David Bowie Outside Press Conference 1995

[Music] hello good hello everybody hear me good afternoon don't worry I'm luck we'll be up here for too long it's just a few things that we have to talk about before we get into today's main event first of all let me introduce myself my name is Heinz hen I'm the senior VP of BMG entertainment international and as such I guess I'm your host for today myself and the people that have organized this press conference absolutely fantastic I'd like to welcome you to London it's wonderful to see all of you here and it's great to have you here today already I'm sure that most of you are going to go and see the show tomorrow which I'm sure it's going to be an absolute highlight before we go into the actual press conference there's a few announcements that we would like to make and for the first one I would like to bring up mr. John Giddings who is David's European agent who would like to tell you a few things about an upcoming tour so John thank you very much and good afternoon before we start talking about Europe I'm pleased to announce - we've added a fourth Wembley this coming Saturday due to unprecedented demand you know that the tour in the UK is with very special guests Morrissey and we've decided to extend into January February a European tour in conjunction with MTV which starts off in Finland we're going to play into Sweden Denmark Germany Belgium Holland Czechoslovakia Austria Slovenia Italy France and Switzerland with other territories under discussion to be added at a later date tickets will be going on sale this week some of them in fact go on sale this afternoon and that's it thank you very much indeed all right before another announcement I have to do some housekeeping things here Jaclyn already mentioned it earlier we would kindly ask you to not take any photos during the press conference because as you can see we have cameras set up and if everybody would be flashing away here that would ban disturb the cameras and the quality of what we're filming here so there's going to be the photo call it's going to be right after the comes of will will ask everybody to leave the room we'll set it up here for you it'll take about five to ten minutes and then all the photographers can come back in here and we'll have about ten minutes of photo call what else I've seen well a lot of you have traveled a long distance and I know that all of you are trying to stay in touch with where you came from so I've seen a lot of these portables or Handy's or whatever you might call them if I could ask all of you are those of you that have had them to please turn them off now because some of them actually interfere with some of our equipment and since we are recording this you would like to deliver all this stuff to you in the best possible quality and if you keep your portables up on it could badly distort the quality of our recordings I think that's pretty much about it and then just one last announcement that actually has just been confirmed this morning David Bowie will be performing at this year's MTV Music Awards on November the 23rd in Paris and he'll be performing together with PJ Harvey and they'll be doing the man who sold the world now at this point I would like to welcome the president of MTV or mr. Brian Henson and the senior vice president of communications mr. Ian Rennick should you have any quick questions about this that you would like the field to brenda Ian do it right now any questions no questions I guess everybody was happy about it takes note of it and then without further ado at least you have any questions right now as to the organization because we would like to concentrate on the creative matters once David comes out here and answer your questions any other organizational matters wonderful then once again I would like to thank you for attending and I would now like to ask you to welcome mr. David Bowie [Applause] [Music] [Applause] what we gonna do is we have three handheld mics going around here one of which I'll be holding there's two other people where where the others there is Nicole where is the third one there's Jaclyn so just raise your hand and one of us will be coming towards you to hand you the mic very good hang up just a second I'd like to get my dry-cleaning back actually anybody knows anything about it good oh this is Anders from Sweden and I'd like to ask you do you get nervous before these kind of things no good lord did you ever I don't I can't remember actually I don't think I've done many of them about four I think I just spent my fourth time do put on an actor in anyway when you do this absolutely yes as you can see this very choreographed hi you said it'd been an MC in the standard last week he talked about the tyranny of the mainstream yeah and how an album like outside was designed to avoid that yeah do you think you'd still be accessory I'd suggest indeed yeah do you think you'd still be able to say that had you never had mainstream success do you think you'd still talk about turning the main street I think so yeah because that was my chief interest before I had that was that sort of success it's really the only thing that it was anything that I bought or used to go and see really or listen to it was always stuff on the edge I was always far more interested in the periphery of life's matters then sort of what was happening in the centre the centre sort of seemed a simple vocabulary or something wait didn't catch my imagination no I think you're getting from both I think i'ma think I'm as much influenced by real popular as I am with obscure kind of rather diffident stuff but I'm just kind of a creature if eclecticism on time really you say I'm a bit of a hybrid from Picasso that it took him 30 years to to learn to paint like a bit like a child yeah are you still striving for that kind of simplicity you know I don't think so I think I like you know he said another interesting thing somebody said to him but what you do a child of three could do that and he said yes but very few adults which I thought was a nice comment but I think I like I like complications I like things that seem to be endless puzzles and I've always liked art with that was fairly enigmatic you know and maybe was made of layers and things so I like I like I like thickly textured things but Brian Eno is probably more like he goes for a much simpler more minimalist thing ways I mean the most isn't he only only wears black corduroys hi David hello in America I think he created some sort of a cyber operatic cinematic type of show and you interact a lot with Trent arrestor don't know sir what do you mean what the show that I've just done in America yeah not no not at all it was very own theatrical actually or we use we use lighting but on the whole it was very much just singing the songs they were just autonomous pieces they weren't connected in any way and are throwing quite a lot of my older but maybe less known songs well they're known to people who have bought my albums now don't take it away from them he isn't really got his question out yeah I'm just in country I'm being interrupted sorry it's okay carry on you interact a lot with Nine Inch Nails and yeah it's Reznor yes Mari see as attractive and entertaining as trends it's difficult you know I've had not hard hardly had any any contact with Morrissey I guess we'll get to say hello tomorrow night I've not seen the guy I mean he seems I thought I was reclusive this guy this guy is impossible to go hold up I mean he never answers me phone calls I think no I didn't say anything nasty about him let's be clear no I think he's wonderful I think he's one of Britain's best lyricists I think he's he's sort of rocks Alan Bennett I think I think he's probably a very perceptive about a certain British kind of the quirkiness of the Brits I think there's suddenly very fifties about it was kind of a John Osborne figure I think it's gonna be very enjoyable I think it really should could be quite a lot of fun but Trent and I you know but I mean we sort of rehearsed quite a long time before we went out and and there's a