<\/p>\n What did the Brooklyn-born guitarist give him that no other player did?<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n \u201cI have theories about that,\u201d Slick tells Guitar Player via Zoom, from the kitchen of his home in New York City, while smoking a morning cigarette and opening a bottle of Gatorade. \u201cOne of the things was that, when it came down to needing that rock and roll guitar player, that was always me or Mick. And Mick left us a long time ago.\u201d (Ronson died in 1993.)<\/p>\n As for the others?<\/p>\n \u201cAll those guys are wonderful,\u201d Slick says. \u201cBut none of them are rock players. So he came back to me for that. That\u2019s when I got called in.\u201d<\/p>\n Earl Slick was not a constant in David Bowie\u2019s universe. Few were. But the guitarist \u2014 born Frank Medeloni nearly 73 years ago \u2014 was a mainstay. He arrived in 1974, following the demise of the Spiders From Mars and Ronson\u2019s exit, to perform on Bowie\u2019s Diamond Dogs tour. He played on the Young Americans and Station to Station albums soon after, then returned in 1983 for the Serious Moonlight Tour as a last-minute replacement for Stevie Ray Vaughan, who famously lent his electric guitar<\/a> stylings to Let\u2019s Dance<\/a>, Bowie\u2019s 1983 commercial smash.<\/p>\n \n Bowie and Slick perform on the Diamond Dogs tour, Slick’s first with Bowie, at the Boston Music Hall, November 15, 1974. (Image credit: Ron Pownall\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n Nearly 20 years would pass before Slick came back once again on the tour for Bowie\u2019s 2002 album, Heathen. That led to him working on its follow-up, Reality, and performing on the subsequent A Reality Tour, a celebrated groundbreaking global stint that was the biggest and longest of Bowie\u2019s career.<\/p>\n It was there that he witnessed Bowie\u2019s heart attack on June 23, 2004 while onstage in Prague, along with his subsequent decline.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was amazing how he went from looking great to looking pretty ill \u2014 like, overnight,\u201d Slick says. \u201cWe were just a month shy of a year being out.\u201d<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Bowie recovered, but he canceled the remaining shows and never toured again. Slick returned for his penultimate album, 2013’s The Next Day, making him the only guitarist to have worked with Bowie over such an extended range of the performer’s career.<\/p>\n The music from Slick\u2019s latter tenures with Bowie is generously chronicled on the upcoming box set David Bowie 6. I Can\u2019t Give Everything Away (2002\u20132016), due out September 12. It\u2019s the latest and, theoretically, last in a series of massive completist collections, and features Bowie’s final albums, including Reality and The Next Day, as well as the A Reality Tour live album and a previously unreleased recording from the 2002 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.<\/p>\n Also included is \u201cIsn\u2019t It Evening (The Revolutionary),\u201d a track from Slick\u2019s 2003 solo album, Zig Zag. Co-written with and featuring Bowie, it hit the Top 10 on several U.K. charts when it was re-released there last year.<\/p>\n It all serves to underscore the vital position Slick held with Bowie during the final era of his career, making this an apt time for him to weigh in on his impactful years with the chameleon of rock.<\/p>\n \n Earl Slick and Bowie perform a warm-up show for the A Reality Tour, Poughkeepsie, New York, August 19, 2003. (Image credit: KMazur\/WireImage)<\/p>\n Was there much difference being Bowie\u2019s \u201crock\u201d guitarist compared to other things you\u2019ve done?<\/p>\n Well, with David I did have to have a pedalboard<\/a> to cover 40 years of recordings or whatever. And I hate pedals, especially overdrive pedals. But you needed certain things. You definitely needed two delay pedals<\/a> just to cover \u201cHeroes,\u201d just to get it bouncing all over the place.<\/p>\n But I got a lot of free rein from David. I could literally change up bits and bobs during a show, and he liked it, actually. If you look through the concert videos, you\u2019ll see really weird arrangements of songs and stuff. \u2019Cause you get bored if it\u2019s the same song every night, so sometimes you change things up, and he liked that I did that. I had a lot of freedom to just ad lib, everywhere.<\/p>\n You\u2019d been out of the Bowie orbit for about 15 years when he reached out to you around 2002. How did that come about?