David Bowie Live | 1983 | Sydney | Serious Moonlight Tour | Pro shot | Complete Concert
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- čas přidán 28. 05. 2024
- In my original posting, the audio was slightly out of sync with the video, which has now been corrected. Plus Life On Mars? had a drop out (now restored) while Station to Station had a glitch (now removed).
About.
On the 20th November 1983, David Bowie performed his final Australian concert of the Serious Moonlight tour. This Betamax recording was taken from a sight screen feed made at that time.
The first couple of numbers, plus the end have some artefacts but, as it hasn't been viewed in nearly 40 years, the quality overall has held up well. The audio was in mono and has been remastered to bring it out more.
The Setlist:
0:00 Introduction
0:18 Look Back In Anger
3:00 "Heroes"
7:57 What In The World
11:29 Golden Years
14:57 Fashion
17:41 Let's Dance
22:08 Breaking Glass
24:54 Life On Mars?
29:00 Sorrow
31:49 Cat People
36:02 China Girl
41:18 Scary Monsters
44:59 Rebel Rebel
47:24 White Light White Heat
52:34 Station To Station
1:01:23 Cracked Actor
1:05:53 Ashes To Ashes
1:10:00 Space Oddity
1:15:02 Band introductions
1:17:00 Young Americans
1:22:25 Fame
Encore
1:27:32 Star
1:30:11 Stay
1:38:22 The Jean Genie
1:43:33 Modern Love
Story behind this video.
Back in 1983, I was working in a One-hour photo lab in Sydney and we would often have crew from the Sydney Entertainment Centre come by to drop off films to be processed. Over time I got to know some of the camera crew that were used to shoot the video that would be projected onto the sight screens at the side of the stage.
When Bowie came to Sydney, these guys were hired to do the same thing at the Sydney Showgrounds for his final two concerts. This was video only, as it was to be shown live on the side screens. However, I was told that for the final concert a Sony U-Matic video recorder was used to record the show with a mono audio feed from the mixing desk used for reference by the director. This was for personal use only. When I was told about this on the following Monday by one of their crew, I asked if it was possible to get a copy. The guy said that I could drop by with a VCR and make one, which I did (but with a Sony Betamax) the following day. Later when I saw one of the crew and thanked them again, he told me that the original tape had been lost and it was possible it had been recorded over (!!??) also, there were no other copies made. As such, I had the only video in existence.
The tape has been with me for 40 years and I finally got to having it transferred to digital file last year. I hope one day the tape can be restored to remove any artefacts and defects.
**20th November 2023 (40th anniversary of the concert)
I have been hunting around Sydney, trying to confirm if the original tape still existed and possibly be available for the 40th anniversary of the concert, unfortunately I can confirm the original is long gone. I did track down a member of the crew and he told me that one of the cameramen was caught in traffic that night, so they were short one camera for the early part of the concert. This is why there is limited footage of Earl Slick early on. Fortunately the cameraman did turn up for the remainder of the show.
No one is sure who made the recording from the feed but I for one am grateful they did and that I made a copy at the time.
The Band:
David Bowie - lead vocals, guitar, saxophone
Earl Slick - guitar
Carlos Alomar - guitar, backing vocals, music director
Carmine Rojas - bass guitar
Tony Thompson - drums, percussion
Dave Lebolt - keyboards, synthesizers
Steve Elson - saxophones
Stan Harrison - saxophones, woodwinds
Lenny Pickett - saxophones, woodwinds
George Simms - backing vocals
Frank Simms - backing vocals
trog26@gmail.com - Hudba
Such an extraordinary artist surrounded by an outrageously gifted band. This is a wonderful piece of history. Thank you for preserving this and sharing it so many years later!
This planet was a better place with him on it. Miss you David Bowie.
A lovely touch to Heroes as he begins the song with the longtime loved song/poem Lavenders Blue, with its Heroes-like words " When i am King dilly dilly, you shall be Queen". Something i believe he only ever did on the gigantic 83 Serious Moonlight World Tour.
2 years before Marillion made Lavender into such a big hit. I agree a nice touch. I love the grin he has on his face just after pointing into the crowd and saying "you will be... " and the screams that ensued.
Is there a link with Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence? I feel like the concept for this tour is derived from that film and Isolar II 1978 (travel, sailor look) /Lodger - (again, travel 'Move On' etc). It brings to mind the Tin Tin comics too.
