MAGAZINE ECONDS SECONDS #33, 1995 • Sby George Petros & Steven Blush

So much has already been said about DAVID BOWIE: “He was the first Rock Star who…” — “Before him, no one had dared to…” — He single-handedly started the…” — “Every one of his albums was…” — “Everything he said was…” — so what can we say? That he was the first Rock Star who was Gay and Straight at the same time? Good and bad at the same time? Cutting-edge and over with? That he was the most flaming and focused and stayed cool the longest? That he is one of the handful of all-time world-class Rock Stars? How about this — before him, no one had ever blown your mind quite like David Bowie. 78 “It’s entirely possible that the idea of murder as art is an option for some people.”

SECONDS: In terms of your writing, are together. He taught me a wonderful riff hits a formula or a by-product? which became “The Supermen.” BOWIE: I don’t know, I don’t have too SECONDS: We hear about your many. You’re speaking to fascination with the New the wrong artist; I think you York stuff, Lou Reed, should ask Elton John. Andy Warhol, even Wayne SECONDS: Bowie County — impersonators over the years BOWIE: Wayne County I — do you see them as a met twice in my life and I compliment or an insult? couldn’t stand him. I had BOWIE: I don’t know. absolutely no fascination They’re glitches in music for him at all. I felt he was history; they’re kind of absolutely useless. I saw interesting. I don’t really him work a couple of times feel about them one way or — I didn’t know him at all. another. There was a couple The only one I was aware of Gary Numan songs I of until I got to America quite liked — I guess they was Lou Reed and The all have their moments. Velvet Underground that There’s always one song in there that’s I’ve been huge fans of since the Sixties. It worth it all. It was only recently I’ve been was such an alternative to what was going made aware of how influential my music on. The New York Dolls I got to buddy up — or our music I should say because a lot with when I came over and we just felt of it has to do with Brian Eno — has been like-minded. In England, their own form on American bands. I always felt we were was Roxy Music and T-Rex, a loosely- incredibly Eurocentric in what we did. knitted movement. SECONDS: When you first came out, SECONDS: I assume no one was selling a did you feel part of the Hippie movement lot of records — because your music seemed a reaction to BOWIE: Well, we did very well in those ethics? England. It took America BOWIE: It was the thing a lot longer. The Ziggy I’m so against — idealism. Stardust thing and what Unfortunately, idealism subsequently followed was turns into a certain kind of quite huge in England, fundamentalism. I was a and so were Roxy Music reaction to that, although and T-Rex. much more naive and un- SECONDS: Your work thought-out. I kind of know with people like Iggy Pop what I do these days. I or Lou Reed, was that didn’t know what it was collaborative or in tribute? that I did in those days. BOWIE: It’s hard to say. I SECONDS: Jimmy Page was a huge fan of both. played on some of the SECONDS: You Mannish Boys stuff. resurrected their careers. BOWIE: He did indeed, BOWIE: Well, we were with the first fuzz box in England. He was all in the right place at the right time this kid who just left art school and was and it just worked out well for everybody the youngest session man in the world, concerned. It was collaborative, definitely, fifteen or sixteen. He was a fresh-faced kid with Iggy. I spent a lot of time writing for who had a real joy for playing. The Led him as well as producing. For me, Iggy’s Zeppelin thing — it’s hard to put the two strength was as a lyricist. I thought 79 D A V I D B O W I E he was the funniest, darkest lyricist of BOWIE: Because they’re told by an art the time. I really wanted to give him elite that things have to be absolute and musical support that would get him a pure. For instance, Keith Haring who wider audience. It just seemed so unfair was a wonderful Graffiti artist but was that he was virtually plucked from his coterie of neglected, as was Lou fellow artists and elevated Reed when I first started to a point … we were given working with him — I the impression that he was was going through a very elevated into high art because experimental stage what he had to say was an when I started working absolute of some kind — that with Iggy on The Idiot. it transcended street Graffiti I had some ideas which — which is absolute bullshit. reached fruition when It’s important for the art I started working with world to create a distinction Brian on Low. The Idiot, because for commercial for me, was a format for reasons more than anything devising a new kind of else, you can’t put a $200,000 musical scenario. price tag on somebody who’s SECONDS: What just a “street artist.” You have misconceptions do people have about the to create a synthetic platform for them. Glam