"Where are we going?" "We're going down this way." "Got a drink?" "Got a drink?" "Yes." "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." "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Makes a man take things over ♪" "I mean, the image you have is almost nothing to do with your real life." "Real life." "It depends which image you're talking about." "There are 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."" "Well, that's why you're different from most rock stars." "Yeah, well, I'm not a rock star, you see?" "You've just said it." "I'm not in rock 'n' roll." "That's nice." "♪ Fashion ♪" "♪ Turn to the left ♪" "♪ Fashion ♪" "♪ Turn to the right ♪" "♪ Ooh ♪" "♪ Fashion ♪" "♪ We are the goon squad, and we're coming to town ♪" "And we're coming to town ♪" "I've always found that I collect." "I'm 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 a story writer, and I decided that I prefer to enact a lot of the material I was writing rather than perform it as myself." "♪ Here's a starman waiting in the sky ♪" "♪ There's a starman waiting in the sky ♪" "I'm a fairly good social observer, and I think that I encapsulate areas maybe every year or so." "I try and stamp that down somewhere, the quintessence of that year." "That year." "♪ Let me make it plain ♪" "♪ Gotta make way for the homo superior ♪" "♪ Ch-ch-ch-changes ♪" "♪ Ch-ch-ch-changes ♪" "♪ Learn to 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 ♪" "♪ I just wanted to be a better man ♪" "♪ But time may change me ♪" "♪ But I can't trace time ♪" "I got a call from David." "He called me directly, and he said, "can you come over to the house?"" "And I sat there with him, and he took out this battered, old 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 mommy is yelling "no" ♪" "♪ And her daddy has told her to go ♪" "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's 40 years since I've played it, but..." "♪ But her friend is nowhere to be seen ♪" "♪ Now she walks through her sunken dream ♪" "♪ To the seat with the clearest view ♪" "Now, this is a classic example of where he throws in a chord that you wouldn't expect." "Chord that you wouldn't expect." "Normally after..." "You would expect it to go back there, but he doesn't." "He goes..." "But the thing that makes it really clever is he put an e-flat in the bass, which just gives it a bass part that you can start to move on." "Really clever, so you've got... ♪ But the film is a saddening bore ♪" "♪ For she's lived it ten times or more ♪" "Ten times or more ♪" "Now, after that chord, you would expect it to go to..." "But he doesn't." "I mean, nobody -- only David would do something like that." "It's a piano player's joy." "In fact, I must go home and learn it." "♪ Take a look at the lawman beating up the wrong guy ♪" "♪ Oh, man!" "♪" "♪ Wonder if he'll ever know ♪" "♪ He's in the best-selling show-ow ♪" "♪ Is there life on ma-a-a-rs?" "♪" ""Life on Mars?" Is sort of" ""life on Mars?" Is sort of magic realism, really, if you listen to it, that you recognize 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 ♪" "♪ 'Cause Lennon's on sale again ♪" "Again ♪" "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." "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 'n' 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 anybody else." "♪ Freak out" "♪ freak out in a moonage 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 ♪" "♪ 'Cause you can't afford the ticket ♪" "♪ I'm back on suffragette city ♪" "♪ Oh, don't lean on me, man ♪" "♪ 'Cause you can't afford to check it ♪" "♪ I'm back on suffragette city ♪" "♪ Is out of sight ♪" "♪ Is out of sight ♪" "It just seemed 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 sort of creating something thoroughly artificial, but something that worked in the confines of rock 'n' roll." "♪ There's only room for one, and here she comes ♪" "♪ Here she comes ♪" "What Ziggy stardust does is it projects him as a rock star." "He sings about the imagined experience of being a rock star, 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 fulfills his fantasy." "It aligns itself with what he wants to be, which I think is what psychologists call" ""self-actualization."" "Not many people can do it, but he did." "♪ Ziggy played guitar ♪" "♪ Ziggy played guitar ♪" "♪ Jamming good with weird and gilly and the spiders from Mars ♪" "♪ And he played it left-hand ♪" "♪ But he made it too fa-a-r ♪" "I'd found my character." "One man against the world, things like -- really reverberated in my mind." "It was something that I really, kind of, honed in on." "♪ Screwed-up eyes and screwed-down hairdo, like some cat from Japan ♪" "Like some cat from Japan ♪" "♪ Oh, 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 kind of colossus that marks a tremendous transition between the 1960s and the 1970s." "♪ ...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 probably the Roman empire." "Sex without consequence, anonymous sex, pick-ups in dark clubs." "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 ♪" "Like a leper Messiah ♪" "♪ When the kids had killed the man," "I had to break up the band ♪" "♪ Oh, yeah ♪" "♪ And Ziggy played guitar ♪" "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." "Particular time." "♪ Oh-ho ho ♪" "So, I kind of tried to do my own version of that kind of music, which was the basis of the "young Americans" album." "♪ Whoa-oh-oh-oh, hoo-ooh-ooh ♪" "I'd become soul man." "When David really decided that he wanted to be a soul man, he said to me, "so, how shall we do it?" "Where shall we go?"" "You know, to get the people, the singers and the band and all singers and 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, "okay."" "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!" "Orange!" "And he was about 98 pounds." "I'm talking about thin, thin." "I mean, he was freaky." "At one point I told him," ""man" -- and you'll have to excuse the 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 collaboration