By Brendan Halligan

Bowie Interview by Helena Mulkerns 1 Hot Press, October 1995 Singer, , actor, spokesman for several generations, Internetter, art collector, sex icon, painter, A Walk co-producer of Lou Reed’s most famous song … The man with the most awesome CV in the history of popular on the culture (and then some), , Is back. HELENA MULKERNS braves the palm trees of the Chateau Marmont In LA for an exclusive chin-wag about fame, Outside fashion, Drag Queens, the end of the millennium, er, Hieronymus Bosch and, of course, his new Outside. But what’s all this about “non-linear Gothic Drama Hyper-Cycles”?

It is perhaps fitting to meet David Bowie within the muted confines of the most Gothic building In West Hollywood. Sweeping off the madness of Sunset Boulevard at noon, the taxi noses up into a wooded cul-de-sac, stops at the archway leading to a carved stone cloister. To get to the actual hotel entrance, you pass a series of tall windows and columns that overlook a quiet garden. The Chateau Marmont’s palm trees seem magically to provide sound-proofing as well as shade from the world outside, creating an effect where, once you cross the threshold, you could almost be in another dimension. In the tasteful surroundings of Suite 35, I await – with as blank a mind as I can muster – for David Bowie. I sit on a pine green velvet couch directly under a mammoth print of The Garden Of Earthly

Bowie Interview by Helena Mulkerns 2 Hot Press, October 1995 Delights by Hieronymus Bosch. What was how unfortunate it would have been to earthly manifestation will the man take? miss this meeting. I tell him the wounds and There have been so many. How does one bruises are all in the spirit of the new album. greet a legendary 20th Century Rock God? He laughs. One would almost be tempted to say “Hi, “It sort of sounds like that looks, Elvis!” for the laugh. Suddenly, he breezes actually!” He indicates the Bosch print, with in, looking for cigarettes, addressing the its inmates squirming in pain and anguish, publicist, criticising the orange juice, being burned, carved and generally unplugging the phone. Nervous ebullience tormented by devils. clouds invisibly out of him and fills up the “Damn,” he says, hitting his thigh in room as he flops down at last into the sofa mock dismay. “So it’s been done before then beside me to announce: … “ “I’ve just had a bath” Thematically, Outside is without doubt as “You smell very nice, David.” Gothic as Bosch, and in a more contemporary I am completely thrown. One doesn’t sense, hugely ambitious. It attempts to depict expect Rock Gods to divulge the details of the chaos and fragmentation of so-called their personal ablutions at the offset. But civilised life, now facing the end of its second then, not what you might millennium, within the context of a “non- expect, overall. You expect charm, sexiness, linear Gothic Drama Hyper-cycle” – set in yes. But not bloody Dorian Gray. He is the realms of fringe Art. The story revolves svelte, graceful, evincing a young man’s around the diaries of private dick Nathan demeanour, with an absence of facial wear Adler, attached to “Art Crime, Inc.”, who and tear that renders him perhaps twelve has come across a grisly ritual-art murder. years short of his 48, and a wicked grin that Hippies and squeamish folk beware: we fixes on my forehead, which is black and glimpsed the computer-mutilated corpse on blue. the cover of Lodger, but with Outside, the “How’s your head?” sleeve notes/short story begins: The previous day, while turning onto “It was precisely 5:47am on the morning Sunset Boulevard from Crescent, a warp of Friday, 31 December 1999 that a dark- speed pick-up truck smashed into the spirited pluralist began the dissection of side of my car, hurtling me momentarily 4-year-old “Baby Grace”. The arms of into oblivion. The last thing I saw was a the victim were pin-cushioned with 16 glimmering rain of multi-hued diamonds hypodermic needles, pumping in four major (the side and front windscreens); the first preservatives … The stomach area was thing that occurred to me when I came round carefully flapped open and the intestines

