Fantasy life

Reeves Gabrels makes music with Bowie

by Ted Drozdowski

One delight of David Bowie's career -- besides the vicarious thrill of observing someone both so thin and so rich -- is the ch-ch-ch-changes. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) In the past 10 years, he's fronted the tooth-and-claw rock band Tin Machine, emerged as a respectable painter, made his biggest solo tour (in 1990), portrayed Andy Warhol in the film Basquiat, played his smallest solo tour in decades (in '96), and alighted on a blend of drum 'n' bass and industrial sounds for his latest CD, Earthling (Sony).

If there's an "imp" on the musical side of Bowie's seeming impulsiveness, it's Boston-based guitarist Reeves Gabrels. These days, he even looks a bit like one -- at least on stage. Black eye shadow lends malevolence to his gaze, his draped clothing seems plucked from Quasimodo's closet, and there's the bright orange hair and feather boas. It's quite a visual change from the regular guy who's been playing Boston clubs since the early '80s.

Gabrels chuckles about his new look over the phone from a San Francisco stop on Bowie's current tour, which hits Boston's Orpheum Theatre this Tuesday and Wednesday. Dyeing what's left of his retreating hair was "in part, trying to turn a liability into an asset," he concedes. "But all the changes were kind of an evolution. I think it's hysterical, though you might have to know me to realize it's not serious.

"It started with the feather boa. I remember seeing Mott the Hoople's bass player use a mink guitar strap on The Midnight Special, and I've always thought, `Wow! Cool!' But I never had a chance to do anything like that before. I realized when I first wore the boa that it made people uncomfortable, so I figured I'd escalate it a bit. I enjoy the absurdity of it [his stage appearance], and the fact that it pisses people off or scares them. Plus, there is a certain adolescent aspect to this occupation. Actually, that's true of anything that's not a real job. For guys who race cars or play football, or artists in general, there's always that fantasy aspect of life."

There's also the reality of Gabrels's virtuoso guitar skills. He has always been known locally for his eclectic bent, plying arty rock with Life on Earth, power-playing his way through the Adam Said's dramatic songs, and plowing up his blues-rock roots with Modern Farmer (and on tour with Paul Rodgers). But these days his solos are more sonic expressionism than the licks we've come to expect from wood, strings, and amplification.

"I'm always amused by the fact that people think I'm weird, avant-garde, or forward-thinking. That just points out to me how conservative everybody else is." But the truth of the matter is that in recent years Gabrels has composed and played some striking music, whether with Bowie, in duets with downtown Manhattan slide guitarist Dave Tronzo, or on his own 1995 solo CD, The Sacred Squall of Now (Upstart).

That Gabrels, like Bowie himself, is a man with his own sound and vision is something his current employer understands. Since being summoned to Bowie's Swiss home for the formation of Tin Machine nearly a decade ago, Gabrels has become the 50-year-old superstar's most consistent collaborator. It was Gabrels's sonic vocabulary and Bowie's lyrics that gave Tin Machine their weight, and Gabrels shares much of the writing credit for Bowie's last three albums. In particular, '95's Outside and '96's Earthling, with their eerie textural loops and out-leaning sound palettes, have Gabrels's fingerprints all over them.

Gabrels says the creative process behind the much-lauded Earthling revolved in part around his then-new fascination for composing on computer. "I wanted to get away from things that were guitaristic a bit. I wanted to see what my music was. I wanted to see if what comes out of my guitar was determined by the instrument or what I was hearing in my head. When we went in to do Earthling, I had six pieces that were evocative of a mood, and since they were on computer, I was able to move sections of each piece around. So if we wanted to repeat a verse or lengthen a chorus, we could sample that part of a song and drop it in somewhere else. Then David and I played guitar against it, to fill in the harmonic structure. So I had the soundscape stuff, and we wrote against it. That gave us three songs, and he and I then wrote six or seven more.

"One morning we came into the studio without a song to work on, so I came up with a drum-and-bass loop and we played acoustic guitars against it. He and I went out and had lunch, and David came back and wrote the lyrics based on the lunch conversation. He put the vocal down, and we had "The Battle of Britain (The Letter)."

As usual, Bowie's already got his eye on his next album. And for now the songcrafting process has shifted back to the approach Tin Machine used. Gabrels has been dropping musical ideas on his four-track cassette recorder. And he and Bowie glean tapes of jams recorded at soundchecks, "searching for peppercorns among the manure."

"With David, you're always looking ahead," Gabrels points out. "Things don't sit still. He and I have been doing a lot of acoustic gigs sponsored by radio stations along the tour, so we're throwing around the idea of an acoustic recording. That music's already creeping back into the set. A few nights ago we played `I Can't Read,' an old Tin Machine song, much to the surprise of the rest of the band."

Gabrels says Bowie is considering making two albums for 1998 release but will not tour. That should free Gabrels up to complete his next solo album, for which major labels have come calling. Meanwhile, he's played on the Cure's next single and the forthcoming Sister Machine Gun CD, and he's completing a soundtrack for a PBS series on a Nebraska farm family. And when Bowie's tour ends, in November, we'll probably see him in Boston clubs again.

With or without the feather boa?

David Bowie plays the Orpheum Theatre this Tuesday and Wednesday, September 30 and October 1. Both shows are sold out.

Read Ted Drozdowski's review of a newly released David Bowie biography.