John Byrne talks to former David Bowie and The Spiders from Mars' drummer Woody Woodmansey about his upcoming tour of Bowie's early masterpiece album, The Man Who Sold the World.
It's become something of a regular event on the gig scene, acts touring some famous album from their back catalogue. But what Woody Woodmansey's doing is that little bit different.
The 64-year-old drummer was a member of David Bowie's band during the early 1970s, featuring on classic albums such as Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, The Spiders from Mars, and Aladdin Sane.
The first album he recorded with Bowie was 1970's The Man Who Sold the World and now he's touring that early Bowie gem, along with some of the Thin White Duke's other key songs from the period.
Okay, there's no Bowie involvement, but an intriguing line-up has been assembled, including Bowie's erstwhile producer Tony Visconti, on bass, and former Heaven 17 vocalist Glen Gregory. As part of the tour, they'll be playing Dublin's Olympia Theatre on Wednesday June 25.
By all accounts it's a great show and essential for Bowie fans. Woodmansey was in great form when RTÉ TEN caught up with him on the blower and looking forward to bringing the tour to Ireland.
John Byrne: You worked with Bowie on his breakthrough albums. The best of times?
Woody Woodmansey: Yeah. Brilliant times. You set off as a musician wondering if you're going to be any good and you're practicing like mad. And then you get so you think 'Well, I'm as good as that guy and I can play what the can play, I think I'm pretty good'.
Woody Woodmansey at Haddon Hall where he lived with David Bowie and band in 1970
But you never really know if you're going to do it. And then you just hold your nose and take the jump, really. And then hopefully you're good enough, and then you get together with other musicians who have also got it together.
And that's what happened, and we ended up with David, Mick Ronson and Trevor Bolder. All good players, really. Bowie being an incredible songwriter – that's what really got us into him to start with, because the image and all that wasn't really there back when we first joined. It was more the music we were concentrating on.
Why The Man Who Sold the World? Why tour it now, 45 years later?
I got asked by the ICA on The Mall in London, which is the Institute of Contemporary Art, would I go and do an interview in front of a live audience, and talk about those time and that, and how you've influenced the culture, and I was kind of taking the piss a bit, really. And I said 'How long is it for?' And they said about two hours, so I said what do we talk about after the first five minutes?
Anyway, they talked me into it and it was really good. There were some brilliant questions from the audience and then turned out they's kind of put this band together to do a gig at the ICA and The Latitude Festival. It was Clem Burke from Blondie on drums, Steve Norman from Spandau Ballet, James Stevenson from The Cult - they were all from name bands, and they all wanted to do that music.
So they said 'Come to the festival and just do two songs' as a guest. So I ended up stood at the side of the stage watching Clem Burke play all my parts and I was just like 'Oh no! I wanna play that one!' He'd got the gig, really.
Woody Woodmansey in more recent times
So I ended up playing two and it was so frustrating and then we kind of finished that, and then we looked at it: the first album we did with David was The Man Who Sold the World. But at that time he was changing management and there was no money, basically, to get out and gig.
And it was an album that we really got off on and were looking forward to playing live, so we just went: 'Why don't we do that album?' Because nobody has seen it [live]. We did do a couple of tracks in the Ziggy show that were from it, but we didn't do the whole album.
I gave Tony Visconti a ring and said, 'Do you fancy it?' And he said he would love to do it. He went back into production after that album, doing T Rex and Thin Lizzy and loads of different artists, and didn't get a chance to play live with us, which is what he really wanted to do.
Is it going to be a straightforward gig, or will there be some background-setting?
There might be a few bits like that, yeah. And we've got a few special guests lined up, who wanted to come up and sing different tracks as well. And we're going to jump into some Hunky Dory and Ziggy ones and Aladdin Sane. I think we're doing about two hours and ten minutes - which is hard on the drummer, you know?
Tickets for The Man Who Sold the World, Dublin's Olympia Theatre, Wednesday June 25, are now on sale.
Here's Woody on Top of the Pops playing drums on Starman:
