David Bowie 1993 interview

well they've already planned to start this inti was talking about skiing but since this is the Easter holiday and everybody's skiing and everybody takes a good subject yeah goose kill yourself I scared a lot over the last 12 years yeah I started when my son was a kid he was we were living in Switzerland and that's the first thing you really learned to do and he was having such fun doing it I really wanted to join him so I was kind of forced into learning and I did it out of a parental need initially but now I'd I absolutely adore it but you drew Lacey for her for across countries yes and I smoked much too much you got to be extremely fit I think and a Zen Buddhist I still send with this no but you have to be one if you're gonna do cross-country ski well maybe maybe but I like downhill yeah and I ski mainly switched and I've never skied in America a lot of friends have suggested I do that one friend just got back from Canada doing powder skiing so these you're welcome to do it any time in Norway but another thing that struck me when I was thinking about this into you is that you have at least two things in common with the President of the United States of America do you know what that is neither of us can play saxophone very well I would say saxophone that's all right and but I in high hell yeah that's different I don't know what is the second one you're expecting the same age I'll be really 46 46 yeah that's true does that bother you mr. president's not younger than me I think I think he's about six months older than your something but yeah yeah does that bother you that rock-and-roll stars like you you're the same age no no no I think it's a I think it can be very I think for some it's probably very depressing but I think for some others of us it's actually quite exciting now because we it's I guess it's an era than none of us expected ever to happen I don't I think when you're real young you don't honestly expect that one that you'll still be around after like 30 something like that and there's secondly I don't think you ever concede that you'd still want to write music and play it when you get into you could your picture of somebody in their forties getting into their fifties is usually one's own father you know and the generation will jump and the attitude of the two those two generations is it's such a quantum leap that I think to find that one still is excited by music and still wants to play you know is it's really invigorating well does the music change or the attitudes towards the music change during that for me personally I think I'm not so I'm not so I'm not so desperate to be on a cutting edge all the time I think I'm not quite so desperate to make them imbue the music with some kind of shock value and for me I've got much better concentration so I don't get as bored as easily as when I was younger when I was younger if I'd done one kind of album that was it I immediately wanted to do another style and change everything but I'm not that doesn't occur to me so much so maybe my approach is is I guess more more relaxed about my approach to music you could also say that you've taken steps from a rock and roll rebel until to respectable entertainer I don't know respect very kind of you and as you considered me respect Charlie nice of you well the clothes are different but I think you know my imagination is still pretty much what he used to be probably a lot more collected than it ever was then you look back and think about the dreams of the young David Jones are these dreams fulfilled ago they are now because I'm having looked past whatever it was I presumed success or achieving some kind of celebrity status in music or whatever and I sort of becoming regarded as somebody important in music but when I got past that and realized that that really what I was going to find it would help my life along as if I started looking at myself and what I need as opposed to sort of outside try things and I think over the last 10 years or so I think those things have come into place for me I think for me I feel very if you want to do anything with my life and the life of my generation when you started left well when I was young your life in your generation no I think I just wanted to reflect what I felt about society I think every young writer feels that he has something incredibly important to say and that he's going to do everything in his power to let everybody know about it and I think as you get older you realize that a lot of um unanswered questions in yourself that you need to address and so I think you you invert your perspective from that being outside to going to reflecting to an inside why you use the word reflect but you've always been ahead of everybody else in terms of trends and and I think a lot of people wonder are you the person who creates the trends or are you just got an extremely good intuition of what's going to happen next year I don't know probably a bit of each I think it comes from knowing what I miss in music at any given time if there's a kind of a music whatever the general kind of music is this one I look for what it is that I'm missing in it and then I try and I try and complete the picture for myself and so would this is quite good but what if there's a lot of what if in the way that I approach writing when you went out and announced your or bisexuality was that a PR trick or did you what about 1972 you're asking me yet well you definitely said that you you had sex with men but that was my answer yeah but did you want to do something to do society to the attitudes in society no no no I was I mean I was a prophet