Lmst
Login

#MikeGarson

Johnny J. Blairsingeratlarge
2026-01-09

patreon.com/posts/searching-fo

Johnny J. Blairsingeratlarge
2026-01-08

open.substack.com/pub/blairpro

Johnny J. Blairsingeratlarge
2026-01-07

CELEBRATING DAVID BOWIE WEEK + SONG OF THE WEEK: “Space Oddity.”
johnnyjblairsingeratlarge.band

Johnny J. Blairsingeratlarge
2025-12-05

BANDCAMP FRIDAY IS TOMORROW! Friday 12/4

johnnyjblairsingeratlarge.band

Thank you from the bottom of my heart! JJB PS: From now till the end of Dec.—buy a CD or LP and get a 2nd copy free to give as a gift or whatever...

buffy leigh (she/they)buffyleigh@mas.to
2025-07-29

Whoa, it's Mike Garson's 80th birthday today! Him and Bowie made such a fantastic duo.

David Bowie & Mike Garson - "My Death" (just audio from a 1995 performance)

youtube.com/watch?v=hbSsTbojHPk

#MikeGarson #DavidBowie #JacquesBrel

1001 Other Albums1001otheralbums.com@1001otheralbums.com
2024-06-20

Thursday, What A Concept! | David Bowie – The Leon Suites (1994, UK)

Next up in our series spotlighting rock operas or other concept albums from The List is number 423, submitted by yours truly.

With the first album in our “Thursday, What A Concept” series being Nine Inch Nail’s The Downward Spiral, David Bowie’s so-called “Leon Suites” is basically the logical next choice…if you’ve ever heard of it, that is. While not an official release, “Leon Suites” represents what is left of the “improvised opera” titled Leon, an absolutely batshit collaboration with Brian Eno – Bowie is always at his most interesting when he gives in to his experimental side, and you can’t get more experimental than this. Recorded in 1994, Leon was reworked to become Bowie’s 1995 concept album, 1. Outside; it was between these original 1994 recordings and the release of Outside when the NIN/Bowie co-headlining “Dissonance” tour started, which was part of the NIN touring cycle for Downward Spiral.

For those who are interested in all the details behind Leon/”Leon Suites”/1. Outside, I highly recommend reading Chris O’Leary’s work, either via his fantastic Pushing Ahead of the Dame blog (links to relevant entries at bottom of this post) or the collected/edited versions in his second Bowie volume, Ashes to Ashes: The Songs of David Bowie, 1976-2016. There are a few versions of the story floating out there; here I provide just a summary, based on O’Leary’s book.

The road to Leon began when Bowie and Eno reconnected at Bowie and Iman’s wedding in 1992. Setting out to make an album that wasn’t just an addendum to their Berlin trilogy, the pair wanted to create some sort of incomplete and interactive work where the listener ultimately had to figure out (or make up) the story. The writing/recording process began in March 1994 and was highly improvisational, relying heavily on role playing, Eno’s directions (including secret character sheets for all musicians and engineers), and Bowie’s vague sketch of a Twin Peaks-inspired narrative that involved a murder mystery, the art world, the Internet, and a handful of characters including Leon Blank, who was (either from the start or, in the process of Leon being reincarnated into Outside, became) an homage of sorts to both Tricky* and Jean-Michael Basquiat. The band jammed for weeks with the tape rolling, Eno ensuring the jam didn’t stray into the conventional or coherent. Bits of the resulting 25 to 35 hours of recordings were then further developed over the next few months, and everything was edited down to end up with a 3-hour long album called Leon…which no label wanted to distribute.

The “Leon Suites”, then, is the result of someone getting a hold of that 3-hour piece and editing it down further, to 3 tracks that are each over 20 minutes. Though both Eno and Reeves Gabrels (guitarist on the recordings) wanted Bowie to ignore the disinterest in Leon and still release it in some form – even if as a quasi-bootleg release without his name on it – Bowie stopped shopping Leon around at some point in 1994/5. It’s possible that the bootlegged “Suites” made Bowie lose interest in pushing Leon in its original form; however, since the bootlegs didn’t leak until 2003, perhaps they had no bearing on Bowie’s decision to rework Leon (Bowie was known, after all, to start huge brilliant projects, only to completely abandon them and move on). Whatever the case may have been, at the end of 1994, Bowie’s assignment to keep a diary for 10 days for the 100th issue of Q magazine kickstarted the rewriting/fleshing out of the Leon storyline and then reincarnation of the work into the more commercial 1. Outside (this diary then became the liner notes of Outside). In fact, Bowie expanded the storyline to the point that Outside was meant to be the first in a series of 5 albums totalling 8 hours of material that would (or, maybe, would not) complete the story he had roughly sketched out for Leon. As the other 4 albums never happened, and as only snippets of the “Suites” exist in Outside, one can’t help but wonder whether more/the rest of the “Suites” would’ve popped up in those albums, or if they would’ve largely been new post-“Suites”/Leon material. At any rate, without Leon we wouldn’t have Outside, and, without Outside, who knows what other gems we would never have been gifted – there probably wouldn’t have been the NIN Dissonance tour, and then probably no Earthling, probably no Mike Garson on NIN’s The Fragile…who knows.

