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Serious Moonlight Tour

Serious Moonlight Tour
Tour by David Bowie
The Serious Moonlight Tour promotional poster
Location
  • Europe
  • North America
  • Asia
  • Oceania
Associated albumLet's Dance
Start date18 May 1983
End date8 December 1983
Legs8
No. of shows96
David Bowie concert chronology

The Serious Moonlight Tour was a worldwide concert tour by the English musician David Bowie, launched in May 1983 in support of his album Let's Dance (1983). The tour opened at the Vorst Forest Nationaal, Brussels, on 18 May 1983 and ended in the Hong Kong Coliseum on 8 December 1983; 15 countries visited, 96 performances,[1] and over 2.6 million tickets sold.[2] It was the biggest tour of the year 1983.[3] The tour garnered mostly favourable reviews from the press.[4] It was, at the time, his longest, largest and most successful concert tour to date, although it has since been surpassed in length, attendance and gross revenue by subsequent Bowie tours.

Background and development

In 1980, David Bowie had released his album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), at the time expecting to support the album with a tour.[5][6] However, the murder of John Lennon in December 1980 deeply affected Bowie[a] and as a result, he cancelled his tour plans and withdrew to his home in Switzerland where he became a recluse and continued working.[5][6] Consequently, the Serious Moonlight Tour was Bowie's first tour in 5 years.

This tour, designed to support Bowie's latest album Let's Dance, was initially designed to be a smaller tour, playing to the likes of sub-10,000-seat indoor venues around the world, similar to previous Bowie tours. However, the success of Let's Dance caused unexpectedly high demand for tickets: there were 250,000 requests for 44,000 tickets at one show, for example, and as a result the tour was changed to instead play in a variety of larger outdoor and festival-style venues. While reviewing the album the week following its release, the Billboard Magazine stated that "Bowie's first tour in five years would only enhance sales fire".[7]

The largest crowd for a single show during the tour was 80,000 in Auckland, New Zealand, while the largest crowd for a festival date was 300,000 at the US 83 Festival in California. The tour sold out at every venue it played.[1]

Bowie used boxing (of which he was a fan) to get in shape for the tour. His son Duncan Jones pointed out years later that "Each round [of boxing] is approximately the same length as a song, so if you can get your cardio up enough to do a full 12 or so rounds, you’re ready to go!"[8]

Set design

Initially, Bowie worked with Derek Boshier to design the stage for the tour, as Boshier had designed the artwork for the Let's Dance album itself. The design proposed by Boshier was an "extravagant design reminiscent of the Diamond Dogs set with multiple platforms and levels, rotating prisms revealing different backdrop designs on each facet, and a gigantic cartoon figure of Bowie with a guitar", but this was rejected as too expensive, so instead Bowie worked with Mark Ravitz to come up with what was the final design,[9] which included four giant columns (affectionately referred to as "condoms") as well as a large moon and a giant hand.[10] Ravitz had designed the set for Bowie's 1974 Diamond Dogs Tour, and would work on Bowie's next touring set as well, the 1987 Glass Spider Tour.[11]

The Serious Moonlight stage was deliberately given a vertical feeling (especially due to the columns) and an overall design that Bowie called a combination of classicism and modernism. The weight of one set (of which there were two) was 32 tons.[1] Lighting the set were 40 Vari-Lites, some of which were set horizontally across the stage, which allowed them to "create set-piece landscapes" for certain songs.[9]

Tour rehearsals and musicians

Earl Slick performing in November 1983 during the Serious Moonlight Tour

Bowie used the musicians he'd newly collaborated with on Let's Dance, along with some longer standing collaborators, including Carlos Alomar who was the designated tour band leader.[1][10] Stevie Ray Vaughan, who had contributed guitar solos to six of the songs on Let's Dance and who was up and coming, was to join the tour, also to please the American audience.[12] Early rehearsals were held in Manhattan[1] without Vaughan and Bowie, and were overseen by Alomar.[9] Rehearsals moved to Las Calinas, Texas in April,[4] where Bowie and Vaughan joined the band,[9][13][14] but Vaughan showed up with a cocaine habit, a hard-partying wife and an entourage looking for easy access to drugs.[15] Given that Bowie himself had moved to Berlin in the late 1970s to try and kick his own cocaine habit,[16][17] Bowie and Vaughan's management failed to come to an agreement on how to temper the situation, and in the end Vaughan pulled out of the tour.[12] Bassist Carmine Rojas called Vaughan's release "one of the most heartbreaking moments he had ever witnessed on the road, Stevie left standing on the sidewalk with his bags surrounding him."[18] Bowie, who was in Europe promoting the album and tour when the disagreement arose, did not have a say in Vaughan's departure.[18] This happened less than one week before the tour's opening night, and as a result, Vaughan's replacement Earl Slick spent the next few days in his hotel room, learning all of the 31 songs on the setlist.[18]