Bowie Interview by Helena Mulkerns 3 Hot Press, October 1995 removed.” And that’s just for starters. fashion, to enhance the plot. It’s as far away from the crowd-pleasing “I’ve virtually left them alone since cabaret of The tour as it is from 1975/76 with ,” he the jazzy romance of Black Tie, White Noise. says. “He was the last really conceived But if what came between was a period character. Anything else was just a public that Bowie himself describes as one of his stance for stage afterwards. Up until that lowest in terms of self-esteem and creativity, I’d been working with characters, but then the 1993 album was like a full-stop at the during the course of I really tried to end of an era. Basically, a love tribute to clean up my house in many ways, and on Bowie’s bride , it was at their wedding of them was to go through myself and what that Bowie met up again, after fourteen my needs were as a writer and do without years, with , and entered into a the characters, because psychologically new phase of creativity. they brought me a lot of trouble, and I was in no position to mess around with all that. During the eighties, Eno had gone to But NOW THAT I’M OKAY … “ (he leers, Malaysia to re-group, emerging at the jokingly) … end of the decade as the magician for The There are other echoes from the past, Unforgettable Fire, later developing his work too. On board for the album are Carlos in conceptual art. He is now a professor of Alomar, (the piano player from the subject at the Royal College Of Art in ), , Sterling London. The two, re-united after fourteen Campbell and Erzal Kizilcay, all of whom years, discovered their mutual likes and Bowie has worked with before. dislikes in contemporary music trends, and Thus, between Bowie, the band and decided to work on a collaborative album. Eno, stark musical memories leap out at you “What we’re trying to do is to lay the from the speakers: here, that searing, lonely texture and the ambience and the sub-text Turkish vibe that imbued Lodger; there, the which illustrates what 1995 feels like,” says ambient lushness of Heroes; a tinkling Bowie. “The intent is to make a diary of the piano pirouettes across the album like a last of this millennium – that’s ghostly dancer; there are what sounds like what we’re trying to do, in musical form. some very early chords and even The interesting thing for Brian and I is that several monologues reminiscent of the intro it is a continuous sage. The overall ambition to “”. is to keep working in this vein. Not only in It seems like Bowie is back in future time, this vein, because I think we will both make via the past. Every style you remember from other as well, but the Adler Diaries your brain’s Bowie Directory is flickering on per se as a collective – we’re going to keep and off on your internal screens, in a sort of them going, and as each year presents itself, Dervish-Windows gig that allows a myriad we’re going to try and capture that year of different Bowie elements to be present using the device of the fictional story, and simultaneously, but under a carefully building up more characters each time.” managed whole. The album features several dramatic “In terms of stylisation of the album, characters, ranging from a 14-year old girl to I think that I’m almost in a situation now a sleazy, ancient shopkeeper, whom Bowie where I’ve got, years-wise, such a body of depicts on the sleeve art work as with his work since the late sixties, that for me it’s own computer-generated images. The become a question of where, if I’m going to creation of personae, one of Bowie’s former ‘appropriate’ anybody these days, it’s going fortes, is used this time in a more composite to be me!

Bowie Interview by Helena Mulkerns 4 Hot Press, October 1995 Because when you re-contextualise collectors (e.g. Saatchi) purchased work. something, the information changes. To use Bowie himself is on the board of directors of a Warhol reference, for instance: when you the magazine, Modern Painters, for whom just see Marilyn Monroe, it’s Marilyn in the he interviewed the artist Baltheus last year. black and white scheme of things right there His own private collection is extensive. on film. But when Warhol painted her on a “It’s always been an extraordinarily canvas it almost represented 1965 – it was so important part of my life. One of the first incredibly modern and prescient, it just felt paintings I ever bought, as a matter of fact, like the times – using a symbol from the past in the late 70s, was a Yeats, who I’m a big and re-contextualising it. fan of. I’ve been painting for the same “The painter Jasper John made a career, length of time. When I was a kid it was a big virtually, of a similar technique. He ended decision whether to stay on as a visual artist up where he was only painting with his own or to become a . I certainly was vocabulary of images. I’m sort of getting drawn to both all the time. One has been near that, because the years do it. You can’t a career, the other has been a sort of back- do it unless you have enough work to draw text, but whenever I’ve made an album I’ve from, and I’m nearly in that old, sage-like always found that my painting output has position (laughs) where I actually can.” increased dramatically, so it does seem that Bowie’s art repeated art references, to they work in tandem. It’s just that I’ve been recur throughout the interview, from a little bit more flamboyant about it over the increasing time he’s been devoting to the last two or three years. I think that’s his own visual art. Earlier this year, he held because I’ve changed a lot. I’m getting less an exhibition of his work in the sacrosanct self-judgemental about my work, and more realm of the British art world, London’s or less putting everything out there that I do Court Street. Despite having received now, these days.” mixed reviews, museums and important

