For those of you who might not know…about David Bowie

In June 1970, Ian Underwood made use of the 100-year-old Bechstein grand piano at Trident studios in London, as can be heard on The Mothers 1970. This famous piano can also be heard on David Bowie’s Changes and Life On Mars?, as tinkled by Richard Christopher Wakeman CBE.

But there’s more than an old piano that connects Frank Zappa to the Thin White Duke.

I imagine most readers will know the ‘Fuck you, Captain Tom’ story from the time Bowie lured Adrian Belew away from Zappa to join his band. (If not, look here.) Terry Bozzio’s recollection of it was that, “They got into a bit of an argument. I was shocked and did not sleep well that night. When I met Frank the next morning, he said, ‘Can you believe that guy was such an asshole?’”

Perhaps alluding to this incident, Zappa would later tell Arthur Barrow he had gone out to dinner with Bowie and that it was totally boring: “they had little in common, and really had nothing much to say to each other,” Barrow wrote in his memoir, Of Course I Said Yes!: The Amazing Adventures Of A Life In Music.

But perhaps they had more in common than they knew?

For example, the 1973 cash-in compilation album Images 1966–1967 – which comprised Bowie’s debut album and various early singles and b-sides – sported artwork by Neon Park, who designed the Weasels Ripped My Flesh cover.

The pair were also both avid tobacco chuggers and, in the mid-70s, when Zappa attended a Randy Newman show in Philadelphia, he was somewhat incongruously asked to request the audience to refrain from smoking. Introduced by MC Steve Martorano as ‘Doris Day’, Frank strolled on stage and said “I’ve come out here to make an announcement. Please do not smoke. If you want to smoke, go to the Spectrum and watch David Bowie.”

A few years later, Zappa wrote Be In My Video, which mocks Bowie’s Let’s Dance. Scott Thunes said, “The line ‘Dance the Blues’ set Frank off. Dumb line, let’s make it dumber. It’s an example of taking something into the realm of the absurd. Face...nose...lips...sinus. How do you dance a sinus? Let’s say the words and see what pops up!”

In Them Or Us [The Book], Francesco Zappa asks whether Bowie was last century’s “nasty little Mozart”, suggesting he was “a non-person of indeterminate sex with special hair”.

When asked about glitter rock and Bowie, Zappa once said, “It’s not my idea of a good time. I think lipstick in small quantities is OK in certain girls, I’m not too big on it for boys.”

Bowie was erroneously lumped in with Alice, Iggy and Lou as an ‘American glitter boy’ in Harry, You're A Beast on Beat The Boots I: Unmitigated Audacity.

And during the audience participation section of Dinah-Moe Humm in Dayton, Ohio on 20 November 1974 - when Frank wants everyone to cum at the same time - he says, “Maybe it’d be different if I were David Bowie…arf arf arf...” before singing “Ground control to Uncle Tom!” This last line was edited out on the Apostrophe(') 50th Anniversary Edition though.

So while Bowie himself may not have exactly endeared himself to Zappa, it seems old Ziggy was nevertheless a fan of Frank’s – or the Freak Out! album, at least – as Bowie’s early bands The Buzz and The Riot Squad covered, and reputedly recorded, It Can’t Happen Here and Who Are The Brain Police?

In 2003, Bowie played a concert in Vienna and noticed Gail Ann Dorsey, his female bassist, wasn’t wearing a long shirt – just a jacket above a smaller shirt – and commented “Who could imagine?” in reference to It Can’t Happen Here. He then asked the audience if any of them knew the song. I’m guessing probably not, as it’s unlikely to be on many lists of the 1001 songs you must hear before you die, and Bowie himself had noted earlier that “Frank’s stuff was virtually unknown and re-listening to that song I can see why he wasn’t on any playlists.”

In 1973, Bowie had his back-up singers – then girlfriend Ava Cherry and The Astronettes – record a version of How Could I Have Been Such A Fool (sic) at Olympic Studios in Barnes, London for their planned album, People From Bad Homes. The album was eventually released as The Astronettes Sessions in 1995, where Bowie’s guide vocal can clearly be heard on the track. And who was the drummer on these sessions? Why none other than former Mother, Aynsley Thomas Dunbar, who played with Bowie on his Pin Ups and Diamond Dogs platters.

