The song David Bowie gave to Adrian Belew
After revitalising his artistic drive with Tin Machine in the late 1980s, David Bowie sought to retire his back catalogue of hits for good with the 1990 ‘Sound + Vision Tour’. Initially, Bowie’s choice for guitarist and bandleader was his Tin Machine bandmate Reeves Gabrels. Gabrels declined but instead recommended a familiar figure to both him and Bowie: Adrian Belew.
Belew had made his name performing with acts like Frank Zappa, Talking Heads and King Crimson. He had also previously worked with Bowie on his ‘Isolar II Tour’ in 1978, eventually sticking around long enough to contribute to Bowie’s 1979 album Lodger. More than a decade later, Belew had returned to Bowie’s orbit.
When Belew got the call from Bowie, the guitarist was working on his 1990 studio album Young Lions. Bowie offered to help, and in the final tracklisting, Bowie is credited on two tracks. One is ‘Gunman’, which was a co-write between Belew and Bowie. The other was ‘Pretty Pink Rose’, a Bowie original that he gave to Belew.
“It was David’s very generous idea that since we would be touring together for a year he would do something on my record to help promote it,” Belew later recalled. “He sent me a demo of ‘Pretty Pink Rose’. It presented me with quite a dilemma at first because I didn’t like the demo! (I never told him) but I liked the song, so I went about recording an entirely different version of it and thankfully he loved it!”
“I sent him five tracks that didn’t have any vocals, and he sent me back a song called ‘Pretty Pink Rose’ that he hadn’t used but thought it might fit in with my album,” Belew added. “We went to record that in New York and because we’d been rehearsing for the tour, his voice was shot. He said, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t sing it today.’ I said okay, I’d work on another song that hadn’t got vocals and he could go home and rest. But he said, ‘Let me hear that.’ He began writing lyrics and about half an hour later, he’d finished a song called ‘Gunman’. I was amazed. He then went in and sang it two or three times and that was it.”
Bowie and Belew recorded the vocals together in a joint session. During the recording, Bowie began to improvise a vulgar monologue during the intro of the song. The original version of Bowie’s recitation was left off the final mix, but Belew resurrected it when he included ‘Pretty Pink Rose’ on his 2014 album Dust.
“David and I recorded the vocals with a stereo mic; him on one side, me on the other,” Belew explained. “It gave me chills. We started recording and while the intro began, in a dramatic voice David said into the mic, ‘She had tits like melons, it was love in the rain!’ – of course, it had to be left off the single.”
“The same evening we recorded the vocals for ‘Pretty Pink Rose’, we also recorded David’s vocals for ‘Gunman’. I had asked him to consider helping me finish the track. He sat in the studio control room with a legal yellow pad and in half an hour’s time he wrote the lyrics. I was amazed! I still have the original of his lyrics. Somewhere. It’s another track where I doubt I could replicate the guitar playing.”
Check out ‘Pretty Pink Rose’ down below.
