Highlights from the Set Design of the Glass Spider Tour.

These are nominally redacted highlights from the 'Set Design' sub-section on Wikipedia's page about the Glass Spider Tour. Nothing's been added, all italics are my own.

Bowie entered the show by lowering himself down from the set's ceiling while seated in a silver chair and singing into a telephone. He was dressed for this number in a single-breasted three-quarters length red suit, a red shirt, and red shoes. The show's first vignette began with "Bang Bang", during which Bowie pulled an audience member out of the crowd, only to be rejected by the fan, who by the end of the song was revealed to be one of the troupe's dancers. Later in the show, for the song "Fashion", the dance troupe threatened Bowie with a street fight, which, by the end of the song, he accidentally wins. For the live performance of "Never Let Me Down", Bowie was influenced by the minimalist choreography of Pina Bausch. Bowie said:

"I wanted one straight movement that starts upstage and comes all the way downstage and doesn't vary. I'm on my knees, with my arms in a kind of straitjacket, and a crawl for three-and-a-half minutes. A girl is with me, as if she's accompanying her pet in a park, but she has a cylinder on her back, and every now and then she's giving me oxygen. It felt like a very protective, a very sad little image, and it felt right for the song."

For Part 2, Bowie appeared on the stage's scaffolding to "'87 & Cry," flew through the air in an abseiling harness and was subsequently tied up by riot police.

The encore typically opened with the song "Time", for which Bowie emerged from the top of the spider's head with angel wings behind him, 60 feet above the crowd. Bowie's outfit for the encore was a gold lamé leather suit complete with gold winged cowboy boots.

Points of note:

• David Bowie knows better than to get into a street fight with a dance troupe.
• That wasn't the riot police. It was the music police, assisted by the satire squad.
• Emerging from a spider's head in a gold lamé suit and winged cowboy boots while masquerading as an angel does not count as minimalism.
• Nor does crawling on your knees in a straitjacket with a girl pulling you along you like you're "her pet in a park, but she has a cylinder on her back, and every now and then she's giving me oxygen".
• The ability to conceive of a bound dehumanised cripple being fed oxygen as 'a sad little image' is only possible if you are David Bowie or have been absorbed into the collective unconsciousness of the 1980s, or both.
• Cocaine.