You probably would not recognise Earl Slick if you saw him in the street. But you would know he is a rock star. With his spiky, jet-black hair and elegantly undernourished physique, the 63-year-old guitarist has a look somewhere between Ronnie Wood and Derek Zoolander. We met in 2016, face to face in a rehearsal complex in North London in a room with no exterior windows. But I never saw his eyes, which remained encased behind big, black shades.
He was summoned to the capital under conditions of strict secrecy, to perform in a special tribute to David Bowie at the Brit Awards. As we talked, the sound of various Bowie tracks drifted through the studio walls. At one point, Bowie’s voice intoning the familiar message ‘Ground control to Major Tom,’ seems to have got stuck on a tape loop, lending a ghostly backdrop to our chat.
Slick was the most longstanding of Bowie’s many decorated guitarists. The New Yorker, who was born Frank Madeloni in Brooklyn, first joined Bowie as a young hotshot for the tour of 1974 and last played with him on 2013’s In between, he played on the albums and and took a key role in the in support of the album. He has also worked with Ian Hunter, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, as well as releasing his own albums both as a solo act and in bands including Dirty White Boy and
