Slinky Vagabond’s Keanan Duffty collaborated with David Bowie and has been a regular at tribute events, so it comes as no surprise that there’s a strong Bowie influence on their latest album, The Eternal Return. But just as Bowie constantly embraced new styles without coming across as a copyist, Slinky Vagabond blends post-punk, glam, and psychedelic influences into a sound all their own.
The Eternal Return is the second album from this incarnation of Slinky Vagabond, which teams musician and fashion designer Duffty with Italian multi-instrumentalist and composer Fabio Fabbri. Slinky Vagabond originally began as a collaboration between Duffty and Earl Slick (David Bowie), Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols), and Clem Burke (Blondie). That version didn’t last due to the busy schedules of those involved. Fabbri attended a fashion lecture given by Duffty in 2017, where the two met and began a musical collaboration. At Fabbri’s suggestion, they reactivated the Slinky Vagabond name for their new music. Their first album together was 2021’s King Boy Vandals.
Collaboration remains a key element of Slinky Vagabond, and The Eternal Return sees them working with Mike Garson (David Bowie/Mick Ronson), Ava Cherry (David Bowie/Luther Vandross), Dom Beken (Nick Mason/The Orb), fretless bass legend Percy Jones (Brand X/Kate Bush), and Christian Dryden (The Ritualists).
Over Zoom, Duffty discussed the new album.
How did making this album compare with the last one?
Keanan Duffty: Well, I think this record’s a lot more cohesive. Six or seven years ago, when Fabio and I first met, we both had a bunch of ideas. We kind of threw them all in the pot to make that first record. And we sort of had the same approach this time, in a way. But he and I have been working together now for seven years, so I think this time, when we threw ideas together, we had a more cohesive way of actually realizing them.
And we had—there’s not necessarily a story for the record, but there is a kind of undulation in terms of the tracks and lyrically. So I think that was the biggest difference. We’ve just gotten to know each other really well. We’re good friends, and we’ve gotten to know each other even better as sort of workmates as well. I think that’s the main difference, really.
Did you discuss and plan what you wanted to do with this album, or did you just start working on music and let it take shape on its own? How did it come together conceptually?
Keanan Duffty: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. Fabio is based in Florence, Italy, and that’s where his studio is—that’s where we do most of the recording. We did go to Mission Sound in Brooklyn this time to do all the drum tracks with our friend Christian Dryden. But I think the process of me going to his studio to record was more compressed this time because, years ago, I was working in Italy and going there regularly anyway. In the last few years, I haven’t been, so I was making these sort of dedicated trips.
So I think we were kind of under a deadline to get everything done when I was there for a couple of days. And I really like deadlines. I think I love working in a studio where the clock’s ticking because you kind of have to make your decisions, get it down, and not second-guess yourself. So there was a little bit more of that vibe this time—it was a little bit more like working in an external studio where you’re on the meter and paying by the hour. And I think that really benefited us, having that stringent approach.
Lyrically, I had a lot of lyrics—I kind of keep notebooks of ideas, words, and sort of rhyming things, and they tend to coalesce into what becomes a song lyric. But sometimes, I might have three different song ideas, and I’ll take the chorus from one, the verse from another, and maybe a bridge from a third. And I think that this time, Fabio understands my way of working, and I really understand his way of working. So again, it’s kind of a “getting to know each other better” situation. That’s really the difference.
What was your overall timeframe like?
Keanan Duffty: We started in, I want to say, 2021. We had a few initial ideas. What happens is Fabio works on a backing track in his studio and gets it to a place where he can then share it with me, and then I will add my lyrical ideas and the top line. When I go to his studio, we actually record the whole thing.
I think we started pretty much right after the first record came out. We had excess material from the first record, but we didn’t use that on this one—we kind of just kept that to one side. This time, we recorded probably 20 songs, and our editing process was to get them to fit on a vinyl record. So we thought about it in that way.
What are really the 11 songs that form a narrative and do it in a fairly concise way? I think that’s a good thing, too, because with other formats, there’s not really a cutoff point. And I think that’s what we really benefited from—editing, deadlines, boundaries—all of those good things that any regular band would have had maybe 20 or 30 years ago. Now, with home recording, those kinds of parameters have gone away a little bit, but I think we sort of self-imposed them.
So we started in 2021 and wrapped up in the middle of 2023 with the drum tracks. It took about two years to get everything down.
I’m curious about the material that didn’t make it on. Did it differ stylistically? Did you feel it just wasn’t as strong?
Keanan Duffty: No, there’s actually a track that I love called “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, “which is an Orson Welles quote. Fabio wrote this entire backing track, and it actually sounds very electronic. For that reason, he didn’t want it on the album. I wanted to call the album “They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead” because I love that song so much, but Fabio felt it was out of character for the rest of our material because it had a very ‘80s electronic sound. So we had to make the hard decision of setting aside what was—at least for me—my favorite song.
But I’m sure we will revisit that later because it’s a song that really works. The lyrics are very kind of witty, wry. And then there’s another track called “Coney Island Daydream” that, again, Fabio wrote—a beautiful song—but it just didn’t make the cut for this record. But I think we could revisit that, and it’s the kind of song that would lend itself more to an almost acoustic interpretation.
So there are about six or seven songs that didn’t make it onto this record. I think we’ll revisit a couple of them later and see if we can rework them in some way. Not necessarily for an album, but certainly just to have them fully fleshed out and completed.
You’ve always worked with an interesting group of collaborators. Could you talk about the other guest contributors—how you came to work with them and what they added to the album?
