Update: New Bowie Interview Unlocked!
David Bowie Interview on Countdown in 1990
I always love Bowie's interviews, but I usually can barely stand the interviewer. I find myself cringing whenever the interviewer tries to question him about something like his sexuality, his personal life, or something equally intrusive. So I was pleasantly surprised to find an interview I enjoyed in which the interviewer stuck to questions about Bowie's work. Not to mention the fact that whenever Bowie discusses his work, it always has a level of articulation and intelligence that shocks me.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about this interview is how insightful Bowie was about music and new artists in 1990. 1988 saw the creation of his band, Tin Machine, and in 1989 they debuted their eponymous album before disbanding in 1992. This moment in Bowie history is considered by many to be the lowest point in his career, so his shrewd understanding of the difficulty new acts face, what it means to be an artist, and how the music industry operates is a striking contrast to the reality of his career at the time. Indeed, in the 1990s it was cool to say you didn't like the ultimate king of cool.
(Although I do want to note here that I love "Tin Machine". It doesn't reach the dizzying heights of albums like "'Heroes'" or "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars", but I think it deserves more credit than it gets. I would digress further, but once I started writing about Tin Machine I quickly realised that my thoughts should be in an entirely separate post).
Here's my transcript of the key parts of the interview (with my own commentary interspersed) that I think is still excellent advice for young artists. This interview just proves how visionary he truly was - 27 years later and all of this insight still applies:
BOWIE: When I was a younger guy and I had the opportunity to be either a musician or a painter, when I was thinking about being a painter it never occurred to me that I was gonna want to be a paint to make a big killing, you know, and make a lot of money. Because that wasn't what was happening then ... I mean our whole idea about painting being a career opportunity - it just wasn't there. And that seems to have happened over the last 10 or 15 years. And it's happened to rock far more as well - whereas once upon a time you really moved into rock because the whole idea of it was exciting, there were girls, there was, you know, a lot of fun times, and you could make some statements about something or other - and you'd think of something or other to make a statement about. But now guys very-approach it very seriously as a career opportunity - you know, it's as serious as banking these days ... for a lot of kids, you know. It's a whole different ball game.
What I love about this is that it reminds me not take my work too seriously. This is especially relevant advice for when I fall into the trap of feeling like I have to make a "masterpiece" or that I have to have a "grand statement" in my art in order to even hope to match up to the "Greats". I love how Bowie clearly contrasts this misconception with his simple analogy, "it's as serious as banking these days". It's laughable to think of art in the same light as banking, but the attitude we approach both can be stifling these days - and perhaps even damaging to creating good art. In fact, I would argue that artists who douse their work with a healthy sense of humour richly furnish their serious, complex, meaningful themes to create a greater work of art.
In literature, to surmise the entirety of the epic Harry Potter series, Rowling has Peeves sing, "We did it, we bashed them wee Potter's the one, and Voldy's gone moldy, so now let's have fun!" And in music, my friend Shane pointed out that Mozart, one of the most influential musicians of all time (who still has amazing selling power over 250 years later), was known for his comedic, light-hearted operas which sometimes included "racy" themes. There are even plenty of Bible stories where humourous things happen in the midst of serious narratives. For instance in Judges, which outlines Israel's serious rejection and abandonment of God, there are comedic moments like in 3:12-30 in which the judge Ehud kills Eglon, the extremely fat king of Moab.
Perhaps in the world today, new artists have to be somewhat "serious" in order to start their career. But I have a sneaking suspicion that most of them could stand to learn not to take everything so seriously. As Bowie stated, "I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously." [x] And what better example than the fact that his last live performance ever was the comedic song "Little Fat Man with a Pug-Nosed Face" for Ricky Gervais' "Extras" (2005-2007). [x]
INTERVIEWER: Has it changed the sound of music over the years?
Oh it has done! Yeah! It's changed - It's changed what's available, anyway, I mean it's very hard to pick up good music .... but generally, in America it's almost impossible to pick up good music on radio. Absolutely impossible. I mean you really are restricted to [underground radio stations], which is a tiny share of the market. Yeah I think it's a great struggle for any artist that really have a strong integrity with what they're doing. I think this is probably - even though we have more media, more access to media, more communications now, it's probably harder now to get good music played than it ever was in the 60s! God! The 60s were brimming over with good music on radio, you know, it was fantastic. Very difficult.
Think everybody's playing it safe right now at this moment? Radio stations are really playing it safe?
Oh absolutely! Because it's big bucks out there, you know? For making that right sound, you know?
Yet another strong insight by Bowie about how increased access to media doesn't mean artists have an easier time obtaining a platform with which to show their work - or even that more media means more quality work being circulated around. It's not an argument for an elitist structure in which only a handful of people are able to create art. But it is a shrewd observation about how increased ability to create and share content still comes with its own problems. To quote him from an interview ten years later,
"We live in a world where every headline is famous for 15 minutes. You know: “At War With America”, “Britney Spears Wears A T-Shirt”, “Saddam Is Still On The Loose” - they all get the same space, the same time. It creates a situation where all news seems equally important. I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. If you have an inquiring mind, you can really pick through it all and find some semblance of the things that you want to find. But I think, for most people, the process is just so fundamentally overwhelming that they’ll accept whatever they happen to be looking at that evening....I wonder about the great sense of indifference that seems to be creeping into the culture. I think at least partially it has to do with the paralysing factor of having to wade through so much information to arrive at some approximation of what is really happening. But it also has something to do with this feeling amongst people that the power has totally been taken away from them, that whatever they say is not going to affect the course of events. I imagine part of the appeal of “reality shows” is that people suddenly feel like they have a voice - they can say “Number three is a good dancer”, “Number four has a better ass”."
