Transcription
This is for pop racism, yeah. My name is David Bay, and a very warm welcome to Popper Eight. Berenson, Brazuca needle on thought of an exclusive interview, MIT's David Bowie, you know. And I got the right sort of feeling on the "Low" album, and we thought we continue in the same place as this is part of a sort of a trilogy around what's what's special about that Hamza at the walls through your is this sound?
Well, it's about 30 or 40 meters away from the war. Mm-hmm. And there's a turret on top, and so you record looking at the turret, and it provides it a friction or recording kind of friction that I need. It's not a it's not a comfortable place to record. No, I want to say something, so that's the reason it's like makes me feel like they would make you feel cold. And so mmm, no, not cold. You feel overprotective. You feel very they're on the right side of the wall; it still comes in. You feel it coming in. Mm-hmm. And and so that you developed very strong impetus empathize with the people you're working with, sort of out of protection, a security blanket thing.
Berlin still have a little off the atmosphere that I associate you with, like the decadence Louis. No, it's nothing like that. No, it's a very serious city. Mm-hmm. How did you serious two years ago you said you were gonna stop with all this rock business? Yeah, now where are we today? And I think I'm certainly no longer and part of the rock trappings. I mind the way that I live is not very rock and roll, so I've divorced myself from that physical side of it. The nearest I get to it is in is in records.
You're not performing anymore? Yes. I'm I'm gonna do it to next year. I want to do it too very much. I wanted to low and hear us right. You hear yourself? No, I'm well I'm D missed, but you yeah, we're happy, but that do a lot of people you are here all right. Tell adesh that shouldn't be the case at all, is it?
Is it strange to be in that you don't want to be dead, but people force you into them? No, I don't find that it's all because the the areas that I live in, nobody knows me anywhere, right? So it's not a problem of Manchukuo bar. We even added the Vaticanus kind of strong heroes. The idea of the song, it's a story attached to it. Watching the wall every day about 12 o'clock midday to about 1 o'clock, obviously during the lunch break, a boy and a girl would meet under the wall, under the guard, under the gun on a park bench, little bench which is by the wall, and they would meet there a their sandwiches and kiss and cuddle them, whatever they were carrying on some kind of affair. And this went on through the whole recording now every day, and it struck me as ironic that of all the hundreds of places they could have met in West West Berlin, they met under the wall. So I presume that they were felt a little guilty about their affair. I'm a subconsciously drawn there through, and I was sort of having this illicit thing going, and I guess that they gave their affair credibility by regarding it as an act of heroism. And so the songs have evolved out of that.
[Music] Sorry, what you saying? I was I was I was saying all right, mom, right there we are. I was saying as soon as you're out of that protected area, you're a hero. I mean the kids waiting on come in upset studio, come in without doing anything involved, just an interview. I thought you'd never stop blowing that horn. Another glass of my that's what got your car keys. Another glass of milk. Okay, now what I wanted to say as soon as you're out side off to protect ya, I've got the question you're a hero if you want to be or not, right? Well, there's only a couple of places that that sort of gets to be superficially a problem, and that's sort of Los Angeles and you not so much New York and London is quite difficult to sort of move around and during that during the day to him that power that that gifts you said it a frightening to you? I don't know. Is this saying I'm not I haven't been in that environment for about a year and a half, two years. Mm-hmm. So it doesn't affect me. I live in a very different way. I mean I I move this year. I've I've moved on from Japan through Hong Kong, Thailand back to Germany, up to Switzerland. You live in one specific place, you know, by nowhere, right? Okay.