<\/p>\n Omigod. Reeves had left and David was looking for a guitar player, so his people tracked me down through a web site. It was called Slick-something-or-other, and it had all these old demos we kept putting out. That\u2019s how he found me.<\/p>\n The webmaster called and said, \u201cI just got this email. It\u2019s a New York number and they seem to really want to get in touch with you.\u201d He said it was from Isolar, and I said, \u201cI know exactly who that is. It\u2019s David.\u201d [Isolar was the name for pair of Bowie\u2019s tours in 1976 and 1978.]<\/p>\n We got a phone call saying, \u2018Sit tight for a couple of days. David needs to rest. We\u2019re gonna take a few days off.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Earl Slick<\/p>\n The A Reality Tour was Bowie\u2019s last and, many think, one of his best. What was your experience with it?<\/p>\n That was a fun record to play live, especially the rockers \u2014 the title track and stuff. It was the best touring band I ever played in with David. The combination of people \u2014 it was absolutely drama free, and I\u2019ve never seen him that relaxed and happy on a tour, ever.<\/p>\n It was also the tour that was notoriously ended by his health issues. What do you recall from that Prague date when he had his heart attack?<\/p>\n It was a really weird gig. At first I couldn\u2019t figure out what was going on. It was hotter than hell in the place, and I could see he was having a hard time hitting some notes. I thought he was just baked. We were all baked.<\/p>\n I think we were doing \u201cThe Jean Genie,\u201d and he goes to me, \u201cKeep vamping, just jam\u201d \u2014 this, while he\u2019s having a heart attack. Then he started grabbing his chest and the tour managers came over and dragged him off.<\/p>\n A few minutes later, he comes back and joins us. He lasted about a measure or two and then he walked off. They said that he had a blocked nerve, whatever that is, and that diagnosis was wrong.<\/p>\n We did the Hurricane Festival in Germany a couple days later; I went over to talk to him, and he was feeling horrible. We did the whole show and then we got a phone call saying, \u201cSit tight for a couple of days. David needs to rest. We\u2019re gonna take a few days off.\u201d<\/p>\n So we just hung out in Hamburg. Nobody\u2019s saying anything to us.<\/p>\n And then we get phone calls saying, \u201cGuys, we\u2019re done. You gotta go home.\u201d We didn\u2019t get an explanation; we all knew he was probably getting some kind of surgery, but we weren\u2019t getting any details about it.<\/p>\n When we did \u201cHeroes\u201d at the Hurricane Festival, I swear to God it\u2019s one of the best vocal performances he ever did of it. Two hours later, probably, he was in the hospital.<\/p>\n Was the idea of him playing live again ever broached?<\/p>\n It was. We were working on The Next Day; just as I finished up my work on the track \u201cSet the World on Fire.\u201d We were listening back in the control room and he looks at me and goes, \u201cThis would just kick ass live.\u201d I looked at him ready to say something, and he goes, \u201cDon\u2019t even think about it.\u201d [laughs]<\/p>\n That was the discussion we had about going on tour again. That was the whole discussion, and he said, \u201cDon\u2019t think about it.\u201d I could see it in his eyes. I\u2019d been with him so long, I knew he was dead serious. He ain\u2019t going nowhere.<\/p>\n It was disappointing, because I really thought we would have at least one good tour left in us. This was the summer of 2013, so it\u2019s possible that he might\u2019ve been ill already, with the cancer. We\u2019ll never know, but I think it\u2019s a possibility.<\/p>\n The Next Day was another kind of odd reconnection, wasn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n Yeah, it was typical David. He started making that record around 2011, I think, and everybody who was brought in had to sign an NDA. I\u2019m talking to some of the guys on the phone and nobody says a word.<\/p>\n In the meantime, this friend of mine, a surgeon, he built a car, a Cobra, and I had this blues gig I was doing near his house in Montclair, New Jersey. I go visit and he says, \u201cLet\u2019s go for a ride in the Cobra before we go to the gig.\u201d<\/p>\n I swear to God, if we hadn\u2019t blown up the car, I might not have been on that record.