Earl Slick does a stylistic 'Zig Zag' with new solo album
by Michelle Nikolai

Earl Slick is an instinctive player who's lived a life of musical wanderlust for nearly three decades. His gritty, blues-based sound caught David Bowie's ear when he was looking to replace guitarist Mick Ronson in 1974, and he recruited the unknown 22-year old Slick for the "Diamond Dogs" tour. They've worked together off and on over the years - Slick is back trotting the globe with Bowie on his latest "A Reality Tour" and has just released Zig Zag, his first album of new songs in 12 years.

"I have a very basic way of playing the guitar, and it's all emotion-based - that's the only way I know how to do it," Slick says. "I think it's just the essence of that, that street thing . . . it comes naturally to me, that's how I play the guitar."

He has pursued his niche as a solo artist since the mid-1970s, on his own and with various bands. His first solo instrumental album, In Your Face, came out in 1992. After rejoining Bowie's band permanently in 2000, he thought he might have an audience for his music again, so he began playing his song ideas and hooks into a TASCAM four-track recorder whenever his creative muse struck. He called producer Mark Plati early on and asked him if he'd be interested in making a record. Zig Zag was going to be an all-instrumental album, but Slick got consumed with other projects - he was doing a lot of live shows and touring with one of Japan's biggest artists, Yazawa. When he came back to revisit the album, his concept for the project had taken on a different life.

"My idea was to go somewhere between modern stuff, like using drum loops and more up-to-date sounds, and then doing a Link Wray twangy vibe-style guitar. I started out thinking Link Wray meets Moby," Slick explains during a phone interview from his hotel in New York. "It has moments of that, but it really didn't end up sounding like that."

Plati mentioned the project to Bowie, who offered to write lyrics and sing on a track, and soon there were several artists who had signed on to craft melody and lyrics for Earl's instrumentals. Royston Langdon from Spacehog, the Cure's Robert Smith, Martha Davis, Joe Elliott from Def Leppard and Summer Rose, an unknown singer from L.A., lend their eclectic songwriting sensibilities to Earl's energetic guitar work. "The idea was to make a record where I got to write songs with singers, because I love pop songs. There's a pop element to everything on this record, even the instrumentals have verses and choruses," Slick enthuses.

The Bowie collaboration, "Isn't It Evening (The Revolutionary)," sounds eerily like a premonition of 9/11, and it was in fact written several months before the catastrophic events, according to Slick. "He is very much a sponge - he picks up everything that is going on around him all the time. And being in New York City, you pick up images . . . this place is so full of them, you just take a walk and you're going to get 100 images in a second."

New York City, specifically Greenwich Village, surfaces again in the pop rock song "St. Mark's Place" that Slick recorded with The Motels' Davis. He knows the Big Apple intimately - he grew up in Brooklyn and as a young teenager was completely engrossed in the hysteria generated by The Beatles. He loved the swagger of the Rolling Stones and the cool British blues of the Yardbirds as well, and he begged his father for a guitar. His dad got him a used Danelectro.

The rebellious Slick tried lessons but despised the rote approach - "Back in those days, they would just give you some sheet music for 'Old Brown Jug' or some real dumb shit. I thought, this doesn't sound like the Stones to me," he laughs. Instead, he taught himself by woodshedding for a few years, imitating songs off records and television. "Stupid things like the theme from the 'Twilight Zone,' whatever I could figure out - you're astounded with anything you can play - like wow, it actually sounds like that. It's before you get jaded."

He had a Hagstrom and a Telecaster, but then he saw Eric Clapton and traded his Tele for a new 1965 Gibson SG Jr. that he got for a steal at Sam Ash - the original music instrument store in Brooklyn. There was just one left in inventory and he paid around $120 for it with the case. He still has the SG at home, though these days his favorite ax is a customized Les Paul Standard with Bigsby tailpiece.

"I've been playing Gibson again the last couple of years, but this year I really got back into it," Slick explains. "It's just the fatness of it - it's definitely a more aggressive sound." He's got a Les Paul Classic Double Cutaway in bullion gold, an Epiphone Jorma Kaukonen Riviera, and a 1962 Firebird Reissue on the road with him. He also has a 1970 J-45 that he plays in the studio - "It's nice and aged now, it's great."

Slick's guitar work is a cornerstone of three Top 10 Bowie albums, David Live from 1974, recorded at a show at the Tower Theater in Philadelphia; 1975's Young Americans; and the experimental Station to Station, recorded in 1976. He also appears on Bowie's latest albums. "It's me, it's my sound, that's why I'm there. David doesn't bring you into the studio and ask you to sound like another guy," he says of their working relationship. "He uses a number of guitar players on these albums, and there's a reason for that - he wants players that do specific things instead of getting a session guy who can fake his way through all the stuff."

Earl paid his dues as a session player and recorded with his own Earl Slick Band during the '70s, which eventually led to a phone call from one of his idols, John Lennon, who recruited the awed Slick to play on his final all-studio album, Double Fantasy. After Lennon's brutal murder, Slick also did several albums with Yoko Ono, most notably Season of Glass.

Slick rejoined Bowie for the "Serious Moonlight" tour in 1983, which cemented his reputation as an A-level player. He had a hit song in the mid-'80s, "Men Without Shame" with Phantom, Rocker and Slick - the Stray Cats (Slim Jim Phantom and Lee Rocker) minus lead singer Brian Setzer.

He took a four-year break from the music industry to work through a very low period in his personal life. But, the resilient Slick bounced back and started his own record label, Slick Music, Inc., which carries his own releases as well as rare and archival releases of other diverse artists.

These days he's interested in scoring movies, and you can hear that approach in his new instrumentals. He also writes "library music" - music used for bumpers for sporting events and commercials. He makes no apologies for branching out as a writer: "I'm not 25 years old anymore, and it's not like we're trying to promote some new young band or artist," he says matter-of-factly. "At his point, you have to look at who are, where you are in your life and where you are in your career, and come up with a concept that's going to work for you.

"I think what's happened over the years is that I've become more in tune as a songwriter; and I'm treating what I'm doing as a songwriter might treat it, not as a guitar player. If a guitar player treats it, he plays over every hole he can find. I think I've gotten more musical."