scene? They were many other Graffiti artists BOWIE: I think they believe we all had running around like Fab 5 Freddy who a lot in common with each other and that were quite as good, but because they there weren’t many of us — there were didn’t have a specific motif, a well-defined hundreds of copies really quickly. Within signifying character, they kind of got lost. months, we had Sweet and Gary Glitter If I stayed with one kind of music and and all these others. I plodded on with it all these think myself, T-Rex, and years, at least I would’ve Roxy Music felt not a part had “integrity.” I never stay of with one thing for more than all that. ten minutes, so of course SECONDS: What’s the I’m not “serious” about what relationship between I do — which is absolute glamour and Rock, and bullshit. I’m probably one how has that changed of the most serious artists I over time? know. I really feel that it’s BOWIE: What I find with important to my life that a lot of younger bands what I do has integrity, but these days — especially it’s not perceived the same the ones who’ve cut their by so many — I don’t believe teeth on a lot of the early in a world of absolutes or Seventies bands — is that fundamentalism. I don’t there’s more of a desperate need not for work in that kind of polemic atmosphere. recognition, but for insulating themselves I really am a fan of hybridization and I from the world. What I believe we were believe that the mutation of systems is doing in the early Seventies was making the way that things will go. an occasion of our personalities. It’s SECONDS: You’ve also had a career as almost tribal now. There’s a different spin film actor and stage performer. How do on glamorization. you view yourself in that context? SECONDS: Why have people run away BOWIE: Being in the studio recording is from pretention? the most pleasurable activity of all for me, 80 “In the late Sixties there were several people walking about in London with great holes in their heads.” quickly followed by painting. The other relationship. stuff I do for a number of reasons. Acting, SECONDS: What does the public have for instance, is because I have a thing wrong about Brian Eno? about the directors and I BOWIE: That he’s not want to get near them and funny. I don’t think see what it is they do. I they’d imagine he has an really have no ambitions incredibly weird sense of in that particular world. humor — a very funny guy It doesn’t seem terribly and extraordinarily pithy. exciting to me. It’s probably Like all Brits, he’s great at more exciting if you’re the put-down as well. doing it in Europe, maybe SECONDS: Is there any in New York it’s more fun, music you’ve consciously but God forbid one would avoided? end up in LA —the most BOWIE: Country & frenetic, seething, hostile Western. I have no idea city on the face of the how to get anywhere near Earth under the guise of that. When they were being this laid-back, cool carting Buddy Rich into place, which it is not. the hospital, the doctor leaned over and SECONDS: How did you get to that point asked if he was allergic to anything and in the Eighties — he said, “Yeah, Country & Western.” BOWIE: The main problem with the SECONDS: Tell me about your interest in Eighties was the Eighties. It was such a body art. nebulous, commerce-oriented period that BOWIE: When I was a kid, there was a I felt invalidated. I escalated myself into thing with the Surrealists that always some kind of MOR hell with stayed in my mind. Let’s Dance. I was treading Andre Breton said in the water after that. I just didn’t Twenties that maybe the have any real interest in greatest work of art is writing or playing. I just somebody who would fire trotted out albums which, a revolver into a crowd, ironically, became very big which was the first idea for me. It was a terrible that I’d had that murder situation. I felt really could be considered as frustrated because I saw fine art. Researching it myself in a cul-de-sac that I recently, I found that in just loathed and hated. fact a guy called Thomas SECONDS: I can’t figure DeQuincy, who wrote a out if you’re bringing Art book called Confessions into Rock or Rock into Art. Of An English Opium BOWIE: Brian and I have Eater in 1820, had written actually talked about this a very similar piece for and what we seem to have come down Blackwoods magazine called “Murder to is that what I’m very good at doing is Considered As A Fine Art.” I then started taking high art elements and deeming doing a research thing on where this had them down to low art, whereas Brian does gone and how it had continued through the precisely the opposite — he takes vulgar years. It seemed to be gaining tremendous things and makes them high art. Because momentum with people like Ron Affey our approaches are so diametrically and their scarification performance works opposed, it makes for a good artistic and Kiki Smith and her anatomical pieces. 81 D A V I D B O W I E

