DAVID BOWIE - METAMORPHOSIS- AN ECLECTIC DOCUMENTARY

[Music] he [Applause] [Music] [Applause] this I'm the writer that's what I do I write and I started examining the subject matter that I writer and it really only falls down to a few songs based around um I guess loneliness to a certain extent couple with isolation some kind of spiritual sech and are looking for a way into communicating with other people and that's about it that's about all I've ever written about in 40 years you know it's not really changed we'll creep together [Music] you and [Music] I way back in the [Music] Hotel I real out the window you die for [Music] Diamond but you wly love [Music] [Applause] [Music] if it's uh wearing a pink hat and a red nose and and it plays a guitar upside down I'll go and look at it you know I love to see people being dangerous [Music] there was a real feeling of inadequacy in that area I never really felt like a rock singer or rock star or whatever and I always felt a little bit out of my element which is uh uh a ridiculously holu way of looking at it now from my standpoint when I look back and realized that from 72 through till about 76 I was the ultimate rockar I couldn't have been more rockar records new but the lifestyle and everything I mean it's sort of you know anything that was going out there that had anything to do with being a rock and roll singer then I was I hey let's go for this see what it's [Music] like I read a quote somebody called you a surreal cartoon character brought to life it was sort of yeah Ziggy was I mean he was half out of skyfi rock and half out of the Japanese theater the clothes were that time simply outrageous and and simply nobody had seen anything like them before was there a point where people didn't take your music seriously because you were I think I moved out of Ziggy fast enough so as not to be caught by that one because most Rock characters that one can create only have a short lifespan they are Bunch shots they are cartooning and the Ziggy thing was worth about one or two albums before I couldn't really write anything else around him or the world that I sort of wanted to put together for him I'm a moderately good singer I'm not a great singer but I can interpret the song which I don't think is quite the same as singing it so I was never unaware of my strength as an interpretive performer but writing a song for me always it never rang true I had no problem writing something for aop for uh or working with Lou Reed or writing for M Hoople I can get into their mov and what they want to do but I find it extremely hard to write for me so I found it quite easy to write for the artist that I would create because I did find it much easier having created the Ziggy to then write for him even though even it's me doing it it's it I was able to sort of distance myself from the whole yeah well it can become very complicated yeah with a fabric of time there um it did bring it a whole sack full of its own inherent problems that [Music] it you have an affection for some of these characters that you've created as you um I think the only time I get sort of you know kind of nostalgic about any of that stuff at all is if I see the odd video or something or or I I see a bit of the Ziggy Stardust concerts or whatever no other than that I don't think I'm C about them but I think it's work done I think that's an actor's uh attitude too I think it have to otherwise you start yeah yeah you get into a danger of of of getting into the rut and and maybe try to perpetuate something that's gone before a lot of people that I know are bugged with the idea that the they got to have an audience they got to be liked and uh I think the more that you get fall into that trap it makes your own life harder to come to terms with because an audience appreciation is only going to be periodic at the best of times you full in and out of favor continually I don't think it should be something one should be looking for I think you should turn around at the end of the day and say I really like that piece of work or that piece of work sucked not was that popular or wasn't it [Music] popular is it hard being David B not not really not now no I no it's uh I don't have the outsid is problem I mean for me and the world that I inhabit in reality is is a probably a very different very different world from the one that people would expect that I would be it's quite sedate it's uh far removed from a lot of what they would feel would be the limousine trappings of a rock existence or whatever I went to one of the first art oriented high schools in England and I had a very excellent teacher Peter Frampton's father who really kind of was quite an inspiration I went into the visual side of an advertising agency that I was doing past up jobs and and small designs for raincoats and things like that is that awful absolutely aw maybe you should have kept it well if all this goes down the TS get on Madison have there with the best of them I think those days are over you are happy here are you not John oh yes the BS have rid you of your odor have they not first chance I've had to pay regular Le three meals a day delivered to your room yes sir oh this is your promised land is it not roof food care protection oh right streets I'll bet you don't know what to call this no sir I don't you call it home never at home before well you have one now say it John home home no no I mean