Spider from Mars Read online

  It was particularly emotional arriving in Hiroshima, where the Americans had dropped the first atomic bomb in 1945, obliterating the city and its people and ultimately bringing about the end of the war against Japan. The city had obviously been rebuilt and across from the hotel was a park around the area where the bomb had hit the earth. It’s called the Peace Park. I visited the museum at the park’s centre and saw some of the horrific photos taken of that event, images that have stayed with me.

  Next was Kobe and then Osaka before returning to Tokyo. The concerts continued to be wild. When Bowie sang ‘Like some cat from Japan . . .’ in ‘Ziggy Stardust’, the audiences went completely insane.

  Our final concert in Japan was at Shibuya Kokaido, a different venue in Tokyo. As had started to happen in America, Bowie kept himself separate from us a lot of the time. Often he would arrive at a soundcheck, wave or give us a quick nod, sing half a song and disappear. Only occasionally would he stay and have a conversation with us. But he would socialize at the after-show get-togethers, especially if there were pretty girls around . . . at least until he’d pulled one of them.

  This night was particularly memorable: the crowd seemed wilder than ever and when we left the stage we received a standing ovation that just didn’t seem like it was ever going to stop. It lasted for fifteen minutes. We went back on and did two encores, then we came off again but the stomping continued, getting louder and louder.

  We went back on to do a third encore of Chuck Berry’s ‘Round and Round’ and almost immediately a dozen fans managed to climb up on the stage, grabbing Bowie and Mick – in fact, anyone they could get to. The bodyguards, Stuey and Tony, had their hands full trying to control the situation by either hauling the fans off to the side of the stage or by throwing them back into the audience.

  The stomping had continued throughout this invasion of the stage and suddenly the first ten rows of the audience, which had been visible up to this point, disappeared from view . . . There were more fans than ever on the stage, some even getting as far as my kit.

  I think Mick was the one who shouted, ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here!’ and we all dropped everything and ran from the stage. It transpired that all the stomping had caused the floor at the front of the stage to give way, seats and all.

  By this stage the theatre was in a state of pandemonium with police, road crew and Angie helping the kids, some of whom were trapped by their seats. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt. We, meanwhile, were back in our dressing rooms in relative safety.

  The police, who were now calling this a riot, wanted to investigate whether anyone in our entourage had incited the audience, as it was thought that some of our crew had encouraged the fans to rush the stage for a better finale. The next day the Tokyo police called RCA to question them about who could be responsible for this. At this point it was thought that warrants for the arrest of Angie and Tony Zanetta had been issued so Leee bundled Tony, Angie and Zowie off to the airport so as to avoid any potential trouble. On returning he told us that the police were watching all the flights to London and the US and in fact warrants had been issued, but he had managed to get them all on a flight to Honolulu.

  So Japan had been really wild and the Tokyo concert was not the finale to the tour we were expecting but it was exciting nonetheless. I really loved Japan and I’ve been back several times since then. I’m still enamoured of both the people and the country.

  Trev, Mick, myself and the rest of the entourage flew back to London while, on the 21st, Bowie took a ferry from Yokohama to Nahodka, then caught a train to Vladivostok to join the Trans-Siberian Express to Moscow, a 6,000-mile journey. Again he was travelling with Geoff and also Leee Black Childers who would make a photographic record of the trip. They took the Orient Express to Paris and then home to London. He later told us that it was a mixed experience for him: he saw a lot of poverty-stricken people and towns on that journey, and couldn’t wait to arrive at the other end of the line in Berlin. On the other hand, it gave him a new appreciation for his position as a VIP, sleeping in ‘soft class’ cabins (sonamed because they had beds) as opposed to ‘hard class’ where Russian peasants sat for days on end on wooden benches.

  We now had about three weeks before we started our biggest tour ever, sixty shows in the UK between 12 May and 3 July. Many were matinee shows, meaning we had to perform twice a day.

  In May we regrouped in London for rehearsals for the run of English dates, which was scheduled to kick off with a sold-out show at London’s Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre. It was the first time this venue had been used for a rock concert. It was an 18,000-seater, at the time the biggest indoor venue in the UK. The prospect of playing to that many people on our home turf was exciting for all of us and was an indication of how popular we’d become since being out of the country.

  Earl’s Court was like a vast cathedral inside, and its ceiling was so high that they had suspended huge parachutes spread out to try to reduce the amount of space and hopefully make it more controllable soundwise. Unfortunately no one had done their homework on what it would actually take to provide a good sound in a venue of this nature. Our sound man, Robin Mayhew, had been with us since the very beginning and had always managed to get us an amazing sound everywhere we’d played. He did his best, using the in-house PA system and adding all our regular touring equipment, including PA, to it, hoping this would be adequate. It wasn’t and the gig turned out to be a complete disaster.

  As soon as we started to play the first song I knew we were in trouble: all the guts and definition of the instruments was missing and it was just a wishy-washy, thin sound that sounded as if there were three or four bands all playing at the same time. Also there were no big screens around the hall like you get today at concerts and festivals, so seeing us was a problem, too.

