A Bowie Celebration/ Lazarus
Two major streamed events celebrate the work of the starman, with much pomp, splendour and an A-list cast.
Five years after he was recalled to his home galaxy, David Bowie’s loss still feels like a major rupture, an annual cenotaph-style pause for mass mourning even in the depths of the covid crisis. On the weekend that straddles both the late starman’s 74th birthday and the anniversary of his death, these two major livestream events are welcome reminders not just of his enduring musical genius, but also his spectacular pretentiousness and gloriously overblown naffness. Often overlooked amid all the posthumous highbrow reverence, preposterous peacock poncery is a crucial part of Bowie’s legacy too.
An off-Broadway avant-musical that was playing to packed houses when Bowie died, Lazarus remains a ripe old bag of onions. It is notionally a semi-sequel to The Man Who Fell To Earth, with Michael C Hall stepping into Bowie’s screen role as Thomas Jerome Newton, an extra-terrestrial Howard Hughes tormented by long-lost love and boozy hallucination. The fairy-tale plot is an overstuffed mess, but director Ivo van Hove’s stylish production still dazzles with high-art visuals and superbly staged musical numbers. It’s the freakiest show, but full of interesting touches, especially the knowing parallels with Bowie’s own life and his looming death.
More all-you-can-eat buffet than sombre memorial, A Bowie Celebration is a celeb-stuffed charity gala hosted by Bowie’s longserving piano maestro Mike Garson and featuring a stellar supergroup of alumni including Tony Visconti, Carlos Alomar, Gail Ann Dorsey, Earl Slick, Peter Frampton and Rick Wakeman.
With most of the players beaming in their performances via socially distanced TV screens, this oddly clunky broadcast show looks like a Zoom-era mash-up of Celebrity Squares and The X Factor. A comically stiff and awkward presenter, Garson plays along to every number in avant-jazz Jools Holland mode.
Mirroring Bowie’s career, there are bumpy detours and bizarre choices here. If the emphasis on his glam-heavy early 1970s is forgivable, the complete absence of material from landmark avant-rock albums like Station To Station or Low is harder to justify. The sole “Heroes” nod is the title track, powered by a soulfully impassioned vocal from Bernard Fowler. Trent Reznor also croons an elegant electro-krautrock arrangement of Fantastic
Voyage from Lodger. But such squeamishness towards Bowie’s most fertile, experimental period undersells his range and impact.
Even when the choices are more imaginative, some vocal guests are simply a bad fit. Macy Gray’s smoky growl is a gorgeous instrument, but she struggles with the wistful South London romanticism of Bowie’s classic mod-memoir Changes. And while Boy George’s Aladdin Sane medley is heartfelt, it shades into bloodless cabaret. In fairness, the only real howler is raddled Bill Nighy-lookalike Charlie Sexton, former teenage guitar hero and opening act on Bowie’s much-derided Glass Spider tour in 1987, who Garson over-indulges with piss-weak pub-rock karaoke versions of Let’s Dance, Rebel Rebel, DJ and more. All fall wanking to the floor.
Fortunately there are enough inspired reinventions and knockout performances to excuse the duds: Duran Duran pay respectable homage to their art-ponce guru with a glossy, string-couched Five Years; Billy Corgan reimagines Space Oddity as a shimmering, woozy sci-fi lullaby; Perry Farrell plays macabre court jester in a stylised, David Lynch-ian staging of The Man Who Sold The World; Anna Calvi, Corey Taylor, Lzzy Hale, Taylor Hawkins and Dave Navarro all find their personal Bowie, from sultry jazz chansons to garage-punk slammers.
Among Bowie’s older friends and contemporaries, 81-year-old Ian Hunter proves impressively lusty on All The Young Dudes, while Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott brings plenty of South Yorkshire muscle to Ziggy Stardust and Win. Doing his best Clive Dunn impersonation, actor Gary Oldman also wrings conviction from Tin Machine’s I Can’t Read. But the show’s slam-dunk vocal champion is unquestionably long-serving Bowie bassist Gail Ann Dorsey, whose majestic rendition of Can You Hear Me, from Young Americans, lends great warmth and emotion to the late star’s fabled ‘plastic soul’ phase. An entire album of Dorsey covering Bowie? Yes please.
In pure show-stopping terms, contemporary glam-pop idols Yungblud and Adam Lambert also bring high-voltage drama to Life On Mars? and Starman respectively, each channelling some of Bowie’s alien-loving gender-blurring queer-punk charisma. As the late space-rock superstar himself realised astutely, the line between high-camp excess and high-art genius is often deliciously blurred.
Despite a few wobbly moments, Garson serves up a fine musical banquet, with a little help from his friends.
“The line between high-camp excess and high-art genius is often blurred.”