Mick Ronson deserves every bit of credit that he gets for helping Bowie achieve mega fame in the early 70s. As is noted on Beside Bowie<\/i>, as a lead guitarist he had a rare ability to sound both melodic and ferocious at the same time (check live versions of Moonage Daydream), while his skills as an arranger and producer defined The Spiders From Mars\u2019 sound as much as anything else \u2013 and deserve just as much of a production credit as Bowie for the likes of Lou Reed\u2019s Transformer <\/i>album.<\/p>\n
But Beside Bowie <\/i>has a bit of a crisis over who its true star is. We\u2019re promised a headline \u201cvoice over by David Bowie\u201d, but really his contributions are taken from a short interview given towards the end of his life: invaluable praise for Ronson, but, at best, short interjections alongside the input of other interviewees. Director Jon Brewer also places himself squarely in the interviewees\u2019 chair; he is undeliably informed, sure, but not so much so that it feels anything more than a vanity spot.<\/p>\n
Besides, much of the first hour of this is more or less the Bowie story, with added Ronson (and some dodgy animation), rather than an in-depth look at the guitarist\u2019s roots. Only post-Spiders do we get more direct focus on Ronson himself: the ill-fated solo career, various production duties, a struggle to make ends meet. Key post-Bowie roles with Dylan and Morrissey are sped through with little insight, though, so that the documentary might have been more accurately subtitled The Bowie Bits Of The Mick Ronson Story<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Most touching are the latter-day interviews with the man himself, in which the warmth and personality everyone else talks about are abundant. Ronson, clearly, was a gem until the end \u2013 though while everyone is right to sing his praises, it\u2019s also unmistakably apparent that, as much as he had a role in making Bowie the rock god of the early 70s, it\u2019s Bowie who also enabled Ronson to unleash his full potential.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mick Ronson deserves every bit of credit that he gets for helping Bowie achieve mega fame in the early 70s. As is noted on Beside Bowie, as a lead guitarist he had a rare ability to sound both melodic and ferocious at the same time (check live versions of Moonage Daydream), while his skills as an arranger and producer defined The Spiders From Mars?\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8023,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,16],"tags":[76],"issue":[10093],"class_list":["post-193491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dvd","category-reviews","tag-david-bowie","issue-january-2018"],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n