“It wasn’t about going out to parties, Bowie just liked to make the art” 

As a teenager growing up in Philadelphia in the late 70s, Gail Ann Dorsey worshipped opulent British rock band Queen, but the young bassist never imagined one day filling Freddie Mercury’s position alongside Queen’s “Under Pressure” collaborator David Bowie. Twenty years later, on the other side of the world and in front of an audience of more than 100,000, Dorsey and Bowie’s performance of the 1981 single was a highlight of a hit-laden headline performance at the 2000 Glastonbury Festival. It was a duet the pair had been honing since Dorsey joined Bowie’s band for the 1995 Outside Tour.

“It was so unexpected that David would even suggest we do it, but basically being able to perform that song with him changed my life forever,” Dorsey says, while watching the first snow of the season fall outside her New York apartment. “Queen are my favourite band of all time and he knew that, so singing “Under Pressure” with him on pretty much every tour, it was one of those moments you can dream of as a kid, but never think it could happen. I’m proud it became a signature thing for us. To be able to do that and share that song with him, it meant a lot to me.” 

On the release of Glastonbury 2000 on LP, DVD and CD for the first time, Dorsey offers warm and thoughtful recollections of Bowie, who she worked with through to his penultimate album, 2013’s The Next Day. Despite the third anniversary of the influential artist’s death looming, there are times when Dorsey still slips into speaking of him in the present tense. Even 30 years on from his first hit, 1969’s “Space Oddity”, Bowie’s American confidante suggests there were a lot of nerves going into Glastonbury, the only large-scale performance of their 2000 schedule.

“David always got the jitters a little bit before those UK shows,” Dorsey says. “It was a big deal and everyone was pretty nervous. I think for David playing anywhere in England was always very important to him. He wasn’t living there at the time and he hadn’t lived there for many years, but he was very proud of being British. Glastonbury was particularly special because if memory serves me right he hadn’t played Glastonbury since the early 70s.” 

Much had changed since Bowie’s first set at 1971’s inaugural Glastonbury Festival, with his breakthrough 1972 album The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars being followed by the critical or commercial successes of 1974’s Diamond Dogs, 1977’s “Heroes” and 1983’s Let’s Dance. All of these albums were represented in the Glastonbury 2000 setlist, which found Bowie thawing his stance on populist performances.

“That was definitely the first time we started doing more hits,” Dorsey says. “When I first started with him it was hardly any hits at all, he was determined not to go down that route. Slowly he was convinced – perhaps as the band configurations evolved he got more excited about the possibilities of playing some of the old stuff. We were bringing new life to the old songs, so he was encouraged to play more of the hits.”

This fresh approach to songs is reflected in the Glastonbury set via a flamenco introduction to "Let’s Dance", as well as "Hallo Spaceboy" being beefed up with a colossal, pounding drum beat.

Read more: 5 Stellar Moments From The Greatest Glastonbury Headliner Of All Time

“Exactly. The beauty of working with David as a band was that we were encouraged and inspired to try and bring a new approach to songs, not just do them as they had been on the original recording. If we went too far he would rein us in, but he never set any boundaries from the start. With the Latin feel to Let’s Dance, it was just something we were playing around with in rehearsals and we found it worked, so he would be up for trying something new: ‘Oh, that’s fun – let’s do that!’. A lot of it was very spontaneous and became part of how we would interpret the song, because he gave us an open field to experiment. We’d rehearse anything up to 60 songs because he wasn’t someone who liked to do the same set every time. He would change things up if he got bored, so we would have an arsenal of songs we would learn that we sometimes would never get around to playing. We would always rotate different songs at soundcheck and keep them under our belt in case he wanted to do them.” 

At the close of the two-hour Glastonbury set, which NME described as “the best headline slot at any festival ever”, Bowie gives Dorsey and drummer Sterling Campbell a big hug as they walk off-stage. So how affectionate was he as a person?

“Very much so, he was very affectionate and very kind and respectful of people, considering his position and the caricature or cliché of a rock star as a diva or troublesome or arrogant. He was really very down to earth in that respect and he was very affectionate, he really was. He wasn’t afraid to say thank you or show how he was feeling by giving someone a hug. He’d call you up to wish you a happy birthday or those kinds of things.”

Dorsey offers an example of Bowie’s acts of warmth and generosity. While he wasn’t able to make it to her 50th birthday after they wrapped up the covert recordings of 2013’s The Next Day album, he sent her a fascinating, expensive and one-of-a-kind gift. 

“It was a beautiful and very old hand mirror about six inches in diameter and it looked like it was handmade. It had an engraving on the back that said ‘GG’ and I wasn’t sure who that was. I opened the letter and David explained it was a hand mirror that was on Greta Garbo’s dressing table until the day she died. I’m a little bit of a hermit and I think David is as well – he’s not a hugely outgoing person, he’s not at every TV awards ceremony, benefit or party, that wasn’t his scene. Some artists like to be a part of that sort of thing, but he just liked to make the art, it wasn’t about going out to parties. I’m similar in that when I’m finished working I like to go home and shut the door. 

“I have a hard time making the effort to post something on Facebook, let alone go out to a party, so I think David was having a joke with that, given that Greta Garbo was famous for saying ‘I want to be alone’,” Dorsey laughs. “It was a little thing David and I shared of wanting to be private when we could have time to ourselves. So I’ve never told anyone that before, but that was my gift.”

Glastonbury 2000 is out now on 2CD, 2CD/DVD and 3LP. Get it here.  

For more great insight from Gail Ann Dorsey, watch this interview which was shared from David Bowie's official YouTube channel this week...