On May 30, 1987, David Bowie began his Glass Spider Tour in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The tour lasted until November 1987, ending in Auckland, New Zealand. At the time, it had one of the largest set pieces in tour history. Additionally, it took a momentous toll on Bowie’s health.
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The Glass Spider Tour was in support of Bowie’s album Never Let Me Down. It was the first of his tours to visit Austria, Italy, Spain, Ireland, and Wales. Subsequently, this was the longest and most expensive tour Bowie had designed in his entire career.
More than a tour, Glass Spider was conceived as a theatrical experience. There were spoken-word introductions, vignettes, dancers, and elaborate visuals throughout the show. Its theme explored “the reality and unreality of rock,” as Bowie described it, and the main set piece was a 60-foot-high inflatable spider.
The spider hovered over the stage with vacuum tube legs lit from within by 20,000 feet of lights. The set took 43 trucks to transport from venue to venue, and allegedly weighed 360 tons. At the time, it was considered “the largest touring set ever.”
The Glass Spider Tour Took a Toll on David Bowie’s Health During the Long Months Performing
Besides being extravagant, expensive, and long, the Glass Spider Tour affected David Bowie’s health. He was noticeably thinner as the months wore on, and he even expressed some of his exhaustion. According to an interview with Q magazine, Bowie was exhausted just from planning the tour.
“I think [tours like this] are extravagantly dangerous to do because they’re so f—ing tiring,” he said. “Just the pressures of organizing the event, and it’s no longer a show, it’s an event. Even before you go out on tour, you’re knackered.”
“There’s God knows how many people running around, and everybody’s doing something and people are forgetting to delegate jobs to the right people,” he continued. “And it’s a mass of confusion and somehow it’s all supposed to come together.”
While the Glass Spider Tour was received rather poorly at the time, with many considering it pretentious and overblown, Bowie felt that it would be inspirational for other artists. He had wanted to get back to the theatrics of the Diamond Dogs Tour, and Glass Spider essentially did that times a thousand. Only much later did it earn recognition for its incredible design.
Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns
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