Bowie PDF Book from JFK247

came about, bar ‘Boys Keep Swinging’, where they
told him that Carlos was playing drums. ‘It was like a
freight train coming through my mind,’ he says of his
now celebrated solo. ‘I just had to cling on.’
Completed in March 1979 at New York’s Power
Plant, Lodger would meet with a respectful, slightly
subdued reception on its release in May. Visconti
blamed the lack of enthusiasm on a rushed mix.
Much of the instrumentation did indeed sound thin
next to the ebullient clatter of “Heroes”; the same
applied to the emotional content, for where its two
predecessors were deep, Lodger was restless and
quirky. The album would attract admiration rather
than visceral love or hatred, but its art-rock
intellectualism sat neatly alongside emerging bands
like Talking Heads – produced by Brian Eno over
the same timeframe – or New Romantic bands like
Spandau Ballet, whose Germanic name, sound and
peg-leg pants were all based on the 1978-model
David Bowie.
After the break for the main Lodger sessions in
September, the tour continued through Australia and
Japan. For Belew in particular, the experience was
one of the most fulfilling in his career: ‘We got to
Japan and it was amazing, like the stratosphere of
super-fame.’ Seven months of touring with David
‘really propelled me into being the guitarist I
became. He was the first person to give me the
freedom to go and explore, in front of 20,000 people.
When you have that scenario, you almost transcend
yourself – you dig deep and find stuff you didn’t know
was there. I was on a permanent high.’