David Bowie's former drummer slams Gaga's 'tacky' Grammys tribute

David Bowie's former drummer has labeled Lady Gaga's tribute to the late singer at the Grammy Awards "tacky".

Gaga honored Bowie in her own unique way at the ceremony in February (16), performing a medley of the veteran star's hits including Space Oddity, Rebel Rebel and Heroes.

The tribute divided opinion, with Bowie's son Duncan Jones among those slamming it when he tweeted the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of the word Gaga: "Over-excited or irrational, typically as a result of infatuation or excessive enthusiasm; mentally confused."

Now Mick Woodmansey, who played with Bowie's Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars from 1970 to 1973, has revealed he and producer Tony Visconti were asked to perform at the awards, but turned it down because they didn't think it would be a fitting tribute.

"We were actually asked to do that, we were on tour at the time, they asked Tony and myself would we do it, and we looked at it and it was going to be like 14 or 15 songs in the space of four minutes, and we just went ‘no”, that’s stupid, that’s not going to represent anything good about him,'” he told Britain's NME magazine. “I haven’t seen many things that do represent it properly. It’s nice that many want to do that, it’s a great thing, but quality wise, there hasn’t been many."

And Gaga's tribute was one of those which didn't live up to expectations, Mick added.

"It was just, ‘why are you doing it?’" he explained. "If there’s a genuine heartfelt thing that you wanna do out of respect, then you’d probably pull it off, but if there’s any other reason, it just gets tacky, and obviously you can’t stop that, they have a right to do it as they want to do it, but it doesn’t help a lot, it doesn’t do a lot."

The Grammys were held just a month after Bowie's shock passing in January (16), after a short battle with cancer.

And while the timing of the ceremony wasn't ideal, Gaga admitted in a recent interview that she was upset by the criticism of her tribute.

"It did hurt. But what are you going to do?" Gaga told NME of Duncan's tweet. "I can’t… it’s his father, you know. Whatever he was feeling in that moment I have compassion and love for him. But yes, of course it hurt.

"I still have to trust and believe in myself as a Bowie fan. I’m not his family, and the thing is, that’s his father. His father is not David Bowie, his father is David Jones. I’m sure that was difficult to watch and of course, I called many people on David’s team before I even begun doing that project and it’s unfortunate, what can I say? But God bless him, you know?"