David Bowie - BBC Sessions, Volume 7: In Concert, Milton Keynes National Bowl, Milton Keynes, Britain, 8-5-1990

I had previously posted six albums of David Bowie performing for the BBC, from the years 1967 to 1980. I had thought I was done with his BBC material, since I'm not a big fan of his music after the mid-1980s. But then I came across this concert broadcast on BBC radio in 1990, and couldn't resist posting it.

In 1987, put out the album "Never Let Me Down," which wasn't well received. He supported it with a worldwide"Glass Spider" concert tour, which was criticized as overblown and pretentious. He regrouped in 1988 with a new band, Tin Machine, that had a very different sound. However, while this band's first album had a better critical reception, its sales were disappointing. In 1990, his record company put out a career spanning box set called "Sound + Vision." Bowie decided to take a break from his Tin Machine band and put on a world tour to promote the box set. 

He famously and repeatedly claimed that he would use this tour to exclusively play his older hits, and then would retire them. However, the claim wasn't entirely true. He did retire some of his songs, such as "Space Oddity" and "Young Americans." And from this point on, he tended to play lesser known songs from his back catalog more often. But he did play many of his older hits on subsequent tours. In any case, those claims helped fill the seats, causing most of the concerts to sell out. 

To make a long story short, this concert (and the tour as a whole) is a great selection of his favorite songs from his entire music career up until that point. He didn't play any songs from his 1987 album "Never Let Me Down," nor did he play any Tin Machine songs. But guitarist Adrian Belew was in the tour band (which consisted of just five musicians, in contrast to a much bigger sound for the Glass Spider tour). Bowie wrote and sang lead on a song off Belew's 1990 album "Young Lions," and Bowie sang that sole new song, "Pretty Pink Rose," in this concert.

When I first posted this in 2022, the version I found had some issues. I made extensive audio edits on all the songs, and even then, they still didn't sound up to usual BBC concert standards. But in May 2026, a commenter named Captcrunch pointed me to a much better sounding version. So I replaced the whole thing. I didn't have to any audio editing for this version at all.

Other than "Pretty Pink Rose" there aren't really any surprises here, since it's a greatest hits type show. But he did perform the Them hit "Gloria" as part of a medley with "The Jean Genie." He never officially released his version of that song.

I understand that this show took place in front of an audience of 60,000 people during a summer heat wave. Many suffered from dehydration, sunburn, and heat exhaustion. However, you can't tell that at all just listening to this recording.

This concert is an hour and 37 minutes long.

01 Space Oddity (David Bowie)
02 talk (David Bowie)
03 Rebel Rebel (David Bowie)
04 Ashes to Ashes (David Bowie)
05 Fashion (David Bowie)
06 talk (David Bowie)
07 Life on Mars (David Bowie)
08 talk (David Bowie)
09 Pretty Pink Rose (David Bowie)
10 Sound and Vision (David Bowie)
11 talk (David Bowie)
12 Blue Jean (David Bowie)
13 Let's Dance (David Bowie)
14 Stay (David Bowie)
15 talk (David Bowie)
16 Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie)
17 China Girl (David Bowie)
18 Station to Station (David Bowie)
19 Young Americans (David Bowie)
20 Suffragette City (David Bowie)
21 Fame (David Bowie)
22 Heroes (David Bowie)
23 Changes (David Bowie)
24 The Jean Genie (David Bowie)
25 Gloria (David Bowie)
26 White Light-White Heat (David Bowie)
27 Modern Love (David Bowie)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fVKuVVbS 

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/jKyvLbSNOkTO2yM/file

The photo chosen for the cover is the only high-resolution one I could find where I was 100% sure it came from this exact concert. So I used it, even though it's a bit odd with his hands on his face.