Spider from Mars: My Life With Bowie

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A kid says to his mother, ‘When I grow up I want to be a drummer,’ and she says ‘You can’t do both , son.’ With my life enriched by Bowie, and his death making a major impact as well, I was seriously looking forward to reading this book. Here would be a book that had not been touted as a tell-all, or a mud-slinging gossip piece. This book was written by someone who truly knew Bowie, lived with, created and played music, & toured with him. What can go wrong?...

The book is well written, and reads like a documentary concerning the arc of the bands existence and a complete index to the songs performed and concert locations the book revolves for the most part on Mr. Woodmansey's life as a musician, and the history of events from youth through his musical legacy. Woody Woodmansey is the last living member of the legendary Spiders from Mars who accompanied Ziggy Stardust in his adventures on the planet Earth. After finishing the book I immediately had to listen to the albums from this period out of the Five Years vinyl boxset to really immerse myself, yet again, in the amazing music of David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars First wave U.S. David Bowie fans will immediately recognize the name Woody Woodmansey as the drummer for The Spiders From Mars. For others that didn’t catch on until The Thin White Duke phase or later, this book is an insider account of Bowie’s earliest success and transformation from an English folk singer into Ziggy Stardust – from conception to fame to final bows.

Martian Drummer unravels web of intrigue

O'Leary, Chris (2015). Rebel Rebel: All the Songs of David Bowie from '64 to '76. Winchester: Zero Books. ISBN 978-1-78099-244-0. Woodmansey has also played with Art Garfunkel, [15] was a member of the band Cybernauts, [16] and is currently the featured drummer with 3-D. He also co-led, with Visconti, the supergroup Holy Holy, performing Bowie songs from the 1970s, including the full The Man Who Sold the World album. Woodmansey toured with Holy Holy in September 2014, and followed up with tours of the UK, US and Japan during the following two years. The group has featured Erdal Kızılçay, Glenn Gregory, Steve Norman, Marc Almond and James Stevenson. [ citation needed] It was announced that Woodmansey would not be participating in the 2022 Holy Holy tour, due to his being unvaccinated with regard to COVID-19. Woodsmansey said he had a "medical exemption" from the vaccine while saying he harbouring no "negative feelings" towards the band and a spokesperson for the band issued a statement that "It is incredibly sad that personal beliefs over the vaccine has lead[ sic] to the break-up of the original incarnation of the band". [17] Cann, Kevin (2010). Any Day Now – David Bowie: The London Years: 1947–1974. Croydon, Surrey: Adelita. ISBN 978-0-9552017-7-6. This book is recommended to all Ziggy Stardust fans and it is a good reminder that behind every great man (and David Bowie was one of the greatest), there are many others who have contributed to his success. It is nice to get to know them as well. If anything, in this day and age, Woodmansey’s life story is a good reminder that it’s worth pursuing our dreams for no other reason that we won’t regret later that we haven't tried. Drummer Woody Woodmansey is the last surviving member of Bowie’s band The Spiders from Mars which helped launch his Ziggy Stardust persona and made David Bowie a sensation.

A vivid and unique evocation of a transformative musical era and the enigmatic, visionary musician at the center of it, with a foreword by legendary music producer Tony Visconti and an afterword from Def Leppard's Joe Elliot, Spider from Mars is for everyone who values David Bowie, by one of the people who knew him best. The Spiders’ contribution to The Man Who Sold the World, with producer Tony Visconti, documents in fascinating detail, that although still Bowie’s vision and voice, this was very much an album by a band finding each other’s musical strengths and exploiting a wealth of talent from all involved. (And like 95% of the material on the RCA albums, it passes the test of time with honours.) There are a lot of funny stories in this memoir too – the way the band felt when Bowie first suggested some of the more outrageous stage outfits is amusing. The ways they would wind each other up in the early days just shows how for a time they were just normal young men in a band trying to make it big. There is a real warmth in the way Woodmansey tells his story. Often with these kinds of bios (written not by the star but by one of the lesser members) I am left feeling sorry for the person writing as there is that strangely blind loyalty to a person who, while certainly giving him quite an interesting story to tell, also unceremoniously and cruelly dumped him. I'm not looking for Woody to trash Bowie, but he is damn forgiving of the way things went down. The Dennis Dunaway book about his time in the original Alice Cooper is the same. Both of these guys were very important to the bands they were in, but when the leader decided they were not necessary they were deemed disposable. That's business I guess, but they still continued to look at the world in terms of what David or Alice might think of what they are doing, and would likely be on the next plane if a call were to come to have another shot.So here we are, blood, toil, tears and sweat - and not a lot of cash... but then great things are seldom accomplished without casualties. Woodmansey published his autobiography Spider From Mars: My Life With David Bowie [18] in 2016. It was co-written with author Joel McIver and includes a foreword by Visconti. [19] Discography [ edit ] With David Bowie [ edit ] The book is a real record of the Ziggy era which I remember as being really exciting. Woody mentions the infamous Russell Harty TV interview in which he asks Bowie the most inane questions such as ‘Do you believe in God?’. Bowie is at his most outre and glamorous as he parries Harty and then performs ‘Drive in Saturday’. What would have happened if the Spiders and Bowie had stayed together – where would he have gone next?

I couldn’t resist requesting this book when it was available on NetGalley. I’m a huge David Bowie fan and love every era of his including Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. Woody Woodmansey is from a place near where I’m originally from so I feel like I was aware of the Spiders from Mars from a really young age. But Spider from Mars is a record of a man who’s still in love with music and drumming having worked with the greats and one of the most influential artists of all time. Woody did not even like Bowie's music, but he decided to go to London thinking he might regret it after he did not. I’d been listening to bands such as Led Zeppelin and Cream over the previous couple of years; Bowie’s influences were obviously completely different. My friends wouldn’t even know who Bowie was if I asked them about him.It might be difficult to imagine now, but in early 1970 Bowie seemed like a one-hit wonder. His single ‘Space Oddity’, which got to Number 5 in the charts, had come and gone, and the follow-up, ‘The Prettiest Star’, had flopped. David Bowie tribute band remove unvaccinated drummer Woody Woodmansey". NME. 31 January 2022 . Retrieved 3 May 2022.

Woodmansey converted to Scientology after being introduced to it by Mike Garson [11] and had his wedding service at a Scientology church in Sussex. [12] The title of the book "Spider from Mars: My Life with Bowie" by Woody Woodmansey for me was a bit misleading. Yes Mr. Woodmansey was a "Spider from Mars" (the bands amazing drummer) and according to this book he did live in the same house as Me. Bowie there are little and few mentions of interactions with the MAN.After the final disbandment of the Spiders, he formed his own band, Woody Woodmansey's U-Boat, with Phil Murray, Frankie Marshall, Phil Plant and eventually Martin Smith, releasing a debut album U Boat in 1977. [13] The album was subsequently re-released in 2006 as Woody Woodmansey's U-Boat ( Castle Music ESMCD895). [14] So, anyway, it is all very interesting, the story from his unique perspective on the drum stool. Of course, he spends more time talking about the drums and the beats, but that is his wheelhouse, his area of expertise. That is what I want to hear from him mainly.