David Bowie 1972-09-28 New York ,Carnegie Hall (only one track) – SQ 10

David Bowie 1972-09-28 New York ,Carnegie Hall (only one track) -
Sound Quality Rating Excellent sound

01 My Dead .flac

Incidentally RCA recorded this concert for the aborted Ziggy Stardust live album and while it was never released “My Death” from this concert is able to be heard today as it was included on RARESTONEBOWIE (1995).

At 9pm following a taped introduction from "A Clockwork Orange", Bowie and the Spiders made their entrance to a standing ovation from the audience. "Hello," said David Bowie...." starting his 90 minute set.

Setlist
"Hang Onto Yourself"
"Lady Stardust"
"Moonage Daydream"
"Five Years"
"Suffragette City"
"Changes"
"Life on Mars?"
"Queen Bitch"
"Starman"
"Andy Warhol"
"My Death"
"Space Oddity"
"Width of A Circle"
"Waiting for the Man"
"White Light - White Heat"
"Round and Round"

Bowie was initially dressed in a multi-coloured jumpsuit and would make one more costume change (to a gold and black checkered jumpsuit) halfway through the concert. In addition to the white strobe light which was used for the opening number, two more strobes (coloured red) were used to highlight David's face so that the audience could see his expressions change with every musical moment.

Bowie was very frightened that he was going to physically break down during this concert due to a 48 hour influenza bug that he and some of his entourage were suffering from. However, the concert was very successful despite this and few people noticed that it impeded his singing or stage theatrics. Timothy Ferris (Rolling Stone), though, due to Bowie's flu, described the show as only a "pallid imitation" of those he had seen earlier in Cleveland and Memphis. When Ferris interviewed Bowie after the concert he noted that Bowie's:/

"...flu had progressed to its stupefaction stage .... He responded to questions in the flu sufferer's manner, with a blank stare into space for about the time it takes to ride a bicycle up a long hill, followed by a fretful harvest of words..."

It was reported that it took a while for Bowie and the Spiders to build momentum but they were soon in stride and during "Starman" there were accounts of some of the audience (including Angie and Cyrinda Foxe) dancing in the aisles.

"Sound. Its swells like the booming of surf on a deserted shore. Ziggy and the Spiders. And there's Ronno, on his knees in front of the idol whose fame Bowie covets. The sexual movements are explicit and everybody is happy because it is happening just as it was reported by NME. Carnegie Hall is for a moment Wolverhampton. You can't fault the music. Or the group. They play hard, muscular chords, sharp and choppy, the tempo a futuristic quick-step that induces the adrenaline to flow. And Bowie as Ziggy cries to the crowd, head back, sweat running in glistening rivulets down the creases of his thin neck, staining his uniform. Put Your Space Face Close To Mine, Luv. Ronno rips off the chords. It's the first Bowie show with real power..." - Eric Van Lustbader (1976)

"They went ape-shit. The place really rocked. It was fabulous, the best, the only comparison was The Rainbow Show" - Will Palin

When Bowie introduced his song "Andy Warhol" he had a smile on his face, realizing that Andy Warhol was in the audience. This is "for all the blondes in the audience" he said. After about seven numbers Bowie and Mick Ronson perched on stools for the acoustic numbers which included Jacque Brel's "My Death" - which some mistook for "Port of Amsterdam". He introduced "My Death" with the words:

"We are going to cut some of the acoustic numbers down because I'm having a little trouble as you can hear, I may not finish this one...This is by Jacques Brel" - Bowie

Incidentally RCA recorded this concert for the aborted Ziggy Stardust live album and while it was never released "My Death" from this concert is able to be heard today as it was included on RARESTONEBOWIE (1995).

Before he sang "Waiting For the Man" Bowie told the audience "This is like bringing coals to Newcastle" - a reference to his next two songs being written by New York's own Lou Reed. Trevor Bolder's bass amplifier blew out during "White Light - White Heat" but the group kept going.