Bowie Interview by Helena Mulkerns 5 Hot Press, October 1995 One of Bowie’s recent projects has can become de-humanised extensions of involved several collaborative paintings machines, barrenly wallowing in cyberspace, with the London artist Damien Hirst (whose this compensates by presenting the blood material and unorthodox methods have and guts of humanity right into your face. made him highly controversial). Hirst has Bowie relates it to a more atavistic urge. exhibited pieces including a large pickled “The more focused attention I give to shark in a tank and other preserved animals. ritual artists ties in with a set of subjects that One installation even features a pregnant cat, I’ve always been passionately interested sawn in two, each half carefully preserved in, that are coming into my work more and displayed in two separate cases, so you obviously these days, which involve the can walk between the two parts, all of which spiritual starvation that we have, and what relates strongly to themes explored in the do we replace it with? We don’t believe in textual and narrative part of Outside. the Church, or we’ve lost faith in the Church Flesh, blood, guts and pain may be – but how do we deal with creating a bond banned from MTV (as in Trent Reznor’s between ourselves and whatever is beyond? video escapades), but live performance “There are areas of sexuality and violence (art) has taken to it in a big way. Especially a that are not embraced or contained by in the US, where Andreas Serrano’s once- Judeo-Christian ethics, and we feel that we shocking “Piss Christ” pales in comparison don’t know how to deal with these things, with the antics of HIV positive artist Ron or publicly see them displayed so that we Athey (referred to in the text). His self- can make up our own minds and manifest afflicted “crown of blood” routine, and his our fears or our exuberances about those live, onstage carve-up of a colleague’s back particular areas of our lives, and I think in order to create blood images on paper that’s what popular culture is for. I think it’s towels for suspension above the audience, there to take up the slack the Church won’t caused outrage in the more conservative deal with, and that if we didn’t have a public American art circles. arena for that almost gladiatorial, fight-out, A similar scalpel-wielding stage show is that NCO-pagan blood-letting – that the referred to on the album in one of Nathan world would be in an even worse condition Adler’s monologues, when he describes than it is now.” a performance by suspected Baby-Grace When challenged that the tone of the murderer Leon and renegade high-priestess album seems to espouse a particularly of S&M, Ramona Stone. negative spiritual flavour overall, Bowie The album and notes also refer to artists vehemently disagrees. like Chris Burden (had himself shot onstage) “I don’t believe that it’s a negative Mark Rothko (an abstract expressionist who outlook, you see. I think it’s a common committed suicide), and one young Korean wisdom that at the end of every hundred underground conceptualist who would years you have a psychic panic that comes have himself anaesthetised in order that into place just before you turn the century – body parts would be removed in front of a it happens in the arts and society. I think that live audience (that was the show). While it has an awful lot to do with the momentum the trend can be denounced as an ever more that gathers. It’s like a desperation that you’ll crass and pretentious attempt to shock and never get through to the next century, and I gain attention by a marginal group of artists, think coming up to the millennium it gets the movement gains increasing momentum. far more exaggerated, more highly focused. One theory for this intensely physical “This story is indicative of the feeling expressionism is that today, when humans that there has to be some kind of ritual

Bowie Interview by Helena Mulkerns 6 Hot Press, October 1995 sacrifice made, otherwise we won’t get The process included flashcards issued at into the year 2000. It’s the same with these the beginning of a recording session, which artists – there’s some kind of mutation of might instruct the : “You are the some barely remembered pagan ritual going last survivor of a catastrophic event and you on that’s carried out in these new post- will endeavour to play in such as way as modernist ways. Its within that area. It is a to prvent feelings of loneliness developing dark irony and it’s supposed to be.” within yourself” or “You are the town crier Another theme on the album, which in a society where all media networks have is inextricable from the kaleidoscope of tumbled down”. Eno would sample snippets musical styles involved, is that of chaos. One of radio broadcasts s they happened. Bowie song is entitled, ‘I’m Deranged’, another, would come into the studio with his cut-ups “No Control”. Methods for the music’s and the whole gang would jam. composition were often equally diverse.