  Fighting broke out towards the back of the hall where fans were growing frustrated at not being able to see or hear us properly and had started to surge forward. Bowie did try a couple of times to calm everything down but to no avail.

  Needless to say reviews the next day were not that favourable! We were scheduled to return to do another gig at Earl’s Court later on the tour which had already sold out, but this was immediately cancelled. We were all pissed off, including Bowie, that what should have been an amazing first gig back in the UK, to our largest audience at that point, had gone so badly. But we had a monster tour in front of us to get on with, so we quickly got down to business as usual. We were like a well-oiled machine where everyone involved knew their parts and were able to deliver at the drop of a hat a show that they knew would work, and create the intended effects. The routine soon became established: we’d travel to the next gig, sound-check at 5 p.m., for a performance at 9 p.m. unless we had a matinee, in which case we’d still sound-check at 5 p.m., play at 7 p.m. and then again at 9 p.m., leave and get back to the hotel.

  For any long journeys between cities we’d take the train, with even Bowie joining us in a reserved first-class compartment. We had our own bus for the tour but this was before the days of the custom, luxury band buses which are available nowadays. It had half a dozen tables each with its own table lamp, an area to make coffee at the back as well as a toilet. Each window had curtains you could draw for a bit of privacy. Unless it was a long journey involving a train, however, Bowie was still travelling from city to city, and from hotel to gig, exclusively by limousine. The Spiders would still leave the gig after the show with him in the limo, back to the hotel.

  Obviously because of the overspending on the US tour we were no longer staying in the ‘best’ hotels in a city but they were still nice. There were many times when the hotels were on the outskirts of the city but the tradition continued of filling the bus with girls after the show, so it meant that there would be a party of sorts before retiring to your room.

  And so we rocked our way through the tour, many times playing two gigs a day as more matinees had been added to keep up with the demand for tickets. The audiences were
loving it and for me that time on stage was what being in a rock ’n’ roll band was all about. Seeing so many people every night getting off on the show was amazing.

  Remember, this was the early seventies. It was a gloomy period politically and economically and the future wasn’t looking too bright. All it took was for someone with ideas, like Bowie, who wanted to brighten things up and create some excitement, to say, ‘This is the future, we’ll take it somewhere.’

  We had all received thousands of letters from fans who wanted to tell us how much the music and shows meant to them. In many cases they described how it had changed their lives for the better, how it helped them to decide who they really wanted to be and that it had inspired them to pursue their ambitions. One in particular read, ‘I was in Vietnam and I only had the Ziggy album. Listening to it was what got me through it.’ There were many stories like this. I guess at the time the letters were a confirmation that what we were doing was having a positive effect on so many people. Over the last four decades, with the advent of the internet, I have seen countless emails, tweets and Facebook messages reiterating the sentiments of the Vietnam vet which continue to this day. I still find this humbling.

  On 23 May we played a matinee concert at the Brighton Dome. The venue had a huge mirror ball suspended high up above the middle of the hall. As we started ‘Space Oddity’ a light hit the ball and the effect was magnificent, giving the appearance of thousands of stars circling the whole place, totally integrating with the song. The crowd went crazy. After an evening show that was just as brilliant, however, we were informed that David Bowie had been banned from ever appearing at the Dome again. Apparently overenthusiastic fans had done considerable damage to a section of the seating and this was too much for the Dome’s proprietors.

  On 6 June we checked in to the Hallam Hotel in Sheffield, as we were playing the City Hall later that day. We found out that Lulu and Labi Siffre were also staying at the same hotel as they were both playing gigs in the area. After our gig we all convened in the bar for an after-show party, and Lulu and Labi joined us. The bar happened to have a baby grand piano which Labi began playing – he was soon joined by Lulu and Bowie singing ‘My Funny Valentine’. They followed this up with some blues standards which allowed Lulu to demonstrate her vocal abilities. It was nice to hear her singing in a non-pop voice, being as ballsy as on her 1965 single ‘Shout’. Later on, I heard Angie asking where Bowie was: had anyone seen him? I didn’t say that I had seen him get into the hotel lift with Lulu half an hour earlier. Apparently she later found out they’d disappeared up to his room.

  June had arrived earlier that day to spend the rest of the tour with me. I remember the next morning we went down to the lobby and saw three young fans waiting there. We went to talk to them and found out they had been following us from gig to gig and had now run out of money to get home – they couldn’t even ring their parents. June got the number of one of their parents and called them up, letting them know the kids were all OK and making arrangements to get them home. She then packed them off to the station in a cab. This kind of thing happened a few times on this tour.

  On our way to Salisbury in Wiltshire, where we had a gig at the City Hall on 14 June, the driver happened to mention that we were passing close to Stonehenge. Seeing Stonehenge struck us as a brilliant idea so we asked him to take a detour and arrived at the site like a typical busload of tourists. Back then the stones themselves hadn’t been cordoned off from the public. We all bought ice creams and had various silly photos taken lying on the stones. For an hour and a half it actually felt like we were on holiday. We even had a group photo taken outside, alongside the bus.