@@hazelwray4184 Yes very likely, the 83 tour having a link to the film. I even trialed for a part as a POW prisoner here when they were looking for extras. Got turned down, wasnt skinny enough, but i was quite trim then.
About Lodger's link to the 78 tour, definitely yes. Mind you, Lodger wasnt quite released by the tour's end, so it wasnt in the setlists. But what an album it is, stunningly unique and so eagerly anticipated right after the tour.
There is one great song, I Pray Ole, which almost made it onto Lodger, i wish it made it, would of lifted Lodger even higher.
I was just 21 and in a good place in my life.
Wonderful friends,and finding my way in life.
David Bowies music a big part of it.
Saw him in Melbourne during this tour and it was an awesome unforgettable night.
❤
IT WAS 40 YEARS AGO TODAY!! For those that were at the Sydney Showgrounds that night, hope you have some great memories of this.
Just some updates on the video. I was hoping to track down the original source tape in time for the 40th anniversary, unfortunately I can confirm this is long gone. However, I did track down one of the camera crew that night and was advised of the following:
* The audio feed was from the soundboard to be used by the video director to know the timing end for each song, hence it is mono.
* One of the cameramen was caught in traffic, so they were short one camera for the early part of the concert (which is why there is limited Earl Slick footage at that stage of the show).
* No one was sure who made the recording from the feed but we are all grateful they did.
Too right, seen footage from other parts of this tour,,with better Audio,,if helps anyone,,not from where I had seen them,,shame
He owned the stage. There’s Pop stars and then the are real Pros who are famous and popular for the right reasons. Truly one of a kind Artists.
Saw this tour in Offenbach with massive full moon; one of the most memorable experiences of my life.
This is amazing and impeccable timing. I came across this video while I was reading about Bowie's life. Such a gifted human being, his life was extraordinary. There wont be another like Bowie
Tony Thompson RIP - what a talent on drums!
Younger fan here so I never got the chance to see him live before he passed sadly. But it's so nice to see clips like these! You dont know how much I appreciate it man!
It is coming up to 40 years ago (next month) that this was recorded. I was a young(er) Bowie fan then as well, so I am really glad that you got to see it and enjoy it as much as we did back in 1983.
Keep enjoying !
Enjoy it youg person. I used to work with him . A Very, very clever man.
I saw the glass spider tour in 1987, a huge Bowie fan for years. In my 60s now and glad I can say I saw many great bands in my day. The Ramones, Tull, Alice Cooper, ELO, Squeeze the original Beach Boys, the Who and many many more.
@@Sunbirds2soarwith What a treat on this sundaymorning Thank you so much ❤ How unbelievable fantastic What a story. I think a certain Ms Schwab would be very interested in your tapes. How happy he is to be back in Sydney, the whole performance has this extra spark, very moving. Maybe it’s just my imagination. If I understand you correctly this registration was for himself ? But he actually never saw it ? Only you !! And you’ve been sitting it all that time ? OMG ! I love ‘yours’ even more than the ‘official’ Vancouver version. I can not thank you enough for posting : All Best Thank You, You Number 1
A wonderful story about when you were working in a photo lab and how that led to you owning this extremely rare footage. I was there in 83, and i will never, ever grow tired of watching many of my fave moments on this, thankyou.
Thanks Danny. Doesn't seem like 40 years! I feel privileged to have been the custodian of this since then, and now to share it with the world.
@@Sunbirds2soarwith Bless you
@@Sunbirds2soarwithhank you so very much. I'm 55 now and saw him on this your at Anaheim Stadium back then. I was only 15, so yes dammit lol it's been 50 yrs. I can only speak for myself and I can tell you that I don't feel 50 yrs older. No, I lie, sometimes I feel 80 yrs older. Most days, however, I only feel a few years older. All that 40 yrs ago crap?
Fuck that.
I'm only 3 yrs older lol Yep, 18 is good for me. Yep I'd give my left n,$#t to be 18 again.
Bless you
Shame about the audio quality,,hard to restore,🫰🫰🫰😁
I was at this gig - one of my most favourite musical experiences!!
Absolutely amazing footage.. Breaking glass will forever be a classic
I was working security at the old Capitol Centre in Landover Md.I was in front of the stage for two nights. Unbelievable show,At the end of the second show I took the set list off the stage floor by David's Mike stand.I still have it after all these years.
