Ahead of his appearance at the 2024 David Bowie Convention in Liverpool, I talk to legendary guitarist Carlos Alomar.
AS: What was the major creative shift when you were working with Bowie?
CA: When I look back on our albums with Bowie, particularly the run of Station To Station, Low, ‘’Heroes’’, and Scary Monsters , it was all about the DAM Trio—our rhythm section leading the way.
We replaced the Spiders From Mars when Bowie came to America in 74, 75, it changed everything. What you have to remember is that the brand of The Spiders From Mars was so great, that no-one really understood that this man [Bowie] suddenly had a three-piece jazz rhythm section, an all-black power trio, and the [Berlin] Trilogy really gave us the opportunity to perform at our greatest, really great rock and roll music—a lot of those songs could have been on Station To Station!
When Bowie was doing the Trilogy, it became clear that there were other influences at play, Eno and Fripp and all that stuff. We have to remember, respectfully, that during that Berlin era it made sense for electronic music to lead the way. In time, rock music became overshadowed by the arrival of the computer, but also, it never went away.
Silhouettes And Shadows: The Secret History of David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps
AS: What was it that made the DAM Trio stand out?
CA: If you think about it, most bands used to have a piano player. Nothing against it, Mike Garson is a great piano player—but I’m thinking of the Diamond Dogs album, and the Philly Dogs soul tour—‘he’s got those ten fingers, and he wants to use all of them!’
Traditionally, the piano is the bandleader, everyone follows their chords, with Bowie we didn’t have that. It’s through jazz that the rhythm section got changed from piano, bass and drums to move towards guitar, bass and drums, and that’s where I come from, that old school.
AS: That is ironic, given the range of session players on Bowie albums, particularly piano players. I’m thinking Rick Wakeman on “Life On Mars” and Mike Garson adding so much wild jazz to Aladdin Sane.
Scary Monsters is full of guest appearances from a number of artists, including the major label debut of synth guitarist, Chuck Hammer, ex-King Crimson maestro, Robert Fripp, who is –literally– all over that album, but also Roy Bittan, of the E-Street Band. How did all these collaborations come about?
CA: There was a lot of that spontaneity, back then. We were recording at the Power Plant studio, so named because it used to be an old power station. And this kind of things happens a lot – especially in New York city. You never know who is going to be next door in Studio B. So Springsteen happened to be there, along with his pianist, Roy, so he stepped over to our side and did his thing.
As the rhythm section, we left all these little holes for guest musicians to come in. I never got to meet most of these people; but I would love to meet Robert Fripp and Hammer and shake their hand, and I hope that they would shake mine.
AS: What was the jumping-off point for you to work with Bowie again in 1980?
CA: When Bowie talked to me about doing this new album it made sense, I was like: ‘dude, you gotta let us loose, you gotta unleash us, man!” The goal was that we could finally let it go. Once I started to work with the band on some of the ideas and arrangements that Bowie had. We were just flipping beats and going crazy—those sessions propelled everything back to square one!
AS: What makes Scary Monsters so different?
CA: The japanese primal scream that opens the first song shows Bowie’s intention on that record. Lodger had gone down in a certain kind of way; and I think Scary Monsters was a break from that. It’s one of those questions: are you running away from something, or are you running towards it? David knew where he was going, and he did everything he wanted to, and each of those albums were steps that defined his future direction. Scary Monsters was a big launchpad for this. I also love the crazy dynamic of those lyrics, as well.
“As a band we were fucking relentless“
AS: Low is quite…well, low, in mood. And “Heroes” is really intense, almost schizophrenic in its approach. What did you make of the more slick, poppy style of Scary Monsters, alongside its intense politically charged motivations, because despite that intellectual weight, they’re not songs that bring you down?
CA: Well, you have to remember the studio is more sophisticated than most people think. What is the beat of a dance song? What will make you shake your butt? There are moments when that metronome changes, you stop moving, and you have to pay attention to the lyrics.
AS: Where did all that UP creative energy of Scary Monsters come from?
CA: As a band we were fucking relentless, and the goal of this record was to hit them right between the eyes. Bowie just wanted that power, to let that raw power ring, so we talked about songs like “Joe The Lion” and “Blackout”, the quirkier faster songs of the Trilogy. “Up The Hill Backwards” —are you kidding me?! That’s not Bo Diddley, that’s in 5/4 time, a few chords with a flipped beat. Bowie never wanted to go back to the simple Bowie, like when he asked Dennis Davis for a closing beat so he would know where to come in with his vocal.
“There are no problems—only challenges!”
There’s all these little tricks being done on the album. For one song, we asked George Murray: ‘hey, whenever you get back to the pattern, don’t play the first note—just to see if he could get there—and of course—he could. All these little things are what make music a challenge—remember—there are no problems, only challenges!
AS: I heard rough demos / studio outtakes on the Vampires Of Human Flesh bootleg, and while it’s the same urgency of the final record in there, it’s really stripped-back and the sound is rougher, more raw.
