER TO THOSE EXPECTING A GREATEST HITS PACKAGE… THE SHOW SEEMED, ON THE ONE HAND, TO BE ‘PURE ESSENCE’ OF BOWIE, VERY ARTISTIC… AND ON THE OTHER IT SEEMED ALMOST MISCHIEVIOUS…
We went on tour, and his manager used to beg me to try and get him to do some hits. I’d say “No, he has to do this come hell or high water”. He knew he had to do it like that for his own heart. He felt that he had no alternative. He had something to say with this new music. I wasn’t gonna fight that! So we did it like that, like he wanted. Then eventually we’d start mixing whatever was going on at the time, whatever he was writing, with some of the hits or older songs – so later on we got a nice balance, and that’s how it went down.

I FELT IT WAS A SOULFUL SHOW, DESPITE THE WEIRDNESS AND ABSTRACTION, BECAUSE IT WAS CLEAR HE WAS DOING IT FROM THE HEART… AND EVENTUALLY HE ‘CAUGHT UP WITH HIMSELF’ AS AN ARTIST… I STILL THINK THAT WAS BRAVE, VERY HONEST… 
I think so, I think so. Absolutely. There were those who loved those OUTSIDE shows – but it was a very small population, ha ha… David was a very brave and very honest artist. Many times he asked me “should we do this tour?” or “should we do that tour?” – and I’d always say “only if you’re feeling it”… And so then we wouldn’t tour because he wasn’t feeling it; the time wasn’t right. I’d been on some tours where he didn’t want to be there or didn’t like something about it, or whatever. I’m the same, as an artist. If I don’t hear something in my inner ear, or in my head – or in my soul -then I’m useless. I mean, you can still play but you’re just churning it out as ‘a professional’. There’s no heart and reason, so no meaning, behind it. We shared that sort of reality together, David and I…

THERE WERE OTHER THINGS AFTER THE OUTSIDE PERIOD… THE EARTHLING ALBUM AND (ANOTHER) MASSIVE TOUR, THE HOURS AND HEATHEN ALBUMS (ALTHOUGH I THINK YOU’RE ONLY ON ASSOCIATED FRAGMENTS OF THOSE)… AND THEN THE REALITY ALBUM…
Yeah, bits and pieces and then the REALITY album…

… AND THE REALITY TOUR – AGAIN A VERY LONG RUN OF DATES. EARLIER THIS YEAR I PODCASTED WITH PRODUCER TONY VISCONTI, AND HE REMEMBERS TALKING WITH DAVID BACKSTAGE AFTER A SHOW ON THAT TOUR AND DAVID TELLING HIM HOW TIRED HE WAS… THERE WAS THAT FATEFUL GIG IN, I THINK, HAMBURG. DAVID TOOK ILL ON STAGE, WHICH WAS (OBVIOUSLY) DREADFUL FOR HIM AND UNSETTLING FOR EVERYONE AROUND HIM…
It was very unsettling. Very unsettling. As his pianist I had some sort of a kinetic, or telepathic, tactile, connection to him. I could feel something wrong in my fingers as I was accompanying him that night. I’m looking at him during the show and I sensed pain. In a way that was the beginning of the end, because that’s when he had his heart attack. In that moment nobody realised that was what it was. But somehow we managed to finish the show and then he went to the hospital. Even though he healed from that, it seemed to go downhill from that point, on a physical level. It was gonna be a rough ten years following, healthwise.

UP TO THAT POINT THE BAND HAD BEEN VERY TIGHT, REALLY FANTASTIC. THE SHOWS HAD BEEN FANTASTIC… AND IN ALL OF THE BACKSTAGE FOOTAGE I’VE SEEN IT LOOKS LIKE IT WAS A REALLY HIGH-SPIRITED TOURING PARTY…
Oh yeah, it was. We all got along great. He was in rare form. The band was probably, like you say, the tightest band he ever had. We must have played a hundred and thirteen concerts. It would have been a hundred and thirty had David not gotten sick.

I THINK IT WAS PROBABLY HIS BEST BAND…
It might not have been the best, actually. Best is a hard word to pin down. In terms of precision it definitely was his best band. In terms of creativity, I think his best band was the second part of the OUTSIDE band – when it was just David, Zack Alford, Reeves Gabrels, myself and Gail Anne Dorsey. I only say that because it was in that particular band that you had the most freedom to improvise, and to do different things every night. On the REALITY tour we were playing the music pretty faithful to the recordings. Most people played their parts quite exactly. Because they were so tight that way, I had the freedom to really move around and change things. As long as I gave him a solid introduction and a solid ending, he was more than happy for me to have that freedom inbetween. But I really didn’t take advantage of him, either, y’know? I found the spots where I could support the music, and I pulled back on the spots where the music needed to do the things it needed to do without me…

AFTER THE REMAINING DATES OF THE REALITY TOUR WERE CANCELLED AND YOU ALL WENT YOUR SEPARATE WAYS, DID YOU AND DAVID KEEP IN TOUCH?
Yes, we kept in touch with e-mails. He was in New York and I was in California. Aside from two concerts that we did as just me and him (one for TV, Fashion Rocks, and one a benefit show), I didn’t see him after that. That benefit show was the last time I saw David. But we had e-mails. They were always fun. He had a great sense of humour, or we’d talk about music and send each other things. He always wanted me to send him music, whether it was published or not, and he’d always listen to it and then comment on it. He loved hearing music that was new to him. We were friends, y’know? It’s as simple as that.

