![\"David](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\/1b82593b-08e6-4577-af58-33e449ec0fd7.jpg\")
<\/p>\nDavid Bowie casts a long shadow. Not just in the countless films, books and podcasts exploring every last aspect of his 69 years on Earth, but over the lives of the people who shared a stage or studio with him. <\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, ever since he left the world, something\u2019s happened,\u201d says Gail Ann Dorsey, Bowie\u2019s bassist from 1995 to 2013. \u201cI know it sounds hippie dippie, but something shifted. I wish I could ask him, where are we going, David?\u201d<\/p>\n
Bowie\u2019s death on January 10, 2016 may or may not have caused a cosmic imbalance the likes of which we are yet to recover from, but it unquestionably had a huge impact on the people he worked with. Speaking to the key alumni of his 50-year career, some still feeling the pain of being discarded, others feeling blessed to have come into his orbit at all, similar descriptions of the man crop up. David Bowie was funny, personable, spontaneous, very good at bringing out the best in people \u2014 and totally unsentimental about ditching everyone and moving on. <\/p>\n
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On stage with bassist Gail Ann Dorsey in 2002<\/p>\n
BERTRAND GUAY\/AFP\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody got fired, they just didn\u2019t get called again,\u201d says Carlos Alomar, who came in to play guitar for Young Americans in 1975 and stayed until Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) in 1980, before returning intermittently until Reality in 2003. <\/p>\n
As Mike Garson, who provided the unforgettable avant-garde piano solo on Aladdin Sane in 1973, puts it: \u201cNobody doesn\u2019t want to get the call from Bowie. Everyone feels dissed. But he was honouring his truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 David Bowie remembered by Kate Moss \u2014 the friend he called \u2018Smasher\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n Nobody felt the sting of truth being honoured more than Woody Woodmansey. The last surviving member of the Spiders from Mars, with whom Bowie transformed from an Anthony Newley copyist to a glam rock alien, Woodmansey was drumming for rock bands in his native Yorkshire when he got the call from Bowie to move into Haddon Hall, his house in Beckenham, Kent, alongside Woodmansey\u2019s guitarist friend Mick Ronson. <\/p>\n \u201cAll I knew about David Bowie was the curly haired guy from Space Oddity,\u201d Woodmansey remembers. \u201cThis man in red corduroy trousers, blue shoes and a silver belt answered the door and said, \u2018Hello, Woody.\u2019 I was all in denim, so that was our first culture clash. <\/p>\n Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder, David Bowie and Woody Woodmansey of Spiders From Mars in 1972<\/p>\n MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n \u201cHe played me his old records and I thought he was trying to sound like other people. Then he performed Wild-Eyed Boy from Freecloud on an acoustic guitar, sitting a few feet from me, and I thought, he\u2019s got something.\u201d<\/p>\n Woodmansey says he could see the talent, but not much direction. \u201cHe could sing, he could write, he looked like a star. But nothing was in place and he worried about being a one-hit wonder. Then he went on a promo trip to America where he met Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, people who were completely themselves, and he came back saying, \u2018I know what I need: more Bowie.\u2019 <\/p>\n \u201cNext thing I know I\u2019m in the kitchen, buttering toast, when he says he finished a new song while I was up in town. He plays Life on Mars and I\u2019m thinking, \u2018Holy shit. That\u2019s incredible.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n There were wild times at Haddon Hall. Woodmansey woke up one day to find the house filled with naked women, to be told by Bowie\u2019s wife Angie that they were all lesbians. There was an attempt at a normal Sunday lunch with Bowie\u2019s mother and his schizophrenic half-brother, Terry, where, after being asked what he had been doing, Terry replied: \u201cMasturbating, mainly.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Revealed: David Bowie\u2019s secret list of his favourite songs<\/a><\/p>\n But there was dedication to the job at hand, alongside a lack of preciousness that is cited time and again. Woodmansey says that for the 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Bowie showed the band a song, got them to run through it once \u2014 and put the run-through on the record. <\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what he wanted, something edgy. And it was all about work. When we were making albums there was nothing stronger than coffee.\u201d<\/p>\n By the time of Aladdin Sane, written on the road during an exhausting US tour and released in April 1973, Bowie was a star. On July 3 that year he announced the Spiders from Mars\u2019 retirement from the stage of Hammersmith Odeon, which was the first they had heard of it. Then he sacked Woodmansey on his wedding day. <\/p>\n Woodmansey married June Harrison and was sacked from Spiders from Mars the same day<\/p>\n DAVID THORPE\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n \u201cThat was an effective way to piss me off,\u201d Woodmansey says. \u201cWe had an argument with [Bowie\u2019s manager] Tony Defries, when he said, \u2018Bowie could have made it with anyone.