CA: Yes, lots of our earlier working versions were punkier, hammered-out. And older song ideas, “I Am A Laser” [a demo from Bowie’s short-lived soul trio with Geoff McCormack and Ava Cherry, The Astronettes] became “Scream Like A Baby”. We musicians do that kind of stuff to the audience all the time. You take the chords with a certain sentiment and you invert them; does it change the sentiment of the song, or does it make you feel the same? You know “Stay” from Station To Station and you hear “John I’m Only Dancing”, the alternate version from the Young Americans sessions—well, there you go!
AS: How was it working alongside Tony Visconti again as the album’s producer?
CA: Bowie was always down for all this craziness, and you have to remember that the hidden member of a band is the person who says ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to an idea. I think for Visconti this album really became the benchmark for all of the other techniques he had been working on with the other Trilogy albums.
Every song had to be better than what we’d done before!
But when it came to the DAM Trio, it was me and David, I would be able to translate his ideas and give it back to the other members. Although you see ‘produced by…’ on the record sleeve, Eno and Visconti were never really talking to us about the music. Except when Eno came in and wanted to conduct us with his methodologies and Tony with his effective placement in the studio.
We [The DAM Trio] would form ideas, David would love it, and make suggestions where we should change things, it became this lovely way of working to keep working and get this power that we wanted—every song had to be better than what we’d done before!
AS: How did you come about getting to Ashes To Ashes, a weird song that gave Bowie another number one hit?
CA: We were looking for something that had a lot of call-and-response, that’s why it had that weird kind of funk. The thing about funk is it can be fast or slow, but it has to have holes, space—no holes, no funk.
Then, the trick was to make it poppy. That ‘bom-ba-bom/ba-bom-ba-bom’ swing behind the verse, know where I got that from? The fucking Captain and Tennielle, “Love Will Keep Us Together” — it doesn’t get any poppier than that follower melody.
AS: How long and intense was the process; being in the studio, jamming out songs and making changes all the time?
CA: We went through a lot of stuff, but as usual, I don’t think that album took more than three weeks. We were really fast, and when you have a calibre of session musicians like this—we don’t play around.
With Scary Monsters, the intention was to show and prove!
Here’s another thing about working with Bowie. He would say: ‘don’t just give me ten songs for this record, give me fifteen songs’. First, this gives you a broad range of music that hopefully proves the concept of what you were trying to achieve with the record, but it also gives you these neat outtakes, should you ever need to release the album again.
AS: Scary Monsters would be Bowie’s last record with RCA?
CA: They had given him hell with the trilogy records. So he was like ‘fuck you’ see what you can do with this one! He was out to prove them wrong; it had to be great in order to make his point. With Scary Monsters, the intention was to show and prove! Give them a hit – they have to promote it – then walk off and get a new record deal. Then RCA went ahead and put out a final compilation record—they were no dummies!
AS: Bowie expressed a lifelong fascination with Buddhism, I hear this in some of the later songs and it strikes me as an interesting coincidence that a lot of the people he worked with such as you and Tony Visconti are Buddhists—did you talk about religion much?
CA: The thing about Buddhism is that it doesn’t necessarily show; and that depends on what you think a Buddhist acts like? Am I calm, peaceful, do I avoid pursuing the things I want with aggression? Maybe that’s reflective of it, but it doesn’t tell you whether I’m a Buddhist or not.
David had that nature that wanted to teach and inspire people, but not to tell them what or how to think. Ambiguity is an important aspect of Bowie, and songwriting in general. Do not give away what the song is about in the first verse for fear of losing half of your audience. Don’t tell them explicitly what you mean with the first chorus, because they need to understand subjectively what that chorus means to them, it should be by the second and third verse, when more information is revealed, then they understand your message, in their own way.
It’s the same with Buddhism. You don’t hit people over the head with it. If you like a load of mantras that sound good to you: ‘the good of a gift is for those who give it’, ‘there are no problems, only challenges” you take it with you, and you repeat it—it’s like a Confucious cookie! Although we speak about Buddhism, the message of it is to find another way, to be a sponge, it’s about changing the way that things affect you.
It encourages a calming nature, and I think David knew that if he came to me with that calming nature, I could never say no to anything! If you say ‘Yes’ to everything, then the adventure continues—I believe in odysseys.
Carlos Alomar will be appearing alongside his DAM Trio bandmate, George Murray, at the 2024 David Bowie World Fan Convention on several panels talking about all aspects of their work with David Bowie. The event will take place 26-28 July in Liverpool, UK
For tickets and more information, visit the Bowie Convention website.
Adam Steiner is the author of Silhouettes And Shadows, a deep dive into the making of Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) he will appear as a co-moderator at The David Bowie Convention with video editor, Nacho in discussion about the album with Carlos Alomar and George Murray.
Silhouettes And Shadows: The Secret History of David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)
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