David Bowie // Interview Collection

welcome nice to see you thank you so you've got a lot of explaining to do yes I I feel like interview I always feel like she didn't be like that character Peter cook does you know what is all this prancing about as staging trappings and all of that but you don't you don't have the trappings that you've had in the past you're a little more conventional yeah this movement what happened but we did that Diamond Dogs too and took it from New York to Los Angeles yeah I thought that that was enough really rather than come back with the same thing I wanted to give myself fun an opportunity just to work with the band yeah so a lot of the glitter is gone that we associate with you and you've got an entirely new new person there who's only glitz the yesteryear or something like that is the off stage Bowie I'm likely to surprise people I have had the weirdest reactions from people who know you're going to be on so I'm gonna say they'd be scared to sit and talk with you some people said you would bite my neck sorry yeah very peculiar kind of thing it's what you want really isn't it and what do you think on that well I've only met you over the phone in a little bit backstage and and to me it seemed like oh this isn't insult you a working actor I mean that's very good you know I mean what are you drawing [Music] so if you know there some people thought there's a lady who said I I don't know if I'd be if I'd want to meet him he would make me very nervous I have a feeling he's into black magic and that sort of thing and other people see was just a very skillful performer who changes from time to time one thing to another yeah what I've had a person of diverse interests but not fewer I'm not really very academic and I I glitter from one thing to another a lot GLIP mm-hmm it's like flip but it's something it's the seventies version one letter later in the alphabet this incredible picture it's very striking if you the first time you see it I'm the first time this album appeared in a record store window and it was I could see it actually stopping traffic on the sidewalk this is the picture you send to the draft board obviously No how did that come about that whole idea but very painting well it's an artist from Belgium could keep a lot we did a book called rock dreams that I nicked I nicked the young why didn't make the book I saw the book of Mick Jagger's act and I'm Nick the idea of doing a cover but it's nicked me I'll stolen story only does this make you nervous to sit without your band and and with everything in this to chat a little bit oh let's count talking to ask me that Oh otherwise I wonder yeah there's nothing up Meredith I'm nervous into Michaela I won't worry about that okay where's the kick for you David in performing it in performance when you're on stage that's it complete really being there yeah the entrance that I can imagine that it would be very exciting profession I mean to stand there with it there are people in the world who've never stood on the stage those of us who have forget this I mean stand on a giant stage like that with a band behind you their rehearsal today I stood in for you Alliance and I mean and the feeling of standing there with that sound coming behind you is very exhilarating I have an incredible feeling and I've got a lot of fulfillment from working in productions like diamond dogs or bazooka starters yeah but it was one of putting together lots of bits and pieces and loose ends and directing our thing and remembering a thousand things at once but that so that was one kind of fulfillment but now that I'm working just with the band and singing which is something I haven't done for years just stand and sing myself yeah and finding a new kind of fulfillment I I'll go back to doing productions in the world oh yeah I just wanted to go out and sing my songs as a singer-songwriter for a bit yeah and you know [Music] if take a break right now for message that will be back back back back stay with us David what kind of student were you in school as I say not very academic um I suppose I was considered arty arty did you go through college or to college here oh yeah I went to a Technical College near London and our course for people from 12 at ones who couldn't do anything else much like math or physics wasn't there so I took art alright hmm you know that Jagger studied economics yes and I mentioned that once when he was on and some of his fans were disappointed to hear that and he was the London School of Economics yes and it ties into something he said in an interview he did with William Burroughs which I thought was interesting if it's if it's in fact true who time to leave it well everything ties in with something else he said which is every don't ask me any questions because I'll say something different every time but but taking a chance here taking a stab in the light you you said that there were lives of the rock stars are really not as strange as the lives of the fans and that the fans it's an interesting point that the fans sort of envy the stars but in an effect to starts with conventional lives and envy the fans it strikes me as odd the idea that you know fans are out shoving I don't know nutmeg under their cuticles there's something and trying to be really freaky and you and you and Jagger are sitting around discussing economics before the Angeles and the Benelux Nations or something is it am i exaggerating now speaks economics I don't understand it but it is this in fact true that the what is your private life like 2002 versus in the song oh yeah what I meant is that when I first started I could get out and about a bit and I used to go to clubs and dance and you know that was quite easy and I sorted out what I wanted aware what I wanted to do but later on when things became slightly cocooned fact they were cocooned I was kind of you know in there somewhere I found that I was seeing what everybody else was wearing when I used to come to the shows kind of out of it a bit psycho I would things up that I kind of get influenced by people come to see me I mean kind of agency I mean I saw a person with a kind words of course but then like somebody started bringing them to the gigs and that I really liked them so I started using one so he wasn't me it was then you've been influenced by your audience than yours yeah I think you are not how do you how do you dream up your your latest manifestation you know what I mean which one particularly in any case the these fitted sketchpad you worked from your own dreams to you visions like I mean I'm in a very lucky position of not being wanting to fly so I took a ship or train or something we won't fly no I already took the trans-siberian railway somewhat yeah yes yeah who's right through Russia from the hood go through to Moscow and from Moscow wassail East Berlin and chopped off the earth threatened to send back in Moscow where won't you fly um excuse me it's you know great the plane will get them down where it isn't supposed I don't I don't like the feeling of going up and they speak it always feels like something running very fast and then like going to the edge of a cliff and jump in and open air get to the other side I like that well it should be like if it's might discover like that yeah luck is also what way to rock stars tend to have premonitions of doom it seems to be a theme in their work and in their life how because they pretty Nazis would be doing it in the first place you know but a very tangled Minds very very messed up people give a try to picture yourself at 60 somebody said the idea of a reunion of the Beatles in their 70s oh they come tottering out on this day someone holds a guitar out in front of them or left Luckett for their eighties that's what this is rather personal question but is that your real hair color I know I did when you walk around New York and hardhats there's a hey sweetheart you know I'm not drawing so you have your [Laughter] good idea what are your parents do for a living my father's dead and my mother has a small flat and I think she's got a day job this year trouble explaining you to the neighbors who say are you any relation to that she pretends on the earth now she's uh she doesn't talk much you know she doesn't I don't think we really we're never that close particularly we have an understanding yeah it's that true that your real name is Menemsha Spiegel gasps is it is it really you didn't want that revealed I was waiting for you to reveal it well I I'm sorry actually didn't want that out but what is black noise black noise yeah black noise is something that borrows got very interested in it so it's um ya know it's the one facet of blackness is that everything like a glass of you fan opera singer hits a particular note the vibrations are out of the metabolism of the glass and it cracks it yeah so the black noise is the register within which you can crack a city or people or it's a new controlled bomb it's a bomb in fact which can destroy is it a real thing excellent in France could a tyrant use it through until last year you could buy the patent for it in the French Patent Office for about equivalent of three four dollars and it would wipe out a say if the criterion depends how much money you put into it I mean a small one could probably kill about four people here but a big one could destroy a city or even more this is a it's a weird idea don't look it's not my idea no let's not give the instructions on how to do it how to do it can you recommend a good book to your fans have a good look this week I'll pause familles oh do I have a book here yeah oh I wondered if you last thing I read you you'd said the Kerouac was important to you but that's a long time back what do I dance I'm really lucky a velly you're reading Machiavelli no we find on your coffee table in your apartment in it at the moment mainly pictures I I bought an Diane Arbus book of photographs photographer that I like branch yeah could I ever do a walk-on in your show I've got to know what it feels like to stand on stage in it in a big production thing like that but that's you're up here well if I had a part for you yeah yeah maybe if I were to bring out a cup of tea in a good book oh I forgot about you you