Glass Spider (Live Montreal ’87)

Recorded: 30 August 1987
Producers: David Bowie, Aisha Cohen, Nigel Reeve

Released: 31 July 2007

Personnel

David Bowie: vocals, guitar
Carlos Alomar, Peter Frampton, Charlie Sexton: 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.

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.