YOU MENTIONED THE BENEFIT SHOW… THAT WAS A GUEST APPEARANCE AT THE ALICIA KEYS THING IN NEW YORK IN 2006. IT TURNED OUT TO BE DAVID’S LAST EVER LIVE PERFORMANCE. I’M TOUCHED, SITTING HERE TALKING TO YOU, THINKING ABOUT THE FACT THAT THE LAST SONG YOU PLAYED TOGETHER WAS CHANGES… THE SAME SONG YOU PLAYED AT YOUR AUDITION IN 1972…
The complete circle, huh?

OBVIOUSLY NOBODY KNEW THAT THE ALICIA KEYS SHOW WAS GOING TO BE HIS LAST EVER LIVE PERFORMANCE… BUT DO YOU REMEMBER IT AS BEING ANYTHING REMARKABLE?
Oh yeah, oh yeah. It was a great experience. I remember it very very well. There was a lot of people in the audience. Tom Cruise was there, Brad Pitt was there. The TITANIC guy was there. I think we did WILD IS THE WIND and then we did CHANGES. Actually Alicia was going to play the piano, but when she saw I was there she asked me to play, and the two of them sang it. It was very good. He was such a pro but for some reason (and sadly I think) David didn’t want it filmed. So there’s this really non-great recording of it out on YouTube, with terrible sound. I’ll tell you, I never heard anything sound as great as when we played that…

WHY DID HE NOT WANT IT FILMED, DO YOU THINK?
He was perhaps a little shaky, still, healthwise. It hadn’t been that long and I think he felt he was still a little bit bent out of shape.

I THINK ‘THE WORLD’ FELT THEY WOULD NEVER HEAR FROM DAVID AGAIN AFTER HE WAS TAKEN ILL. HE RETREATED INTO ‘NORMAL’ LIFE IN NEW YORK, AND DEDICATED HIMSELF TO BEING A FAMILY MAN AND RAISING HIS DAUGHTER. FAIR PLAY TO HIM, I SAY… BUT THEN IN 2013 CAME THE SURPRISE ALBUM THE NEXT DAY…
I had no idea he was making a record, it was kept so secret. I was delighted by it – I think it’s a great album. Yeah, THE NEXT DAY is an amazing album. And, of course, the follow up was even better… I’ve been doing the song LAZARUS with my own band since last year. Sting sat in with us at the Wilton in Los Angeles. He sang that song and BLACKSTAR and it was just… tremendous. Other than David, I thing Sting is probably the only one with the voice who could do such justice to those songs.

I’M STILL AMAZED THAT YOU’RE NOT ON THAT RECORD, ACTUALLY. I THINK THERE ARE SO MANY MOMENTS ON BLACKSTAR KIND OF ‘BUILT’ FOR YOU, MIKE…
Absolutely. I really wished I was on that, to be honest with you. Had I been living in New York I know I would have been on it. But I feel that because of our love for each other, David didn’t ask me because he didn’t want me around during his illness. I almost feel like he was protecting me…

IN THE PODCAST I DID WITH VISCONTI HE TOLD ME BOWIE HAD MORE WORK UP HIS SLEEVE – AND SO THAT MEANT BLACKSTAR WASN’T MADE AS A DELIBERATE FAREWELL ALBUM – BUT THAT IS WHAT A LOT PEOPLE HAVE PROJECTED ONTO IT. SO… YOU MAY HAVE WORKED WITH HIM AGAIN…
Yeah. I believe that had he not gotten sick he’d wanted to do more OUTSIDE sort of projects with Brian Eno and myself. But, to me there’s no question about the definitiveness of BLACKSTAR as being the last Bowie album. We’re always hopeful for another day – but I suspect it just wasn’t ‘meant to be’, y’know?

DO YOU REMEMBER THE LAST TIME YOU AND DAVID WERE IN TOUCH? DO YOU REMEMBER THE MOMENT YOU FOUND OUT HE’D DIED?
Yeah. We last e-mailed around a year, nine months maybe… Something like that… I found out he’d passed while watching the news. It was on the news, around eleven at night. It was a Sunday night, I think. I remember the moment too clearly, actually. And like millions of people I went into shock. There’s absolutely no question that I was in shock. But no more than anyone else – he had so many people that cared about him and loved him. There’s so many people that admired him and had recognised that he was one of very very few artists of that calibre. One of the genuine greats, y’know?

For a full list of Mike Garson’s ALADDIN SANE tour dates (and ticket links) go here