DAVID BOWIE - VIRGIN SUPERSTARS INTERVIEW - VIRGIN RADIO - AIRED 4 JULY 2004
David Bowie - text =blue
Ben Jones - text = grey
(actually evrything is separated into paragraphs, alternating between Jones and Bowie)
'Rebel Rebel' plays
It’s Sunday afternoon, we are back with Virgin Superstars. This has been an awesome weekend.. just a few weeks ago at the Nokia Isle of Wight festival. What we thought we’d do….he blew me out on the Sunday as he would rather watch the footy, but we’ve got him now in a hotel in London. It’s David Bowie how are you?
I’m not bad thanks Ben…not bad.
Good to see you. You’re looking very relaxed, very chilled out.
Yeah, yeah I’ve got a day off between gigs. We’re off to Norway and it’s nice to get a day off. I went out yesterday and I just spent the day walking, walking and walking, four or five hours.. something like that.
Really and you don’t get bothered, people don’t...?
Well, it's just in the hotel, you know.
(laughs).
So how are you feeling at this stage because it seems to me that you have been touring pretty much non-stop since the last time that I saw you which was the release of ‘Reality’ which was back in September. I mean, how do you keep your energy levels going?
It’s been ten months, something like that. I think the shows themselves are so long these days that they are becoming kind of aerobic sessions in themselves. They are like two and a half, three hour shows. Except for these festivals where we have to drop half the show. It comes out to about ninety minutes on festivals.
I mean ‘Reality’ is your 27th album, I’ve met and spoken to you now on many occasions. I know you don’t do this for the fame, I know you don’t do it for the financial rewards so what motivates you?
Oh I do, I do.
(laughs)
Don’t lie.
So what motivates you these days other than just cold hard cash David?
Well, I don’t think there is a logical answer to any of that at all. If it was an effort to write and record I think I probably wouldn’t do it.
Because you are incredibly prolific at this stage in your career. We had ‘Heathen’ in 2002 and then ‘Reality’ almost a year later.
Yes. It’s not a problem for me to write, I get such a lot of satisfaction out of putting music together. I suppose it is my forte. It is not a terribly important job, but it’s one that I think I do well and I just enjoy doing it. I don’t really see myself doing much else.
‘Space Oddity’ plays
You had that near impossible task on Sunday at the Isle of Wight festival of trying to cheer up 35,000 people who were thoroughly disappointed. We thought we’d nailed it and in the last two minutes of the final game, it just goes out of the window. So you come on, and with the opening notes of ‘Rebel Rebel’, that game was a distant memory.
They did cheer up quickly didn’t they (laughs).
Very, very quickly. Which is credit to you.
I suppose it’s because it wasn’t really a critical game I guess, you know. This one coming up with Switzerland is the….
(interrupts) It’s the French!
Yeah but, you know, it’s not like anybody was going to be knocked out of the thing. My presumption was that because they’d bought their tickets before they heard that football was going to be shown, they were kind of there for the music first and then the football - ’Oh good AND we get football’. So I think, you know… we were so well received there, it was just great anyway. It was a good hearted audience.
There were some great stories kicking about at these festivals about the acts playing. One of them was that you were staying at the Travel Inn.
I’ve still got ‘me’ key
With your fourteen inch plate by Alan Partridge
(laughs)
Funnily enough I didn’t see you in the lobby of the Travel Inn.
Funny that, no, it was probably because we were stuck on our ferry (laughs). We did get the ferry over both ways though because I just don’t do helicopters.
You know the Stereo’s just did a little impromptu gig on the ferry on the way across.
No, Kelly did did he? They have just been with us in the States you know. They did about a month over there playing gigs with us.
The other rumour about you was that you were coming in by helicopter.
No, I think Townshend did, I think he seriously did. No I just can’t stand them.
He can get away with it can’t he.
Well, he has got no fear, apparently. But I'm really not big on the flying thing anyway and helicopters for me are the..
Don’t like flying?
Not at all.
Which is a shame when you are midway through a world tour.
We’ve done pretty good so far because we’ve been able to do most of it in the States and each individual country we get to by coach, you know, which I don’t mind at all. I mean, I don’t mind sleep-overs in coaches, especially the American coaches. They are huge, like small cities on wheels. They really are fantastic.
Big plasma screen TV and all your DVD’s.
They are amazing. Yeah, DVD, flat screen…you know, they are amazing things.
It’s probably better than my house.
Well I tell you they are a lot better than some of the hotels you get in the States actually.
