Gardiner joined his first band, the Vostoks, at school in 1962. Before joining both The Kingbees and The System, with whom he formed
Beggars Opera in 1969. He played in his own outfit with this band, Beggars Opera, and also with friends
David Bowie and
Iggy Pop. For Bowie he played lead guitar on the 1977 album
Low. For Pop he worked on his album
Lust for Life the same year: the issue included "
The Passenger", regarded as one of Pop's best songs, for which Gardiner composed the music. Bowie biographer David Buckley described it as being "possessed with one of the greatest riffs of all time". On 19 October 1977, Gardiner was selected by
Tony Visconti to play guitar for the pre-recorded backing of Bowie's performance on
"Heroes" on the
BBC's
Top of the Pops. The recording was made at
Good Earth Studios in
Soho, London with Bowie, Visconti, and pianist
Sean Mayes. Gardiner emulated
Robert Fripp's feedback-driven guitar line. "I was asked to reproduce Robert Fripp's line. As we went through the song, my amplifier started dying. As the song finished, so did the amp." From the 1970s, Gardiner played and composed in a variety of music styles, including
ambient,
classical, and rock. In 2017, photographs Gardiner took at the
Château d'Hérouville, during the making of David Bowie's
Low album in 1977, were included in a hardcover book that accompanied the vinyl and CD box set of
A New Career in a New Town (1977–1982), alongside photographs by
Anton Corbijn,
Helmut Newton,
Andrew Kent, Steve Shapiro, Duffy, and others. Gardiner said that he suffered from
electromagnetic hypersensitivity, which he believed he contracted through exposure to high levels of computer radiation and
magnetic fields. Gardiner died on 13 May 2022, aged 73, after a long battle with
Parkinson's disease. ==References==