\u2019 But he didn\u2019t, did he? Suddenly David was staying in different hotels, wouldn\u2019t hang out after concerts. It\u2019s only looking back now that I realise how much pressure he was under.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe fires the entire band on stage and I was the only one who knew,\u201d remembers Garson, a garrulous, 80-year-old former habitu\u00e9 of the New York jazz scene. \u201cI loved those guys, I was also the band leader, and here\u2019s the thing. David was charming, charismatic, the friendliest guy I ever knew, and absolutely ruthless. <\/p>\n \u201cFrom 1972 to 1974 he fired five bands. He let go of five musicians on the (1997) Earthling tour alone. But it was never for financial or careerist reasons. It\u2019s because he was the Miles Davis of rock, always willing to change.\u201d<\/p>\n And willing to learn from others. \u201cHe knew he couldn\u2019t do it alone,\u201d Garson says. \u201cWhy did I play so free on those records? Because all David did was give me a shape and allow me to do what I did. He didn\u2019t micromanage.\u201d<\/p>\n The pianist Mike Garson performed at Celebrating David Bowie in 2018<\/p>\n CHRIS MCKAY\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n Garson discovered his own services were not needed after Young Americans, but he was summoned back for the Black Tie White Noise album in 1993 and stayed until Bowie had a heart attack during a concert in Germany in 2004, effectively ending his live career. How did the two periods compare?<\/p>\n \u201cDuring Aladdin Sane he was coked out of his mind. In the Nineties he\u2019s getting married, he\u2019s clean, he\u2019s reading three books over three days on the tour bus. But the creativity was the same. It shows you don\u2019t need drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n The guitarist Earl Slick witnessed Bowie\u2019s druggiest years in the mid-1970s, when he was making Station to Station, dabbling in fascism and the occult, and living on a diet of milk and cocaine. \u201cMick Ronson quit, he needed a guitar player, and I joined on the [1974] Diamond Dogs tour,\u201d says Slick, a fast-talking New Yorker who learnt his chops from classic rock\u2019n\u2019roll. \u201cThe first thing I thought was, this guy\u2019s looks don\u2019t match his personality. He looked kinda weird but actually he was very down to earth.\u201d<\/p>\n The guitarist Earl Slick on stage at Celebrating David Bowie with Gary Oldman & Friends in London, 2017<\/p>\n BRIAN RASIC\/WIREIMAGE\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n At least he was at first. \u201cStation to Station was a strange experience,\u201d Slick says of an album that features ten minutes of funk-tinged paranoia on the title track but also the pop charm of Golden Years and a haunting take on the Nina Simone ballad Wild Is the Wind. <\/p>\n \u201cDavid was definitely on another planet. But whatever condition he was in, he was still incredibly focused. I swear to God, there were times when I went into the studio Tuesday afternoon and came out Thursday. Then I show up the next day, the band shows up \u2026 no David. I guess he was sleeping it off. Hey, this was Los Angeles in 1975. We didn\u2019t think anything of it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 David Bowie and Nazism \u2014 \u2018I\u2019d have been a bloody good Hitler\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n Slick had no idea about Bowie\u2019s lifestyle at the time, because outside the studio there was no communication whatsoever. \u201cI only found out later he was closing the shades of his house, putting weird symbols on the door to ward off evil spirits, all that shit. When I came back [for Outside in 2002] he was a whole different person \u2014 joking, laughing, talking about the last trip he took. None of that happened in the Seventies.\u201d <\/p>\n Alomar, who with the drummer Dennis Davis and the bassist George Murray made up Bowie\u2019s funk-based backing band the DAM Trilogy, witnessed Bowie\u2019s most dramatic changes through the Seventies: the \u201cplastic soul\u201d of Young Americans, the icy alienation of Station to Station, the experimentation of the \u2018Berlin era\u2019 albums Low, Heroes and Lodger, and the postpunk playfulness of Scary Monsters in 1980.<\/p>\n \u201cThis individual comes from overseas, doesn\u2019t have anything, and he wants me to go on the road. But he can\u2019t afford me,\u201d says Alomar, already an in-demand guitarist for James Brown and Wilson Pickett when he got the call. <\/p>\n \u201cHe was a nice guy, wanted to know everything about the black experience, and I was attracted by his English accent, so when he tells me he wants to do this Philly soul sound I hook him up with my clique. And that kind of soulfulness, you have to study it, otherwise you\u2019ll trample it. And as a white boy he really pulled it off.