do mom asked me about my book you have a book with funnily enough a book coming yes I one rising your yeah based on the trans-siberian Express oh really mmm that's saying I can Osmond that's fun I know I'm glad to know that how do you say your wife's name I've seen it printed angels and Angela which is the type of I'm Angela mind you her real name is Angie tomahto did you want a model or an actress or I was a dry attractive picture of now she was intellectual that went to school in Switzerland and there's a vast capacity for knowledge and runs around us thesis is everything yeah and how do you say your son's name Zoe your son's name is Zoe Bowie yeah [Music] is it true that Frank Zappa has a child named moon unit yes can you imagine growing up kids in a tough neighborhood a moon unit do we have a message we will take a break here and we'll be right back so you know somewhere someone is writing a learning paper in a university called something like Jagger and Bowie profits of a pluralistic society and others different prophets of doom it's a indeed you read this stuff and you see critics write very elaborate intellectual analyses of your work and other people's does this put you to sleep the bad ones I always read the good ones yeah I do you want to be understood you know what I mean Ziggy says nothing to understand was concerned with famine in the world and so on and prophesies storyteller arts discipline desire are you I mean are you being absolutely accurate honest when you say you're a disciplined person oh yes you in person a discipline on your own music writing on your own work do I mean you don't just get up when you know you know you know what I'm saying to you a lot of people in your position doesn't mean that you you make sure that you have breakfast at eight o'clock in the morning and you are out of the house by half-past eight discipline is that you if you conceive something then you decide whether or not it's worth following through and if it's worth following through then you follow it through to its logical conclusion and do it with the best to the best of your ability that's the discipline most of all depends whether whether there are areas in it that are not to one's liking you have to go right the way through it and do it and that's what I do and more important than not to other people's liking I mean there are often things that if you decide to do as a major star you're gonna you're gonna get people worked up about yes because you don't appear at the right place at the right time or or the imagination is drying up you need something else to refuel it it's because I thoroughly enjoy looking at myself and looking at the environment that I'm in at anytime with the eyes of someone who's not involved in in any particular line of the arts so it comes out as a sort of eclectic manifestation you know it's not on there's still a fan of everything fan of films fan of Records fan of rock bands and fan of yours well I'm a fan of yours well let's get back to eclectic manifesto it occurred to me having watched MTV over the last few months that it's it's it's got its a solid enterprise with it and it's got a lot going for it I'm just floored by the fact that there's so many but so few black artists featured on it why is that I think they're worth trying to move in that direction we want to play artists that seem to be doing music that fits into what we want to play for MTV there's the companies thinking in terms of narrowcasting that's evident it's evident in the fact that the only few black artists that one does see are on about 2:30 in the morning on - around 6:00 very fewer feature predominant predominantly during the day you know that's if I'll say that over the last couple of weeks those things have been changing but if it's so it's a slow process I know it's funny I think people have different perceptions when you wind up watching let's say watch an hour or two or even three a day people somehow come away with different ideas about what we are doing we don't have any kind of day parting for anything hmm let alone a black artist departed out of what what would be quote primetime we don't have that because one sees a lot under this one black station on television that I keep picking up I'm not sure which station is on but there's a seem to be a lot of black artists making very good videos that I'm surprised aren't used on MTV oh of course also we have to try and do what we think not only New York and Los Angeles will appreciate but also tipsy or Midwest picks on town in the Midwest that will be scared to death by prints which we're playing or a string of other black faces that's inglorious interesting isn't that interesting you know we have to we have to play the music that we think an entire country is going to like and certainly we're a rock and roll station now the question would be asked well should since we're in New York should pLJ play you know the Isley Brothers well you and I might say yeah because we have grown up in an era when the Isley Brothers mean something to me and so did the spinners even way after the Isley Brothers but what does it mean to a 17-year old well if you talk on the phones to these guys like I did when I was in radio it's well I'll tell you what it means I told you what maybe the Isley Brothers or Marvin gayed means to a black 17-year old ah and surely he's part of America's when I was Western no question and that's why you're seeing those things so you're not finding it's a frightening predicament to be in yeah but less so here than in radio and is it not well that don't say well it's not means then is it or is it not possible that it's it's it should be a conviction of the station and of other radio stations to be fair it is it does seem to be rampant through American media is it should it not be a challenge to try and make the media far more integrated in those things especially of anything in musical terms absolutely I think it's happening because white music and white musicians are now starting to play more than ever what more than they have lately let's say in the last 10 years yeah what what black artists have been into and now hopefully the lines are gonna start to to blur and when we play a band like ABC yeah well there's this white and black kids who are enjoying it and all of a sudden well it's it's a little bit easier for a white kid to understand it the fact is quite frankly I could even point you towards a letter in the new issue of the record yeah the magazine the record responding to an article by Dave Marsh that this kid just ranted about what he didn't want to see on MTV well that's you know uncertain terms well what I'm saying though is that there's as you say there's certainly a lot of black kids and white kids you may want to see black music there's a ton who are it's not like it wasn't 67 we say yeah I'm not into that you know but you are you know it's you're into that I don't like you and that's scary and we can't we can't just turn around and go well look this is the right way we can only teach I think a little bit at a time interesting okay thank you very much seems to me that there's been a constant reinvention of sorts yeah why do you do that I think I was quite happy to buy into the idea of reinvention up until the beginning of the eighties really and and it came about I think more than anything else that when I was a teenager I had it in in my mind that I would be a creator of musicals I sincerely wanted to write musicals for the West End of a Broadway whatever I didn't see much further than that as a writer and I really had the idea in my head that people would do my songs and I was not a natural performer I didn't feel at ease on stage ever and I had created this one character a Ziggy Stardust that it seemed that I would be the one that would play him because nobody else was doing my songs and the chances of my actually getting a musical mounted were very slim and so I became siggy stylist for that period whatever and things sort of led I like that I like the idea and I felt really comfortable going onstage as somebody else and it seemed her irrational decision to keep on doing that and so I've got quite besotted with the idea of just creating character after character and I think probably there must have been a point in the late seventies I know there was where I felt that the characters were in fact getting in the way of myself as a writer and I endeavoured to kind of kill them off and start writing for me as as just a singer-songwriter I'm not sure if I was ever successful in that because I I I do take a degree of theatricality when I go on stage all the time - and if that's how I deal with the stage situation I'm still not comfortable on stage but I mean David Bowie himself isn't invention I mean do you think of yourself as burial David Jones the boy from South London less and less is but as Bowie Bowie Bowie I don't even know how to pronounce it anymore I've lost track I always thought it was Bowie I thought what is his Scottish name must be Bowie but nobody has gotten pronounces it I have crowd booing good with weird related it was some kind of discovery in the ice isn't that a lot of what I am is my my my enthusiasms that I've always been a very curious and enthusiastic person again as says from when I was a teenager and that it really wasn't up to me to try and identify exactly what that meant I just had to accept that I was a person who had a very short attention span and would move from one thing to another quite rapidly when I got bored with the other and I became comfortable with that and didn't try and identify myself while trying to ask myself who I was the less questioning I did about myself as to who I was the more comfortable I felt but so now I have absolutely no knowledge of who I had I'm extremely happy but do you find the business of being in the music industry as interesting and attractive as it is I have nothing to do with the industry I really have so little to do with it the hub of my creativity comes from what I do where I go up I put myself in places one that maybe I've never been before or that I I feel there's a certain tension involved I can't I can't really write or produce much if I'm in a place that's that's