Bowie alumni Gail Ann Dorsey and Mark Plati: "We were blessed to work with a great mentor who touched us all in a similar way"

Like U2 in the Dandelion Market, Jeff Buckley in Whelan’s and Sonic Youth and Nirvana in the Top Hat, Dún Laoghaire, David Bowie in The Factory is a Dublin gig that tens of thousands of people claim to have been at but actually had mere hundreds in attendance.

Someone who was definitely there on that fabled May 1997 night was Mark Plati, a New York-based multi-instrumentalist and producer who rose up through the Bowie ranks to become his musical director.

“That was at the end of a five week spell in Dublin,” Mark recalls. “We were there doing pre-production for the Earthling tour. The first three weeks it was just David, Reeves Gabrels and I and then the rest of the band arrived and we started doing full-scare rehearsals. The culmination of that was the Factory gig, which Joe Elliott from Def Leppard was at and got closed down by the local police because we’d gone way overtime!”

Routinely referred to as his ‘drum ‘n’ bass’ album, Earthling got a mixed reception at the time, but is now regarded as a Bowie classic.

“David played me Goldie and the other stuff that was exciting him at that stage, and I was like, ‘Okay, this is interesting.’ Part of my job was to absorb what he wanted, consider the mechanics of it – in this case there was a lot of programming – and make it happen. I ended up doing my own take on drum ‘n’ bass, which was a fun little side-road to go down!”

The Jones boy’s next intimate Dublin show was in October 1999 when he graced the Hot Press HQ Hall Of Fame on Middle Abbey Street, which has subsequently morphed into The Academy.

“The day prior to that we’d played NetAid at Wembley Stadium with a bunch of people like George Michael and Eurythmics, which was in and around 80,000 people,” Mark resumes. “We went straight from there to Dublin and a venue that was five hundred maximum. I remember thinking, ‘The size difference, woah!’”

Mark Plati

Everybody has their own entry point Bowie album – what was Mark’s?

“Station To Station, which was an FM radio staple when I was thirteen or fourteen. Playing the title-track with David was something I never thought would happen and just knocked me out. It also felt otherworldly doing ‘Ashes To Ashes’, a song that meant a lot to me when I was seventeen, and ‘Fashion’ with him. There are too many really to name.”

Plati readily admits to abusing his position as Bowie’s musical director.

“I’ve loved ‘Space Oddity’ since I was nine or ten but by the time I joined up with David he was totally over it,” Mark explains. “Anyway, as band leader I decided that we’d rehearse it behind David’s back, the idea being that if we nailed it he might do it. One day when we were rehearsing with him I thought, ‘Let’s just play it.’ After grrrrrrrrrr-ing at me, David says, ‘That’s pretty alright.’ The next challenge was to actually perform it on stage, which he did just the once at a festival in Denmark on the strict condition that I’d never ask him to sing it again. People in the crowd were crying so the subterfuge was warranted!”

Another magical moment for Mark was getting to see David and Lou Reed jamming together.

“Yeah, that was before David’s 50th birthday celebrations in Madison Square Garden which, being an old, old friend, Lou was a part of,” he reminisces fondly. “He came to visit us in Looking Glass Studios and spent half a day going over the songs – ‘Queen Bitch’ and Lou’s ‘Dirty Boulevard’ – they were performing together. You could tell that these guy had known each other for a very long time and, whatever history they might have had, they knew how to handle it.

“There were a couple of other pinch me moments when Iggy Pop came backstage to say ‘hello’ at a festival in Germany and when David Lynch seemed to materialise out of nowhere!”

It wasn’t only music that Mark and his employer bonded over.

“Part of the reason we clicked straight away was because I’d spent a lot of my teen years watching Monty Python, which David was a massive fan of. I understood the rhythm and the dryness of British humour, which was fortunate because with David everything was laced with humour.”

Gerry Leonard, the Clontarf native who took over from Mark as his musical director, told me that he got to know David Bowie really well, but David Jones less so.

“I couldn’t tell you,” Mark admits. “I didn’t know where one ended and the other began. Around the time him and Iman had Lexi, it struck me that he was just another guy with a baby on the way. There were moments when he was just one of the guys. Sometimes he was completely normal and down to earth and if that’s how David Jones was, there you have it!”

Did Mark get to hear Bowie’s last will and testament, Blackstar, ahead of time or did he have to wait for its official release?

“Since I wasn’t a part of it – and everyone who was had to keep it under wraps – I had no idea it was even being made and heard it when fans did,” he says. “I saw the title-track video first and thought, ‘Oh wow, where’s he going now?!’ He really capped what was an amazing run.”

Another mainstay of David Bowie’s band for nine years was Gail Ann Dorsey, a Philadelphia bass guitarist who’s also worked with the likes of Charlie Watts, The National, Lenny Kravitz, Boy George and Bryan Ferry.

She got into Bowie courtesy of Young Americans, his 1974 soul ‘n’ funk masterpiece which was recorded in her hometown.

“I was around twelve or thirteen when he was making that record in Philly,” Gail Ann recalls. “I’d heard songs like ‘Ziggy Stardust’ and ‘Suffragette City’ and thought he was cool, but didn’t get the quirkiness sometimes.

“Interestingly, when Young Americans came out the DJ on the black radio station my brothers and sisters listened to said, ‘This is David Bowie, guys. This is his new thing. This is the jam.’ They picked up on ‘Fascination’ first and then moved on to the rest of the album.