between bowie and soon to be one of the greatest soul singers of all time," "Luther vandross, along with some of 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 ♪" "♪ No, never no turning back ♪" "♪ Taking it all the right way ♪" "♪ 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 in the back ♪" "♪ Taking it all the right way ♪" "♪ Never no turning back ♪" "♪ Never need no... ♪" "♪ 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 ♪" "That's cool." "That's cool." "Next one." "David had, like, a puzzle." "Just the last line." "He brought this paper to us, and he said, "this is how I want you to sing this."" "You to sing this."" "Oh, sorry, man, I wasn't with you." "It wasn't a straight, "just sing it linearly and melodically."" "♪ Doing it ♪" "Oh, I see, you count from..." "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "I thought you were doing an intro." "Right." "Three..." "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." "Okay." "So, we got that." "That one's all right." "That, too, was the first time" "I ever seen anything like that in my life." "But it was brilliant, because he knew exactly what he wanted." "He knew exactly what he wanted." "Right, okay, and last section." "♪ Gimme, gimme, yeah ♪" "♪ Doing it ♪" "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 ♪" "♪ Doing it ♪" "♪ One time ♪" "♪ One time ♪" "There was no point in doing a straightforward take on" "American soul music, because" "American soul music, because that's been done already." "So, I just wanted to put this spin on it." "♪ Pushing it sometimes, yeah ♪" "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 sort of advanced myself." "I sort of was tumbling over myself with ideas." "♪ Sometimes ♪" "In terms of the" ""young Americans" stuff, it was a chance that he grabbed to be able to do something he had able to do something he had wanted to do since he was 12." "And he may have thought, "I won't have a 40-something," "50-year-old career," and he may have thought, "well, I'm going to get this in while I can."" "♪ He 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 him minutes ♪" "♪ Takes her nowhere ♪" "♪ Heaven knows, she'd have taken anything ♪" "♪ All night ♪" "♪ All night ♪" "♪ She wants the young American ♪" "♪ Young American, young American ♪" "♪ She wants the young American ♪" "♪ All right ♪" "After we finished" ""young Americans," he called me down to electric lady studio." ""Okay, let's get to work."" "And I started laying down ideas and laying down ideas." "Let me show you." "I'm going to play the first" "I'm going to play the first thing that we did and how we layered it so you can hear what happens." "First part, add a little bass." "Doesn't that sound like "fame"?" "David comes in." "He goes, "oh, I hear this line."" "What happened is that" "John Lennon came to the session." "We sort of said, "let's take that riff and then 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 ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Makes a man take things over ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Lets him loose, hard to swallow ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Puts you there, where things are hollow ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Not your brain ♪" "♪ It's just the flame that burns your change to keep you insane ♪" "♪ Sane ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "Now, you've got an announcement to make to us all," "David, haven't you?" "You're changing your plans for the future." "You haven't planned a figure." "You haven't planned an image, whatever that may mean." "I think the image I may adopt may well be me." "I'm sort of inventing me at the" "I'm sort of inventing me at the moment." "I gather that at your end, you have some music with you." "The song is called "the shape of things to come."" "No, it isn't." "No, of course it isn't." "We're having a preview of the shape of things to come." "The song is called" ""golden tears."" "Mr. David bowie, we'll " ""years."" "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" ""golden years," from his forthcoming album," ""station to station."" "♪ Golden years," "♪ gold ♪" "♪ Golden years ♪" "♪ Gold ♪" "♪ 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 ♪" "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 ♪" "♪ Gold ♪" "It was kind of a very weird time, and it was L.A., 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."" ""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 but not so out there that we didn't make a great record." "So, I mean, you know." "Or maybe our view of being out there and people's views of being out there doesn't necessarily correlate with the fact that we were incapable of making a record." "So, whatever "out there" was," ""out there" worked." "I think the biggest influence on that album was the work of kraftwerk and the new German sound." "I tried to apply some of the randomness, and I utilized a lot of that feeling for especially the title track," ""station to station."" ""Station to station."" "The feedback intro at the beginning of" ""station to station" was an idea that David had." "So, we had a few Marshall stacks on the back wall, and we just did the feedback together, something like..." "Earl slick was asked to do something that was unnatural and that was, "I want you to sustain a note for, like, 15 years."" "Boom!" "I mean, and you're waiting for your part, but you can't." "You 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 ♪" "♪ 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 ♪" "You know what I think?" "I think a lot of really nasty shit happened, business-wise, 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 ♪" "And I started really getting and 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 L.A." "He hated L.A. towards the end." "L.A. 