“A Long Hiatus”? Erm… I think not. DB makes the cover of next week’s Billboard.
Cover me, cover me…
Well, it seems the exclusive we were hoping to bring you on Monday, (see story beneath this one) has been compromised in part with the early publication of this piece on Billboard.com, (story only available to subscribers) which is also due to appear as a cover story in next week’s Billboard.
Oh well, it’s done now, and you lucky BowieNetters are getting a heads up a few days early… But, be sure to tune in on Monday anyway, because this information isn’t all we’ll be announcing.
David Bowie is poised to deliver a worldwide dose of Reality.
In his most extensive trek in more than a decade, Bowie’s A Reality world tour will begin Oct. 7 at the Forum in Copenhagen and hit Europe, the U.S., Australia, and Japan before wrapping in March 2004.
The tour is expected to be announced Monday.
Bowie will play North America in December and January. Clear Channel Entertainment (CCE) will produce the tour worldwide.
The A Reality tour will support a new Columbia release set for September, which is also the month U.S. tickets will first go on sale. European on-sales begin the weekend of June 20, with the Dandy Warhols as support.
Bowie will play 30 arenas in Europe; North American dates are tentatively set to begin Dec. 4 and run through January. In the U.S., he will play a combination of full arenas, large theaters, and theater configurations in arenas, depending on Bowie’s history in a given market, according to Arthur Fogel, president of touring for CCE’s music division.
“This is really his first major, worldwide tour in over a decade,” Fogel says. “He did a handful of markets on Area:2 last year, and he has done select shows here and there, but he hasn’t done a world tour in more than 10 years.”
Recent live performances appear to have stoked Bowie’s fire for performing live.
“Last year’s shows were such a tremendous high and the audiences so responsive,” he told Billboard. “My band is playing at the top of its form right now, and it would be foolish not to play a tour this year while we’re in such good spirits about the live-show aspects of our work.”
Bowie’s touring band is guitarists Gerry Leonard and Earl Slick, drummer Sterling Campbell, bassist/backing vocalist Gail Ann Dorsey, keyboardist Mike Garson, and keyboardist/backing vocalist Catherine Russell.
This time out, because Bowie is performing in an intimate venue, he should be able to command a heftier price. Fogel says ticket prices are still being determined, “but David Bowie has never gone nuts with ticket prices. We’re probably looking to average about $50 in most markets.”
Bowie, 56, had stated a desire to scale back his touring, at least in terms of magnitude.
“I got pretty sick with touring in the 1980s — the Serious Moonlight and Glass Spider tours were major, major undertakings,” Bowie told Billboard last year. “They are so huge and unwieldy — I stopped doing those type tours altogether.”