continuum there because we're going to be doing some work from this point over the next two or three months we're going to be sort of doing some recording things together which is more about sending each other tapes and changing them and then sending them back it's a bit like a parcel game enjoyed working with him very much it's a good kid kept it on the Frenchie list um your tracker off you'll see les amis in the movie se7en yeah have you seen the finished movie and did you offer them the rest of the album to make the soundtrack no I the director David Fincher asked the record label if he could use the track in the film I only saw the film week before last did you think I've got it should have used the whole album it's about this similar time no I was quite glad that they only used the one track that they used I believe the old Morgan Freeman was absolutely excellent by the way when you were in the steel you were working with a computer for for the for creating with the lyrics yeah so you were looking for creating a lucky order with the computer or deliberate chaos you know I think the process sounds a lot more random than what the resultant is I was thinking a lot about that about a few weeks ago and it was somebody put ask me a very similar question that was it just total randomness that I was after I actually find some kind of coherent there's a there's a kind of continuum in a song say I don't know how well you know the songs on the arm but something like the voyeur of utter destruction which is almost I would say 70% processed by the computer but it's my choice how lines are juxtaposed against each other and I think in the same way immodestly that a joist or a burrows would use jumbled sentences against each other this um there's a thread that runs through any chunk of the song that has some kind of sense to it so it might have come up come out of circumstances that were random that there's some maybe not a logic that there's a rationale there somewhere but you're a hundred percent happy yeah I like working this way very much but I always did I always liked working this way I mean I wasn't working this way so I'm not actually a very good writer but my choices are very good that's my strength and I get this a certain I can I can intuitively feel when there's an interesting point in see or extremism or a point is made I can I can generally detect that thank you very much yeah I just wanted to know on the album on the sleeve you used a lot of diary fragments yeah do you keep a diary for yourself in a way where you modelled things like that fine you know I actually have done since I wrote that story I've never kept one before but I've been keeping one this last year no bits left from that 1977 the period where I wished I'd kept a diary in that boy do I ever my life looks so bland reading through these last twelve months made all those high points are no longer obvious yes how's your wife doing she's doing very well oh yes yes yes yeah yeah yeah I do very well with Domingo Pavarotti like Bono did no it's not something I list of priorities let's put it that way no thank you hello self-mutilation and self-expression no I think I think it's merely I think I I would imagine that what's going on in not only visual arts but I think in popular culture is almost a purging before the end of this millennium I'd imagine at the very start of the next millennium things will be delightfully and tinkly lovely I think it's all symbolic I don't think it it bodes some great negative future at all in fact I'm very positive about the future I think a lot of it is to do with the ritual of looking for a spiritual foundation which i think is the shakiest part about living in the end of the 20th century spiritual not religious I might am a spiritual foundation hello again hello you've created this character for the inside and the outside albums yeah how in terms of identification I was it different from like putting yourself in that part as opposed to doing it in a field because he said you're not too keen on on film roles right no I don't like I find it very easy now to be played the part of plan intended of an of an author I feel quite comfortable in that situation I find it not a problem to distance myself from the things that are right about where's I think 2025 years ago I would have felt a lot more involved in the characters that I was writing because at that time I wasn't really sure of how you defined the parameters of what one was writing I didn't know how much of myself was supposed to be in there or I was a real learner and it got I found it maybe I was very naive but I found it very confusing now I just like I like writing as a fictional author I enjoy that I'd like to write more prose in fact and I'm gonna get a Booker Prize somebody else's I don't care you know it doesn't have to be mine Goggan was an incredible experience for those of you that maybe don't know it it's a mental hospital institution on the outskirts of Vienna in Austria and a mutual friend of Brian Eno's and myself Andre Heller who's an artist and something of an entrepreneur suggested we might like to do some work there or with the inmates or somehow he wanted us to go and see going and see what's going on what it is it's a hospital where 100% of the inmates are involved in the visual arts it was I believe an experiment that was set up in mid sixties you don't know I think something like the mid sixties yeah as so many inmates in in hospitals in and around Austria showed a proclivity for the visual arts that they thought it might be a good idea to give them their own wing where they could sort of examine and and create things and this is the this is really the foundation of what's subsequently become become called outsider art and we went to talk with the patient's there and look up what they were doing and I found it well it reminded me a lot of course of a museum in Switzerland called la Brut which is in Lizza that was started by Dubuffet with similar sorts of ideas I think and I just like the sense of exploration and the lack of self judgement about what the artists were doing and it became one of the atmospheres for the album I enjoyed it very much they were a modern from Denmark could you tell me a bit about your fascination of the year of the year 2000 it's not really a fascination with year 2000 it's much more a curiosity about why things are like they are now I mean the album may bring into play the idea of the barrier of the year 2000 but really it's about 1995 one of the things that Brian and I hope to do is to complete this cycle of albums met four or five of them as a sort of a musical or textual diary for the last five years of the 90s the subject matter isn't really the subject matter may bring into play the year 2000 but the content is the texture of this year I'm David yes from Austria too so all right my question is is it true that you wanted to work with Andra hello in the circus yeah we had an idea what Bryan and I wanted to do was to create some kind of situation that never really happened but film it is noted but had happened we were going to document an event which never took place surrounding the album but the ideas that Andre myself and Brian had for it got so out of hand and it all started to look like a major money thing I mean people were talking in terms of millions of dollars and suddenly we were told that if we were going to do it for this amount of money then it had to look a particular way for television and all these things came into it and we Brian and I just wanted to do something for a few thousand you know so that at least we can have artistic control but it was it just grew it became it just became something like a big TV production thing and so we drop the idea rather than get involved in that nonsense yeah yeah hello hello again do you know so far how will the how will the diaries end or if they will and definitely sometime yeah I think I think they will end in the year 2000 I mean there's quite likely because of the way Brian and I work that with the narrative might really fall by the wayside on the next