Anything special to say about the number heroes for the rest? I mean, is that a hero for a day? It's a very pretty love song. Okay, that's interviewer number one. Yeah, that said the heroes is a pretty love song. Yeah, it says we could be a hero for one day. Yeah, as a hero's one. Yeah. Do you want people to feel like that just for one day? You said you're not you don't feel yourself a hero. Yeah, people make you hero. No, they don't for them. No, they don't. What don't make me a hero? I know I'm not a hero. What is the power? I'm still going on teaching, doing it doing not making records selling. Yeah, that's work, just work. Yeah, work in a way of life for me. Mm-hmm. An interview one time ago you said I could be a Hitler in England and yet make this country's very big if I want to. Hmm. I don't think I said I would make this country very big. Let me see what you say could have been a hero that could make this country the great country. I don't know where you read that, but that's not true. Oh, I'm sorry to tell, but that's not true. It's a translation. I I mean we get all the press information, but that's all we know on yeah, right. I have to feeling you change just a hard-working. There's no not much more of the image building around and at the moment none at all. No, I'm so we're talking to David Bowie instead of talking to people. Yes, as well as you characters young.
Well, when I had the characters, can I take this on? Oh, no, I had to lose that them doesn't matter the first row, I'll just take off one half, right? I was a character when I perform the other realms, right? A land insane Ziggy Stardust stuff like that, and I carried the character through into interviews, into newspapers, on stage, off stage, whenever there was media around. I had to keep those characters concrete because it was important because it the fabric of my work is using my body, my personality as well as my songs and sage performance, and the idea was to rather like a canvas, but now I've finished with those particular situations, the hardware of science fiction in the beginning, the Rockets and the moon and the aliens whatever, then there was the period where I was relating to technology upon society as in the Diamond Dogs through to just before the station the station period, ending up with a plastic sole character, third young Americans, then the young and then the station. Station was a plea to get back to Europe. I mean, I've had it in America. I was going crazy, so I came back to Europe and decided that I needed to discover for myself a new form of musical language before I continued writing anymore. So the last two albums, "Low" and "Heroes," aren't so much situations but a process of discovery, searching for a new language, artistic language so that I can go further, and that's what you know and myself and frothing up to Munich. Okay, let's look at the ends of the role you can take up here. What can take it up completely? America a mess? No, it's impossible to care on mess, but the contact I have with a few that get to see me is sound very good, and I take them as people as individuals. One lyric, although nobody people all the somebody people. Yes, I need them. Yes, yes. What that character definitely did because the world was exploding. There was good character. Listen, that was that was definitely a current that was the key starters, right? And he was the archetype needing people Rockstar. Right now, come back to death the new. Well, the music to me sounds really a little bit out, that's the right English word, alienated. So I'm very surprised what from from from okay, from my world, from your world. Yeah, alright. You can you understand it or instead? Yes, I can because it's um because it's new language. Would you like to know the process of writing or did that may help ya help understand aside to especially aside one slightly different form of writing, but Brian and I would that Brian ena would attempt to write in as many different processes and fashions as we could each the aim to be to discover this so-called language, artistic language. And one of the processes that we used was that Brian would think of a statement that he wanted to make musically, and I would think of a statement that I wanted to make musically, and neither of us would tell each other what our respective statements were, and we would come up with a one foundational musical thing that would be the foundation and maybe a chord sequence or that a number of bars that would be in monk one key and a number of bars and another keen that was our only foundation. Then we both go away and write about our individual statements, come back and both put down our recordings of what we were doing and then listen back to it. Hahaha. And it was phenomenal that we got a third piece of information out of in a piece of information that neither Brian and I would knew was gonna happen. And so the album for us all the time it when we finish it it's a surprise, very sometimes very pleasant, sometimes you're living together and you just know oh, and then we've them will work on those on those particular pieces of information, those two will sell, but we very rarely tell each other what we're doing.