really say it I have a home this is my come on I have a home this is my home this is my home I have all I have for as long as I like that is what home is that is what well here we are in fact in the wonderful warm Suite of the caral hotel they're all warm but this is one of the warmest and thank you for sparing very about time last night I saw you on Broadway first time I've seen you legitimately acting or acting legitimate as they call it here why have you done it obvious question but uh perfunctory answer because somebody asked me if I would was it the play that attracted you or the idea of not really I saw the play uh I missed it when it was in London at the Hamstead um but then Philip angam brought it over to New York and started it there and I missed it Off Broadway as well I always wanted to go and see it when I'd heard about it because I there was a book by Frank Edwards called strange people which came out when I was a teenager which had all kinds of things like the the uh the the poor poor blow torch who was a a young black guy who walked into a Chicago hospital and said that he couldn't lie down on the sheets because they used to burst into flame and he laid down on the bed and promly set the pillow on fire and I held him for 24 hours but then he sort of of ran away in Terror and nobody ever knew what happened to it was full of those kinds of stories and one of them was John Merck The Elephant Man and that appealed to me ever since then because of my I have a sort of eclectic thing about Freaks and isolationists and alienated people sort of I kind of gather information on people like that mentally anyway then it became a play and uh I of course that sort of rekindled my interest in it I went to see it onway when it had already got sort of smartened up and became a Broadway piece um and I was uh totally um knocked out by it I thought it was it's sort of a classic piece of Victoria melodramatic writing uh with a slight socialist subtext um but it appealed to me strongly I thought the structure was very good but thought no more and then Jack hofus the director came to see me a couple of months later whilst I was back in New York yet again doing the Scary Monsters album and asked me if I would consider taking over the role at the end of the year and I was flabbergasted cuz I had never been asked to do anything that sort of supposedly legit and I said I would adore to and you began out of town in yeah we began they sort of played safe and put me somewhere so I could die a quiet death right uh Denver and we did a week there and then we did three weeks in Chicago and then they felt that I was right for the big time well in fact you didn't die death it big TI Brian Ferry impersonation you get everything on this show and actual fact all went very well the critics gave you a very kind reception do do do after all the years of of of having had a pretty good run in the Rock World which is obviously still continuing um do in fact find getting praise from a limp rather than a run awkward at best but but you must be almost blaz about praise from Rock papers or at least the intelligent ones um are you in fact much more thrilled by the audience response at Broadway is is it a totally new excitement for you from Rock papers has never been a gift given unto me but or to anybody indeed it's no some I mean I mean there was so I've had a a terrific uh audience that have been uh staunchly loyal in the main part to what I'd done and the changes that I've taken which have been quite as you know diverse to say the least um and that there have been a sort of a naughty band that have sort of stayed with me through all of that um and so I I I I don't think I've tried never to feel self-satisfied with what I've been doing which has prompted me to keep on moving in different directions um but it certainly was a an incredible fulfillment for me to be able to do something so-call legitimate um in fact undergo that kind of discipline and find that I could withstand it and and work within somebody else's very strict confines are you getting people saying I enjoyed your performance but I hadn't even heard of you before I mean is this possible uh that element has crept into it yeah uh there have been some regular theater goers who come and well they had heard of heard the name didn't some either perverse fashion or or some kind of really corrupted idea of what I was about right and I I I suppose they've got a different impression of me now little do they know how long will you do the part four on Broadway um 2 hours you I got it how many two hours about um I think I don't think I could personally go past Christmas I know I'm tied up till Christmas so that's quite a run so it's a long run I mean for for somebody who's as sort of grasshopper by Nature as myself I it's a long run and would you like to go back to stage on something else and do course not particularly no um I've learned an awful lot just in the few weeks that I've been doing this I hope that I can explore the part even further I good Heavens if I don't then I'll be sort of wasting a lot of time I would like to be more adventurous with the part I've been sticking very tightly to the way I first wanted to interpret the thing whilst all this pava has gone on about press and opening nights and whatever now things are relaxing more sure I would like to stretch out into it more and there are certain Avenues I would like