What a great recording. Saw this in Milton Keynes in England. And the official recording in Canada about a thousand times. Serious Moonlight is probably my favourite tour. He was completely different in this tour than any other. Looked like he was really enjoying himself and the band was fantastic. Its hard to believe that this is Ziggy Stardust only 10 years before. Absolutely zero similarities. Although I love Ziggy aswell.
I spent nights with my VHS Serious Moonlight in 80`
Earl Slick on guitar is amazing dominant here , same as Carlos
Great coreography of the show , briliant
R.I.P. dear David
I think the guitar arrangement is actually SRV’s before he quit David’s band…way before either’s sobriety.
I saw this Tour in 83...5th row center stage. I even snuck my camera in and took some amazing photographs.
Saw it at Anaheim Stadium, Orange County California USA. Madness and the Go Go's opened up.
@teckertime wow!dammit, I can't recall if we even had an opening act...but I know it wasn't them...😂
i was there for both shows, front right for the 19th November, toward the back for the following night. fantastic experience, brought back some good memories. thanks for posting.
Great recording! Thanks so much for sharing this treasure with the world!!!
Whilst no longer a Bowie superfan, I still return to this concert every now and then, holds a place in my heart
This is a superb capture of a moment in time. Thank you for digitising and sharing with the world.
Thanks for that. I still struggle to think it was that long ago.
This is so wonderful…i miss him so much. The band is genius!
I LOVE YOU SO MUCH BOWIE
Oh, my, my, my!
Thank you so very very much, Trog601, for sharing this lovely treasure!
I cannot begin to tell you what this means to me.
Thank you again and again!
Wow, just wow. Spectacular. And Earl Slick is on fire on Lets Dance!
Reinventing himself on and on. The ultimate artist.
Love how David featured the horns.
I was at the opening concert of this tour in Brussels. Thanks for bringing back some memories of that evening. Fantastic video considering the story behind it.
Thanks again Trog601
Bonjour, Me too ! We were so damn lucky beyond imagination. Remember Wild is the wind .. ?? ❤
Wowwwwwww
energy is palpable band is on fire and the Thin White Duke busting out the goods. thanks for sharing, I'm grateful to experience this show!! as he says after Space Oddity- Terrific!!!!
I saw '83 in Lang Park, Brisbane. This brought back not just memories, but the feelings that were felt in the body. ❤
17:34 OMG THOSE LEGS ARE SO SICKKKKK
IT SEEMS LIKE MAGIC 😲
I have the Vancouver, BC dvd press of this same tour. It's a great capture and maybe the band was even a little tighter and more glittery that night. But it's missing several key songs that this show _does_ have. "Modern Love" being the most noticeable omission. Bravo to the uploader. I have a reason to get my Gen X friends together again, put on this show on the big screen and reminisce just how lucky and sadly oblivious we were as spotty teenagers to have this great music in our lives.
My pleasure Lauren, I think we were all oblivious back then. Have a great reunion if you can get your friends together and enjoy the memories from that time. So hard to believe it can be that long ago
Saw him at the 1983 US Festival and this tour several times. David Bowie will never be duplicated. He was just that great and innovative. In the states, Peter Frampton played with the band, just an added bonus to the genius that was David Bowie. He is SO missed.
Saw this tour in Scotland. Best day ever until I saw him again at Live Aid and again ..... and again 🖤💙💙
The time signature starts slow, speds up, slows again, and ends fast.
Live music, gotta love it.
I saw this 1983 tour four times - The US Festival in May in San Bernardino, 2 nights in August at The Forum in Inglewood, and 1 night in September at Angel Stadium in Anaheim with Madness and The Go-Go's. What a great year that was. How I miss the 80's.
US festival and Anaheim also
Awesome!!! Youre super cool
I caught the Anaheim show. I was 15 and had been a Bowie fan since I was about 6, thanks to my older brother and sister.
I got two tickets and ended up going with a friend who had just turned 16 and gotten his driver's license.
His mom and dad had recently divorced. The father left the house and became a swinging single. A new Porsche 928. Shirts with wide lapels and gold chains.
He was a short man with a fur rug of chest hair he always exposed.
He had bought my friend a brand new Toyota 4WD with a custom paint job. He was always spoiling him after the divorce.
