Toronto Sun
January 2, 1996
Bowie's Outside man
Reeves Gabrels does two tours at once
By Kieran Grant
Less than a decade ago, Reeves Gabrels was a low-profile Boston innovator lending his guitar talent to obscure bands.
Then the sonic gun-for-hire caught the ear of David Bowie and was enlisted for a hitch in Bowie's now-defunct outfit Tin Machine.
Now the low-profile innovator is a frontline collaborator on Bowie's Outside album.
"Bowie had been bothering me as to why I had never done a solo record," says the laid-back guitarist of his long-awaited solo debut. "He said, `Do I have to get you a record deal for you to do this?' "
Gabrels opted for a deal with U.S. indie label Upstart, but had another offer for his mentor.
"I said, `I'll tell you what, I'll do a solo record if you'll write a track with me and sing on it.' "
This set the tone in motion for The Sacred Squall's motley collection of collaborators, including Bowie, ex-Pixie Frank Black, singers Jeffrey Gaines and Charlie Sexton, and actor Gary Oldman, who supplies some spoken word and croons out a duet with the Thin White Duke.
"I met him in '88," Gabrels says of Oldman. "He always joked that he wanted to sing on a record. So many rock singers had gone on and acted in films that he thought a turnabout would be fair play."
The Sacred Squall also contains Gabrels' first recorded vocal takes, best exemplified on his bizarre reading of CCR's Bad Moon Rising.
"I didn't have much faith in my singing, but I definitely didn't want to do an instrumental guitar record, which I'd been offered in the early '90s when it was all Steve Vai and Joe Satriani," he says, referring to two of rocks flashiest, technique-over-taste guitar players.
"Those albums are like buying a body-building magazine: You look at it because you're curious but you never pick it up again. They're great players, but for me, I think great playing in the service of a great song is more important."
Though he's not a staunch guitar purist, Gabrels did put a disclaimer in his liner notes that swore off synthesizers.
"I would play tracks for people and they would comment on the nice synth part or keyboard pad or the interesting sample," he laughs. "I'd have to explain to them that it was all guitar. I also put `no vibrators used' because when I was out on the road with Tin Machine I used to create textures and solos with a vibrator, and I began to feel like I was known in the guitar magazines as that `vibrator guy.' "
Those demanding experimentation should be appeased by Gabrels' arsenal of sound inventions like the "iron viola" and "sonic barnacle."
Of his habit of giving cool names to guitar parts, he says: "It's either clarifying it or it's clouding the issue even further, but it's certainly comical to read."