Low/Europe/Area 2 (Part One)

First, my apologies for not keeping up to date with this thing. I was besieged by a plethora of web-related stupidity sometime around last February or so. OK ... so 'besieged' might be a slightly strong word, given some of the other developments of the last year. In all honesty, my patience gets really taxed dealing with voicemail systems and the like. I'm convinced that there's been a law passed prohibiting any human beings from answering phones at businesses (is it some sort of terrorist screening system)? Once I got into rehearsals, I just gave up on the whole thing.

Anyway....Here were are again. New address (for now), slight redesign, and some new content. A lot has gone on since my .com went down the toilet. Here's a bit of it, to start ...

I've spent the better part of this year being David Bowie's musical director and one of his guitarists - my third time in this role. This particular hitch has been the lengthiest as well as the most challenging. A lot of people have been wondering what I do in the capacity as bandleader. Some want to know how we went about performing two albums in a single show. Others want to know what I'm doing onstage at all - after all, three guitarists seem a bit much in this era of downsizing. Hopefully ... this will shed a little light.

Sometime in March, I got a call from David. He tells me he wants to do two entire albums, start to finish, on the upcoming tour. Given that it's 2002, the thirtieth anniversary of 'Ziggy Stardust' - the bellwether of glam, in many eyes - I figure that's where he's going.

DB: 'I want us to play the 'Low' album from start to finish, in order, at Roseland this June'.

MP: 'Uh ... OK'

DB: 'And then I want to play the entire new album right after it'

MP: 'Ummm ..... right'

DB: 'What do you think of that?'

MP: 'Well ..... '

Which led us into a discussion of why to play the 'Low' album in particular: 2002 is the 25th anniversary of that record; it's one of his favorites; it was a big step forward in style and production; 'Low' was an underdog extraordinaire at the time of release (RCA didn't want it - they wanted 'Young Americans 2.' DB still has RCA's telegram saying they'd pay for him to make it); and, it's a cousin in style to his new record, 'Heathen.' In addition to playing the record in sequence, David wanted to be more or less faithful to the original recording as well - no radical remixes or reworkings.

It all made sense to me, though I had a few issues along the lines of practicality. This was a record based not only on your usual guitar, bass, and drums, but a whole lot more: Chamberlains, synths, guitar treatments, honky-tonk pianos sent through fuzz boxes, Harmonized snare drums, etc. You get the idea.

Plus, there was my need to decipher who was doing what in the dense, collage-like construction of the record, so I could assign different parts to the musicians in the band. Last, but definitely not in the least, was how to pull off the Side 2 instrumentals.

A few things made performing 'Low' possible. First was the revamping of the band. We decided on adding a couple of more instrumentalists, and replacing the backing singers (flash: you should find Emm Gryner's new CD, 'Asianblue' .... it's brilliant ... get it now!).

We brought in Gerry Leonard, a guitarist who we first had contribute to a number of tracks on the still unreleased 'Toy.' Second was Catherine (Cat) Russell, a vocalist from New York City who has worked with a number of people (Cyndi Lauper and Toshi Reagon among them) who also plays keyboards and percussion. With these additional players, we could cover nearly any stylistic ground on guitars, plus Cat would be able to help Mike Garson covering the keyboards. I would also become more of a swing man, switching to keyboards for some of the more synth-laden 'Low' material.

Next, we were able to secure a very nice endorsement deal from Kurzweil (via Mike Garson), who supplied us with three K2600 keyboards. With only one type of keyboard, we'd only have to worry about programming sounds for one particular format. Sterling recommended a friend of his, Tony Widoff, to program sounds for us. Tony is a Kurzweil ace (in addition to being a first class musician in his own right) and he is responsible for duplicating all the synth sounds from 'Low.'

Now that we had the personnel ..... I had to figure out how to get people their parts to play. As 'Low' is such a dense record, I decided that the most accurate - and expeditious - way to go about it would be to get a hold of the original multitrack masters and transfer them into my computer. Then I could hear individual tracks, and decide who was going to play what based on each musicians' style & technique. I could also get the individual sounds to Tony Widoff, making his programming a much easier job.

It's always an intense experience to do something like this with records from the past - to see how they were constructed, how the individual tracks interact and make the whole, and listen to ideas which were abandoned. At this point, I've done it with a fair bit of David's music - a few 'Station to Station' tracks, some of 'Heroes,' 'Fame,' even 'Lust for Life.'

I made CD's for each musician. I'd pick a song, decide what part the person should play, then put their designated part on the right side. Then, I'd put a mix of the rest of the track on the left side, so that they could hear their part isolated, but in context. This was time consuming (do the math - five or so different mixes per track, for the entire record, with CD burning time), but it made it a breeze for the players to hone in on both their parts as well as their sounds.

The instrumentals proved to be a bit more challenging. I decided to go the same route as they had when they originally made the recordings - to play along with a click and a bar count. Still, even these came together very easily for the most part. Once again, Tony Widoff's synth programming (especially on 'Art Decade' and 'Warsawa') was stellar, and really made these pieces possible. Also, there was the ability to shuffle people around. Gail became a vocalist; Sterling and I played additional keys; and David covered keys, bari sax and harmonica.

I was amazed at how quickly the songs came together. It almost seemed TOO easy.

Gerry Leonard made it his business to really cop the sounds from the record, especially Ricky Gardeners' phase shifting and dirt on the solo from 'Always Crashing,' and the warbly ska-like vibe from 'A New Career in a New Town.' With three guitarists, we were able to cover the depth of the parts on the record. Sometimes there'd be four or more guitar parts on a track, which we were able to distill down to three separate parts and sounds.

I was initially a bit concerned about the three guitar concept. David was really into it visually - he thought all those guitar necks would be an intense look. I agreed, but knew it'd be a total trainwreck if it weren't orchestrated properly. Fortunately, we all have very different styles and sounds, and don't step on each other much. I tended to take Carlos Alomar's rhythm parts, and then divvied up the leads according to whose style - Slick's or Gerry's - fit better.

Next .... we repeat the process with 'Heathen'.