relaxing I have to have a set of conflicts going around me not necessarily of my own doing I've learned that that is particularly bad idea what do you say well I don't create my own conflicts in my own life I think I might have done that to quite an extent when I was younger is actually things were going too smoothly I would be drunk it could be being an addictive personality I will be drawn to create conflicts that would reduce the tension necessary to right now I find that I can do it by observation more than being perhaps deeply involved in a mess because of right but the industry side of things I really I'm not even sure what that word actually represents to me anymore I mean if personal love you don't do drugs anymore no absolutely not and you don't drink I don't drink either not even a glass of wine no they were kill me first I'm an alcoholic so it was it would be kiss of death for me to start drinking again my relationships with my friends my family everybody around me are so good and have been for so many years now I wouldn't do anything to destroy that again you know it's very hard to have relationships in your tune drugs and drinking I thought for me personally anyway and you become closed off unreceptive insensitive all the dreadful things that you've heard every other pop singer ever saying and I was very lucky that I found my way out of that it's it's been good for me I've reassessed my life any number of times but starting out now I think that's probably quite right I think I think I'd probably just be a a fan in the collector of Records what would you do I I wanted to be a musician because it seemed it seemed rebellious it seems subversive it felt like one could affect change to a form it was very hard to hear music when I was younger you know when I when I was really young you had to tune in to AFN radio to hear the American records there was no MTV and there was no it wasn't sort of wall-to-wall blanket music and so therefore it had a kind of a call to arms kind of feeling to it this is the thing that will change things this is a dead dodgy occupation to have there's still produce signs of horror from people with you said yeah I met I'm in rock-and-roll it was my goodness now it's a career opportunity and the Internet is now it carries the flag of being subversive and possibly rebellious and chaotic nihilistic and oh yes it is is that forget about the micro soft element there the monopolies do not have a monopoly maybe on programs what do you like about the fact do what you like about it is the fact that anyone can say anything we'll do it from my start from where I am because of the by virtue of the fact that I am a pop singer yeah done right huh I I really I really like I'll embrace the idea that there's a new demystification process going on between the artist and the audience I think when you look back at say this last decade there hasn't really been one single entity artist or group that have personified or become the brand name for the nineties in like it was starting to fade a little in the 80s and the 70s there was still definite artists in the sixties there were the Beatles and the Hendrickson and the fifties that was presently now it says subgroups and genres it's hip hop it's girl power it's a divot is a communal kind of thing it's about the community it's becoming more and more about the audience because the point of having somebody who led the forces has disappeared because the vocabulary of rock is too well-known is a currency that is not it's not devoid of meaning anymore but he's certainly only a conveyor of information it's not a conveyor of rebellion and the Internet has taken on that as I say and so I find that a terribly exciting area so from my standpoint being an artist I'd like to see what the new construction is between artist and audience there is a breakdown there's a personified I think by the the rave culture of the last few years where the audience is at least as important as whoever is playing at the right it's almost like the artist is to accompany the the audience and what the audience is doing and that feeling is very much permeating music and and permeating the Internet but what is it specifically about the Internet I mean anybody can say anything and it all adds up to what I mean it seems to me there's no there's nothing cohesive about it in the way that there was something cohesive about the youth revolution in music but that absolutely and because I think that we at the time up until at least the mid seventies really felt that we were still living under the within the guise of a --single an absolute created society whether were known truths unknown lies and there was no kind of duplicity or pluralism about the things that we believed in that started to break down rapidly in the seventies and the idea of a duality in the way that we live in there are always two three four five sides to every question that the singularity disappeared and that I believe has produced such a medium as the internet which absolutely establishes and shows us that we are living in total fragmentation you don't think that some of the claims being made for it are moment where the interplay between the user and the provider will be so in Sympatico it's going to it's going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about and but it's happening in every form is happening in visual art the breakthroughs of the early part of the century with people like to Sean who was so prescient in what they were doing and putting down the idea that the piece of work is not finished until the audience come to it and add their own interpretation and what the piece of art is about is the gray space in the middle that grey space of the middle is what the 21st century is going to be though [Music] Barry Bonds of the big one of the things you're best known for yeah third you're supposed to raise 30 million by selling yes you did rights to earning future earnings on your bed I'm not alive a catalog yeah yeah doesn't the come a point at which there's no point in earning any more money do you know how expensive it is to get involved in the Internet I think that are you I probably the majority of the money that I make goes I plow back into some some new project rather I also of course being working-class always what feel that there's never enough to leave my family so there's a kind of a survival instinct that okay I could definitely that's going to be fine I can leave that to all the kids future and bars and everybody will be ok however I would love to start a new Internet company as well so I'll need a bit more for that so you kind of get a bit plant you just keep plowing it back in I'm not a buyer of things I think the only thing that I buy addictively and obsessively probably is ah I'm not really a house man or a car man are the only nice car I've ever bought for myself was 1967 a type 1 and 1/2 which is what I would get a half and I don't have things I don't have a a plane I don't have a I haven't got very much Joe I'm not a buyer of stuff I much rather I do tend to regard money as the oil to get other things going I'm not sure I feel more comfortable with them I you have any desire to come back here I'd love to come back here and I will we haven't decided when it'll be but that's an absolute given but a few other things I want to get accomplished over the next I'd say two years that may be quite surprising to people what do you make of cool Britannia Oh lumpin it's it's so cliched and silly and ineffective I think I don't think it's really changed I think it might have I think it's helped the media get some handle on how to describe these times but I don't think anybody else anywhere believes it you know there's good and bad in everything that we do we're brilliant architects got some wonderful artists visual artists and some rubbish in artists as well music we've always been good at music we're not truly a rock nation everything that we do in rock-and-roll hasn't a sense of irony Testament we distant we know that we're not the Americans we know it didn't spring from our souls and so as the British always do they try and do something with it to make them feel smug and that's what we're good at doing but when you see politicians embracing rock stars I mean personally I start reaching for my revolver then or at least I wear a pair of women's high heels when I meet a primary I do my bit still he didn't even notice you know what this was Tony Blair who didn't notice you aware I'm where he's like a woman's stiletto shoes on a nice suit and tie that's the last time or it's I I think no it wasn't no what I wore in vicars dog collar nice black suit black shirt with a dog collar and pair of women's high heels and he doesn't bat an eyelid thank you very much David Bowie outsider man of a million faces his follow his chitchat chitchat changes this chameleon of rock that sounds like you hate that guy yes I do I do I think it's I think it's lazy journalism for it firstly for instance a chameleon is something that changes its colour to suit its background which I don't think that that's what's intended when they say that and the church a church ain't his things just like a ghastly literation anyway I've been making music 25 years oh yeah is there something like a threat building rumor I'll just corneas search for spiritual foundation I really do think it's just kind of cliche is that that's an easy answer yes I know and unfortunately I keep coming back to it you know I suppose it's that is a term that the Gnostics use which is called the God beyond God and I think that there's a sense at once some some merit in the chaos that we perceive as our existence and for someone like myself who comes from like most of us I don't know in this room come from the judeo-christian upbringing there's something that Paul's with the idea of having a God who's a judge and a father and an arbiter of morals and whatever it just doesn't it seems too symbolic it's too easy and I think that the idea that the early Gnostics had which is that there is in fact the the the deep the depth of the God beyond the God that is something beyond that which one can't call a singular entity something that just pervades everything and I still