{"id":92570,"date":"2025-10-23T05:26:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T05:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/92570\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T05:26:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T05:26:11","slug":"i-was-just-getting-my-sound-when-david-shouted-ok-done-i-was-like-but-i-havent-actually-started-yet-the-future-motorhead-guitarist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/92570\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI was just getting my sound when David shouted: \u2018OK, done!\u2019 I was like: \u2018But I haven\u2019t actually started yet!\u2019\u201d: The future Mot\u00f6rhead guitarist who recorded a last-minute guitar solo for David Bowie"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Bowie<\/a> was a man of innumerable talents, but one of his greatest abilities was to cherry-pick brilliant, often unknown musicians who would help realise his musical vision at any given time.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Thin White Duke had an especially great track record with guitarists. Bowie\u2019s early partnership with Mick Ronson<\/a> helped propel the singer to stardom after several false starts, and he went on to fruitful creative relationships with a stellar array of six-stringers from Carlos Alomar, Earl Slick<\/a> and Stevie Ray Vaughan<\/a> to King Crimson\u2019s Robert Fripp, Chic\u2019s Nile Rodgers and Reeves Gabrels.<\/p>\n

Not everyone who entered Bowie\u2019s orbit stayed there long. Occasionally, the singer need the help of a musician at the last minute and if his regular collaborator at the time wasn\u2019t available, he put in a call to whoever he could.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

One of these people was Brian \u2018Robbo\u2019 Robertson<\/a>. The Scottish guitarist had spent the second half of the 1970s as a member of Thin Lizzy<\/a>, but by 1979 his time in the band was over due to his increasingly fractious relationship with Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott.<\/p>\n

But Robbo had an admirer in Tony Visconti<\/a>, who had produced Lizzy\u2019s 1977 album Bad Reputation as well as many of Bowie\u2019s biggest records. And when the singer needed a guitarist to re-record a solo for a 1979 TV appearance, it was Robbo that Visconti suggested.<\/p>\n

In a 2012 interview with Classic Rock, Robbo recalled his very brief time in Bowie\u2019s company.<\/p>\n

\u201cBowie was appearing on [British TV comedy programme] The Kenny Everett Show, and that involved him having to record a new version of [1979 single] Boys Keep Swinging,\u201d recalled Robbo.<\/p>\n

Sign up below to get the latest from Classic Rock, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in the middle of a Lizzy tour, but I got the call from Tony Visconti asking if I could play the guitar solo, I wasn\u2019t going to miss that. I\u2019d been a big Bowie and Mick Ronson fan since I was a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robbo told Visconti that he\u2019d do it. \u201cTony sent me a cassette of the original Boys Keep Swinging and it had this crazy lead guitar stuff by [then-Bowie collaborator] Adrian Belew, all these weird noises. I thought, \u2018Fuck! I can\u2019t do that.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I went down to Good Earth studios with a Strat and a bottle of Courvoisier. David and Tony were sat behind the mixing desk.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI was just getting my sound when David shouted: \u2018Okay, done!\u201d I was like: \u2018But I haven\u2019t actually started yet…\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Happy with Robertson’s ad-hoc but accidentally perfect contribution, Visconti fleshed out the final recording. Keyboards came from Sean Mayes, whose band Fumble had supported Bowie on the Ziggy Stardust tour.<\/p>\n

Former Hawkwind man Simon House added violin, session musos Andy Duncan and Ricky Hitchcock provided drums and guitar, and the producer himself played the bass.<\/p>\n

A video was filmed the following day, Bowie dragging on a cigarette throughout, and the finished segment was broadcast on April 23.<\/p>\n

Robertson’s non-solo-solo was officially released in 2019, when the Kenny Everett version of Boys Keep Swinging was released as a 7″ picture disc to celebrate its 40th anniversary.<\/p>\n

Robertson went on to form Wild Horses with ex-Rainbow bassist Jimmy Bain, before famously going on to spend an ill-fated, one-album stint in Mot\u00f6rhead for 1983\u2019s Another Perfect Day \u2013 becoming the only guitarist to have played with David Bowie and Lemmy.<\/p>\n

David Bowie \u2022 Boys Keep Swinging \u2022 The Kenny Everett Show \u2022 April 23, 1979 – YouTube
\n\"David<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Bowie was a man of innumerable talents, but one of his greatest abilities was to cherry-pick brilliant,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-92570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}