Not only is Earl Slick my favourite Bowie guitarist, he is also one of my favourite all time guitarists. So my expectations of this book were high. Fortunately, I was not disappointed.

licks credits read like excerpts from a compendium of contemporary music. from John Lennon to the New York Dolls – but it was his association with David that defined him he  was barely out of his teens when David Bowie hired him to play guitar on the ground-breaking 1974 Diamond Dogs tour.  a relationship that would endure through thick and thin for the next forty years playing on Young Americans, Station to Station and the 2013 comeback, The Next Day, Slick played on the tour that followed Bowie’s  hit Let’s Dance album and was at his side for the epic Glastonbury show in 2000.

Other collaborations read like a roll call of rock ‘n’ roll royalty including Mick Jagger, The Cure, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Joe Cocker, Buddy Guy, Ian Hunter, David Coverdale and Eric Clapton. And in the ‘80s he became an MTV star in his own right with the success of Phantom, Rocker and Slick. Through it all he lived the rock ‘n’ roll life to the hilt, until it nearly killed him.

The wise decision to use musician and journalist Jeff Slate to write the book with him pays dividends. It is lucid, chronological and insightful  professionally musically   and personally. It does not rely upon salacious gossip, the raw truth is powerful, and interesting enough.

My favourite woman of mystery Coco not only organised auditions, but also sometimes ran them.  Slick overdubbed  Ronson’s lead guitar on the Ziggy Stardust motion picture album on  “Width of a circle” due to technical issues on the original recording. ( check out the versions on “David Live” and  “The motion picture album”.Drug use was so endemic amongst the touring party that Slick was “snowballing” taking cocaine and heroin. He cannot remember  the “Across the universe” session he was so out of it ( most of us are keen to forget it too). He was amongst the mutineers for the recording of the David Live Album when they arrived to find recording equipment and vans- but no payment proposals for the album. Despite several contractual/ financial spats his admiration for, and desire to play with, David never diminished. I could not help but reflect that Ronson could have learned much from Slick in his business dealings.

A fine book and  must for all Bowie fans. Slik closes by saying that his epitaph was written on the liner notes to Station to Station :

Guitar- Earl Slick