Circus Raves (US) - September 1974
David Bowie - The Secrets Behind His "Dog" Tour Throughout the increasingly balmy nights of spring, the famous face of David Bowie could be seen up and down the avenues of New York, and each evening the city of a thousand moods had something more intriguing in store for him. Again and again the lily-skinned rocker swept up to Harlem’s famed Apollo Theatre to see The Impressions, The Persuasions or The Spinners. He popped into Gary Glitter’s press party with Marc Bolan (after Glitter had left) and toasted Todd Rundgren’s Carnegie Hall concert accompanied by Eva Cherry, the black former-Bowie back-up and Astronette whose new hairdo made her look like a tennis ball. As the moon spun farther across the sky, he journeyed to the red-lit smoke of Max’s Kansas City or the city’s sharpest after-hours decadent disco, The 82 Club, where he danced with the hot tramps of Long Island and New Jersey until dawn. Meanwhile, across the Hudson River, a very different sort of cityscape was being prepared for Bowie’s arrival. Just as David was shutting his multi-colored eyes and making it with the sandman behind drawn shades, highly skilled technicians assembled every morning at Design Associates in Lambertville, New Jersey to erect the props and scenery for Bowie’s 28-city tour of the East. Commented one veteran special effects designer - co-ordinator Paul Stange, "It’s the heaviest rock and roll show ever to go out on the road – literally. There are three tractor trailer loads of equipment and more special effects than has ever been seen before in a rock and roll show." Canine concept: Bowie popped in and out of his suite at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel all April and May to frequent RCA’s recording studios and rehearse the "Diamond Dogs" stage act with his new band (ex-Spider Mike Garson, Herbie Flowers, Tony Newman, and Earl Slick). Sandwiched between these activities, the artiste met with Mark Ravitz of Jules Fisher’s Associates to conceive the stage setting which would be his home for 36 performances over the course of a month. The two had prolonged conversations about the aesthetic meanings of various scenic elements. Once Bowie and Ravitz knew what they wanted, they enlisted the aid of Chris Langhart, the man who fashions such super-creations as the Barnum & Bailey circus carousel. Langhart’s second floor office which looks out over a local teenage gathering place, is set in fairly tranquil surroundings, but when the four telephone lines all star ringing at once , the blond engineer feels like he’s in the middle of Manhattan. "The plans don’t come to you with everything thought out," the masterbuilder confided to Circus RAVES Magazine. "The designer comes to me with the basic ideas and says ‘How can we capture a, b anc c?’ He comes to me to make his concepts function. Then after they get their minds made up what size it’s all going to be, they want it instantly. It’s a super coordinating job. Rock and roll in its present state owes a lot to the telephone as a timesaver. It’s not like the Ringling Bros. Circus where you have half a year to put something together."	Lightning sculpture: The cityscape itself, with "pools of essence" dripping down the face of the buildings, was Ravitz’s design. "It’s not as simple as a backdrop," Langhart said of the three-dimensional set which Bowie can move through, coming out from between different buildings and appearing in windows illuminated from the back. Among the buildings there is a giant lightning bolt, Bowie’s Aladdin Sane symbol, which chases up and down as light sculpture – "stationary lights changing their on and off relationship to each other." It appears as a building when not illuminated and then suddenly becomes the familiar jagged slash. "It’s done with scrims," Langhart explained. "It’s a theatrical technique that’s existed for years but hasn’t been applied to rock and roll before." Engineering extras: The most spectacular engineering feats in the "Diamond Dogs" extravaganza, though, are the three elements which move in coordination with David’s choreographed movements – the diamond, the bridge and the catapult. The diamond is a space car on wheels which looks like a jewel. Bowie can be either inside it or on top of it. It appears upstage and comes down toward the audience to reveal the singer, somewhat like Bette Midler’s well known entrance to the Palace Theatre last fall from a high heeled shoe. It has microphones that come out so he can sing on it, and all the cables for sound and power for the DC motors are passed upstage with little rollers. The bridge is similar to a painter’s trestle. It has winches of variable speeds on the ends so it can go up and down in time with various songs. The bridge moves between the buildings of the cityscape, and Bowie can dance across it, or leap over the railing and slide down ropes like a warbling buccaneer. Explaining the freedom of the concept, Langhart offered, "Bowie has the choice of going up the towers on the ends to get to it and then coming down, or he can board it from ground level, ride up in it, and then get off on the towers. It’s full of options for him." The catapult doesn’t really hurl Bowie into the air, but the apparatus does allow him to sit in a chair at the top and be lowered down into the lap of the audience, over the first few rows. A kind of giant arm, it comes out of a "pool of essence." "It’s a monster quantity of flashy electronic special effects," observed Stange. The triple trailered caravan lumbers onto the road once again in September for the red-haired Mainman’s swing through the western U.S.A. SIMON DECKER
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