A Reality Tour

Bowie announced the tour in June 2003, intending to play to over a million people across 17 countries, and was billed as his first major tour since the Outside Tour of 1995.[6] Rehearsals for the tour begin in July, with the band from his previous Heathen Tour mostly unchanged; Mark Plati had other work booked, so guitarist Gerry Leonard was made the new bandleader.[7] The band played a warm-up gig on 19 August in New York to an audience of about 500 people at The Chance theater.[8] Starting in September, Bowie appeared on national radio and TV shows in Germany and France before doing a "live and interactive music event" staged in London on 8 September, one of the first live streams of a rock concert, and the first to be broadcast in 5.1 sound.[8] This show was beamed live to audiences around the world, although some countries (such as the Japan and Australia) didn't broadcast the show until the following day, and some countries (like the US) did not broadcast the show until a week later.[8] Some theaters report not receiving the center channel of audio of the show, meaning that some audiences didn't hear Bowie's singing as part of the broadcast (strictly an issue at the theaters' end, according to Tony Visconti, who was responsible for the mix).[9]

Bowie continued publicity for the album and tour, playing songs on shows such as Friday Night with Jonathan Ross on BBC One, The Today Show, Last Call with Carson Daly, and The Late Show with David Letterman.[10] Tracks performed during these shows included "New Killer Star", "Modern Love", "Never Get Old", and "Hang On to Yourself".[10] Finally, in late September, Bowie and the band played songs for AOL Online, performing "New Killer Star", "I'm Afraid of Americans", "Rebel Rebel", "Days" and "Fall Dog Bombs the Moon",[10] all of which were streamed to AOL customers over the next few months.[10] By the end of September, Bowie and band were in Brussels for final rehearsals.[10]

The tour itself was described by Bowie biographer Nicholas Pegg as "in some respects [...] even more theatrical" than the "Sound+Vision Tour", one of Bowie's more theatrical undertakings.[10] The stage included a giant LED screen with a raised catwalk, multiple platforms pushing out into the audience, staircases and "huge, bleached white tree branches" that dangled "gracefully from either side of the stage".[10] Bowie himself helped design the stage alongside designer Therese Depreze, lighting designer Tom Kenny and visual director Laura Frank.[10]

The set list included tracks spanning Bowie's 30 plus years in the music business, from The Man Who Sold the World (1970) all the way to Reality (2003), along with collaborations such as "Sister Midnight" (originally from The Idiot (1977) by Iggy Pop) and "Under Pressure" (released as a single (1981) by Bowie and Queen later found on Hot Space released the following year), and snippets and teasers of Bowie classics such as "Space Oddity" and "Golden Years".[11] The band had rehearsed around 60 songs for the tour,[2] and the large repertoire of available songs allowed them to change the setlist from night to night, sometimes making up the setlist on the fly, a departure from some of Bowie's previous and heavily choreographed tours like the Serious Moonlight Tour of 1983, the Glass Spider Tour of 1987, and the Sound+Vision Tour of 1990.[11] Bowie and his band played over two hours every night of the tour, playing more than 30 songs at some venues.[12] One song that was rehearsed but not performed is "Win" from his 1974 album Young Americans; it never made it further than the occasional soundcheck for the tour.[13]

The 24 January 2004 show in Vancouver, Canada was reviewed positively, with the reviewer saying that "with Bowie's near-flawless vocals, brilliant band, and smartly executed show, you wind up with one of the finest old-school rock gigs the Canucks’ home rink has ever hosted."[14] The review of the next show in Seattle on 25 January 2004 was similarly positive, saying Bowie, "still every inch a superstar ... still oozes charm and sex appeal" and called the setlist a "celebration of his whole body of work."[15]

On 6 May 2004, a performance at the James L. Knight Center, Miami, Florida was cancelled after lighting technician Walter "Wally Gator" Thomas fell to his death prior to Bowie going onstage.[16] At the show in Oslo on 18 June 2004, Bowie was struck in the left eye with a lollipop thrown by an audience member.[17]

A DVD video of the Point Theatre, Dublin performances of 2003 was released as A Reality Tour in 2004. A CD of the same performances was released as A Reality Tour in 2010.

• David Bowie – vocals, guitars, stylophone, harmonica
• Earl Slick – guitar
• Gerry Leonard – guitar, backing vocals, music director[19]
• Gail Ann Dorsey – bass guitar, vocals
• Sterling Campbell – drums
• Mike Garson – keyboards, piano
• Catherine Russell – keyboards, percussion, guitar, backing vocals

• On 19 August 2003 Bowie performed a one-off show in Poughkeepsie, New York at The Chance, as a warm up show.
• On 8 September 2003 Bowie performed a show at the Riverside Studios in London which was a 'satellite show'. This was a live performance beamed via satellite to cinemas and theatres across Europe and due to time delay the following day across Asia, Australia, North and South America.[20][21]

Notes

Cancellations and rescheduled shows

Notation:

• ^DVD/CD Included on A Reality Tour (film) and A Reality Tour (live album)
• ^CD Included on the live album
• ^iTunes Available as Digital download bonus tracks (iTunes) for the live album

• Pegg, Nicholas (2016). The Complete David Bowie (revised and updated ed.). London: Titan Books. ISBN 978-1-78565-365-0.
• O'Leary, Chris (2019). Ashes to Ashes: The Songs of David Bowie 1976–2016. London: Repeater. ISBN 978-1912248308.