Interviews

Andrew Interviews Bowie

From UNDERNEATH THE ROCK - issue 14 / winter 95

THE LADS INSANE

Tempted by another cheap holiday in nearby Las Vegas, ANDREW ELDRITCH
recently accepted a commission to interview DAVID BOWIE for Rolling Stone.
The following article appears in the German edition of that magazine, where
it was badly translated and treacherously rewritten by the usual bashed
suspects. In a UTR exclusive, we bring you Mr. Eldritch's original
version......

Everybody has an agenda here; it's so tiring." Except that Mr. Bowie looks
as fresh as ever. He's one of those people who remind you of the story of
Dorian Gray: somewhere there must be a painting of him looking fucking
terrible. If the painting still has David Bowie's original teeth, then I
probably resemble the painting more than he does. But his record company
won't let us be photographed together, so there is only way to prove the
distinction: tell him his record's no good.
David Bowie is in Los Angeles to promote the new Bowie/Eno album, 'Outside'
An exciting prospect for those of us who are old enough and smart enough to
remember previous Bowie/Eno albums.
As a very backhanded compliment, I suggest that since 'Low' or 'Heroes',
Bowie has been deliberately waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.
Bowie says "I don't know about that", and laughs a little uncomfortably at
the idea that it might have something to do with the burden of
responsibility.
"At one time I was floating alongside of myself. There was a period in the
eighties that life felt so redundant. Brian Eno and l went through
incredibly similar things. We both came to loggerheads with music. We both
felt that we were out of sync with the eighties that we were doing our worst
work, and we both opted out to some degree. Between '86 and '88 virtually
did nothing of any consequence at all in the studio. I was painting more
than ever, and sculpting. Brian went off to Malaysia for a long time, to
work out what he really wanted to do in life, and he didn't do very much
music. Then towards the end of the eighties he buddied up with U2 and I met
Reeves Gabrels. Both of us found that we were suddenly excited about music
again. It was almost like treading water through the eighties. For both of
us it seemed so inconsequential. I've got a theory about this, from looking
at my son and his friends and what I know of youth generally. It seemed to
me that the numbness which was the face of youth in the eighties, that kind
of opting-out which is between indifference and lethargy... was in fact a
generation learning to adapt to a new way of life, a new kind of society,
coming to terms with chaos really being the structure of reality. It was
almost like a nurturing period for youth, and I think that it was very
necessary. If you'd asked somebody in the eighties if there was any decent
music being produced, that would be around in ten years' time, I think
they'd have said, "You've got to be kidding" It was just disposable, it was
Paula Abdul." David Bowie had hits, along with Paula Abdul.
"Don't remind me. But I think in the nineties, there's a list of albums,
musicians and bands that people consider would be around in ten years' time.
Everything from Nirvana to Pearl Jam."
I'm reminded of the waitress who likes country AND western, but I decide
not to mention it.
"Kids don't see those things as disappearing. They see those things as real
milestones in their lives. They're actually getting involved in the depth of
music again." Or are they just buying some ersatz hippy bullshit? No,
explains Mr. Bowie patiently, Woodstock 2 was very important to the people
who attended. He then attributes Nine Inch Nails' deep success to the fact
that they were suitably muddy I point out that some people would say they
looked like an ephemeral eighties band of the most despicable kind.
"Those people would be wrong," he laughs. "I think it was the emergent
voice of a new direction."
Now, I hold myself personally responsible for Nine Inch Nails (among
others), but not for the fact that they look like Alien Sex Fiend. This
makes Mr. Bowie laugh some more. "I liked Alien Sex Fiend. It's a fucking
great T-shirt."
So he likes the clothes, basically?
"No, it was the attitude... and the tight trousers."
For whatever reason, Bowie has decided that Nine Inch Nails are a nineties
icon, and is about to collaborate with them. In a similar vein, he is keen
to stress his connection with Damien Hirst. This is much more to the point,
since the story behind 'Outside' is set in a world of art-terrorism, where
there is no longer a dividing line between shock-art, mutilation and crime.
The sleevenotes are brilliant. Unfortunately, I can't see any of it
reflected in the actual record. And because I don't think the concept is
conveyed at all without the accompanying background material, I had to ask
whether 'Outside' was really an album, or just an unfinished CD Rom. Turns
out it's an album.
"I don't think it will be a CD Rom, because Brian and I have got very
different ideas about what should be done with CD Roms." Bowie does likes
Myst, though. Did he ever play the old text-adventure computer games, which
are like Myst except that you have to imagine your own pictures?
"No. Brian used to." We agree that providing the listener with pictures is
a problem. "That's precisely the area that Brian and I have been working
on." He doesn't say what they've decided to do about it. For the time being,
we will have the sleevenotes instead. "I'm including the sleevenotes because
it's an identity thing. I'm treating the narrative and its characters as the
subject-matter, but not the content. The content is the texture, the subtext
and the atmosphere of this particular year, 1995. We're trying to accomplish
a series of albums that would record musically what the last Eve years of
the millenium feels like. The characters are a device to lead you through it
all."
I tell him that he might have made the album's background concept clearer
if the characters appeared in the music, and although he "would have been
quite keen to hybridize character and real life", Bowie insists that "we
were trying to leave as much space as possible for a multiplicity of
interpretation" Given his respect for the shamanistic, doesn't he know that
his audience misses the kind of impact which he could make if he
incorporated one or more of the characters, as he used to do in the old
days?
"I'm not sure it's an impact that I want to have."
Doesn't it bother him that certain other people have usurped his role(s),
some of them using almost exactly the same characters, which he used to
incorporate?
"I think for my own sanity and my own artistic life I have to be almost
indifferent to those kinds of situations. I decided emphatically to remain a
pluralistic creature and that all interpretation lies with the audience and
culture, not with me. I'm merely the author. I'm quite content with that
situation, playing author"
Yeah?
"Yeah."