to follow that I haven't had the courage to do so yet but now I sort of will probably take advantage hi David can we apply okay I I've always wanted to ask was that a period there there was a lot of people who really tried to put David Bowie in the Ziggy years in with the Alice Cooper thing because of absurd well it was because of I think it was inevitable I don't no it's not absurd I both were doing broad category but people tend to do things like that yes they do have a tenden I kind of expected all that to you know happen um and I just trusted in my own um conceptions that eventually would split off and have separate identity is Alice and myself you worked out okay yeah I mean just trusted in my own optimistic ideas of what I could do are you these days that Optimist as well do you see that much uh optimism in rock and roll that was a very optimistic record for rock I mean this guy is saving Rock literally I'm pretty self-satisfied with my own um individuality I don't think I have to exert myself so much to um uh explained that I not part of rock and roll I have my own identity I'm not I just use rock and roll and I had to be very exaggerated in the beginning to um defy people to put me into a category so that that would leave me room to work in play guitar jaming good with we and G and the spiders from Mars what is Ziggy Ziggy I wanted I wanted to define the archetype uh Messiah Rockstar that's all I wanted to do and I used the trappings of Kabuki theater mime technique um Fringe New York music like my references were Velvet Underground whatever suffragette City or uh it had that that energy value I wanted that energy value yeah it was the cover British view of American Street energy so Ziggy was for me a very simplistic thing it was what it seemed to be an alien rock star and uh for performance value I dressed him and acted him out I lifted at that but other people reread him and contributed more information about Ziggy than I had put into him right they could write novels about that guy right I think basically because of the uh that I'd put three viewpoints into the album um from uh three different areas maybe the the character himself would appear and then there would be two other statements by two other people all on one album which was kind of confusing but it was I mean it was it was the way an author would write a book rather I mean it hadn't been utilized that much in in in records and I had trouble explaining that it was it was a theater piece that the spiders didn't really exist that they only existed for the length the duration of that character's life right I was stuck with him for a long time took a long time to shake him off after ID finished working with him because people relate to him more than David Bowie at the time it was still very hard for anybody to realize that a rock artist can go on stage and be a different person every time he goes on stage they do that day though it need not be repetitive right exactly you don't have to be the same personality every time you go on stage and not mine was more exaggerated there are no characters really involved with the the last two projects other than David Boe I I see with with Lo and heroes no of course not I'm because when I got back to Europe before I could start getting involved with characters or narrative again I had to define a new form of musical language and at this point Germany was really a part of you at this time I mean you no that happened when I left America as I was leaving America I knew I had to get to an environment that was totally different to Los Angeles so I thought of the most uh arduous City that I could think of and it was West Berlin M and so I stuck myself you picked up everything and just sort of took a flat left everything left and just went there yeah I left B air and I left all my millions of videos and then moving out of that to an area where I actually had to go down the road and buy food in a shop actually learn how to buy a plane ticket which sounds so sort of you know naive and TR sounds most people because they can do those things sounds like you dumped a lot of people along the way then yes I did I did I reduced this whole incredible Entourage that was sort of starting to develop down to three or four people that I work very well with um is is that sort of how you live now with that sort of Hub of people yeah well I've I've I've uh my womb of Berlin when it was a womb because of the wall I guess it was all psychological to go there I mean I needed some kind of there tension there the tension there is terrific and it it it forced me to re-evaluate my position in any given society that in between low and heroes even you took Iggy Pop to Berlin to to make his record I think yes I I think it's a very good therapeutic City for an artist to go to come back to not the punk street level but a real street level where you have to go and do things for yourself nobody will take any notice of you I was totally Anonymous in Berlin but they couldn't care less seem to do that I mean after every album after every tour or project you take these bizarre trips and you go away I mean who wants to come to a city and have people come up to you and say you know what's happening on Mars at the moment I mean you know it's you've got to very unlikely that would happen in Kenya tell us about Kenya Kenya yeah what do you want to know about Kenya are you record their to okay well um I don't know I I I I didn't know what to expect from Kenya before I got there I mean I went there to show my son how animals really live um that they're not always behind bars because he's seen the Berlin Zoo and and things like that and that's about it and he's only six and he had He's only seen them in in zoos and so he got there and then we started looking at the animals and then I found it was a real country with real people in it wasn't just one great big Safari and there were kinds of people that I'd never come across before people called tribes who led existences that they've LED for 700 800 years unchanged unchanged and also very quite another quite humbling experience completely I was totally humili I've never met such proud and tall people I want to ask you during that uh and I don't want to lose sight of the fact that your time in Kenya but I I wanted to ask you about the Iggy thing one question did was was Iggy a a way of letting your pop thing come out uh while you were making albums like L and heroes I mean were you kind of in a sense kind of staying disguised behind him as the producer and player to do this pop music you know that's a difficult question I guess that that might have been uh the uh incentive to actually get ahead and do it but I've been a big fan of igis for a number of years I'd never ever seen him perform ever you didn't know about the blades and the glass and the I heard you know all that stuff rumors vicious rumors well knowing Jim it it it was in Congress but um actually going out on tour with him was the first time I'd ever seen him work that was quite a surprise he's amazing yes he is that must have been amazing for you though to sit back there every night behind a piano in front of people and I mean you L your name to the project there's you know there's but we we know that we have that problem from the beginning and we knew we'd gradually back off how felt more assertive about what he was doing how did it feel being a session man as Ray Davies says not I had my bottle of beer and a packet of cigarettes and a piano and I could get drunk with a band I remember you wearing those thick glasses in your little Harvard lost and you were really it was a terrific character I really adored it in both low and heroes you create moods that are thought paintings that don't really require words or can get along with a mock language and not even a real tongue to get the idea across yeah is that what's coming is that what's up now well what happened what happened is that I didn't have the necessary verbal equipment to describe what I was seeing and that's where I needed assistance mhm I needed somebody to bounce ideas off and somebody to give me input because I was uh so confused about with all these blessed people running around my head that I had to do that so and Eno was somebody that I'd known for years and years and never had the chance to work with briano of formerly of Roxy Music for any of you people who don't know I'm sorry and forly of the port Portsmith Symphonia Portsmith Symon and many lectures many lectures all that he's a professor of Fine Arts and uh he you got involved with him and he had been making electronic music for I wouldn't like to just call it electronic music he'd been making his own very personal music for because he also used organic instruments as well apart from Electronics even heroes where side one is so accessible that it's it's the finest you know in I think in our opinion what you've done up to date as far as bridging that you know accessibility towards that as you would say personal music you know yeah there was a lot of enthusiasm on Heroes because Brian and I like so much what we did on low and we knew we had it in us to do another one and and now I think even a third one oh that'd be great I can't say I wish we had more time to just stand here sit here and talk really it it should be standing I mean we we will sit here and talk for more hours but uh we have to really kind of buzz off and that's really that's a Canadian word for station break buz off yeah uh kind of glamorous to be a commercial artist that's what I kind of thought I wanted to do when I was 12 I thought it must be CU I was impressed with things like the father and Dennis the Menace who had those check jackets and the big glasses on and the crew cut that was a very HIIT look then you know to anybody in Britain I don't think it was in America but at the time I thought that's that's Madison Avenue you know that's advertising that's the place to be I think the difference that most artists have the ones that I come across they they think they tend to think we tend to think our opinions are a lot more important than other people's in some way that often we feel as though we have the key to something I don't think that we do at all I just think we dwell on it more we tend to look at the world as some usable substance more than a non-artist would I think for many people just getting through life is enough that's a big enough task about let alone having to look at the world and the universe and say now if I had my way you know the way that I work I will either be extraordinarily accepted or otherwise I reach a point where I've got seven people listening to what I do I mean there's never in between at least and it's been like that all my life you know I'm it's people have either really accepted what I do or they absolutely sort of push it away from them and I guess I've gotten used to that and that's kind of I guess that's what I am you know sometimes I'm useful currency and other times I'm [Music] not oh Lord that's so I honestly can't say there been one person um or one set of values or one artistic movement I think uh all my I've been so eclectic all my life I've been admiring of so many different people and so many different things that they've done that it almost feel that that I feel that I owe so many you know people for the way that I think and and and and do things um I guess anybody who's had the Integrity to kind of always work outside of the system has always appealed to me well I think I suppose since I stopped doing drugs and drinking I think probably uh uh I I I really priz getting up early in the morning which is something that happens um I now find for years now I've gotten up regularly at 6:00 in the morning it doesn't matter what time I go to bed I still get up which is not a great thing actually when I'm rehearsing cuz you rehearse pretty late but I still get up at 600 I enjoy the fact of seeing the light come up with me and then utilizing the daylight and what it brings and the kind of message that it brings it's a different message from when you're living in Twilight hours and things get very symbolic representationally if you live through the Twilight hours and and the early hours of the morning you there's some kind of there's a shadow to your life all the time you psychologically you're in the dark as well as physically in the dark and something that I find very uplifting and uh uh optimistic and creative about working and being very much in the dayl if I found myself in some kind of culde saac in the music I'd break down the problem by actually painting it I try and visualize what the problem was that the sense of of these textures were grating against each other in a way that wasn't admirable and I try and Rec I try and visualize those textures and paint them and then find out what was wrong and then when I'd solve that problem I'd take it back into the studio i' never really compartmentalized things everything for me is is is just this flux of uh of doing stuff some it music and some of its Visual and the two have always been very entwined it's going to affect me um whether I like it or not uh I'm going to be pained by the people that don't like it it and I'm going to be uh bolstered by people who do like it um what it won't do is change the way that I work which is probably the most important thing but whatever I hear and people will insist on sending me any criticism I'll get over it fairly quickly I'm not thick skinned uh but I'm not thin skinned either but I've gotten used to the fact that uh you just can't please all the people all the time and I've got no great desire to be loved in a major way by faceless Anonymous crowds it doesn't really it's not part of something that I want what happens if you make it overly big if the face is too big for the block yeah yeah I judge something that when I can't see my own hand in what I'm listening to or looking at then I feel that it's in a state that I couldn't distance myself anymore from it let's just see oh that's wonderful what one on top of the other yeah if I can see or feel my own hand my own workings within it then it's still too close to me and I've got to move it even further away so it becomes something other than myself it's almost like these two work well mhm and these two well maybe when it touches that moment then that becomes like an arbitrary cut off point because you could go further and the trouble is is is over complicating an idea which I do frequently it's the sin of the artist when you when you have an idea and then you it up and Francis Bacon used to do it all the time so in Good Company where where you think you've got to a point where it's really good and then you do that next thing and it's the worst possible thing you could have done and you've just gone overboard and you think s I've ruined it there's no going back you know cuz you're trans hey how do we know what there yes never play to the gallery I think but you never learn that until much later on I think but never work for other people what you do always always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest it in some way you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society and I I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people's expectations I think they produce their generally produce their worst work when they do that and if the other thing I would say is that if you feel safe in the area that you're working in you're not working in the right area always go a little further into the water than you feel you're capable of being in go a little bit out of your depth and when you don't feel feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom you're just about in the right place to do something exciting I wish I could be all truistic and say no it's just for the moment but I kind of I kind of I would like to feel especially music I would love to feel that what I did actually change the fabric of Music um and I think I've been very fortunate that I've actually seen it happen within my lifetime I mean uh I've seen music uh modern music change so dramatically for the last 25 years and I've got a fairly shrewd idea of of how much say myself and and Brian Eno had to do with