A few weeks back, the good folk at the BBC loaded onto their own dedicated digital channel something around 150 performances from bygone years at Glastonbury as a way of filling some space in the absence of the festival taking place in 2020. A number of the headline performances stayed up for 30 more days which is why myself and Rachel were able to sit down a few days later and finally watch the David Bowie set from 2000.
Social media went absolutely crazy at the time the BBC was showing it ‘as live’; it was the first time the entire show had been seen as the agreement back in 2000 with Bowie was that only the opening segments and part of the encore could go out over the airwaves. It’s regarded by many as the best ever Glastonbury headlining show and among one of Bowie’s greatest performances, with the setlist consisting of many of his best-known and best-loved songs, as well as a smattering of new tunes (new in 2000 that is).
But here’s the thing…..neither of us at Villain Towers were that blown away by it.
Rachel is, of course, spoiled by the fact that at the age of 14 she was present at the Green’s Playhouse (later the Apollo) in Glasgow in 1973 when Ziggy Stardust was being toured, and there’s nothing that can beat that. She thought that the songs from that era, and indeed the rest of the 70s, as seen and heard at Glastonbury felt and looked as if they were being performed by a Bowie impersonator backed by a group of musicians who wouldn’t have been out of place at a swanky Las Vegas hotel. And I’m not disagreeing.
She had been really looking forward to the show having read all the fawning comments across social media and within the mainstream media reviews, especially as so many had focussed on the fact the songs had come from the entire canon. When the band left the stage after the final encore, she turned to me and asked ‘Is that it?’ The closing two songs of Let’s Dance and I’m Afraid of Americans was not what she was hoping for or expecting.
Glastonbury setlist
1. Wild Is the Wind
2. China Girl
3. Changes
4. Stay
5. Life on Mars?
6. Absolute Beginners
7. Ashes to Ashes
8. Rebel Rebel
9. Little Wonder
10. Golden Years
11. Fame
12. All the Young Dudes
13. The Man Who Sold the World
14. Station to Station
15. Starman
16. Hallo Spaceboy
17. Under Pressure
Encore:
18. Ziggy Stardust
19. “Heroes”
20. Let’s Dance
21. I’m Afraid of Americans
It led to us to recall the time we had seen Bowie in each other’s company, back in 1990 at the appalling Ingliston Showgrounds in Edinburgh – a venue that is just about the worst imaginable in terms of sound and yet managed to provide something really special on this occasion. The setlist from that night was the sort of thing that Rachel had believed she would now be watching from the comfort of the living room:-
1. Space Oddity
2. Changes
3. TVC15
4. Rebel Rebel
5. Golden Years
6. Be My Wife
7. Ashes to Ashes
8. John, I’m Only Dancing
9. Queen Bitch
10. Fashion
11. Life on Mars?
12. Blue Jean
13. Let’s Dance
14. Stay
15. China Girl
16. Ziggy Stardust
17. Sound and Vision
18. Station to Station
19. Alabama Song
20. Young Americans
21. Panic in Detroit
22. Suffragette City
23. Fame
24. “Heroes”
Encore:
25. The Jean Genie
26. Pretty Pink Rose
27. Modern Love
28. Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide
Looking back, it was something of a perverse ending at Ingliston with Pretty Pink Rose during the encore having folk scratching their heads as it was a duet with guitarist Adrian Belew that had been released as a single about six weeks earlier and very few knew it, followed by a well-known but not exactly highly-loved single. But what a way to rescue things and send the crowd home absolutely buzzing.
I know these things are subjective and the absolutely ideal set would have incorporated songs from both Glastonbury and Ingliston, but overall the vast majority would surely have been from those aired back in 1990 and not 2000. I’d loved to have heard Wild Is The Wind, The Man Who Sold The World and Starman, but surely the Glasto audience deserved to hear Queen Bitch, Sound and Vision, Suffragette City, The Jean Genie and Rock’n’Roll Suicide– it was the absence of the last three on that list that really irked Rachel!
I asked her the next morning if she had changed her mind about being disappointed with the Glastonbury show. Her reply was that maybe she had overreacted a little but it was a response to feeling she had watched something that had over-promised and under-delivered. She also reiterated that the musicians on stage at Glastonbury had annoyed her – she knew they were incredibly talented and skillful but she couldn’t really classify them as a band – certainly not in comparison to the Ziggy tour or indeed the different and smaller number of musicians who shared the stage at Ingliston.
mp3: David Bowie – Queen Bitch
mp3: David Bowie – Changes
mp3: David Bowie – Rock’n’Roll Suicide