All language subtitles for David Bowie - Five Years.eng

"I guess I was one of the first

"I guess I was one of the first

"I guess I was one of the first
to really say

"I guess I was one of the first
to really say
I'm USING 'rock & roll'..."

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Can you get me a Coca-Cola
for Mr Bowie, please?

'I'm only using rock 'n' roll
as a medium.

'I don't think it had
been really voiced before then.

'I wanted to be the instigator
of new ideas.

'I wanted to turn people on to
new things and new perspectives.

'I always wanted to be that sort
of catalystic kind of thing.'

"I am only the person

"I am only the person
the greatest number of people

"I am only the person
the greatest number of people
believe I am."

I mean, the image you have has got almost
nothing to do with your real life.

'It depends on which image
you're talking about.

'I've seen so many because, of
course, there will be so many.'

It's like looking
at an actor's films

and taking clippings from the films
and saying, "Here he is," you know.

Well, that's where you're
different from most rock stars.

Well, I'm not a rock star, you see.
You've just said it.

I'm not in rock and roll.

That's nice.

♪ Fashion!

♪ Turn to the left

♪ Fashion!

"Sometimes...

♪ Turn to the right

♪ Oooh, fashion!

"Sometimes...
I don't feel like a person at all."

♪ We are the goon squad
And we're coming to town

♪ Beep-beep. ♪

I've always found that
I collect. I am a collector.

And I've always just seemed to
collect personalities, ideas.

In David Bowie's OWN words

In David Bowie's OWN words
and those of his closest
collaborators

♪ Put on your red shoes
and dance the blues... ♪

I'm a storyteller
and I'm a storywriter

and I decided that I
preferred to enact a lot of the material

I was writing, rather
than perform it as myself.

questo film usa
scene tagliate MAI VISTE
e filmati rari

♪ There's a starman

♪ Waiting in the sky

to tell the story

of FIVE key years

in Bowie's career.

♪ There's a starman

♪ Waiting in the sky. ♪

I think I'm a fairly good social observer,

and I think that I
encapsulate areas maybe every year or so.

I'm trying to stamp that
down somewhere,

the quintessence of that year.

♪ Let me make it plain

♪ Gotta make way
For the Homo Superior. ♪

David Bowie
FIVE YEARS

'I wanted to make a mark and I
didn't quite know how to do it,

'and it took me all the '60s to
try everything that I could think of

'in terms of theatre
and arts and music,

'to find out what exactly
it was I wanted to do anyway.

'I was learning about how
to play rhythm and blues,

'learning how to write, finding
all these, everything that I read,

'every film that I saw,
any bit of theatre,

'everything went into my
mind as being an influence.'

'But at the time, I thought, '
"God, that's going in my memory bank."

'But just about the end of the
'60s, it started to come together for me

'that there was a way of
expressing, not only musically,

'but visually what one can do.'

♪ Well

♪ She takes me up

♪ She takes me down

♪ She takes me down, down, down

♪ Anywhere you want me to be. ♪

YEAR ONE

YEAR ONE
.1971
to 1972

"I feel like an actor

"I feel like an actor
when I'm on stage,

"I feel like an actor
when I'm on stage,
rather than a rock artist."

- You ready?
- Yeah.

♪ Like to take a cement fix

♪ Be a standing cinema

In 1971 David Bowie
went to New York to sign
a contract with RCA Records.

♪ Dress my friends up just for show

♪ See them as they really are. ♪

Warhol, scene one, take one.

While he was there,
he met the pop artist
Andy Warhol.

♪ Put a peephole in my brain

♪ Two new pence to have a go

♪ I'd like to be a gallery

♪ Put you all inside my show. ♪

How come your camera doesn't make any noise?

'This guy was as
well-known as the work that he did.'

'In fact, probably more people knew
the name and the look of Andy Warhol

'than actually knew
what it was he did.'

Oh, it's so glamorous.

Bowie admired Warhol, but also
felt competitive with him, in some way.

I think he understood that
Warhol's work had waned in the prior years.

Camilla Paglia
Cultural Critic & Author

Bowie felt on Warhol's level,

wanted to be taken as
his peer, and rightly so.

'I did write a song about him,

and that rather linked me
to him, in a certain way.'

♪ Andy Warhol looks a scream

Andy Warhol
from "Hunky Dory"

♪ Hang him on my wall, oh-oh, oh-oh

♪ Andy Warhol, silver screen

♪ Can't tell them apart at all

♪ Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh. ♪

'He hated it. He loathed
it. He told people afterwards,

' "That's the worst thing
I've ever heard."

'I was upset by that, you know.

'I thought it was kind of
a flattering portrait of him.

'I thought it was a very
contemporary picture 'of Andy at the time.'

If you'd like to take
the camera back,

I'd prefer to do something.

You going to do something, still? No.

I do feel that Bowie felt
disappointed in not being embraced by Warhol,

and certainly
dramatised his own sense of disease

by doing his hilarious disembowelling mime

at the end of the video
that recorded this ill encounter.

'Oh, that's right.

'Did he really?

'Oh, that's nice.'

With Andy Warhol from Hunky Dory,
you've got the sense

that Bowie's one of the first people
who's able to essay

the experience of stardom,
wanting to be a star,

imagining what it's like
to be a star.

And even the cover picture
has a sense that he knows

John Harris
Journalist & Author

that he's starting to turn himself
into what, if you're being romantic,

you'd call an icon, and if you're being
horribly cynical and 21st-century,

you'd call a brand.

But I'd rather not use that word

because it's a huge
disservice to what we're talking about.

♪ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Changes
from "Hunky Dory"

♪ Turn and face the stranger
♪ Ch-ch-changes

♪ Don't want to have to be
A richer man

♪ Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

♪ Turn and face the stranger
♪ Ch-ch-changes

♪ Just wanted to be a better man

♪ But time may change me

♪ But I can't trace time. ♪

I got a call from David,
he called me directly,

and he said, "Can you come over
to the house?"

And I sat there with him, and he took
out this battered old 12-string guitar

Rick Wakeman
Piano
"Hunky Dory"

and said, "I'm going to play you some songs."

And he played me these songs
one after the other.

Life on Mars?
from "Hunky Dory"
(video filmed in 1973)

♪ It's a God-awful small affair

♪ To the girl with the mousy hair

♪ But her mummy is yelling "No"

♪ And her daddy has told her to go

♪ But her friend is nowhere
To be seen

♪ Now she walks
through her sunken dream... ♪

"Life On Mars?", from Hunky Dory,

was certainly the stand-out song for me,

but it was a challenge in certain areas,
because of some of the chord structure,

because he would lead you down
the garden path with

quite a bog-standard chord
structure, and then suddenly go AWOL.

Now I've got to try and remember this,
because it is 40 years since I've played it, but...

♪ But her friend is nowhere
To be seen

♪ Now she walks through
Her sunken dream

♪ To the seat with
The clearest view... ♪

Now this is a classic example of where he
throws in a chord that you wouldn't expect.

Normally after...

You would expect it to go back
there, but he doesn't. He goes...

But the thing that makes it really clever
is he put an E flat in the bass,

which just gives it a bass
part that you can start to move on.

Really clever, so you've got...

♪ But the film is a saddening bore

♪ For she's lived it
ten times or more. ♪

Now, after that chord, you
would expect it to go to...

But he doesn't.

I mean, nobody... Only David
would do something like that.

It's a piano player's joy. In
fact, I must go home and learn it.