Before embarking on his illustrious career, Bowie had attended Bromley Technical High School – as did Peter Frampton, who would later work with David and, of course, inspired Frank’s song I Have Been In You. I myself attended the nearby Bromley Technical College in the early 70s, around the time that my old primary school friend Kevin Armstrong turned me onto the music of FZ. Kevin would himself go on to work with Bowie, most notably he put together David’s band for his 1985 performance at Live Aid. (For more on their time together, you should read Kevin’s excellent memoir, Absolute Beginner).

But I digress.

Aside from referencing Let’s Dance (and also Space Oddity in concert on occasion), Frank didn’t ever cover a full Bowie tune. But in the year after David’s demise, Dweezil did when he recorded his version of I’m Afraid Of Americans featuring US Bowie tribute artist David Brighton on vocals.

As well as Dunbar and Belew – and of course John Lennon and Tina Turner – did FZ and DB have any other collaborators in common? They sure did:

• American jazz double-bassist and studio musician, Jay Anderson. Anderson infamously overdubbed string bass on The Mothers’ Cruising With Ruben & The Jets album in the mid-1980s, and also plays on the original version of Bowie’s Sue (Or In A Season Of Crime) recorded with the Maria Schneider orchestra and released in 2014 (and included in this ‘best of 1987-2016’ Spotify playlist);
• Big Jim Sullivan, who was part of John Williams’s classical guitar ensemble on 200 Motels, and is also credited with orchestration. Sullivan played banjo, guitar and sitar on Bowie’s eponymous 1967 debut studio album;
• Québécois contemporary dance group La La La Human Steps, who helped choreograph Bowie’s Sound+Vision tour in 1990 and Zappa’s The Yellow Shark concerts in Frankfurt, Berlin and Vienna in 1992; and
• Flo & Eddie, who Bowie had record radio ads for his Lodger album (featuring Belew) and also asked them for help on a semi-autobiographical film that never happened, called The Traveler.

Which reminds me: when Flo & Eddie worked with the afore-mentioned Ava ‘No, No’ Cherry in 1983, Howard Kaylan described it as “one of those avant-garde projects that we did because either the artist was very exotic to us, OR we thought it’d reach a new audience, OR - even better - no-one would hear it and we’d just get paid.” The latter appears to have been the case.

Zappa and Bowie could also have had Shuggie Otis in common had he not turned the latter down, saying “I’m nobody’s sideman. I’m my own man. I’m Shuggie Otis!”

And similar applies to little Terry Ted Bozzio.

In December 1989, Bowie attended a date at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena on the Jeff Beck/Stevie Ray Vaughan co-headlined ‘The Fire Meets the Fury’ tour. SRV had earlier overdubbed lead guitar parts on Bowie’s 1983 hit album, Let’s Dance, but didn’t take part in the ‘Serious Moonlight’ tour to promote it. (While he was present at rehearsals, he was reportedly let go by Bowie at the last minute due to his alcohol and drug use – plus his request that his band Double Trouble be the supporting act.)

Anyway, back to 1989, and Beck’s drummer at the time was Terry Bozzio. At their first meeting in Berlin in 1978, TTB had introduced himself to Bowie backstage with, “I’m Terry Bozzio, the drummer,” to which Bowie said, “Oh, you’re very energetic,” and turned away and started talking to somebody else. Despite Bozzio’s disappointment at the time, Bowie clearly was very impressed by him as he later wanted him to play on his 1987 Glass Spider Tour, and also to be a part of the rhythm section for his subsequent Tin Machine project – alongside bassist Percy Jones. Bozzio told Modern Drummer magazine that he “figured everybody already knew that I was a great drummer, so why just do a visibility thing like that? I did that with Zappa. The next step for me was to form my own band.” So instead Bowie got New York session drummer Alan Childs in for the tour and the Sales brothers in for Tin Machine, and we can only imagine how differently things might have turned out there.

Tee-nu-nee-nu-nee – MOO-AHHHH!

Bowie was born David Robert Jones in Brixton, South London on 8 January 1947. He died of liver cancer in his New York City apartment on 10 January 2016.

A truncated version of this article can be found in the latest edition of the Arf Dossier. It will also appear in an expanded edition of my Frank Zappa FUQ eBook in 2025...and maybe in a second paperback too.

I currently have a Bowie CD bundle for sale in my online store.