could turn to Buddha breaker I mean I think I went through life doing that mm-hmm but I when I acknowledge that that I was heterosexual I think that was something that I it was an experiment I think for myself between the trans period of the late sixties in the early seventies that it was for me one of the experiments that are almost a continuation in the sixties experimentation but I mean other things that are gleaned from that period were I think a lot of the gay clubs at that particular time but the only places that were playing music that was really worthwhile listening to all the dances and the theatrics and the flamboyant C's that were a revolution against the denim look at the end of the whole sixties late sixties and early seventies period came out of that particular subculture and for me it was really Opus a hidden subculture it was something I wanted to investigate it wasn't like it is now it was almost something that was verboten very taboo and for me that was incredibly magnetic it was something I wanted to know that and I think I probably got a lot of my formative musical ideas from that from their particular culture characters that you've been performing I mean everybody knows in CG star just Aladdin Sane and so on where did they come from did they come from within you or did you make them up with the people in the business the people in the business you know something agents I've never talked about the people in the business of depth there are these people in the business who wear long raincoats and sit on the edges of rooms and they devise things like characters now don't be absurd my characters came out from the need to not want to perform as myself I mean I had a long time of making a character out of everything I did because I had my really was very very cautious and shy of my own self and it took me years right up until 1978 to want to actually do a show where it was me singing and not being the characters that I was writing for the songs and so they kind of ate each other I mean I would write albums that had concepts behind them because that would enable me to be able to create a character and the character would then be able to go on stage and do the songs so it was hot I took myself further and further from writing about me and always I was in viewing the characters that I was writing for with their own personalities I mean that but that's that's not necessarily exactly what really happens because looking back now I can see that a lot of those albums in fact I was writing about myself but my presumption at the time is that I was writing about somebody else the kind of creator doppelganger you kind of imbue that doppelganger with all one's own fears and feelings of inadequacy and you put them on the doppelganger then one day you presume that if you kill that doppelganger you will be free of all these things and of course that doesn't happen I mean when you think you've killed it off they all are back in you and you have to really address those things and I think that's what happens when you come out of drug addiction yeah is that you start to try and redress the things and when you finished becoming an addict when you've gotten clean I think then you really have to deal with your own emotions and you have to deal with relationship relationships and how you deal with your family and and all that so I had a long period where I had to readapt to literally learning how to relate to my son and to the people around me so it was from from being a real real heavy drug casualty in the later seventies it was a very slow climb back out over 12 years something like that you kind of found the real thing I don't know I don't know well no he was always there of course I'm I was always there but it's no it's not a question of that it's a question of actually addressing the person is actually looking at myself as opposed to looking outwards and trying to trying to not be involved with myself being involved with outside situations is a replacement for looking at myself I didn't expect you to talk so frankly about drugs actually before I had you don't but what you tell your son solely about the drugs I tell him everything about everything I mean it's I mean he's 21 he's quite capable of taking information and he's at university in America so my presumption is that in his peer group he's probably having as many experiences in watching and drunk culture fortunately he doesn't do drugs and he doesn't drink doesn't smoke as I ever had as well you know so I think we have I think we've developed a very relevant relationship between us so there's no secrets between us at all but does it ever keep you awake that you with your exampling in drug consumption may have inspired some other young people no I can't do that I don't have guilts about my past I just have for me a series of luggage that are carried around with me things that I've not looked at and the best thing of all is to be able to look back at the past and examine those things and try and learn from them but if you have them as guilts you tend to lock them away and not look at them and then you really do cause yourself I think emotional damage I don't buy into that I don't buy into that myth at all so you don't accept that did that's anything to you as a person no what happens to oneself as a person one does it to oneself anything that's happened to me is because of my behavior on my experiences nobody from the outside damages me nobody from the outside does that if I caused damage to myself it's me that's causing the damage but often you run into the damaging things in an act of evasion of addressing yourself and