album you know we're not actually sure where the narrative will even continue or it might suddenly reimagine album four or something we don't know because we don't know what the next year's gonna feel like it really the sound and what happens to the album's will be dictated by the year before uh-huh and another question have you ever will feel tempted to experiment this kind of art which is murder number of times but it was never connected with art remember any I felt murderous on a few occasions yes yeah what is it that makes you continue to go on touring here menu thanks I think the excitement of new new material is really the the thing that will just get me out of the house I think that's the only reason that I would - I don't think I could just turn to her and I'm not actually about that keen on doing performances you know cuz I get to I know after a week I don't really see the point of doing them again but logistically that's not really possible so at least I don't - well maybe once every four or five years oh I'm quite a trooper I mean I'll never let the side down but yeah I know what you mean I think they should all come tomorrow night then we can all get it over with again they've been over here yeah you think if any andis memorabilia what do you feel like play Andy Warhol in the movie if you keep any Andy's memorabilia and shoes no no no the museum or insistent I wanted it all back again I could have used the wig a little ha ha I kind of liked a wig he had hundreds of them hundreds of them and they're all made by this guy on Broadway I mean some dodgy wigmaker's place near the red light district unrolled by them and there weren't sort of posh wigs or anything but he had I don't know two three hundred wigs but somebody told him quite well that he would actually phone somebody every couple of weeks and asked him if they'd come over and cut his hair and they had to and it was like not talked about that it was a wig let me just sit there and just take a little bit more off the back please like it was growing one last kiss I really want to believe that because I think that's such a mystery do you see any of these thematic ideas about side crossing over into a real script or I mean if you asked a lot of Martin's in disgust I think I think it's I think the one thing about the album is that it it it feels quite pertinent it's fairly synchronistic I think that in popular culture so many serial killer films are being released that over this last couple of months there's one in particular called copycat which I don't know if it's released over here where the detective progenitor and it at one point says my god he wants us to believe his murders are art which I'm sure has nothing to do with my album but the fact is that people are thinking in those terms there was recently an artist about a month ago show in Philadelphia when we arrived in Philadelphia on the tour called Charles Scarborough who had an exhibit called serial killers and it was just body bags and their remains of bodies and scalpels and all the implements associated with serial killing I just read the review idea I didn't want to go and see it particularly I'm not actually that interested in it you know it just it felt that it kind of represented the savagery of people's spiritual life at the moment of plunging it into these arcane areas I am a camera thank you hi I'm Patrick from France I read that you said that you didn't want to work on melodies on this album why are melodies contradictory or with the universe we wanted to make yeah my chief problem with that is that I naturally fall into them I mean I can't help but maybe that's once again I mean I fight that all the time and Brian fights it even more I'm just good at them I mean I'm good at writing tunes so being the kind of obtuse fellow that I am I try very hard to go away from that otherwise I'd just be churning them out it would be so simple for me to churn out album after album of good tunes where you walk out at the building singing the set I don't have a problem with that so you're not after the ultimate pop song anymore no I'm much more interested in doing something with music and creating songs songs really don't interest me that much they're kind of singular they're just things I mean I just I'm much more interested in sitting back and saying yeah I changed the texture of music in this way or that way and made music do a different thing it's like really kind of vain ideas of changing the course of rivers I don't want to book news I had the impression that on the album you relied a lot on improvisation yes very much so music yeah and how much is this important when you go onstage how much yes it's an interesting point I think probably within the context of several of the songs there's a certain amount of improvisation but it's amazing how formulaic it's all become it's down to I think it's a real challenge that you know you quite write this a very interesting point how far could one go onstage I guess if I wanted to lose the audience entirely just seems I'm doing the best that I can at the moment but the idea of making each and every show totally improvisational is exactly I couldn't have put it better myself it's terribly enticing you know yeah PJ Harvey played there the other night did you go to the show oh she liked atham Athens a lot um I think a lot of countries that aren't actually in the list of the moment I know three or four that are actually under discussion at the moment so it's very likely I mean once I've got this I've got what together what I would consider a dream band they're just the best musicians that I've ever worked with all the way around and I'd like to try and keep the band together as long as possible because as soon as we stop they've all got such independent careers in their own right that I'm going to lose everybody so I'm just going to endlessly go on and on and on again yeah is there any musical style a group or artist that came out in the 80s and 90s that you consider interesting oh yeah a lot gee well firstly with Garson I actually started working with him again you know on an album called the blood of Suburbia which is it started out as a soundtrack to a a BBC play a couple of years ago and might do some work with me on that and it was just astonishing that he still had the zest for playing around at the edge of the pool again I mean he still as eccentric and as quirky as ever in his playing he doesn't seem to have well he's been playing with some interesting people in California he's been playing jazz for the last 15 years or so Stanley Clarke in fact he's been working with an awful lot so I enjoy I still enjoy experience working with Mike a lot in terms of new artists I think there's dozens of them what comes to mind immediately well I guess the ones that have been interested in in the ages for me I thought the best battle in the eighties with the pictures and I thought it was a just a disaster that Frank fried them up at the wrong time really I think they could have been a a terribly important band now if they'd stayed together that's a shame and again like so many of those bands situations Frank just isn't he doesn't have the strength without the rest the chemistry the band was so strong it was just a shame that we kind of opted to go there again I don't know what the person from because I have personal problems in advance oh no no I think peach oh not just because I just work with it but I think future holidays great I also think trick is wonderful out of Britain anyway but Scott Walker album this year that came out that nobody Balt use as usual somebody might hear well done give that woman a cake that's for me one of the more serious adventurous pieces of work I've heard in years I think it's tremendous absolutely absolutely great funny though I didn't hear it on the radio what I mean there isn't anybody else like I haven't been it oh do you know I must be honest I'm not really quite sure how that happened I get asked if he could do this European turn I jumped at the opportunity when he said yeah because I I think it's a really good