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Earl Slick<\/p>\n We drove for a little bit, and then the car started to do weird shit, like sputtering and stalling out. So he stops the car and two seconds later a big flame comes out of the engine. We call 911 and the fire department comes, and the cops come, and there\u2019s TV. I guess one of the reporters figured out I was in the car and the word gets out on the Internet.<\/p>\n The next day I get a text from Bowie: \u201cOh God, I saw this accident. Are you okay?\u201d I write back, \u201cYeah, I\u2019m great, I\u2019m fine. How are you?\u201d \u201cGood.\u201d Then I get a few more messages over the course of the next day or two, like, \u201cHow you doin\u2019? What have you been up to lately?\u201d This is not a typical thing with him.<\/p>\n So finally I\u2019m like, \u201cOkay, are you trying to get to a point? What is it?\u201d And he was, \u201cWell, we\u2019re making this record, and I need you to come in for a week or so and work on it.\u201d<\/p>\n I swear to God, if we hadn\u2019t blown up the car, I might not have been on that record. That\u2019s just him: It\u2019s out of sight, out of mind sometimes, and then it\u2019s, \u201cWait a minute \u2014 Slicky could do this or that.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Slick performs at a concert celebrating Bowie on what would have been his 70th birthday, at London’s O2 Academy Brixton, January 8, 2017. (Image credit: Brian Rasic\/WireImage)<\/p>\n Was there a standard operating procedure when you worked together?<\/p>\n We\u2019d sit there and brainstorm, especially on the overdub bits. Both of us always like to have some kind of melodic lick in there somewhere, some signature in the song, and we\u2019d just knock ideas around.<\/p>\n Like the lick on \u201cValentine\u2019s Day,\u201d the signature lick at the beginning, we sat there and bounced it around for about 10 or 15 minutes and that lick popped out and there it was. A lot of that kind of stuff was done on the fly; we never spent lots of time. As soon as we heard something that clicked, that was it. That\u2019s the best stuff, when it just comes out from outer space or something.<\/p>\n What is your sense of the late-period Bowie compared to your previous years with him?<\/p>\n Well, back in the early days \u2014 this not speaking out of school, \u2019cause it\u2019s pretty well known \u2014 a lot of drugs were involved, and a lot of cocaine. Between the drugs and him having management problems and all that, he was on another planet.<\/p>\n And then as the years went on he changed, like we all do. In the 2000s a sense of humor was there that was never there in the early days. He was funnier than hell, and he was more approachable. He turned into… I wouldn\u2019t say a different person, but the real him came out.<\/p>\n How did you approach guitar choices for your work with Bowie?<\/p>\n I love Telecasters<\/a>. I\u2019ve always been a Tele player. But for the Heathen tour he said, \u201cWe do need a humbucker on some of this,\u201d so I grabbed some Les Pauls<\/a>, and by the A Reality Tour I was using pretty much my Les Pauls most of the show. I don\u2019t think I used my Teles at all on that. I did have a Strat<\/a> I used for a few things, but most of it was Les Paul.<\/p>\n It got on the charts and we had a hit single. Funny how timing works. And I\u2019m really glad it\u2019s on the box set, because it turned out to be his last hit.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Earl Slick<\/p>\n Having \u201cIsn\u2019t It Evening (The Revolutionary)\u201d on the box set is a nice postscript, especially after its success last year in the U.K.<\/p>\n That\u2019s a weird one. I was living in Portland [circa 2002], and I just started to toodle around with my guitar, and all of a sudden I started coming up with stuff and recording bits and pieces. I ended up with a lot of them, so I called up Mark Plati and said, \u201cWhen you get some time maybe we can cut an instrumental record. I got some good ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t realize he was in the studio when I called him. David was there, and David says, \u201cEarl, I heard Mark say you guys were gonna do some recording. Maybe I\u2019ll play some tambourine or something. Maybe I\u2019ll even sing one, or we can write one.\u201d<\/p>\n So I sent him a half-dozen bits and he picked the one that eventually turned into \u201cIsn\u2019t It Evening.\u201d We recorded it, and we released it during the A Reality Tour, which turned out to be a bad idea, because my record got buried in there.<\/p>\n![\"David](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/yn9zkCYFyaxGNXj3wfVQXe.jpg\")
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