  So after two more weeks of concerts during which we played twenty-two performances, obviously with quite a few matinees to fit that many in, we headed back to London. As we were nearing the end of this British tour there were rumours circulating among the band and crew, supposedly originating with Defries, that other tours were already being looked at. Forty dates in the US was being mentioned, as was a tour of Europe, and Bowie had actually told me that he wanted to take Ziggy to Russia and China.

  ‘Life on Mars?’ had been released as a single on 22 June. It went straight in at Number 21 and had jumped to Number 4 by the beginning of July. (It climbed to Number 3 in the UK charts and stayed in the charts for thirteen weeks.) It felt as if we could do no wrong.

  Our third UK tour had been all we hoped it would be and more. The finale was two nights at Hammersmith Odeon on 2 and 3 July.

  The first show was brilliant, probably spurred on by it being a London gig and that extra adrenalin you seem to find when the finishing line is in sight. These two gigs had been added to replace the cancelled Earl’s Court gig – the disaster a distant memory by now.

  There’s a great story about that first night at Hammersmith, which has been around the music scene for all these years but I was not aware of it until April 2016, when Tony Visconti and I appeared on Jonesy’s Jukebox, an LA radio show presented by DJ and former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones.

  After Tony and I had answered many questions regarding our time working with Bowie, Steve looked at me and asked, ‘Woody, what about Hammersmith?’

  At first I thought maybe he’d been at the concert, so I said, ‘Yeah, a great night.’

  ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?’ he said.

  ‘Not really,’ I replied.

  He then proceeded to tell me that he lived in Hammersmith at the time and he knew the Odeon like the back of his hand. He and a friend had got into the theatre after the show on the first night and pinched Bowie’s vocal mic, Trevor’s spare bass amp and two of my cymbals. He said it was just a thing he did, but they only stole things from bands they liked . . .

  ‘This is a British thing, right?’ Tony said, laughing. ‘You like someone so you steal from them.’

  ‘I want to make amends for that, on air,’ Steve said. ‘How much do I owe you for the cymbals?’

  I still thought he was joking at this point, so with a straight face I replied, ‘A hundred and twenty thousand pounds.’

  ‘No, I’m serious,’ he said, taking a sheaf of dollars out of his pocket,

  ‘Two hundred dollars,’ I said, which he promptly handed me.

  ‘Good, I feel better about that,’ he said. ‘It’s been on my conscience since then.’

  I thanked him and we carried on with the interview.

  For the final concert at Hammersmith Defries had arranged for director D. A. Pennebaker to film the show and an RCA mobile unit was there to record it. Ken Scott was in charge of the recording that night and had brought in another Trident engineer, Roy Baker, to assist him. This would eventually become Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars: The Motion Picture, which was released in 1983.

  That last night was probably one of the best shows we’d ever done. We tore through the set and everything just seemed to fall into place. Bowie was particularly on form. Every move he made was delivered with an extra something that made the whole show electrifying. After a blistering version of ‘White Light/White Heat’ the Hammersmith audience were going berserk.

  It got even wilder when Bowie stepped up to the microphone and announced, ‘As this is our last concert of the tour we thought we’d do something special for you, so we invited one of our friends and I know you’ll give a big, warm welcome to Jeff Beck.’

  Jeff walked on to thunderous applause and Mick started the riff to ‘The Jean Genie’. It was a particularly special moment as Jeff Beck was one of Mick’s guitar heroes. We did an extended version of the song where they each took it in turn to solo back and forth. It was ‘The Jean Genie’ like we’d never played it before. Jeff stayed on for ‘Round and Round’ and then left the stage to great applause.

  Then there was a longer than usual gap but luckily the audience were still making one hell of a noise. Bowie then stepped up to his microphone and signalled with his hands that he wanted the audience to be quiet. They immediatel
y calmed down.

  ‘Everybody . . . this has been one of the greatest tours of our lives,’ he said. ‘I would like to thank the band. I would like to thank our road crew. I would like to thank our lighting people. Of all the shows on this tour, this particular show will remain with us the longest because not only is it the last show of the tour, it’s the last show we’ll ever do. Thank you.’

  My first thought was, ‘What did he just say? Did he just say it’s the last show we’ll ever do?’ My eyes went to Trevor who, judging by the look of confusion on his face, was thinking exactly the same. I looked around at the other guys on the stage and most of them wore the same bemused expression. Some of the audience began shouting out, ‘No, no, no’ and I could see many of the fans close to the stage in tears.

  Then Hutch, the auxiliary rhythm guitarist, started playing the intro chords to ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide’ and we were into the final song of the show.

  Throughout the song I was wondering if it was just another of Bowie’s publicity stunts. Had he planned this or was it just spur of the moment? He’d done many things like this before without informing us. By the end of the number I was actually quite annoyed so I threw one of my drumsticks in his direction, obviously with no malice intended as it missed his head by about six feet . . .

  Then Bowie said to the audience, ‘Bye bye, we love you’, and we left the stage.

  As Trevor and I walked back to the dressing room we quizzed each other about what he’d said and what it was all about. I guess there was still not enough information at that point for us to reach a conclusion. When we questioned Mick in the dressing room he said, ‘As far as I know he’s quit but I’m not sure what it all means. You need to ask him.’