Outside Tour

Updated on Dec 04, 2024

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Start date 14 September 1995 Legs 2 Dates 14 Sep 1995 – 20 Feb 1996 Leg 2		End date 20 February 1996 No. of shows 68 Associated album Outside

Dissonance Tour (1995) Fragility Tour (1999-2000)

The Outside Tour was a tour by English rock musician David Bowie, opening on 14 September 1995 at Meadows Music Theatre – Hartford, Connecticut. Support during the US leg of the tour was provided by Nine Inch Nails, who segued their set with Bowie's to form a continuous show. Prick opened the first date of the tour. Morrissey was the support act for the European leg, but withdrew from the tour after nine dates. On selected dates Reeves Gabrels performed songs from his album, The Sacred Squall of Now in addition to performing with Nine Inch Nails and David Bowie. The opening of the concert tour preceded the release of the 1. Outside album which was released on 25 September 1995.

In a 2012 Rolling Stone reader's poll, the tour (pairing Nine Inch Nails with Bowie) was named one of the top 10 opening acts in rock history.

Tour history

Initial tour rehearsals were held at the Complete Music Studios in New York before moving to the Mullins Center, where Nine Inch Nails joined the rehearsal.

This tour was Bowie's first since he retired his hits with his previous Sound+Vision Tour (1990). Bowie said, "We're going to play some older material, sure, but not obvious things. I found, while rehearsing for the [Outside] tour, that older songs I haven't played for years suddenly fit in with this new material quite well – things like ... "Joe the Lion." So I'm quite looking forward to it." Other songs from Bowie's back catalog that he performed during the tour include "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)", "Look Back in Anger", "Andy Warhol" and "Breaking Glass".

Bowie spoke on why he chose to tour with Nine Inch Nails:

I personally did like the combination of NIN and me, but my fans didn't. Bad luck!! It also was an extremely young audience, between about 12 and 17 years old. My starting point was simply: I've just made an adventurous album, what can I do now to turn the concerts as adventurous. Looking at it in that way, it seemed logic to confront myself with the NIN audience. I knew it would be hard to captivate them by music they never heard, by an artist whose name was the only familiar thing.

Trent Reznor has gone on record numerous times as being heavily influenced by David Bowie, and further collaborated with Bowie by remixing "The Hearts Filthy Lesson" and later on 1997's "I'm Afraid of Americans" single. When asked in 1995 if his album Outside was influenced by Nine Inch Nails, Bowie answered, "the band that I was actually quite taken with was three guys from Switzerland call The Young Gods ... I’d been aware of them previous to knowing about Nine Inch Nails."

Set and costume design

For the tour, Bowie went with a modest stage design ("some banners, some mannequins") and avoided the theatrical presentation like his previous Glass Spider Tour in 1987 and Sound+Vision Tour in 1990. The stage "resembled a building site, with paint splashed crumpled sheets draped about", and included an old fashioned table and chair in one corner, onto which Bowie would occasionally climb during shows.

Bowie had a few outfits for the tour (which varied between the European and US shows), but included 3 jackets designed by Alexander McQueen.

Live recordings

The 13 December 1995 performance at the National Exhibition Centre (Hall 5) in Birmingham, England, billed as the Big Twix Mix Show with Alanis Morissette, Lightning Seeds and Echobelly as support acts, was filmed by BBC TV with excerpts broadcast at a later date.