How long you think you can go on writing in this this way? Well, that's just one way. I mean that that was what I want that's what I mean the processes changed earth on just about every track. That's why it's such a it's such a great variety of musical information on the on the album because the process was rarely the same for any any two trans. In these days of young kids buying or being into punk and new wife and all that started they buy your album and those kind of music these are mounts it is isn't it? Yeah, oh yes, do everything. I'm delighted, but I'm very presumptuous because I'm also very biased. I consider that what we're doing is also part of a new wave or a new old lade. You think the whole the sale of the album for instance has still a lot to do is to hype around you? I've not seen any hype. No, no. If it comes, it comes from you guys. I'm very happy. Thanks very much. Punk appeal to you? I haven't heard Punk. I've seen a lot of punk. I've not heard the rock yet. I I see a category. I see it's there's the abstract art of the mid-sixties that the yes, what is it that's better he's in the other room. Ah, the the conceptual art of the the sixties that was something very kin to punk rock as a movement I think in his match that it wasn't experienced, it was theorized about, and I find that at the moment with punk, I think that the category is being created by the media as always, and it's still a vacuum. There's nothing filling it yet apart from than two or three bands maybe as far as the band's concerned, the ones that I've seen I've I think there's an awful lot of enthusiasm among which I think is terrific, but it's they're still sort of adopting opposed and trying to think of something dangerous to say, but they haven't actually got anything yet. Somebody will, I suppose, you will discover any talent already. Devo? Devo are you a man? Yeah, Devo? Devo an American band know about it, and I haven't been recorded yet. They're extraordinary to work with. Yes, I'm very excited about. Now we get to Iggy Pop. Some people say it's pre-punk or it's his it has a new wave feeling already in the beginning of the 70s when he was with the stuccis. I've got a surprise you. Come on, Jim, come on. Yeah, Kong is he's giving himself completely when he's he's performing. Yes, yes. He's scratching, doing everything very physically extravagant in this perform. Do you think it's it's good for an artist to start my own place to have an opinion on that on what Jim does? I admired him very much. I'd like what I've always liked what he did, and I wanted to be involved because I didn't think that people took him firstly seriously, and I thought all or didn't take him at all, and which I've always had a penchant for the so-called musical underdog. And the hardest part of that working with Jim was getting other people in the music industry to take what he was doing seriously, and that was really hard, and now of course it's it's happening. Yeah. Well, it's not my place to judge his performance because it's his performance and his music that attracted me to in the first place. Have you got a name that big as David Bowie's and it very easy for two to be a very big push on someone? I think that's I think that's a pretty naive sort of associate thing. If it wasn't good, it wouldn't sell. I mean, if Jimmy there's no good onstage, people wouldn't go, and they wouldn't get excited. If they did go, they wouldn't go again. They've been and they're going again because he is very exciting on stage and musically. I mean, as it is with all product like that in in the that's marketed through the media it and it's the first one ourselves, it doesn't necessarily mean that anything else is going to sell, but that they buy Jimmy's records because his music is gladdie good.
You think you're powerful? You your power crazy aren't you? Well, Lord, no, I know no, I don't I don't see what I do in terms of power. I think I'm a fairly good social observer, and I think that I encapsulate errors every maybe every year or so. I try and stamp that down somewhere what that year was is all about rather than what it was all about or what it's going to be. It's very much that trying to capture the quintessence of that year there's and so it's an active performance all the way through the year because one's dealing with 365 days, so I I may seem very active indeed I am. You're talking about a trilogy of Records. Yes, yeah. Is there still want to come any larger series? Yes, yeah. They were working on it already. Yes. Oh, so I'm going to America in a few weeks, and I'm working on Robert Fripp's album. He's asked me to do some work with him in New York. You know, Sookie, stop it, sister. All right. Okay. Talk a little bit about show business in general. Will tell me about it, right? Tell us about it. I don't know. You told me now if you mean if you have to feel that you have been left in the last few years. I mean, being being lived by other people by record companies by managers by that's the extraordinary question. Yes, it's very appropriate at the moment. Dare I say anything