Gibson's History Of 'amazing' Bowie Guitarists

Boy, could he play guitar…

Gibson.com has published a list of seven Bowie sidemen with the title: Heroes: A History of David Bowie?s Amazing Guitarists.

Here’s a bit from the introduction…

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Among his many gifts, David Bowie?s knack for recruiting spectacularly talented guitarists ranks near the top. From Mick Ronson to Robert Fripp to Stevie Ray Vaughan and beyond, Bowie?s six-string sidemen have done some of their best playing while recording and performing on the glam-rock pioneer?s albums. Not surprisingly, Les Pauls have figured prominently in the bulk of those recordings.

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You can view the full list here on the Gibson site, I won’t spoil it completely for you now, but you’ve probably already guessed that the two gentlemen above made the grade.

On the left above is a full-page advert for Framus guitars featuring Earl Slick from the July 2010 issue of Guitarist magazine. The advert bears the catchline: Earl and the Thin White Duke made history from “Station To Station” to “Reality”. Now Slick is backing another Rock ‘n’ Roll legend: Framus.

As you can see from the stunning cover on the right above, the same magazine also has a large Ronno feature described thus: 40 years on from Ronson and Bowie’s historic collaboration, Charles Shaar Murray celebrates this underrated guitar hero PLUS 10 Great Glam Guitarists.

Murray writes affectionately and it’s clear that he’s as big a fan of the Ronson sound as you or I. The article is illustrated with several pictures of Ziggy, Ronno and the other Spiders in full flight.

Thanx to guitar-mental Zardoz for the pointer to Guitarist magazine, which he did actually tell me about last week. Zardoz has a new angle on playing the guitar with his teeth, he takes out his full set of dentures and picks the strings with his sparkling gnashers that way…probably.

One Bowie guitarist that didn’t make it into the Gibson list, even though he deserves to be there in my humble, is one Gerry Leonard who nearly made me choke on my Cornflakes when he popped up on morning TV in some live footage from Suzanne Vega‘s current UK tour. Suzanne has regularly employed Gerry over the years and the current show is a stripped-down affair that features just Vega, Leonard and bassist Michael Visceglia. You can view an audience member’s mobile footage from the Isle of Wight on the official Suzanne Vega site.

Finally, Crowded House gave fellow antipodean, New Zealander Connan Hosford, (of Connan Mockasin) the impossible task of recreating Ronno’s Moonage Daydream solo at a Manchester Apollo show at the end of last month. He was helped along by Johnny Marr, though Connan created the more convincing Ronno sound…albeit a little lost in the mix in a film of the performance on the band’s website.

Crowded House have been playing Moonage Daydream sporadically throughout their tour, including at two out of their three recent Hammersmith Apollo shows in London, and Neil Finn has hinted that the band may yet record a studio version of the 1972 classic.