♪ Take a look at the lawman

♪ Beating up the wrong guy

♪ Oh, man! Wonder if he'll ever know

♪ He's in the best-selling show

♪ Is there life on

♪ Mars? ♪

"Life On Mars?" is sort of magic realism,
really, if you listen to it,

that you recognise it as a song about Britain.

And there are references in it which
anyone who grew up in suburbia would understand.

Very mundane, and yet it's magical.

You know, he's seen the
cosmos in the bus stop.

♪ It's on America's tortured brow

♪ That Mickey Mouse
Has grown up a cow

♪ Now the workers have
Struck for fame

♪ Cos Lennon's on sale again. ♪

The vocals are performances,
they are real, they are live,

and I think that's one of the
reasons we're still talking about them today,

Ken Scott
Co-Producer
"Hunky Dory"

is because they do resonate with
people. Unlike the manufactured

and thrown-together vocals that
are so prevalent today, his are real.

Queen Bitch
from "Hunky Dory"

♪ I'm up on the eleventh floor
And I'm watching the cruisers below

♪ Well, I'm down on the street
And he's trying hard to... ♪

Sorry.

Although most of Hunky
Dory is not a rock record,

there are stirrings of the Bowie to come.

When you listen to Queen Bitch,
it swings.

It has raunch to it, you know.

That record shakes its hips very convincingly.

♪ Well, it could have been me

♪ Yes, it could have been me

♪ Why didn't I say?

♪ She's so swishy
In her satin and tat

♪ In her frock coat
And bipperty-bopperty hat

♪ Oh, God, I could do better
than that. ♪

'I think I was getting
nearer to what I wanted to do,

'which is to create
this alternative world,

'and Hunky Dory was the first,

'really stepping off this planet
and going somewhere else.'

So, we'd finished Hunky
Dory, and a couple of weeks later

I ran into David walking along
the corridor of Trident Studios

and he comes up to me and he says,
"We're going to record a new album,"

"But you're not going to like it."

I said, "Why?" and he said,
"Well, this is much more rock and roll."

♪ I'm an alligator

Moonage Daydream
from "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
And The Spiders from Mars"

♪ I'm a mama-papa coming for you. ♪

Mick Ronson
Lead Guitar
"Ziggy Stardust"
girato nel 1992

Bowie's always been brilliant
at finding the right collaborators.

He had the extraordinary Mick Ronson,

who could strike amazing guitar hero poses and

fill the hall with riffs

in such a way that Bowie
shared the stage with Ronson

Charles Shaar Murray
Music Journalist

in a way that he's never
shared a stage with anyone else.

♪ Freak out in a moon-age daydream,
Oh, yeah! ♪

'When I first heard him play,
I thought,

' "That's my Jeff Beck, he is
fantastic, this kid is great."

'And so I sort of hoodwinked
him into working with me.'

I forget how it goes, but,
I mean, that's basically...

He is good at stealing.

You've only got to look
at Ziggy, really.

I mean, there is a lot
of Lou Reed in there,

Trevor Bolder
Bass Guitar
"Ziggy Stardust"

a lot of Iggy Pop in there, you know.

A lot of all sorts of influences
that he has got in there,

you know, so he would steal little bits.

♪ Oh, don't lean on me, man
♪ Cos you can't afford the ticket

Suffragette City
from "Ziggy Stardust"

♪ I'm back on Suffragette City

♪ Oh, don't lean on me, man
♪ Cos you can't afford to check it

♪ I'm back on Suffragette City

♪ Is out of sight. ♪

'It just seemed like a perfectly
natural thing for me at the time,

'to put together all these odds and ends
of art and culture 'that I really adored.

'It was just creating
something thoroughly artificial,

'but something that worked in
the confines of rock and roll.'

♪ There's only room for one
And here she comes

♪ Here she comes... ♪

I suppose the whole thing that made
Ziggy as popular as it was-stroke-is,

was that it was a good rock album.

Nothing extraordinary,
in my opinion,

but a good rock album, and
then the image on top of it,

which was really honed
to perfection by David,

and people grabbed hold of it.

What Ziggy Stardust does is it
projects him as a rock star.

He sings about the imagined
experience of being a rock star,

and in doing that,
becomes a rock star.

And there is a story about his
wife Angie, in the front row,

screaming at him as if
he was a rock star,

despite the fact that two
men and a dog were there.

What happens, then, really, is
that the world fulfils his fantasy.

It aligns itself with
what he wants to be.

Which is what I think
psychologists call "self-actualisation".

Not many people can do it
but he did.

♪ Suffragette! ♪

I was sitting next to this guy who
was living it, he was already

Woody Woodmansey
Drums
"Ziggy Stardust"

being it on a daily basis,

and it's funny, but he would
eat breakfast as a superstar.

It was like, "This guy means it."

Ziggy Stardust
from "Ziggy Stardust"

♪ Ziggy played guitar

♪ Jamming good with Weird and Gilly

♪ And the spiders from Mars

♪ He played it left-hand

♪ But made it too far... ♪

'I'd found my character.

'One man against the world. It
really reverberated in my mind.

'That's something that I
really, kind of, honed in on.'

♪Screwed up eyes
And screwed down hairdo

♪ Like some cat from Japan

♪ He could kill 'em by smiling... ♪

'Ziggy was this kind of
mythological priest figure.

'And I only say that in retrospect
because I didn't quite know 'what he was then,

but it does occur to me now

'that the androgyny of some of
the tribal priests throughout history

'have been transvestite in nature.

'I only know this because I
read Camille Paglia on the subject.'

Ziggy Stardust is, to me, a kind of colossus

Camille Paglia
Cultural Critic & Author

that marks a tremendous
transition between the 1960s and the 1970s.

♪ So we bitched about his fans ♪
♪ And should we crush his sweet hands? ♪

The 1970s were a dark era,

where sexual promiscuity for its own sake

was pursued in a way that had never been

so universal since the Roman Empire.

Sex without consequence,
anonymous sex, pick-ups in dark clubs.

So Ziggy Stardust, when he appeared,
was a kind of prefiguration,

almost like the Book of Revelations,

a hallucination of an apocalypse
about to occur.

♪ Making love with his ego

♪ Ziggy sucked up into his mind

♪ Like a leper messiah

♪ When the kids had killed the man

♪ I had to break up the band. ♪

What made Ziggy different, and
Bowie different, at that point,

was that he

Michael Watts
Music Journalist

turned himself into an
idol that people could worship.

Nobody had actually, in pop
music, ever done that before.

It was the province of Hollywood.

Starman
from "Ziggy Stardust"

♪ There's a starman
Waiting in the sky

♪ He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds

♪ There's a starman
Waiting in the sky

♪ He's told us not to blow it

♪ Cos he knows it's all worthwhile

♪ He told me
Let the children lose it

♪ Let the children use it

♪ Let all the children boogie. ♪

His management would
distribute posters of Bowie at concerts,

so that the fans could pick them up and
go home and put them on the walls,

and it was that kind of attention

to detail in thinking about
the whole process of stardom

that singled him out from people
that had gone before.

I think David was calculating
in a lot of things that he did.

He understood how to manipulate
his image, in that

he didn't make himself too available.

He just gave them a little bit, and they'd go,

"Oh, we want more of David Bowie."

Ava Cherry
Backing Singer

You know, that sort of thing.

And I used to always wonder about that. I
was like, "Why don't you just give them it all?"

And he was like, "No, I've just got
to give them that.

"And then they'll come back for more,
and then just give them that."

And it worked.

