Lenny Pickett & David Bowie | Borneo Horns Saxophonist

Pickett’s first major international platform came through Tower of Power. He joined the Oakland-based funk and soul group while still a teenager and became an important member of its celebrated horn section during the 1970s.

Tower of Power demanded much more than technical accuracy. Its horn arrangements depended on rhythmic precision, dynamics and the ability of several players to function as a tightly coordinated musical unit. Pickett developed as both a saxophonist and arranger in that environment, while his powerful tenor sound and command of the instrument’s extreme upper register became increasingly recognisable.

The Tower of Power horn section also worked outside the group’s own recordings, giving Pickett extensive experience as a session musician and exposing him to a wide variety of artists and musical situations.

In 1983 David Bowie was preparing to take the enormous success of Let’s Dance onto the concert stage. The resulting Serious Moonlight Tour required a large and versatile band capable of performing the new material while also radically reworking songs from Bowie’s earlier catalogue.

Pickett had not played on the Let’s Dance studio album. Steve Elson and Stan Harrison had participated in the recording sessions, but Pickett’s Bowie connection began when he was recruited for the subsequent tour.

Pickett later described the beginning of the collaboration very simply:

The Borneo Horns did not simply arrive as an established group when Bowie assembled his touring band. Their identity developed during the Serious Moonlight Tour itself.

Pickett later explained that the tour contained considerable periods of downtime. During soundchecks, the rhythm section would often be checked before the horn players were required. Pickett began using that waiting time to write music for the three saxophonists.

Steve Elson has independently remembered the same period: Pickett was writing, Elson was also developing material, and the three musicians began playing together as a horn section during their time away from the actual Bowie performances.

The Serious Moonlight Tour opened in May 1983 and continued until December. It travelled through Europe, North America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand and was seen by more than two million people.

Pickett, Elson and Harrison were fully integrated into the touring band rather than being used merely as occasional decorative brass. The arrangements required them to move between the polished sound of Bowie’s new material and songs drawn from very different periods of his career.

The tour’s repertoire stretched across Bowie’s catalogue, placing songs from Let’s Dance beside material such as Heroes, Life on Mars?, Golden Years, Young Americans and other earlier works. That demanded considerable stylistic flexibility from every member of the band.

By this point the three musicians already had the experience of an entire Bowie world tour behind them. Their ability to work as a coordinated saxophone section could therefore be transferred naturally from the stage into the studio.

Pickett contributed tenor saxophone and clarinet to the album sessions, while Elson and Harrison supplied complementary saxophone parts. Their presence gave Bowie access to three musicians who could function as a tightly organised section while retaining strongly individual instrumental voices.

The sessions also placed Pickett within a broader group of musicians surrounding Bowie during this period, including Carlos Alomar, Carmine Rojas, Omar Hakim and other players involved in Bowie’s mid-1980s studio work.

Pickett returned on tenor saxophone, with Stan Harrison and Steve Elson again contributing alongside him. Their appearance demonstrated that the musical partnership created during the 1983 tour had survived well beyond its original purpose.

By then Pickett’s career was moving simultaneously through several different musical worlds. He could work on a large-scale Bowie production while maintaining his own musical projects and developing what would become another major part of his professional life: Saturday Night Live.

Never Let Me Down marked the last Bowie studio appearance by the Borneo Horns for fifteen years.

The Borneo Horns were never merely a name for Bowie’s backing section. The music Pickett had begun writing during the Serious Moonlight Tour eventually developed into an independent project.

After returning to New York, the musicians performed their own material. A radio performance attracted the attention of Geoff Muldaur, and the group subsequently recorded Lenny Pickett with the Borneo Horns.

The unusual instrumentation gave the project its distinctive character. Pickett was not trying simply to reproduce a conventional rock horn section. The music grew from three saxophonists exploring arrangements together, drawing on their different backgrounds and Pickett’s increasing interest in composition.

The project is therefore an important part of the Bowie story for an unusual reason: something created during idle moments on a Bowie world tour developed into an independent body of music.

The reunion was historically significant. Almost nineteen years had passed since the three saxophonists first toured with Bowie, and fifteen years had passed since their previous Bowie studio appearance.

The Borneo Horns recorded saxophone overdubs during the Heathen sessions, reconnecting a musical relationship that had begun during the very different world of Serious Moonlight.

Their work can be heard particularly on Slow Burn, where the three-piece saxophone section appears alongside a recording that also features Pete Townshend on guitar.

Pickett’s importance extends far beyond the list of artists with whom he has performed. His playing is immediately recognisable, particularly because of his extraordinary command of the tenor saxophone’s altissimo register.

Those very high notes are not simply a technical trick. Pickett developed an individual vocabulary in which extreme register, rhythmic attack, tone and phrasing form part of a coherent musical voice.

His approach also reflects the unusually broad musical environment in which he developed. Rhythm & blues, soul, funk, jazz, popular music and experimental composition have never existed as completely separate worlds in his career.

In 1985, Pickett joined the band of NBC’s Saturday Night Live. The position gave him a very different kind of musical platform from international rock touring: a permanent New York base combined with the requirement to respond every week to changing performers, musical guests and styles.

He became the programme’s musical director in 1995. His saxophone playing has consequently been heard by generations of television viewers, while his role behind the scenes has required him to lead an ensemble capable of moving rapidly between virtually every form of contemporary popular music.

Pickett has described the programme as an opportunity to remain connected to contemporary culture because each new episode brings different artists and musical demands into the studio.

Pickett’s career cannot be understood solely through his work as a saxophone soloist. Composition and arranging have remained equally important.

He has written music for theatre and contemporary dance and has worked with choreographers and other artists outside conventional rock and jazz settings. His compositional interests also help explain why the downtime during Bowie’s 1983 tour became productive: when three saxophonists were available, Pickett instinctively began writing music for the combination.

He has also taught and shared his approach to saxophone playing with younger musicians, including through his association with New York University’s jazz programme.