SPEAKING UP

Bowie Drummer on Grammys Tribute: ‘F*ck Off, That’s Stupid’

Mick “Woody” Woodmansey on why he turned down role.

David Bowie’s former drummer Mick “Woody” Woodmansey blasted the 2016 Grammy Awards’ tribute to Bowie in a new interview published Monday by NME. Woodsmansey played in Bowie’s Spiders From Mars backing band between 1970 and 1973, and claimed that both he and long-time Bowie producer Tony Visconti both turned down roles in the tribute performance fronted by Lady Gaga and guitarist Nile Rodgers. “We looked at it and it was going to be like 14 or 15 songs in the space of four minutes,” Woodmansey said, “and we just went ‘no, fuck off, that’s stupid, that’s not going to represent anything good about him.’” He added that he wondered at the time: “‘Why are you doing it?’ If there’s a genuine heartfelt thing that you wanna do out of respect, then you’d probably pull it off, but if there’s any other reason, it just gets tacky, and obviously you can’t stop that, they have a right to do it as they want to do it, but it doesn’t help a lot, it doesn’t do a lot.” Bowie’s son Duncan Jones also tore apart the performance at the time.