On 3rd july 1973,
Bowie killed off the character
of Ziggy Stardust.

YEAR TWO

YEAR TWO
.1974
to 1975

"Bowie was never meant to be.

"Bowie was never meant to be.
He's like a Lego kit.

"Bowie was never meant to be.
He's like a Lego kit.
...there is no definitive David Bowie."

'At that particular time, 'I was
chopping and changing really quite drastically.

'The music that I was listening to
was definitely the soul music

'that was really, really big in the clubs
in America 'at that particular time.

'So I kind of tried to do my
own version of that kind of music,

'which was the basis of the
Young Americans album.

'I'd become soul man.'

When David really decided
he wanted to be a soul man,

he said to me, "So, how shall
we do it?

"Where shall we go?"

And, you know, to get the people,
the singers, the band and all that.

And I said we should go to New York.
To Harlem and go to the Apollo.

So he was like, "OK."

So we went backstage
and he met everyone.

I didn't know who David Bowie was,

but I did know this was
the whitest man I've ever seen.

I'm not talking about white like pink.

I'm talking about translucent white.

And then he had orange hair.

Carlos Alomar
Guitar
"Young Americans"

I'm not talking about

your momma's orange,

I'm talking about an orange,

orange!

And he was about 98lbs. I'm
talking about thin, thin.

I mean, he was freaky.

At one point I told him - and
you'll have to excuse my language -

"You look like shit, man.
You need some food.

"You need to come to my house."

"Young Americans"
Tour rehearsals

Come forward. Yeah, that's great.

'Carlos had been able to introduce
me 'to a lot of fantastic new musicians,

'one of whom was Luther Vandross, of course.'

So you have this amazing collaboration

Nelson George
Cultural Historian

between Bowie, and soon-to-be one of
the greatest soul singers of all time,

Luther Vandross,

along with all the other
background singers who would sing with Luther.

♪ Taking it all the right way

Right
from Young Americans

♪ Keeping it in the back

♪ Taking it all the right way

♪ Taking it all the right way

♪ Never need, no
Never no turning back

♪ Taking it all the right way

♪ Keeping it in the back

♪ Taking it all the right way

♪ Never no turning back

♪ Never need, no
Never no turning back. ♪

Right, from the Young
Americans album, was a difficult song

but Luther put it all
together for him.

We had...

♪ Taking it all the right way
♪ Keeping it all in the back

Robin Clark
Backing Singer
"Young Americans"

♪ Taking it all the right way

♪ Never no turning back
Never need no... ♪

And then that section comes in.

♪ Wishing, wishing, sometime
Doing it, up there, nobody

♪ Nobody doing it, getting up. ♪

That was so hard.

♪ Time

♪ Doing it

♪ Giving it

♪ Keeping it back. ♪

Right. That's cool, that's cool.

David had, like, a puzzle.

Just the last line.

He brought this paper to us and
said,

"This is how I want you
to sing this."

Oh, sorry, I wasn't with you.

It wasn't a straight "just sing
it linearly and melodically".

Oh, I see, you count from...
Yeah. I thought you were doing an intro.

Right. One, two...

It was "I want it to jump in here,
and I want you to jump out there,

"and jump back in here."

♪ Keeping it back. ♪

Right, that's fine. OK, so we've
got that. That one's all right.

That, too, was the first time I
was singing anything like that.

In my life.

But it was brilliant, because
he knew exactly what he wanted.

Right, OK, and the last section.

♪ Gimme, gimme, yeah. ♪

Oh, Lord, it was too much!

It was like, "Man, I'll be
glad when we finish with this song."

♪ Wishing that sometimes
Sometimes

♪ Doing it, doing it right, till
Doing it

♪ One time One time. ♪

'There was no point in doing
a straightforward take

'on American soul music,
because that's been done already,

'so I just wanted to put
this spin on it.'

'Eventually, of course,
when the album came out,

'it was very well-received,

'and Young Americans
became a very big album for me.

'I mean, I really advanced myself.

'I was tumbling over myself
with ideas.'

People see you as a very
skilful performer,

who changes from time to time
from one thing to another.

Yeah. I glit from one thing to another, a lot.

"Glit"?

It's like "flit", but it's the '70s version.

One letter later.

To be on Dick Cavett meant you had arrived.

And what's fascinating about that

is he's not really playing by the Dick
Cavett rules, if there are any,

in the sense that one watches
it and it's like,

"Do you want the whole of America to
think you're a complete nutcase?"

"Out of your mind on cocaine?"
And he clearly did.

And it was to the
benefit of his career.

It rendered him fascinating.

Is the offstage Bowie
likely to surprise people?

I've had the weirdest reactions

from people who know
that you're going to be on.

Some say they'd be
scared to sit and talk to you.

Some people said you'd bite my neck.

- A very peculiar kind of thing.
- Yeah.

Which it's what you want, really.
What do you think I'm like?

To me you seem like a...

I hope this doesn't insult you,
a working actor.

That's right, that's very good.

I mean... What are you drawing?

It's therapeutic.

David, he was a character.

I knew he was, excuse my language,
I knew he was fucked up.

Dennis Davis
Drums
"Young Americans"

But you know, he was good,
he was cool, he got through it.

♪ Pulls her down behind the bridge

♪ He lays her down, she frowns

♪ Gee, my life's a funny thing

♪ Am I still too young?

♪ He takes her hand and there

♪ She takes his ring,
takes his babies

♪ Takes him minutes,
takes her nowhere

♪ Heaven knows,
she'd have taken anything

♪ All night

♪ All night,
she wants a young American

♪ Young American, young American
She wants a young American

♪ All right. ♪

In terms of the Young American stuff,
it was a chance that he grabbed

to be able to do something he had
wanted to do since he was 12.

He may have thought, "I won't have

a 40-something,
50-year-old career,"

Geoff MacCormack
Backing Singer
& childhood friend

and he may have thought, "I'm
going to get this in while I can."

Carlos had a riff that he'd
had in his head for some time

which I put to a standard
called Footstompin' by The Flares.

♪ Everybody, young and old

♪ Learns how to rock and roll

♪ Listen to something new

♪ Everybody sure can do it

♪ Footstompin', footstompin'. ♪

David always liked that
little line as I was playing it with...

He liked that
but he hated the song later on.

So I'm called back into the studio.
After we finished Young Americans

he called me down
to Electric Lady Studio

and I get there

and he had cut the song
up into a more blues format,

what we called the one-four-five-four
format.

And he had cut it up but
the only thing he had kept was...

I heard that and I was like,

"OK, we're going to do something
with that,"

and I started laying down ideas
and laying down ideas.

I'm going to play the first
thing that we did and how we layered it

so you can hear what happens.

First part, add a little bass.

Doesn't that sound like Fame?

David comes in, he goes,
"Oh, I hear this line."

What happened is that John
Lennon came to the session.

We sort of said, "Let's take that
riff and write something over it."

It was Carlos' riff.

Fame.

John was playing and he
kept on coming up with,

"Ame! Ame!"

and I put an F in front of
it and that was it, really.

♪ Fame makes a man take things over

Fame
from "Young Americans"

♪ Fame lets him loose,
hard to swallow

♪ Fame puts you there
Where things are hollow

♪ Fame

♪ Fame, not your brain,
it's just the flame

♪ That burns your change
to keep you insane, sane. ♪

David wasn't trying to be a soul singer.

But as far as

being taken seriously, he wanted
to be taken seriously

but he wasn't trying to be
a pretender.

"A Natural Woman" by Aretha Franklin.

