Earlier this year, Lady Gaga was selected to deliver a medley of David Bowie songs at the 58th Grammy Awards, paying tribute to the recently deceased rock icon. Despite Bowie collaborator and Chic frontman Nile Rodgers coming to its defence afterwards, Gaga's performance was heavily criticized (even by Bowie's own son) for being uneven and overly ambitious in its attempt to jam nearly a dozen songs into a few minutes.
Now, Bowie's former Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars drummer Mick "Woody" Woodmansey has spoken out about the homage, claiming both he and Bowie's longtime producer Tony Visconti turned down the opportunity to participate in the performance.
"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," Woodmansey told NME. "And we just went 'No, fuck off, that's stupid, that's not going to represent anything good about him.'"
"It was just, 'Why are you doing it?'" he added, questioning the motives behind the Grammy night homage. "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."
He continued, "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."
In recent years, Woodmansey and Visconti have taken their Bowie-approved Holy Holy act on tour, playing tribute shows to The Man Who Sold the World and other classic Bowie material.
Now, Bowie's former Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars drummer Mick "Woody" Woodmansey has spoken out about the homage, claiming both he and Bowie's longtime producer Tony Visconti turned down the opportunity to participate in the performance.
"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," Woodmansey told NME. "And we just went 'No, fuck off, that's stupid, that's not going to represent anything good about him.'"
"It was just, 'Why are you doing it?'" he added, questioning the motives behind the Grammy night homage. "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."
He continued, "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."
In recent years, Woodmansey and Visconti have taken their Bowie-approved Holy Holy act on tour, playing tribute shows to The Man Who Sold the World and other classic Bowie material.
