The Legendary Earl Slick at Norwich

On Tuesday 11th September I attended an Earl Slick Q&A session at the Norwich Arts centre, St. Benedicts Street, Norwich. As a big Bowie fan and I also really liked his album with David Coverdale "Into the Light" plus his work with John Lennon on the "Double Fantasy" album, it was a must attend event for me. The format of the evening was a chap introduced him and would prompt him with recollections about his life. The chap made a joke about touring the country at Hull, Colchester they hadn't quite been to Ibiza but here they were at the Norfolk Broads, a nice pun taken from the very famous line from Bowie's seminal classic "Life on Mars!" He started he learnt the American version of "Tales of the Unexpected", he learnt on the guitar as a young lad. At the tender age of 20 he was invited to audition for a big star in New York, he worked out it was for David Bowie replacing the legendary Mick Ronson on guitar. He was asked to play along to some basic guitar tracks supplied by Bowie himself in a darkened room with red lights on the control panel. After about 20 mins Bowie walked in and he knew he had the gig. he joined Bowie for the Diamond Dogs tour. EL stated that Mick Ronson was Bowie's best guitarist. His two favourite licks were both David Bowie's tracks "Stay" & "Valentines day" on the Next day album. He helped compose the hit "Fame" with DB and John Lennon but was off his head for most of the time and when he came to meet John lennon again for the Double Fantasy sessions he arrived around an hour early at JL's house and was shown into a large room, he was a bit start struck at meeting his hero who walked in straight away, who said hi slick do nice to see you again & EL couldn't remember and JL ribbed him about this afterwards. At some stage he tired of rock and roll went into selling houses. Shortly after Bowie rang him to see if he could play with him again and was asked to audition again, this was to see if he still looked the part and could still play and EL stated he wasn't go through all that cr*p, so he was in again! EL said the "Reality tour was one of the best tours he had played on. Asked him why was the Reality tour such a happy time/ best tour he was on. Both he and DB had cleaned up by thenHe said there were no s stirrers in the band then and everyone got on really well. Another chap in the audience asked him about his work with David Coverdale on the "Into the Light" album, he said it was a really good but underrated album, nothing like his Whitesnake stuff and he wasn't going to see DC again soon when he visited Lake Tahoe. He was asked about his name, El said he came from an Italian immigrant family and his name wouldn't cut it in the business, so when he was cooking he put too much oil in the pan and it created an Oil Slick slightly changed to give him his iconic stage name! Finally we queued up to get his autograph and our picture taken with him, I asked him if was doing the Mike Garson Bowie celebration tour to which he replied he didn't know yet (despite his name being advertised as definitely appearing! let's hope he does).