Mick 'Woody' Woodmansey from Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars reveals he and Tony Visconti turned down invitation to perform with GaGa for the Grammys tribute to Bowie.
- Nov 1, 2016
AceShowbiz - David Bowie's former drummer from Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars slams Lady GaGa's Grammys tribute to the late singer. Mick "Woody" Woodmansey reveals he and Bowie's longtime producer Tony Visconti were invited to perform with The Mother Monster but they turned it down.
"We were actually asked to do that, we were on tour at the time, they asked Tony and myself would we do it, and we looked at it and it was going to be like 14 or 15 songs in the space of four minutes, and we just went 'no, f**k off', that's stupid, that's not going to represent anything good about him," Woodmansey tells NME. "I haven't seen many things that do represent it properly. It's nice that many want to do that, it's a great thing, but quality wise, there hasn't been many."
He adds, "It was just, 'why are you doing it?' If there's a genuine heartfelt thing that you wanna do out of respect, then you'd probably pull it off, but if there's any other reason, it just gets tacky, and obviously you can't stop that, they have a right to do it as they want to do it, but it doesn't help a lot, it doesn't do a lot."
Woodmansey hasn't been the only one to criticize GaGa's tribute performance with Bowie's frequent collaborator Nile Rodgers. Previously, Bowie's son Duncan Jones tweeted, "Overexcited or irrational, typically as a result of infatuation or excessive enthusiasm; mentally confused. Damn it! What IS that word!?"
GaGa later replied to Jones' comments, telling NME, "It did hurt. But what are you going to do? I can't... it's his father, you know. Whatever he was feeling in that moment I have compassion and love for him. But yes, of course it hurt. I still have to trust and believe in myself as a Bowie fan. I'm not his family, and the thing is, that's his father. His father is not David Bowie, his father is David Jones."
"I'm sure that was difficult to watch and of course, I called many people on David's team before I even begun doing that project and it's unfortunate, what can I say? But God bless of him, you know?" she added.