‘Heroes’ (live) plays
'Ziggy Stardust' plays
It must be a welcome change of scenery and a nice scenario, you know, to change the scenario of playing at a festival, having done so many of these live shows when you turn up at a venue….
We did one hundred and four shows up until these festivals and a good fifty of them had to have been all in America. And there is a point once you have left New York and L.A. and you are in the middle there, when every town looks identical. You really go through a Groundhog Day thing. I think coming over to do something like the Isle of Wight and then we go off to Norway and Finland where just everything changes every twenty four hours... and visually things change and the sensibility and the language changes, and your perspective is tweaked every day and you get more sort of invigorated about things. Because there's a point where you become a bit of a somnambulist when you sort of.. its only the shows that spark you back into life again. You can't…how many times can you do the same shopping mall (laughs).
‘where do we go in this town’?
(db with American accent) ‘You know we have the third biggest..’
‘I know, the third biggest shopping mall’
‘hey you happen to know that’.
And it’s always a shopping mall. That’s it. You ask, ‘what’s the best thing to see here’?
‘You know we’ve got the seventh biggest…’
‘Yeah…shopping mall’
‘Hey you know that?’
‘Yeah, I just guessed.’
‘Well, we’ve got a wave machine’
‘What’s that’....
It’s a big tank of water that makes waves and you pretend you are at the beach and you just go and stand by it and let it wave at you..and get wet.
You know the last time I saw you, you said to me that on paper ‘Reality’ was the album that you really wanted to play live…
Yes.
….now you are, say, one hundred and four shows into this tour, has it proven to be just that? I mean, what a live band you’ve got.
Well, yes, I mean we are working with sixty songs now so I guess the thing about playing…I suppose we were real ‘Reality’ heavy at the beginning of the tour because you want to really play the thing out and see how it works. Now we’ve dropped down to about four or five from ‘Reality’ but we’ve brought back in four or five from ‘Heathen’ and then we are pulling in stuff from the 90's as well, plus obscurities.
'I’m Afraid Of Americans' (live) plays
Do you get concerned that the show might end up simply as a sort of travelling greatest hits that people expect you to play?
That’s why we are not doing it all greatest hits. That’s why there is no 'Golden Years' or 'Space Oddity' or, hey, 'Let’s Dance'...you know I think we’ve done that about five times, maybe even more on the tour, but no it’s not a greatest hits show that’s the thing. I don’t think I could do it because you are stuck with the greatest big biggies. You know what, I really like a lot of them. I think they are really good songs and I am glad they are well known and I am proud that I wrote them. But if I had to play the same songs in the same order every night, it doesn’t matter if they were greatest hits. If they were the same bunch of obscure songs, the same twenty four obscure songs that I had to do every night for one hundred and four, or one hundred and thirty shows by the time we finish, I just couldn’t do it. I’d go crazy. So it’s not about the strength of the song itself. And there’s some that I thoroughly enjoy doing. ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ is a great song to sing.
'I’m Afraid Of Americans', I can tell you enjoy doing that as well.
Yeah I like those kinds of things. Well, there you go, I mean it is hardly a greatest hit. I think that is the thing. The set for me was really meant to amplify the work that I had done over a thirty five year period and I think it successfully does that.
Because there was a time when you sort of didn’t lap up your musical shadow, but now you play them because a) you enjoy them, b) you know the crowd enjoy them and c) you can rotate them from time to time.
Yeah, it is a harder crack of the whip to do it this way. It is an easy call to just do the well known songs you know. But I think what happens if you do do that, you are doing it for a different reason. You’ve really got to enjoy doing it.
I was surprised at how well ‘Disco King’ went down for example.
Yes.
Midway through the set you wanted to sort of sit back before… we know what’s coming towards the end…..
…Or any of those slowies, the ‘Loneliest Guy’ or something like that. I mean the audiences have been tremendously appreciative of those.
'Ashes to Ashes' plays.
'Let’s Dance' plays
The festival to me proved that, yes the young bands can rock. I am talking about bands like Jet and the Snow Patrol and the Stereos, but you know age is only a number. I mean The Who and your set were just unreal….
(laughs) It’s 57 actually. Age is 57.
You see The Who, you didn’t get chance to see them did you?
No, No.
Of course you’ve worked with Pete.
I saw them a couple of years ago in America at the Madison Square Garden so I kind of know where they are at at the moment. Actually I saw one of the last gigs before poor old John went.
