The third and final part of my interview with David Bowie.
David’s sets change
from night to night but all the songs from Station
To Station are played, along
with half a dozen songs from Bowie's past. He says he's never been as loose on
stage since the early days of the Spiders, and he's enjoying the experience.
Despite his appearance onstage – severe and formal – he denies he's the
"Thin White Duke" referred to on the album. It's someone else and he
won't say who.
I asked which of the
old songs he still liked to sing. "I think 'Jean Genie' is a gas. I like
that one. I still love 'Changes'. All the songs I still do I still like, but
I'm not doing 'Golden Years' or 'Space Oddity'. I've really been very radical
for this show and I won't do any hits for the sake of doing hits.
"I think people
look on the show as an honest appearance, and that's why they develop such a
strong empathy for it. For the first few minutes they are absolutely alarmed at
what they are seeing, they don't understand it, but there's one point when it
breaks out and people realise what it is all about. It's not honest, really,
but then I've never been a let-it-all-hang-out entertainer. One thing I do is
fabricate a personality for a stage. I was never a rock and roll singer. I was
clumsy as a rock and roll singer, but I do have a certain penchant for
fabricating a character and portraying a cold, unemotional feeling.
"I'm still
giving them a persona, but that persona out there is possibly an exaggeration
of all the things I feel about me. Maybe it's some aspect of me as a person
blown-up to life-size. A lot of the other characters were blow-ups of other
rock and rollers that I saw around. I'm more approachable onstage this time
around, unlike the last time when the character I played was a paranoid refugee
of New York City. That was about the collapse of a major city and I think I was
right to be remote, don't you?"
I agreed. But was it
necessary not even to acknowledge the presence of the audience or his group?
"Oh yes. That character was in a world of his own. This time I at least
say 'good evening' to the people. Now you know that I'm not the warmest
performer onstage, and I never have been, but that's because I feel too shy
about talking to people onstage. I've never felt comfortable talking on stage.
With Diamond Dogs I even wanted to have the band in an
orchestra pit.
"If ever I have
the audacity to do a Diamond
Dogs tour again, I think I
know how I would do it, and I will do it properly because of everything I've
learned over the past few years. You know, unless you make some big mistakes
you are never going to grow, you've got to make mistakes. I've made one a week,
and if you don't make them then you won't become a self-invented man. I've got
to learn to make mistakes to understand the character that I am clawing the air
for. People like watching people who make mistakes, but they prefer watching a
man who survives his mistakes. To make a mistake in life, and survive it, is
the biggest kick of all.
"The so-called
rebel figures are not popular because they're rebels, but because they've made
mistakes and got over them. I think audiences go to rock concerts to obtain
information and the artist is the one who provides that information. I don't
know what the information is but it is something to do with survival. I'm sure
that rock and roll has something to do with survival, and that survival
instinct transcends the music, the words and everything else."
It wasn't long ago,
I mentioned, that Bowie stated he wasn't going to tour again. He shrugged.
"Oh yes, I did, but I don't feel that way now. I love it. The other tours
were misery, so painful. I had amazing amounts of people on the road with me. I
had a management system that had no idea what it was doing and was totally
self-interested and pompous. They never dealt with the people on the road, so I
was getting all those problems.
"I was getting
all the problems every night. Ten or 15 people would be coming to see me and
laying their problems on me because the management couldn't or wouldn't deal
with it. For me touring was no fun, no fun at all. They were little problems,
but to each individual they were important. I understood all their problems but
I couldn't cope with them all, so the two major tours I did were horrendous
experiences. I hated every minute of them, so I used to say I'd never tour
again. Then I would be talked into doing it again to make somebody some money.
"This time,
though, I will be touring again. We've got it down to a sensible number and it
works. It's the most efficient tour I've been on, and I can truthfully say it's
the most efficient tour I've seen. Everybody on this tour is in a wonderful
mood, and we're well through half the tour. This time no one comes to me with
problems, so we get together as people instead, and I actually find I'm
spending time with the band, which is rare. I've actually written on the road
this time. The band and I have written three things and I've never been able to
do that before.
