When Your Mask Went On- An Interview With David Brighton...
(Login TragicYouth) Forum Owner Posted Sep 27, 2004 5:50 PM
He's a world renowned David Bowie impersonator who received the man himself's blessing when they worked side by side for the Vittel water commercial.
Brighton as the Ashes to Ashes Bowie.
Just recently he finished up another whirl wind tour, wowing Bowie fans, and impressing the most fashion sensetive individuals. Taking a break he sat down and told Speed of Life about his starting point, his choice of musicians, and his love of the art.
1. Is David Brighton your real name?
That’s what Mr. and Mrs. Brighton gave me…
2. What got you interested in doing impersonations? Was there something prior to it that got you involved in impersonating?
I sort of got sidetracked into doing the whole impersonation thing. About ten years ago, I’d reached a point where I needed to take a break from the frustrations of the record biz for a while. I’d been playing lead guitar for bands like Quiet Riot and others before my own band got a recording contract. What followed is a pretty common story. Radio stations in the US and Europe had really gotten behind our first album and the singles that had been released from it…. so we were getting a good amount of airplay. But the sales up to that point were only moderate. So for our second album, our record company wanted us to change our musical direction and emulate whatever groups were the biggest sellers at that moment. We weren’t interested in doing that. It became apparent that if were going to make the kind of records we had set out to make, we were going to have to look for another label. As someone in glitter and platform shoes once said: “It’s not easy having a good time…” After months of agonizing and attorney’s legal fees we got ourselves freed from our contract. Many more months of making new demos, shopping for a new record deal, etc. followed… dragging on until the band’s moral had eroded to an all time low. Bands are fragile. When a group has high expectations, works really hard for a number of years, finally gets a record contract, and things fall apart it’s pretty devastating. We finally broke up. Most of my band members moved to Nashville and started recording and touring with some of the country and gospel acts that were popular at the time. I was feeling really drained and just couldn’t bring myself to jump right back into the rat race just yet. I stayed in LA and through an unexpected sequence of events, found myself playing George Harrison with the original cast members of Beatlemania. My band wasn’t very happy about it at the time. They’d call me saying, “Come to Nashville David… they could use a songwriter and a guitarist like you out here… ” But playing with the Beatle bands proved to be very therapeutic for me at the time. It allowed me to keep working as a musician while taking a much needed break from the business side of the recording industry for a bit. Cameron Crowe (in Almost Famous) was right. The suits did ruin rock and roll. But I digress…
3. Why David Bowie?
I came to another cross road. Doing the Beatles thing had been really, really great… but after maybe five years of touring the world with various Beatle acts, it was time for a change.
Bowie was another rock icon who had always inspired me. He’s different… in a world of Spinal Tap rock bands, here was a genuine artist….. a brilliant songwriter and performer. People like to watch him.
Also, somewhere in my little brain, I liked the fact that he went against the grain. He does his own thing. He’s not afraid to be an individual. Side note…Back in school, I was never the guy who tried to be like everybody else. My friends and I were art and film students and we were somewhat eccentric. At an age where most adolescents are trying to fit in, we tended to do the opposite by default. It wasn’t a conscious decision exactly, it was just that being normal didn’t seem very interesting. Plus, now that I think about it, we were too out there to blend in even if we had wanted to.
But again I digress… back to choosing Bowie… I loved the music… As Lester Bangs said, “We don’t choose music, it chooses us.” I guess the fact that I could emulate to some degree certain things Bowie does vocally and so forth had at least a small bearing my decision! So I started thinking about putting together a Bowie show. Not just a band playing songs… but a legitimate stage production on a scale similar what I’d experienced in some of the really elaborate Beatlemania productions.
4. How did you go about assembling a band/crew that would want to perform David Bowie songs?
I was fortunate. Bowie and the musicians he’s worked with over the years have created some absolutely brilliant rock and roll. And, seeing as how great musicians love to play great music… and in Los Angeles, there are a lot of great musicians... it hasn’t been too hard to find really exceptional players who are very into performing Bowie’s material.
I also thought it might be a novel idea to put together a group of people that were fun to hang out with. I started by approaching people I’d worked with before.
