>> DAVID BOWIE :: MUSIC FROM BAAL

This is the last time David Bowie and I ever worked together until we reunited in 1998, for various small projects, then the recording for Heathen began in 2001.

He starred in an obscure musical written by Bertolt Brecht called "Baal", filmed especially for BBC television. The music was "live" and very basic, but David wanted his fans to have a more memorable keepsake of this opus. He hired arranger Dominic Meldowney, a specialist in this form of musical theatre, to write for a typical Brecht "pit band" and rerecord the songs for an EP.

We returned to Hansa again for this one. What better place could there be? We employed a pit band -- a band that has one of everything: one violin, one cello, one trumpet, one trombone, etc. -- and spent a long day recording some very complicated arrangements.

The idea was for David to sing live with the band, but that was a technical impossibility because we didn't hear the arrangements until the last moment. So Muldowney conducted the scores with no vocal, then explained them to us after the event.

I quite like the results, however. This is probably the least-known Bowie recording.