♪ Looking out on the morning rain

♪ I used to feel so uninspired. ♪

It was surreal because

it was getting close to the
point where we were casting the movie.

And I knew there was something I
had to get that was totally different.

And suddenly this programme came on

Nicolas Roeg
Director
"The Man Who fell To Earth"

and by chance I saw it.

There's a fly floating around
in my milk.

And he's floating. He's a foreign body in
it, you see, and he's getting a lot of milk.

That's kind of how I feel.

♪ You make me feel
like a natural woman. ♪

He wasn't being over-careful
or worried about losing an image.

Maybe that was the image.

And almost from that moment,

I couldn't believe it because
I thought, "This is the man."

Nothing you have seen or
heard about David Bowie

will prepare you for the impact
of his first dramatic performance

in The Man Who Fell To Earth.

This is another
dimension of David Bowie.

One of the few true originals of our time.

David calculated all of this.

I think he said, "Yeah, I'm Ziggy.
No, I'm not Ziggy. I'm soul man.

Ava Cherry
Backing Singer

"Now I was a soul man, now maybe an actor."

Yes, I think that he calculated all of that.

The Man Who Fell To
Earth is a powerful love story.

A cosmic mystery.
A spectacular fantasy.

David Bowie

David Bowie
PHENOMENON OF OUR TIME

A shocking, mind-stretching experience.

The film was the first thing
I'd been given

where I didn't have to play a
rock 'n' roll star for a start.

I wasn't required to sing.

I wanted it to be considered as a
serious sort of attempt at acting.

The early scenes where we're
together in the hotel room,

Candy Clark
Co-Star
"The Man Who Fell To Earth"

his skin just reflects
the light so beautifully.

He does look like he's from another planet.

Oh, I'm just visiting.

Oh, a traveller?

'As to how close it was to him,
pretty close.

'You know there wasn't
a lot of changes to him.'

You know that was the colour of his
hair. They didn't change his hair.

He just said, "Be yourself!"

I think Nick realised I had
some serious problems at the time

and just thought, "He's perfect.

"Just put him in, just change his clothes,

"just put him in as he is and let him
just walk through it," and I did.

All I could do as far as his
performances were concerned

was

stop myself from trying to influence him.

And some days my face ached
through not being able to use it.

Everything had to be absolutely
expressionless.

Three months of being
totally "the iceman cometh".

You don't know? How could you?
You're simple.

He might think he's being
expressionless, but he really isn't.

His body language, everything
is telling me something

when I'm working opposite him.

You won't find anyone else like me, you know.

'The way he blinks his
eyes, the way he looks away,

'the way he moves his
hand tells me something.'

So he's wrong when he's
saying he's expressionless.

He's really not.

The actual alien was more

that vulnerable part when he wasn't Mr Newton.

When Candy Clarke found him taking
the stuff out of his eye,

and she's freaked out and he
was so freaked out that she saw him

because he was trying to hide it so well.

And

it just seemed like
something about him in real life to me.

It had a certain truth in,

he made the mistake of telling her his secret.

Of course, in that final sequence, it can't

be the same, it'll never be
the same again, you know,

which was terribly sad.

You've just finished making the
film called The Man Who Came To Earth.

- Fell To Earth.
- Fell To Earth, I beg your pardon.

It's not an easy film to
explain to people who haven't seen it.

It's very, very sad. Very romantic.

It brought a lump to my throat watching it.

And it's been a gas working on it.

David, we're coming towards the
end of our all-too-brief conversation.

Oh, that's a shame.

I think what we might do is
end with a bit of music.

I gather that, at your end,
you have some music with you.

The song is called The
Shape Of Things To Come.

- No, it isn't.
- No, of course it isn't.

We're having a preview of
The Shape Of Things to Come.

The song is called Golden Tears.

- Mr David Bowie, we'll come back
- Years.

- to you after we've seen some.
- You did get it wrong. It's Years.

- Years.
- Years.

Why don't you introduce it from that end?

This is David Bowie singing Golden Years,

from his forthcoming album Station To Station.

♪ Golden years

♪ Gold, whop, whop, whop

Golden years
from "Station to Station"

♪ Golden years

♪ Gold, whop, whop, whop

♪ Don't let me hear you
say life's taking you nowhere

♪ Angel

♪ Come, get up my baby

♪ Look at that sky, life's begun

♪ Nights are warm
and the days are young

♪ Come, get up my baby

♪ There's my baby lost that's all

♪ Once I'm begging you
save her little soul

♪ Golden years, gold,
whop, whop, whop. ♪

It was kind of a very weird time

and it was LA and it was
the '70s and it was coke

Geoff MacCormack
Backing Singer
"Station To Station"

and it was weird people hanging around and
people who didn't speak and just whistled

and stuff like that.
"You know, man, heavy."

It was like being on another planet, yeah.

♪ Run for the shadows, run for the
shadows in these golden years. ♪

I was probably fairly psychically damaged.

Not probably.
I WAS psychically damaged.

I guess trying to get what I was understanding

expressed in musical form.

Everybody was on drugs.

At that period of time, we
were all well out there.

Earl Slick
Lead Guitar
"Station to Station"

But not so out there that
we didn't make a great record

so, I mean, you know.

Or maybe our view of being out there
and people's views of being out there

doesn't necessarily correlate with the fact
that we were incapable of making a record. So

Whatever "out there" was, "out there" worked.

I think the biggest influence on
that album was the work of Kraftwerk,

and the new German sound.

I tried to apply some of the randomness

and I utilised a lot of that
feeling for especially the title track,

Station To Station.

The feedback intro at the beginning of Station
To Station was an idea that David had.

So we had a few
Marshall stacks on the back wall

and we just did the feedback
together something like...

Earl Slick was asked to do something
unnatural and that was,

"I want you to sustain a
note for, like, 15 years!"

Boom!

You are waiting for your part but
you can't. You've got to hold it.

Don't play, don't play, just hold it.
Finally you get to play one little thing.

Station To Station, I really
can't put a title on what it is he does.

I mean,
I can put a title on Young Americans

Dennis Davis
Drums
"Young Americans"

but everything after that I
don't have a title for it.

Station To Station
from "Station to Station"

It was supposed to be deadly, and just brutal.

Just this hard, hard,
heavy, dark, dark texture

Carlos Alomar
Guitar
"Station to Station"

that just laid down.

Just bog it down, bog it down.

♪ The return of the Thin White Duke

♪ Throwing darts in lovers' eyes

♪ Here am I

♪ One magical movement

♪ Such is the stuff from
where dreams are woven. ♪

Station To Station dealt with a character
called the Thin White Duke,

who was a European living in America,
who wanted to get back to Europe again.

♪ Bending sound

♪ Dredging the ocean
lost in my circle. ♪

Know what I think? I think a
lot of really nasty shit happened,

business wise, and with hangers
on and all these useless

fucks that you accumulate.

♪ It's not the side effects
of the cocaine

♪ I'm thinking that
it must be love

♪ It's too late to be grateful

♪ It's too late to be late again

♪ It's too late to be hateful

♪ The European cannon is here. ♪

I started really getting
very, very worried for my life.

You know I just had to get
myself out of that situation.

It wasn't surprising at all
that he wanted away from LA.

He hated LA towards the end.

LA at that point was a
very, very alien society.

It was kind of unreal
with unreal people.

I just did too much and I came close
several times to overdosing.

It was like being in a car where the
steering had gone out of control

and you were going towards
the edge of a cliff.

