David Bowie – The major 1976 interviews

David Bowie – 1976 interviews

Introduction

In 1975/1976, David Bowie gave two interviews which would be published in Rolling Stone in February and Playboy in September 1976. In them, he made a number of striking, and at times outright explosive, statements that would have far-reaching consequences for Bowie, and would also be partly responsible for the founding of organizations such as Rock Against Racism. Both interviews are reproduced in full below. Certain passages are highlighted in the main article.

Rolling Stone, February 12, 1976

Ground Control to Davy Jones

Despite a new album and tour, David Bowie claims to have rocked his last roll. It’s the devil’s music, he warns – sterile, fascist, downright dangerous. That’s why he’s abdicated his glitter throne for more promising careers. Like films. Or world domination. By Cameron Crowe

Corinne Schwab is probably the last holdover from David Bowie’s glitterglam phase – the days of Aladdin Sane, Moonage Daydream, gaudy costumes, hulking bodyguards, ex-manager Tony De Fries and the back-room-at-Max’s-Kansas-City mystique. In her three years as his secretary, Corinne has watched Bowie shrewdly work up to his most difficult move yet: the switch from cultish deco rocker to a wide-appeal film and recording star/entertainer. “I want to be a Frank Sinatra figure,” Bowie declares. “And I will succeed.”

Wheeling a cart in a Hollywood supermarket just three blocks from where David is working on his new LP, Station to Station, Corinne says she has no doubts about something so obvious as Bowie’s success in achieving his stated goal. The way she sees it, David has only one problem. “I’ve got to put more weight on that boy,” she sighs. And with that she carefully places eight quarts of extra-rich milk in the basket.

Down the street at Cherokee Studios, David Bowie is just back from three vice-free months in New Mexico where he starred in Nick Roeg’s film, The Man Who Fell to Earth. He is still glowing from the experience and, says Corinne, the healthiest he’s been in years. He is relaxed and almost humble as he scoots around the studio and directs his musicians (Carlos Alomar and Earl Slick, guitars; George Murray, bass and Dennis Davis, drums) through the songs. It is a complete evolution from the David Bowie of six months before. But then, of course, anything less than a total personality upheaval would be entirely out of character for him. “I love it,” he cracked several months earlier. “I’m really just my own little corporation of characters.”

He is actually anything one wants him to be at any given moment – a paranoid hustler, an arrogant opportunist, a versatile actor, a gentleman, maybe even a genius. He had, after all, made a warning up front. “Don’t expect to find the real me… the David Jones [his true name] underneath all this.”

May 1975 – It’s four in the morning, Hollywood time, and David Bowie is twitching with energy. He’s fidgeting, jabbing a cigarette in and out of his pursed lips, bouncing lightly on a stool behind the control board in a makeshift demo studio, staring through the glass at Iggy Pop.

Bowie has spent the last nine hours composing, producing and playing every instrument on the backing track, and it is finally time for Pop to do his bit. After all, this is Iggy’s demo.

Bowie touches a button and the room is filled with an ominous, dirgelike instrumental track. The shirtless Iggy listens intently for a moment, then approaches the mike. He has prepared no lyrics, and in the name of improv, he snarls:

You go out at night from your sixty dollar single down in West Hollywood
With your ripped off clothes that are bulging at the seams.
I can’t believe that you don’t know you look ugly.
I mean, are you really all that dumb?
I mean, I don’t want you to be that dumb, you know.
But you are.
You’re just dumb. Straight out of the cradle and into the hole with you.

He begins screaming.

When I walk through the do-wa.
I’m your new breed of who-wa.
We will nooowwwwwwwwww drink to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Bowie clutches his heart and beams like a proud father watching his kid in the school play. His whisper is full of wonder. “They just don’t appreciate Iggy.” he is saying. “He’s Lenny fucking Bruce and James Dean. When that adlib flow starts, there’s nobody like him. It’s verbal jazz, man!”