Bowie Interview by Helena Mulkerns 7 Hot Press, October 1995 Bowie’s “cut-ups” method (not the only is changing radically. Overnight it’s being Burroughs influence on the album my any re-written. Every tissue of our society is means) has undergone a cybernetic upgrade: being evaluated and re-written, because now he does them by punching his writing revisionism is really the word of the day – it into a “verbaliser” computer programme, means that what we end up with is really which cuts up what he’s just fed in for him a network of histories, rather than one in seconds. straight trunk which takes you back down “There’s so much emphasis now on the one absolute path.“ speed by which we receive information, and Speaking of expansion, does Bowie the voluminous quantity of the information fear its antithesis – the growing spread of in the States. There’s 78 Channels worth extremism seen generally in world affairs of stuff to look at on the television alone. and on a more mundane level, how it affects Which means that because they are all vying personal and sexual freedoms? Even in the for ratings, they can’t possibly pretend to area of Gay politics, the extreme activists cover anything in any more depth than a have become as intolerant of non-conformists buzz phrase, a sound byte or a quick image. as the heterosexual conservatives they once “And people are receiving their fought against. information like that. And because the speed “There’s a lot of fear on both sides. and the diversity of the output, people have And I think that kind of polarisation is lost the need to analyse anymore. They’re apparent everywhere. The polemic at the not looking past the surface image. moment is very tribal. And it’s a tribalism “For instance, the younger people are that extends through politics, through very adept at scanning the surface of things. Church, fanaticism of various kinds. And And we (my generation) tend to think it’s about finding an absolute. Absolutism that shows some kind of indifference or a and absolutes generally, again, it’s one of the Philistine attitude, but I think it’s probably a fifties’ philosophic strains that ran through transitory period. I think they’re leaning to society and it’s been shouldered and adapt to a world which will only get more dragged through this end of the century. fragmented and more chaotic at this point. It’s quite obvious that there is no absolute Everything is changing. political system. “History is breaking down, there’s “What it does breed more than anything revisionist history – just look how Ireland else is malicious fundamentalism. The

Bowie Interview by Helena Mulkerns 8 Hot Press, October 1995 trouble is that the ones who are getting it It passes information, and voluminous more than anybody else these days are the information, and very quickly. But Drag Queens, because they are despised, unfortunately most of the information is abhorred and ostracised by everybody. By crap! And you think, wait a minute, why am straight gays and by straights. And I can I wading through this rubbish. They say it almost regard the Drag Queen as the only makes information more accessible – but it radical left – it’s peculiar, but it’s come back has an awful lot to do with the quality of the to that again.” information you’re searching for. For somebody who was, at the height of “And the other thing is that I’ve always his career, the harbinger of an all-compassing seen it, since its instigation, as a thing whose sexuality (or as he puts it himself, with a grin, very dark side manifests itself when it “indiscriminately promiscuous”), this kind becomes a force of the financial middle and of dogma is ludicrous. I tell Bowie the story upper classes. of an “outing” campaign run by one of the “It’s divisive in the sense that a certain more extreme Queer activist groups. Names group of people will benefit from it and ad photos of celebrities were plastered all have that computer ability, but the rest of over walls in urban areas around US cities, the world will suffer dramatically. Because in the form of imitation “Absolut Vodka” they’ll have even less information than ads. The caption under Jodie Foster would before, without access to computers. You be “Absolutely Queer”, the one under Paula won’t find some guy running around the Abdul would read, “Absolutely Straight”. Andes saying, “wow, you wanna see what I Bowie suddenly erupts into hilarious snorts got on the Internet tonight …’ It isn’t going of laughter. “Ooooh,” he quips. “Was I on to be like that It supports the haves, and both, then?” doesn’t support the have-nots.” “No, it’s funny, because I recently saw a In that regard, Bowie is, undoubtedly headline on the cover of Harpers & Bazaar, very much in the former category himself at which read: BISEXUAL CHIC (laughs) this stage in life. Nevertheless, the current – and it felt, oh God (mock shame and album could be perceived as a risk for him. horror), – has it come to this? And it has!! Although almost anything that Eno touches It’s something you wear now! But it’s very turns to artistic (and sometimes commercial) funny. I guess that’s how experimentation gold, Outside is, overall, decidedly dodgy. is showing itself, because again, I think the The audience that bought Never Let Me depth aspect of it is not really there, it’s Down or Black Tie, White Noise isn’t going to almost a surface thing. I think that to pick on touch it with a barge-pole. Can a duo of lads something as a ‘fashionable’ thing to do is a in their late forties swing a successful album way of assimilating information these days, without stopping to he greed tactics we’ve like reading surfaces. Surfing the chaos sort seen from some of Bowie’s contemporaries of thing.” of late? Just take The Eagles tickets last summer across the US, at $125.00 a pop. Or Bowie does surf the Internet, and although your “Special Edition” Rolling Stones Gold initially intrigued by its potential has found Visa card, available with the Steel Wheels it “a bit of a let-down”. tour tickets purchases. “I don’t have Utopian thoughts on “I think I’ve ever only had one physical computers of the Internet of anything else. obsession in my life, and that was with art, I think it’s got up-sides and down-sides. and that’s the only thing I’ve ever really

