The David Bowie song that “really touched” Jeff Beck
Only once in their careers did the late Jeff Beck and David Bowie collide. The historical event occurred at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1973, the same night Bowie famously put Ziggy Stardust to sleep for good, downgrading Beck’s appearance to a footnote.
Towards the end of the show, Beck was welcomed with open arms to the stage to assist Bowie with a rendition of ‘The Jean Genie’. They also covered ‘Love Me Do’ by The Beatles and ‘Around and Around’ by Chuck Berry before Beck left the podium to allow Ziggy to appropriately close the show in shocking style with ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’.
Decades later, while discussing the show on BBC Radio 2 with Johnnie Walker, Beck revealed that he’d never considered the possibility of performing with Bowie until the opportunity arose. He explained how Angie Bowie contacted his girlfriend to organise the appearance, and initially, the guitarist was reluctant to accept the offer.
“I didn’t want to do it. I thought, ‘Well, got nothing else to do’. And I went and played. I just really, honestly, to this day, I don’t know what I was doing up on that stage, really. But I found out later that Bowie wanted me in his band. I was probably on a tour somewhere; I couldn’t do it,” he explained.
Beck added: “But what an experience playing to his fans. So I’ll never forget that. Then we saw quite a lot of each other, actually. I’ve had a Chevy pick-up, and we were in the middle of Soho. The whole place was besieged with fans, and I just realised who was sitting next to me, amazing.”
As their lives changed, naturally, they saw less of each other, but Beck’s admiration for Bowie’s immense talent never wavered. During an interview in 2016, the legendary guitarist explained how ‘The Starman’ continued to influence his artistry and name-checked ‘Where Are We Now?’ from The Next Day as a personal favourite.
On the track in question, Bowie reflects on his days living in Berlin throughout the 1970s, which he released as the lead single from his 2013 album The Next Day on the singer’s 66th birthday. Tony Visconti, who produced the track, described ‘Where Are We Now?’ to the BBC as “very reflective” and “very melancholy”.
Taking to Rock Cellar in 2016, after Bowie’s death, he explained how the song significantly impacted him during the making of his album Loud Hailer. “I’d been digging into the sidebars of the tragedies of 9/11 and the aftermath and realised that somebody had to do something positive out of that. It wasn’t just one particular aspect of it, though. Because there are so many unanswered questions. But mostly, for me, it was, ‘Where are we headed?'”
He continued: “I remember when I first heard the David Bowie song, ‘Where Are We Now?’, it really touched me. I became super strung up, thinking about everything that’s happening in the world. So meeting these two girls, especially the singer, who is incredibly expressive and also wrote the lyrics, was more than I could wish for to help unfold some of it.”
Listen to ‘Where Are We Now?’ below.