Bobby wasn't supposed to let anyone drive it. Because I had got the tickets etc. I talked him into letting me drive it to the show. Lol.
Here we are 15 and 16 shit faces drunk swerving all the way to the stadium. Only a half hour from where we lived in Whittier.
I don't remember a lot of the show except I cried during Life On Mars.
Madness was ok. Go-Gos were so so.
But Bowie was ....well Bowie, simply magnificent. lol
All in all, I saw Bowie a total of nineteen times from 1974 to 2004. This includes one Tin Machine show at the Hollywood Palladium in December, 1991. Thanks for the positive replies.
Saw this in Adelaide, couldn’t believe he was actually there…loved every minute
It was 40 years ago last night that I saw his first North American show of Serious Moonlight in Quebec City. There were 8000 people and I was against the rail right in front of his microphone. Absolutely the best show I’ve ever seen!
Great story tks for sharing I was there!!! I remember this concert so well unreal!!!! This is gold as it is the only rare footage available aah the memories of the thin white Duke RIP Sir David Bowie you were so ahead of the times❤❤❤
What a fabulous concert!
Thanks for the devotion to get this gem out here for all of us unworthy masses. This was one of his best touring years and best bands for sure.
Thanks for that Tom, so glad you appreciate it.
Thank you for posting this video and fixing it. This tour has my favorite live versions. I remember having an old VHS version of this tour, which I loved.
I saw him at Edinburgh on this tour at Murrayfield Stadium. I was 15 and bunked- off school. Happy days!
His singing is glorious this evening.
In many respects its enjoyable to watch a live performance which hasn't been digitally remastered...
Amazing Tour . Original Chic Drummer Tony. Thompson on Drums
YES! I've Been looking for this show for years. Thank you!
Glad you have found it after all these years.
Wow, what a precious piece of concert history! Thank you so very much for posting this!
Thanks for adding chapter markers - I wish more videos did this.
Thanks Peter
I’ve seen him in concert a number of times and this was one of my favorite tours!
Thanks for posting. I saw this tour at a 23,000 seat indoor arena in Cleveland. This brings backs plenty of good memories.
The Richfield Coliseum! So many great memories there.
Earl Slick is fucking amazing!
Considering this is 1983 Bowie's show still looks modern, never lazy in performance Bowie did shows that were always way more than just hearing the music
Thank you for taking the time to digitize and remaster the audio. It was an amazing show, I missed them all growing up and it's incredible to see Bowie, Carlos Alomar, and Earl Slick so young, energetic and powerful. It really captures the time as well. Love this.
Someone needs to remaster and rerelease this tour. The Serious Moonlight tweaked versions of his older hits were amazing
It's an amazing concert❤❤❤ Thank you for sharing🙏
Saw this show at nec Birmingham 5th row seats (still amazed by my luck postal application as well) superb buzz because of the world wide hits. Greatly missed been a fixture forever oldest brother saw ziggy tour at hard Rock in Salford. Next brother saw alladin sane I've seen every tour until last tour in uk never will see him again unless we developed an avatar show! Thanks for post. Brilliant work alan
Great version of "Let's Dance" with extended Sax solo.....thanks so much for uploading.
Been a Bowie fan since I was a teenager, but I was just a wee lad, when this concert occurred.
🙏👌👍💐💐💐...THANKYOU Trog 601 for this precious concert. If it wasnt for you, we wouldnt be enjoying this. Kiss& hug! ❤...I miss him terribly. I even have dreams of him. A gentleman 100%✝️
Thanks Barb, my absolute pleasure.
Fantastic to see. I was at the Wellington concert a few days later. Would be even greater to a retored version one day.
This is gold! Bowie the one, forever present.
I saw this tour in the USA. I still have the program I bought at the concert!
David was always the consummate performer....
He is so beautiful in this era. I wish I was able to see this live.
This is brilliant.thanks for uploading 😎
the power on stage! The performance! The art from mars, David Bowie.
I had a motorcycle accident that summer. Had tickets and missed this tour and Talking Heads '83 Summer Tour. I did go to Simon and Garfunkel on crutches.
YEAH DAVID YOU DIED AT THIS DAY AT 2016 REST IN PEACE YOUR MUSIC LIVES ON
Yes! I went to Yokohama Stadium Japan concert. 1983 Serious Moonlight tour. that was my first concert experience. Thanks for sharing!!!
