Bowie cohorts for 2020 Dublin festival
The Dublin Bowie Festival has announced its headline act for DBF 2020 - Holy Holy - an all star lineup featuring legendary producer and long time Bowie cohort Tony Visconti on bass and behind the kit, the one and only Woody Woodmansey, Bowie’s drummer from 1970-73 and of course, the backbone of the legendary Spiders From Mars.
As the festival celebrates the 50th anniversary of David Bowie’s landmark album 'The Man Who Sold The World' in 2020, these are the men who performed on this memorable album; NME critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray have said of The Man Who Sold the World, "this is where the story really starts.''
Holy Holy are the authentic sound of David Bowie’s early songs, starring Woody Woodmansey, legendary Spider from Mars & David Bowie’s drummer from 1970-1973 and Tony Visconti, Bowie’s longtime producer, friend and bass player on The Man Who Sold The World. The all star lineup also features Heaven 17's Glenn Gregory on lead vocals, Scott Walker/Cult guitarist James Stevenson, Ian Hunter/Bob Geldof guitarist Paul Cuddeford, Heaven 17s Berenice Scott on keys and Jessica Lee Morgan on keys/saxophone.
The Man Who Sold The World and Tony Visconti
Bowie’s third studio album is frequently regarded as a turning point for him – the first flowering of his maturation as an artist. Perhaps the most (and indeed, only) straight-forward “rock” album in the Bowie repertoire, it was a great influence on subsequent artists working in harder rock genres, like gothic, industrial, and metal. Kurt Cobain listed it as one of his top fifty albums and famously covered the title track.
Although Bowie wrote most of the lyrics and is credited with ownership of the album, it is believed that most of the construction of the album was actually handled by producer Tony Visconti and guitarist Mick Ronson. Engineer Ken Scott is quoted in Paul Trynka’s Starman biography:
“Tony and Mick did take over. How much of it was David not wanting to have anything to do with it, and how much was Tony taking over, I don’t know. But I think it was more Tony’s ideas [on the album] than David’s.”
Visconti subsequently left Bowie’s band, leaving Bowie and Scott to produce his next three albums until Visconti returned in 1974 for Diamond Dogs, also producing some of Bowie's greatest works, including the Low/Heroes/Lodger 'Berlin Trilogy' and his final masterpiece 'Blackstar'. Visconti has also produced Marc Bolan, Thin Lizzy, Morrissey, Manic Street Preachers, Iggy Pop, The Stranglers, Kaiser Chiefs and , most recently, Damon Albarn’s side project, The Good, The Bad & The Queens latest classic, Merrie Land.