I'd almost resigned myself to the
fact that I'm going over the edge.

You know, I'm not going to be able to stop.

On 2nd May 1976,
Bowie arrived back in London.

WELCOME HOME DAVID

YEAR THREE

YEAR THREE
.1976
to 1977

"The minute you know

"The minute you know
you're on safe ground,

"The minute you know
you're on safe ground,
you're DEAD.

I was tiring of the method I was writing.

I wanted to develop a new language so I
knew that my next move was to have to do that.

I discarded for the time
being characters and environments.

And I couldn't look at
myself properly at the time.

I needed some help and who better
to work with, I thought, than Eno.

And, of course, I found what
I consider a soul mate there.

He's a constantly changing person.

Brian Eno
Synthesizers
"Low"

I knew he was sort of getting tired
with the way he'd been working.

I knew also he liked a
particular album that I had made very much.

It was Discrete Music, which is my

longest, slowest, quietest album.

The fact that he liked
that sort of alerted me to

the idea that he was wanting to go
somewhere else in his own music.

We would get in the studio,
it was really wide open.

That's why I like doing recordings with
him because it was, like, real easy, you know.

Dennis Davis
Drums
"Low"

Until Brian Eno came along.

That Brian Eno, he was a character!

The problem actually
I had at that time was that

I didn't really
understand how good musicians worked.

I'm not a musician
myself in that sense.

Brian Eno had a blackboard,
you know,

like elementary school, you know.

I'm like,
"You've got a blackboard. So?"

So we started coming up with
these ideas for different chords.

E, C, G, B, and so he'd go, ok, so,

Carlos Alomar
Guitar
"Low"

"I'm going to point to that
chord and you play that chord

"and then I'll point to another."
So I'm playing and it goes D.

When you're working
with really great players,

like Carlos and Dennis, you have
to accept that they have a way of

processing information that
is beyond intellectual.

"Dude, man. Hey, Brian, look.
What are you... This is...

"This isn't working for me, man."

But with their
incredibly natural musicianship,

the two together produce
something that,

again, one wouldn't have had
with either on their own.

I mean, some of it worked,
some of it didn't,

but quite honestly it did
take me out of my comfort zone

and it did make me leave my frustration
at what I was doing

and totally look at it from
another different point of view

and, although I didn't like
the point of view,

when I came back, I was fresh.

Speed of Life
from "Low"

I think Eno opened up new doors of perception.

In terms of the use of the studio,

I'd never used a studio in
quite the way that Brian was using it.

I received a phone call
from David and Brian Eno

and they said, "What can
you bring to the table?"

Tony Visconti
Co-Producer
"Low"

I said, "I've got this new
thing called a harmoniser."

And they said,
"What does this thing do?"

And I thought, and I said,

"It fucks with the fabric of time.
This is science fiction."

And I could hear the two of them
whooping on the other end.

They just went, like, "Whoa! Woo!"

Something like that, you know.

It was very exciting because it
enabled you to change the pitch of things.

So what we did with Dennis' snare drum was we

fed it through the harmoniser,

dropped its pitch and then
fed that back through again.

so it goes... but faster.

Even though, musically,

it has absolutely
nothing to do with the blues,

Low is, in a weird way,
Bowie's blues album.

His marriage was breaking up.

He was having serious
business hassles with ex-managers.

And, like a blues man,

Charles Shaar Murray
Music Journalist

he was attempting to deal with those troubles

by, as part of the process,
singing about them.

It was evident that he was
having problems

and he wanted to come into the studio
to get away from everything

but you kind of bring everything with you

and so Breaking Glass had that kind
of feeling so we started it,

and he really wanted,
like, angry, very, very punky.

David came up with...

♪ Baby

♪ I've been

♪ Breaking glass in your... ♪

And I was trying to figure out,

he probably did that shit yesterday
in somebody's room.

You know, cos David writes
this stuff about life shit.

And it had that kind of...

♪ I've been breaking glass
in my room again. ♪

You know, then Dennis and George
kicked in with theirs so it was just...

♪ Baby

Breaking Glass
from "Low"

♪ I've been

♪ Breaking glass in your room again

♪ Listen. ♪

It just needed a positive
decision to only do what I want to do

and not do things
for the sake of what,

either David Bowie or whoever
I was playing last time,

Thin White Duke or
something, was expected to do.

♪ I drew something awful on it. ♪

What I think excites both of us

is the idea of going where
nobody's been before

and trying to find out what
you could do there, you know.

David, I think, was really interested

in new moods and landscapes
and textures

that you could get with electronics

and he didn't feel a compulsion
to turn everything into a song.

Warszawa
from da "Low"

I cannot think of anybody comparable

in terms of being
sort of that famous.

Dylan, The Stones, The Beatles.

Elvis. People of that stature.

John Harris
Journalist & Author

Can you imagine
even any of those people

making a record which was half instrumental

at the supposed peak
of their career?

It was never going to happen.

♪ Milejo

♪ Sula vie

♪ Milejo, ejo. ♪

On Warszawa he was using
sort of non-language

so they still weren't
songs in the conventional sense.

Is there a danger that, by
following your instinct,

that you will jeopardise the
money and the good life?

No shit, Sherlock!

Yes, I think I've rather hit
that one on the head at the moment.

And it's quite a relief, really.

I feel a lot more...

free.

Some critics who wrote about it,

god, they really need...they really
need to get a proper job sometimes.

They kind of moan about it.
"Oh, what are you doing?"

'I don't give a shit about how
clever it may or may not be.

'It stinks of artfully counterfeited spiritual
defeat and futility 'and emptiness.

Recensione della rivista NME di "Low"
Gennaio 1977.

We're low enough already, David.

'Give us a high or else
just swap tapes with Eno by post

'and leave those of us who'd rather search
for solutions than lie 'down and be counted

to try and find ourselves
instead of lose ourselves.

'You're a wonderful person
but you've got problems.'

Yeah, that's what I wrote.

The music to me sounds
really a little a bit alienated

- so I'm very surprised...
- Alienated from what?

- From...from...from...
- OK, from my world.

From your world? Uh-huh, OK.

Can you understand it?

Yes, I can because
it's new language.

I went naked in Berlin.

I really did try and strip down my life

to what I believed to be absolute
basic essentials so I could build up again.

I virtually gave a lot
of possessions away, and

my wardrobe really was
just jeans and checked shirts

and that's how I walked about
and I had a bicycle and that was it.

I think it was the first freedom I'd had from

all those so-called trappings of celebrity.

He was kind of recuperating.

He soaked up all this
very fascinating European music

and carried on making albums.

It's better than sitting
in the Priory for two years.

Now based in Berlin,
Bowie began work
on his next album
in the summer of 1977.

David and I were talking. We had
a number of pieces in progress

and David said, "What shall we do
next? How should we work on them?"

I said, "Well, why don't we call
Fripp and see what he would offer?"

The voice came on and said,

"It's Brian, hello! I'm here
with David. We're in Berlin.

Robert Fripp
Lead Guitar
"Heroes"

"Hang on, I'll pass you over," so
Eno passed the phone over to David

and David said,
"Hello, we're here in...

"Do you think you can play
some hairy rock'n'roll guitar?"

What is hairy rock'n'roll?

It has danger.

What is the difference between pop

and rock'n'roll?

You might get fucked.

Can you put that in

or should I express it
in alternative terminology?

It was a collaboration, a
highly successful collaboration,

the new one, and with the addition
of Fripp as middle man,

I think that helped an awful lot as well.

