Mike Garson: ‘David Bowie’s influence keeps growing’

“I sit up here 15 hours a day putting this show together and I won’t know if there was a Trump or a virus if my wife didn’t tell me,” he quips, adding that musicians are “still calling” asking to take part in the Bowie Celebration concert, which is now so packed with famous names and former members of the singer’s many bands that its running time is now over three hours long.

“I have up to 39 alumni,” he says, “I thought they were all dead but I keep finding them, they’re coming out of all parts of the woodwork, and then I have 30 singers that adored David, from Duran Duran to Gavin Rossdale to Perry Farrell to Ian Hunter. Adam Lambert came on the other day, and Andra Day and Judith Hill.

“Every day someone else calls and they loved David because his influence in the arts is probably the greatest of any artist I’m aware of, and they want to contribute to the celebration.

“It’s five years since he passed and it’s his (74th) birthday, so we’re doing it on his birthday. In LA time it’s six o’clock. You only get a 24-hour stream to do it and that’s it. People can watch it around the world – if it’s 2am in England you can watch it at 8am.”

Garson, who played on 11 of Bowie’s studio albums from 1973’s Aladdin Sane to Reality in 2003, says he is “trying to get away from the Zoom concept with a little square for everybody” with the show’s online presentation. “We’re trying to present it like a concert. I was supposed to be in this big studio being filmed on this beautiful piano and even playing live along with some of the acts that have sent in pre-recorded videos, but because of Covid I’m in the house. So we’re trying to figure out aesthetic ways to make it beautiful and yet I’m sitting right here, so to speak.

“It’s very challenging but we’re innovators here in the States, despite the craziness, so we deal with it as we can.”

The set list for A Bowie Celebration will encompass almost all of the singer’s albums, from his self-titled 1969 debut for Deram to Blackstar, released two days before his death from cancer in 2016.

“My assistant went through all of his albums and I think it’s down to two now (that are not included),” Garson says. “We’ll see what happens because people are still calling. It’s very flattering but it’s an easy ask, we are all sitting around and what do we like to do as artists – we like to create and make music, it’s the perfect time. If I tried to ask them to come on tour with me and do six shows a week for three months in a bus for $30 a week I think I’d probably have four people; now I’m up to 70.”

The 75-year-old believes the ‘Bowie alumni’ have formed a strong bond in the four years that they have been touring the US and Europe. The core band of himself, Gerry Leonard, Sterling Campbell, Earl Slick, Gail Ann Dorsey and Catherine Russell have recorded 18 of the 38 songs for this concert “so half the show sounds like the original music”.

“Then half the show I’ve done new arrangements, because I can’t help myself,” Garson adds. “I’ve done things with string quartets, an orchestra and jazz things because that’s what David would do. Certainly when they hear Under Pressure or Life on Mars? it will sound very authentic. Ian Hunter will sing All The Young Dudes, David wrote it for him. It’s like Christmas really came early for me, because I started on this stuff months ago, and I consider it a blessing, really.”

There’s also the key presence of Tony Visconti, producer of 14 Bowie albums. “Tony is the only person who knew David longer than me,” Garson says. “I came in in ’72, he was working with him two or three years before that. He’s going to play bass on The Man Who Sold The World.

“Then we have Tim Lefebvre and Mark Guiliana who played on the last album, they’ve done a new arrangement of Lazarus with Ian Astbury from The Cult. The music goes from Trent Reznor to Billy Corgan to the young rock singer Taylor Momsen and Yungblud. Duran Duran have gone all out. I’m very excited. I hope I can pull it all off. It’s like a 5,000-piece puzzle and I’ve done 3,900 pieces and can I get these 1,100 pieces done in time?”

Garson sees the involvement of younger artists, who also include Anna Calvi, as passing on the musical torch. “I had to do that because everyone who’s involved either knew David very well or worked with him or was influenced in a tremendous way. Gary Oldman is doing a song. He was friends with David and he’s an amazing actor but he’s got a great voice so we’re doing an esoteric song I Can’t Read from Tin Machine, just piano and voice. I’m doing crazy stuff and Life on Mars? and Changes will sound like the record. It’s the biggest project I’ve taken on – it’s like Live Aid or Woodstock or something in the virtual world. How can you get 30 great singers? No one is like fluff.

“I’m just enjoying that David was a great songwriter and people can sing his songs just like people sang George Gershwin or Cole Porter or Burt Bacharach. The problem was he also performed them whereas those other composers were just songwriters. David was a great performer – that makes it hard for every singer because they all love him. Since I lost my resurrection abilities to bring him back I have to go with whoever loves him and can make the music their own, that’s the secret.”

The concert will also include a “homage” to Mick Ronson. “I played on his album Slaughter on 10th Avenue, and we’re doing that song note for note with Kevin Armstrong, who’s in England and one of our alumni and knew David and played with him. I’ve changed my piano part a little but it sounds like the record. That’s the only instrumental.”

$2 from each ticket will be donated to Save The Children, a charity that was close to the singer’s heart. “That was the charity he supported, and I played with him at his 50th birthday at Madison Square Gardens and all that money went to Save The Children, so I had to follow through,” says Garson. “I really hope we’re able to get people online on that 24-hour stream.”

Five years on from Bowie’s death, Garson believes appreciation of his work is “growing daily”. “I see my grandkids loving it,” he says. “My daughters who are now in their forties, they were on the side of the stage at one-year-old when I was playing with David in England at Wembley. Now they’re older and they have kids. I have seven grandkids and they all love him.

“He’s not just a typical rock star, he’s a renaissance man, and his influence keeps growing.

“It’s the old story, when someone passes on there are few people who really knew him and were friends with him and lived on a bus with him for years. I was one of those who were blessed to be part of that, and I only had a small part compared to his whole life, but that small part was significant: 1,000 shows, 20 albums, it’s not nothing.”

In the past half-decade, Garson says his love of Bowie’s later work has deepened. “His voice got richer and lower in a very warm way,” he says. “People like to pigeonhole an artist, so it’s mostly Ziggy for the world, and Aladdin Sane and that whole thing, and I get it because it was the zeitgeist at the time, just like The Beatles. That’s not to say John (Lennon) didn’t do great works afterwards, Paul (McCartney) too, but you like the hits. Beethoven we like to hear Fur Elise, everyone knows that but they don’t know other things. David has probably 300 or 400 pieces of music.”

His own favourites Bowie records include Aladdin Sane “because it was my first I album I made with him”. “I loved Diamond Dogs – we’re doing Sweet Thing/Candidate (in the show) – and I loved Young Americans and Outside, and then some albums that I didn’t play on that I’m a tremendous fan of, like Hunky Dory. Those would be some of my favourites, but I like things like The Buddha of Suburbia too, and the Reality album was a great album. I loved The Next Day and Blackstar. It’s a hard one because this guy was so prolific, but there’s something to be said for all of them.

“He called me in 1996 and said, ‘Let’s do a jazz big band album’ where we take the least famous song from every one of my albums. I think I owe it to him to eventually do that, but it never came to fruition because we went on tour and you know how life is, it never happened. But he talked to me about writing Broadway shows; I never did one with him but he did put together Lazarus, and in America the star was Michael C Hall, and he’s singing with us on this show.”

A Bowie Celebration: Just For One Day! starts on Saturday January 9 at 2am GMT. For tickets visit http://rollinglivestudios.com/bowie