Now, you, yourself, you see the music as a real competitive business?
Oh, it tis.
Do you have competitors?
Uh, I would say that I stay out of it. I'd like to say that. Whether that's true or not I don't know - you could tell me from the outside, but I don't really feel that. I feel that, frankly, over the last 20 years or so, I'm pretty much my own man. Um, I suppose it's very cheeky of me to put meself in the same light, but if I look at Bob Dylan - he doesn't have competition! He's just Bob Dylan. Whether you like him or don't like him, whether he does good stuff or bad stuff, he's still Bob Dylan, and you don't compare him with anybody. It's not a competitive kind of thing. It's the same with the Stones. I know they create mock competitions for them, with other bands I've noticed in America it's been happening, but there's really no way that they can compare the stones with anyone. And I would hope that I'm - I think I probably am - in the same kind of position. I'm David Bowie. That's - I'm either good, a pile of shit, or, you know, I'm accessible, I'm not accessible, I'm obscure, very commercial, I change all the time, but I'm still ME, you know? No. [laughs] I think that was the - my answer is no, I don't feel that I am in a competition. I do feel it's very competitive for new artists, and they really have to make up their minds if they're gonna sort of present themselves as something to take off the shelf or whether they want to be in it - whether you wanna make music because you want to make the music or whether you want to use the music to obtain fame - if you wanna use it to become famous, then you'd just be shallow and it will be superfluous, you know. But if you're doing it because you want to do the music and fame comes out of it, that's a whole different thing.
What I love about this is how confident he is in his own work. He has no illusions about competing with others, and he doesn't shy away from his branding as David Bowie. I also think it's a healthy perspective to have. The business may be competitive, but you can also be collaborative. Indeed, Bowie was known for supporting new artists throughout his career (one of the most well-known being Arcade Fire). I think that kind of mentorship and community recognition can only come from a place of confidence in one's own work. I hope as an artist to one day have that level of self-awareness (whether I'm in "competition" or not) about and confidence in my own work.
In a way, most artists wanna do music plus they really enjoy the fame -
It's a good 50-50. It's a good 50-50. But you get bands like, I mean I don't know, but - there's creations now like the old late 50s-early 60s bands, like New Kids on the Block, say, an American band, where the music is there to create a vehicle for them. I mean it's not, um, surely they can't be in love with that music that they play, you know? I mean, you can't comprehend that - oh this is our life - Get outta here! You know?! They're cute boys in tight jeans. I mean, it's about selling to that particular market, you know. It's just like early Osmond stuff, you know, the Osmond's music wasn't their life. It enabled them to get a tv show, you know, and all that. It's like - that's all that whole early 60s syndrome has come back again, you know?
Bowie's amazingly accurate observations of entertainers seeking fame versus loving art have alway astounded me. But what's interesting is that there's more to this pithy comment than an artist scorning attention-seekers. As previously stated, Bowie was a fan of supporting up and coming artists. Instead, I think that this portion of the interview shows how artist and businessman can come together.
Although Bowie was the consummate writer, performer, and Artist, he was also a shrewd businessman (just look at Bowie Bonds or BowieNet). He once joked,
Interviewer: Do you consider yourself more of an artist or a businessman?
Bowie: An artist! But I tell everybody I am a business man. I'm a chronic liar. [x]
And like any businessman, he knew how to sell sex just as well as art.
For instance, his music video for "China Girl" features him and New Zeland model Geeling Ng completely naked. In fact, later in the interview, when asked about what the song "China Girl" reminded him of, Bowie stated, "Lyrically it's difficult - I just - I can only interpret that because I didn't write the lyrics....but as a portrayal, I can quite get into it, and for me personally, it reminds me of being in Sydney because there's a large Chinese community there. And we had a really attractive, wonderful girl who did the video there for it, so uh, I think about that! [laughs]". Not to mention his use of gay underground culture in most of his early work as Ziggy (see: "John, I'm Only Dancing"). He may be a serious artist who elevated rock music to new heights, but his original reasoning for getting into rock 'n' roll - for "fun times and the girls" - definitely still remained a light-hearted strain within all of his work.
So when he derisively comments on acts like "New Kids on the Block", rather than coming off as hypocritical, it instead feels like criticism from a veteran artist who, at the relatively young age (although not for the music industry) of 43, had already been in the music business for 25 years. Yes, sex sells, but there's a way to do it as part of your art and there's a way to be a sell-out. The music video for "China Girl" is actually a part of a larger commentary of the west's appropriation and fetishization of eastern culture. And "John, I'm Only Dancing" was a formative part of creating the modern music video and for paving the way for gay culture to be accepted in mainstream media.
So overall, I was definitely pleased to come across even more sage Bowie advice, and I hope it also helps young artists who are fresh out of school just like me.
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