writer so unless he turns up this afternoon no yeah I think again that Marcy doesn't doesn't write in a formulaic way I think that he expresses himself very much from very much from a place where he wants to come from it strikes me that he doesn't write to match audience's expectations of them which for me is the most important I think when I'm looking and listening to other people and their work I always get a sense of yeah he's trying to please me you know and if they're trying to please me I tend to go off them really fast I me again in the context of these sort of spiritual renewal that you're looking for how do you feel well I found it well on behalf of everybody else are you looking forward to playing Belfast next week yeah very much so when was the last time you were there it's got to be in the 70s I played Dublin which of course is a and another thing altogether but I'd not played Belfast for many years have you been a visitor do you got friends no I haven't yes I've got friends that come from Belfast but I've not been there that is very of course that's for me is very exciting David yeah yeah once anyone yeah and you know Nesbitt yes I'd like very much to blame them you know South Africa yeah absolutely jump at that chance if it were offered I hope it does get tabled because I'd really like to do that um friends of mine have been concerned with sort of trying to re involve and I so rien volved because African music has been probably one of the bedrocks of all modern popular music actually but people like David Byrne in the Talking Heads and and you know himself in the late eighties were working along those lines I think I waited until it became American music and then my my way of working is sort of working with those strong American rhythmic qualities and and having this kind of Eurocentric ambience on the top in in a in a nutshell that's sort of how I work yeah yes I think probably you're right I don't know you tell me I'm the worst person to analyze my own music yeah the brand again yeah I've been asked to do to next year when I get off this tour to do to next year which I'd really like to have a cracker really well that I think this the rather strangest one is one that dated Damien Hirst and I put the ideas together for last year were one of Damien's fans has left him his body in his will but I think we'd have to wait quite a long time because he seems to be relatively healthy and quite young but he wanted to be included in one of Damien's pieces when he shuffled off this mortal coil and we were trying to sort of work out ideas in which we could use it and we came up with a couple of ideas that work which is that this might be long-term projects that's interesting I don't know I'd have to think about it I presumed it would be by myself and open could might be with someone else if you got any suggestions oK you've used the song strangers when we yes twice is that because of the different contexts no it's much simpler than I thought it was a bloody good song and I think it got lost on the first time around so I thought well let's Ram it down people's throats the second time someone said that after listening to outside that's just what I need to stop my stomach from turning well the strangers at the end yeah I'm very delicate of them thank you why don't they say what they really mean outside you started jamming with the musicians in the studio giving everyone a different subject and have them play a different subject didn't you want them to harmonize or what was the reason for actually the very first thing that we asked them to do was redecorate the studio and we got I mean we got them painting and putting up wallpaper and carpets and is generally redecorating and having gotten to that point it was quite hard to get them to actually start playing instruments again everybody's inside every musician there's an interior decorator waiting to get out I've found we we created any device that came to hand to stop them being like regular the worst thing is to go into a studio and think that you've got to make this album you know and and that's colours everything is trying to break out of that those dreadful constraints of this earnest industrial this is what the record industry expects kind of thinking so we will we'll try almost anything to get people to forget that they're making an album uh what we really what the ultimate situation is to have some kind of event happen and the thing is recorded that's really the ultimate situation it's very hard to get those circumstances like that but you can get quite near rather than there's the recording studio and then you have to deliver something that works for the studio sorry sorry to interrupt I just wanted to let you know five more minutes ladies and gentlemen okay yes Brian and I have sort of at least worked out different kinds of parameters different ideas we were thinking in terms of maybe just describing a night in New Oxford town or something we don't we don't know we we just we really won't know until we go back in the studio again David when you were doing the albumen Mountain studios nice hat thank you very much nice week you've got there thank you this is no yeah this is real sign it's the dandruff is spike Mountain studios when you went in and with sterling the rest of the boys as Nathan Adler's Diaries unfolded did it shock you did it surprise you it actually did yeah yeah because it's when you're improvising I think you tap into a kind of unconscious ideas and thoughts and I think I think always some of the stuff that you sort of you you sort of bring out are the stuff of nightmares or dreams you know so it's quite surprising and just just when you vocally had to do it I mean there's so many different moods different deep feelings different light feelings I mean when you did the vocals how did you approach them I mean because you your gymnastics go from one to another yeah the original thing that I did we did we did a set of three and a half hours of improvisation on I think it was March the 20th 94 that we're going to put out at some point which was really the the genesis of this whole thing and that was absolutely in complete improvisation for three and a half hours and there's an awful lot of just straightforward dialogue improv on it and some of the stuff that comes out of that is really peculiar really strange it was a little though to the album the result of album outside is a bit more ordered than our original thing David yeah how important this painting for you and have you ever thought of giving up music and just do no I can't I really I just can't see a time when I would start making music I enjoy it far too much it really is a lifeblood for me it's a source of nourishment in a way and trying to say that with a smile it really is I enjoy so much but but black wise I do enjoy I enjoy writing I enjoy painting enjoy any way of trying to ascertain my position in in a universe and it has to do with those things created outlets again no just it's as real as breathing it's as much part of me as that ok one more from over here and then hello oh I do know you said something about you wanted to do some kind of a theatre and musical some stuff about that I go into musicals late or something um yeah not so much a musical but maybe a piece of a piece of theatre that involves the albums I'd like very much to work with an American director called Robert Wilson who for me is probably the the most important director of the last 10 years in America or even longer into the seventies actually he did a piece that you might not called Einstein on the beach with Philip Glass a number of years ago and I just thought that possibly a collaboration between Robert Brian and myself might prove really interesting so we kind of like to do that I'm not so sure if that would fall into the to prove one thing so there's a musical it would be Katie with music something like that okay thank you very much one one has to be the bad guy in the particular case it's me I know we could go on for quite some time but David still has a very busy schedule he actually has