“And I'm gone, through the crack in the past”
Here’s the fourth and final instalment of our interview with Reeves Gabrels and may we take this opportunity to thank him for his time and generosity, not to mention all the superb noises he’s made on David Bowie recordings.
Today, Reeves recalls the making of Dead Man Walking with some great insights into the writing of the song, including the source of the riff* and how a Neil Young performance was the trigger for part of the lyric. Watch it here
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* SPOILER ALERT: You should watch the Reeves’ interview before reading further...
Mr Gabrels mentions how DB was given the riff for Dead Man Walking by a very generous young guitarist by the name of Jimmy Page. Well, that wasn’t the first song Bowie utilised the riff for. Here he is talking on the subject during his 50th birthday celebration on BBC Radio 1’s ChangesNowBowie (which Reeves was a part of), broadcast 8th January 1997...
“When I was a baby, I did a rock session with one of the bands, one of the millions of bands that I had in the ’60s – it was the Manish Boys, that’s what it was – and the session guitar player doing the solo was this young kid who’d just come out of art school and was already a top session man, Jimmy Page. And he just got a fuzz box and he used that for the solo. He was wildly excited about it and he was quite generous that day and he said, ‘Look, I’ve got this riff but I’m not using it for anything, so why don’t you learn it and see if you can do anything with it?’ So I had his riff, and I’ve used it ever since! [laughs]. It’s never let me down.”
At least one of the other songs that benefitted from the riff gift was The Superman from 1970’s The Man Who Sold The World.
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Picture of Reeves and Bowie during rehearsals at the Hanover Grand in London in May 1997, by Scarlet Page...yes, she is related to aforementioned superstar guitarist.
The boys are pictured with a Bowie lookalike playing sax, much to their amusement. The lookalike didn’t make it to the gigs, mainly on account of us having just made that up. Apologies to @scarletpagephotography for the crude photo manipulation of her shots.
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