Tony Thompson is one of my favorite all time drummers, yet sadly little live footage exists. Thank you!!!
Agreed. This is probably Tony’s best live performance on CZcams. You can hear Tony but he’s hidden behind his cymbals a lot. There’s Live Aid with Power Station & Led Zep. Meh. You’re right. Tony was amazing!
@@foodog777 And such a shambolic performance. Would’ve loved to heard that properly
Wow Wow Wow what a find many thanks my friend
One of the greatest tours ever CHEERS
Absolutely amazing show, brings back so many memories. I saw this tour at the old Winnipeg Stadium back in 1983 and it was my first really big concert (I was only 12). It really is a blurry haze of colours and sound at this stage of my life (I do remember massive clouds of pot smoke in the stands and being freaked that I'd become a druggie or something. Ah the naivety of youth ;)). Anyways the story behind this video is just as great, one of those chance things where everything came together and years later you were generous enough to share it with the rest of us CZcamsrs! This gives me hope that there might be more holy grails of unreleased concert shoots out there (PInk Floyd's original Wall and Animals tour are ones that I'd be looking for personally). Way better than the official release and complete to boot! Thank you. :)
Thanks for that and it was my absolute pleasure to share this after all these years.
I notice you mention about seeing him when you were 12 years old. It must have been a global thing, because when you look at the front row of the Sydney show @ 28:16, I know it was at the Sydney Showgrounds, but the average age here looks about 12 as well (ok, maybe 14!)
@@Sunbirds2soarwith I'm laying here in bed with this amazing gem playing on my tv almost exactly 40 years after I saw the show live at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto September 83. I was exactly 14yo going into grade 9 and wore my serious moonlight tour shirt from the concert on the first day of high school. Thought I was the coolest kid in school cuz of that shirt! 😀 Amazing memories! He and his genius are truly missed. Thx so much.
Awesome Show Thank You so much sharing!
@Trog601 Thank you. What an unexpected time journey you made possible by posting this!
Great song brings back memories
And fashion of the 80tys, so cool!
Saw this at the Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton on a perfect gorgeous summer day. One of the best outdoor concerts I've ever attended. 40 year anniversary in just a couple weeks!
This is just so awesome. Thank you, @Trog
David Bowie Live | 1983 | Sydney | Serious Moonlight Tour---From Wikipedia ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The Serious Moonlight Tour was a worldwide concert tour by English musician David Bowie, launched in May 1983 in support of his album Let's Dance (1983). The tour opened at the Vorst Forest Nationaal, Brussels, on 18 May 1983 and ended in the Hong Kong Coliseum on 8 December 1983; 15 countries visited, 96 performances, and over 2.6 million tickets sold. The tour garnered mostly favourable reviews from the press. It was, at the time, his longest, largest and most successful concert tour to date, although it has since been surpassed in length, attendance and gross revenue by subsequent Bowie tours.
Background and development--
In 1980, David Bowie had released his album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), at the time expecting to support the album with a tour. However, the murder of John Lennon in December 1980 deeply affected Bowie[a] and as a result, he cancelled his tour plans and withdrew to his home in Switzerland where he became a recluse and continued working. Consequently, the Serious Moonlight Tour was Bowie's first tour in 5 years.
This tour, designed to support Bowie's latest album Let's Dance, was initially designed to be a smaller tour, playing to the likes of sub-10,000-seat indoor venues around the world, similar to previous Bowie tours. However, the success of Let's Dance caused unexpectedly high demand for tickets: there were 250,000 requests for 44,000 tickets at one show, for example, and as a result the tour was changed to instead play in a variety of larger outdoor and festival-style venues. The largest crowd for a single show during the tour was 80,000 in Auckland, New Zealand, while the largest crowd for a festival date was 300,000 at the US 83 Festival in California. The tour sold out at every venue it played.
Bowie used boxing (of which he was a fan) to get in shape for the tour. His son Duncan Jones pointed out years later that "Each round [of boxing] is approximately the same length as a song, so if you can get your cardio up enough to do a full 12 or so rounds, you’re ready to go!"