to go off to full dress rehearsal this afternoon and since we also still want to do the photo call I think 10 minutes break so we can change this thing over here David thank you very much I thank you very much thank you so if all of you just filed back in the room here to the right this coffee and everything else and then in about ten minutes we'll bring all the photographers back in thank you very much [Music] hello good hello everybody hear me good afternoon don't worry I'm luck we'll be up here for too long there's just a few things that we have to talk about before we get into today's main event first of all let me introduce myself my name is Heinz hen I'm the senior VP of BMG entertainment international and as such I guess I'm your host for today myself and the people that have organized this press conference absolutely fantastic I'd like to welcome you to London it's wonderful to see all of you here and it's great to have you here today already I'm sure that most of you are gonna go and see the show tomorrow which I'm sure it's going to be an absolute highlight before we go into the actual press conference there's a few announcements that we would like to make and for the first one I would like to bring up mr. John Gibbons who is David's European agent who would like to tell you a few things about an upcoming tour so John thank you very much and good afternoon before we start talking about Europe I'm pleased to announce that we've added a fourth Wembley this coming Saturday due to unprecedented demand you know that the tour in the UK is with very special guests Morrissey and we've decided to extend into January February a European tour in conjunction with MTV which starts off in Finland we're going to play into Sweden Denmark Germany Belgium Holland Czechoslovakia Austria Slovenia Italy France and Switzerland with other territories under discussion to be added at a later date tickets will be going on sale this week some of them in fact go on sale this afternoon and that's it thank you very much indeed all right before another announcement I have to do some housekeeping things here Jaclyn already mentioned it earlier we would kindly ask you to not take any photos during the press conference because as you can see we have cameras set up and if everybody would be flashing away here that would ban disturb the cameras and the quality of what we're filming here so it's going to be the photo call it's going to be right after the concert will will ask everybody to leave the room we'll set it up here for you it'll take about five to ten minutes and then all the photographers can come back in here and we'll have about ten minutes of photo call what else I've seen a lot of you have traveled a long distance and I know that all of you are trying to stay in touch with where you came from so I've seen a lot of these portables or Handy's or whatever you might call them if I could ask all of you or those of you that have had them to please turn them off now because some of them actually interfere with some of our equipment and since we are recording this you would like to deliver all this stuff to you in the best possible quality and if you keep your portables up on it could badly distort the quality of our recordings I think that's pretty much about it and then just one last announcement that actually has just been confirmed this morning David Bowie will be performing at this year's MTV Music Awards on November the 23rd in Paris and he'll be performing together with PJ Harvey and they'll be doing the man who sold the world now at this point I would like to welcome the president of MTV Europe mr. brand handsome and the senior vice president of communications mr. Ian of Renick should you have any quick questions about this that you would like the field to Brenda Ian do it right now any questions no questions I guess everybody is happy about things note of it and then without further ado les you have any questions right now as to the organization because we would like to concentrate on the creative matters once David comes out here and answer your questions any other organizational matters wonderful then once again I would like to thank you for attending and I would now like to ask you to welcome mr. David Bowie [Applause] what we gonna do is we have three handheld mics going around here one of which I'll be holding there's two other people where where the others there isn't he called where is the third one there's chuckling so just raise your hand and one of us will be coming towards you to hand you the mic very good hang up just a second I'd like to get my dry-cleaning back actually anybody knows anything about it good hello this is Anders from Sweden and I'd like to ask you do you get nervous before these kind of things no good lord did you ever I don't I can't remember actually I don't think I've done many of them about four I think I've just about my fault all the time do put on an actor in any way when you do this absolutely yes as you can see this is very choreographed hi you said it been an empty in the standard last week you talked about the tyranny of the mainstream and how an album like outside was designed to avoid that yeah do you think you'd still be excessively I'd suggest indeed yeah do you think you'd still be able to say that had you never had mainstream success do you think you'd still talk about during the main story I think so yeah because that was my chief interest before I had that was that sort of success it's really the only thing that it was anything that I bought or used to go and see really or listened to it was always stuff on the edge I was always far more interested in the periphery of life's matters then sort of what was happening in the centre the centre sort of seemed a simple vocabulary or something where it didn't catch my imagination no I think you get it from both I think I think I'm as much influenced by real popular as I am with obscure kind of rather diffident stuff but I'm just a kind of a creature if eclecticism on time really you say I'm a bit of a hybrid from Picasso that it took him 30 years to to learn to paint like a bit like a child yeah are you still striving for that kind of simplicity you know I don't think so I think I like you know he said another interesting thing somebody said to him but what you do a child of three could do that and he said yes but very few adults which I thought was a nice comment but I think I like I like complications I like things that seem to be endless puzzles and I've always liked up with that was fairly enigmatic you know and maybe was made of layers and things so I like I like I like thickly textured things with Brian Eno is probably more like he goes for a much simpler more minimalist thing ways a minimalist isn't he how many only wears black corduroy so hello in America I think he created some sort of a cyber operatic cinematic type of show and you direct a lot with Trent arrestor they're not sir what do you mean what the show that I've just done in America yeah not no not at all it was very own theatrical actually or we use we use lighting but on the whole it was very much just singing the songs they were just autonomous pieces they weren't connected in any way and are throwing quite a lot of of my older or maybe less known songs well they're known to people who have bought my albums oh don't take it away from them he isn't really got his question out yeah I'm just in something-something interruptive sorry it's okay carry on you interact a lot with Nine Inch Nails and yeah interests her yes Mari say as attractive and entertaining as friends it's difficult you know I've had not hard hardly had any any contact with Morrissey I guess we'll get to say hello tomorrow night I'm not seeing the guy I mean he seems I thought I was reclusive and this guy this guy is impossible to go hold up I mean he never answers me phone calls I think no I didn't say anything nasty about him let's be clear no I think he's wonderful I think he's one of Britain's best lyricists I think he's he's sort of rocks Alan Bennett I think I think he's probably a very perceptive about a certain British kind of the quirkiness of the Brits I think there's something very fifties about it was kind of a John Osborne figure I think it's going to be very enjoyable I think it really could be quite a lot of fun but Trent and I you know but I mean we sort of rehearsed quite a long time before we went out and and there's a continuum there because we're going to be doing some work from this point over the next two or three months we're going to be sort of doing some recording things together which is more about sending each other tapes and changing them and then sending them back this is a bit like a parcel game I enjoyed working with him very much it's a good kid yep I'm a French at least um your tracker ask fuel si les amis in the movie se7en yeah have you seen the finished movie and did you offer them the rest of the album to make the soundtrack no I the director David Fincher asked the record label if he could use the track in the film I only saw the film week before last did you think I've got it should have used all album it's about this similar talk no I was quite glad that they use the bunch I used I believe the old Morgan Freeman was absolutely excellent by the way when you were in the steel you were working with a computer for the for creating with the lyrics yeah so you were looking for creating a lucky order with the computer or deliberate chaos you know I think the process sounds a lot more random than what the resultant is I was thinking a lot about that about a few weeks ago when it was somebody put ask me a very similar question that was it just total randomness that I was after I actually find some kind of coherent there's a there's a kind of continuum in a song say I don't know how well you know the songs on the arm but something like the voyeur of utter destruction which is almost I would say 70% processed by the computer but it's my choice how lines are juxtaposed against each other and I think in the same way immodestly that a joist or a burrows would use jumbled sentences against each other there's a there's a thread that runs through any chunk of a song that has some kind of sense to it so it might have come out come out of circumstances that were random but there's some maybe not a logic but there's a rationale there somewhere but you're a hundred percent happy yeah I like working this way very much but I always did I always liked working this way I mean I wasn't working this way as I'm not actually a very good writer but my choices are very good that's my strength and I get there's a certain I can I can intuitively feel then there's an interesting point in C or extremism or a point is made I can I can generally detect thank you very much yeah I just wanted to know on the album on the sleeve you used a lot of diary fragments yeah do you keep a diary for yourself in a way where you modelled things like that fine you know I actually have done since I wrote that story I've never kept one before but I've been keeping one this last year [Music] I wished I'd kept a diary in that period boy do I ever my life looks so bland reading through these last 12 months I had all those high points are no longer yes how's your wife doing she's doing very well oh yes yeah I do very well with Domingo Pavarotti like Bono did no it's not something I list of priorities let's put it that way no thank you hello self-mutilation and self-expression no I think I think it's merely I think I I would imagine that what's going on in not only visual arts but I think in popular culture is almost a purging before the end of this millennium I imagine at the very start of the next millennium things will be delightfully and tinkly lovely I think it's all symbolic I don't think it it bodes some great negative future at all in fact I'm very positive about the future I think a lot of it is to do with the ritual of looking for a spiritual foundation which i think is the shakiest part about living in the end of the 20th century spiritual not religious on my time spiritual foundation how in terms of identification I was it different from like putting yourself in that part as opposed to doing it in a film because he said you're not too keen on on funerals no I don't like I find it very easy now to be played the part of pun intended of an of an author I feel quite comfortable in that situation I find it not a problem to distance myself from the things that are right about whereas I think 2025 years ago I would have felt a lot more involved in the characters that I was writing because at that time I wasn't really sure of how you defined the parameters of what one was writing I didn't know how much of myself was supposed to be in there or I was a real learner and it got I found it maybe I was very naive but I found it very confusing now I just like I like writing as a fictional author I enjoy that I'd like to write more prose in fact and I'm gonna get a Booker Prize somebody else's I don't care you know doesn't have to be mine going was an incredible experience for those of you that maybe don't know it it's a mental hospital institution on the outskirts of Vienna in Austria and a mutual friend of Brian Eno's and myself Andre Helen who's an artist and something of an entrepreneur suggested we might like to do some work there or with the inmates or somehow he wanted us to go and see cooking and see what's going on what it is it's a hospital where 100% of the inmates are involved in the visual arts it was I believe an experiment that was set up in mid sixties you don't know I think something like the mid sixties yet as so many inmates in in hospitals in and around Austria showed proclivity for the visual arts that they thought it might be a good idea to give them their own wing where they could sort of examine and and create things and this is the this is really the foundation of what's subsequently become become called outsider art and we went to talk with the patients there and look at what they were doing and I found that well it reminded me a lot of course of a museum in Switzerland called la brute which is in lisanna that was started by Dubuffet in similar sorts of ideas I think and I just like the sense of exploration and the lack of self judgment about what the artists were doing and it became one of the atmospheres for the album I enjoyed it very much they were a modern from Denmark could you tell me a bit about your fascination of the year of the year 2000 it's not really a fascination with year 2000 it's much more a curiosity about why things are like they are now I mean the album may bring into play the idea of the barrier of the year 2000 but really it's about 1995 one of the things that Brian and I hope to do is to complete this cycle of albums met four or five of them as a sort of a musical or textual diary for the last five years of the 90s subject matter isn't really the subject matter may bring into play the year 2000 but the content is the texture of this year yeah we had an idea what Brian and I wanted to do was to [Music] create some kind of situation that never really happened but film it as though it it had happened we were going to document an event which never took place surrounding the album but the ideas that Andrzej myself and Brian had for it got so out of hand and it all started to look like a major money thing I mean people were talking in terms of millions of dollars and suddenly we were told that if we were going to do it for this amount of money then it had to look a particular way for television and all these things came into it I mean Brian and I just wanted to do something for a few thousand you know so that at least we can have artistic control but it was it just grew it became it just became something like a big TV production thing and so we drop the idea get involved in that nonsense yeah yeah hello hello again do you know so far however how will the Diaries end or if they will and definitely some time yeah I think I think they will end in the year 2000 I mean there's quite likely because of the way Brian and I work that with the narrative might really