Saratoga Springs welcomes dozens of bands each summer, with the biggest names making it to the stage of Saratoga Performing Arts Center. In 1990, one of the biggest names in rock n roll history, David Bowie, performed his one and only show at SPAC, with a Saturday night performance on July 7.
For the “Sound+Vision” Tour, Bowie opted for a smaller band and suggested he was looking for a smaller sound, saying in an interview with Q Magazine, “It’s a much smaller sound. It’s not quite as orchestrated as any of the other tours. The plus of that is that there is a certain kind of drive and tightness that you get with that embryonic line-up, where everybody is totally reliant on the other two or three guys, so everybody gives a lot more.” Read the full interview with Paul Du Noyer here.
This tour was not in support of a new album, as the latest release from Bowie was 1987’s Never Let Me Down which launched the “Glass Spider” tour. This was instead billed as a greatest hits tour, with Bowie planning to retire his catalogue of hit songs from live performance, a move that would draw millions of fans worldwide to see him on the “Sound+Vision” tour. With two albums having flopped in the mid-80s (hello 1984’s Tonight), he was looking to give himself a creative and artistic boost, and shedding his old hits became the drive behind “Sound+Vision.”
Bowie was also playing with Tin Machine at this time, and told the band he was contractually obligated to embark on this greatest hits tour, inviting guitarist Reeves Gabrels to join him on the road. The Tin Machine guitarist declined, but suggested Adrian Belew, giving him a phone call and putting Bowie on the phone.
It’s time to put about 30 or 40 songs to bed and it’s my intention that this will be the last time I’ll ever do those songs completely, because if I want to make a break from what I’ve done up until now, I’ve got to make it concise and not have it as a habit to drop back into. It’s so easy to kind of keep going on and saying, well, you can rely on those songs, you can rely on that to have a career or something, and I’m not sure I want that.
David Bowie, interview with Music Express Magazine, March 1990
Bowie went on discussing his clean break from his past catalog, adding, “I’ve never done a show where I’ve just done songs that over the years have proved to be popular with the audience in that way. It’s always been about 50/50. I’ve done enough that they know to keep their attention on the show and the rest of the of it – I can do the stuff that I want to do in between – but I’ve never actually almost allowed them to choose the show for me, which is in fact, what we’re going to do.”
Thus, the personnel for Bowie’s 1990 tour were the Thin White Duke himself (guitar, saxophone, vocals) Adrian Belew (guitar, backing vocals and also serving as music director), Erdal Kızılçay (bass guitar, backing vocals), Rick Fox (keyboards, backing vocals) and Michael Hodges (drums.) Canadian dance choreographer Édouard Lock of the Québécois contemporary dance group La La La Human Steps co-conceived the tour with Bowie, and served as artistic director for this tour.
It had been reported there was tension among the band during the tour, as Kızılçay, who recalled that Bowie “wasn’t very happy“ and when they were in South America by the end of the tour, Bowie was not coming to soundchecks.
As noted in Chris O’Leary’s Ashes to Ashes The Songs of David Bowie 1976-2016, keyboardist Rick Fox was not invested in the Sound+Vision tour, going so far as to eat dinner on stage, and at least once turned off his own keyboards and played his own songs while sampled parts of Bowie’s songs were playing.
In total, Bowie spent seven months on the road at five continents, performing 108 times in 27 countries. Discover more about the Sound+Vision tour here.
So with a greatest hits tour and only so much drive in the tank after a pair of commercial failures, David Bowie gave it a go on a global tour, and his performance at SPAC was full of the hits he promised and a notable moment following “Young Americans” where he spoke out in defense of free speech and expression.
Fans recalled the venue was packed, as this sold out show had the SPAC lawn filled, even with KISS performing 30 minutes south in Albany at the Knickerbocker Arena that same night. One fan who was not a fan of Belew’s noted the difference, saying “Belew, while a great instrumentalist, did not have the style and flash or sound of Spiders from Mars guitarist Mick Ronson. Sure enough, after a few songs I knew I’d made the wrong choice! The comparatively subdued band to the Spiders couldn’t give any authentic glitter and sleeze to those songs and they fell flat for me. I stayed but wished I was at the KISS show seeing their over the top excess.”
A Times Union review of David Bowie at SPAC, written by Michael Eck, referred to the concert as “the most breathlessly awaited show of the summer” and called the show “one of the best things in life – the kind of performance that could breathe life into a tired soul.”
During the performance, Bowie utilized multiple screens and the best video effects of the early 90s to capture his movement, performance and engagement on stage. Watch below and you’ll be able to see Bowie singing duets with a 20-foot projection of himself, dancing with an androgynous look-alike, and thin screens housing projections of Bowie over the stage. Providing fans these visuals in conjunction with his greatest hits showed the tour name “Sound+Vision” was more than a song or box set, and allowed Bowie to find balance in this extensive tour. Bowie was, after all, going through the motions of playing these songs live for the final time, relieved for sure, and as the tour wore on, surely experiencing wistfulness of the occasion.
The show is a greatest hits show from one of the greatest musicians, and having listened to this show numerous times, its a crowd pleaser for any Bowie fan. Of note, and tied to the politics of the era, is Bowie’s aside during “Young Americans,” where Bowie took a moment to offer supportive commentary towards 2 Live Crew – whose album As Nasty As They Wanna Be was declared obscene by a judge and was the focus of ire against lyrics, particularly rap and hip-hop.
While stretching out “Young Americans” with a blues riff that Belew and Bowie smoked, Bowie said, “This is the unnecessary portion of the show,” and began to talk about growing up in London, listneing to American music, especially the blues. He mentioned listening to Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, and James Brown, and then shifted gears to authors he read: Kerouc and Ginsberg, who wrote about what they felt and were going through. And with a captive audience in a seemingly ‘off script’ moment, Bowie said:
“Do you know that they’re banning Hemingway in libraries these days? You don’t know do you? Does anybody here hear that they’re banning Hemingway? Fahrenheit 451 is now on the restricted borrowing at some libraries. You don’t care do you?”
David Bowie, to the SPAC audience, during “Young Americans”
Sensing the crowd was drifting away, Bowie reeled them back in, saying “That’s why I went out and bought my 2 Live Crew album” which was followed by enthusiastic applause from the audience. Bowie continued on, saying that “You don’t have to like the stuff but my god I support any right for anybody to write a song without going to jail for it, motherfuckers.”
Despite the injection of what some would call ‘politics’ in a rock concert (gasp!), David Bowie brought the SPAC audience full circle, revisiting the roots of one of his greatest hits, tying it to his youth and that of the crowd, then to present day, with a supportive pro-free speech statement.
As Michael Eck noted in his review, the reunion tours that took place in 1989-90 – the Rolling Stones “Steel Wheels” tour, The Who 25th anniversary tour, and Paul McCartney embarking on his first solo tour – it was Bowie who stood alone among them. “Saturday night Bowie took his past in his hands and gloriously threw it all away while we watched. Those other tours were history shaking with age, Saturday’s was history shaking with life. It was simply one of the greatest spectacles I have ever witnessed.”
David Bowie – Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) – Sound+Vision Tour – July 7, 1990
Setlist: Space Oddity, Rebel Rebel, Changes, Ashes to Ashes, Life on Mars?, Pretty Pink Rose (Adrian Belew cover), Stay, Blue Jean, Let’s Dance, Sound and Vision, Ziggy Stardust, China Girl, Station to Station, Young Americans, Suffragette City, Fame, Heroes
Encore: White Light/White Heat, Baby What You Want Me to Do, The Jean Genie, I’m Waiting for the Man, Gloria
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