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 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." "♪ Too late to be hateful ♪" "I was tiring of the method I was writing." "I wanted to develop a new language, and 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." "Well, he's a constantly changing person." "I knew he was sort of getting" "I knew he was sort of getting tired with the way he'd been working." "I knew also that he liked a particular album that I had made very much." "It was "discreet music," which is my longest, slowest, quietest album." "The fact that he liked that sort 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," "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, "okay, so, I'm going to point to that chord, and you play that chord, and then I'll" "point to another."" "So, I'm playing "d."" "When you're working with 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." "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." "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 could you bring to the table?"" "I said, "well, I've got this new thing called a harmonizer."" "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." "Whooping on the other end." "They just went, like, "whoa!" "Whoo!"" "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 harmonizer, dropped its pitch, and then fed that back through again." "So it goes..." "But faster." "♪ Baby ♪" "♪ I've been ♪" "♪ Breaking glass in your room again ♪" "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 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." "On "warszawa," he was using sort of non-language." "So, they still weren't songs in so, they still weren't songs in the conventional sense." "Such a bold experiment for somebody like him to make, you know?" "♪ Sula vie milejo ♪" "♪ Sula vie milejo ♪" "♪ Mejo ♪" "The music to me sounds really a little a bit alienated, so a little a bit alienated, so" "I'm very surprised -- alienated from what?" "From..." "From..." "From..." "Okay, from my world." "From your world?" "Uh-huh, okay." "Can you understand it, or is 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." "David and I were talking." "We had a number of pieces in progress, and David said," ""well, what do you think?" "What should 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, 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." "You might get fucked." "Can you put that, 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 middleman," "I think that helped an awful lot, as well." "[ Introduction to "heroes"" "[ plays ]" "♪ I ♪" "♪ 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 ♪" "♪ 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 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." "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 get stoned out of your gourd to write well, you know?" "I think that was, you know, an incredibly important period for me." "Not very fast, are you?" "I can't say it was like night and day that suddenly I was this different person." "It wasn't." "It took quite a long time." "But I think, you know, I did see light at the end of the tunnel, and it wasn't a train." "♪ Do you remember a guy that's been in such an early song?" "♪ I heard a rumor from ground control ♪" "♪ Oh, no, don't say it's true ♪" "It is very interesting that it is very interesting that at the end of the '70s, he goes back to his first key character." "Major tom returns." "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 sort of discomfiting, sinister figure." "♪ Pictures of jap girls in synthesis, and I ain't got no money, and I ain't got no hair ♪" "David rang me." ""Could we make a video for this new single?"" "And he said, "I want to be a clown on a beach."" "Clown on a beach."" "I said, "oh, 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 digge" "♪ we know major tom's a junkie ♪" "David allows me lots and lots of freedom to do very much what" "I want, the ways I want it edited." "I storyboard it for him, show him exactly what frames I want done." "And then he puts his input in, as well." "And, especially on" ""ashes to ashes," the combination has been very successful." "The people round the bonfire on the beach in "ashes to ashes"" "were people from blitz, which is a London club, which was the precursor of the modern romantic movement." "And David managed to clock the whole modern romantic movement way before anybody else." "♪ Major tom ♪" "♪ Major tom ♪" "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 on board." "It's certainly one of the better songs I've ever written, in terms of familiarity and a song that really kind of hooks song that really kind of hooks in." "I felt very positive about the future, and I think I just 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 this 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 kind of maybe even reproduce a little bit of the "fame" feeling, and so he the "fame" feeling, and so he wanted to keep everything up so" "as to kind of give him a secure, commercially viable album that he could work with." "And so "fashion" started just with this very, very funky beat." "Then it grew it into a monster." "People started over-dubbing stuff on it." "Fripp started overdubbing this crazy guitar to it." "It was just evolving into a fantastic track." "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." "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, throwaway it was a lightweight, throwaway song, I think, 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?" "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 ♪" "♪ Beep-beep ♪" "I think I wanted to re-evaluate what I wanted to do, musically." "I did a hell of a lot in a short period, and I needed to get some space away from writing music because it was becoming, possibly, too much of an exercise, and the enthusiasm had gone." "But now it seems to be back again." "Emi are celebrating." "Against serious opposition and for very serious money, they've just signed a real superstar." "Ladies and gentleman," "Mr. David bowie." "Emi don't give lavish receptions like this very often." "Receptions