fall by the wayside on the next album you know we're not actually sure whether narrative will even continue or it might suddenly reimagine album four or something we don't know because we don't know what the next year is gonna feel like it really the sound and what happens to the albums will be dictated by the year before and another question have you ever will feel tempted to experiment this kind of art which is murder number of times but it was never connected with art remember any I felt murderers on a few occasions yes what is it that makes you continue to go on touring here menu Thanks I think the excitement of new new material is really the the thing that will just get me out of the house I think that's the only reason that I would - I don't think I could just turn to her and I'm not actually about that keen on doing performances you know cuz I get I know after a week I don't really see the point of doing them again but logistically that's not really possible so at least I don't well maybe once every four or five years oh I'm quite a trooper I mean I'll never let the side down but I know what you mean I think they should all come tomorrow night again over here yeah do you think you penny envious memorabilia what do you feel like play Andy Warhol in the movie if you keep any Andy's memorabilia and shoes no no no the museum are insistent I wanted it all back again I could have used the wig I would have liked a wig he had hundreds of them hundreds of them and they're all made by this guy on Broadway I mean some dodgy wigmaker's place near the red light district unrolled by them and they weren't sort of posh wigs or anything but he had I don't know - 300 wigs but somebody told he knew quite well that he would actually phone somebody every couple of weeks and asked him if they'd come over and cut his hair and I had to and it was like not talked about that it was a wig let me just sit there baby just take a little bit more off the back please my camp is growing one last kiss I really want to believe that because I think do you see any of these thematic ideas about side crossing over into a real scribbs or being asked a lot of Martin's discuss I think I think it's you I think the one thing about the album is that it it it feels quite pertinent it's fairly synchronistic I think that in popular culture so many serial killer films have been released over this last couple of months there's one in particular called copycat which I don't know if it's released are they here where the detective progenitor and it at one point says my god he wants us to believe his murders are art which I'm sure has nothing to do with my album but the fact is that people are thinking in those terms there was recently an artist about a month ago showing in Philadelphia when we arrived in Philadelphia on the tour called Charles Scarborough who had an exhibit called serial killers and it was just body bags and the remains of bodies and scalpels and all the implements associated with serial killing I just read the review idea I didn't want to go and see it particularly I'm not actually that interested in it you know it just it felt that it kind of represented the savagery of people's spiritual life at the moment sort of plunging it into these arcane areas I am a camera thank you hi I'm Patrick from France I read that you said that you didn't want to work on melodies on this album why our melodies a contradictory or with the universe we wanted to make yeah my chief problem with that is that I naturally fall into them I mean I can't help but maybe that's once again I mean I fight that all the time and Brian fights it even more I'm just good at them I mean I'm good at writing tunes so being the kind of obtuse fellow that I am I try very hard to go away from that otherwise I'd just be churning them out it would be so simple for me to churn out album after album of good tunes where you walk out of the building singing the set I don't have a problem with that so you're not after the ultimate pop song anymore no I'm much more interested in doing something with music and creating songs songs really don't interest me that much they're kind of singular they're just things I mean I just I'm much more interested in sitting back and saying yeah I changed the texture of music in this way or that way I made music do a different thing it's like really kind of vain ideas of changing the course of rivers I don't want to build canoes I had the impression that on the album you relied a lot on improvisation yes very much so in music yeah and how much is this important when you go on stage how much yeah an interesting point I think probably within the context of several of the songs there's a certain amount of improvisation but it's amazing how formulaic it's all become it's down to I think it's a real challenge that you know you quite write this a very interesting point how far could one go onstage I guess if I wanted to lose the audience entirely it seems I'm doing the best that I can at the moment but at the idea of making each and every show totally improvisational is exactly I couldn't have put it better myself it's terribly enticing you know yeah PJ Harvey played there the other night did you go to the show oh she liked atham Athens a lot um I think a lot of countries that aren't actually in the list at the moment I know three or four that are actually under discussion at the moment so it's very likely I mean once I've got this I've got what together what I would consider a dream band they're just the best musicians that I've ever worked with all the way around and I'd like to try and keep the band together as long as possible because as soon as we start they've all got such independent careers in their own right that I'm going to lose everybody so I'm just going to endlessly go on and on and on is there any musical style group or artist that came out in the 80s and 90s that you consider interesting oh yeah a lot gee well firstly with Garson I actually started working with him again you know on an album called the Buddha of suburbia which is it started out as a soundtrack to a a BBC play a couple of years ago and Mike did some work with me on that and it was just astonishing that he still had the zest for playing around at the edge of the pool again I mean he still as eccentric and as quirky as ever and his playing he doesn't seem to have what he's been playing there's some interesting people I mean interested him in the eighties for me I thought the best band in the eighties were the pictures and I thought it was just a disaster that Frank bugged them up at the wrong time really I think they could have been a terribly important band now if they'd stayed together that's a shame and again like so many of those band situations Frank just isn't he doesn't have the strength without the rest the chemistry of the band was so strong [Music] I think pgo not just because I just worked with it but I think featuring all these great I also think trick is wonderful out of Britain anyway but Scott Walker album this year that came out that nobody vault use as usual somebody bite here well done give that woman a cake that's for me one of the more serious adventurous pieces of work I've heard in years I think it's tremendous absolutely absolutely great funny though I didn't you know it on the radio why him what I mean there isn't anybody else like Alan Bennett oh do you know I must be honest I'm not really quite sure if he could do this European turned I jump to the opportunity when he said yeah because I I think it's a really good writer so unless he turns up this afternoon no [Laughter] yeah I think again that Marcy doesn't doesn't write in a formulaic way I think that he expresses himself very much from very much from a place where he wants to come from it strikes me that he doesn't write to match audience's expectations of them which for me is the most important I think when I'm looking and listening to other people and their work I always get a sense of yeah he's trying to please me you know and if they're trying to please me I tend to go off them really