So, my recommendation? Set aside time to listen to both the “Leon Suites” and Outside, ensuring you can listen to each one in a single sitting, both in one go if you have the capacity. While you can read about what parts from “Suites” did or didn’t make it into Outside, it’s a lot more fun to do a close listen of both and figure that out for yourself. The key is to consider the “Leon Suites” and Outside as companion albums, not thinking of the “Suites” as Outside demos or outtakes (as they’re sometimes labelled) or Outside as a polished version of the “Suites”. Listening to “Suites” is more like finding only 3 issues of an out-of-print highly conceptual comic book series that later inspired a brilliant TV series (…that was then inexplicably cancelled after the first season); so, if you’re the type of nerd who loves finding all the connections and easter eggs, a double bill is best. At the very least, if you have a spare hour and want to listen to Bowie yell out a whole bunch of random words and phrases in a bunch of ridiculous accents (and/or at least want to hear him predict in 1994 that “someday, the internet may become an information super-highway”) over top of Garson’s absolutely brilliant piano playing, give “Leon Suites” a try.

The “Leon Suites” – what a concept!

* Some fun extra Bowie/Tricky stuff: In 1995, Q magazine asked Bowie to interview Tricky for an issue. The two hadn’t yet met, and Bowie instead wrote a piece of fiction that essentially featured himself as the Leon/Outside character Nathan Adler and Tricky as Leon. Bowie then wrote Tricky a letter after him and Iman saw a Maxinquaye show in August 1995 (a month prior to the release of Outside), letting him know about the Q piece that was to be published in their October 1995 issue. See also the “Leon Takes Us Outside” blog post from O’Leary.

#1001OtherAlbums #1990s #BrianEno #conceptAlbum #DavidBowie #experimental #MikeGarson #ReevesGabrels #ThursdayWhatAConcept #Tricky

The cover art (for one version of the bootleg) is an obscured/altered photo of a face on a black background, with "LEON" written across the face and "David Bowie" in the top left corner.
jetsilverjetsilver
2023-04-15

David Bowie- "Aladdin Sane"

That mindblowing Mike Garson piano solo that starts around the 4 minute mark.


Theme-

youtube.com/watch?v=bc-E78guBLI

Greensleeves WebsiteGreensleeves@indieweb.social
2023-03-08

Today I found a version of Greensleeves from a Nine Inch Nails concert in 2018 (sort of):

youtu.be/WlpDQF6Bmsw

It’s mainly pianist Mike Garson jamming out on the tune for a couple minutes before the band transitions into “Just Like You Imagined” - I think that counts!

Mike Garson was David Bowie’s long-time concert piano player and he’s done impromptu Greensleeves playing like this on stage before

#NIN #NineInchNails #greensleeves #mikeGarson

Essjay 🏳️‍🌈 :flag_ace:essjaykeys@hachyderm.io
2023-03-07

@ambergrey

Sound and Vision is my all time favourite Bowie track.

That bass line.
And the drums 😎

youtube.com/watch?v=aUkTzQ7-RN

@psychictides @GuitarSith

#Music #DavidBowie #MikeGarson

Let's go to the 3DBB.Dbregernyc@masthead.social
2022-12-31

#TheMorningLine:

#TheGripWeeds, Salad Days
#EdwardOConnell, My Dumb Luck
#McCoyTyner, Groove Waltz
#ChuckBerry, I Want To Be Your Driver
#MikeGarson, Tribute To Mick Ronson
#BirdSounds, #CentralPark Forest Walk
#MinkyStarshine, Wrecking Ball
#ThePrettyThings, Cries From The Midnight Circus

John Rowleyjsrowley
2022-11-12

Love David Bowie? Ever wondered why you love Aladdin Sane so much? Listen again to the piano - the great Mike Garson. Still touring & performing Bowie numbers…

youtu.be/ueeSCdOabJ0


Kim PfeiferAdamsKimPAdams
2022-11-11

It's here! Mason Alexander Park's EP with Mike Garson is live. Go listen! It's also available on YouTube Music. 🥰 You can also hear me clapping and wooping from the front row. (I assume it's me 😁)

Michael J. GleasonMichaelJGleason
2022-10-30

Continuing a time-honored tradition of Rocky Horror fandom from Sam Beckett himself.

RT @AwkwardCentaur@twitter.com

Sweet Transvestite by @MasonAPark@twitter.com and @mikegarson@twitter.com during the Endless Nights show at the Sun Rose in Hollywood twitter.com/AwkwardCentaur/sta

🐦🔗: twitter.com/AwkwardCentaur/sta

Client Info

Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.07
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst