Robyn Hitchcock and Emma Swift: Sweet Home Quarantine David Bowie-Europe Show

David Bowie, rocking out in 2004.

Yesterday, Robyn Hitchcock and Emma Swift reprised their all-David Bowie edition of “Sweet Home Quarantine.” Robyn and Emma’s concerts happen through the Stageit website on Wednesday nights at 8PM Central time, a fairly friendly hour for the United States, but less so for those in Europe. So, there’s a second show on Friday afternoons at 2PM Central time. This was the first time I’d tuned in to the Friday show, but since I enjoyed the Bowie show so much, I figured why not?

The setlist was mostly the same as Wednesday night, with some slight differences. Robyn and Emma opened Friday’s show with a great version of “Ashes to Ashes,” followed by “Ziggy Stardust.” More songs from the Ziggy Stardust album followed: “Soul Love,” “Moonage Daydream,” with Emma taking the lead vocal, and “Starman.” “Moonage Daydream” sounded great, and it was interesting to hear it without Mick Ronson’s wonderful guitar solo at the end. Emma also took the lead vocal on “Life on Mars?” which has long been one of my favorite David Bowie songs. Robyn and Emma duetted on “Quicksand,” which features some of Bowie’s most impenetrable lyrics. I have no idea what the song is about, but it’s got a lovely melody. 

Robyn again performed “Heroes” in a stripped-down Lou Reed style, almost the opposite of the anthemic version that Bowie recorded. It was effective and goes to show how if a song is really good, you can perform it in all sorts of different ways. Robyn and Emma did a lovely version of “Sound and Vision,” one of my favorite tracks from the Low album. One of the audience members was Jessica Lee Morgan, a singer/songwriter who is the daughter of longtime Bowie producer Tony Visconti and singer Mary Hopkin. (It’s Hopkin providing the “do-do-do-do” vocals on “Sound and Vision.”) Jessica said that Bowie had greatly increased the volume on Hopkin’s backing vocals during the mixing of the song. Also in the audience was a woman who had lived in the same apartment building in New York City as Bowie. She ran into Bowie in the elevator the day his and Iman’s daughter Lexi was born, and she congratulated him. She didn’t say how Bowie reacted, but in my mind, I picture Bowie, immaculately dressed as always, flashing a toothy grin, saying “thank you,” and then disappearing. 

As on Wednesday, there were lovely version of “Drive-In Saturday,” which I feel is an underrated Bowie gem, and “The Prettiest Star.” The show ended with a great version of “Golden Years,” complete with whistling from Robyn. Although Robyn did sing “in the back of a train car” instead of “dream car,” but that just shows you his preferred mode of transportation. Robyn and Emma sang a verse or two of “Sorrow” as the show closed and promised that “Wild is the Wind” would make an appearance on a future edition of “Sweet Home Quarantine.”

Robyn Hitchcock and Emma Swift: Sweet Home Quarantine Week 9-David Bowie

Emma Swift and Robyn Hitchcock

Since the quarantine began, singer/songwriter Robyn Hitchcock and his partner Emma Swift have been performing concerts live from their couch in Nashville. You can view the concerts through the Stageit website on Wednesday evenings, 8PM in the Central Time Zone. I’ve watched about 4 or 5 of the shows, which Robyn and Emma have titled “Sweet Home Quarantine,” and they’re all very entertaining.

Last night’s show, which was week 9, was David Bowie-themed. As a huge Bowie fan, I was excited for this. Robyn has covered Bowie in concert fairly regularly, although I don’t believe he’s done any Bowie covers on his records. 

The show last night began with “Soul Love,” from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It’s a cool song that is probably one of the lesser-known tracks on that classic album. Robyn said that the saxophone solo is one of the few saxophone solos he enjoys. Next up was “Moonage Daydream,” with Emma taking the lead vocal, and it showed just what a fantastic song that is. One of the great things about Sweet Home Quarantine has been seeing and hearing Robyn and Emma sing together—their voices blend very well, and the harmonies really give his songs a different sound. Robyn and Emma have recorded a few songs together, but they haven’t made an album together, and I’ve still never seen Robyn and Emma sing together live. (At the last Robyn show I was at in 2018, Emma was handling the merch table, but didn’t sing with him.) 

Up next was another Ziggy Stardust track, “Starman,” which was a lot of fun to hear. “Starman” is just a great Bowie song, with that sing a long chorus. Then came two songs from Bowie’s 1971 LP Hunky Dory, “Quicksand” and “Life on Mars?” “Mars” featured Emma again singing the lead vocal, and she did a fantastic job on it. Robyn accompanied on his Fender Telecaster. Robyn then sang the iconic “Heroes,” but he gave it more of a Velvet Underground vibe, which was very cool, and very different from Bowie’s version. Robyn also sang “Sons of the Silent Age,” which has a very odd melody and is a hard song to sing. 

Robyn and Emma were back harmonizing together on the underrated “Drive-In Saturday,” and the lovely “The Prettiest Star,” both off Aladdin Sane. Robyn sang “Kooks,” Bowie’s sweet ode to his son Duncan, and “Golden Years,” another tricky one to sing, but they pulled it off quite well. Robyn and Emma got a verse or two into “Wild is the Wind,” with Emma on lead vocals, before they got cut off. (The Stageit concerts are 30 minutes, plus a 20-minute encore, but they cut you off right at 50 minutes, no matter where you are!) 

It was lovely to hear some great Bowie songs again, in the hands of two artists who clearly love Bowie’s music.

Book Review: Nat Tate An American Artist: 1928-1960, by William Boyd (1998)

Author William Boyd with his book Nat Tate An American Artist: 1928-1960, 1998.

David Bowie at the launch party for Nat Tate, April 1, 1998. Critic Matthew Collings is at the right, and Jeff Koons is lurking behind Bowie's right shoulder.

Portrait of K, by Nat Tate, 1958. The Sander-Lynde Institute, Philadelphia. (Don't go looking for this painting, because it's not real. Also, don't waste time in Philadelphia searching for the Sander-Lynde Institute, it's not real either.)

There are several reasons why you probably haven’t heard of Nat Tate, an Abstract Expressionist artist active in New York City art scene of the 1950’s. The first is that Tate destroyed nearly all of his own work shortly before his suicide in 1960. Another reason why you haven’t heard of Nat Tate is because he didn’t actually exist. 

Tate was the brainchild of author William Boyd, who had the idea to create the biography of a fake artist and try to pass him off as the real thing. Boyd was on the editorial board for the magazine Modern Painters, and his fellow board member David Bowie (yes, that David Bowie) told him that he should turn this idea into a book, as that would make the hoax more convincing. Boyd wrote a short monograph, detailing how he had seen one of Tate’s drawings in a gallery and been inspired to dig into his story. 

Inventing Tate, whose name is a portmanteau of two of the most well-known art museums in England, the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery, meant that Boyd had to invent other fictional characters to support his story. So Boyd created a wealthy patron who adopted Tate and financed his artwork, a gallery dealer who showed his drawings and paintings, and a British author, Logan Mountstuart. It’s through Mountstuart’s diary and letters that we see glimpses of Tate’s personality. Mountstuart became the subject of Boyd’s 2002 novel Any Human Heart. I wonder if Boyd had the idea for the novel about Mountstuart before the idea of Nat Tate, and then folded Tate into Mountstuart’s story, or if he created Mountstuart to support Tate’s story and then decided to expand Mountstuart’s story into a novel? 

When the book Nat Tate was published, it featured supporting blurbs from Bowie and Gore Vidal. A launch party was held in New York City on April 1, 1998. Bowie read excerpts from the book, and people in attendance claimed to recall Tate and his unfulfilled talent. Unfortunately, soon after that the hoax was revealed by a reporter. 

The story behind the Nat Tate hoax is more interesting than the book itself, which remains a fascinating curio. I can imagine if someone knew nothing of the backstory you could pick up the book and be convinced that Tate was a real artist. The book is full of photos—mostly of people other than Tate, of course. And the three works of Tate’s reproduced in the book look authentic enough to be real 1950’s Abstract Expressionist pieces. 

With the proliferation of the internet, it’s hard to imagine such a hoax being attempted now. Not to say that a hoax like this couldn’t happen, but someone would have to work very hard to create a convincing digital footprint for the fictitious person. 

Boyd kept Mountstuart’s diary entries about Tate in his novel Any Human Heart. As Mountstuart recounts a visit to Tate’s studio in 1959, an asterisk draws our attention to a footnote at the bottom of the page: “For a fuller account of Nat Tate’s life, see Nat Tate: An American Artist, by William Boyd.” (Any Human Heart, p.334) 

If nothing else, the Nat Tate book and hoax are continuing reminders of David Bowie’s everlasting coolness.