Pop himself is spent from his eruption; he listens only once to the completed cut and groggily proclaims it “the best thing I’ve ever done.” A woman acquaintance materializes, as if on cue, to drag him out by a handful of his platinum-dyed hair.

“Go and do what you will,” Bowie calls after them. “Just don’t be too long. We have a lot more work to do tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry,” Pop mumbles. “She never lets me kiss her anyway. Ever…”

“Good, Good.” David adds an afterthought. “Iggy, please keep healthy.”

Pop is still mumbling as he walks out the door. “I don’t believe my patience,” he says to no one in particular. “I just don’t believe my patience. She won’t even let me give her one little smooch…”

He leaves Bowie laughing, partly at the soporific antiwit, but mostly over a successful effort at producing the unproducible.

Less than a minute later, Iggy Pop is the farthest thing from his mind. Bowie’s blanched, bony face has already fallen into furrows. “I am very, very bored,” he says.

But he is still charged up. He jumps to his feet, skips to the next room and straps on an electric guitar. This is Bowie the rocker and the image is striking. He stands under the studio’s deep blue light, dressed like a scruffy street corner newsboy from the Thirties, bashing on a bright orange instrument that perfectly matches the hair peaking out from under his cap. Over the next couple of hours, Bowie moves at breakneck speed. Before long he has written and recorded a new song and entitled it “Movin’ On.” Only three months before, he and John Lennon had come up with the Number One single “Fame” in only 45 minutes. “Another song,” he groans. “That’s the last thing I need. I write an album a month as it is. I’ve already got two new albums in the can. Give me a break.” He is happy. It’s 7 a.m. and David Bowie is finally content as he locks up the studio.

Driving a borrowed VW bug through sluggish morning traffic toward the Hollywood Hills, his eyes never stop scanning the streets. He thrills over the massage parlors, billboards and stumbling itinerants. “L.A. is my favorite museum,” he says.

Bowie had fled New York by train (he does not fly) only five days earlier. After the numerous lawsuits, countersuits and injunctions over his split with manager Tony De Fries and the MainMan Companies, New York, he says, began to “close in on me.” Now he is staying at the home of Deep Purple bassist Glenn Hughes. While Purple is on tour, he’s been living there with Hughes’s housekeeper, Phil. When he lets himself into the house, David finds a stranger, Phil’s houseguest, drunk and half asleep on the sofa.

Bowie extends his hand tentatively. “Hello, I’m David. Who are you?”

The stranger is quickly aroused. Looking exactly as if he’d just awakened to find David Bowie standing in front of him, he pumps the hand wildly. “I’m Jack,” he says. “Hey man, fucking-A great to meet you. Phil told me you were staying here too. He’s asleep now… so how you fuckin’ doin’ anyway?”

After a quick breakfast spent dodging inquiries (“I hear you only play soul music now. That true?”), Bowie graciously explains that he’s late for an appointment. He leaves the house, hops into the car and shrieks: “Oh my God, what a cretin! He’s totally wrecked my nerves, that oaf! Christ!” He claims down and politely begins easing out of the planned interview – his first in more than three years. He begs exhaustion after two full days without sleep. “Why don’t I just drop you off at your hotel and we can get together next week?” He has already swung into the direction of the Beverly Wilshire. “You know, I may even check myself into the hotel for a day of sleep. No one will know where I am, no one will bother me… yes, that is exactly what I’ll do.” At the front desk, however, he hears that guitarist Ron Wood is staying in Room 207, and Bowie decides to pay his old friend a visit. He procures a fine champagne and raps on the door.

Wood has just fallen asleep, but is glad to see Bowie nonetheless. They exchange stories on what they’re up to in L.A., then settle down to listen to a cassette of the Jeff Beck Group live at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom. Sprawled across the hotel room bed, Bowie is by now well into his fifth or sixth wind. And the interview is on. “Well,” he asks, “what do you want to talk about?” One mentions the MainMan lawsuits.