Each band member wore a costume which was designed "down to the smallest detail", as if a character in a play.[19] Two sets of each person's costumes were made and worn on alternate nights, and everyone got to keep one set at the conclusion of the tour as a souvenir.[4] The bands' costumes were a nod, a "slight parody", on all the New Romantic bands that were growing in popularity at the time.[1]

Song selection

Faced with high demand for tickets for the tour, Bowie decided to play his more recognizable songs from his repertoire, saying a few years later that his goal was to give the fans the songs that they'd heard on the radio over the past 15 years, calling the setlist a collection of songs that the fans "probably didn't realize when added up are a great body of work".[20] Bowie and Carlos Alomar selected an initial list of songs for the tour, 35 of which they rehearsed for the tour.[1] One song that was on the rehearsal's song list that never actually got to the rehearsal stage was "Across the Universe", which Bowie had covered in 1975 on his Young Americans album.[4] The setlist for the tour was the basis for the track list for the 1989 box set Sound + Vision.[21] Some of Bowie's less well-known songs, such as "Joe the Lion" and "Wild Is the Wind" were performed only on early dates of the tour.[22]

Tour performances

David Bowie on stage during the 1983 tour

Various artists opened for Bowie across different legs, including UB40, Icehouse, The Tubes, The Beat and Peter Gabriel.[23] To counteract counterfeiting, tickets and backstage passes were printed with small flaws that casual observers would not notice, but tour staff and security were trained to spot.[1]

On 30 June 1983, the performance at the Hammersmith Odeon in London was a charity show for the Brixton Neighbourhood Community Association in the presence of Princess Michael of Kent.[23] The show raised nearly £100,000 for charity (about £400,000 in today's currency), and was performed without the standard set.[23] The 13 July 1983 Montreal Forum performance was recorded and broadcast on American FM radio and other radio stations worldwide, and it was from this concert that the live version of "Modern Love" was recorded.[24] The concert on 12 September in Vancouver was recorded for the concert video Serious Moonlight, that was released in 1984 and on DVD in 2006.[24] There were discussions to release a live CD from these performances as well, but that idea was later discarded.[24]

At the Canadian National Exhibition Stadium performance on 4 September 1983 in Toronto, Bowie introduced special guest Mick Ronson, who borrowed Earl Slick's guitar and performed "The Jean Genie" with Bowie and band.[24] Mick had only been asked to play the day before when he had been backstage at the previous night's show, and he later recalled:

I was playing Slick's guitar ... I had heard Slick play solos all night so I decided not to play solos and I just went out and thrashed the guitar. I really thrashed the guitar, I was waving the guitar above my head and all sorts of things. It was funny afterwards because David said, 'You should have seen [Earl Slick's] face...' meaning he looked petrified. I had his prize guitar and I was swinging it around my head and Slick's going 'Waaaa... watch my guitar', you know. I was banging into it and it was going round my head. Poor Slick. I mean, I didn't know it was his special guitar, I just thought it was a guitar, a lump of wood with six strings.[4]

The last show of the tour, on 8 December 1983, was the third anniversary of John Lennon's death, whom Bowie and Slick had previously worked with in the studio. Slick suggested to Bowie a few days prior to the show that they play "Across the Universe" as a tribute; but Bowie said, "Well if we're going to do it, we might as well do 'Imagine'." They rehearsed the song a couple of times on 5 December (in Bangkok) and then performed the song on the final night of the tour as a tribute to their friend.[4]

