Album Review: David Bowie - ChangesNowBowie (2020)

In November 1996, as he prepared for his 50th birthday celebration show at New York’s Madison Square Garden, David Bowie recorded a handful of rehearsal tracks for a radio special called ChangesNowBowie. That show, and those recordings, circulated in bootleg form for many years but were, in April 2020, set for an official Record Store Day release on a newly sanctioned (or official) album with the same title as the radio show itself.

That plan, of course, hit a snag when RSD was postponed in wake of the Covid-19 global pandemic outbreak which has pretty much brought the entire planet to a standstill. That 
setback didn’t prevent ChangesNowBowie being released in digital format (only) however, with a more extensive release (including vinyl, CD) earmarked for the rescheduled RSD date of June 20.

Unlike the three previous ‘Changes’ offerings - ChangesOne (1976), ChangesTwo (1981), and the 1990 hybrid compilation, erm, Changes - ChangesNow isn’t really a “Greatest Hits” type set. But it does include a few gems. Nine quite special tracks, and something of a pick n mix assortment of mostly stripped back acoustic takes on (again, mostly) older 1970s material.

For the ChangesNow sessions Bowie was supported by revered guitarist Reeves Gabrels (Tin Machine, The Cure*), bassist and co-vocalist Gail Ann Dorsey, and keys man, Mark Plati, but rather typically, the minimalist nature of these versions means its all about the man himself, and that incredible voice.

The radio interview itself and the general chit-chat narrative of the original broadcast has been omitted from the album, naturally. If you want that, you’ll just have to dig deep for the aforementioned bootleg editions. 

Highlights include fantastic takes on standards like ‘The Man Who Sold The World’, ‘Aladdin Sane’, and the live/cover favourite ‘White Light/White Heat’, which is easily the most uptempo, or straight up rock track of the bunch. There’s also the Hunky Dory sleeper, ‘Andy Warhol’, Ziggy’s ‘Lady Stardust’, and the Lodger-era ‘Repetition’. But for me, the pick of the bunch is Tin Machine’s ‘Shopping For Girls’, which is given new life on this. 

All up, it’s a cool addition to the wider Bowie discography. I’ve got the digital version of the album, which does quite nicely for now, but completists will want this on vinyl, so don’t sleep on RSD’s June 20 release date. 

* Incidentally, Bowie’s 50th birthday bash at Madison Square Garden was pivotal in Reeves Gabrels eventually joining The Cure. It was there, in early 1997, where Gabrels met Robert Smith, who performed a track alongside Bowie at MSG, with the pair going on to forge a close friendship. Years later, in 2012, Gabrels guested with The Cure for a few festival shows before later becoming a permanent member of the band. He remains a member of The Cure at the time of writing.

Classic Album Review: David Bowie - ChangesBowie (1990)

David Bowie’s recent comeback album was a timely reminder of the relevance of an artist who has had a profound influence on pop music throughout my lifetime. A man who transcends the “three G’s” of music consumption: generation, genre, and gender. I’ve got a fair few Bowie albums in my collection, the highpoint of which is surely the 1972 landmark, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.

However, I only have one compilation album in that set, the 1990 release ChangesBowie.
 

Not to be confused with the 1976 “best of” album, ChangesOneBowie, or its inferior ill-fated 1981 companion release, ChangesTwoBowie, this one is something of a hybrid of both. Indeed, it compiles the entire contents of ChangesOne, adds the essential ‘Heroes’, ‘Ashes To Ashes’, and ‘Fashion’, plus four singles from Bowie’s mid-Eighties Serious Moonlight period including ‘Let’s Dance’ and ‘China Girl’.

Subsequent to 1990, of course, we’ve seen multiple David Bowie “best of” packages flood the market, but ChangesBowie probably represents one of the more concise guides to his more mainstream work, an ideal starting point for beginners, and sufficient for the casual fan looking for an overview.

not this ..

.. or this

But it’s not quite enough for me, and far from definitive. Comprising of just 18 tracks on a single CD, how could it be? That may seem more than enough for the unfussy observer, but without even starting to scratch the surface, I can think of at least another 18 tracks, right here and now, that could also have made the cut – all pre-1990. The plain truth is, this album barely tells half the story.

With Bowie having revealed so many faces, and worn so many masks over the years, somehow always managing to position himself on the periphery of the latest trend, a single CD is never going to do Bowie’s career justice, and I’m afraid that is all ChangesBowie ultimately amounts to.

 

Highlights include the landmark ‘Space Oddity’, ‘Ziggy Stardust’, ‘Jean Genie’, ‘Rebel Rebel’, ‘Golden Years’, ‘Heroes’, ‘Ashes To Ashes’, and ‘Fashion’ … but I’d have preferred the original version of ‘Fame’ over the ‘Fame ‘90’ remix, and am even less convinced by the disappointing ‘Modern Love’, and the simply awful ‘Blue Jean’.

Meanwhile, the absence of ‘Starman’, ‘Sorrow’, and ‘Sound And Vision’ is unforgivable.

Here’s an (imaginary) Alternative ChangesBowie compilation (hey indulge me!), to include another 18 tracks NOT FOUND on here, all stuff that was out prior to this album’s 1990 release date – picking up the best of the rest, whilst carefully avoiding some of his earliest incarnations (‘Laughing Gnome’ anyone?) and his worst commercial abominations (such as ‘Absolute Beginners’ and ‘Tonight’):

An AlternativeChanges then: ‘The Man Who Sold The World’, ‘All The Young Dudes’, ‘Five Years’, ‘Moonage Daydream’, ‘RocknRoll Suicide’, ‘Starman’, ‘Life On Mars’, ‘Station To Station’ (live), ‘Sorrow’, ‘Fame’ (the original please), ‘Sound And Vision’, ‘Wild Is The Wind’, ‘1984’, ‘DJ’, ‘Boys Keep Swinging’, ‘Under Pressure’ (with Queen), ‘Cat People’, and ‘This Is Not America’ (with Pat Metheny);

Read it and weep.

 

Here’s David Bowie, class of 1977, performing ‘Heroes’ on Marc Bolan’s television show … Bolan of course being a glam-era icon in his own right: