THE ARTFUL LODGER

Rip It Up, Issue 219, 1 November 1995, Page 24

THE ARTFUL LODGER

cVZ interview with iyOmtite David Bowie

"Allo Geowge, 'ow are ya?" Yeah, fine, RipHUp New Zealand here. "I know, we met, it must've been 87." No, 78, at the Christchurch press conference. "I was only a year or 10 out."

I remember you had a chuckle at the name of our mag, RipitUp. "I was just young and foolish," Bowie laughs. "The Little Richard song was one of my favourites as a kid."

I is back, no longer a kid, but one of the elder statesmen in an art form he’s been influential in shaping with his restful, inquisitive and artful style. Now he’s nudging 50 (“it’s only 18 months away, but it’s fantastic, very exciting”) and on the edge of a tour with Nine Inch Nail Trent Reznor.

“He’s a really nice guy, and with his fourpiece band, they’re one of the best stage acts in America at the moment,” Bowie enthuses. The real motive behind this exclusive chat was the promotion of his new record, Outside — a return, almost, to the cerebral, eclectic hey-days of Diamond Dogs and Station to Station. Bowie was to prove the ideal interviewee — enthusiastic, talkative, eloquent and amusing.

Before the heavy stuff, let’s dispel a rumour that you lived in Wellington for a while during the filming of Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. “No, no, no. I don’t know where that rumour came from, but it isn’t true. There’s another rumour that isn’t true, that I had a big white house in Perth, Australia. I saw pictures of it and I was very jealous because it looked beautiful, but it wasn’t mine. “The only stuff I did in the movie were the sections we did in Rarotonga, where I have memories of treading water for six weeks. I never actually got to New Zealand." To the new album, the futuristic, detective nightmares of Outside. It seems it was created mainly by giving hand-picked musicians like Mike Garson and Reeves Gabrels role play cards and then starting the tape rolling. “Yeah, it was throwing the dice to see what would come out of it. It’s not so different from the way Brian and I worked on those late 70s albums, in that it was about not having expectations as to what we were going to do in the studio. The way to break down inhibitions as to what people should or shouldn’t be doing is to put them into roles. It’s like when you play charades, even the shyest person tends to become something else when they’re given a role to play and don’t have to talk through their own voice. This happens to musicians, they become far more experimental, and that’s how we got the strange atmosphere for this album.” So, if the music was spontaneous, does the same apply to your lyrical ideas and themes? “I had ideas of different subjects that I was interested in and still am. Coming to the end of the millennium, there’s a feeling that there’s a

strange kind of paganism being revisited in the West through the interest in things like piercings. People are trying to find some kind of spiritual value.

“There’s been so many artists over the last 20 years who’ve been getting more involved with the idea of the body as opposed to regular ideas on concrete, stone and wood. The body is becoming the new fabric of art, working on mortality. So, I typed up my feelings and attitudes on all of these different subjects, then I had my Mac computer randomise everything, then used what came out as a kind of fodder for my improvisation against the music.” To what extent does the album’s title, Outside, reflect the way you see yourself? “Not so much as I did when I was younger. Developing some sort of domestic life and returning to that situation prevents that. So, socially, I’m not so much an outsider as I used to be. But artistically, I’m still more interested in things on the periphery of the mainstream. My musical tastes tend to be out there a bit because I like the new vocabularies in the stranger stuff. I’m not interested in hearing things where I know what they mean. I like things that stimulate me intellectually, that are fresh. So, Outside pertains to that, and also the people in the storyline are on the outside of society.

“Another thing that inspired Brian [Eno] and I was we went to see a very famous mental hospital in Austria called Guging. It was set up as an experiment in the 50s by a doctor who saw a lot of his patients showed an orientation towards painting. So, he used a wing at the hospital where his patients could develop as artists and they’re now producing the most extraordinary, weird kind of work. That whole genre of art is now called ‘outsider’ art. “Brian and I visited there to soak up the atmosphere of working on the outside, where these people don’t pay attention to what the rules are. They’re only interested in putting themselves onto canvas. That straight through line into art is very exciting because these guys don’t give a fuck about you or what the art world thinks. It gave us a good atmosphere to take back into the studio.”

What was it like working with Eno again? “It was absolutely immediate within an hour of going into the studio, like we’d never stopped working together. We were drawn together in the first place because we always liked everything other than what was going on.

Biting bits off the edge and seeing what kind of monster you could make of that always interested us.”