think that that's probably one of the major searches that I've probably made in my life not sure how close I ever got but I know that it does occur to most of us I think your work in in in the answer in writing or expressing oneself when you're expressing myself you're also trying to express one's existence you know so it's wrapped up in the same thing I don't know I really don't know it's something to do that is something to do with what used to be feelings of alienation although those feelings have kind of dissipated over the last 10 years for me I feel I don't feel as though I'm picked on by by today there was though I feel comfortable in my society I don't think I miss obsessive as I used to be by any means I think I have such a great personal domestic life now that a lot of my energies go ahead I think when I felt sort of disenfranchised to a certain extent from life around me I think I just focused in on working nothing else but that was a long time ago in almost 20 years you know it's I don't I don't have that obsession anymore quite the same way no hmm are you happy for that it's relative and very happy with the way my life is I have a very fulfilled life I think it has to be measured in terms of fulfillment and as a person I feel very fulfilled no way I do equal enough work and live a very fulfilling life with my chosen partner and family I find nothing lacking there's nothing really I want out of out of life that I haven't somehow been given some kind of access to which is I'm very lucky extremely I don't think there's an ounce of Americanism in me I'd likely contend it to be in rock rock and roll I think I probably would have been far better suited in another time for sort of vaudeville law or cabaret or something I don't feel like a rock and roll anthem look even one iota know I'm a pop singer much more a pop singer don't need I I think it's forming on stage you're doing anything I think in in any of the art forms one is to be loved and I think when you want that when you need an audience's love I think that you have to what you end up doing is trying to match their expectations and trance sort of say well what would they want you know and I think that there's this like brother cranky idea that people like me have is that you know you want to keep exploring different avenues and and our guests that because I get all my love that I need at home I don't really feel that I need to please an audience in quite quite that same way so I'm prepared for more or less anything I get but I really I really insist in in doing things that give me the kind of musical again I use the same word fulfillment that I require as an artist so it means doing some things that are quite I guess bizarre or obscure or kind of off-the-wall for an artist of my age and standing for me personally I think there's me some songs that I really really have always adored I never really give myself a chance to play them because the shows that I've done up until 1990 especially during the eighties after the nighted were generally so stacked with things that probably the audience would wish to hear that there wasn't much room left for doing some of the songs that I'm now able to do because I'm jaxxed opposing the material from the outside with things like like teenage wildlife Joe the lion Andy Warhol actually in turn look back in and interestingly enough there are - I'm adding on for this tour - songs that were from the Ziggy Stardust album but once which I haven't done for something out of 25 years which five years which was the opening track and the closing track which is moonage daydream which is is really quite exciting this man what this the thing that he can put extra on your music I don't know haha it's always a really embarrassing question for me because I'm not quite sure what it is that Brian does and he doesn't play very much I always mix my albums so I guess it has something to do with the fact when he puts himself into a work situation he just changes the parameters of what you're doing more by verbalizing different approaches to what one does so it's more it's more a kind of a philosophic content with Brian and then then a kind of a didactic musician Lee kind of overall control he's very good at what if you were to do this or what if you were to do that and possibly come up with a new new choices of avenues to take that maybe we you know wouldn't otherwise have thought of so at that he's very he's really important in the very early stages of making an album because he can set it on a path that will be unusual and that's where he tends to feel happiest I think in the inception of making an album he's like me has very short attention span I think once he's done a few days work you well I'm off now on a hill got up somewhere else shishun say [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] outside really came from Brian alight we've got very since the seventies there's a museum near to where I live in Switzerland called La Rue which was I think it was started by a Dubuffet the painter and in the late seventies Brian and I would go there a lot and look at the stuff there because it was it's quite bizarre that the presentations and the paintings it's from that genre of art which is now called outsider art people who are in solitude or ostracized may be self-inflicted or institutionalized they were very strong influences on Dubuffet and Dubuffet kind of built this museum is like a guilt payback and and put put a number of these people in and it was that there's a sense of the non-judgmental about the work the said that people who painted from some real inner need to throw everything out in such a way that they had no they were indifferent to whether the work was ever seen or not so it comes from a place that there are very few painters or artists that I'm aware of but I know and have met who actually paint and then after they finished painting for a while indifferent to what people think of it we all feel as though we should get some comment on our work but this work gets gets to a place which is really really strange and insular and outside and I guess that that was sort of that became our buzzword for the album that was trying to resuscitate that same sense of being on the periphery of the mainstream rather than being right in the center so it takes on all these different shades for me because I also remember fairly clearly my state of mind when I was actually writing it which was I guess some as near to a mystical state that a 19 year old can into and I remember it was at a time when I was sort of studying Buddhism for my 15 minutes of Buddhism so it's it's interesting that it changed it really had two mystical states the time that I wrote it and recorded it in the time when he wrote it when he recorded it out up to his end after that so I guess it was still retained for me a sense of the mystical hey you played a song yeah yeah well again we do yet another very different version [Applause] Wow great [Music] [Applause] thank you so you see what's the right place to choose Cologne I could actually go around the seventh album right now yes but it's very successful already commercial unbeliev it started place for in our charts it's been like this throughout Europe and had it went in it like 14 in America it's really seized yeah so you know people love you they almost go crazy the Cologne is the only place where you're playing your concert tomorrow that comes the time yeah yeah we sold out in 45 second did you know that I think that's extraordinary absolutely extraordinary be to Cologne before our minds of the order there's only 15 people in the audience and 45 long ago thank God you speaking so have you been to Cologne before I have yes but I haven't been there for maybe Oh since 79 1990 something like that like a long long time ago I used to for a while I was living between New York and Berlin in the late seventies yeah so I used to come to Germany a lot and I had a great time in Berlin of course when the war was still there so it's a different kind of vibe what what's that I suppose was it a time when you lived with the old friend James Osterberg James Osterberg yeah biggie pop there about three or four of us there's Jimmy and his girlfriend and there was myself and one other we had our apartments in the same block on it was called if I remember helps us a hundred from from films again Charlottenburg that's nice to go you got very drunk ins it have such a hunger for when you get home and we had a great time I remember none of us have any money then because either we've been ripped off or you know dealings had gone wrong and we were all pretty broke and the three of them is my birthday coming up they club together and they got me an old 1955 Mercedes and the it was rusted completely so we cut him in and our feet just went through the floor we went around Berlin and that and I remember we dropped a guy off at a club one night it was I think one of the anniversaries of the wall being put up you know and he went to a punk Club and he came back later and he said it was amazing they'd made a birthday cake in the shape of the wall which went all the way around the room at 12 o'clock at night they jumped on it and ate it for real yes they really laid they've made this entire wall and then ate it and he said it was singularly the most moving moment in Berlin that he had spent because there's something really quite ideological about it you know yes and of course it later on it really it was especially for him for his birthday no no it was the war yeah the anniversary of the war going up you know and it was he said it was the strangest thing and of course that's virtually what they did remember they didn't eat it cool I know one person who tried eating about he was stoned Bernie so now you came back to Europe on the qe2 yes well not here because there's no River if I cracked half I would have but you travel on the qe2 yes yeah the other direction from Southampton New York and you came from New York to Southampton that's right yeah the two different captains one only knows how to get to Southampton I think that's true what was the average age on are we to this 914 yes something like that mainly widows really no it's changed a lot