Artist News Releases

Spiders From Mars’ Visconti and Woodmansey to play Bowie’s Man Who Sold The World

By | Published on Friday 23 May 2014

The Spiders From Mars

Tony Visconti and Mick ‘Woody’ Woodmansey, both of David Bowie’s iconic, Ziggy Stardust-era backing band The Spiders From Mars, are to play Bowie’s 1970 LP, arguably his first truly avant garde one, ‘The Man Who Sold The World’, live and in full at a show in London this Autumn. And don’t worry, it’s all Ziggy-approved.

The pair will fill the spaces in the Spiders line-up with a group of ten guest musicians, including Spandau Ballet saxophonist Steve Norman, and Heaven 17’s Glenn Gregory. Visconti, producer of most of DB’s albums since 1969 of course, not least his latest, ‘The Next Day’, will play bass on the songs for the first time since ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ was made, whilst Woodmansey is playing drums.

Talking to The Guardian this week, the latter said: “‘The Man Who Sold The World’ was the first album Mick Ronson and I played on, our first even in a proper London studio, yet it never got played live. It was the forerunner of what we could do sound-wise, and we just let rip. We spent three weeks recording it because we were creating the songs as we went”.

He added: “This was the album that showed Bowie trying out things and finding his direction. ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ was his first step into rock n roll. It got critical acclaim, but we never toured it, and in the live shows the album tracks never got touched on. So the idea of being able to go out and finally play some of those great tracks live was just so exciting”.



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