And Eno said, "Well, why don't
you plug in?" So I plugged in.

They hit the play button.

And then on bar three you'll hear...

with skysaw guitars,

and that's straight into
Beauty And The Beast

and what you hear on the
record, the first track of Heroes,

is the first note I played
on the session, first take,

going all the way through.

♪ Down the highway, sing the song

Beaty And The Beast
from "Heroes"

♪ That's my kind of highway
gone wrong

♪ My my

♪ Smile at least

♪ You can't say never
to the beauty and the beast. ♪

Anyone who's playing
Beauty And The Beast,

you know they get erections.

♪ There's something in the night,
something in the day

♪ Nothing is wrong
but darling someone's in the way

♪ There's slaughter in the air,
protest on the wind

♪ Someone deep inside of me

♪ Someone could get skinned, how? ♪

Most of Heroes takes you back to
that very poetic, somewhat obtuse,

often gloriously
indecipherable way of doing things

which you'd heard
in Station To Station.

It's great but I don't really
know what he's talking about

and so the sort of mystery kind of returns.

But, at the same time, the title
song of Heroes is an exception to

that idea that he's sort of become
very obtuse again.

I always knew that was
going to be a great song

from the very first moment those
guys started playing it.

Brian Eno
Synthesizers
"Heroes"

You thought, "OK, yes,
this is a good one."

And then I think the really crucial
moment in it came

actually with Fripp.

Heroes
from "Heroes"

♪ I

♪ I wish you could swim. ♪

Fripp's plaintive guitar cry really
triggered off something emotive in me,

and it was a song of triumph, and it was like,

"I've been a real idiot some of my life

"and put myself in
ridiculously dangerous situations

"and I seem to have been
getting through it."

And that became part and parcel of that song.

You can overcome some incredible odds.

♪ We can beat them

♪ Forever and ever

♪ Oh, we can be heroes

♪ Just for one day. ♪

Fripp did three takes on
it and we used all three.

This is Tony Visconti's
genius that he can do that

without it sounding a mess.

David sat down in the
control room, you know, and

he said, "Could you just
take a walk?"

He goes, "I'm writing and
I just want to be to myself

Tony Visconti
Co-Producer
"Heroes"

"and I want to finish these lyrics."

So I was having a little
flirtation, shall we say,

with the singer Antonia Maass.

She was the female
vocalist on the album.

We walked outside the studio
where, from the control room,

you could see the Berlin Wall and
you could see a lot of rubble

and you could see the
guards and the gun turrets.

And right beneath the
window we had a little snog.

And David saw that and he said,
"That's the second verse!"

♪ And we kissed

♪ As though nothing could fall. ♪

The thing that was most exciting
about it all is that I found

that without drugs I
was still writing very well,

you know, and that was probably
the most rejuvenating aspect of it all,

is that you don't need to get stoned
out of your gourd to write well, you know?

I think that was, you know, an incredibly
important period for me.

Not very fast, are you?

I can't say it was like
night and day that suddenly

I was this different person. It
wasn't. It took quite a long time.

But I think, you know, I did
see light at the end of the tunnel,

and it wasn't a train.

When I met Bowie again around
the time of Heroes

I was struck by the fact that his
hair was its natural colour,

he wasn't wearing any make up,

he was wearing a shirt
so un-rockstar-y

it virtually qualified
as suburban casual wear.

Charles Shaar Murray
Music Journalist

It was almost like
saying, "OK, this is the real me."

Though, of course, one did suspect

is this affable natural Dave

simply the latest mask?

And is there something still lurking

beneath this apparently lifelike surface?

Can I ask you one last thing?

People I've talked to who worked with you say

you're a very personal
person, if you know what I mean?

- People who go out with me?
- No, to WORK with you!

I thought you said people who go out with me!

You're a very, erm... Not
secretive, but personal.

- Keep things to yourself.
- Quite...quite quiet, yes.

Do you think you're shy?

No.

No, I'm not really shy.
I'm just a bit quiet.

Do you think if you didn't
keep things to yourself

people wouldn't be
surprised at what you did next?

I've never really thought about that.
I'll let you know after the show.

- OK, thanks.
- Off to do a show. Come with me?

♪ I

♪ I will be king

♪ And you

♪ You will be my queen

♪ Though nothing

♪ Can keep us together

♪ We can beat them

♪ Forever and ever. ♪

I guess you merit being seen as
the ultimate artist of your era

if you do two things.

First of all, if you change
what you do at a mind-boggling rate.

If you're not only prodigious,

but the diversity of the work
you come up with is incredible,

and Bowie does that in the '70s.

And then the other thing is whether
you act as a lightning rod for your time.

♪ And the shame

♪ Fell on the other side

♪ Oh, we can beat them

♪ Forever and ever

♪ We could be heroes

♪ Just for one day. ♪

YEAR FOUR

YEAR FOUR
.1979
to 1980

"You have to accomodate your pasts
within your persona.

...it helps you reflect on
WHAT you are now."

David, looking back
over the '70s, into the '80s,

how do you look at music in the '70s?

Sort of like this.

♪ Ground Control to Major Tom

"The Kenny Everett Show"
Video
ITV

♪ Ground Control to Major Tom

♪ Take your protein pills
and put your helmet on

♪ Ground Control to Major Tom

♪ Commencing countdown, engines on

♪ Check ignition
and may God's love be with you. ♪

The Kenny Everett Video Show was
sort of cheerleader in England

for what we might call
the video generation,

what we might call the music
video generation, which, at that time,

and was so totally new to the Brits and
indeed unheard of to the Americans,

David Mallet
Director
"The Kenny Everett
Video Show"

But I think he immediately clocked it.

And the Space Oddity video

was really something that we
cobbled together quite quickly.

♪ You've really made the grade

♪ And the papers want to know
whose shirts you wear. ♪

I think Major Tom is the first time I'd
been able to create a character that

was very credible. I think, for
any writer, that's a high point.

He preceded all the others and I suppose
one has a special place for him.

♪..to Ground Control

♪ I'm stepping through the door. ♪

It is very interesting
that, at the end of the '70s,

he goes back to his first key character.

John Harris
Journlist & Author

Major Tom returns, in the sense of
an updated performance of Space Oddity.

But then he takes the character of Major Tom,

puts it in a new song and does
very interesting things with it.

So Major Tom becomes a much
more discomforting, sinister figure.

♪ Do you remember a guy that's been

♪ In such an early song

♪ I heard a rumour from Ground Control

♪ Oh, no, don't say it's true

Ashes To Ashes
from "Scary Monsters"

♪ Got a message from the action man

♪ I'm happy, hope you're happy too. ♪

Major Tom became a little,
sort of, bouncy hero.

I just wanted to sort of bring
him up-to-date a little bit

and put him in a Victorian nursery
rhyme kind of atmosphere.

Even though it's not Victorian,
it has that queasiness of those,

♪ Ring a ring of roses

♪ This is about the plague and we're
all going to drop down dead ♪

Kind of thing about it, which
is what I did with the piece.

♪ I'm happy, hope you're happy too

♪ I've loved and I've needed love

♪ Sordid details following. ♪

David rang me. "Could we
make a video for this new single?"

And we sat round a table and he
said, "I want to be a clown on the beach."

David Mallet
Director
"Ashes To Ashes" Video

I said, "Whoopee, I've just done something
on a beach and by accident

"I found this great effect of making the
sky black and everybody have a halo."

Then he wanted a digger.

