“He said no to us, like, two or three times”: The three bands David Bowie refused to work with
One of the greatest aspects of David Bowie’s celestial stardom was that, despite being discreetly singular, he welcomed so many people into his oeuvre that he created his own little bohemian world.
When you peered into his work, you didn’t just become a fan of David Bowie; you became a fan of everything and everyone he was a fan of, in turn. It was like meeting a friend who turns you onto their own diverse interests. In fact, it is, without doubt, one of Bowie’s greatest attributes as an artist that he wasn’t unhinged by his own sense of individualism and was happy to celebrate the artistic vision of others.
He welcomed Brian Eno into his world and turned legions of fans onto Roxy Music. He compiled a list of 100 books to read before you die and had his horde of literary fans flocking towards Yukio Mishima, readily drawing comparisons between Bowie and the Japanese writer, or laughing away at Viz‘s DIY comedy that he also adored.
It seemed to be his singular aim as an artist to turn the world’s attention towards progressive, new culture. His hits were merely the medium he used to gain the necessary attention to do so.
As he put it himself, “I suppose for me as an artist, it wasn’t always just about expressing my work; I really wanted, more than anything else, to contribute in some way to the culture I was living in.” Behind Bowie’s influence was pure intent. With it, he has shaped the culture of today.
As for the nature of influence itself, “I think what happens is you look at somebody and maybe something you had as a small seed in your own mind, you see that somebody has extended that or gone quite a long way with it,” he said, recognising how his art was being picked up and reshaped by others, much in the same way that he had done with William S Burroughs, Lou Reed, and plenty of others before them.
“You think ‘Yeah that person is doing what I really like to do… ‘so that kind of influence I’m proud, if I have been influential on people in that way,” he humbly posits, “That’s really good.” It’s also a mark of his timelessness that even in his passing, the influence, if anything, has only grown more profound. No wonder Johnny Marr claimed that he is by far and away the most important British artist in history.
His worldly outlook also makes it noteworthy when he chose not to extend his influence to certain areas. For a man so collaborative, you could almost argue that a snub was the inverse of the come-hither he extended to the likes of Roxy Music, Mishima and Viz; you could argue he was sending a signal to his fans to stay away from the spurned bands listed below, just in his own respectful British way..
Three bands David Bowie turned down:
Red Hot Chili Peppers
There is no doubt that the Californian funk rockers loved David Bowie, particularly during his Berlin trilogy period. That much is evidenced by the way they not only badgered the Starman to produce them but also tried their hand at attracting Brian Eno. “In the beginning, we would call him, and he would say no, respectfully,” Anthony Kiedis told KLOS.
After a while, the phone line went quiet, but that didn’t stop them. Later, we would write long emails explaining everything and why it was time for us to really get our ships on, and he always respectfully declined.” This left them saddened and dismayed but unperturbed. ”We asked him to produce By the Way, as we were writing By the Way, and then we asked him again for our next record, which was Stadium [Arcadium],” the persistent Kiedis continues.
”He said no to us, like, two or three times,” he recalls. So, they changed tact and angled for a further string of rejections from one of his associates. ”His mate [Brian] Eno, who we’ve also been asking our entire career to please produce a record for us, has said no eight times. All good. You gotta ask. And by the way, ‘no’ is a reasonable answer. It’s one of a couple of answers you could get, and it’s acceptable,” he eventually concluded.
Nevertheless, take a hint, gents. And put on a shirt while you’re at it.
Coldplay
At this stage, who the fuck wouldn’t turn down Coldplay? The Lib Dems? Glastonbury? About half a billion fans? Aside from those candidates, there aren’t many people proudly backing the band. But, as ever, Bowie was ahead of the curve on this front. He shunned the group back in the weird old days when they were being dubbed the new Radiohead. With that favourable wind behind them, they boldly decided to throw caution and perhaps decency to the wind and simply send the ‘Life on Mars’ singer a demo and asked whether he’d like to put some vocals on it.
“It’s not a very good song, is it?” was Bowie’s comic response. The band did bother to inquire whether that meant a yes or a no. Unlike their Californian counterparts in the Red Hot Chili Peppers, they left it at that. “He was very discerning – he wouldn’t just put his name to anything. I’ll give him credit for that,” the ‘Fix You’ band’s Will Champion told NME in a curiously self-incriminating admission.
The group remained firm fans of Bowie all the same. I mean, what would they have done if they held a grudge? Give him a nasty papercut? Or inquire with the ombudsman?
Dave Grohl / Foo Fighters
“David Bowie provided an indelible addition to the soundtrack of my life from an early age,” Dave Grohl wrote upon Bowie’s tragic passing in 2016. He grew up listening to the Starman and had his world turned upside down in 1997 when Foo Fighters were invited to be special guests at Madison Square Garden to mark Bowie’s 50th birthday.
“So when he walked (levitated?) onstage that night, I felt as if I were being visited by another life form,” Grohl later wrote of the incident. In amongst the amazement, he even managed to secure Bowie’s email address. This is an administrative slip-up that the Starman would live to regret. He did warn us about the dangers of the internet, after all.
He hung onto this until 2014, when he was working on potentially putting together a soundtrack to a blockbuster that remains mysteriously unnamed. He’d cut a few demos and figured Bowie would be perfect for one of the tracks. Sadly, the singer replied that the project was “not his thing”. Grohl figured that was as good as a British ‘maybe’, so he kept going. After an everlong back-and-forth, Bowie decided to put a blunt end to it all and said, “All right, now that’s settled, then fuck off.”
It took a beat for Grohl to realise it was a ‘no’, but he was, to some extent, joking. “With every muscle in my body loosening from the crippling anxiety of the past few minutes, I sunk back into my living room chair, born again. Hallelujah! I could finally breathe knowing that David Bowie did not actually wish me to ‘fuck off’ (or maybe he did, but in the nicest way possible, and even that was an honour),” he recalled.