about that? Sure, about the chap in yes, I can. I said wait till say because we have gone, he's gonna say something that we want, and then it's oh, I'm sorry, good. Yeah, I am sort of lived over there a bit in that you know some there's some crazies over there that your whole career. I know what you mean. Am I being soaked? No, um, from the last two years, I mean, I've sorted my own life out very much, and I don't I don't I'm not involved in in show business at all in any way, shape or form. My life the life that I leave this incredibly conservative adventurous because I travel an awful lot. I don't live anywhere. I don't have any houses anywhere who never have never will have. This has got almost nothing to do with your real life, right? I mean, the image we have for the magazines and um it's bends which image you're talking about. Oh, I've seen that so many um 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 me, so that's very different from well, I'm not a rock star, you see. You've just said it. I'm not in Lucknow Garret. That's nice. I'm very definitely thirsty. All right, David, maybe this is the past for you, but I'd like to talk about your experiences in show business and mouth. Well, there was this girl Karen. What experiences really? Concerts for 10,000 people, record companies running behind you, yeah, hype hahaha. You're determined to put me in the scenario. You've been in a banana Queen. Uh, yeah, I'm not sure what you think in there, right? Um, yes, I have been in there, and I tell you it's sticky stuff. It's so it's like that trenches. It's like going out on some kind of maneuver actually the whole process. It's this sort of in a rock thing on a tour. There's sergeant majors and then there's corporals and verses, right? Pack move on, and you set up tents that are called Hilton's and you know Holiday Inns. Oh, I hate the process. I think it's loathesome. It was originally meant to be informal rock and roll, and then it turns into a big company kind of thing. Enormous arena. Yeah, yeah. I can do that. Mm-hmm. Same goes for the records ministry is that um I don't want my dealings with all those people on very personal basis. No, I mean I don't have any management, but that's know anything. Yes, in the past. I mean, I never knew what was going on. I was oblivious to everything that was happening because those responsibilities David have been taken away from you David so that you have the freedom to write David. Mm-hmm. Right, and I wrote and they made money, and now there's no management. Now there's no management so keeps the books um me and somebody else. Right? Interviews. Hmm, you do lot of them. No, this is the first time I've done this kind of interview for an album, and must be quite honest the reason I'm doing it is because I want to give the album every chance that it can get because it is um oh, didn't know he was going to go gold in three days. I think very honest. I mean, that's why I'm here, right? To do that. I didn't expect it to be received so enthusiastically. I'm flabbergasted. It's now our new cities and new journalists and new questions and people train young people a little bit not new questions on the most question for me. Well, no, I tend to I sort of just reacted by I'm trying to blow the interview, and that often produces some further questions, but I was just wondering but you're obviously do this only once a year or something. I was just yes, yes. Again, defuse camera. Well, it's the idea of becoming a machine. I mean, if one is asked during the course of a day the same question about ten times if it's ten different people at once, very tempted to make up new answers because I'm because I get very bored very quickly. Then I feel a bit like a parrot and by about the fifth interview writing and something very sort of stare Ireland sort of rather moldy by about the tenth interview, and the people hit you with remarks you've made ten years ago. Oh, yeah, yes. But what I did a dreadful thing in the past which I stopped doing now. I would reach something that I never said in the paper and adopt that point of view since a long reaction it would get and see if we get a third reaction from that. So I had a lot of fun so delving into other people's ideas of what I am and adopting their idea for a bit. Sometimes it went a little bit out of hand. No, but of course, but I work on dangerous ground. I mean, that's why I'm I when people start talking about yes and yes, I know it's some atrocious things happen. Yeah, well, it's all nonsense. Let's say that and I'm totally a totally I believe a political fair, right? Absolutely. I I have no it's it's not my position for the kind of artist that I am, which is a person who tries to capture the rate of change. Mm-hmm. For me to adopt any given policy or stance oolitic Lee because my job is as an observer of what is happening, and any statements that I made in that direction were a general reaction and a theatrical observational, but I could see happening in England, right? And it hasn't happened yet, but no, it hasn't. Zenko, right? But what do you