The second part of my interview with
David Bowie, Detroit, March 1976.
Musically
David Bowie has veered towards black music over the past two years, especially
with last year’s Young
Americans. He readily admits he has been copying what he’s heard on the
radio in a deliberate attempt to be commercial.
“I don’t listen to it very much now,
though,” he said. “I don’t like it very much now. It was a phase. I don’t like
very much music at all now, actually. I like performing with a band, but listening...
not really. I’ve listened to a lot of Kraftwerk and any kind of, er, cute music
like that, but there’s very little happening musically that interests me now.
“My own recent music has been good,
plastic soul, I think. It’s not very complex, but it’s enjoyable to write. I
did most of it in the studio. It doesn’t take very long to write... about ten,
15 minutes a song. I mean, with Young
Americans I thought I’d
better make a hit album to cement myself over here, so I went in and did it. It
wasn’t too hard, really.”
Was John Lennon an important
contributor to ‘Fame’? “No, not really. I think he appreciates that. It was
more the influence of having him in the studio that helped. There’s always a
lot of adrenalin flowing when John is around, but his chief addition to it all
was the high-pitched singing of ‘Fame’. The riff came from Carlos, and the
melody and most of the lyrics came from me, but it wouldn’t have happened if
John hadn’t been there. He was the energy, and that’s why he’s got a credit for
writing it; he was the inspiration.”
Roy Bittan, Bruce Springsteen’s
pianist, played on Station To
Station. How did that come about? “It was Eric Barrett, my road manager,
who saw him and recommended him. I needed a pianist because Tony wasn’t around and
Mike Garson was off being a scientologist somewhere, so I needed him. He
impressed me a lot, but I’ve never seen him with Springsteen. I once saw
Springsteen when he was just forming everything, at Max’s in New York, and I
was impressed by him but I didn’t like the band. That was when I recorded three
of his songs, but they were never released. At the time I was intending to do
an album of songs by New York people that I liked, but I never finished it.”
In three years Bowie hasn’t set foot in
England. Any particular reason? “I just haven’t got around to it,” he
confessed. “Most of my affairs have been messed up so badly that I just hadn’t
time. There were plans at one time to take the Diamond Dogs tour to England, but I doubt if
ever that show will see the light of day again. I’ve still got the scenery
stored away in New York, so there’s always a chance.”
That tour must have been
extraordinarily expensive to stage. “Apparently so. I never saw any money from
that tour. I’m only making money now. That’s why I wanted to simplify things
this time around, to make money. I’m managing myself now, simply because I’ve
got fed up with managers that I’ve known.
How
were relations between himself and Tony De Fries? “I haven’t seen him since the
day I left him. I wouldn’t know. Is the still in the business? I honestly don’t
know.”
Bowie seemed a little reluctant to
enlarge on this point, so I mentioned that De Fries was still managing Mick
Ronson and asked whether Bowie had any opinions on Ronson’s role in Bob Dylan’s
Rolling Thunder Revue. He seemed disinterested. “Yeah, I heard all about that.
I don’t have any opinions. I honestly can’t remember Mick that well nowadays.
It’s a long time ago. He’s just like any other band member that I’ve had. Maybe
I should react more than I should react. Anyway, I’m not a great Dylan fan. I
think he’s a prick, so I’m not that interested.”
As his own manager, Bowie has honed his
entourage down to three key people: Pat Gibbons (acting manager), Corinne
Schwab (secretary), and Barbara De Witt (press relations). “My office is a
suitcase that stays in my room. It’s far better than before when I never knew
what was going on, and this is how I used to do it back in England before. My
last manager was Michael Lippman and he didn’t cope very well. I think it was
an experience for him, though. You’d better ask Michael Lippman why Earl Slick
left me on the eve of this tour. He’s managing him now.”
Talk turned to films and Bowie
brightened up considerably, Bowie no longer sees himself as only a rock star,
so I asked him whether movies would become his prime interest.
“No. Making a bit of money is my prime
interest. I’m an artist and anything that makes money is okay. I don’t know
whether I’m an actor or not, and I won’t know until I see the movie (The Man
Who Fell To Earth) in a cinema with people around me. That’ll be the test.
I want to watch myself in that context. I acted or non-acted as best as I could
in that film. It required non-acting because the character of Newton that I
played is a very cold, unexpressive person. The thing he learns on earth is
emotion, which comes hard to him and reduces him to an alcoholic.