fast I me again in the context of these sort of spiritual renewal they look for how do you feel well I found it well on behalf of everybody else are you looking forward to playing Belfast next week yeah very much so when was the last time you were there it's got to be in the 70s I played Dublin which of course is a and another thing altogether but I'd not play Belfast for many years have you been there you got friends no I have yes I've got friends that come from Belfast but I've not been there that is very of course that's for me is very exciting David yeah yeah once yeah and you know Nesbitt yes I'd like very much to play them you know South Africa yard and I don't absolutely jump at that chance if it were offered I hope it does get tabled because I'd really like to do that and friends of mine have been concerned with sort of trying to re involve and I so rien volved because African music has been probably one of the bedrocks of all modern popular music actually but people like David Byrne in the Talking Heads and and you know himself in the late eighties were working along those lines I think I waited until it became American music and then my my way of working is sort of working with those strong American rhythmic qualities and and having this kind of Eurocentric ambience on the top in in a in a nutshell that's sort of how I work yeah yes I think probably you're right I don't know you tell me I'm the worst person to analyze my own music [Music] yeah the brinded yeah I've been asked to do to next year when I get off this tour to do to next year which I'd really like to have a crack at really well that I think this the rather strangest one is one that date that Damien Hirst and I put the ideas together for last year were one of Damien's fans has left him his body in his will but I think we'd have to wait quite a long time because he seems to be relatively healthy and quite young but he wanted to be included in one of Damien's pieces when he shuffled off this mortal coil and we were trying to sort of work out ideas in which we could use it and we came up with a couple of ideas that were just it might be long-term projects that's interesting I don't know I'd have to think about that I presumed it would be by myself and it could might be with someone else if you got any suggestions okay you've used the song strangers when we yes twice is that because of the different contexts no it's much simpler than I thought it was a bloody good song and I think it got lost on the first time around so I thought well let's Ram it down people's throats the second time someone said that after listening to outside that's just what I need to stop my stomach from turning what the strangers at the end yeah I'm very delicate of them [Music] thank you why don't they say what they really need for the first part outside you started jamming with the musicians in the studio giving everyone a different subject and having them play to the different subject didn't you want them to harmonize or what was the reason for actually the very first thing that we asked them to do was redecorate the studio and we got I mean we got them painting and putting up wallpaper and carpets and is generally redecorating and having gotten to that point it was quite hard to get them to actually start playing instruments again everybody's inside every musician there's an interior decorator waiting to get out we we created any device that came to hand to stop them being like regular the worst thing is to go into a studio and think that you've got to make this album you know and and that's colours everything it's trying to break out of that those dreadful constraints of this earnest industrial this is what the record industry expects kind of thinking so we will we'll try almost anything to get people to forget that they're making an album uh what we really what the ultimate situation is to have some kind of event happen and the thing is recorded that's really the ultimate situation it's very hard to get those circumstances like that but you can get quite near rather than there's the recording studio and then you have to deliver something that works for the studio sorry sorry to interrupt I just wanted to let you know five more minutes yes yes Brian and I have sort of at least worked out different kinds of parameters different ideas were thinking in terms of maybe just describing a night in New Oxford town or something we don't we don't know we we just we really won't know until we go back in this to David winner you were doing the album Mountain studios nice hat very much nice week you've got there this is not an ya know that this is real sign it's the dandruff is spiked Mountain studios when you went in and with sterling the rest of the boys as Nathan Adler's Diaries unfolded did it shock you did it surprise you it actually did yeah yeah because it's when you're improvising I think you tap into what I'm doing unconscious ideas and thoughts and I think I think always some of the stuff that you sort of you you sort of bring out of the stuff of nightmares more dreams you know so it's quite surprising and just just when you vocally had to do it I mean there's so many different moods different deep feelings different light feelings I mean when you did the vocals how did you approach there I mean because you your gymnastics go from one to another yeah the original thing that I did we did we did a set of three and a half hours of improvisation on I think it was March the 20th ninety-four that were going to put out at some point which was really the the genesis of this whole thing and that was absolutely in complete improvisation for three and a half hours and there's an awful lot of just straightforward dialogue improv women and some of the stuff that comes out of that is really peculiar really strange it was a little though to the album the results in album Outsiders have been more ordered than our original thing David yeah how important this painting for you and have you can just do no I can't I really I just can't see a time when I would start making music I enjoy it far too much it really is a lifeblood for me it's a source of nourishment in a way and I'll try to say that with a smile it really is I enjoy so much but but black guys I do enjoy I enjoy writing I enjoy painting I enjoy any way of trying to ascertain my position in a universe and it has to do with those things created outlets okay no just it's as real as breathing it's as much part of me as that okay one more from over here and then oh I dunno you said something about you wanted to do some kind of a theater or musicals and stuff I got into musicals late or something um yeah not so much a musical but maybe a piece of a piece of theater that involves the albums I'd like very much to work with an American director called Robert Wilson who for me is probably the the most important director the last ten years in America or even longer into the seventies actually he did a piece that you might not called einstein-rosen number of years ago and I just thought that possibly a collaboration between Robert Brian and myself might prove really interesting so we kind of like to do that I'm not so sure if that would fall into the category of what one thinks of as a musical it would be clear to with music something like that okay thank you very much one one has to be the bad guy in the particular case it's me I know we could go on for quite some time but they've Adil has a very busy schedule he actually has to go off to full dress rehearsal this afternoon and since we also still want to do the photo call I think 10 minutes break so we can change this thing over here David thank you very much for the question so if all of you just filed back in the room here to the right this coffee and everything else and then in about ten minutes we'll bring all the photographers back in thank you very much

Channel: DB and TM

Views: 36,566

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Keywords: bowie, outside

Id: 37_x2yJymmM

Length: 92min 22sec (5542 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 25 2018