Although Las Vegas missed out on the Thin White Duke’s glitter-rock years, during which he could have shown Sin City a thing or two about flash, he did make three concert appearances. He chalked up his lack of more frequent visitation to being "still a quaint oddity in the States," as he put it at the time of his final appearances in Las Vegas. (The remark itself seems to allude to his early hit, "Space Oddity.")
Bowie’s belated Vegas debut took place in 1995 in tandem with Nine Inch Nails when he brought the "Outside Tour" to the Thomas & Mack Center. Audiences hoping for a throwback to Ziggy Stardust or even Bowie’s "Let’s Dance" reinvention from 1983 would have been disappointed, as he'd deliberately retired past hits and personae with 1990's "Sound+Vision" tour and performed a set entirely comprising of new songs. Two Hard Rock Hotel & Casino concerts at The Joint in 2004 marked Bowie’s unplanned Las Vegas farewell and what the Vice President of Entertainment deems "one of the best shows we have ever done."
Judging by a review we came across penned by a fan who was in the audience for the first show, which took place on January 30 (the second was on February 6), we're guessing Bowie himself had a somewhat different recollection, quipping to an apparently less-than-attentive younger crowed, "Speak up a bit please folks. I almost heard the band for a moment." Skipping any encore for the first time during that tour, his departing words were, "See you again next week kids... without your phones, OK?"
Still, by that juncture Bowie had evidently had a change of heart in terms of the material he performed, with a set list that included such hits as "Fashion," "Under Pressure," "Heroes," "Ziggy Stardust," "Rebel Rebel," "Suffragette City," "Ashes to Ashes," and "Life on Mars?". Following news of his passing, a candle memorial lined Bowie's memorabilia case at the rock-centric casino, an honor last granted back in 2006 to Godfather of Soul James Brown.
In-between the Thomas and Mack and Hard Rock gigs, Bowie sandwiched a 1999 cameo at Mandalay Bay, performing on a WB Network awards show when he was honored as a WB Legend, but that was it as far as Sin City was concerned.
Anschutz Entertainment Group Live made noises in 2013 about wanting Bowie for a Vegas residency but, by that time, he would have already been fighting the cancer that took his life. Even had his health permitted, Bowie’s aversion to living in the past (or in public) would surely have run contrary to the "greatest hits" philosophy of Strip-residency shows and all the attention that comes with them. In the end, Las Vegans who saw Bowie’s few appearances here can count themselves lucky, while the rest of us can only mourn what might have been.
