“David Bowie asked me if I wanted to go out to dinner with John Lennon! I had a big ‘dilemma’ moment; I was hearing certain musical things in my head. I didn’t wanna go out and lose myself”: Carlos Alomar on making Fame, Heroes – and Bowie’s Berlin era

David Bowie and Carlos Alomar onstage in the '80s, with Alomar soloing on a red Stratocaster.

By the dawn of the ’70s, though he was only 19, Carlos Alomar, a Puerto Rican-born New York citizen and son of a strict Pentecostal minister, had made a lifetime’s worth of memories. Not only had he regularly dominated the stage at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, but he’d backed Chuck Berry and James Brown and even served as the house band for Sesame Street’s first few episodes before moving on to session work for RCA Studios, which was booming by 1970.

Soon, Alomar joined the Main Ingredient, an NYC-based soul and R&B group that had a hit with Everybody Plays the Fool, which bolstered Alomar’s cachet, as did a notable guest spot with Ben E. King on Supernatural. And while all that was wonderful, none held a candle to what was next – a gig beside David Bowie as he entered his most experimental period.