Like many right-thinking people, I was blown away by seeing "Starman" on
English pop TV. If I was David Bowie, I would be even more annoyed to see
Suede repeating the character.
"It can't be the same character"
It is.
"No it's not. Once you play something in another context it cannot be the
same creature, by virtue of the fact that it's being recontextualised."
Even to people who are seeing it for the first time?
"No, because they bring different luggage to it. Their interpretation is
incredibly different to the way that the parallel generation were
interpreting it in 1973, because they are not informed by the same sets of
circumstances. They're informed by an entirely different world, where
contradictions - the idea of putting contradictions together - is virtually
the network that we exist in. There are so many contradictions now, that
contradiction almost simply ceases to exist anymore."
Seems to me that contradiction is alive and well, and easy enough to spot
when somebody is trying on a little situationism where it's convenient.
Bowie continues.
"In 1973 we still had an idea of absolutes, that there were real rules
through everything: through every science, through every religion, politics,
art. Picasso was the god of the twentieth century. Everything was a known
quantity. All Starman was in '73 was a shock. Presented now, it's merely
another colour in this incredibly tangled network of information that we
exist in now. And it's read only at surface value. It's very rarely read
with any depth."
Aren't these the same kids who are "getting involved in the depth of music
again"? Would he like to point out what they're missing?
"No. It's merely my interpretation, which is really invalid in the long
term. It comes from an archaic stance. It's not applicable to them."
Assuming that Bowie aspires to depth (and hopefully more of it than Nirvana
and Pearl Jam), then he's got two big problems: album and audience.
Why did he decide to make this album by putting half a dozen musicians in a
room and then improvising for fifty hours before Brian Eno chose which
sections to work on?
"It's about trust... Brian is one of the few people who can tell me what
the fuck it is I'm doing. Often he'll contextualise things for me when I
don't actually see what the framework is. He's an excellent framemaker...
Brian used a wonderful allegory, which I keep coming back to. He said "Art
is one of the few aspects of life where you can take the plane and crash it
and walk away from it. Never be scared of going too far, because it's a safe
zone." On the albums before 'Low', things like 'Diamond Dogs' and 'Station
To Station', I would get involved in areas that weren't coherent, and there
was an atmosphere which made up for the lack of coherence. But I would only
go so far.''
Doesn't David Bowie feel the urge to sit down and write some David Bowie
songs before going into the studio?
"Brian would never put himself in that situation. He has no time to do
that, he couldn't be bothered. That's why it's so essentially freeing to
work with him."
Is music the right medium to express that kind of incoherence?
Bowie pauses for a long time. "It is our chosen one."
While claiming to be less interested in the end result than in the process
of making the record, he says "We're at our best when we may be a little bit
out of our depth... in an area where you're out of control."
I tell him that when I think of Reeves Gabrels and improvisation, the term
'jazzwank' springs to mind. On this album there are five musicians out of
control. Is that such a good idea?
"It's good when you've got Brian there. He'll just scan it all and say
"That bit is an essentially interesting piece of work. The rest is
superfluous rubbish." He's very good at that."
I remain unconvinced. Besides, will anybody understand the record?
"They'll certainly pick up on the atmosphere of it all, and realist that
what I'm doing is extrapolating the idea of what can become of ritual art,
in a far-out situation which isn't so far-out any more. There won't be a
broad understanding, no. I don't believe it could happen, and I don't think
it's actually very necessary. Art being an event on TV is precisely my
understanding of how culture now works. There is virtually no difference
between OJ's trial and Christo's building. They're both taken totally at
surface value... But any more than that is not required in this age. you
scan through it all and make a new network of understanding for yourself.
There is no time to analyst anything. Events are tumbling out of our screens
and from newspapers, gossip and rumour at such a vast proliferation that one
almost questions the idea of having a history at all. If history changes so
radically and is being revised so continually, if historians barely have
time to revise it (and are misunderstanding and questioning it anyway), we
as laymen certainly don't have time to plough through their books and get a
further understanding of what history is. We don't therefore have time to
acknowledge history per se. History is fast disappearing, and if that's
true, then so is the future. You cannot have one thing without the other.
We're creating, possibly, this almost synthetic Buddhistic situation of
nowness, we're cramping ourselves into this bottleneck of now, in which all
happens only at the moment, which is quite an interesting prospect, because
it's virtually a parallel to Buddhistic thought, but we've contrived to
create it by all these mutant and deviant devices of mass-communication.
It's our kharma of the tv."

