The Man Behind the Star DAVID BOWIE

CAMPBELL FIRST RECORDED WITH BOWIE IN 1991, THEN JOINED HIS BAND, TOURING FOR 13 YEARS FROM 1992 TO THE END OF THE “A REALIT Y” TOUR IN 2004.

It was a dream come true, still is a dream come true. I

can’t believe I got to do it. RUSSELL WAS IN BOWIE’S BAND FROM 2002 THROUGH 2004, PROVIDING BACKING VOCALS AND FEATURED CONTRIBUTIONS ON GUITAR, KEYBOARD, AND PERCUSSION. THE TWO-TIME GRAMMY WINNER IS BEST KNOWN FOR HER PROLIFIC CAREER AS A JAZZ AND BLUES SINGER.

Earl Slick, guitarHe wasn’t satisfied to keep doing the same thing over and over again.

Had he been, he’d be long gone. He would have been finished in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s.

Gail Ann Dorsey, bass, vocals I was never disappointed or feeling like anything that I

contributed … was a waste of time. It always turned out to be so brilliant.DORSEY’S LONG TENURE WITH BOWIE SPANNED FROM 1995 UNTIL “THE NEXT DAY” ALBUM (2013). ASIDE FROM PL AYING BASS, SHE SANG LEAD VOCALS ON LIVE PERFORMANCES OF “UNDER PRESSURE” AND RECORDED NUMEROUS DUETS WITH BOWIE.

SLICK’S HISTORY WITH BOWIE GOES BACK TO RECORDING AND

TOURING IN THE ‘70S, STARTING WITH “DIAMOND DOGS” (1974). AFTER A T WO-DECADE HIATUS, HE RETURNED FOR “HEATHEN” (2002)

AND THE “A REALIT Y” TOUR. HE PL AYED GUITAR ON A TOTAL OF

EIGHT ALBUMS, ENDING WITH “THE NEXT DAY” (2013).Sterling Campbell, drums

He was a great observer, and I learned from him

to look at all angles.

DAVID BOWIE — STAR MAN | SPECIAL EDITION — EPOCH TIMES | JANUARY 13, 2017

Catherine Russell, vocals, guitar, keyboard, percussion

HumilityOn stage, David Bowie was the consummate rock star who could send a stadium of fans into a frenzy with a single strut and tip of his mike stand. But as soon as he stepped out of the light, he was simply David again.

“It was like he hung it up and put it away, and he’s back to just khakis and a baseball cap,” said Campbell. “I always thought that was pretty fascinating.”

Yet the Bowie mystique was so strong that he would leave even a seasoned musician initially starstruck.

Zachary Alford, who’d played with Bruce Springsteen and the B-52s before he joined the band in 1995, said he couldn’t look at Bowie the first time they met at rehearsal. Alford came in without an audition based on the recommendation of Campbell, his childhood friend, who wasn’t available to do the “Outside” tour.

“I thought I was immune,” recalled Alford.

“David was down in front of the stage, just dressed casually and saying hi to everyone. It got to where he looked at me to say hi, and I had to look down, because, that was David Bowie. … I had never been that starstruck before.”

“[But] very soon, he puts you at ease, because he is such a down-to-earth and normal person, as normal as a genius like him can be. He was a joy to work with. He’s someone who really likes to collaborate,” said Alford. “And once you feel that, imme-diately you’re comfortable.”

Each band member has their own Bowie band origin story. Getting a call from Bowie was like getting a call from Michelangelo: Can you help me paint a ceiling?

“You never think you’re gonna play with David Bowie. I never in my wildest imag-ination thought I’d do any of this stuff,”

said Adrian Belew, the legendary guitar player whom Bowie plucked from Frank Zappa in 1978, to Zappa’s immense ingratitude.

But Belew quickly saw that Bowie didn’t seem to take his stardom seri-ously. “He could joke about it, and I loved that. I just thought that is so endearing in a person.”

Bowie showed the same kindness to everyone, said Campbell. “I really used to get a kick out of bringing my friends to meet him, because he was like, ‘Yes, of course, of course. Nice jacket, where’d you get that from?’”

“He was really, really, really sweet, and just made you feel comfortable right off the bat. You never felt like he was above you,” Campbell reminisced.

“I think that’s why I felt free to express myself in the studio with him,” said singer and percussionist Holly Palmer. “Because it felt like what was—I wouldn’t say required—but what was desired, was for me to do what I do. … There wasn’t some other standard there. In a way, it was like, ‘These are my friends [and] they said you were cool. Do your thing.’”

Palmer got her Bowie call in 1999. One hot summer day, she was sweating in her Brooklyn apart-ment when her friend Reeves Gabrels called, saying he was in the studio mixing with Mark Plati, and they asked her to sing a few lines of TLC’s “Waterfalls” over the phone.

“The next thing I know, I hear this voice, this unmistakable voice [that] goes, ‘Could you do it once more, with a little less of the vibrato please?’ And in my mind, something was yelling, ‘Woah, it’s David Bowie!’ But on the outside, I was like, ‘Sure!’”

Bowie clearly liked what he heard, and an hour later she was in the stu-dio recording background vocals on the “Hours” album. Palmer toured as a vocalist and percussionist in the band for the next two years.

In this way, Bowie created an envi-ronment where everyone felt encour-aged to bring out their ideas and tal-ents. He sought people out, believing in them, and then gave them the free-dom to soar. To play. Demonstrating, always, these qualities of a great leader.

In 1995, Gail Ann Dorsey was working on

David Bowie in Sydney, Australia, during “A Reality” tour, on Feb. 16, 2004. The eight-month tour was cut short when Bowie suffered a heart attack following a show in Hamburg, Germany, on June 25, 2004. It was his final tour.

(L–R) Gail Ann Dorsey, David Bowie, Sterling Campbell (back), Gerry Leonard, at the Bercy stadium in Paris, on Oct. 20, 2003.BERTRAND GUAY/AFP/GETT Y IMAGES

David Bowie at the Auteuil Hippodrome in Paris on June 9, 1983.PHILIPPE WOJAZER/AFP/GETT Y IMAGES

PATRICK RIVIERE/GETT Y IMAGES

David Bowie at the Forum in Copenhagen, Denmark, on Oct. 7, 2003.AP PHOTO/NILS MEILVANG, NORDFOTO

as remembered by band members from the 1970s to 2010s

ALL PHOTOS OF "CELEBRATING DAVID BOWIE" BAND MEMBERS BY BENJAMIN CHASTEEN/EPOCH TIMES