Legacy

David Bowie in a 1983 promotional picture

The tour was a commercial high point for Bowie, who found his new popularity perplexing. He later remarked that, with the success of Let's Dance and the Serious Moonlight Tour, he lost track of who his fans were or what they wanted.[25] One critic would later call this tour his "most accessible" because "it had few props and one costume change, from peach suit to blue."[26]

"The 'Blond Ambition' tour, as we ended up calling it, in 1984 [sic] was pretty good," Bowie conceded in 2003. "We'd booked it before everything went huge and it really was quite innovative. It was the first big theatrical-show-type tour there had been. Madonna and Prince came to see it and it had an influence."[27]

The 26 November show in Auckland became – at the time – the most attended concert in the Southern Hemisphere with over 80,000 people in attendance.[28]

Bowie specifically tried to avoid repeating the Serious Moonlight Tour's successful formula for his 1987 Glass Spider Tour.[29]

Set list

This is the set list from the performance in Vancouver, Canada, on 12 September 1983. It's not intended to represent all shows throughout the tour.[30]

  1. "Look Back in Anger"
  2. "Heroes"
  3. "What in the World"
  4. "Golden Years"
  5. "Fashion"
  6. "Let's Dance"
  7. "Breaking Glass"
  8. "Life on Mars?"
  9. "Sorrow"
  10. "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)"
  11. "China Girl"
  12. "Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)"
  13. "Rebel Rebel"
  14. "White Light/White Heat"
  15. "Station to Station"
  16. "Cracked Actor"
  17. "Ashes to Ashes"
  18. "Space Oddity"
  19. "Young Americans"
  20. "Fame"
  21. "Red Sails"
Encore
  2. "Star"
  3. "Stay"
  4. "The Jean Genie"
  5. "Modern Love"

Personnel

A black and white photograph of three men, one is wearing a wide-brimmed black hat.
Stevie Ray Vaughan (middle) and his band Double Trouble in 1983: Vaughan was originally slated to be the guitarist on the tour before being replaced by Earl Slick.