With current mainstream rock ’n’ roll being so uninspiring, you’ve got to go to the edges. “I look at it optimistically as there’s a lot of really interesting things happening. A lot of it’s coming out of white music, which had a bad time in the States up until the beginning of the 90s, and with Nirvana and Pearl Jam there was a new exploration of what music meant to young people again. And in England, there are people like Tricky doing some extraordinary things, and that particular multicultural slant on music has always been fascinating. One of the things I loved doing in the late 70s was an amalgamation of soul and R&B music against very Euro-centric industrial sounds. It’s great to hear that happening in a genre in its own right. There are things happening, but you have to look a bit.” In white music at the moment there’s no cohesive or dominant movement or style. “Right, there’s a movement of non-move-ments. There’s never been such a period of individualism in terms of what you can say in music. I think that’s very healthy as I’m all for fragmentation, as I think it’s a much more accurate reality than the idea that there are certain rules and that things are black and white. “I think things are even more complex than we believe. If we were to realise the state of confusion that reality really is, we’d all give up. So, we have absolutes in everything, there’s one system of government and religion because it helps us believe we can steer a ship through our lives. What we’re actually doing is surfing along on chaos.” The fictional diary setting of Outside allowed you to slip into your favourite pastime of role playing various characters. “But this time I was in control. I didn’t go off with them outside of the studio because I’ve not played characters since the mid 70s. And it felt, while we were improvising and the cards that I was given by Brian said I was newscaster of this technological society, that I would have to develop characters to play out this many faceted story.” The plot of Outside is based on the diaries of art detective Nathan Adler, but it’s suspected murderer Leon Blank who gets the best songs. “Yeah, he’s my favourite. I guess because if my wife and I have a child it’s going to be

somewhere in Leon’s world. There’s always the innocent, the one the finger points at. And I wanted a youth, someone to take the story through, but I don’t know where it’s going as so much depends on the computer. “One of the overriding ambitions Brian and I have for this thing is, by the year 2000, we hope to have covered the last five years with a series of albums that in texture, at least, cover those five years. So, I don’t know where the story’s going to go because the year itself will help write the story, as well as the computer.”

Isn’t this idea of the end of the millennium very much like the false fears conjured up by Orwell’s 1984, where people were expecting things to happen and a mind-set to change? “Yeah, and I think they’re going to be totally fucked when they wake on January 1, 2000, and nothing’s changed. I think we’ve put up a huge psychological wall and that’s one of the reasons we’re reverting back to this neo-pagan-ism. At the end of every 100 year period people go crazy, so at the end of a 1,000 years they’re going to go bonkers. "That’s why we see so much of this ritual body art with the emphasis on blood and guts — people want to make some sort of sacrifice and they’re doing it artistically and, in reality, to start with a clean slate in the twenty-first century. That’s why popular culture is really useful, as people can explore their fears about death and sex. It is our gladiatorial arena and it’s culturally quite healthy, so more strength to Stallone and Sharon Stone.” I draw the line at Stallone.

“But you get my idea. It’s not gratuitous. I hate it when I hear moralists saying that the increase in violence is dreadful in popular culture. There’s stuff in the Grand Guignol theatre of nineteenth century France that would make their toes curl in terms of violence, rape, incest and child abuse. It’s been a continual part of popular culture, right back to the Greek Plays.” From the roles of Ziggy and the Thin White Duke in the 70s, to current Outside personalities like Ramona Stone and Touchshriek, you obviously prefer to write from the point of view of a character.

“Yes, and I also find it easier to project a fantastical situation. I’m not very good in linear fashion, it’s far better when I cut things up and create a new place and new people that don’t exist. I’m vaguely constructing metaphors, but they’re loosely knit as a lot of it is stream of consciousness, so I’m only vaguely aware of

what I’m putting into it. And I, for one, don’t want to be considered the author of my works. “I agree with the deconstructionists that it is the audience and the culture that interpret art, not the person who created it. Once the artist has created a work it is no longer his, in terms of what it means, because everyone brings their own luggage to a song or a piece of art. That’s why some people like something and others don't. “As I get older, I don’t want to be interpreting society for others because I know less and less the older I get. The major exploration an artist can make is to present how incredibly complex life is. In fact, what we do is create more questions and more confusion than there was before. Art doesn’t simplify anything, it makes it even more complex.” In the 70s, when you lived out your roles like Ziggy and the Thin White Duke beyond the stage, was that the result of youthful naivety? “It came out of a multitude of things, naivety went into it. When you’re young, and especially in those days, you really thought you were supposed to say something. If you were a singer and a writer you had to have something to write about. I was still writing in a cut-up fashion, but

trying to put form to it. Also, I was doing quite an amount of drugs and that’s not the best way to solve the situation. So, I was living in the eye of a vortex of pure and utter madness.” Was that cut-up process of scissors and glue as a songwriting process really that random? “Absolutely, and William Burroughs, with his cut-up methods of writing, has been my mentor for 20 years. When I was a kid I had an addiction to reading, and I came across American writers like Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, who I met in 1972. He struck a resonance with me in the way he abused reality that actually made more sense than reality itself. “When I met him he was such a great guy and we had great talks about stream of consciousness, and he put me on course for how I was going to work in the future. I used to get down with my scissors and glue and cut up everything I was writing into two and three word phrases, and basically put them in a hat and pull them out and see what sort of animal it was. It’s exciting as you never know what’s going to come up.” So, you must have a giggle when critics sit

