David Bowie Keyboardist Mike Garson: ‘He Was a Chameleon’

He followed through.
He did. He called me in 2006 and said, “Mike, do you think we should go out again? I’m getting a lot of pressure.” I said, “David, only if you’re feeling it.” Now I screwed myself up because I wanted to play, but I knew he wasn’t feeling it. He told [drummer] Sterling [Campbell] a year later, “You know, I’m just not feeling it.” Knowing him so well, if he went out there and didn’t feel it, it could be a nightmare. I’d been on some tours where he didn’t want to be there, or he didn’t like the promoter. We were in Moscow at the Kremlin [in 1996] and he hated it because the first few rows was all Russian mafia. I did all the interviews and he just stayed in his room. He hated it, and he’s not fun to be with when he’s pissed. But most of the time, it was joyful.

I remember one time back in the 1990s, he said to me, “Mike, I have all this fame and money, but it doesn’t mean shit to me. I could live out of a suitcase and have a small apartment and be just fine.” I don’t think he was bullshitting me. He had this simplicity, which I think came from Buddhism. One time he said to me, “Mike, you wouldn’t want the fame that I have. You don’t really have your own space.”

Did you talk to him much in the past few years?
I didn’t talk to him much about things like that. A few months ago, we were talking about Nina Simone. I wrote to him and asked if he’d seen the new documentary [What Happened, Miss Simone?]. We both love Nina Simone and were talking about that. A little while ago, a biographer writing a book about me had me listen to more than 50 songs I’d recorded with David, some really obscure. I listened to them all and was blown away. I’d never heard them all at once, and many of them I hadn’t heard since we made them. I wrote to David and told him about it. He immediately wrote back, “We did some amazing, wonderful work. What a great body of work we did, Mike.” But I got the creepiest feeling, like it was the final thing he’d ever say to me. This was nine months ago. 

Did you have any idea he was sick?
No. He never told me. Tony Visconti might have been the only person to know outside of his family.