Tour dates

Date City Country Venue Attendance (approx)
Europe
18 May 1983 Brussels Belgium Vorst Forest Nationaal
19 May 1983
20 May 1983 Frankfurt West Germany Festhalle
21 May 1983 Munich Olympiahalle
22 May 1983
24 May 1983 Lyon France Palais des Sports de Gerland 23,615[31]
25 May 1983
26 May 1983 Fréjus Les Arènes 28,937[31]
27 May 1983
29 May 1983 Nantes (Cancelled) Le Beaujoire
North America
30 May 1983 San Bernardino United States US Festival
Glen Helen Regional Park		 300,000[1]
Europe
2 June 1983 London England Wembley Arena 23,162-27,000[31][32]
3 June 1983
4 June 1983
5 June 1983 Birmingham National Exhibition Centre 22,000[32]
6 June 1983
8 June 1983 Paris France Hippodrome D'Auteuil 120,000[1]
9 June 1983
11 June 1983 Gothenburg Sweden Ullevi Stadium 101,000[32]
12 June 1983
15 June 1983 Bochum West Germany Ruhrstadion 33,843[31]
17 June 1983 Bad Segeberg Freilichtbühne 24,150[31]
18 June 1983
20 June 1983 West Berlin Waldbühne 22,245[31]
24 June 1983 Offenbach am Main Bieberer Berg Stadion 24,720[31]
25 June 1983 Rotterdam Netherlands Stadion Feijenoord 101,311[31]
26 June 1983
28 June 1983 Edinburgh Scotland Murrayfield Stadium 47,444[1]
30 June 1983 London England Hammersmith Odeon 2,120[1]
1 July 1983 Milton Keynes Milton Keynes Bowl 174,984 (over all 3 nights)[1]
2 July 1983
3 July 1983
North America
11 July 1983 Quebec City Canada Colisée de Québec 14,400[1]
12 July 1983 Montreal Montreal Forum 32,547[31]
13 July 1983
15 July 1983 Hartford United States Hartford Civic Center
16 July 1983
18 July 1983 Philadelphia The Spectrum 64,235[31]
19 July 1983
20 July 1983
21 July 1983
23 July 1983 Syracuse (Re-scheduled) – Carrier Dome
25 July 1983 New York City Madison Square Garden 57,820[31]
26 July 1983
27 July 1983
29 July 1983 Richfield Richfield Coliseum
30 July 1983 Detroit Joe Louis Arena 37,268[31]
31 July 1983
1 August 1983 Rosemont Rosemont Horizon
2 August 1983
3 August 1983
7 August 1983 Edmonton Canada Commonwealth Stadium 60,000[33]
9 August 1983 Vancouver BC Place
11 August 1983 Tacoma United States Tacoma Dome 20,000[34]
14 August 1983 Inglewood The Forum
15 August 1983
17 August 1983 Phoenix Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum
19 August 1983 Dallas Reunion Arena
20 August 1983 Austin Frank Erwin Center
21 August 1983 Houston The Summit
24 August 1983 Norfolk Scope Cultural and Convention Center 21,370[1]
25 August 1983
27 August 1983 Landover Capital Centre 29,371[1]
28 August 1983
29 August 1983 Hershey Hersheypark Stadium 25,230[1]
31 August 1983 Foxborough Sullivan Stadium 60,000[1]
3 September 1983 Toronto Canada Canadian National Exhibition Stadium 101,239[31]
4 September 1983
5 September 1983 Buffalo United States Buffalo Memorial Auditorium
6 September 1983 Syracuse Carrier Dome
9 September 1983 Anaheim Anaheim Stadium 67,401[31]
11 September 1983 Vancouver Canada Pacific National Exhibition Coliseum
12 September 1983
14 September 1983 Winnipeg Winnipeg Stadium 34,816[31]
17 September 1983 Oakland United States Oakland Alameda Coliseum 57,920[1]
Asia
20 October 1983 Tokyo Japan Nippon Budokan 42,984[31]
21 October 1983
22 October 1983
24 October 1983
25 October 1983 Yokohama Yokohama Stadium 25,989[31]
26 October 1983 Osaka Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium
27 October 1983
29 October 1983 Nagoya Kokusai Tenji Kaikan 10,064[31]
30 October 1983 Suita Expo Commemoration Park
31 October 1983 Kyoto Kyoto Prefectural Gymnasium
Oceania
4 November 1983 Perth Australia Perth Entertainment Centre 23,063[31]
5 November 1983
6 November 1983
9 November 1983 Adelaide Adelaide Oval 18,409[31]
12 November 1983 Melbourne VFL Park 37,914[31]
16 November 1983 Brisbane Lang Park 26,757[31]
19 November 1983 Sydney RAS Showgrounds
20 November 1983 25,000[1]
24 November 1983 Wellington New Zealand Athletic Park 50,000[1]
26 November 1983 Auckland Western Springs Stadium 80,000–90,000[1]
Asia
3 December 1983 Singapore Singapore Former National Stadium
5 December 1983 Bangkok Thailand Thai Army Sports Stadium 9000-14,981[35][31]
7 December 1983 Hong Kong Hong Kong Hong Kong Coliseum
8 December 1983

Song list

Notes

  1. ^ Bowie and Lennon became friends in the mid-1970s and collaborated with each other for "Fame" and a cover of Lennon's Beatles song "Across the Universe", both released on Bowie's 1975 album Young Americans