when I'm cuz I first went 30 years ago yeah and in those days it really was older people to older generation although this time around I noticed it was a lot more families with children you know because I have these days that have like things like play rooms on board there were five restaurants three cinemas casinos public library and what television studio what did you do on board to hold it I've read and watch DVDs did you walk around now I swam alongside for exercise you know I used to keep up because I'm very fit these days you know because I swim going to the qe2 that's how you doing but now most of the time I took I took DVDs of all the films I can't watch at home because they're all like subtitled European avant-garde classics and they last 19 hours and have subtitles and nobody else in my house wants to watch them so as I was traveling alone I just watched them on my computer you know just and listen to music and I made notes and I watch the sea I watch the sea I see watching me it was wonderful I loved it is it true you get up pretty early in the morning at around 6 o'clock well both of us both my wife and myself get up between 5:00 and 6:00 in the morning and and the irony is that we know you know we just had a small child yeah and she's 23 months now but of course we now get up before she does so who'd he go and wake her up you have to be quiet is that the the parents revenge yes so when did your wife take take take my god and see my baby says I'll come on give me another round simply got milk did your wife take lessons in preparing to birth you know in Germany it's very example young man accompany that with two lessons like what she had practiced because she also has another daughter you know 4xp knew what was gonna happen you didn't go together yes we did the breathing things the counting one and oh god you like that well it was fine and we got it down it was absolutely exact and was all timed and everything perfect [Laughter] everything goes you know and it was just exciting we raced there in the car and all that and and then I got to cut you know I didn't I like doing that but everything went well went fine yeah beautiful wonderful is there easy birth hams good so when you sit in your office only a room in the morning and you start composing immediately I'd this is a cup of tea yeah don't like compose immediately now I just died I just sit there and I get on the telephone to Europe from cuz I live in New York you know and so I just I think telephone calls to Europe all morning so what's happening did you see the Howard Schmidt show last night right yeah really yeah oh that's amazing so I hear all the gossip yeah yes I mean you you wrote this this record the songs for this record in Woodstock we know from the festival so very stress very quiet area yeah it's very hippie still is I mean so that kind of flower writing on all the shops and everybody has long hair and wears beads and all that you know and I didn't think I was gonna like it at all but I didn't realize the actual studio was at the top of an extremely high mountain we were completely isolated from the rest of the area and I love that because I love isolation I'm very kind of masochistic like that I love being cut off from everything and and for a writer it just worked really well and I think I just sat down to write and I had been doing for many months putting together songs that I felt were very strong and attempted to do no more than express how I felt my age with the new family and my feelings to the universe and our place on this world and and all that the little questions so no good you're going on a little tour now in Europe what yeah it's just a promotion to I don't want to be away from my family too long yeah I miss my baby very much indeed and I'm gonna go home I've stayed in America yes well and at the moment coincidentally she's over in England with the whole family but she's going back in a few years and then I'll go back at the end of this month and then we'll catch up I guess okay we do a short commercial break now and then we hear live here on stage very much what was it that makes him such a good collaborative producer I think it's because he's brighter than most of them and more interested in the world outside music and kicks yeah we've known each other for a long time you know he's he's a wonderful guy I really like him a lot really talented besides Iggy and Lou David has collaborated with Trent Reznor Stevie Ray Vaughn The Cure's Robert Smith Pete Townsend Mick Jagger clean John Lennon and others the whole essence of Fame you know the fact that you can put yourself up on the stage before four hundred thousand people and suddenly become vulnerable and I remember that for the young Americans album you wrote that song Fame when John Lennon yeah to me paid the ultimate price and was the ultimate victim of Fame yeah how do you boss the question how do you deal with that in the 1980 after a tragedy like that as well this subject I wouldn't even comment on there is no handbook for fame and you had to learn as you went fine now this is it good for absolutely cool huh fame fame I wouldn't give attempts for fame celebrity all that stuff is absolute nonsense and really as a hindrance to everything that one wants to do the worst thing about it I would have loved to have enough to do everything that I had done and be totally faceless a combination of Fame money and Bowie's quick to experiment personality would lead to cocaine use a drug-addled detachment from reality he'd proved too much and by the decades in he would be clean there's drugs started to take a more severe hold in my life there'd be the ability within your conscious mind to actually deliver yourself into two separate parts disappears and the lines blur and it's only this one formless mutant there's left left behind so it gets quite messy in there it's very messy in there and by the mid seventies I was so sad oh my god that really it was very positive it was all my own impossible for me to function in any rational way I saw an x-ray of of what the brain looks like after continual coke use it's terrifying it looks like cheddar cheese it looks like Swiss cheese the great huge holes everywhere not my head I haven't yet had that done but a head that is terribly wine because it some really points out where memory lapses are whatever and they never these holes never heal you do the most extraordinary irreparable damage oh if only I'd known it was my own prison that I had formed around myself what with my own way of life in terms of drugs and everything I'm it's so great for that I found the key to be able to unlock myself in that without too much without too much damage to my psyche naturally I would I would advise my son not even to think of that because I'd know the inherent dangers of doing it somehow or other I went through a whole series of survivals and crawled out of it all the story up David Bowie I think every time I do something new I just pretend I don't have any audience whatsoever so that I'm totally free of any expectations from anybody I'm kind of going like that and when I've done it then I get trepidatious there I go I felt reviewing things with Eno in that period that I really didn't need to there doc characters to sing my songs for me that actually I could do them quite well on my own and it was a confidence booster in that way the thing that Brian always uses when I get a bit timid about the work that I'm doing he says don't forget that in music you can crash your plane and walk away from it that art really isn't that full of by threatening situations what Brian is really good at it's the way that he doesn't do anything which copes is the best performances are the people that he's working with I wanted to make the kind of music that was like a landscape no that invited the listener to enter not with me as a guide that said here's the landscape you find your way through it he has a keen sense of conceptualism and while he does but better than anybody else that I've met is he's able to frame something and give it a context Brian introduced me to a whole different system of writing at the time I mean I was really feeling style in the mid seventies I was physically spiritually and emotionally drawn S word I can use and he really sort of filled me back up again with a new sort of inspiration for writing and how one can approach it and why one should approach him he knows an extraordinary person you know and I came up with what we call planned accidents we put two pretty solid statements together and it would inevitably produce a third piece of information and that's there that's what you listen for and when you take that third piece and you start playing around with that I mean being a die-hard David Bowie fan just because his approach to music as elephants so amazing you know as a songwriter he's phenomenal as a singer he's phenomenal but also the fact that stylistically and aesthetically he's always he's always been remarkable you know in the mid-70s when everyone else had like you know was making progress and you know had doing like 20 minute katar solos he's in Berlin making really cool electronic disco you know he was all he always just he knew what was going on before anyone else knew what was going on it's pretty impressive that's what people should they should follow their real gut love of what they do you know there's nothing wrong I think embarrassing than watching somebody who doesn't love what they do but does it because they believe that's the way they're going to be loved and this going this huge ephemeral way by the masses or something would you describe yourself as fearless that way then because you've never really I mean everything I do I do it's great trepidation that's absolutely untrue no I don't do that no I kind of I think I think every time I do something new I just pretend I don't have any audience whatsoever so that I'm totally free of any expectations from anybody kind of going like that and when I've done it then I get trepidatious there I go I shouldn't have done this no he's gonna write this at all I know I'll do I do a really arty out and Colour than there like it there must be a tendency when you lock on to something that's