around the table and work out what your songs are supposed to be about? “If they try and suss out what the song is according to my meaning then I have a giggle, but if they do their own interpretation, that fascinates me. Nothing gives me more pleasure than what people derive from my songs and have paralleled their lives against them. “Everything we do in culture is to be used. If we buy a chair we buy it because it says something about us. Why does a businessman get a haircut that’s a bit sticky on top? He does it because in his private fantasy he sees himself as a bit of an astronaut. “Art is to be used, not venerated. I’m very anti-museum, anti the idea that if we stand next to a painting long enough we’ll get the wisdom of the artist. That attitude to art is pathetic." You must’ve been chuffed that Nirvana used your art by covering ‘The Man Who Sold the World’? “I was over the moon. I’m quite aware of what weight my writing has had in Europe (I always felt I was fairly Euro-centric), but I didn’t feel that I was part of the American landscape, as they have their own thing. I kinda felt I was this eccentric limey that went and toured and

people came and looked at me curiously and then I’d go away again. I didn’t feel I was out there with Bobby Dylan and Bruce. It didn’t feel like my place.” But what about the soul Influenced Golden Years and Young Americans!? “I guess that was maybe one place we collided, but when I moved into the Euro-centric stuff with Eno, I felt we had parted ways. Yet, from the Nirvana point onwards, all of these other bands started coming out of the woodwork saying how they’d been influenced by those late 70s albums and Scary Monsters and Low. I started reading articles by Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots saying what an influence I’d had, and this was a revelation. “So, suddenly in the early 90s, stuff I thought didn’t have anything to do with America had actually been found by these new American bands. It’s been really gratifying, really a turn on.” Is there any reason you can think of why Cobain chose to cover ‘The Man Who Sold the World'? “It’s full of teenage angst. But I don’t know, I’d love to have met the guy. I’ve met his wife

because she was on the Andy Warhol movie, and she told me that album and Low were two of the few albums he kept throughout his life. I don’t think she said that to flatter because she’s not that kind of girl. So, I was knocked out that those two records were a serious part of his life.” He was the equivalent of Presley, Lennon and Rotten for this generation. “Yeah, and it’s up to every generation to create it’s own language and that means tearing down what was there before, and that’s a sign of growth. I get mad when I hear people saying the youth of today are so indifferent. It’s because they’re having to adapt to a society that’s so chaotic and fragmented, where it seems all power has been taken from them for making decisions in their lives. “The world isn’t allowing them the same luxury of time to look at things as we did, so they’re learning to scan the surface of things. Who’s to say that’s worse than looking at things in depth? If you’d asked kids from the 80s what music from that period they’d take with them for the rest of their lives they’d say Kylie Minogue or Paula Abdul. You must be crazy, there’s nothing in the 80s. But you ask the same question now and a lot of them will

say Pearl Jam and Nirvana. They’ve started a music and a vocab’ they can go with that will help them get through their lives. The worst we can do is deride and fail to try and understand where they’re coming from. “I’ve got a 24 year old son and I know about this first hand. I saw him treading water for a few years and then he blossomed when he understood what he needed out of life. Doesn’t every generation go through it? What is this story we’re hearing?: ‘Oh, the kids today, the music they listen to.’ I can’t believe I’m hearing that from the same people who were so adamant they were going to change the world 20 years ago.” A couple of years ago you met Brett Anderson of Suede and you admitted to past drug excesses. Why then? “Because I was asked about it, as simple as that. I’ve never been a secret man, but I’ve always been private and I rarely spout off about things unless somebody brings it up. At that time my whole life was entering a different phase. I’d just got married and there was a whole new buoyancy in my life, and it was wonderful getting over the 40s. I felt very fresh, so

I touched on the drug thing, but not as much as some of my contemporaries because I was bored with the endless litanies about what pains they went through. The fact is, I was pretty stoned out for nearly all of the 70s and part of the 80s.” And Suede obviously owe a lot to your music of the 70s. “They’re one of the more obvious role imitators, I just don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve certainly got substance, and for a new band they seem like quite an old band, what with Blur and Oasis scooting onto the horizon. “I was impressed with Suede’s stuff past the initial hype-gimmickry that happened in their first year — poor sods, but we all have to go through that. Brett is a very good lyricist, with a great sense of irony and quite a bit of poignancy as well. The newer artists like Suede are being extraordinarily eclectic. They’re using the whole history of rock as their palate, which is very post-modernist, which is what today’s society is about — picking at the whole pile of our cultural process and putting together these pieces of art, music and ways of life.” Do you see your career as one of continuity, or can it be divided into phases? “I see it more as an obsession to change, an

obsession to not trap myself in one genre so I can find what it is I’m writing about. That seems to be the only continuum in my work, the maddening need to catch up with myself.” Your life is more settled than ever. Who was it who said domesticity is the enemy of creativity? ‘‘Probably Picasso, the amount of fuck-ups he had in his private life [laughs].” But how do age and domestic contentment affect creativity in rock ’n’ roll? “I don’t think they have anything to do with it all, it’s a creative drive. You’re either addictively curious about the life you live or you’re not. It’s that simple. Your curiosity either dries up as you feel less able to cope, or it grows and your appetite gets bigger for the very basic reason: Why are we here? “As I get older, two questions come more into focus: When will I die and why am I here? I don’t look at them morbidly, but I find them fascinating. What an incredible game, what’s the point of it all?”

"I was living in the eye of a vortex of pure and utter madness."

GEORGE KAY