Bowie’s speech assumes a quiet, studied tone. “The split had been building up for some time. For the last year and a half, I’ve had no empathy with them whatsoever. It took me that long to stop touring and come back to finding out where the office was really at. I guess it was a bit hard for them to come to terms with what I wanted to do. A lot of people who I never even met got involved. I grew to dislike their attitude. So I just said goodbye. No, of course, it isn’t that simple, but I’m going to make it that simple. It’s not going to bother me. I’ll survive. I’m far from broke. I’m free.” (Reached at the New York MainMan offices, De Fries refused to comment.)

I’ve never been so happy,” Bowie says. “I’ve got that good old ‘I’m gonna change the world’ thine back again. I had that once. I was a strong idealist once, then when I saw all my efforts being mistranslated. I turned into an avid pessimist. A manic depressive. Now I feel strong mentally again. You could probably hear from Young Americans that I’m on an upper. It’s the first record I’ve actually liked since Hunky Dory.

“Basically I haven’t liked a lot of the music I’ve been doing the past few years. I forgot that I’m not a musician and never have been. I’ve always wanted to be a film director, so unconsciously the two mediums got amalgamated. I was trying to put cinematic concepts into an audio staging. It doesn’t work.”

At the time, Bowie had already signed the contracts for his film debut in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Not that director Nick Roeg (whose previous credits include Far from the Madding Crowd, Walkabout, Don’t Look Back and Performance) had an easy time procuring his star. David disliked the script sent him but was fascinated by the fact that Roeg had waited eight hours for him after he forgot an appointment. The two held an eight-hour conversation lasting into the next afternoon and Bowie was sold. “It didn’t take long for me to realize the man was a genius. He’s at a level of understanding of art that tremendously overshadows me. I was and still am in awe of Roeg. Total awe.” Still, parts of the script were rewritten.

Before he fell to earth, Bowie had been reported ready to star with Elizabeth Taylor in Bluebird. “I never said that,” David counters, “Elizabeth Taylor did. It was her idea for me to be doing the film. I read the script though and it was very dry. I mean she was a nice woman and all, even if I didn’t get much of a chance to get to know her. She did tell me I reminded her of James Dean – that endeared me to her – but her script was so… boring. My own films are more important anyway.”

Bowie has been voraciously writing screenplays and scenarios ever since his three-month Diamond Dogs tour of two years ago. His first completed script is Dogs, a film which could star Terence Stamp and Iggy Pop if Bowie can work it out. David is especially amused by his casting. “Terence is going to be Iggy’s father,” he titters. “Isn’t that lovely? I can’t wait to direct it.

“I think, you see, that the most talented actors around are all in rock & roll. Iggy never should have been a rock & roll singer, he’s an actor. Dave Johansen [the former New York Doll] is an actor. A renaissance in filmmaking is going to come from rock. Not because of it, but despite it. I’ll tell you, I’ve got nothing to do with music. I’ve always interpreted or played roles with my songs.”

Ron Wood, who’s been quietly listening all along, comes alive. “Why did you get into rock & roll, then?” he asks.

“Rock & roll is a very accessible medium for any young artist. Don’t you think so? I like music but it’s not my life by any stretch of the imagination. I mean I was a painter before, but as a painter I couldn’t make enough money to live on. So I went into advertising and that was awful. That was the worst. I got out of that and tried rock & roll because it seemed like an enjoyable way of making my money and taking four or five years out to decide what I really wanted to do. I have no ideals on being a starving artist at all.”

“Same as me,” Wood chortles. “Otherwise we’d both still be in art school, eh?”

