Recorded: 30 August 1987
Producers: David Bowie, Aisha Cohen, Nigel Reeve
Released: 31 July 2007
Personnel
David Bowie: vocals, guitar
Carlos Alomar, Peter Frampton: guitar, vocals
Carmine Rojas: bass guitar
Erdal Kızılçay: keyboards, trumpet, congas, violin, vocals
Richard Cottle: keyboards, saxophone, tambourine, vocals
Alan Childs: drums
Tracklisting
Glass Spider was first released in 2007 as part of a special edition package containing a DVD of David Bowie’s 1987 world tour of the same name, and a two-CD set recorded in Montreal, Canada.
The concert footage, directed by David Mallet, was initially released on VHS in 1988. Mallet filmed eight shows during the tour’s stop in Sydney, with much of the material taken from the 6 November show. The resulting film ran to just under two hours, and was shorter than a typical Glass Spider concert.Songs for the Glass Spider Tour were absolutely fun, especially performing ‘Chant Of The Ever Circling Skeletal Family’, ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’, ‘Loving The Alien’, ‘Sons Of The Silent Age’, ‘Bang Bang’, ‘Time’, and a few from the album which translated quite well live, like ‘’87 And Cry’, ‘Never Let Me Down’, ‘Time Will Crawl’, and ‘Beat Of Your Drum’. The live concert video is a very good representation. We really worked hard on the material.
David Bowie: Ultimate Record Collection (Uncut)
The Sydney film was reissued on DVD, with remixed audio, in 2007. There was a standard edition, and a special edition with the live double album.
The bonus album contained an almost-complete show recorded more than two months previously, at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium on 30 August 1987. The audio, originally recorded for radio broadcast, omitted encores of ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ and ‘White Light/White Heat’, but contained six songs not included on the video.
A different live set, titled Glass Spider Live, was released in the Netherlands in 2008 on vinyl and double CD. This took the Sydney audio from the original VHS mix, and was an unofficial release.
Glass Spider was reissued in 2018 as part of the Loving The Alien (1983-1988) box set. It was retitled Glass Spider (Live Montreal ’87) and had new artwork.
in the Sydney concerts and I was at all 9 Charlie Sexton was in town and that’s why I wanta be your dog was on there. Charlie came out for the encore. I believe this was the first concert ever to use radio mics and they had only five channels so 5 mics. Every single show was different which you wouldn’t know unless you saw them all but it was due to theatrical issues, early shows just had numbers left out and about show 4 on there were delays as they tried to fix it often more than 10 minutes. I hear the set was meant for Stadiums and the Sydney Entertainment centre at the time was too small for the set. At this time he still had his apartment in Elizabeth Bay a Sydney suburb and I’m sure he stayed there. He lived in Sydney on and off. At the time there was no online at all and I and others slept outside the Entertainment Centre to get front row tickets for the first 2 concerts that went on sale. So worth it and he was so good and we didn’t see him again until he played 2 concerts at the same venue with the reality tour where I think he was at his best.
A small correction about the personnel: Charlie Sexton was never part of the Glass Spider Tour band. This is a common misunderstanding as he is included in the official tour video, but he was only a special guest for the encores at that show in Sydney. I think he might have been supporting act in some shows in the States, but he never played with Bowie at Montreal or any other shows apart from Sydney. Source: listen to the band introduction from the Montreal recording and you’ll hear all the band members and no Charlie.
Ps. Thanks for a great website.
Thanks Anders – now corrected.