“I’d been offered a lot of scripts but
I chose this one because it was the only one where I didn’t have to sing or
look like David Bowie. Now I think David Bowie looks like Newton. One thing
that Nick Roeg (the film’s director) is good at doing is seducing people into a
role, and he seduced me completely. He told me after we’d finished it would
take me a long time to get out of the role and he was dead right. After four
months playing the role I was Newton for six months afterwards, and now I’m
gradually becoming Max Radl for the next one.”
Bowie’s next movie in fact, as
exclusively reported in MM,
is likely to be based on Jack Higgins’ best-selling novel, The Eagle Has Landed, which is
based on a fictitious plot to kidnap Winston Churchill during the last war.
Bowie is cast as Max Radl, a German officer who organises the kidnap attempt
from inside Germany.
“I’m getting into my Nazi bit for this
one,” he continued. “I have an inert left hand and a patch over my left eye for
the part. Michael Caine and Donald Sutherland are in it, too, so it’ll be one
hell of a film. Sutherland is the reason that I chose to do it – Sutherland has
the money.
“If it wasn’t for Sutherland and the
money I wouldn’t be interested. As it is, I’m more interested in a Bergman film
called The Serpent’s Egg which is coming up, and I’d do
that for nothing, just to work with Bergman.” [In the event Bowie did not
appear in this movie, his part being taken by Robert Duvall.]
Would he drop music in favour of acting
if his career blossomed “Er, no, I don’t think so. I just do anything as it
comes up. I’ve learned to find a much calmer level of intensity these days. I
don’t push for much, but I seem to move a lot faster when I do things this way.
I think I’ve done the bit that I needed to do in rock and roll. I’ve made my
contribution to rock and roll, and the only thing I can do now, if I stay in
rock and roll, is to have a rock and roll career. Not being very career-minded,
I don’t want a career in rock and roll.
“I couldn’t do anything but survive
now. Once you’ve made that initial boom, what else do you have to do? So I’m
just resting around and picking up on all the things that have fascinated me. I’ve
become interested in art over the last two years and I’ve done several silk
screens and lithographs.”
Was it that he was frightened of
repeating himself rock? “It’s not that so much. I didn’t want my enthusiasm for
rock and roll being mixed up with my own dissatisfaction with becoming a rock
and roll careerist. In rock and roll the artist quickly becomes an archetype,
and as soon as he becomes an archetype he has served his purpose.
“I don’t believe it’s possible for an
artist to say more than two new things in rock and roll. One artist has one
thing to say and it’s such an ephemeral sort of culture that after he’s said
it, it’s just a question of staying around. If you do strive to say something
new, it gets interpreted as just another way of staying around. They’re doing
it to Dylan at the moment, and poor old Bruce Springsteen has hardly started
before they’re saying it to him. And whether Patti Smith will ever get there,
they’re saying it about her. It’s not that interesting after a certain point,
anyway.
“I’m not disenchanted because I always
believed when I started that Ziggy,
for me, was what it was all about. I said it with Ziggy five years ago and I believe that
you can go up or come down or be carried along by the tide for a few years. The
only thing to do, if you want to contribute to culture, or politics, or music,
or whatever, is to utilise your own persona rather than just music. The best
way to do this is to diversify and become a nuisance everywhere.”
But it must have been satisfying to
have a massive US hit with ‘Fame’. “Well, it kind of put the cap on things. It
told me I could finish now, pack it all in now. That meant I had done the two
things I was supposed to do, which is to conquer this market and conquer the
British market. Once you’ve done that you can pretend to rest on your laurels
and all the other cliches you can do when you hit the top. You can forget
longevity and all the things that make you stay there, as far as I’m concerned.
All that staying at the top is just a heartache for me. I just want to do what
I want to do, and first, that’s make some money with this tour and enjoy making
it at the same time.
“I wanted to use a new kind of staging,
and I think this staging will become one of the most important ever. It will
affect every kind of rock and roll act from now on, because it’s the most
stabilised move that I’ve ever seen in rock and roll. I’ve reverted to pure
Brechtian theatre and I’ve never seen Brechtian theatre used like this since
Morrison and the Doors, and even then Morrison never used white light like I
do.
“I think it looks like a corrupted
version of the Thirties German theatre, what with the waistcoat, which has
always been a favourite with me. I should have had a watch-chain to make it
perfect. I’m trying to put over the idea of the European movement with the Dali
film (before he arrives on stage, the Dali-Luis Bunel film, Un Chien Andalou, is shown) and
playing Kraftwerk over the speakers. I’d like to get my hands on the new Eno
album to play, actually. I think side one is absolutely fabulous.”
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