A five minute standing ovation was accorded Bowie before he and the Spiders returned for "Round and Round" - the encore. Ellen Willis of the New Yorker was seen standing on her chair enthusiastically applauding at the end of the show. Bowie finished with a smile, and a sincere "thank you" to the audience.

info from The Ziggy Stardust Companion:

Bowie's history, September the 28th 1972.
David Bowie has generated so much publicity with his Ziggy Stardust concerts that he sells his debute at New York's Carnegie Hall.
"I suppose the standard show for us at the time was our debut at Carnegie Hall. We had played only a couple of US shows before this one and hadn’t really felt as though we’d found our feet. I had a very bad ’flu and had been dreading the concert, not sleeping well the night before as I thought I would be giving a rather sluggish show and didn’t know if my voice would hold. The audience was packed with faces including Warhol, Tony Perkins and the newly-formed New York Dolls, as well as a huge amount of press.
As it happened, we did a pretty good show and both the audience and press liked us. In fact, we really were very popular on both coasts and another bunch of shows were added, so we felt like everything was kind of swinging along.The night before the concert I had had my first big-time star interviewer, a guy called Alfred Aronowitz. I didn’t know what to think of him, this great big man, as he talked and talked about himself from the moment he walked in, right through dinner, until his departure. It was all, ‘So I advised Dylan to do such and such…’ and, ‘without my input The Grateful Dead wouldn’t have blah blah blah…’ He was unstoppable and he found every moment fascinating, I believe. As he left he said, ‘Oh, by the way, I won’t be going to your show tomorrow night. The Carnegie Hall people were very rude to me once.’ And, true to his word, he didn’t."

David Bowie
Moonage Daydream
"The show at the prestigious Carnegie Hall was an important one for us. The Beatles had played there twice in 1964 and to succeed in the US rock market it was important we were a success in New York. We definitely needed to deliver the goods on the night. Working against us was the fact that Bowie had caught flu the day before and he had had a pretty sleepless night. He wasn’t sure if he could muster the energy or even if his voice would hold out.
As our limo pulled up before the show we saw a giant searchlight outside the hall, which moved around lighting up the clouds and the tops of the skyscrapers, creating a Hollywood premiere feeling. It was a sold-out show and the guest list included Truman Capote, Todd Rundgren, Andy Warhol, Alan Bates, Tony Perkins and about a hundred British journalists plus US press.
We were all a little nervous before the show but we walked on after our usual Clockwork Orange intro tape to a standing ovation, which was a fantastic start. It looked like the biggest gig we’d done to date. This could have been due to the number of balconies, five in all, above the main seating area. We all rose to the occasion, including Bowie, despite his flu, though before one of the acoustic songs, Jacques Brel’s ‘My Death’, he did warn the audience he might not make it to the end vocally. Suffice to say, he did a great version of it. The show really rocked and the audience were with us all the way. Before returning for an encore of ‘Round And Round’ we received a five-minute standing ovation. The reviews were all positive and, because of the success of this gig, more concerts were added to the tour."

Woody Woodmansey
Spider From Mars: My Life With Bowie
"I was introduced to Trevor Bolder at the Carnegie Hall concert on Thursday, 28 September 1972, and all he could talk about was losing his job. He was concerned about being booted off the tour and asking if I thought that was going to happen and what might happen to him after there was no more Ziggy. I told him that he was a great bass player and I was sure he would find other work, but he was concerned about the expiration time coming up. It was sad in a way because he knew that it was coming to an end."

Josette Caruso
David Bowie: A Life, Dylan Jones
“When David Bowie made his Carnegie Hall debut last fall everybody from Albert Goldman to Andy Warhol was there plus a gaggle of weirdo’s expecting some kind of a British Alice Cooper. That’s not what they got. The concert opened as Bowie, in clockwork orange hair, came onstage amid flashing strobe lights, to the Mooged up strains of Beethoven’s Ninth. From there, except for a simulated sex act with silver haired guitarist Mick Ronson, it was a matter of music, ranging from hard rock laid down by Bowie’s band, the Spiders From Mars, to a Jacques Brel song with guitar accompaniment…” – Playboy (1973) A "Who's Who" of celebrities attended this concert including Truman Capote, Todd Rundgren, actors Tony Perkins & Alan Bates, Lee Radziwill (sister of Jackie Kennedy), Andy Warhol and the New York Dolls (with their respective entourages). There was also a very large press turnout. Every one of the British music papers was represented. RCA announced that more than 400 applications had been made for the 100 press passes available for this concert. However, there was also the suspicion that many of the audience had been "planted" by RCA and Mainman in order to help ensure a successful concert. While the other Ziggy Stardust concerts on this tour netted about US$20,000
each, according to Bowie's manager Tony De Fries, there was no financial return from the Carnegie Hall concert because it was largely a "paper audience" - so many tickets had been given away that it made no profit at all. . David Bowie debuts in Carnegie Hall.This story was written by Lillian Roxon.
Great heavens, what a night it was! Angela Bowie jitterbugging in the aisles, Geri Miller, the same one who jumped naked out of Mick Jagger’s birthday cake, rushing to the stage with a sheaf of gladioli. Every groupie who ever lived, male or female or simply undecided, clomping around self-consciously in giant wedgies and silver makeup, determined to be noticed. David Bowie was making his New York debut in Carnegie Hall and no one who was anyone, not even Dave Gahr, the Time magazine photographer, or Albert Goldman, rock critic of Life, was about to miss that.
When Bowie made his entrance to the strains of Beethoven’s Ninth straight from the soundtrack of “Clockwork Orange” and a blinding display of strobe lights, the room gave him a standing ovation.

