Ricochet: a never-before-seen glimpse at David Bowie's Serious Moonlight tour

David Bowie's official tour photographer, Denis O'Regan, offers us a breathtaking, behind-the-scenes look at life on tour with the late singer.

It is my pleasure to introduce Ricochet:  David Bowie 1983, a unique record of a year in the life of this extraordinary artist, and a powerful posthumous statement. I had been working on this project with David prior to his death in January 2016. On the face of it, it’s a record of David’s 1983 ‘Serious Moonlight’ world tour, on which I accompanied him as his official photographer. At the time, it was his biggest tour, lasting nine months and taking in fifteen countries, in support of his most successful album, Let’s Dance. But ‘Ricochet’, named after a favourite track of David’s on the album, has turned out to be more than just a record of that time. It’s also a candid, accessible portrait of the most tantalising and elusive figure in David Bowie’s life – David himself.

I assumed that what was wanted of me were some striking shots of David on stage... the moment I realised this was going to be a very different assignment was when David and his entourage were waiting for our luggage at an airport [and] David’s PA asked me why I wasn’t shooting . . . The pictures of him wheeling his trolley through the terminal, and drawing languidly on a cigarette at a baggage carousel are among my favourites.

In the pages of this book we come as close as we’re likely to get to the man behind the costume changes and the shapeshifting image... With my help, David was chronicling his life in images three decades before it became de rigueur among today’s pop wannabes.

Even the best-planned tours take on a life of their own once the show is on the road. ‘Serious Moonlight’ was originally intended to play at arena-sized venues of 10,000 seats or fewer, as on previous Bowie tours. No one had quite anticipated how big the album Let’s Dance was going to be, or what that would do to the box office. At one show, there were 250,000 requests for just 44,000 tickets. Soon David’s management began booking bigger venues. The American leg of the tour was given a boost before it had even begun when Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, got hold of David on the road in Europe and persuaded him to play at a new festival he was launching in San Bernardino, California. There hadn’t been much in the way of music festivals in the States since the notorious Rolling Stones gig at Altamont in 1969, where a fan was stabbed to death. David and his producers saw the wisdom of accepting the $1.5 million appearance fee that Wozniak was offering him to play the US Festival, as it became. That kind of money would pay for a second stage and enable the road crew to ‘leapfrog’ through the tour, building a stage in one city while David and his musicians were performing on the other one elsewhere. So we cancelled our next show, in France, and following the Frejus concert flew straight to California. The change of plan worked like a charm for David. He played to 300,000 people at the festival, by some margin the biggest crowd of the entire tour.

David Bowie – aka David Jones, DB, le Grand Fromage, and Dave, to his friends – was a very different man offstage to the one whom the fans saw over the footlights. He was warm, funny, and self-deprecating. I once told him that it was his Ziggy Stardust concert that had inspired me to take up a camera in earnest. ‘You’ll probably say that to Bono tomorrow,’ he modestly quipped. I could do a whole book full of nothing but shots of David laughing. That’s how he wanted to spend his time, having fun. He loved jokes – mostly silly schoolboy stuff – and he was a very talented mimic. I remember sitting with him in a restaurant in Perth while he was taking off everyone around us, ‘doing’ their voices and catching their mannerisms perfectly.

There were 25 of us in the band and entourage. We were like a family. We lived in each other’s pockets, travelling on the same private jet, staying on the same floor of the same hotel, eating dinner together backstage before the show, sightseeing, partying. The ‘band party’ travelled as a unit. It consisted of David himself, eight musicians, security, administrative staff, wardrobe and make-up, and me. Meanwhile, the ‘road crew’ went on ahead, to build the stage. Inevitably, cliques formed. We British guys tended to hang out together and that often included David. We were like a bunch of homesick ex-pats: we would grumble about the lack of marmalade at the hotel, or catch up with the English cricket results. Most of us prefer not to be reminded of our karaoke performances, but I will never forget David and I belting out a version of the Madness hit ‘Our House’, the pair of us overcome by nostalgia for dear old England even though – or perhaps because – we were a long way from our London roots.

The warm night air bathes our bodies, and the scents and smells of the East grow stronger as the evening grows longer. For a moment I feel I am playing to the tiger-infested jungle that existed here until the arrival of concrete a few short decades ago. There is an audible breakdown of reserve as curious uplifting faces recognise this song, then that one. They are singing along. It is an overwhelming experience for me and for any artist, I suppose, to see an audience of a culture ostensibly so far removed from one's own, singing along. It may not sound like a big deal, but for one night it can mean everything.

Now we are all dancing and loving each other and having the greatest of times. We are back for an encore, and the crowds swell up over the ramp. We touch hands and inspire each other on. All at once my songs sound very good, and I get another elusive glimpse of how lucky I am to be doing what I do. I think I may tour again.

Ricochet by Denis O'Regan is out on the 1st November 2018.