Steve Reich: When I met David Bowie

Steve Reich: When I met David Bowie

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norman lebrecht

January 12, 2016

Just posted:

I have great admiration for David Bowie. We only had a few moments of contact. One was back in 1976 when he was at Music for 18 Musicians in Berlin and then made his beautiful Weeping Wall. Years later at the Bottom Line in 1978 during the ECM ’18’ release concert we finally met and I was invited to see David Bowie on Broadway in The Elephant Man. His performance was riveting as one watched this incredibly handsome man create a character of freakish ugliness.

More recently I was struck by his deeply sad yet commanding voice in the Love is Lost remix with Clapping Music. I’m proud to have made even a minutely small contribution to David Bowie’s incredibly varied and influential musical output. He was an absolutely brilliant and original artist whose impact was felt across many mediums.

Reich’s page carries no mention of Pierre Boulez.

Steve Reich

Comments

  • Martin Thomas says:

    “Reich’s page carries no mention of Pierre Boulez.”
    Er…and your point is?

  • Joe says:

    No Boulez? I see it as not surprising at all, knowing what I know of Reich, and also an unnecessary comment to even mention. Reich’s eventual musical direction may have been an intentional rejection of the stranglehold that Boulez’s attitude to music may have had on academia, but on that subject, Reich has said what he needed to say, years ago. Just because Boulez has passed doesn’t mean Reich should be required by anybody to dredge up what is to him 45 year old ancient history.

  • Eddie Mars says:

    [[Reich’s page carries no mention of Pierre Boulez.]]

    Nor need it. A forgotten figure in his own lifetime. His bullying and abuse of other composers was a disgrace.

  • Nicola Lefanu says:

    ==“Reich’s page carries no mention of Pierre Boulez.

    And in March 2015, Slipped Disc made no mention of PB’s 90th birthday, despite the promptings of many regular contributors !

  • CDH says:

    Well, Alex Ross’s has enough for both of them, but makes no mention of Bowie.

    Is this supposed to make either of them a bad person?

  • Dave T says:

    “I’m proud to have made even a minutely small contribution to David Bowie’s incredibly varied and influential musical output.”

    I’d look at it as the other way around but I guess SR is being gracious.

  • Nicola Lefanu says:

    Can’t Eddie Mars be blocked ? I’d thought that entries were monitored.

    • Glenn Hardy says:

      Blocked? Based on this comment? Nonsense. There are posters who regularly post diatribes and hateful comments, who are never blocked. Perhaps Eddie Mars has a track record with which I am not familiar, but I see nothing particularly inflammatory about this comment. I don’t think you’ll have to look too far afield to find others who were put off by PB”s tiresome and often snide putdowns of other composers. And it is not just rubes or dilettantes who would deny Mr. Boulez a place in the first rank of composers.

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