Mike Garson

My dad was watching Journey one night.

I went out, I woke up to go get water, and, and he's watching Journey perform Wheel in the Sky, and he said, "Hey, Mike, come sit down with me." And he's like, "Check out this new band." I'm like, "Who are these guys?"

Yeah.

But my dad was a big influence.

And I, I love them.

Yeah.

I love White Lion, and e- you know, I love Mike, I love Greg, I love James, who I worked with, James LoMenzo.

Uh, but especially loved Vito.

I get to speak Russian, I get to scratch the strings inside the piano, and hum, and very theatrical.

And Mike Garson, who's actually a rock and roll legend, he was the pianist for David Bowie, he wrote a piece for me called "A Psalm to Odessa." So that one doesn't have any words, but it kind of, you know, it marks Odessa, connects everything to Odessa.

And, uh, so all of this new music on the album, [lips smack] I decided, well, I need something familiar, because I always like to do that.

I like to include music that people have heard, that they know, and that makes them comfortable, because that makes them much more open to hear new music.

So they took bassist Gail Ann Dorsey and, uh, drummer Sterling Campbell's rhythm section to rearrange it.

They put some loops on Mike Garson's piano, and they manipulated s- uh, Earl Slick's guitar sound, and then took some of the backing vocals, cut up and reassembled them, which kinda created this digital fake backing track.

And then on top of that, they added new backing vocals.

Hmm.

There's some great moments on it.

The piano is Mike Garson, isn't it? That's it, yeah.

Who is a big part of the sound.

But yeah, it's not for me as consistent as something like Diamond Dogs, for example, which on some days is my favourite of his 70s albums.

I...

Like, the piano bashing in '65 is great, but also what Mike Garson is doing with the piano in the, the Toy version is very hooky, and I think is one of the m- more interesting instruments in the mix.

And I do like the breakdown towards the end of the song on, on the Toy version.

I just feel like it doesn't really lead anywhere, which is kind of disappointing.

Because of the, you know, length of tracks on the album, they had to cut something, so they cut Conversation Piece, and it came out as a B side in 1970 to the song The Prettiest Star.

And the, uh, Toy recording came out as a bonus track on, uh, Heathen special edition or whatever.

Mike Garson said that this was one of his favorite Bowie compositions of all time.

Gail Ann Dorsey, the bassist on the album, loved this song as well, and is considered by other authors to be the jewel of the Toy session.

On drums, Sterling Campbell, who had played on 1993's Black Tie White Noise and 1995's Outside.

On keyboards, Mike Garson, who had started with Bowie during the American leg of the 1972 Ziggy Stardust Tour and had played on Bowie albums up until Young Americans.

He was reunited with Bowie in 1993 and had been a mainstay ever since.

On backing vocals were Holly Palmer and Em Grinner, who had just started with Bowie in 1999.

I was terrified.

And I walk in and there's Carlos Alomar and there's Mike Garson.

There's all those names from the albums that in my album collection as a teenager.

And I'm going, I'm in the room with these people now.