"If I'm in
charge I'll tour again, whereas before I always thought there was somebody
better at doing this kind of thing. It wasn't until John [Lennon] pointed it
out to me that I realised maybe the artist is as good at managing as anybody
else. It was John that sorted me out all the way down the line. He took me on
one side, sat down, and told me what it was all about, and I realised I was
very naive. I still thought you had to have somebody else who dealt with these
things called contracts, but now I have a better understanding of show-business
business."
And the right wing
politics I had read about? "Oh, that was just bullshit, something I said
off the cuff. Some paper wanted me to say something and I didn't have much to
say so I made things up. They took it all in."
Why had he chosen to
live in the US for the past three years? "Because I didn't have any money
to get out. I was told I couldn't go back to England because I had tax problems
there and didn't have the money to pay them, but now I do, so I'm going back.
Unfortunately, I'm going to have to live in Switzerland, because I want to keep
my money. I'd like to live in England because I don't like America at all as a
place to live, except maybe New Mexico.
"I haven't
lived properly in America. I've been here but I haven't lived. I've been in Los
Angeles, coping with a town that I consider to be the most repulsive wart on
the backside of humanity. I'd rather live here in Detroit than in Los
Angeles."
Bowie has formed his
own film production company, Bewlay Brothers Ltd., which will handle his movie
business in the future and, he hopes, produce films of its own, especially
films of artistic, rather than commercial, merit. He plans on sinking his money
earned in rock into the film company.
"I've been
trained in a career as a rock and roll singer and I now see that I do that very
well. Therefore, like any good chap who has a career, I should utilise my
talents and the training that I've got and make some money out of it. You have
to own up to that after while.
"It's all very
well being number one protest kid for a while, but you have to consider whether
you are just protesting to stay around or whether you really mean to protest.
If that's the case you won't be at the top of the hit parade all the time, but
if you think your protest lies elsewhere you'll change horses and quickly earn
some money out of the business you are good at. That's what I'm doing now, but
I'll only do it if I'm enjoying the stuff that I'm doing.
"I'm enjoying
this tour so I'll do some more tours. Albums? I'll make some commercial albums
and I'll make some albums that possibly aren't as commercial. I'll probably
keep alternating, providing myself with a hit album to make the money to do the
next album, which probably won't sell as well."
At that point Bowie
wanted to finish, but some quick probing revealed that he has completed an
electronic album ("without vocals that you'd recognise"). Also, he
still has plans to produce a record with Iggy Pop, who was at the hotel and
seemed in much better health than usual. ("I'm a good lad. I look after
him".) And exactly the same show will be coming to London, though probably
with some additional numbers.
As a parting shot I
asked David whether he still professed to be bisexual. Momentary shock.
"Oh lord, no. Positively not. That was just a lie. They gave me that image
so I stuck to it pretty well for a few years. I never adopted that stance. It
was given to me. I've never done a bisexual action in my life, onstage, record
or anywhere else. I don't think I even had a gay following much. A few glitter
queens, maybe.
"You know the
funniest thing of all," he continued, talking like a conspirator,
"I'd never heard of Lou Reed until somebody said my stuff was influenced
by him. So when I heard that, I started saying it myself, that my songs were
influenced by Lou Reed. It seemed the obvious thing to say, and that's when I
started getting interested in Lou. The same with Iggy. It wasn't until people
told me my music was very sort of Detroity that I happened to discover Iggy Pop
and the Stooges. I thought 'what a great name', and although I'd never heard
them, I used to tell everybody who asked that I liked them a lot. Then I got
around to meeting Iggy, but it wasn't until months later that I actually heard
anything he'd written.
"It's
marvellous. A lot of people provide me with quotes. They suggest all kinds of
things to say and I do, because, really, I'm not very hip at all. Then I go
away and spout it all out and that makes it easier for people to classify me.
People dissect the songs and say that's influenced by someone or other, but I
don't know whether I'm influenced. All I know is I'm drinking a beer and
enjoying myself."
No comments:
Post a Comment