♪ But I'm hoping to kick
but the planet is

♪ glowing

♪ Ashes to ashes, funk to funky

♪ We know Major Tom's a junkie. ♪

David allows me lots and lots of freedom
to do very much what I want,

the ways I want it edited.
I storyboard it for him,

show him exactly what frames I want done.

And then he puts
his input in as well.

And, especially on Ashes to Ashes,
the combination has been very successful.

The people round the bonfire
on the beach in Ashes to Ashes

were people from Blitz,
which is a London club,

which was the precursor of
the Modern Romantic movement.

And David managed to clock the
whole Modern Romantic movement

way before anybody else.

It showed him co-opting a
new phase of youth culture,

which he'd been the key figure
in inspiring in the first place.

So some might say he was
imitating his imitators.

Others were saying he was buying
them off and getting them onboard.

It's certainly one of the
better songs I've ever written

in terms of familiarity and
a song that really hooks in.

I felt very positive about
the future and I got down

to writing a really
comprehensive and well-crafted album.

David came into the studio with a lot of ideas

and I remember he had his demos on
a new contraption called a Walkman.

Tony Visconti
Co-Producer
"Scary Monsters"

Carlos Alomar flipped when
he saw it and heard it.

Fashion for the
Scary Monsters album,

Carlos Alomar
Guitar
"Scary Monsters"

David had this need to maybe even
reproduce a bit of the Fame feeling

so we wanted to keep
everything up so it would give him

a secure commercially viable
album that he could work with.

So Fashion started just with
this very funky beat.

Then it grew it into a monster.
People started over-dubbing stuff on it.

Fripp started over
dubbing this crazy guitar to it.

It was just evolving into a fantastic track.

I don't believe you'll find another
guitarist who would have played that to that.

Robert Fripp
Lead Guitar
"Scary Monsters"

It's very out.

From a point of view of

making a contribution to the
work of an artist with their producer,

the opportunity to do that and
be supported and encouraged in it...

..it's out, it's out.

♪ There's a brand-new dance
but I don't know its name

Fashion
from "Scary Monsters"

♪ That people from bad homes
do again and again. ♪

It was kind of a little
wary of the Lemming-like quality

that people were slaves to fashion.

♪ It's big and it's bland,
full of tension and fear. ♪

It was dictatorial authority
that the thing seems to grasp people.

It was a lightweight, throw-away
song, as important as fashion.

♪ Fashion, turn to the left

♪ Fashion, turn to the right

♪ Oooh, fashion!

♪ We are the goon squad and we're
coming to town, beep-beep. ♪

'We are the goon squad and we're
coming to town, beep-beep.'

Now, ain't that a line which
sticks in the mind?

♪ Listen to me,
don't listen to me

♪ Talk to me, don't talk to me

♪ Dance with me, don't dance with me

♪ No, beep-beep. ♪

And now Bowie in New York.

The play in which rock star David
Bowie has scored a remarkable triumph

on Broadway is called The Elephant Man.

Bowie's first appearance as
a straight actor met with

almost universal praise from
the New York critics and

there are long lines at the box office.

The baths have rid you of
your odour, have they not?

First chance I've had to bathe regular...

ly.

'I went to see it on Broadway
and I was totally knocked out by it.'

And then Jack Hofsiss,
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 cos I had
never been asked to do anything that sort of

supposedly legit.

This is your promised land,
is it not?

A roof, food, care, protection?

Right, Mr Treves.

'I noticed that, as David
created the voice for the character,

'there was a quality
there that was very unique.'

And I thought that was the core
of the uniqueness of his performance.

Jack Hofsiss
Director
"The Elephant Man"

You call it

home.

Never had a 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.

'There was no make-up at all.'

This...

is my home?

And that

demanded that the audience,

in conjunction with the actor,

imagined what this guy really looked like

and the way he moved.

I think the toughest part was
just working with my own body

and trying to create this
really distorted ugly figure

without using make up.

It came very naturally to me.

I presume that it was something to do with
the mime training that I had earlier.

I have to say that

you can tell when there's a real actor

coming back at you when you rehearse.

And in his case it was
a real actor there

and that's the highest praise I can give him.

I am reading Romeo and Juliet.

Ah, Juliet! What a love story.
I adore love stories.

I like love stories best, too.

If I had been Romeo, guess what?

What?

I would not have held the
mirror to her breath.

What?

'I hope that he really knew
how good he was in the part.'

And it was a

wonderful performance

that remained wonderful
throughout his entire run.

If I had been Romeo,

we would have got away.

YEAR FIVE

YEAR FIVE
.1982
to 1983

"My prime concern was to present
myself as just a performer.

To take away some of the confusion
_

To take away some of the confusion
about my identity."

I think I wanted to
re-evaluate what I wanted to do, musically.

I did a hell of a lot in a
short period and I needed

to get some space away from writing music

because it was becoming,
possibly, too much of an exercise

and the enthusiasm had gone. But
now it seems to be back again.

'EMI are celebrating.

'Against serious opposition
and for very serious money,

'they've just signed a real superstar.'

Ladies and gentleman,
Mr David Bowie.

'EMI don't give lavish receptions
like this very often.

'They won't say how much they paid for Bowie

but rumours 'range from £10 million to
£17 million for a five-year contract.'

Reportedly so, yes. I'm
overwhelmed that I've...

Is that anywhere near accurate?

It's absolutely
nowhere near accurate.

Can you give us a more accurate
figure?

Of course not.

Thank you very much and good afternoon,
ladies and gentlemen.

Bowie's attitude to himself and
his music seems to have changed

and with that comes a change of producer,

so out goes Tony Visconti,

John Harris
Journalist & Author

who one associates with the
art for art's sake period.

And in comes Nile Rodgers.

He's just had that huge run of
hits with Chic and Sister Sledge.

He's gone on to produce Diana Ross.

But it just doesn't seem like what
one would have expected from

the David Bowie of the '70s and
the first part of the '80s.

Seems somewhat uncharacteristic.

Nile Rodgers
Co-Producer
"Let's Dance"

When we met originally,

it was completely by chance,

and he was sitting alone,
back of this nightclub,

and I spotted him right away.

I walked in with Billy Idol
and Billy walked in and went,

"Bloody hell, that's David Bowie!"

And when he said "Bowie,"

cos he called him BOW-ie,
we called him BOH-ie,

and when he said Bowie
he like vomited, he barfed.

It was, like, hysterical. By that time,
I was already chatting him up.

Later, David said to me that he
wanted me to do what I did best.

So when I asked David what he thought
I did best, and he looked at me and says,

"You make hits."

I was charged with the responsibility
of doing such.

So, one morning in Switzerland,

he walks into my bedroom.

And he says something to the effect of,

"Nile, darling, I think I have a
song that feels like it's a hit".

And he comes in with
this 12-string guitar

that only has six strings on it.

When you see a 12-string
guitar, you're in folk city right away.

Something like that.

So when I started fooling around with it,

I made it very jazzy, very cool,

but Bowie is a jazzy cool
guy, unbeknownst to most people,

but I certainly knew that.

So...

It was cool. And...

It was ultra-cool. And...

It was pretty normal cool. And...

But you put in the delays
and all of a sudden you get

groove and funk and
rhythm all at the same time.

Let's Dance
from "Let's Dance"

♪ Let's dance. ♪

It has an intention of
being danceable but I think,

in terms of lyric, I've tried to keep it
simple as anything that I've ever written before.

I'm trying to write in a more
obvious and positive manner

than I've written in a long time.