fairly successful to almost fall into a formula that's why they always fought against that and I've never done that and I really see no reason to stop now I create something out of my enthusiasms of that particular moment I'll get reused by something else and and and suddenly I don't see that anymore I know over here and that's the way I am I've got a very short the Penta attention span no attention span whatsoever and not many of us have kind of got to this age and still be working in popular or rather rock music so there's some decisions to be made by some of us one of the major ones is that do we continue in this or a Sinatra type fashion and carry the baggage of our past with us or did we do something that prohibits that and for me I choose the latter course I now see that I've probably evolved in to devolve some would say in two or three ways of writing once very theatrically one is the soundscape venture and the other is straightforward songs and I think each album I'd go into it's one of those three principles it becomes the the parameters for why we're going in with little bits of the others I like writing firstly and for mostly I would give my right arm maybe not my right arm I would give somebody's right arm if I could find somebody to sing all my songs for me I really would and I'm very much of the opinion that it is the interpretation of the receiver or listener that creates the that completes the album that when I listen to other people's work or so look at other people's work maybe if I really don't want to know what they want what they I'm less and less interested in what what their intention was far more interested in in what my reactions are but that's coming from the idea that art should be there to be used I think it was Socrates that said actually was Plato that the artist is positively useless because he can't explain how he does what he does therefore why should anybody take any notice of what his subject matter is because if he can't even explain how he does what he does why should we put any faith in his actual statements when they do come out and I I really that really makes me feel inadequate because I haven't a clue how or what I do I don't know what I do I don't know what I do I just know I enjoy it I think the assumption that I actually get what I do is maybe should be placed in doubt because I mean half of the fascination of the work that I die doudou is that I don't fully understand it I don't know what I do I just know I enjoy it and and the end result often sends me spinning off somewhere I mean it's kind of give myself little trips with the stuff that I write early 70s and where I would take three or four different subjects and intercut them literally cut them up with scissors and and then sort them all in a big hat or something and just pull out bits of phrases and put them together and see if it sparked any interesting ideas and sometimes the phrases were so good you could use them just as they came out the Hat kind of stream of consciousness would cut up the world and reassembled it that kind of chaos the juxtaposition fragmentation to evaluate a truer picture of reality that's what I really enjoy that [Music] it's one of that fashion inning I can't tell you it's all about the trousers well it Bailey say about fashion it was never about the clothes if I born some trousers probably that uh done their part in changing the world my trousers have changed the world brief a still a very well I think was more the shoes is the shoes there one can be tempted to glide along you know which is not a good thing you know I had a very bad Isis I think everybody had a very bad idea stantly I particularly did specifically from the round 84 through till eighty late eighty eight that those four years in fact which is actually looking back on my career I that I was pretty lucky I mean that wasn't so bad I know artists that mean through much rougher period I lost all confidence in what I was doing and I hated what I was doing actually quite quietly to myself I didn't tell anybody else around me that I I didn't think I was doing very good work specifically because it was selling really well which is really embarrassing you know and the best things that you that wasn't me like you have ones that you don't really think much of credibly big sellers in his little Christ adapting to the idea of being kind of mainstream I found very difficult indeed but looking at it in a fairly sober light I felt that I could deal with it you know and I just couldn't I was so beat by the whole a three-ring circus thing about it and trying to reach a wider and wider audience you know without actual any kind of feelings of artistic passion at all I didn't really believe in the material I was doing and indeed some of it was very good material but I just had lost the belief in myself as a creative artist and I got introduced to reeves gabrels as a guitar player and and just a good guy that I met and he just very simply said you've just got to stop doing this you know there's no way out just stop doing it do what you like I said you don't understand he said yes I to understand I've read all the books and that was it really and I just stopped doing it you know and I formed Tim machine with the really quite clumsy idea that I could just disappear into abandon honestly I found my exit from all that mainstream stuff through Tim Machine I mean that was my sort of my Holy Grail at the time it was ah this is the truth I don't find it very exciting anymore Germany I think it's got to get a lot more dangerous again we're working on it on hold in 1989 to form tin machine the band featured Reeves Gabrels on guitar in the sibling rhythm section of Tony and hunt sales the band allowed Bowie the opportunity to return to his roots touring small clubs and collaborating in what he asserted was a truly democratic creative partnership they would release two studio albums in 1989 and 9188 meeting Reeves Gabrels and Farmington Machine that I really felt that I was back on course and things generally started to get back into sinking in late eighties nineties methyl excited again you know it was a very freeing experience we started writing in a way that I was that was so reminiscent of the way that I used to write it was a very spontaneous none of it was pretty ribbon the stuff was vibrant and exciting it actually worked for me as a vehicle for getting back to my own my own personal standards of writing and producing and all that so I think it was one of the better things that I did and to follow through from that I've I've actually liked an awful lot of what I've done in the nineties I'm really proud of that work and there's some very good work in there but I do start off with a clean slate every time I really try and think what is it I think now what is it where am I going philosophically how am I looking at my life and the lives of others and how we live our life that's kind of where I go from these time I think I kind of added on to this Canon of things that I've developed that I'd like to harness their own issues and the ideas things everything for me from early rock then through rhythm and blues and through early electronica all those things I keep drawing upon after 93 sophisticated and soulful Black Tie white noise who would reunite with Brian Eno for 95 s industrial techno influenced outside a return to concept records featuring characters [Music] when I was doing the characters in the early seventies I think it was it was some problem for me about whether they were stage characters or recreating aspects of my life and taking it on stage or whether the thing was evolving on stage and I was then pulling it back into real life now I think what I'm doing probably to protect my own sanity is that in a way it's a precaution I guess instead of inventing just one character I've invented about seven or eight and I think it's but I can't I think enables me to retain the the guise of an author but at least I don't identify Riven the album is about atmosphere it's about the sound of 1995 in 1997 Bowie would push himself further into the post-grunge industrial world with the jungle influenced earthly and the olden first came out there was a big hype surrounding the record is you know Bowie's now dabbling in drum and bass and techno family dabbling it's techno influenced there's a great mix of the organic sounding guitars of Raven yeah well I mean I think what we're doing what we're still doing it's really unlike anybody else it's certainly influenced by dance vocabulary sound movies are the first to admit now but we like that kind of particularly the drumbeat side of it very much indeed but I think what we're doing the hybrid that we've created is I feel a very positive direction for us to goes around and really there's virtually nobody else doing it being 50 I want to see what you can do as a rock artist at 50 and everybody else can do what they want to do but I know what I want to do and I've got the chance of doing it it's extraordinarily exciting for me because I honestly don't know what's going to happen because I really feel that if I if I had to lay back on what I've done before I'd much prefer to start but while I'm still wildly excited about what I do as a musician that's that's the course that I choose to take still to come on the story of David Bowie when somebody does like what I do and that's always like really rewarding you know we think core that's pretty good I really like that that's good I won't repeat it then I always love the latest dance I mean my approach is really quite consistent I don't like my people think that I change all the time I actually don't you know do the same thing I really do I mean I just I tend to whatever it is I kind of tend to Stewart in this kind of vaudevillian based English idea of pop music it's it's rough meets pop it's solely to pop it's in all its Dicky pride tackiness he still got funny haircut on january 9th 1997 at New York City's Madison Square Garden a tribute benefit concert took place to commemorate the 50th birthday of David Bowie special guests included Lou Reed Robert Smith Sonic Youth Foo Fighters Billy Corgan and more you take a fan like Sonic Youth I mean he was doing a count a tonal