There has been an almost apocryphal memory that has stewed at the back of mind for the last 19 years. A long time ago. It was three years before the Millennium and pretty much nothing seemed wrong with the world, not like today. It seems an age away and as I look back the distance seems to stretch away into some kind of youthful haze.
In 1997 I went to a music festival and I didn’t watch David Bowie live.
That is the thought I have kind of chewed over since then. Of course, for a long time, it didn’t even register. Then in the last ten years, long enough for the actual long-term memory to fade into half-truth, it has bugged me more and more. For a long time, I even thought it was the V Festival of 2000, so any attempt to go back and check ended up with confusion and less recall than ever. The story I have told, to myself and others, was that I went to a festival and saw a number of bands – one of the acts was David Bowie. I watched a little bit but decided that I would rather go and see Sinead O’Connor.
From the more recent perspective, I kick myself every time I think that I had a chance to see the great man in performance and didn’t recognise the opportunity set before me. Now, there is nothing wrong with Sinead; for at that time she was in a kind of ‘Peak Sinead’ state and I was very much into Irish folksy stuff. Also, Bowie was touring with the Earthling set and although I liked the record I was not yet fully cognizant of what David Bowie meant. This was before the impact of Hours.. and Heathen. This was a time when Outside received almost no press coverage and Black Tie White Noise was a little too close to the Eighties for anyone in the Nineties to offer any respect. Plus, there was the Drum and Bass connection which was a little too closely linked to some very poor bands at the time, most just thought he had done a Drum and Bass album, so it didn’t fully register on my internal landscape.
I have tried to justify this over time, thinking that it was so very hot that Summer, pushing thirty degrees every day. I would tell myself that the crowd was too much and I couldn’t see; that I would rather have a good position with a lesser act, than stand in the crush. Maybe that was the case, but my memory fragments are quite clear. I can remember the stage setting. I can remember the jacket. I can almost remember some of the songs… almost… remember… the only tracks that really set in my mind were Scary Monsters and Little Wonder. I saw myself listening to two tracks and then wandering off into a tent that smelt of weed and armpits to look a bald lady.
This feeling has been with me. The idea of missing out. Looking left when history was happening to the right. You fool!
Re:call
Last weekend we spent the evening looking through a YouTube playlist of live performances and one of them caught my attention. It was Pheonix Festival 1997. Suddenly I remembered that it was not V Festival or anything like it. It was Pheonix ’97. There was only a small clip but I remembered the set. I remembered the jacket. It gave me a keyword to search for more. I looked and I found out some things…
There he is, David Bowie on the Sunday, headlining. There was Sinead too. There were photos, flyers, videos and set lists. It all came back.
SET LIST for DAVID BOWIE PHEONIX FESTIVAL 1997
Quicksand
The Man Who Sold the World
The Jean Genie
I’m Afraid of Americans
Battle for Britain (The Letter)
Fashion
Seven Years in Tibet
Fame
Looking for Satellites
Under Pressure (Queen cover)
The Hearts Filthy Lesson
Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)
Hallo Spaceboy
Little Wonder
Encore:
Dead Man Walking
White Light/White Heat (The Velvet Underground cover)
O Superman (Laurie Anderson cover)
Stay
It’s a helluva set. Do you see what I see? Scary Monsters and Little Wonder were not the first two tracks. They were among the last. This means I saw the whole thing and didn’t stay for the encore. I saw the entire set. I saw David Bowie live.
I should be happy with this news and partly I am overjoyed. On one hand, I realise now that the narrative I had been telling myself was wrong and only made my own recollection that much more difficult. I had talked myself out of ever seeing him, erasing it from my memory bit by bit. On the other hand, I saw David Bowie live and have only a scant recollection of the event. I just didn’t know I should be paying attention. Yet, it is also like waking up from a fog and suddenly seeing your own past clearly.
I still look back on that young self and think of what an arse he was, but that is the way of youth. I console myself with the idea that perhaps if you can remember that Summer, you weren’t there. Mainly I am happy that I get to re-write the wrongs of memory and now I can say: I saw David Bowie live, and from what I recall, he was awesome.
The full set, though some poor sound. At least I can relive it in entirety.