David Bowie sidemen debate whether he was a good guitarist or not: “He had a kind of caveman instinct with the guitar”
David Bowie goes down as one of the greatest songwriters and most influential musicians who ever lived. But does artistic vision always correlate with technical ability?
According to several of his six-string sidemen over the years, Bowie’s guitar playing ability wasn’t the strongest, but that had no diminishing effect on his ability to write songs.
Gerry Leonard, Adrian Belew, Eric Schermerhorn, Peter Frampton and others – all of whom have played alongside David Bowie – sit down in a new feature with Guitar World to discuss Bowie’s artistic genius, but often limited technical ability when it came to the guitar.
READ MORE: “Yeah, I swore at a Beatle!”: Phil Collins recalls how George Harrison’s prank left him “angry, depressed, sad”
“David wasn’t virtuosic or anything like that. He didn’t have any aspirations in those ways,” says Leonard. “He had a kind of caveman instinct with the guitar of what he wanted to do in a broad sense. For instance, when we did The Next Day, he’d said, almost apologetically, ‘Do you mind playing this part?’ And he’d play me a part from the demo, which was a stabbing chord or something like that.
“It was great, so raw and punk rock. He’d say, ‘Take it and do what you want with it,’ so sometimes I would modify it, but I would always be very careful to try and keep the intention.
“So he got people to do the things that he wasn’t able to do himself, but he had good instincts; he could write on the guitar and he could play a mean riff, too.”
Adrian Belew, meanwhile, reflects on how he “never saw him play much of anything”.
“Not piano, not guitar. When I was his musical director in 1990, I just about managed to talk him into playing saxophone for one song, just because I thought it would be a cool look for David.
“All those years I never thought about it, but when I ask myself when he sat down and wrote all these great songs, I don’t know the answer. He must have done it privately.”
Eric Schermerhorn remembers Bowie’s unique approach to songwriting which often went against the grain of what was conventional.
“I thought what was cool was he never did barre chords. He did the E shape and slid that up and down the neck. He was letting the other strings ring on the 12-string. That’s how I remember him playing, and his timing was great.”
Peter Frampton says Bowie used the piano and guitar chiefly as songwriting tools: “He used guitar and keyboard in order to write. He was like me in the sense that I can play piano enough to write a song, but I’m not a piano player, whereas I am a guitar player.”
David Bowie died on 10 January, 2016 at the age of 69.
The post David Bowie sidemen debate whether he was a good guitarist or not: “He had a kind of caveman instinct with the guitar” appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
