All language subtitles for BBC.David.Bowie.Five.Years.1080p.x265.AAC

Where are we going?
We're going down this way.

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 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.

MUSIC: "Fashion"
by David Bowie

# 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. #

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

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

# Let's dance

# 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.

# There's a starman

# Waiting in the sky

# 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.

MUSIC: "Oh You Pretty Things"
by David Bowie

# Let me make it plain

# Gotta make way
For the Homo Superior. #

'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. #

You ready?

Yeah.

MUSIC: "Andy Warhol"
by David Bowie

# Like to take a cement fix

# Be a standing cinema

# Dress my friends up just for show

# See them as they really are. #

Warhol, scene one, take one.

# 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.

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

# 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

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

# 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

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

And he played me these songs
one after the other.

# 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...

HE PLAYS "Life On Mars?"

# 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...

HE PLAYS SEQUENCE

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

HE PLAYS SEQUENCE

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...

HE PLAYS SEQUENCE

# 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...

HE PLAYS CHORD

But he doesn't.

HE PLAYS SEQUENCE

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

HE PLAYS SEQUENCE

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,

because they do resonate with
people. Unlike the manufactured

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

# 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?

# 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

# I'm a mama-papa coming for you. #

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

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,

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

# 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 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 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 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 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.

# 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."

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.

CROWD CHANT: Bowie! 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.

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."

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 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

# Keeping it in the back

# Taking it all the right way

# Never no turning back

# 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

# 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"?

Mm-hmm. 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.

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.

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,"

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...

PLAYS "FAME" RIFF

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...

PLAYS "FAME" RIFF

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.

PLAYS "FAME" RIFF

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 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.

MUSIC: "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.

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

And suddenly this programme
came on and by chance I saw it.

There's a fly floating around
in my milk.

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."

VOICEOVER: 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.

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

Yes, I think that he
calculated all of that.

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

A cosmic mystery.
A spectacular fantasy.

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,

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.'

That was the colour of his hair.
They didn't change his hair.

He just said, "Be yourself!"

HE LAUGHS

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.

SHE SCREAMS

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. Ah.

The song is called Golden Tears.
Years.

Mr David Bowie, we'll come back
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

# 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

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.

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 being people's views
of being out there

doesn't necessarily
correlate with the fact

that we were incapable
of making a record.

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...

GUITAR PRODUCES FEEDBACK

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

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

It was supposed to be deadly,
and just brutal.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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,

"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.

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?"

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, 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. #

Then Dennis and George kicked
in with theirs so it was just...

# Baby

# 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.

I cannot think of anybody comparable

in terms of being
sort of that famous.

Dylan, The Stones, The Beatles.

Elvis. People of that stature.

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.
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.

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.

"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

# 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.

MUSIC: "Heroes" by David Bowie

I always knew that was going to be
a great song

from the very first moment
those guys started playing it.

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

And then I think the really crucial
moment in it came

actually with Fripp.

# 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

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

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

"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

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.

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? Mm.

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?

AUDIENCE CHEERS

MUSIC: "Heroes" by David Bowie

# 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. #

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

# 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,

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

that 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.

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

# 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?"

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

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.

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.

Carlos Alomar flipped
when he saw it and heard it.

Fashion for the
Scary Monsters album,

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.

PLAYS RIFF

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.

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

# 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.'

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

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.

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.

APPLAUSE

'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,

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.

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,

he 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,

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.

He says something to the effect of,

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

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.

It was ultra-cool.

It was pretty normal cool.

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. #

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...

# 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.

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.

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."

PLAYS 'CHINA GIRL' RIFF

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."

# 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.

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 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

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.

ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentleman,

the 1983 Serious Moonlight Tour!

David Bowie!

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

MUSIC: "Let's Dance" by 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.

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.

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.

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... #

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 jumped
in with my future in my hands.

# Fame, fame, fame, fame, fame... #

# What's your name? #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

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.

I didn't get humped. You? Yeah.

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.

# 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. #

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