stuff in 1980 you know you take a cure and he was doing kind of clammy pop and 72 you take me fix your hair I'm enjoying it so much I'm gonna do this every year I'm going to be 50 from this point onwards I haven't lost a one iota of enthusiasm for life I'm extremely lucky that way I really am it really is a blessing as I get older I get more and more selfish about what it is that I want to do that I find satisfying and it's definitely how one should spend one's life is because you know if you make yourself happy a little bit of that sunshine can spread on to others when you have a legacy as amazing as David Bowie's to some extent I don't know how he feels about it but there must be a sense of pride knowing that you've created so much iconic music to touch so many people and the truth is like his new record is wonderful and David Bowie fans like everyone I talked to his a David Bowie fan who buys he's and listens to it like wow this is this is really good you know 30 years on and he's still making vital emotional wonderful music with every David Bowie record there's a lot of people watching to see what you're gonna do next yeah it's almost like a free Cadillac with this one it's like fighting this Columbia to come up with this idea that every album we sell will give a kind of like away with it which is absolutely extraordinary idea I don't know where they find the money on my Cadillac let's talk about the artworks show it's very disturbing yeah art shouldn't be desecrated no I crickey your own lyrics are crossed over you know the idea I it was the subtext of the word heathen the obvious definition is someone who's who's not an adherent to the one God but the other meanings a kind of range from barbarian to Philistines who iconoclast so the idea of striking out art and negating words by putting lines through them is sort of really fun trying to find the full range of the word heathen really let's just quit this Foo Fighters they enjoy both they've grown the record I'm thinking it must have been a great perfect circle for him to work with you well we worked I mean he came and work with me I enjoy thoroughly working within the first time Madison Square Garden on my birthday he did the show with me there he's just so collaborative he's very open I like it I like his his presence is very enthusiastic strong curious I like everything about him he's a very bright spark do you honestly think that man who sold the world by Nirvana didn't bring anyone to the Bowie camp oh I'm talking about a 13 14 year old I guess 70 kids who'd like commend me on covering Nirvana songs I say yeah I'm I'm cutting edge well I think outside was probably your last concept record with a character associated with might a few in that one well they're not five or six characters is this a character no not really no I shouldn't have done the eyes then it wouldn't have then it would has to be me wouldn't it there's the eyes that did it that was a pun on Christianity the eyes you see it's it's really awkward and long wrong one as well the idea is that the fish's eyes and of course fish is the was the symbol of the the hidden Christians in the and the pagan days so if that's what that sort of though nobody actually picked up on that so oh look he's got the same eyes the Village of the Damned so I'll now he's doing bloody science-fiction again he's got nothing to do it's got a lot more to do a man rye and Brunel actually I guess isn't it awful when you have to explain it mmm-hmm well I get used to it these days people are so dumb nobody reads anymore nobody goes out and looks and searches and explores the society and the culture that they were brought up in people have attention spans of five seconds and there has much depth as a glass of water I don't think you get frustrated by it otherwise were nude any not really you can t get resigned to it I think I've got to do it all for my own amusement that can't possibly kind of even begin to think that there's anybody out there that knows or likes what I do so it's always a treasure when somebody does like what I do and that's always like really rewarding you know isn't cool that's pretty good I really like that that's good I won't repeat it then David Bowie there's been almost as much written and said about the different phases of Bowie the different personas I take no responsibility at all Carrie how are you as there has been about the reinvention in your music when you set out to build a career 40 40 years ago yeah did you already then have the kind of groundbreaking musical ambition that emerged in the 70s or did you really mostly just want to be a star I wanted a right theoretical thing but actually strangely enough well maybe it's not so strange when you look at it in context but when I was around 17 18 what I wanted to do more than anything else was write something for Broadway I wanted to write a musical had no idea of how you did it or how musicals were constructed but the idea of writing something that was rock based for ball my really intrigued me I thought that would be a wonderful thing to do I saw myself as somebody who would kind of end up writing musicals in a way probably rock music or some major but he never actually became that so they were in a little in a way though those ideas were kind of quashed a little bit when I realized how what a huge and ambitious thing that was to take on you know because you have to write dialogue and all that I really didn't know how to approach that so I took them for fast simple of course and kind of abbreviated the idea of music or enjoyed just a concept piece for an album and created the characters to go with the different albums and in the process of doing that I found that I was actually playing around with the music that I was writing more and more so it really was it was character-driven that actually started to interfere with the music in its in a good way and my interest eventually became just the music itself so it's like it's almost like I left a lot of the the theatrical ambitions behind when I really got involved in the music itself I mean Ziggy Stardust is a yeah classic illustration but so how much of Davy Jones was in stinky diapers I was gonna be my next Stardust or was it Freddy Stardust I don't really think there was you know there was a guy in England his l'hospital he he was in the fighters we have a comedian called Freddy star over in Britain he friendly stars the guy who wet the hamster I don't know if you remember the story Freddy stories hamster that wasn't in their times either and this fella looked a lot like me and so he went plastic surgeon today's flight face Jones and now he looks like Freddy star I just thought that was a really funny story where do we go from Baker word how much how much of Davy Jones Yankee I don't think that was very much at all I mean I honestly I was just trying to I was trying to create an idea of how to expand Rock and expand the horizons of it and I took as the alien form for Ziggy as as he was supposed to be an alien some kind I based him very much on a Japanese concept at that particular time in the early 70s we knew so little about Japan and Japan really hadn't exploited itself and brought its stuff over to the West you know so it still seemed like an alien society but it was a human-alien society so the big you could make a human connection to Japan far there are far more than you could say to Mars which would be you know just beyond so how easy was it to leave the character behind you killed him off so emphatically yeah I I didn't have a problem with it I really didn't because I really wanted to move on in 73 we'd do you know incredible the whole thing lasted only for 18 months in already I insist incredibly did one year's worth of Tours we never even played Europe we played England and the states like killed my manager we never played Europe never played Australia and it was over it was just over I decided that's enough I don't want to get you know imprisoned by all this and I mean I really wanted to towards the last two or three months of the whole Ziggy tour I'd already kind of decided what I wanted to do and what I wanted to write so for me it was just absolutely necessary to move on and what was behind the androgynous images of the seventies it just seemed so perfect within the time that that really represented what the 70s was all about there was such a feeling up coming out of the 50s into the sixties there was a real opening up of attitudes in the sixties and then the seventh is everything that gave us the pluralistic seventies you know there was a there were so many sides to a story in the 70s before in the 50s it was just black and white it was one story yes and one story now but in the 70s you could look at things in so many different ways nothing was right the idea of absolutes it was kind of starting to disappear it wasn't a this is the right way this is the wrong way and I just felt that it really summed up the whole of what the 70s were going to be about there was a guess and it was a good one but how much of that was youth oh I think that would definitely was me I mean obviously in my opinions and in my interests I was extremely Catholic I mean there was nothing that didn't interest me either I had a burning career I still do have a burning curiosity but just about everything this except Country and Western and of course better other than that I'd really like to understand the society that I'm living in and how it works how it functions and what people are thinking you know okay you can't be a writer in any other way I think you have to sort of know where you want to write does that how you see yourself mostly or primarily as a writer firstly I think up until the last couple of years I would definitely have said yes absolutely completely but I I'm so surprised that I'm really I never really enjoyed performance very much I mean having the theatrical devices helped me get on stage and do them and there was a shyness yeah it was really I never really felt like the natural performer you know I didn't I I wasn't an outrageous person at heart I was actually a very quiet little Capricorn boy you know and it seemed that I could get a kickstart to having to perform by you know working