“I was like, ‘Whoa, this is completely different to ‘Hang On To Yourself’, what’s happened?’ I recognised that he wasn’t just some guy with a guitar and some crazy clothes. He could sing!"

While Mark Plati had flown the coup by then, Gail Ann was part of the lineup in November 2003 when Bowie brought his A Reality Tour to the Point Theatre, Dublin for back to back shows.

The second night, which was captured on the album and concert video of the same name, is widely regarded as one of the best gigs he ever played.

“The energy from the audience that night was incredible,” Gail Ann recalls. “David loved doing those long shows. He’d be like, ‘Okay, is everybody up for 2hrs 45mins tonight?’ I could have stayed on stage with him for five hours when he was like that!”

The night’s numerous highlights included a rare airing of  ‘All The Young Dudes’, the glam classic which David gifted in the early 1970s to Mott The Hoople.

“When I started out in ’95 on the Outsider tour, we had to learn fifty or sixty songs because David got bored playing the same set every night and would switch things around. We’d be at soundcheck and he’d say, ‘Let’s try this!’ and you’d be practicing ‘All The Young Dudes’ or ‘Teenage Wildlife’, which is another one he brought back.”

In addition to rhythm section duties, Gail Ann also brought the house down singing Freddie Mercury’s part on ‘Under Pressure’. Was she a bit freaked when Bowie first suggested that she fill the Queen man’s shoes?

“I was a hundred per cent freaked!” she smiles. “After one of the Outsider shows in ’95, he knocked on my dressing-room door and said, ‘Do you remember when I did ‘Under Pressure’ with Annie Lennox at the Freddie Mercury memorial concert in Wembley Stadium? Well, I want you and me to do it just like that.’ He knew that Queen being my favourite band ever I’d say ‘Yes!’

However, I did ask: ‘Who’s going to be playing the bass while I’m singing that?’ because the song is really complicated.He just looked at me with a little smile on his face and said, ‘You are and I’m giving you two weeks to learn it.’
“So, every night after the show I went back to my hotel room and drilled and drilled the song with a metronome. A fortnight later we were good to go!”

David Bowie and Gail Ann Dorsey at a 2003 Glasgow gig

Another song they comprehensively nailed together was Laurie Anderson’s ‘O Superman’.

“Thank you, not a lot of people know that because it was never really documented. We did ‘O Superman’, which is timeless, on the Earthling tour and it fitted in really well with the drum ‘n’ bass thing. It meant a lot to David personally because he was a friend of Laurie’s.”

And of her husband Lou Reed who was part of that magical Bowie 50th birthday bash in Madison Square Garden.

“Who wasn’t there that night?” Gail Ann marvels. “Above all the others, that’s the show which sticks in my memory, and everything leading up to it as well. We did months of rehearsals with these different people coming in and the show being configured around us. With all the clothes that were made and the set design, it was as much a theatre piece as it was a gig. To be in New York with all those incredible musicians was a childhood dream come true.”

Band-related matters aside, did she have music fan conversations with David?

“The thing being that he was still a fan who was always telling you about some new artist he’d discovered. I remember he used to tease me because I grew up listening to people like Olivia Newton John, Helen Reddy, Karen Carpenter and Barbra Streisand on AM radio and still loved them. He said to me, ‘To this day, I refuse to listen to what Barbra Streisand did to ‘Life On Mars?’' He was really quite cross that she’d covered it!”

Gail Ann Dorsey. Photo: Jimmy Fontaine

Like Mark Plati, Gail Ann’s first time hearing Bowie’s ‘Blackstar’ swan song was on the radio.

“I was in my car in New York and parked up on 13th Street because WFUV radio had announced that they were going to be playing it at four o’clock. I hit the radio, heard it and thought, ‘Oh my God, this is incredible!’ Then the melodic part kicked in and I was like, ‘I’ve got to hear this again and again and again because there are so many layers.’

“I had no idea he was sick,” Gail Ann continues. “The day he died I was doing a vocal workshop for girls at a summer school in Massachusetts, which is run by June Millington, a member of the ‘70s hard rock band Fanny who David had introduced me to. I was back in my little hotel afterwards and my phone starts going off at two in the morning. I was like, ‘Who’s texting me at this hour?’ It was Reeves Gabrels referring to something but I couldn’t work out what. Then I got a text from my ex-girlfriend saying, ‘David Bowie has died’.  I thought, ‘That’s got to be some internet hoax’. I never usually watch TV but switched on CNN and there was a photo of David on stage with me, which made it even more traumatic.”

While their leader is sadly no longer with us, David Bowie’s band remain as close-knit as ever.

“Those friendships run deep,” Gail Ann concludes. “We were blessed to work with a great mentor who touched us all in a similar way. To be associated with somebody who’s work is so powerful and connects with so many people on such a deep level… wow, just wow!”

Mark and Gail Ann are set to take part in 'Bowie Alumni in Conversation', at the Royal College of Surgeons on St. Stephen’s Green (Thursday, February 27).

They also play Whelan's for 'Bowie Alumni in Concert' (Friday, February 28); and the 3Arena on for 'Bowie Alumni & the RTÉ Concert Orchestra Perform The Songs of David Bowie', featuring special guests Faye O'Rourke, Dana Masters, Duke Special and Shobsy (Sunday, March 2).

See dbfest.ie for full Dublin Bowie Festival ’25 lineup.