“Absolutely.” Assured that Wood is an interested listener, Bowie settles into a monologue:

“It’s interesting how this all started. At the time I did Aladdin Sane, all I had was a small cult audience in England from Hunky Dory. I think it was out of curiosity that I began wondering what it would be like to be a rock & roll star. So basically, I wrote a script and played it out as Ziggy Stardust onstage and on record. I mean it when I say I didn’t like all those albums – Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups, Diamond Dogs, David Live. It wasn’t a matter of liking them, it was ‘Did they work or not?’ Yes, they worked. They kept the trip going. Now. I’m all through with rock & roll. Finished. I’ve rocked my roll. It was great fun while it lasted but I won’t do it again.”

One can assume then, that Bowie is asking for a separation from the “Glitter Rock King” tag?

David is offended by the notion. “Not at all. I’m very proud of that tag. That’s what the public’s made me and that’s what I am. Who am I to question that? I am the King of Glitter Rock, aren’t I, Ron?”

“The reigning king.” Wood goes to his writing desk and scribbles. “I don’t like giving people tags,” he cackles, “but here. For the king.” He hands Bowie a $15 price tag, on the back of which he’s written “King of Glitter Rock.”

“Fifteen dollars!” Bowie deadpans. “Well, I guess glitter rock was always cheap anyway.” A full minute is spent in laughter, then Bowie abruptly turns skittish and paranoid. “I keep drifting off.” He admits to being tired. “My thought forms are already fragmented, to say the least. I’ve had to do ctitups on my writing for some time so that I might be able to put it all back into some coherent form again. My actual writing doesn’t make a tremendous amount of sense… frankly, I’m surprised Young Americans has done so well. I really, honestly and truly, don’t know how much longer my albums will sell. I think they’re going to get more diversified, more extreme and radical right along with my writing. And I really don’t give a shit… ” Finally Bowie bows:

“Could I have a little break? I can’t go on like this. Just sitting here, talking… it wears me out.”

David Bowie – Rolling Stone 1976 – Excerpt from The Return Of The White Duke

June 1975 – A straw hat cocked lazily over one eye, David is sitting cross-legged against the wall in a small, candle-lit, book-lined room. The framed cover photo from Aladdin Sane hangs above his head in direct juxtaposition. It is one of his favorite ploys – striking not only poses but whole portraits.

It’s been three weeks since the last meeting, and he’s moved from Hughes’s house into the more centrally located Hollywood home of lawyer and former booking agent Michael Lippman. Bowie and Iggy never did make it back into the studio. Pop slept past the booked time, called up drunk several nights later and when Bowie told him to “go away” – meaning “hang up” – Iggy did just that. Now he’s disappeared. “I hope he’s not dead,” says Bowie, “he’s not a good act.”

Bowie announces that he’s got a new project, his autobiography. “I’ve still not read an autobiography by a rock person that had the same degree of presumptuousness and arrogance that a rock & roll record used to have. So I’ve decided to write my autobiography as a way of life. It may be a series of books. I’m so incredibly methodical that I would be able to categorize each section and make it a bleedin’ encyclopedia. You know what I mean? David Bowie as the microcosm of all matter.”

If the first chapter is any indication, The Return of the Thin White Duke is more telling of Bowie’s “fragmented mind” than of his life story. It is a series of sketchy self-portraits and isolated incidents apparently strung together in random, probably cutout order. Despite David’s enthusiasm, one suspects it may never outlast his abbreviated attention span. But it’s a good idea. At 29, Bowie’s life is already perfect fodder for an autobiography.

The son of a children’s-home publicist, David Jones grew up prowling the tough neighborhoods in the south of London. One fistfight paralyzed his left pupil. Today, caught at a certain angle, it looks like a clear marble. Eye operations kept him prostrate for the better part of his 16th year. During the same bedridden time, his brother Terry, six years David’s senior, was committed to a mental institution. It was then, he remembers, that he began to draw up the blueprint for David Bowie.