Bowie Interview by Helena Mulkerns 9 Hot Press, October 1995 bothered with. Commercial success? It’s not mattered a toss over here. my raison d’etre – it really isn’t. I’ve always “Then, after the Nirvana thing, I started wanted, more than anything else, just to to read things that were sent to me by my be a successful artist, and what I mean by PR people in LA, on bands like NIN and successful is to produce things that continue Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple to interest me. I just want to keep surprising Pilots, which indicated that my work was myself with things. That doesn’t necessarily really an integral part of their influences. mean that it’s all good.” That’s more than flattering, it almost Once upon a time in the Eighties … validates one’s work to see it infiltrate a “Yes! In fact, some of the surprises culture in that way. were quite horrendous. But the parameters “That it re-emerges in different guises, for me to stretch are those of expression. in different areas of that particular art form, Sometimes I wonder if wanting to go out is almost tantamount to thinking that in and make a lot of money – I can’t talk for one’s own lifetime, one’s work has come to anybody else – but I think I know why that some kind of fruition. I can’t be anything happens. When a need for the love of the but delighted when I see that happen.” audience, or something – and wanting to Generally, Bowie comes across as keep up your financial status – causes you a Renaissance man mostly at ease with to … It also produces a nagging feeling of himself in the ‘90s, chaos or not. He is even I’m really letting myself down. And when optimistic. you let yourself down – you go shopping. I “I think the Arts Reflect society all the think that money will take the edge off not time, and there is an emergence of such being creative any more, not bothering. As good music since the beginning of the ‘90s if by earning a lot of money, that will give that it indicates a new kind of positivism me the happiness that being creative used among young people. Which has more or to. So really, it doesn’t buy you happiness so less destroyed that whole bland thing of the much as buy you a cocoon. I don’t want that ‘80s. cocoon particularly. I think that what I need “If you’d asked young people in the in my life now is just to remain creative. ’80s what music they’d take with them over Because I’ve had money. the next ten years, they’d say, what? You’re But if the album is unlikely to cause crazy! Paula Abdul? Kylie Minogue? Now Michael Jackson to lose sleep, it certainly has you ask them the same question and they’ll potentially a brand new, young audience come up with half a dozen bands or acts willing to give it a shot. In the way that Bowie from Nirvana to Pearl Jam onwards of who retained his cool pretty much all through they’ll say, that the music will take them punk by being more out-there, skinnier, through a lot of our lives. They will grow paler and generally weirder than any rock- with this music.” star-sniping punk, his early music has Music seems to be the main focus for withstood the challenges to time and served Bowie right now, with the release of the new to influence a newer generation – from Kurt album and the US tour with NIN. But it’s Cobain to Trent Reznor, with whom he is certainly not the only one. He plays Warhol currently touring in North America. in a new film by American artist Julian “The interesting thing for me, is that I Schnabel entitled Build A Fort, Set It On Fire kind of always knew what my weight was on the life of the street artist, Jean-Michel in Europe, it was kind of self-evident. But Basquiat. in America, I had no comprehension that I

Bowie Interview by Helena Mulkerns 10 Hot Press, October 1995 He hopes to further develop The Adler Diaries with Brian Eno, ultimately stage them as a “piece of epic, monumental theatre, directed, ideally, by stage master Robert Wilson. His first visual arts exhibition in the US will take place later this year, and he expresses his wish to “pummel Britain with my art until they give in.” He confirms that he will be creating a Minotaur with Damien Hirst just as soon as the human who has donated his body for this project after his death obliges, and that they even plan to build a labyrinth for it on a small island near the Hebrides. I remind Bowie that precisely 22 years ago to the month, he caused widespread panic staging a “Retirement Gig” at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, in order to guillotine the monster, Ziggy. Yet here we are another decade, another monster and an end-of-millennium album that Ziggy probably would have approved of (remember 5 Years?). Bowie laughs, and begins to speak before I fully formulate my question. “The last five or six years, really, since the end of the ‘80s, have been just wonderful. I’ve been very fortunate in my personal life. But also, what I do as an artist has been so fulfilling. As I get older, for me the priorities fast become quality of life, and each day I don’t want to fuck about. “I don’t really want to waste my time, because there’s so much more that I want to do and say and paint and make music on and all that, and I love it. I really love it. I love being an artist. It’s my chosen profession, and I just think I’m getting better at it, and this is definitely the wrong time to quit.”

FIN

------Writer headshot: © John Francis Bourke

Bowie Interview by Helena Mulkerns 11 Hot Press, October 1995