\u201d<\/p>\n Respect duly earned, the guitarist stayed on Bowie\u2019s ever-changing journey as, by Alomar\u2019s description, \u201can actor who sings\u201d. He also dismisses the cocaine engulfing the Station to Station sessions as a product of necessity. \u201cYou do a snort of coke and stay up all night so you can write two more songs. Will you be a wreck later on? Who cares?\u201d <\/p>\n Moving to Berlin with Iggy Pop was a way of changing the lifestyle. The DAM trio played basic punk chords on Iggy\u2019s 1977 album The Idiot before letting loose on Bowie\u2019s Low. <\/p>\n \u2022 David Bowie\u2019s secret final work: an 18th-century musical<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWas David testing us? Getting a juggernaut of a funk rhythm trio to do punk, the easiest music you can possibly play?\u201d Alomar asks himself. \u201cWho knows? But that\u2019s when we worked in an intuitive way. On Low, [the producer] Tony Visconti would tell you the key, Brian Eno would set the tempo and you played something that fitted. Sometimes it might sound horrible but it was true experimentation.\u201d<\/p>\n It was also a way of Bowie entering a new period of asceticism, away from the druggy excess of his LA years. \u201cBerlin was dark and people didn\u2019t want to live there,\u201d Visconti says. \u201cThat\u2019s why David was renting a three-bedroom apartment for next to nothing. If you travelled by car from East to West Germany you couldn\u2019t stop for petrol. You had to make sure you had a full tank because if you stopped you would be shot.\u201d<\/p>\n At least making Boys Keep Swinging in Switzerland in 1978 and 1979 was less dangerous. For this chaotic celebration of boyish freedom, Bowie had the idea of putting Alomar on drums, Davis on bass and Murray on piano, none of which they played. \u201cHe told us, \u2018You sound too damn professional. You need to sound like a bunch of 14-year-old boys,\u201d Alomar says. \u201cOh my God, it sucked! But it worked because, as David said, when you want to change the sound, change the band.\u201d<\/p>\n Bowie was in London in 1988 when the Philadelphia-born Dorsey came on the television to promote her debut solo album. \u201cHe didn\u2019t call me until 1995,\u201d she says, giving insight into how his mind worked. \u201cHe said he now had a project that I was right for, which was the Outside tour. That\u2019s when six weeks turned into 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n Dorsey puts Bowie\u2019s constant reinvention down to a childlike spirit of adventure. \u201cHe was like a kid, excited about what he was doing next,\u201d she says. \u201cHe didn\u2019t second-guess himself and he was never precious, so there was an infectious work environment. He said to me once, \u2018Putting together a band is like a director making a movie. A good director chooses the right actors, then sits back and lets them do their thing.\u2019 He pulled things out of people before infusing himself into them \u2014 that\u2019s Bowie.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 The 26 David Bowie albums ranked \u2014 from worst to best<\/a><\/p>\n In 1999 Emm Gryner was 24, floating around New York after being dropped by her label, when she got the call to be Bowie\u2019s backing singer and keyboard player. \u201cI didn\u2019t know much about him. I thought Rebel Rebel was by the Rolling Stones,\u201d she confesses. <\/p>\n \u201cI come from a traditional pop format, and the first thing I realised is that the keyboard lines in Bowie\u2019s songs were never static like they are in pop. He let us just get on with it, which I thought was crazy, given the level he was at. One time I screwed up in a concert and didn\u2019t even get the death stare.\u201d<\/p>\n For Blackstar, that remarkable swan song of an album recorded in secret in early 2015 and released two days before his death, Bowie headed off in another direction. Having checked out Donny McLaslin\u2019s experimental jazz quartet at the 55 Bar in New York, he hired the lot of them. <\/p>\n \u201cI did my due diligence and went through his back catalogue,\u201d McLaslin says. \u201cBut I learnt, very quickly, that he wasn\u2019t interested in me replicating the sax part on Let\u2019s Dance. He sent over rough home demos of Sue (Or in a Season of Crime), Lazarus and a few others, gave us the green light to do what we do, and it was wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n The saxophonist Donny McCaslin: \u201cI learnt very quickly that he wasn\u2019t interested in me replicating the sax part on Let\u2019s Dance\u201d<\/p>\n GARI GARAIALDE\/REDFERNS\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n Of Bowie\u2019s old gang only Visconti, who first worked with him in 1968 after arranging the flop single In the Heat of the Morning, made it through to Blackstar. <\/p>\n \u201cJust before Christmas we talked about our families,\u201d the producer remembers. \u201cThen he said, \u2018I\u2019ve got new material, nothing special, but after New Year\u2019s we\u2019ll get together and I\u2019ll show it to you.\u2019 That\u2019s the way David worked: he came up with a few chord changes, but never wrote a lyric or melody before stepping into the studio. I was excited. <\/p>\n![\"Black](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/\/1c970fa0-b7e1-44b2-9729-7305f7a42846.jpg\")
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