True, a few oldies shuffled uncomfortably at the sight of the thin, pale boy with the bright red hair and the artful makeup and the shiny quilted outfit that was tight enough to get him an X-rating on the spot, but what the old men don’t know, the little girls, as usual, understand, and before he’d sung one note you knew he was going to conquer not just New York but all of America with effortless ease.
Unlike what’s been coming from England lately, this was a classy act. It had rock, raunch, an incredible spectrum of color (including several costume changes), movement so graceful it must have been choreographed, nicely spaced patches of purely emotional acoustic material, the best enunciation since Dames Judith Anderson, and just enough shock value to keep everyone talking for days.

The New York Daily News published this article on October 8, 1972.
Back in England, David’s whole thing has been to project a strange kind of sexuality that seems to cover all bases. Thus, while he is clearly most happily married to a girl who is almost (but not quite) as beautiful as he is, the climax of his act is a surrealistic sequence during which he seems to be making the wildest kind of erotic advances at his guitarist. This might be disturbing if the guitarist weren’t exactly the kind of person just about everyone in the audience is dying to make erotic advances at in the first place. So it works.
And it gives Bowie some of that decadent quality that a new act seems to need these days to get across fast. I mean, seriously, if you don’t wear makeup and dye your hair and make people sit up and look twice, you don’t belong in 1972 rock and that’s that.
But don’t be misled by any of this. Bowie is a veritable Nureyev when it comes to combining delicacy with sheer animal energy and power. He can get the whole room silent with an acoustic number like a Jacques Brel song and then have them up and bopping down the aisles and screaming a minute later.
He knows exactly how to pace a show, playing the emotions of the audience like a keyboard. Some of his own songs, though beautifully written, probably are too much alike, but the show itself is full of surprises – those two relentless red spotlights that never leave him, that expressive actor’s face with its million changes, those long brilliant instrumental that remind you everything else is for show but the music is for real, and that true showman’s gift for keeping an audience always slightly on tenterhooks.

David Bowie Tour Band - The Ziggy Stardust Tour
David Bowie – vocals, guitar, harmonica
Mick Ronson – guitar, vocals
Trevor Bolder – bass
Mick "Woody" Woodmansey – drums
Matthew Fisher – piano (20 Apr 1972 – 27 May 1972)
Robin Lumley – piano (2 Jun 1972 – 15 Jul 1972)
Nicky Graham – piano (1 Aug 1972 – 7 Sep 1972)
Mike Garson – piano, mellotron, organ (22 September 1972 – end of tour)
John Hutchinson – rhythm guitar, 12-string acoustic guitar (8 Apr 1973 – 20 Apr 1973 – 3 July 1973)
Aynsley Dunbar – additional drums (8 Apr 1973 – 20 Apr 1973)
Geoffrey A. MacCormack – backing vocals, percussion (19 January 1973 – end of tour)
Ken Fordham – saxophone (19 January 1973 – end of tour)
Brian Wilshaw – saxophone, flute (19 January 1973 – end of tour)

Crew
Robin Mayhew ,Will Palin ,Mick Hince ,Dean Heiser - Sound ,Ground Control ,Front of House Engineer ,Stage hands
Nigel Olliff, Nick Gilbey, Paul Normand and crew - Lights ,1972 Heavy Light ,1973 See Factor Industries NY Bob See ,Steve Hurston ,Mick Fussey
Peter Hunsley - Stage Equipment
Suzi Fussey - Wardrobe, Makeup and Hair

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