David Bowie: The Comedian

Feeling in the mood for something light-hearted today, so I decided to discuss Bowie The Comedian.
 
Bowie's skill as a comedian is by far his most underappreciated talent.  As previously discussed, Bowie has been quoted saying, "I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously." [x] Yet despite his light-hearted outlook on his own career, most critics seem to gloss over it when they talk about his music, quote his writings, or think about the influence he had on popular culture.

Moreover, there are many times in which I watch an interview where he tells a joke, but it falls flat because the interviewer doesn't think someone as great as rock god David Bowie could be so playful (or perhaps other rock stars aren't as funny).  All of this is an anomaly to me since any good comedian is extremely witty and intelligent, and just one look at any of Bowie's work shows plenty of intelligence and an abundance of humorous imagery ("TVC-15" anybody?).

However, thankfully not everyone is in the dark about this facet of Bowie, as any interview from those who knew or met him always emphasises his intelligence, generosity, and great sense of humour.

In an interview with photographer Bruce Weber about his experience with Bowie, he stated, "He’d always mention an obscure artist from the 18th century no one had heard of and he’d be bragging and saying he couldn’t believe we didn’t know them. But then one night at dinner he was going on about some artist, and Iman turned around and told him to shut up, saying, Who cares? And he’d be joking; he didn’t know anything about them either. One way I’d always describe him is that he was a real prankster—in a good way."

And Iman herself confirmed her late husband's comedic talents during a BowieNet chat from 1999:

Miriamsbirthdaytoo: Iman who is the most funniest at home? 

Iman: By far, David. But he's not really funny, he's just plain silly and that's the reason I married him. It's cabaret, cabaret, cabaret!

Additionally, a tweet by his son Duncan Jones showcases Bowie's good sense of humour.  He shared this picture with the caption, "When I was growing up, remember my dad reading this to me with unrestrained glee! Think it was his favourite John Lennon writing ever..."

And Bowie himself shows his true comic colours during his extremely weird and absolutely hilarious commencement address at Berklee College of Music.  My favourite part is when he tells different stories about him and John Lennon (yes, THAT John Lennon).  He makes himself sound completely dorky - an utter "dad joke" of all dad jokes.  My favourite part is when he describes meeting Lennon for the first time, "So John was sort of, 'Ohhh here comes another new one.' And I was sort of, 'It's John Lennon.  I don't know what to say.  Don't mention the Beatles.  You'll look really stupid.'  And he said, 'Hello Dave.'  And I said, 'I've got everything you've made.  Except the Beatles. [cringes]"

Not to mention his mock interview for "Extras", in which Bowie so successfully deadpans his response about working on the show that many people were originally confused that it was a joke.  He starts the interview by saying, "What made me want to do a British sitcom? Well, as you probably know, my background's in serious acting before I started doing the writing-singing thing.  So something like doing the "Extras" is a piece of cake for me, really.  It was fun working with Rick, showing him pointers, maybe new ways of approaching comedy that he hadn't really thought about before, I think."

And if you need any more proof, in yet another BowieNet chat interview (this one from 2002), Bowie directly shares his love of comedy:

Tripitaka01 in Onstage1: Who's your favorite comedian and what makes your wife laugh? 

David Bowie: I'm willing to sit in front of any comedian. I just love comedians. Harry Hill is quite surreal. My wife laughs at me except when I'm trying to be funny, then she just gets a puzzled look on her face. I am happy to report she understands British humour and we can watch the same comedy shows.

Therefore, as a huge fan of Bowie The Comedian, I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across another prime piece of Bowie comedy gold.  In this article from The Guardian (Jan 2016), William Boyd shared his experience in the Nat Tate hoax with David Bowie:

...in 1971, in my horrible room in my horrible student flat, I listened and relistened to Bowie’s album Hunky Dory in a mesmerised trance. If people had told me I would get to know him (a little bit) I would have laughed loudly in their faces. Then the loose continuity kicked in when I was asked to join the editorial board of Modern Painters and I found myself sitting beside him – curious but not overwhelmed, evidently – keenly scrutinising this other latest recruit to the masthead. At subsequent ed-board dinners we used to seek each other out because we were the new boys and over the next few years I saw quite a lot of him, a casual acquaintance that grew more close and intriguing when he became my publisher. Bowie had formed a small publishing company called 21 in order to publish art books and, in 1998, 21 published my fake biography Nat Tate: an American Artist 1928-1960 with the jacket blurb written by Bowie. 

Bowie’s life as an editor, art critic and writer for Modern Painters, artist, collector, publisher (and hoaxer) has inevitably taken second place to his astonishing renown and achievement as musician and global cultural icon but it was very important to him, I believe, and he relished the fact that his occupancy of these other roles had little to do with his global fame and star power. He was a genial and unassuming presence at the regular Modern Painters editorial meetings and when, in one of them, I suggested the idea of creating a fictional artist it was Bowie who said that the concept would work far more efficiently if it were published as a book. 

And so it came to be. I invented a dead American “artist” I called Nat Tate and wrote his biography. Then the team at Modern Painters and 21 transformed the text into a small, beautifully made and copiously illustrated artist’s monograph. However, there’s absolutely no denying the fact that it was Bowie’s participation in the eventual hoax that gave it media heft. He published the book, he organised the launch party (on April Fool’s Day, 1998) in Jeff Koons’s studio in Manhattan – Koons was a friend of Bowie – and it was Bowie who read out extracts of the book, absolutely deadpan, to the assembled New York glitterati. The clincher was his statement in the blurb that he was convinced that, “The small oil I picked up on Prince Street, New York, must indeed be one of the lost Third Panel Triptychs. The great sadness of this quiet and moving monograph is that the artist’s most profound dread – that God will make you an artist but only a mediocre artist – did not in retrospect apply to Nat Tate.” Who wouldn’t be swayed by that eloquent testimonial?

Just imagining The Serious Artist: David Bowie being an integral part in pulling off this massive April Fool's joke gives me great pleasure.  I can just imagine him deadpanning the "heartfelt" and intelligent sounding statement.  The image makes me laugh quite a lot.  It reminded me of what I wrote about yesterday - the trap young artists fall into of taking their work too seriously.  Would any of them ever imagine pulling off such a prank within the elite art world? I think not.  I have a sneaking suspicion that many of them would be too scared or stuffy to do so.  So here's to remembering not to take life (and your work) too seriously.