Outside Tour

Bowie released his album Outside in late September 1995, having recorded it from early 1994 through early 1995,[2] for which this tour was named. It was Bowie's first solo tour since he retired his hits during the 1990 Sound+Vision Tour, and his first performances on stage since The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992.[3] Initial tour rehearsals were held at the Complete Music Studios in New York before moving to the Mullins Center, where Nine Inch Nails joined the rehearsal.[4]

Of the material for this tour, Bowie said, "We're going to play some older material, sure, but not obvious things. I found, while rehearsing for the [Outside] tour, that older songs I haven't played for years suddenly fit in with this new material quite well – things like ... "Joe the Lion." So I'm quite looking forward to it."[5] Other songs from Bowie's back catalog that he performed during the tour include "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)", "Look Back in Anger", "Andy Warhol" and "Breaking Glass".[6]

Bowie said of why he chose to tour with Nine Inch Nails, "I personally did like the combination of NIN and me, but my fans didn't. Bad luck!! It also was an extremely young audience, between about 12 and 17 years old. My starting point was simply: I've just made an adventurous album, what can I do now to turn the concerts as adventurous. Looking at it in that way, it seemed logical to confront myself with the NIN audience. I knew it would be hard to captivate them by music they never heard, by an artist whose name was the only familiar thing.[7]

Trent Reznor has gone on record numerous times as being heavily influenced by David Bowie,[8] and further collaborated with Bowie by remixing "The Hearts Filthy Lesson" and later on 1997's "I'm Afraid of Americans" single. When asked in 1995 if his album Outside was influenced by Nine Inch Nails, Bowie answered, "the band that I was actually quite taken with was three guys from Switzerland call The Young Gods ... I’d been aware of them previous to knowing about Nine Inch Nails."[9]

For the tour, Bowie went with a modest stage design ("some banners, some mannequins") and avoided the theatrical presentation like his previous Glass Spider Tour in 1987 and Sound+Vision Tour in 1990.[6] The stage "resembled a building site, with paint splashed crumpled sheets draped about", and included an old fashioned table and chair in one corner, onto which Bowie would occasionally climb during shows.[4] Above the stage, a neon sign displayed the phrase "Ouvrez le Chien", a partial lyric from Bowie's 1970 song "All the Madmen", which he repeated in his 1993 song "The Buddha of Suburbia".[10] During the US portion of the tour, an additional neon sign hung above the stage displayed phrases like "Strange Ko", "Noise Angel", "Man Made" or "Street Volva" that changed nightly.[4]

Bowie had a few outfits for the tour (which varied between the European and US shows), but included three jackets designed by Alexander McQueen.[4][11]

Bowie in 1995

Bowie opened an interview for the tour with USA Today on the opening day of the tour, on 14 September 1995 with the question "How do you commit commercial suicide? Well, you do this: play songs from an album that hasn't been released yet, and complement it with obscure songs from the past that you've never done on stage."[12]

American industrial rock band Prick opened some nights on the US leg,[4] and for some shows, Gabrels would perform songs from his then-new album The Sacred Squall of Now.[13] During the tour, as Nine Inch Nails reached the conclusion of their performance, the two bands played together with both Nine Inch Nails and Bowie and his band performing "Subterraneans", "Hallo Spaceboy" and "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)", followed by two Nine Inch Nails songs "Reptile" and "Hurt" after which Bowie continued with his own set alone.[8] A review of the opening night of the tour said that "Moving from NIN to Bowie was like moving from Kansas to Oz. Instead of the stark white stage light beating down like investigation lamps, the stage became awash in color and texture."[14] The same review acknowledged that the shift in music puzzled some in the audience, but overall called the show "an impressive body of new music, splendidly delivered".[14] A review of the following night in Mansfield, Massachusetts was unkind, saying that by the end of the set, "Bowie proved he was not up to sharing the stage with NIN, yet insisted on dragging out his overlong performance to its embarrassingly self-indulgent end."[4]

Early in the tour, the "almost 100% Nails audience" provided a challenge to Bowie, who said "In those first weeks, we had to adjust emotionally to the fact that we were going to be challenged every night to get in sync with what people were coming to the show for. But then you start to recognize that if you're going to continue, you'd better enjoy what you're doing. The more we did that, the more it communicated to the audience. That's how it went from survival to being a good tour."[15]

Bowie signed copies of his album at a local record store while in New York on 26 September 1995.[4]

Morrissey was slated to be the opening act of the European tour, but he suddenly and unexpectedly quit just before the Aberdeen Exhibition Centre performance on 29 November 1995.[16] The support slot was filled on later dates by The Gyres, Echobelly, Placebo, Electrafixion (with Ian McCulloch) and a variety of local bands.

After the 20 February 1996 show in Paris, the band took a break until June, but when the shows resumed the band did not include George Simms, Pete Schwartz or Carlos Alomar.[4] Shows from this "Summer Festivals" leg often included yet-to-be-released tracks from Bowie's upcoming Earthling album.[4]

The Kremlin Palace Concert Hall performance on 18 June 1996 was recorded and a 50-minute broadcast was later shown on Russian Television. Other television coverage included the entire 22 June Loreley Festival performance on German TV (Rockpalast) and excerpts from the Phoenix Festival performance on 18 July broadcast on British TV with BBC Radio broadcasting a six-song selection from the performance. One song from this performance, "The Hearts Filthy Lesson", was released on the live CD LiveAndWell.com (1999/2021). The Tel Aviv and Balingen dates were both broadcast on FM radio in their respective countries.[17]

• David Bowie – vocals
• Reeves Gabrels – guitar
• Carlos Alomar – guitar, backing vocals
• Gail Ann Dorsey – bass guitar, vocals
• Zack Alford[26] – drums
• Mike Garson – piano
• Peter Schwartz – synthesizer, musical director
• George Simms – backing vocals, keyboards
• Michael Prowda - monitors
• Steve Guest - FOH

• David Buckley, Strange Fascination: The Definitive Biography of David Bowie, Virgin Books, 1999, ISBN 1-85227-784-X