Earl Slick, who has been a long-time guitar player for David Bowie, expressed that he and the rest of the iconic artist’s backing band hope for a tour.
He shared, “We don’t know. Obviously, we want him to. But right now, that’s a big if…I could get a phone call tomorrow saying, ‘Hey, you know what? Here’s the setlist.’ I don’t know. I can’t speak for him or the organization. Obviously, the band would love to go out. Even if it’s not a huge tour, we would like to go out and do some gigs. But that’s yet to be seen.”
Slick further mentioned that he recorded his contributions on Bowie’s upcoming album ‘The Next Day’—set to be released on March 11th. He recalled, “David got in touch with me out of the blue, and he said, ‘I’m ready to go back in. What are you doing? Are you around? Are you touring?’ I replied, ‘No, just get me some dates.’ We started banging dates around – and he was already recording – and I went in and did all my stuff in July.”
Regarding the album’s content, Slick stated, “There’s a lot of rockers on there, I can tell you that…there’s a few kind of really cool mid-tempo ones in there as well, but I’m the go-to guy for the rock stuff with David.”
Slick’s remarks echo the claims of producer Tony Visconti, who described Bowie’s new album as “a rock album.”
After Bowie’s return, Visconti commented on the first single ‘Where Are We Now?’:
“It’s very melancholy, I think. It’s the only track on the album that goes this much inward for him. The rest of the songs are quite a rock album, so I wondered why David chose to introduce a very slow, albeit beautiful, ballad. He should come out with a bang. But he is a master of his own life.”
by Wallace McTavish