like this very often." "They won't say how much they paid for bowie, but rumors 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 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 more sort of 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." "It seems somewhat uncharacteristic." "When we met originally, it 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 bow-ee!"" "And when he said "bow-ee" -- 'cause he called him bow-ee." "We called him Bo-ee." "And when he said "bow-ee," he vomited." "He barfed after saying it." "It was, like, hysterical." "By that time, I was already chatting him up." "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 he says, "you make hits."" "I was charged with the responsibility of doing such." "So, one morning in Switzerland, he walks into my bedroom." "And he says something to the effect of, "nile, darling, I think I have a song that feels think I have a song that feels like it's a hit."" "And he comes in with this 12-string guitar that only has six strings on it." "When you see a 12-string guitar, you're in folk city right away." "Something like that." "So, when I started fooling around with it, I made it very jazzy, very cool, but bowie is a jazzy, cool guy, unbeknownst to most people." "But I certainly knew that." "So..." "So..." "[ Plays riff [ from "let's dance" ]" "It was cool." "And it was ultra-cool." "And it was pretty normal cool." "And..." "But you put in the delays, and all of a sudden you get groove and funk and rhythm all at the same time." "[ Introduction to "let's dance"" "[ plays ]" "♪ 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 ♪" "They're playing on the radio ♪" "♪ Let's sway ♪" ""Let's dance" is an interesting song because it's basically kind of 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" ""let's dance" is not a traditional, what I would call, dance record, but it's certainly a record that does make you want to dance." "And I just thought to myself," ""man, if I don't make a record that makes people want to dance, and we call the song" ""let's dance," I'm going to have to trade in my black union card, 'cause that just doesn't make sense." "♪ Tremble like a flower ♪" "This is something that can be played in every mall in America." "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, they dabbled 'cause 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" "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." "Hit." "So, I wanted it to have a hook." "I thought, "man, maybe I'll key off the word 'China.'"" "And I said to myself, "either" "David is going to hate this so much that he's gonna fire me, or he's gonna get the comedic value of writing a silly, little, poppy thing."" "But I have to admit, I was 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" "♪ I feel a wreck without my little China girl ♪" "♪ I hear her heart beating loud as thunder ♪" "♪ Saw the stars crashing ♪" "This is the '80s." "It's mtv explosion time." "And he had been a video experimenter, but this record put him right there in the middle of mtv-ization and gave middle of mtv-ization 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." "To mainstream." "The look was more mainstream, even though he had the really 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." "Right." "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." "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 tonight, I think it might be very basic." "Ladies and gentleman, the 1983 "serious moonlight" tour!" "David bowie!" "♪ Introduction to "let's dance"" "[ plays ]" "♪ 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 ♪" "To an empty space ♪" "♪ And if you say run," "I'll run with you ♪" ""Let's dance" hit so strongly that everything changed." "We were thinking we were just going to do a couple of indoor theaters, 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 ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Makes a man" "♪ makes a man take things over ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Keeps him loose and hard to swallow ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "♪ Puts him there, where things are hollow ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "It was beyond belief to me." "Suddenly I wasn't a cult artist anymore." "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." "Stadiums were being put in." "It was all by the shirttails, 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're far too cool to fool ♪" "The "serious moonlight" tour was him capturing the planet as a whole." "A whole." "♪ Bully for you, chilly for me ♪" "♪ Got to get a rain check on pain ♪" "It was major at thapoint in time, in '83." "Everyone -- we're talking about" "China, in Korea, and everywhere else in the world knew who" "David bowie was because of that" ""serious moonlight" tour, and it's a peak level." "♪ Fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame," "fame, fame, fame, fame, fame, fame ♪" "♪ Fame ♪" "There's some moment when the audience comes to you, as opposed to you going to them." "He made a record that was in many senses 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 these outsiders are in on our secret, outsiders are in on our secret, but that's the danger of making 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, fame, fame ♪" "♪ What's your name?" "♪" "People have this idea that he sort of drifted off into the stratosphere and, you know, rumor and gossip starts, and all of that." "In a sense, he's regained the 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 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." "So, we're back to the show-biz adage of leave them wanting more -- very David bowie thing to do." "Happy hump day, Phil." "Ha!" "I didn't get humped." "You?" "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." "Well, 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 ♪" "♪ Earth was really dying ♪" "♪ Cried so much that his face was wet ♪" "♪ Knew he wasn't lying ♪"