Set design--
Initially, Bowie worked with Derek Boshier to design the stage for the tour, as Boshier had designed the artwork for the Let's Dance album itself. The design proposed by Boshier was an "extravagant design reminiscent of the Diamond Dogs set with multiple platforms and levels, rotating prisms revealing different backdrop designs on each facet, and a gigantic cartoon figure of Bowie with a guitar", but this was rejected as too expensive, so instead Bowie worked with Mark Ravitz to come up with what was the final design, which included four giant columns (affectionately referred to as "condoms") as well as a large moon and a giant hand. Ravitz had designed the set for Bowie's 1974 Diamond Dogs Tour, and would work on Bowie's next touring set as well, the 1987 Glass Spider Tour.
The Serious Moonlight stage was deliberately given a vertical feeling (especially due to the columns) and an overall design that Bowie called a combination of classicism and modernism. The weight of one set (of which there were two) was 32 tons. Lighting the set were 40 Vari-Lites, some of which were set horizontally across the stage, which allowed them to "create set-piece landscapes" for certain songs.Bowie used the musicians he'd newly collaborated with on Let's Dance, along with some longer standing collaborators, including Carlos Alomar who was the designated tour band leader. Stevie Ray Vaughan, who had contributed guitar solos to six of the songs on Let's Dance and who was up and coming, was to join the tour, also to please the American audience. Early rehearsals were held in Manhattan without Vaughan and Bowie, and were overseen by Alomar. Rehearsals moved to Las Calinas, Texas in April, where Bowie and Vaughan joined the band, but Vaughan showed up with a cocaine habit, a hard-partying wife and an entourage looking for easy access to drugs. Given that Bowie himself had moved to Berlin in the late 1970s to try and kick his own cocaine habit, Bowie and Vaughan's management failed to come to an agreement on how to temper the situation, and in the end Vaughan pulled out of the tour. Bassist Carmine Rojas called Vaughan's release "one of the most heartbreaking moments he had ever witnessed on the road, Stevie left standing on the sidewalk with his bags surrounding him." Bowie, who was in Europe promoting the album and tour when the disagreement arose, did not have a say in Vaughan's departure.This happened less than one week before the tour's opening night, and as a result, Vaughan's replacement Earl Slick spent the next few days in his hotel room, learning all of the 31 songs on the setlist.
Each band member wore a costume which was designed "down to the smallest detail", as if a character in a play. Two sets of each person's costumes were made and worn on alternate nights, and everyone got to keep one set at the conclusion of the tour as a souvenir. The bands' costumes were a nod, a "slight parody", on all the New Romantic bands that were growing in popularity at the time.
Song selection-
Faced with high demand for tickets for the tour, Bowie decided to play his more recognizable songs from his repertoire, saying a few years later that his goal was to give the fans the songs that they'd heard on the radio over the past 15 years, calling the setlist a collection of songs that the fans "probably didn't realize when added up are a great body of work". Bowie and Carlos Alomar selected an initial list of songs for the tour, 35 of which they rehearsed for the tour. One song that was on the rehearsal's song list that never actually got to the rehearsal stage was "Across the Universe", which Bowie had covered in 1975 on his Young Americans album. The setlist for the tour was the basis for the track list for the 1989 box set Sound + Vision. Some of Bowie's less well-known songs, such as "Joe the Lion" and "Wild Is the Wind" were performed only on early dates of the tour.
Tour performances--
David Bowie on stage during the 1983 tour
Various artists opened for Bowie across different legs, including UB40, Icehouse, The Tubes, The Beat and Peter Gabriel. To counteract counterfeiting, tickets and backstage passes were printed with small flaws that casual observers would not notice, but tour staff and security were trained to spot.
On 30 June 1983, the performance at the Hammersmith Odeon in London was a charity show for the Brixton Neighbourhood Community Association in the presence of Princess Michael of Kent.[The show raised nearly £100,000 for charity (about £330,000 in today's currency), and was performed without the standard set. The 13 July 1983 Montreal Forum performance was recorded and broadcast on American FM radio and other radio stations worldwide, and it was from this concert that the live version of "Modern Love" was recorded. The concert on 12 September in Vancouver was recorded for the concert video Serious Moonlight, that was released in 1984 and on DVD in 2006. There were discussions to release a live CD from these performances as well, but that idea was later discarded.
