The special: “Crosby’s Christmas special was very traditional”
With the White Christmas star touring the UK at the time Bing Crosby’s Merrie Olde Christmas was due to be filmed, the conceit behind the 1977 special had the singer receiving a letter from a distant relative, the fictional Sir Percival Crosby, inviting Crosby to spend the holidays with him in his mansion in England. “Crosby’s Christmas special was very traditional, like Andy Williams with all the family involved,” Sue Scott explained.
As well as Bowie, the special included Crosby’s real-life family – his wife, Kathryn, and their three children, Harry, Mary and Nathaniel – along with 60s supermodel Twiggy (who, perhaps coincidentally, had featured on the cover of Bowie’s Pin Ups album) and the actors Ron Moody (as both Sir Percival and his home’s former owner, Charles Dickens) and Stanley Baxter (as an array of comical staff members). As was traditional for many guests on Crosby’s Christmas show, Bowie performed a scripted skit with the host, setting up the duet that would soon go down in history as one of Christmas’ greatest – but not before a last-minute change of plans had the show’s creators scrambling to write a whole new song.
The song: “I would say within an hour we had it written”
With shooting scheduled to start at 10am on 11 September 1977, Bowie arrived on the elaborate set for Bing Crosby’s Merrie Olde Christmas wearing a long fur coat. His first request – for a bottle of water – was easy enough to grant, after someone fetched one from a nearby Sainsbury’s. His second, however, was a little tricker to resolve.
“We had decided that we wanted them to do a duet of Little Drummer Boy,” recalled Larry Grossman, who, along with Ian Fraser, was one of the production’s musical supervisors. Speaking for the documentary American Masters: Bing Crosby Rediscovered, Grossman continued, “And when we told Bowie about the number, he said, ‘I won’t sing that song.’” Asked why, Bowie’s response was unreserved: “I hate that song.”
With the backing track having already been recorded by British bandleader Jack Parnell and his jazz band, Grossman, Fraser and the show’s scriptwriter, Buz Kohan, were limited in what they could do. Holing up in a basement room at Elstree, they raced to come up with a solution. “We decided the best way to salvage the arrangement was to do a countermelody that would fit in between the spaces and maybe write a new bridge, and see if we can sell him that,” Kohan said. With time pressures bearing down on them, the trio penned the lyrics and vocal line for a song they titled Peace On Earth. “I would say within an hour we had it written and were able to present it to him again,” said Kohan.
The filming: “You could see them both collectively relax and then magic was made”
Within another hour, Bowie and Crosby had worked out their parts for what was now the Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy medley. “They sat at the piano and David was a little nervous,” Mary Crosby told Billboard in 2014. “Dad realised David was this amazing musician, and David realised Dad was an amazing musician. You could see them both collectively relax and then magic was made.”
“Bing loved the challenge,” Kohan confirmed. “And he was able to transform himself without losing any of the Crosby-isms – that relaxed feeling and the atmosphere that he would always create whenever he was on camera.”
That relaxed feeling filtered through to the scripted scene, in which Bowie arrives at Sir Percival Crosby’s house, hoping to use the piano, and the pair trade quips over the then 77-year-old Crosby’s fortunes (“Oh, you’re not the poor relation from America, are you?”) and the younger Bowie’s taste in music (“But tell me, you ever listen to any of the older fellas?” “Oh yeah, sure. I like John Lennon and the other one – Harry Nilsson.” “Ooh. You go back that far, huh?”). Stating that he even has “a go” at Crosby’s signature song, White Christmas, each year, Bowie picks up some sheet music for a tune he recognises as “my son’s favourite”.
The performance: “Little Drummer Boy was one thing, but ‘Heroes’ was quite a departure”
Watching offstage, Bowie’s then six-year-old son, Duncan Jones, truly did recognise the song Bowie and Crosby began to sing. Later writing on Twitter (now X), he said, “I remember being on the set for this shoot, meeting Mr Crosby and then the two of them singing and thinking, Oh! They’re singing that song Dad was practicing in the kitchen!”
After initially harmonising with Crosby on the opening verse of Little Drummer Boy, Bowie breaks away into the newly penned Peace On Earth – “Can it be?/Years from now, perhaps we’ll see” – his higher voice gliding gently over Crosby’s smooth lower register. “We played it through a couple of times on set, and they sang live with a boom microphone moving between the two voices,” Sue Scott told Uncut.
As well as duetting with Crosby on Peace On Earth/Little Drummer boy, Bowie recorded a solo performance of “Heroes”, which was due to be released in just two weeks’ time as the lead single from its namesake album. A mix of the song’s shadowy promo video, directed by Stanley Dorfman (who had previously shot Led Zeppelin’s acclaimed 1970 concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall), and the mime routines Bowie used to act out during the Ziggy Stardust era, the clip featured an impassioned new vocal sung by Bowie over the song’s original backing track, and made for a sharp contrast with Crosby and Twiggy’s preceding take on Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. “Little Drummer Boy was one thing, but ‘Heroes’ was quite a departure,” Scott remembered.
Reflecting on the incongruity a few months later, producer Gary Smith told Billboard, “You don’t book somebody for what they do and then not let them do what they do.”