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Flippo, Chet (1984). David Bowie's Serious Moonlight : The World Tour. Doubleday & Company, Inc. ISBN 978-0-385-19265-1.
  2. ^ Pimm Jal de la Parra, David Bowie: The Concert Tapes, P.J. Publishing, 1985, ISBN 90-900100-5-X
  3. ^ Pegg 2016, p. 582.
  4. ^ a b c d e f David Currie, ed. (1985), David Bowie: The Starzone Interviews, England: Omnibus Press, ISBN 978-0-7119-0685-3
  5. ^ a b Pegg 2016, pp. 662–664.
  6. ^ a b Buckley 2005, p. 325.
  7. ^ "Billboard's Top Albums Picks: David Bowie - Let's Dance" (PDF). worldradiohistory.com. 16 April 1983.
  8. ^ @ManMadeMoon (23 February 2020). "Posted this to someone else, but it applies here too... It's a great way to train for tours and dad did train this way for this tour. Each round is approximately the same length as a song, so if you can get your cardio up enough to do a full 12 or so rounds, you're ready to go!" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  9. ^ a b c d Pegg 2016, p. 577.
  10. ^ a b Edwards, Henry; Zanetta, Tony (1986), Stardust: The David Bowie Story, 1986, ISBN 978-0-07-072797-7
  11. ^ Albrecht, Leslie (24 August 2016). "Former David Bowie Set Designer Keeps Park Slope Building Dripping with Art". DNAInfo.com. Archived from the original on 14 September 2016. Retrieved 29 August 2016.
  12. ^ a b Gregory, Hugh (2003). Roadhouse Blues: Stevie Ray Vaughan and Texas R&B. Backbeat. pp. 75–76. ISBN 9780879307479.
  13. ^ Scapeletti, Christopher (11 January 2016). "Hear David Bowie and Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1983 Rehearsal". Guitar Player. Retrieved 17 May 2016.
  14. ^ "Soundboard Recordings of Stevie Ray Vaughan's 1983 Rehearsal with David Bowie in Dallas Texas". Forgotten Guitar. 17 May 2016. Retrieved 17 May 2016.
  15. ^ Barres, Pamela Des (1996). Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon. St. Martin's Press. p. 259. ISBN 9780312148539.
  16. ^ Mastropolo, Frank (11 January 2016). "The History of David Bowie's Berlin Trilogy: 'Low,' 'Heroes' and 'Lodger'". Ultimate Classic rock.
  17. ^ Wilcken, Hugo (2005). Low. New York: Continuum. p. 24. ISBN 978-0-8264-1684-1.
  18. ^ a b c Pegg 2016, p. 578.
  19. ^ "In Which It Is Neither The Plane Nor The Pilot". thisrecording.com.
  20. ^ Morse, Steve (July–August 1987), "David Bowie (Cover Story)", In Fashion Magazine, 3 (10): 151, 153
  21. ^ Rougvie, Jeff (15 November 2015). "It Was 26+ Years Ago Today Part 3 & Maybe 4 & 5, too". JEFF ROUGVIE HUB. Retrieved 15 March 2019 – via Squarespace.
  22. ^ Pegg 2016, p. 579.
  23. ^ a b c Pegg 2016, p. 580.
  24. ^ a b c d Pegg 2016, p. 581.
  25. ^ Pond, Steve (March 1997), "Beyond Bowie", Live! Magazine: 38–41, 93
  26. ^ Cohen, Scott (September 1991), "From Ziggy Stardust to Tin Machine: David Bowie Comes Clean", Details magazine: 86–97
  27. ^ Lowe, Steve (March 2003). "Q200 – David Bowie". Q. No. 200. p. 62.
  28. ^ "Billboard Magazine" (PDF). 28 January 1984. p. 7. Retrieved 14 December 2016. David Bowie's 'Serious Moonlight' Tour of Australia and New Zealand ` .. eclipsed all previous concert attendance records Down Under. More the 80,000 people attended the final Australasian concert in Auckland. That's the single biggest concert ever in the Southern Hemisphere. 1nact, the audience outnumbered the fifth largest city -in New Zealand.
  29. ^ Graff, Gary (18 September 1987), "Bowie Is Back, And Bolder Than Ever His Controversial Glass Spider Tour Proves The Ageless Rocker Is Still Full of Surprises", The Orlando Sentinel, archived from the original on 29 October 2013, retrieved 28 May 2013
  30. ^ Pegg 2016, pp. 640–641.
  31. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w "David Bowie said "Let's Dance"" (PDF). Billboard. 24 March 1984. p. 7. ISSN 0006-2510. Retrieved 11 April 2024.
  32. ^ a b c "EMI, RCA Dancing For Joy Over Bowie's 'Moonlight' Tour" (PDF). Billboard. 17 September 1983. pp. 9–76. Archived (PDF) from the original on 22 January 2021. Retrieved 11 April 2024.
  33. ^ "David Bowie's 1983 Edmonton concert was once Alberta's biggest". edmontonjournal.com. 12 January 2016.
  34. ^ "David Bowie played Tacoma as the first rock performer at the Dome". thenewstribune.com. 13 January 2016.
  35. ^ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: "สารคดี โบวีในกรุงเทพ แขกรับเชิญคุณ อัมพร จักกะพาก BOWIE IN BANGKOK - THE PROMOTER - full interview". YouTube.

Sources

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