At the Canadian National Exhibition Stadium performance on 4 September 1983 in Toronto, Bowie introduced special guest Mick Ronson, who borrowed Earl Slick's guitar and performed "The Jean Genie" with Bowie and band. Mick had only been asked to play the day before when he had been backstage at the previous night's show, and he later recalled:
I was playing Slick's guitar ... I had heard Slick play solos all night so I decided not to play solos and I just went out and thrashed the guitar. I really thrashed the guitar, I was waving the guitar above my head and all sorts of things. It was funny afterwards because David said, 'You should have seen [Earl Slick's] face...' meaning he looked petrified. I had his prize guitar and I was swinging it around my head and Slick's going 'Waaaa... watch my guitar', you know. I was banging into it and it was going round my head. Poor Slick. I mean, I didn't know it was his special guitar, I just thought it was a guitar, a lump of wood with six strings.
The last show of the tour, on 8 December 1983, was the third anniversary of John Lennon's death, whom Bowie and Slick had previously worked with in the studio. Slick suggested to Bowie a few days prior to the show that they play "Across the Universe" as a tribute; but Bowie said, "Well if we're going to do it, we might as well do 'Imagine'." They rehearsed the song a couple of times on 5 December (in Bangkok) and then performed the song on the final night of the tour as a tribute to their friend. PERSONNEL --- David Bowie - lead vocals, guitar, saxophone
Earl Slick - guitar
Carlos Alomar - guitar, backing vocals, music director
Carmine Rojas - bass guitar
Tony Thompson - drums, percussion
Dave Lebolt - keyboards, synthesizers
Steve Elson - saxophones
Stan Harrison - saxophones, woodwinds
Lenny Pickett - saxophones, woodwinds
George Simms - backing vocals
Frank Simms - backing vocals
Coming up to a 40th Anniversary of this concert and I was only 16 years old...My Serious Moonlight idol... who shines on all us everyday! (Other: The full moon was only a week ago is Australia)
I enjoyed this so much.
This has My Whole Attention! I'm Shaking listening To Bowie!
Tony Thompson!!!!
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Thank you for posting this great concert.. I love David Bowie
Wow I can't believe this 🤩
Not everyone likes pop star era Bowie but the Serious Moonlight tour might just be his best live outing
Great document; similar set, better if anything, than the abridged Vancouver show on this tour that was shown in a 1 hour slot on HBO, with no encore. It was released as a 90 minute VHS home video, with some songs, (Ashes to Ashes, What in the World, Breaking Glass), restored, but still missing at least 20 minutes, primarily those encores. I was only 13 in 1983, just getting into Bowie, and I didn't get to see him on this tour at Madison Square Garden in New York City. I got to see him twice in 87 on the overblown and not as great Glass Spider tour, but then in 1990 he was just phenomenal on the"greatest hits" tour Sound and Vision, starting out the night at Giants Stadium with Space Oddity, Rebel Rebel, Ashes to Ashes, Fashion, and Life on Mars. I sure wish I could see him again....BTW I've been watching this video on my phone and it sounds great; I can't remember anything I've played that way sounding more clear and achieving such high volume on the lousy phone speaker!
I still want a DVD!
Hi Ardent, contact me at trog26@gmail.com.
amazing David , amazing musicians......... ❤💔.......... forever in our heart ......
What a great back story! So glad you made a copy.
I used to know a sound engineer in the UK who decides to start doing his own feeds of shows off the desk onto cassette tapes back in the 80s.
His ex wife threw most of then out when they divorced but he had a few that were in a separate box like Springsteen and U2 which are now out there in tape traders land. A lot of his lost recordings were post pink stuff and new romantic era shows.
This is the concert I missed ! ❤
I would kill to see station to station live.
I just had the two last tickets for Brussels (worst National). Great show. Don't forget the great Carlos Alomar.! thx for sharing.
Congratulations a superb tape . The main reason the quality is so good thankfully your dub is on Beta . This was/ is always way better than VHS .
Absolutely right David, that was why I used it at the time. My only regret is I hadn't bought a HiFi Stereo model at that point, so the transfer was in linear mono. The good thing was that I didn't have a new Betamax unit to play this on after this, so it wasn't watched until recently and therefore not worn (though these is some deterioration caused by age unfortunately).
Great band Bowie had with him
Saw this tour at Sullivan Stadium in Foxboro MA. A great show.
this has so many of my favorite songs!!! 😳💖💕💗
Earl Slick is on fire
21.May 1983.
My first Bowie Concert.
Today, 41 years ago
Thank you. I bow to you!