Life on Tour with Bowie. Sean Mayes
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To Des, Mario, Barry -
you were there in my heart
Acknowledgements
Simon Woods, Geoff Felix, Colin Phillips, Des Henley, Mario Ferrari, Barry Pike, Chic Mayes, Rikki Beadle-Blair, Kaye and Martin Roach, Gerald Woodgate, Derek Beevor, Steve Harley, Wendy Anninson, Maggi Ronson, Kazuya, Hideaki, Youichi, Eiji and Takashi (The Yellow Monkey), and all of Sean’s friends and family around the world.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
David Bowie
Corrine ‘Coco’ Schwab - David’s Personal Assistant
Pat Gibbons - David’s young Manager
Tony Mascia - David’s Bronx-born bodyguard and driver, died in 1991
Stu George - old friend of David’s from Hull, occasional security
The Band
Carlos Alomar - guitar/musical director (wife, Robin Clarke, singer)
George Murray - bass guitar
Dennis Davis - drums
Adrian Belew - lead guitar, ex-Zappa band
Roger Powell - keyboards and synthesizers, Todd Rundgren’s Utopia
Simon House - electric violin, ex-Hawkwind
Sean Mayes - piano, Fumble
Eric Barrett - tour manager, Scot living in LA
Tony Visconti - record producer, American living in London
Barbara DeWitt - public relations, LA
Tony MacGrogan - RCA London, A&R
Frank - security
Bowie Road Crew
Rob Joyce - stage manager
Moose - equipment and emergencies
Leroy - equipment and occasional bodyguard
Jan - equipment, drums
Ron - Eric’s assistant, looks after travel and personnel
Showco - Sound Equipment and Lighting
Buford - sound engineer
Randy Marshall - singing roadie
Rick - piano engineer, US and Europe
Ed - piano engineer, Australia and Japan
Australia
Dennis Garcia - keyboards first three gigs
Bob and Rick - security, karate
Fumble
Des - vocals, guitar
Mario - vocals, bass
Sean - vocals, piano
Barry - drums
Jack Daniels - American bourbon whisky
INTRODUCTION
It’s been four years since Sean died and I’m still surrounded by boxes of his papers, photographs and diary notes. Amongst this fascinating assortment of material are his photo albums and diary for 1978/79, a year out with David Bowie playing major concert halls around the world and recording in Switzerland.
Sean always had a book in mind when he was writing his diary. He was a prolific writer and virtually chronicled every day of his adult life, very much influenced by his grandfather, Tom Thompson, who had been a writer, broadcaster and faithful diarist. Sean was always working with ‘books’ in mind. It had always been his dream to write up the enormous stock-pile of amusing on-the-road incidents encountered with his group Fumble. Sean and Fumble had lived and toured together since the mid-‘60s, and it was with Fumble that Sean first came into contact with David Bowie.
Bowie had seen Fumble perform on The Old Grey Whistle Test on BBC TV. Their timing was perfect as he was making arrangements for a forthcoming tour of America where Ziggy Stardust was starting to make serious in-roads. Fumble were booked for a few UK dates and proved that, unlike previous ‘warm up’ bands, they could indeed rouse an audience fit for Ziggy. The US tour followed and Fumble toured the land of their dreams, working packed theatres on one of the most significant rock tours of the ‘70s.
In 1978, Bowie assembled a band for all seasons, a superb Anglo-American soup of musicians which, apart from the black rhythm section, had never worked together before. Sean had had ‘the call’ some months before and was plucked out of a West End show where Fumble were providing the music for Elvis! From here on in, the diary you are about to read covers just about everything you could wish to know about life on the road with David Bowie.
So, to this book itself. A long time coming for Sean and I’m more than a little sad that he wasn’t here to see it published himself. There is nothing like holding a copy of your new book for the first time, sorry it didn’t happen earlier Sean.
When I began looking through the manuscript(s) again, it became clear that I wasn’t just dealing with one but at least half a dozen versions of the tour diary. Over the years various edits, volumes and excerpts were made and I was left with the interesting task of compiling the version I think Sean would have liked to see himself. I also had a mountain of original tour note-books, where Sean illegibly scrawled first hand notes, together with more sensitive thoughts in a code which he had developed years earlier and which we have still to break. Having worked closely with him for at least the last seven years of his life, I believe I came to know something of his writing interests, so I approached this book with him sitting by my side, working on the same computer we bought together which still contains much of his own files for the myriad of different projects he was always working on.
I decided that I didn’t just want this to be a book about his work with Bowie, that I would try and supply the reader with a slightly broader picture of what Sean was about. His story is a fascinating one, tragically cut short at 49 with AIDS in 1995, but packed full like a travelogue which was eventful right up to his death. Right up until the end he still had surprises in store, he was indeed an intriguing and complex man, but genuine and incredibly faithful to all his friends.
Kevin Cann, 1999
CHAPTER 1
REHEARSALS
March 1978
Nowadays I suppose everyone knows what Dallas is like. But in 1978 it seemed rather an unglamorous place to be rehearsing a David Bowie World Tour. I had flown out from London and checked into a smart but dull hotel on a dusty freeway fifteen miles from downtown Dallas. Just down the road was the rehearsal studio, a large windowless warehouse with a low stage at one end. Outside, the Texas sun blazed down but inside it was dark with occasional pools of light - rather like the music we were playing.
David hadn’t arrived yet but Carlos Alomar was taking us through the numbers, handing out sheets of chords and singing the lead line as we strummed through. The music was a strange mixture - I had lain on my hotel bed with a cassette, listening in despair to the instrumentals on Side 2 of “Heroes” - I couldn’t tell where one track ended and the next began! What on earth was I doing out here? But then we ran through ‘Suffragette City’ and I happily rocked away remembering the excitement of the ‘73 tours.
Back then, David was Ziggy Stardust - sassy and outrageous, the last word in decadence - and I was in the rock ‘n’ roll band Fumble opening the show on his American tour. We finally said “Goodbye” to David at the end of that tour in Los Angeles, but whenever I heard a Bowie record after that I sometimes wondered if he ever remembered Fumble and a piano player called