Back in England, we’ve got a guy called deformers — actually, everything from Mark Quinn, who sculpted his own head clitoridectomies to rhinoplasty falls under out of eight pints of his own blood that body modification. coagulated. This BOWIE: I thoroughly kind of work is really agree and that’s why gathering momentum. I believe that what Noting the kind of we and a lot of the tribal associations artists working in with a lot of kids in the Western sphere terms of tattoos and do is a mutation of scarifications — when that. You get people I was a kid, tattoos like Chris Burden in meant a heart with “I San Francisco in the love mother” written early Seventies who on it. Now, it’s gotten did extraordinary into a paganistic area things like crucifying where they’re using himself on his car or indigenous American hanging himself with designs or Celtic designs. A lot of it has electrodes over vats of water daring his reliance on tribal associations. It’s kind arms not to touch the water. of out of a displaced form of religion SECONDS: Then, of course, there’s Joseph — that maybe we weren’t feeling as Mellon, who trepinated himself — much nurturing from the church, and BOWIE: Absolutely. That became a big that people are inscribing their own practice in Britain in the late Sixties. spiritual and religious areas. In fact, it There were several people walking about smacked more of paganism than accepted, in London with great holes in their heads. established “church.” A lot of it seemed SECONDS: How about transexuality? to go back to the Romans and their That’s a body modification form. drinking the blood BOWIE: Absolutely. and eating the meat Yes, it is. It’s probably of the bull to enable one of the earliest in us to go forward into the West. the new era. I just SECONDS: Isn’t felt that we’re doing that the conclusion of the same thing, a sexuality, to become a kind of appeasement hermaphrodite? to the gods to allow BOWIE: All gods us to go into the next are hermaphrodites, millennium. Using outside of our own that as some kind particular religions. of basis and then Transvestite priests extrapolating on that, are very big in it’s entirely possible Indonesia. That’s part that the idea of murder as art is an option of their ritual — this androgynous figure for some people. wearing full makeup and female attire SECONDS: Are you familiar with earlier who is a high priest. examples of body modification, like the SECONDS: Would the West have been Comprachico cult better off if Christiantity had been in Spain? displaced? BOWIE: No, I’m not at all. BOWIE: I don’t think so because most SECONDS: They were notorious religions that developed within the last

82 “It’s pagans all the way to the finish line.” thousand years have been absolutist and create around you that makes your reality. fundamentalist. I think that’s so scary SECONDS: What’s the key to aging — I think anything that is absolutist gracefully in Rock? and fundamentalist, BOWIE: Wear less including politics, makeup. I think that’s is such a rigid and an artist-by-artist nonsensical system question. For me, I don’t it just cannot work think on the whole for our society. For my music has been me, the key word is generational. I don’t hybridization. In the think I’ve talked for a East, where the older generation. I’ve talked religions come through, about specific subjects they seem to work but those subjects have better. In Indonesia, grown with me. A lot of outside of the Islamic it is about negativity, countries, there’s a alienation, those things kind of bastardized that take a philosophic Hinduism that goes high ground. One sort on where there’s a of hones those subject balance between the matters all the time dark and the light all and they’re continually the time and all the things I revert back to. festivals every day SECONDS: When observe both sides of our state. There’s is sex appeal an asset and when is it a some very dark practices and some very liability? light practices, but it’s a sense of trying to BOWIE: That’s what popular culture’s keep a balance, which I think is absolutely for. What we don’t get looked after for as missed with our particular inclination. far as the Judeo-Christian ethic finds its SECONDS: Are invention and reality way into popular culture. It’s kind of our opposites? gladiatorial arena; it’s where we fight our BOWIE: Reality as it’s perceived, that fears and problems. That’s why we’ve got there is this absolute thing called reality. our Stallones. I don’t think it’s gratuitous In fact, reality is only defined by the at all, it’s necessary. More strength to it, I inventiveness of your self. It’s what you say. Make ‘em bigger, bloodier and sexier,

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