But to play that festival, I guess where they almost started.
Absolutely yes.
Ok, yes it was a different site. There were 650,000 people there.
It was an historic thing.
Can you imagine that. 650,000 people on the Isle Of Wight?
(laughs) On the Isle Of Wight? no, I can’t imagine
There are only 150,000 people that live there.
It is an astonishing number. I remember doing something like that in the States. I have seen a crowd like that and that was at a festival we did, I think it was close on a million people. It was the largest crowd ever assembled for a festival. It was astonishing. And the mad thing about it is that the amplification system was worked in a way where it was staggered throughout the crowd right to the very back. So if somebody clapped here, it was like, you would see the clap go like a wave through the crowd so it was (demonstrates staggered clapping)..(laughs) It was absolutely astonishing.
So it appears then that rock can in fact keep you forever young.
Keep you waving apparently.
Because my Mum and Dad came, my girlfriend came. My girlfriend is in love with you. My Mum wanted to know, where do you get your clothes from because she thinks you have a fantastic stylist. I mean we are going through a scarf thing at the moment. We are going through a scarf phase.
(laughs) The scarf thing is happening yeah. I am working with these people from Brooklyn called the ‘Dethkillers of Bushwick’ who kind of..
Wow, not Top Shop.
No they are kind of.. they are really lovely young, funky, Hells Angely kind of people who went to art school.
(laughs).
That's very surprising
Yes that’s very funny isn’t it. And they are big on distressed. So they are kind of doing all these like really distressed incredibly expensive things with holes in. Not these. These are Levis.
You’ve got to have a pair of Levis haven’t you? Although I don’t know what they are doing at the moment, they just seem to have holes in jeans. It seems cool.
Apparently it is.
And airy.
This is a 501 pair. This is the original 501 pair look. I think they brought it out as a …. I don’t know, they sent them to me a few months ago. Apparently it was some anniversary of the 501. So they got photographs of the original pair that they had and reproduced them. They made five hundred and one pairs, naturally.
Naturally.
'China Girl' plays
I read a great article about you when I was in New York, probably at the launch of ‘Reality’. It was kind of saying that you have become as devoted to New York as Woody Allen. Obviously you recorded ‘Reality’ in Manhatten, and I think ‘Heathen’ was done…
Upstate…
Upstate New York
..and revealed a lot of feeling about being in New York.
Is that part of the world home for you now? Do you feel alien here in London?
No no, I am adapting to new London, because it is new London. There is such a lot of change. The East End has changed beyond belief, the West End has changed beyond belief…just in terms of structure as much as anything else. The buildings that have disappeared and the ones that have gone up in their place. Everything from the really bland awful office blocks to some of the Norman Foster and the Rogers things which I think are really quite great. I like them.
Do you?
Yeah, I like a lot of the new buildings.
Before we go, we’ve got to do some of these quickly if that’s alright.
Yeah whatever.
These are texts and emails from people from the weekend who came to the Isle of Wight festival.
Oh yeah.
This says ‘if you were to choose the line up for your own fantasy festival which five artists or bands would you most like to be there’
Oh lor that is incredibly hard isn’t it.
I know you are into British Sea Power and Grandaddy and Mercury Rev.
Very much so yeah, Grandaddy would have to be there. How long is this festival?
It can be as long as you like Dave.
Alright then it’s a quick one. I’d have the Pixies reform (laughs).
Well, come to ‘V’ – we’ll sort it out.
Oh, we are working with them in a couple of weeks out in Germany. We toured with them a couple of times back in the late 80’s early 90’s before they split up the first time. That is where I first got the contact with them. I became a major fan of theirs.
I have got loads of these. We could go on all night but we’ve got to go.
Alright.
It is, as always, an absolute pleasure to see you.
Good to see you.
Thank you so much for the Nokia Isle of Wight festival because it absolutely went down a storm. We loved it.
It was a lot of fun. And looking forward to ‘T in the Park’.
Yeah that’s gonna be good.
And Oxegen in Ireland.
The Scottish fans haven’t seen you and the Irish fans haven’t seen you for a while.
It’s gonna be great.
…so it’s gonna be good to get out to them as well. Thank you for your time.
Not at all.
And we will continue to play ‘Reality’ and 'New Killer Star' was awesome.
Thank you.
It’s David Bowie, it’s Virgin Superstars, here on Virgin Radio.
'All The Young Dudes' live plays
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Life handed us a pay check and we said, 'We worked harder than this!'