do? You really cool it. Mm-hmm. Museum is the it's the first thing you do, right? I was amazed that nobody noticed that he was happening, and it seems to have come to much more attention since I said that that's what I was gonna say. I mean, you we were talking about power, and you say we were so hung up on the no, no, no, that's not the media has the power Ryan. I have maybe the Podesta medial to you and I have the observation. I'll guess whether it's their combination and their entanglement of women to what is what is and what isn't and what they would have be that provides the people with some fairly distorted informational viewpoint. I just come back to this for one second. Yeah, I mean, you can deny it or not, but the thing that a hundred thousand kids are treating you as a hero, reading every line you lying you say I don't think so. You see, I think that's the generalization a kid doesn't go out and live his life around me. He goes out he might buy my when they come out. He may adopt my hairstyle, but it does very much end there, you know. I mean, the though I've never seen with any rock idol kids that have been so totally intoxicated by the thing that they live out that that thing is there. There miss listen. I think you're carrying it a bit far. It doesn't really work like that, and don't tell people it works like that because it's not that way. I want to hear that from you. We just heard it too to see people direct their life towards what you do or something. I don't think I don't think that's at all the case. I think they the average rock listener gleans information from records and stage performances of an ethereal nature. Bangkok can't put ones finger on what that information is, but that's why people go to rock concerts, and I enjoy the process of of giving and receiving information, which is what I find out now one of the things you've talked about a lot is that people need a leader, right? And and that goes for rock and roll also people definitely searching for musicians that they can the best leader that can possibly have is the one that looks back at them from the mirror, right? So they have to understand that mirror very well, and then that person can leave. You think you can do that by relative fading the whole thing for instance? I don't I don't know. I don't know. Look, Mike, I'm not a psychiatrist. That's a good ending. Ya know he said people are not directing after you, but I mean the day but yeah, do you think you have any info might little have a little influence on their thinking because they listen to your records got to went to your shows and the influence is is only acceptable if it's taken by that person on his own initiative. No, not influencing in the way that I believed that you mean. I've correct me if I'm wrong, but do you mean a insidious influence are kind of a creeping influence that makes people unconsciously do things just because it cause I listen to be saying that is that what you mean? Yes, no, no, because there is far too many images for people to be that directly influenced by one given thing, and that's what I'm trying to do with the new music is find a new language which doesn't isn't that doesn't have that kind of image influence. You think people will understand that language that you are? It doesn't why I think they do. Yes, because I think people is in the especially in the city context think in fragments opposed to a country person who thinks far more and Alinea for me all this is very old hat sort of beatnik philosophy, but it's ER they think far more in linear form sentences entire Center Pharma whilst think I see a cow in the field. It gives me milk, no milk.
Crazy! It gives me milk. But a city person will see a milk advert in the street and be thinking, "You know what's gonna... and what are we gonna have for dinner?" Boy, getting knocked down by a bus, crapped against a ball, that kind of so he's thinking in terms of maybe a thousand different images at any given time. He doesn't know he's thinking any differently to the way his forefathers thought. And the language that Brian and I are sort of producing is a language that can relate to that way of thinking. A film isn't it strange that in a few years' time you will be performing for audiences that are about the age of your own?
Kip, for instance. I is that what I'm going to be doing?
Goodloe: That's what you're gonna be doing. I mean, kids that gave you the book yesterday who couldn't go to your show, about seven or eight years old. That was extraordinary as well. I've never seen anybody that young before, um, come to a show. All but I mean seven or eight years, it was strange.
Will you ever play in Las Vegas, Lorne?
Oh, Las Vegas? No, I can't see that coming, huh. That's not on the immediate horizon by any means.
Okay, thank you. Thank you. And thank you. [Music] I've never even been there, actually. It's the one city, dimeric though, I've never been there. Bye-bye. Analyst, baby. Vin's was going there tonight. Don't go. Well, it must be an interesting phenomena, sister station. Oh yeah, I would, for that reason.