Well put. A good idea for the next album. But surely that means that this
album can't make any impact, because it's never going to come storming out
of the TV' screen?
"I had experience of a similar situation, with 'Low' it influenced certain
people in interesting ways, and so it insidiously worked itself into the
culture. I think that's what one counts on, if you're not going to make the
Michael Jackson kind of explosion. I hate to keep using this analogy, but
it's the one I know best: if you have white paint, you only need to add a
few drops of red to it. If you stir enough, it's going to give it an
iridescent kind of pink quality eventually. You know? And that's kind of
what one presumes will happen with one's work."
I ask if this album going to push the envelope the way 'Low' did. There is
a very long pause. Does Bowie at least hope it would?
"No, I don't think so."
Then why put it out?
"I tell you what, I'm fairly strong in my resolve to enjoy the quality of
my life and therefore the process of what I do. That has really become a
priority in day-to-day life, because of certain personal aspects of my life,
you know? This is a personal agenda, and because of that I don't have
expectations for the album or its impact. I just want to continually feel
that what I'm endeavouring to do is put out the best possible artistic
output that I have available to me. That's really, really very central to
me, as I get older, and I have less and less days to live, and it becomes
increasingly obvious to me that I should not fuck about and do crappy
things."
So why doesn't he do the art-crime instead of making an album about it?
"Well, it had occurred to me to knock off a couple of minotaurs. In fact
Damien and I have this project that we intend doing. I told him the minotaur
myth, and he really loved it. He's got a fan who's left him his body as long
as it's included in an art work, and so l said maybe we could take his body
- when this fella pops off, so to speak - and that of a bull, and make a
minotaur. I could buy a tiny bit of rock in the Outer Hebrides or somewhere,
and we could Christo it: build a small labyrinth on the island and put the
minotaur in the middle. The entire island would then become the artwork."
According to much of the art philosophy, which we've been discussing for an
hour, it's already done, because the idea has now been communicated.
'Virtually, yes. Absolutely right. To be a true conceptualist one would
just have to do the drawings. We should take it to Brian and he could type
it up and articulate it and - "
- and sell it to people in Dusseldorf?
"Absolutely."