On Monday, February 8 at Los Angeles’ Roxy Theater, fans gathered together for a tribute concert to the late, great David Bowie, who passed away just shy of a month ago. Among those performing on stage at the Celebrating David Bowie tribute were Ewan McGregor, Gary Oldman, and Spiders From Mars keyboardist Mike Garson, who was a Bowie collaborator going back forty years. Garson originally played piano on Bowie’s Aladdin Sane, and at the concert he performed his classic piano solo from that album’s title track for the first time in twenty years.

While a well known singer like Seal might be a no-brainer at a tribute concert like this, some people might be scratching their heads at the inclusion of Oldman or McGregor. But McGregor has a long history of association with Bowie on film.

Although McGregor and Bowie never starred in a movie together, one of McGregor’s first big gigs after Trainspotting was The Velvet Goldmine, a very thinly veiled biopic of David Bowie (in the movie referred to as “Maxwell Demon”). Also, McGregor sang a few notes of Bowie’s “Heroes” in Moulin Rouge. You can watch McGregor singing “Heroes” in the video above, a nice reminder that Obi-Wan sure can belt out a tune.

As for Gary Oldman, he ended up performing “The Man Who Sold the World,” which was the title track from Bowie’s third album. Other artists who appeared at Celebrating David Bowie included Fishbone’s Angelo Moore, Nikka Costa, Eric Dover, Holly Palmer (who toured with David Bowie) and others. Proceeds from the concert benefitted Max’s Kansas City Project Inc. This is of course, the first of what will surely be many major tributes to David Bowie over the next few months, including one coming up at the Grammy’s.

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HT: Rolling Stone

IMAGE: Jimmy King