David Bowie turns Peter Gabriel down for covers set

David Bowie has turned Peter Gabriel down flat and will not appear on the followup companion piece to his new album. Out now is Gabriel's latest collection, the covers project Scratch My Back. The album features Gabriel's takes on songs by Bowie, Talking Heads, Paul Simon, Neil Young, Radiohead and others. The followup album is now in production for the artists Gabriel covered to record renditions of songs from his catalogue. Gabriel, who covered Bowie's 1977 classic "Heroes," had hoped that the "Thin White Duke" would be more than happy to reciprocate and cover a Gabriel tune -- but the semi-retired Bowie declined. Gabriel spoke about the situation to The Associated Press, explaining, "Sadly, David Bowie is the only artist that said he clearly didn't want to play with the song swap. I don't think he's doing much music at the moment. But (producer) Brian Eno was a co-writer on the song so it gets around that problem and he's going to do a version of this song, 'Don't Break This Rhythm.' But 'Heroes' is one of those classic songs . . . it's one of my favorite Bowie songs and I was a Bowie fan right from the beginning."