♪ Let's dance

♪ Put on your red shoes
and dance the blues

♪ Let's dance

♪ To the song they're
playing on the radio

♪ Let's sway. ♪

Let's Dance is an interesting song,
because it's basically a funk groove, an old funk...

Carmine Rojas
Bass Guitar
"Let's Dance"

♪ Sway through the crowd
to an empty space. ♪

And Nile just knew how to put that into place

and then put the hook line behind it and

in the shortest amount of time,

you had the song.

Let's Dance is not a
traditional, what I would call, dance record,

but it's certainly a record that
does make you want to dance.

And I just thought to myself,

"Man, if I don't make a record
that makes people want to dance,

"and we call the song Let's Dance,

I'm going to have to trade in

"my black union card, cos
that just doesn't make sense."

♪ Tremble like a flower. ♪

This is something that can be played
in every mall in America.

It's a mainstream record by an
artist who already has a pedigree.

Mick Jagger tried to do his
own Let's Dance a couple of times.

Nelson George
Cultural Historian

Never worked.

McCartney dabbled. A lot of those guys
dabbled cos that was what was going on.

None of them made a record
as good as what Bowie made.

♪ Under the moonlight

♪ The serious moonlight. ♪

I've tried to produce something that's warmer

and more humanistic than
anything that I've done for a long time.

Less emphasis on the
nihilistic kind of statement

and the icy...

one-dimensional kind of thing that I've been
working with over the last few years.

So we had cut Let's Dance and at
the end of the day he gives me a copy of

China Girl and says that he thinks it's a hit.

So I wanted it to have a hook.

I thought, "Man, maybe I'll
key off the word China."

And I said to myself,

either David is going to hate
this so much that he'll fire me

or he'll get the comedic value of
writing a silly little poppy thing.

But I have to admit,
I was nervous as hell

and I played it for him

and David went,

"I love it."

China Girl
from "Let's Dance"

♪ Uh, oh, oh, oh, oh

♪ Little China girl

♪ Uh, oh, oh, oh, oh

♪ Little China girl

♪ I could escape this feeling

♪ With my China girl

♪ I feel a wreck
without my little China girl

♪ I hear her heart beating

♪ Loud as thunder

♪ Saw the stars crashing. ♪

This is the '80s.
It's MTV explosion time.

And he had been a video experimenter

but this record put him right
there in the middle of MTV-isation

and gave his career a whole other life.

♪ You know, I'll give you television

♪ I'll give you eyes of blue

♪ I'll give you men who want
to rule the world

♪ And when I get excited

♪ My little China girl. ♪

David went from being, let's
say, a high profile cult star,

to mainstream.

The look was more mainstream,
even though he had bleachy blond hair

and all the suits and everything.
It was a lot different than that

Earl Slick
Lead Guitar
"Serious Moonlight tour"

that Thin White Duke ominous
character, or Ziggy.

It was the most mainstream I'd ever seen him.

Out of the clear blue sky,
he was taking boxing lessons

Carlos Alomar
Musical Director & Guitar
"Serious Moonlight tour"

and, like, he was beefy, he was cleaner.

Don't take any notice of them.
They're all perfectly harmless.

'He was happier and jovial.'

On your new album, you're
determined to be yourself.

How do we know this isn't
another one of your masks?

I don't know. It's a bit like
the boy who cried wolf.

He was,

"Hey!" you, know. I found it a little odd,

in that it was a very happy David.

Do you see the music going
back to basics from here on?

Tonight, I think it might be very basic.

Ladies and gentleman,

the 1983 Serious Moonlight Tour!

David Bowie!

♪ Let's dance

♪ Put on your red shoes
and dance the blues

♪ Let's dance

♪ To the song they're
playing on the radio. ♪

I think we're out of characters
now and just into suits

and the suit will change
from tour to tour,

but the bloke inside it is
generally much the same.

♪ Sway through the crowd
to an empty space. ♪

Let's Dance hit so strongly
that everything changed.

We thought we were going to do a couple of indoor
theatres, indoor arenas through Europe.

Carmine Rojas
Bass Guitar
"Serious Moonlight" tour

It just quickly turned
around, which was a surprise.

And you're just riding
this big old train going,

"All right, everybody, hang on, here we go."

♪ Fame makes a man take things over

♪ Fame keeps him loose
and hard to swallow

♪ Fame puts him there,
things are hollow

♪ Fame. ♪

It was beyond belief to me.
Suddenly I wasn't a cult artist any more.

It really was a shocker

and we were scurrying around
because we'd already started a tour

and suddenly, like, we were
doing stadiums out of nowhere.

Gigs were being thrown out and
stadiums were being put in. And

And It was all by the shirt tails,
the whole thing.

Then suddenly, "Wow, I've just
had the biggest album I've ever..."

It was extremely odd.

♪ Is it any wonder,
I reject you first?

♪ Fame, fame, fame, fame

♪ Is it any wonder,
you are too cool to fool. ♪

The Serious Moonlight Tour was
him capturing the planet as a whole.

♪ Bully for you, chilly for me

♪ Got to get a rain check on pain. ♪

It was major at that point in time, in '83.

I mean... Everyone in China, in
Korea, and everywhere else in the world

knew who David Bowie was
because of that Serious Moonlight Tour,

and it's a peak level.

♪ Fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame,
fame, fame, fame, fame, fame...♪

♪ Fame, fame.♪

There's some moment when
the audience comes to you

as opposed to you going to them.

He made a record that was an
experimental record for him

that actually worked on a pop level

and that happens a lot for people.

---

Every artist, their core
group resents the fact that

the outsiders are in on our secret,

but that's the danger of a good record.

You never know who's going to listen to it.

♪ Fame, fame. ♪

I allowed myself to be pushed
into the commercial arena

because I'd never been there and
it was sort of, "Ooh, what's it like?"

But there it was and I

I jumped in with my future in my hands.

♪ Fame, fame, fame, fame, fame... ♪

♪ What's your name? ♪

Over the next 20 years, David
Bowie produced 11 more albums.

In 2007, he
disappeared from the pubblic arena.

People have this idea that he sort
of drifted off into the stratosphere

and, you know, rumour and
gossip starts, and all of that.

In a sense, he's regained

the mystery and distance

which was so powerful a part

of what made him so exceptional in the 1970s.

Suddenly, we don't know who David Bowie is

once again.

Even the current rather cat-and-mouse
game that Bowie

has been playing from his seclusion

is reminiscent of Warhol,
the master of games,

pretending to be marginal,

when, in fact, he is the great puppet
master controlling it all.

But then he comes back with this
record, The Next Day,

and he doesn't do interviews.

We're back to the showbiz adage
of leave them wanting more.

Very David Bowie thing to do.

Happy hump day, Phil.

The Stars (Are Out Tonight)
from "The Next Day" 2013

- I didn't get humped. You?
- Yeah.

CELEBRITY COUPLE'S
TWISTED ANTICS.

Some people, huh, they just get lost.

Well, it's more exciting than
anything we've got around here.

I wouldn't say that.

We have a nice life.

We have a nice life.

"I never expected all this to happen.

"I never expected all this to happen.
In the sixties I was told...

I was too avan-garde to be successful."

♪ Pushing through the market square

♪ So many mothers sighing

♪ News had just come over

♪ We had five years left to cry in

♪ News guy wept when he told us

♪ Earth was really dying

♪ Cried so much that his face was wet

♪ Knew he wasn't lying. ♪

Synch: Vegemite The V.I.R.C.

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