changing aspects of it you know and I'm sure many people from my generation because it's such a fast Event Horizon in popular music many of us have been able to see the changes that we've made from the stones to name anybody you would want to really and so that's pretty satisfying you know because we've seen it happen well I had a I had a way of uh working through Musical Problems by painting them out at one time and uh that seems to have disappeared over the over the years but uh You've Lost That ability yeah yeah yeah for one reason or another that seems to have changed now all right let's take a look at some of them and then we'll come back these are the kinds of images that have been downloaded these have been in fact downloaded by our group here from your website www.bo art.com okay the first let's take a look at the first thing what do we what's that could this be Iggy Pop huh it sound could be igp that's igp in 1976 as I saw him when uh we were living in Berlin we just moved we both had Fairly sever uh severe drug problems and uh so to rectify that we moved to Berlin the uh heroin capital of the world uh which I guess in retrospect doesn't sound like a terribly S no it doesn't sound very smart to me and that's a picture of Jim turning blue uh in uh in his apartment in Berlin tell me the satisfaction of completing a painting that you that where you're on that you like a lot for me yeah the satisfaction of that it for me to be quite Frank it's finishing it so I can get on to something else I mean it's not it's getting through it it's the process um there's something in it that it just turns it just turns me to jelly turn my heart and my mind just just become I can't explain it it's a very strange feeling it's not particularly Pleasant either I can't really say that I'm I I can't really say that I enjoy music or painting in quite that it's not like sex or something which you can kind of really enjoy something really it's important but there's something um there's something volatile emotive and um something that makes me really quite angry about going through the process of both making music and and doing Visual Arts and visuals art but you know I guess that's my problem no but let's deal with your problem you came but if you deal with my problem I might not be able to do these things again you see I I'm wary of analysis yes sir but let me point out to you knowing your history and knowing your family and knowing your background you have always always resisted any notion that this creativity that you have comes from any sort of dysfunctional or you know madness out of family I think I often wondered if if actually the being an artist of in any way any nature is a a kind of a sign of a certain kind of dysfunction a social dysfunctionalism anyway it's an extraordinary thing to want to do to express yourself in such in such rarified terms uh uh I think there's a I think it's a loony kind of thing to want to do I think the the Sor and rational approach to life is to survive steadfastly and create a protective home and and and and and create a warm loving environment for one's family and and get food for them that's about it that's actually anything else is extra all culture is extra culture is uh you know that's uh I guess it's a freebie it's something that we we don't we only need to weat we don't need particular color plates or particular height chairs or anything I mean anything will do but we insist on making 1,000 different kinds of chairs and 15 different kinds of plates it's it's unnecessary and it's a sign of the irrational part of man I think we should just be content with picking nuts not mine on my do not make me laugh [Music] it was a great [Music] [Applause] conversation funny sh night sh night take m F say good night no no say good night say night say good night fun night say good night funny say good night bit of a dark spiral with no end I think a Sunday nailover with his deeply felt Grace [Music] this is made time to Ground Control I'm stepping through the door and I'm floting in the most way and the stars look very different today [Music] n [Music] cash girl suffer me I've got no enemies I'm walking down it's nothing to me it's nothing to see if I never see the English Evergreens I'm running to the it's nothing to [Music] read it's nothing to see I'm dying too push their backs against the grain and fold them all again and again I'm trying to we tear our magazines those OLS with foaming mouths G now and [Music] then don't believe it just one I'm down forgetting you I'm trying to I'm dying to Dollar Days to fival sex on a stretching tails to next I'm falling down it's nothing to me it's nothing to see if I never see the English evergreens I'm running too it's nothing to me it's nothing to see [Music] [Music] dying too push their backs against the grain and fo them all again and again I'm trying to it's all gone wrong and on the fit and love and never and I'm falling down don't believe for just one second I'm forgetting you I'm trying to I'm dying too [Music] [Applause] I'm trying to I'm dying too I'm I'm [Music] time [Music] oh [Music]

Channel: ARCADEMIS

Views: 266,531

Keywords: David Bowie, Interview, Documentary, Blackstar, Lazarus, Ziggy Stardust, Elephant Man, Dysfunctional, Eclectic, Demian Kniewald, Not Only Fashion Caffe'

Id: BBKI5ZCOREg

Length: 44min 13sec (2653 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 08 2017