Reeves Gabrels has played guitar with David Bowie solo and in Tin Machine, and now performs alongside Robert Smith in the Cure. So when it comes to shows, he's has plenty of experience, both good and bad.
“Gigs are very funny and unpredictable things,” Gabrels says “You can plan everything out, the band will be well rehearsed, your gear is in perfect shape, and all it takes is one crazy moment to throw everything out the window.”
Of course things can always can go the other way. Gabrels recalls one of his first shows as a member of the Cure, in 2014, that was truly extraordinary.
“It was Robert Smith’s birthday, and we were about to play a gigantic show at a soccer stadium in Mexico City,” he says. “Minutes before showtime, the band lined up behind the stage for some photos. My wife, Susan, was the photographer.
"As she was snapping shots, we noticed something strange… She was rocking back and forth, as if she were on a boat. But we were also rocking back and forth, but in the opposite direction — she would go left, and we would go right. It was incredibly bizarre.”
That’s when the band realized they were in the middle of an earthquake.
“The audience started yelling and screaming, and for a moment it seemed as if things were going to get crazy,” Gabrels says. “But then everything calmed down, and we were faced with a decision whether we should play or not. The audience stayed in their seats.
"Robert looked at me like, ‘Reeves, you lived in California, so you’re used to this. Will there be aftershocks?’ I told him I didn’t know — you can never predict these things.”
The promoter asked the band to wait 30 minutes to see what was going to happen, and so they retired to their dressing room and hung out. After an unremarkable half hour, the group decided the worst was over and that the show would go on. “We walked out onstage and everybody started screaming again,” Gabrels says. “But this time it was because they were excited to see us.
“Despite the shaky — literally — start, the show came off without a hitch; in fact, the group turned Smith’s birthday into a true celebration and played for over four hours without a break. “We played every song we knew,” Gabrels says. “My attitude was, ‘If I don’t die having sex, I’m going to die onstage.’”
After the gig, the guitarist was informed that there were a few aftershocks while the band was onstage, but he never felt them. “It just goes to show you how things can turn on a dime,” he says. “I thought this could have been a bad show — or that it wouldn’t have happened at all — but it turned out great.”
Below, Gabrels recalls two other shows with radically different outcomes, though they share a common factor: a split-second onstage slip-up by the guitarist himself. “One gig became something special,” he says, “while the other ranks as one of my most embarrassing moments. But that’s what makes live shows so extraordinary — you’re always on the high wire.”
The Best
“This goes back to Tin Machine’s second tour in October of 1991, so I was still kind of finding my way through in terms of modifying my voice on the instrument and trying new things. I recall this one night at the Oslo Concert House, or it could have been the Falconer Center in Copenhagen — I can't remember which one it was.
“I was trying to push beyond ‘just electric guitar,’ as always. David was onboard with that; in fact, the only things he ever asked me to do were ‘turn up the volume’ and ‘don’t play solos like on the records.’ That was a dream come true for me.
"I was using a DigiTech IPS33B SmartShift harmonizer and would program all sorts of noises into it — it did sequential stuff and cascading harmonies. Really cool stuff. This was when I was playing Steinbergers. My guitar tech insisted that I have multiple spares, and as it happened, this one night I broke a string during the song ‘Heaven’s in Here.’
“I started to hand the guitar off to my tech during a quiet part in the solo — some nights that could have gone on for 20 minutes — but I pulled the cable out without thinking to mute it. The harmonizer was on, and it sent out these cascading buzzes and noises, but they had a sweetness to them instead of an abrasiveness.
"The second I heard this, I turned the harmonizer up, and while holding the cable I went out to the audience and was like, ‘All right, raise your hands!’
“I felt like a southern evangelist — one by one, I went to people, and I’d press the jack of the cable into their hands. I knew nobody would get electrocuted, but these crazy buzzing sounds were going off. Down the line I went — it was like I was baptizing people: ‘You’re healed!’ I actually felt like I was doing some sort of soulful service, or at least the best in atheist can do.
“The sounds were getting way out there; with each new hand that grabbed the jack, the sounds got more psychedelic. It was totally spontaneous. Everybody was caught up in it. This probably went on for on for four or five minutes before I went back to the stage and got down to business as usual.
"During all of this, Hunt and Tony [Sales] kept vamping. David sat down on the drum riser and had a cigarette — he was digging the fuck out of it. He had that grin on his face, so I knew he was thinking, ‘Keep going, kid.’ Afterward, he told me, ‘That was awesome. I didn’t expect that to happen.’
“For me, the moment became kind of revelatory in that it changed a bunch of things about my sonic approach. It meant that I didn’t have to get rid of anything else I was doing — anything goes, everything fits.” He laughs. “I’m sure it irritated even more people than I was already irritating.”
The Worst
“The most embarrassing moment that ever happened to me onstage was around 2006. This was when I moved from Los Angeles to Nashville. I had quit Bowie, but it was before I joined the Cure. I was pretty much hanging out in Nashville, playing with friends and songwriters. I had gained a bunch of weight, and I had a full beard and long hair. I looked like I could have been in the band Alabama, but without all the styling. Nobody recognized me from my Bowie days.
“I took a gig that lasted for a couple of years playing with a fellow named Brandon Giles. He had portrayed Jerry Lee Lewis in The Million Dollar Quartet. Playing with Giles was a fun and easy gig, and it paid. We would do a lot of songs from the Hank Williams songbook, but then we’d throw in things like ‘Funk #49.’
“We had a pretty rockin’ four-piece band, and one night were playing this huge barbecue festival in Arkansas, where Brandon is from. There was something like 50,000 people there — they’re eating barbecue and drinking Buds and Pabst Blue Ribbon. We came out guns a-blazing, doing this rockabilly with a weird ZZ Top edge. Brandon was totally into it — he’s singing and playing, all fired up.
"The time came for me to do a guitar solo, and Brandon yells, ‘Take it, Reeves!’ I stepped forward to hit my boost, and I was going to turn it into a big moment — you know, put my foot on the monitor and do this cool solo. That was the plan anyhow.
“What happened was very different: I got the straight cable caught in the treads of my boots, and I ended up yanking it right out of the guitar. And what made this worse was, I didn’t loop my cable through my guitar strap, something I’ve done my whole life.
"I didn’t realize I had unplugged myself at the time, and I must say, it’s a special kind of moment when you hit that first note of a solo, and instead of this awesome sound you literally get nothing — no sound at all. Everybody’s looking at you, and time kind of stands still.
"It took me a few seconds to realize what had happened. I bent over and popped the cable back into the guitar. We had a good laugh about it — ‘That’s rock and roll.’
“I take no responsibility for it, mind you. I blame the whole thing on the straight cable.”
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