S3 Ep23: Mark Plati & Sterling Campbell on Toy (Part 1)

Welcome back to Albumtoalbum, the David Bowie albums podcast with me, Arsalan Mohammad. And it’s a very exciting podcast indeed today as we welcome not one but two Bowie alumni, producer/musician Mark Plati and drummer Sterling Campbell, to talk about a new old classic lost collection of remakes, the legendary TOY. 

 
TOY was released last month as part of the Brilliant Adventures box set, which covers the 1992 – 2001 period, an era in which Sterling and Mark worked with Bowie, together or individually, on albums like Black Tie White Noise, Outside, Earthling, hours and TOY as well as some of the most high profile live shows of the era – the Glastonbury performance in 2000, the BBC Radio Theatre show of the same year and the subsequent TOY sessions, where Mark and Bowie selected a number of David’s songs from the 1960s to remake and remodel with a full band. 

Strangely, from the perspective of 2021, when TOY was offered to Bowie’s then-record label Virgin, it was met with some degree of perplexity, a distinct lack of energy and never got released, although the energy and positivity of those sessions led naturally onto 2001’s magnificent Heathen.

By all accounts, these were amazingly creative, enjoyable sessions, a fact that is audibly evident in the charismatic interpretations of the songs. Tunes that were barely heard by the record-buying public at the time, subsequently ignored by their creator for thirty years were now lovingly revisited by a band who knew just what to do with them. 

In part one of this conversation with Mark and Sterling, we begin by going back to New York in the late 70s and 1980s, rediscovering the music that shaped their lives and creative outlook. It’s the stories of two future musicians growing up in the midst of a cultural new wave shaped by punk, hip hop, disco, techno - and Bowie. 

Fast forward to the 1990s and the pair fondly reminisce about their time in the studio working with David Bowie and his collaborators, including Brian Eno, Gail Ann Dorsey, Gerry Leonard and many others. The group dynamic was productive and creative – and hugely enjoyable. Sterling recalls Bowie’s devotion to British contemporary comedy colouring the mood of sessions, with David frequently insisting on group breaks to watch videos of Alan Partridge and The Office. Mark affirms how, in the studio, Bowie would pounce on random ideas and accidents, a characteristic recalled by so many of his collaborators over the years. 

The pair also reflect on the shifts in pop culture and technology from the time of the Beatles to the present day as successive generations have accrued a shared pop culture history and debate how the pandemic might change things for the future.