Larry Treadwell was one of the first people I called. Larry’s recorded with all kinds of acts, from the Rolling Stones to Belinda Carlisle. He’s a great guy too. Same with Howie Anderson. He’s played guitar with people like Brian Setzer and the Strawberry Alarm Clock. He’s also one of the lucky few who saw Bowie and Ronson onstage in the Ziggy days… Jason Smith and Shane Soloski, (our drummer and bass player) toured with Five For Fighting and others. Zach Throne toured with Susanna Hoffs from the Bangles… Tuesday Knight had her own record deal on CBS. It keeps going… we’ve had members of Alice Cooper’s band, Brian Wilson’s band, Shakira’s band and Eddie Money’s band fill in with us. I’ve even had guys from Oingo Boingo call me wanting to play.
So I get to badger all of these wonderfully talented musicians until they learn every note exactly like on Bowie’s records. And of course they want to choke me for it. This isn’t a bar band sort of jamming through some Bowie songs. Every part has to be right, which is why it’s really a pleasure to work with the core group we have.
5. Recall and describe your first time impersonating David Bowie- where were you? How did people react?
The first show we did was at an English club in Old Town Pasadena, California. People sort of stared at us with dumbfounded looks on their faces… like they were going back in time. It was kind of weird having nineteen year old girls to forty something year old men coming up to us after the show telling us how seeing and hearing us made them feel like they’d been transported back to their High School days. It was a testimony to the scope of Bowie’s appeal and longevity.
6. You portray a variety of David Bowie personas/characters- who helps you with your makeup and costumes?
There are costume makers all over LA who put up their closed signs and run and hide when they see me walking up to their shops with yards and yards of neon colored fabric under my arm. After harping on a multitude of poor seamstresses until they’ve gotten every stitch, piece of thread and button hole perfect, we’ve come up with a few really good costumes.
Actually I’ve been really fortunate to find some great costume makers, boot makers, and wig makers who really do excellent work. I have some friends in town at a place called Makeup and Monsters who do make up and masks for the Planet Of the Apes movies, etc. who’ve been a big help. They made the Aladdin Sane mask on the stick for me that I use in one segment of our show. Which is an interesting side note: I got a box in the mail one day and was a bit stunned to find that someone had sent me an actual cast of David Bowie’s face. I’d seen something like it in a documentary film called Cracked Actor, where Bowie had a cast made of his face backstage before a concert during his Diamond Dogs tour. Anyway… it was a bit strange to open this box and have this plaster mold of Bowie’s face staring at me. Since I wasn’t quite sure what to do with this unusual gift that someone had been gracious enough to send me, I brought it in and they made the Aladdin Sane mask for me from it… similar to the mask Bowie used on the tour that I mentioned. They’ve also hooked me up with some great costume makers. We’ve had some of our costumes made in LA and some made in New York.
I’ve learned a lot about doing Bowie makeup from a number of the great makeup artists who have made me up for photo shoots or TV stuff I’ve done as Bowie. I guess there are some good things about living in LA. All of these people are here.
7. How long now have you been doing this tribute?
We started performing live in late 1999… like the song. So it’s been about five years…. Like the other song.
8. If you were to describe Space Oddity's performance to someone who had never seen a show, what would you tell them to expect?
What can people expect? Something different. It’s not the obvious tribute act. If you want to see a tribute to Led Zeppelin or something, there are a zillion of them. With Space Oddity, one should expect to hear great music and experience an exciting stage show… lot’s of costume changes, spanning Bowie’s thirty something year career. And as much as I hate the cliché… they can expect a lot of attention to detail… and hopefully, an authentic sense of community. There’s a definite sense of connection when we perform together. I’m feeling the love right now…
9. In the past year you got to actually work with David Bowie for the Vittel water commercial - was that your first time working with him? What was it like?
Yes, it was my first time working with Bowie. It was obviously a real honor and a great experience. Bowie said a lot of interesting things. He was also very witty.
The whole “celebrity” thing in general is a bit strange. It’s always a bit weird to be standing next to someone you’ve been seeing in movies or on TV or listening to on the radio for years.
10. And finally what can Space Oddity followers expect for the future?
There are so many facets of Bowie’s almost forty year career that people can expect to see integrated into our future shows. I’m not sure where to begin or what to give away. We’re working on some big things. There are costumes and eras we’re preparing to unveil. There will be more pre-Ziggy, Hunky Dory, things from some of the movies… more Ziggy…more later Bowie, more of everything. You just can’t squeeze all forty years into one or two hours. We’re working in more and more as we go… always striving to make things better and better.
-HM 2004
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Contact David Brighton and the Space Oddity Tribute Act by sending an e-mail to Bowielive@aol.com
Contact Heather M by sending an e-mail to runningatthespeedoflife@yahoo.com
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