Mike Garson, Photo © Fernando Aceves
“Basically I just made this commitment to myself that 50 percent of my musical output moving forward would be his music,” Garson tells me by phone. He’s currently traveling with Celebrating Bowie, the 27-city tour with the departed icon’s former bandmates playing his works (at the Wiltern on Feb. 28). “I love this guy’s music; it’s as great as George Gershwin or Cole Porter or Burt Bacharach.”
“Garson should know. He’s considered one of the most gifted pianists in music, with a background that includes not just rock but jazz, classical and avant-garde sounds, too. He wasn’t versed in rock, much less glam rock, when he was hired to play on the Ziggy Stardust tour in the fall of 1972, but he learned quickly. It was an eight-week contract and he had no reason to think it’d be a long-term gig, but it lasted the entirety of the historic tour and then moved into the studio, where his experience and knowledge of both classic and experimental songcraft informed Bowie’s recordings all the way through to the Young Americans era. There was a long period apart after that, but the musicians reunited in the 1990s and continued to work together until Bowie’s last stage appearance in 2014.…
“I drive from my house in Brooklyn to the studio in New York City, and I walk in and see these three guys dressed like, oh my God,” Garson recalls of his first audition, before he had even heard of Bowie. “There’s these three guys, one red hair, one silver and one black, boots up to their knees, stockings … I’m in jeans. Then this handsome guy calls me over to the piano — his name is Mick Ronson. He shows me the music for ‘Changes’ and says, ‘Play this!’ I play for seven seconds and he says, ‘Ya got the gig!’”…
“Though they were opposites in style and upbringing, Garson said it was his jazz background that bonded him with Bowie, who played saxophone and studied jazz as a kid. The Aladdin Sane album, with its red and blue bolt makeup headshot, has become part of mainstream iconography, a strange yet beautiful pop culture symbol that even non-fans know and appreciate. The record itself conveyed an otherworldly mood as well, largely due to Garson’s influence, incorporating classical, jazz and avant-garde elements.…”
Read the full interview on LAWeekly.com
Watch Celebrating Bowie live from Los Angeles
Mike Garson’s Reference Recordings Discography