“Who knows? Maybe I’m insane too, it runs in my family, but I always had a repulsive sort of need to be something more than human. I felt very very puny as a human. I thought. ‘Fuck that. I want to be a Superman.’ I guess I realized very early that man isn’t a very clever mechanism. I wanted to make myself better. I always thought that I should change all the time… I know for a fact that my personality now is totally different to what it was then. I took a look at my thoughts, my appearance, my expressions, my mannerisms and idiosyncrasies and didn’t like them. So I stripped myself down, chucked things out and replaced them with a completely new personality. When I heard someone say something intelligent. I used it later as if it were my own. When I saw a quality in someone that I liked. I took it. I still do that. All the time. It’s just like a car, man, replacing parts.”

Bowie learned to apply this theory to his music. “If I’d been an original thinker. I’d never have been in rock & roll. There’s no new was of saying anything.”

He recalls himself as a “trendy mod” through his late teens. “I was never a flower child. Look what’s happened to them with all their love and peace. They’ve grown up into the SLA kidnapping Patty Hearst and the like. I’d been into meditation years before it became fashionable through Kerouac and Ferlinghetti. I was always a sort of throwback to the Beat period in my early thinking. And when the hippies came along with all their funny tie-dyes and things, it all seemed naive and wrong. It didn’t have a backbone. I hate weak things. I can’t stand weakness. I wanted to hit everybody that came along wearing love beads.”

“I never got into acid either. I did it three or four times and it was colorful, but my own imagination was already richer. I never got into grass at all. Hash for a time, but never grass. I guess drugs have been a part of my life for the past ten years, but never anything very heavy… I’ve had short flirtations with smack and things, but it was only for the mystery and the enigma. I like fast drugs. I hate anything that slows me down.”

A high school dropout, David had already changed his name and gone through a number of pop groups when he met his wife Angela. She was the girlfriend of a Mercury Records talent scout who refused to sign David. Later, she pulled strings and he got a contract with the label. Within months he had a hit with his first single, “Space Oddity.”

“I married her,” David explains, “because she was one of the few women [his emphasis] that I was capable of living with for more than a week. We never suffocated each other at all. We always bounced around. No. I don’t think we fell in love. I’ve never been in love, thank God. Love is a disease that breeds jealousy, anxiety and brute anger. Everything but love. It’s a bit like Christianity. That never happened to me and Angie. She’s a remarkably pleasant girl to keep coming back to and, for me, always will be. I mean, there’s nobody… I’m very demanding sometimes. Not physically, but mentally. I’m very intense about anything I do. I scare away most people that I’ve lived with.”

In 1971, the Bowies had a son, named Zowie. Having a child, Bowie says, “pleased my ego a lot. I think Zowie’s a survivor. He’s very definitely an independent person, of his own choosing, it seems. And I find it quite easy to think of him not as mine or as Angie’s, but as Gibran has said, ‘a little plant.’ I don’t feel very paternal about him.”

Bowie adamantly states that he is still and always will be bisexual. And he will not deny that he has fully exploited the media potential of that. “I remember the first time it got out. Somebody asked me in an interview if I ever had a gay experience and I said, ‘Yes, of course, I am a bisexual.’ The guy didn’t know what I meant. He gave me this horrified look of ‘Oh my God, that means he’s got a cock and a cunt.’ I had no idea my sexuality would get so widely publicized. It was just a very sort of off-the-cuff little remark. Best thing I ever said, I suppose.”

He returns to the subject of his autobiography: “It’s not that I have anything to say, it’s a matter of laying antistyle on people and making them upset. ‘Who the hell is Bowie to think he deserves an encyclopedia?’ But it’s not what you actually put on the canvas, it’s the reason why you did it. Like the Andy Warhol thing. It wasn’t why he painted a Campbell’s soup can. It was ‘What sort of man paints a Campbell’s soup can?’ That’s what aggravates people. That’s the premise behind antistyle. And antistyle is the premise behind me.

“I already consider myself responsible for a whole new school of pretension. Really. I’m quite serious about that. The only thing that seems to shock anybody anymore is something that’s pretentious or kitsch. Unless you take things to extremes nobody will believe or pay attention to you. You have to hit them on the head and pretension does the trick. It shocks as much as a Dylanesque thing did ten years ago.”