finding out what what you're about where your heart is how you relate to other people why don't you relate to other people you know what does the word humility we need to you being able to accept somebody else on their own terms without trying to change them without trying to imbue them with your own opinions having the readiness to be able to listen to them and I mean really listen to them not to just sit there and wait for them to finish speaking before you say what you want to say but listening to what they have to say take it in and then try and validate it I know you're a pretty good listener because you always got out to get the inspiration from other people from other art form on a rock fan I'm the total rock fan I've been a fan of it since I was eight years old we'll be zat the day I die have always got at least one two currently really artists that I find really exciting and the same with the rest of the arts when you're excited about expression when you're excited about how an artist and portrays feelings and his emotions in more than one of the mediums I think you realize in eventually that all that all the tools are available to one out of any of those meetings you can apply what you're doing painting to what you're doing music and for me the to painting music have always been parallel for me when I was painting and using text is to build up different kind of pictures with music is the same I can use different instruments and different sounds and gradually a layer of a song will build and I'll often paint at the same time as I'm writing I mean not exactly you don't think not like that but in the evenings or maybe the next mornings when I've been in the studio I will often paint or draw and it kind of accompanies the album that I'm doing and every album that I've done there's usually some set of paintings or drawings that I've done with them there might not be the same subject matter but generally the sensibilities the same they're about the same weight as the album definitely like to see some of these paintings but it's terrible talking about most of them are terrible but they're that they're mine and what talking about painting if you will come across the Norwegian painter or married to him now how did I actually come across his his work somebody from Norway I think but I believe her one of the audience a fan or one of the shows that I did gave me a Brooke on his work a number of years ago and I was absolutely floored by his technique and his approach I thought it was because I'm a great fan of the Renaissance and Mannerist painting so I'd love very much very Nadine kind of a Geo and and then whole period of Italian art even though there's something very much more actually more Scandinavian about his work generally because of the mythological element in the characters the kind of timeless not dawn not Twilight it's somewhere in between those in his paintings but the way that he uses paints his technique is absolutely flawless on him he's an extraordinary painter really incredible and I've met him on a night yes I met him once properly what do you talk about when you were changing makes a new album the music business and defense and the world expects something very extraordinary to happen I expect something very extraordinary to happen I can't really take any notice of what people want or what the music business wants or anything like that because I've never written for anybody except me and I've always found that if I'm not excited by what I'm doing then it's not going to be an album that I'll ever be able to live with comfortably but if I'm if I'm excited by it then for me it's a success and this is sort of before it's before it's before we go into the commercial aspects of promoting like this promoting an album the actual recording in the studio is the most important thing and if at the end of the mixing I have something that I really feel has got the integrity of what I first intended in it and and has a certain element of surprise that surprises me about what my writing is about then it's a success that's kind of my approach to binding [Music] yeah [Music] who said to the world some five years ago that you'll never take off if you're a solo career again no I didn't said I would never do my solo songs again the big hits - I never anyone said I would never be a solo artist okay you're welcome back anyway but the title track like tie yeah no it says I know that it's inspired by what happened in LA yeah tell me you were there when it happened yes that's right I well my wife and I just come back from Italy and we've landed in Los Angeles on the day that the four police were acquitted of the beating of Rodney King and I think it was pretty it was pretty well thought that in the community that if that decision came in there would be some kind of trouble I don't think anybody expected the the weight of the explosion of protests and outrage that came from that incident and when it did happen it seemed two things it seemed one if it was a numbing experience but on the other hand it was also a fellow almost inevitable if something like a prison riot it felt like people who've being imprisoned for no just reason just exploding with rage that yet another humiliating act of being passed on them and it just felt like they wanted to break all social mores that nothing meant anything nothing had if that kind of decision could be made nothing had any logic and so there was no logic to pay attention to and it was a very strange experience seeing these pillars of smoke throughout the city I mean it really looked like something out of a right or the Lebanon or something