Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

anticipation.
While in New York and checked into the Sherry-
Netherland hotel off Central Park, Bowie and
Ronson auditioned a keyboard player for the
American dates. Given the elemental rock that the
Spiders had been playing throughout England, it
may have seemed superfluous, but according to the
MainMan philosophy, superfluity was a virtue.
Recommended by a mutual friend, Mike Garson,
nearing thirty, had been playing bread gigs in jazz
lounges in Greenwich Village.
“I worked a few nights with Elvin Jones, who was
John Coltrane’s drummer, a year after John died [in
1967],” Garson recalls. “And the way I got that gig
was the piano player fell off the bandstand drunk and
they dragged him out onto the streets, and Elvin
said, ‘Is there anyone who plays piano in the house?’
And I walked up and played.”
At the time that he joined the Spiders, Garson was
growing tired of playing tiny jazz clubs to three or four
tourists and was starting to wonder about his career
path. He auditioned for Bowie and Ronson with
“Changes.” “I played eight bars; it took about twelve
seconds, or eight seconds. And as soon as he
heard what I played, he said, ‘You got the gig.’”
Given how dominant Garson’s playing would be
on the next record, 1973’s Aladdin Sane, it’s clear
that Bowie was already taking the Spiders’ sound
somewhere in his head. Aladdin would be written
along the whistle-stop tour.
“He was looking for another sound,” the pianist