within the functions of characterization this last two or three years I've just thoroughly enjoyed the hell out of just singing the songs that I wrote for all those people myself and just interpreting them myself and I've got such a wonderful supportive band that I've had now for eight years it's just it's just been great so now yeah I'm a writer and I'm also a performer well looking at that quiet shy little boy that you described how did he handle the fame I mean the fine really came into focus with with Ziggy start continuous I did I did again I never ever at any time really enjoyed the fine aspect of it I mean I never really I mean at the height of it all I never wished to go out I hated going up I never went I wasn't a party guy I never used to go to parties I was really a recluse I'd staying all the time more creeped out to clubs at like 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning I mean ever so I've became a night animal I just didn't I just didn't like the fame think the getting a table at a restaurant might have been nice if I'd eaten but I never used to eat in those days you know you actually wrote recorded the song Fame yeah Lennon worked on that with you yes tell me about that it came out of a conversation that we had I said you know I hate this manager that I've got what can I do you know how do I get a new manager and that's a stop right there no management you don't need management I mean he was the first artist I'd ever met who'd told me that I didn't need management that it was not necessary you know and bless him forever after that I did get rid of that manager and I'm virtually managed myself my entire I've had business advisors and all that but the idea of management has never crossed my path again since 77 ish but was that an exciting thing for you to work with John low 75 rather oh hell I mean he was one of the major influences on my musical life I mean I just thought he was the very best of what could be done with rock and roll and also ideas how he was so I mean I felt such kin to him in in in as much as that he would he would rifle the avant-garde and and look for ideas that were so on the outside on the periphery of what was the mainstream and then make them apply them in a functional manner to something that was considered populist and and make it work he would take the most odd idea and make it work for the masses I thought that was just so admirable I mean that was like making art work for the people and not sort of having it as an elitist you know I think there was just so much about in though admired he was tremendous you know living in Los Angeles in the 70s has often been described as a lost or depression figure if not dominated by cocaine then certainly affected by it yeah what are your own standout memories of that time without is Los Angeles well what's your perspective looking there oh just again function you know I guess you know a lot of it had to have been mine trying to function behind a what really was an extremely shy reclusive kind of personality that I had and I if I can I'd probably like most people to get deeply involved in drugs it was I felt that it probably helped me break out of you know my inhibitions you know but of course it doesn't it just throws you into a real quagmire of psychic and emotional hell really gave just brings out or creates awful traumas for you you know but I had no idea of that obviously what would you say what would you say it cost you in personal terms Oh cost me a lot of years where I could have spent them in a very different way you know and had a healthier and more fulfilling kind of I mean I I think the work that I did during that period was surprisingly really good you know I mean but you know what you don't know is what you might have been yeah yes the thing is you know so many people especially it's fashionable to say well you wouldn't be now write those things on if you weren't on drugs and all that you know and I just doubt that's really the truth at all because I think some some of the best things that were wrote that period I'd already cleaned up and so I think that disproves that point I think when you interviewed as much as you have been and quoted as much as you've been as perhaps a little unfair to bring back past quotes particularly from that period but I was oh yeah get to the forest Daggett when I when I read a quote from a Rolling Stones interview that you gave at the time saying I believe very strongly in fascism I need a dictatorial right-wing tyranny what was that about I think that was probably a bit code driven yeah it was also part of I was I had I fell into the trap of there's the blackmagic cattle ISM the whole idea of the just the crowley ism of you know the times there was a significant part of that middle point of the seventies and I really got completely disoriented by all that it was an awful dreadful period for me I mean the only escape for me in the end was just to just to get up and clean clean myself out you know and just just finish my association with cocaine which I've become such a problem that I just I couldn't function on in any other way from day to day I couldn't I wasn't eating I couldn't eat anything at my salmon if you've seen photographs of me in that beer I mean I weighed I don't have 19 95 pounds or something I was just dreadful I'm absolutely amazed that I actually survived that very you did come through it obviously and you you continued to produce Braille music through the Sony in the late seventies we got a stop it we're getting there but it's commonly accepted that you you lost your artistic thread in the 80s and I've seen you deserve it as your Phil Collins period what happened there poor I feel as they travel when you become a symbol for something and fill in those particular cases somebody who really achieved an unknown kind of popularity with the mainstream in that particular time so I'm just using you as a symbol Phil yeah I mean it it lets dancer absolutely took me by complete surprise I mean I had no idea that I would ever achieve that kind of popularity and a mainstream kind of arena and I just didn't know what to do with it I suddenly doing tours the like of which I'd never done before playing stadiums not not clubs and theaters you know and it was hidden its own way it was heavy but on the other hand it was kind of scary cuz I thought what am I follow this up with you know what do I do and I wrote two albums where I felt I really pounded to an audience trying to meet its the audience's expectations what I believed they wanted and I think they're artistically disastrous because of that I looking at other artists contemporaries which I had to do to see if I was alone out there I see I'm not the only one that made some blunders over a 35-year career miraculin I think I did okay that I only really made two albums that I really think were bad and the journey through the 90s to today yeah the David Bowie of today is pretty straight in every way I read recently content with reality that you're no longer the Trailblazer I hope that I'm somebody that other artists could look to as maybe someone who's learned how to ride the full curve of having some kind of longevity in their chosen profession you I'm still writing and producing the music that I've always wanted to and I still have a very loyal audience I don't think life could be better for me and I think I think I'm a good example and legacy what how would you like your legacy written ah I'd love people to believe that I really had great haircuts no problem Lee oh yeah I got the photos of otherwise they're still hanging on a lot of walls I think around you know they're still hanging on a lot series as well seriously well for good or better or worse I think maybe the idea of opening up your possibilities I mean in terms I mean just speaking strictly in terms of music I think being able to look to all kinds of music and being able to draw from all those kinds of music to be on across fertile eight ideas to kind of hybridize things and try to mix it up and present them richer and and really widen a musical culture that's already pretty rich but to make it even more extravagantly questioning and and proud and and savagely energetic I think that would be nice and the question that you possibly can't answer how much of Davy Jones is left in the David Bowie of 2004 can you remember him I think there's an awful lot of David Jones there yeah I think you to finally become the man you we should have been I really believe that and I think now that I'm probably true to my real nature now than I have ever been at any time in my life except maybe for when I was about eight or nine when I first heard a little Richard and you're pretty comfortable with that yeah I am pretty comfortable with that thank David Bowie thanks for talking with us thanks what made me want to do a British sitcom well as you probably know my backgrounds in serious acting before I started doing the writing singing thing and so something like doing the extras is a piece of cake for me really and it was fun working with Rick showing him pointers maybe new ways of approaching comedy that he hadn't really thought about before I think and we came up with the idea of doing a song he said he would do the lyrics with Stephen and I said that would be great I'd love that to happen and I'd do the melody but then I give him some jokes for future episodes of extras so I gave him a couple of my better things there's one head I think he's doing in the city and Miquelon show it some yeah you and whose army Oh which you know you could it's fact there's an example the kind of thing that I've got and there were a couple more if you keep looking like that your face will stay like it that's that's really quite a zinger isn't it and that's kind of thing you see so you know I've been writing a joke scrim and he assures me they'll be in the future episodes so it's it's been very fulfilling this whole experience

Channel: Media Collection

Views: 97,889

Rating: 4.9019866 out of 5

Keywords: david bowie, bojie, bovie, bohvi, interview, old clips, photo, fotos, completion, long

Id: yn18PohBzUY

Length: 96min 57sec (5817 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 05 2017