like that so what they're trying to do with the song are you making a political statement or no I think I'm to the best of my ability trying to create an impression of how I felt and what my feelings are towards the current situation it feels to me that because of the real lack of generosity amongst the white community and extending a hand of integration to both the black and Hispanic community in America in America specifically as the song deals only with America that by now those particular communities don't just don't regard it anymore I think they want to work from their own black economic base and probably that's what they are doing and that's the way it's going and I suspect that if the current administration well not to come through with the promises that it's made toward the inner cities and America that that's sort of an protests but it has got to be found again it comes to politics but it seems to me like like you're very this thing really means something to and yes it does mean a lot to me since the early seventies a good deal of my friends have come from those communities nearly all the musicians I've worked with since 74 have been either Hispanic or black and they themselves have usually been in a more economically higher class because of there are the kind of musicians they are they've had good fortune as musicians but the families they come from still suffer from the kinds of degradation that most people in inner cities have to endure so I have some quite good knowledge of it and it pains me to see that in fact things are worse now for blacks and Hispanics in America than they were even five years ago so many are now living below the poverty line in Los Angeles alone in central South Los Angeles 16 percent of that community is is without work there's very high unemployment 16 percent in such a rich city there's not in a way this time you're using it with your position to to to make people aware of these situations that's that's great I'm not sure it's just it's something that I don't think so it's something that I felt that that I felt I had an emotional response to and so therefore it caused me to write a song that was the initial reason for doing it and so what it does I had no idea but that's why the songs there another thing that characterizes your new album is the celebration of your wife have celebrated my marriage your marriage and the romantic heroics of won't arresting lila enough there aren't actually any songs on the album about my wife but there are songs about the marriage and I can from the simple fact that because she all of her family are Muslim and all of mine a Protestant Christian I had to write music for the church though that wasn't like Christian hymns because we couldn't use Christian hymns in the church so I had to write a music that would make both families comfortable because all her family came from Africa they came over for the service and mine came as well so it was kind of really a balancing act to kind of create some music that was some relationship to what I felt that we were and what we were doing the commitments that we were making to each other so and really because of that simple act of writing that music caused me to really really evaluate what I wanted to say and it was writing that music that caused this album to come into being you're also dealing with a family tragedy yes I'm on a song called jump they say that's a song that I have a stepbrother who tragically in 1986 committed suicide it affected me in several different ways and they're still ways that I'm not sure how to approach them and I'm still trying to address the situation because for me it was quite traumatizing and this song reflects some of my feeling about that situation and about his particular illness which was acute schizophrenia and manic depression and it's a very high he's he's somebody who's occurred throughout my writing in fact I started writing about him on man who sold the world his son called all the madmen and again he appears in in a song called the bewdley brothers on hunky-dory because I had such a very strong affinity with him but also didn't see very much of him either he was a almost a shadow figure in my life and it's taken me and still will take me back and guess several years to fully understand the implications of our relationship but that's what the song is about anyway you've always been taking risks risks and all of you aren't taking my biggest risk now is that I've committed myself to a marriage and so I shall take part in that to the best of my abilities we were full integrity and with good faith and in you see azzam as I'm indescribable happy I mean I'm so happy people want to strangle me third I think it's a for me it's their one of the most joyous decisions I've made and it's thing merit is really changed my life I've seen a lot of interviews with David Bhavan i revved a lot of interviews but I've never I've never seen a David Bowie as happy and maybe as mature as the man I see in front of me right now oh this big flashes occasionally in the past I think altogether I'm you know I have I'm a very lucky guy I have I've gotten through a very strange and potentially damaging life not with psychically less damage than I expected emotionally I'm pretty much together I feel I have real contact with the people around me with my family with my wife with my friends my music I love and I am very invigorated by it what more could a poor white boy one

Channel: Richard ́s David Bowie Channel

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Length: 24min 51sec (1491 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 09 2020