Flashback: David Bowie Sings 'Changes' at His Last Public Performance The Thin White Duke hasn't sang a note onstage since this 2006 New York charity gig By Andy Greene August 26, 2014 David Bowie's three-song set at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom didn't draw a lot of attention back in November 2006. He played as part of Keep a Child Alive's annual Black Ball fundraiser, along with Alicia Keys, Damian Marley and comedian Wanda Sykes, breaking out "Wild Is the Wind," "Fantastic Voyage" and "Changes," which he sang as a duet with Keys. Nobody had even the faintest idea it would be his last public performance before his grand disappearing act. 20 Insanely Great David Bowie Songs Only Hardcore Fans Know » Bowie's never explained why he hasn't sang a note onstage in the last eight years, though many fans point to the heart attack that abruptly ended his 2003-'04 Reality tour. That was certainly a major scare, but that didn't stop him from playing with Arcade Fire twice in 2005 and David Gilmour the following year. He even announced a comeback gig in 2007 as part of New York's High Line festival, but it was cancelled a few months later without explanation. He re-emerged in early 2013 with The Next Day, his first new LP in a decade, but he didn't promote it with a single live performance or even an interview. He did appear in videos to support the album (looking as dapper as ever), but he's since fallen off the grid again, popping up only in the occasional paparazzi photo with his wife Iman and their teenage daughter. Anything could happen in the future, but it's quite possible this performance of "Changes" could mark the end of his performing career. The 1971 song was one of his earliest hits, and the 24-year-old Bowie was clearly feeling a little boastful at the time. "Look out all you rock & rollers," he wrote. "Pretty soon you're going to get older." He was 59 when he sang it again at the Black Ball, not an age when many of his peers are even thinking about retirement. Fans continue to pray there will be one more tour or even a single performance somewhere, but as the years go by that's beginning to seem less and less likely. Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/v...nal-public-performance-20140826#ixzz3xFDGExc5 Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook
He should've kept at it with backing tracks and effects like Bono and Daltrey or other guys in the background covering for him like Jagger and Ozzy. Really milk the fans for all they've got.
Pretty interesting. "The music, co-written by Bowie and Eno, has been likened to a Wall of Sound production, an undulating juggernaut of guitars, percussion and synthesizers.[14] Eno has said that musically the piece always "sounded grand and heroic" and that he had "that very word – heroes – in my mind" even before Bowie wrote the lyrics.[4] The basic backing track on the recording consists of a conventional arrangement of piano, bass guitar, rhythm guitar and drums. However the remaining instrumental additions are highly distinctive. These largely consist of synthesizer parts by Eno using an EMS VCS3 to produce detuned low-frequency drones, with the beat frequencies from the three oscillators producing a juddering effect. In addition, King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp generated an unusual sustained sound by allowing his guitar to feed back and sitting at different positions in the room to alter the pitch of the feedback (pitched feedback). Tony Visconti rigged up a system, a creative misuse of gating that may be termed "multi-latch gating",[15] of three microphones to capture the vocal, with one microphone nine inches from Bowie, one 20 feet away and one 50 feet away. Only the first was opened for the quieter vocals at the start of the song, with the first and second opening on the louder passages, and all three on the loudest parts, creating progressively more reverb and ambience the louder the vocals became.[16] Each microphone is muted as the next one is triggered. "Bowie's performance thus grows in intensity precisely as ever more ambience infuses his delivery until, by the final verse, he has to shout just to be heard....The more Bowie shouts just to be heard, in fact, the further back in the mix Visconti's multi-latch system pushes his vocal tracks, creating a stark metaphor for the situation of Bowie's doomed lovers".[17]"
As the years go on, the more the music dies. And the "you know whats" still wonder why they loose millions.