Keanan Duffty: Yeah. Well, a few years ago, I fell in love with Mike Garson’s playing. I didn’t know Mike personally, but I contacted his manager, who’s also his son-in-law, out of the blue. I said, We’ve got these songs. We’re working on a few that Mike might be suitable for. Would he be interested? I got a note back saying, Oh yeah, okay, send them over. Let’s have a listen. So I sent them, and Mike picked two—the slower tracks of the material we sent him. One is called Ad Astra, and the other is Anthem.
He came back to me and said, Look, I like these two. What do you want on each song? Can you give me some direction? And I said, Well, for “Ad Astra,” I’d love a discordant, almost jazzy, avant-garde style—a bit like “Aladdin Sane.” And, of course, Mike actually played on “Aladdin Sane”. At the end of “Ad Astra,” he did this little ‘diddly-dit,’ which is directly from “Aladdin Sane.” When we got his track back, we debated whether to keep that or edit it out, but then we thought—if there’s one person in the world who can play that, it’s the guy who played it in the first place! So we kept it as is.
For “Anthem, “he asked me again, What do you want? I said, A kind of John Lennon-ish, Imagine-style piano. And that’s exactly what he did. It sounds unmistakably like Mike Garson, which everyone knows mostly from Bowie’s greatest records. It was a pleasure to work with him.
Ava Cherry—I met at an international Bowie fan convention in New York, where we were both performing. I asked if she’d be interested in singing a song with me at that show, and we kind of hit it off. After the show, I went back to her and said, Look, we’re recording an album. Would you be willing to sing on one song? I sent her a couple of ideas, and she picked one—that’s how it came together.
As for the other guys—Percy Jones is a friend of a friend. He’s an iconic fretless bass player that I’ve loved for years—he played on Eno’s records, with Kate Bush, Brand X, and so on. He was actually the first collaborator I contacted, right at the beginning of this process.
Then there’s Dom Beken, who plays with Nick Mason in Nick Mason’s band. I’m somewhat friendly with Gary Kemp from Spandau Ballet, who also plays with Nick Mason, so that’s how that connection came about.
We also had our great friend Christian Dryden from The Ritualists on drums. Christian played on every track, did a phenomenal job, and even though he’s the singer and leader of The Ritualists, he’s also a multi-instrumentalist and an amazing talent. He just did a great job—it was a pleasure working with him.
And then, with Earl Slick and Glen Matlock—I had written songs with both of them way back, actually from when we had the initial incarnation of Slinky Vagabond. We had two tracks that I co-wrote with each of them, and we thought we’d bring them into this new record. Slick and Glen don’t play on these tracks, but they wrote all the instrumentation and music, and I wrote the lyrics and the topline melody.
So in a way, it came full circle. We started out in 2007 with that initial lineup—Glen, Slick, Clem Burke, and myself—and now, we’ve come back around to at least getting two out of the three on this new record.
How do you tend to divide your time between music and everything else that you do, and how do things perhaps influence each other?
Keanan Duffty: That’s a really good question. I mean, I always have a lot of things going on. I’m kind of a jack-of-all-trades, master of none, and I’ve been fortunate to make a living through fashion. Making a living in creativity—in any creative field—is very hard, and there’s a lot of instability. I’ve been lucky that fashion has provided that stability for me.
Music has always been something I’ve done since I was a kid. I had record deals in the ‘80s and so on, but I never really pursued it as a living, so it’s always been this kind of other side of my life where I can do as I please. It’s always been self-motivated. But I think with Slinky Vagabond, this wouldn’t have happened without Fabio because Fabio is an amazing guitar player.
He’s a really good producer, a great vocal producer—he can get a performance out of me that really suits the track. He can find the melody and musicality—maybe that’s the Italian side of him. He has that kind of operatic influence, I guess. And he has his own studio, Wolf Mountain Studios, just outside Florence. It’s a great studio—it’s small, but he gets an amazing sound.
And he’s a really good friend. We trust each other, and I think it’s great to have found a musical partner where we complement each other. Generally, we have the same ideas, so I think I’m lucky to have a partner like that. Without that, I don’t know if I’d be able to do this. Recording is very time-consuming.
I do a lot of live shows in and around New York. We haven’t done any live performances with this version of the band yet, but we want to get to that this year if we can. Fabio is a big driving force behind this, and that’s how I’m able to balance it. Fashion is demanding, but I have a tremendous amount of help from Fabio.
Now that the album is out, what are your future plans? Do you have plans for specific singles? You mentioned wanting to perform live. Have you made any progress toward that?
Keanan Duffty: We would like to put together some live shows. The Ritualists, which is Christian Dryden’s band, have offered to let us play with them, and we could borrow their rhythm section and keyboard player.
Logistically, because Fabio lives in Italy and I live in New York, we’re pretty far apart. So it would make sense to do some gigs in the Northeast—in and around New York and up and down the coast. I think we could make that happen this fall.
I would also love to do some showcases in London at places like The 100 Club. That would require putting together a band in London, which we could do—we have enough friends who play and could fill in on bass, drums, maybe second guitar, and keyboards.
So that’s really the plan—to get out there and do some live shows as a band. And we’re constantly recording. I would love to find some other outlets for our music—some other collaborative ventures—maybe working with someone in another medium, like film.
I would love to do that because Fabio and I both love movies and have a cinematic approach to things. And with our capabilities—having Fabio’s great studio at our disposal—I think that’s something that would be really wonderful to explore.
To get more info and order music, visit slinkyvagabond.net.
Be sure to also check out our 2021 interview with both Keanan and Fabio.