Suddenly – always suddenly – David is on his feet and rushing to a nearby picture window. He thinks he’s seen a body fall from the sky. “I’ve got to do this,” he says, pulling a shade down on the window. A ballpoint-penned star has been crudely drawn on the inside. Below it is the word “Aum.” Bowie lights a black candle on his dresser and immediately blows it out to leave a thin trail of smoke floating upward. “Don’t let me scare the pants off you. It’s only protective. I’ve been getting a little trouble from… the neighbors.”

Something has triggered the emergence of another David Bowie – the apocalyptic theorizer in albums ranging from Ziggy to Diamond Dogs. “I think we are due for a revival of God awareness. Not a wishy-washy kind of fey, flower-child thing, but a very medieval, firm-handed masculine God awareness where we will go out and make the world right again. I’m feeling more and more that way.

Rock & roll has been really bringing me down lately. It’s in great danger of becoming an immobile, sterile fascist that constantly spews its propaganda on every arm of the media. It rules and dictates a level of thought and clarity of intelligence that you’ll never raise above. You don’t have a fucking chance to hear Beethoven on any radio station anymore. You’ve got to listen to the O’Jays. I mean, disco music is great. I used disco to get my first Number One single [“Fame”] but it’s an escapist’s way out. It’s musical soma. Rock & roll too – it will occupy and destroy you that way. It lets in lower elements and shadows that I don’t think are necessary. Rock has always been the devil’s music. You can’t convince me that it isn’t.”

How about specifics? Is Mick Jagger evil?

“Mick himself? Oh Lord no. He’s not unlike Elton John, who represents the token queen – like Liberace used to. No, I don’t think Mick is evil at all. He represents the sort of harmless, bourgeois kind of evil that one can accept with a shrug.

“I’ve got this thing that rock shouldn’t be overstated. I did my bit of Ziggy, I made my explosion and that’s it. When the artist and song is novel and new and enigmatic, then that’s good. That’s when it’s strong, But when it has a familiarity and understanding, it’s no longer rock & roll.

“I wasn’t at all surprised Aladdin Sane made my career. I packaged a totally credible plastic rock star – much better than any sort of Monkees fabrication. My plastic rocker was much more plastic than anybody’s.

“I fell for Ziggy too. It was quite easy to become obsessed night and day with the character. I became Ziggy Stardust. David Bowie went totally out the window. Everybody was convincing me that I was a Messiah, especially on that first American tour. I got hopelessly lost in the fantasy. I could have been Hitler in England. Wouldn’t have been hard. Concerts alone got so enormously frightening that even the papers were saying, ‘This ain’t rock music, this is bloody Hitler! Something must be done!’ And they were right. It was awesome. Actually, I wonder… I think I might have been a bloody good Hitler. I’d be an excellent dictator. Very eccentric and quite mad.”

“I was thinking a few days ago that when I got bored with films and had far too many showings in art galleries of my paintings and sculptures, maybe I should be prime minister of England. I wouldn’t mind being the first English president of the United States either. I’m certainly right wing enough. Do you think Jerry would swap positions with me? I think that would be lovely, don’t you?”

Chain-smoking Rothman after Rothman, Bowie is now just spilling words and concepts out without regard for their ramifications. His sole target now is impact. Shock. Effect.

“Listen, I mean it. I’ll bloody lead this country, make it a great fucking nation. I can’t exist happily and make records and be safe because, man, it’s depressing… Everyone whimpering about the state of things. So what do I do? Just sit by and wait for someone else to sort it all out? No way. The masses are silly. Just look at the cultural leaders of today. Once they were Humphrey Bogart, James Dean and Elvis Presley. Now it’s Robert Redford and John Denver… and these are supposed to be the degenerate Seventies. It doesn’t look good for America. They let people like me trample all over their country.”

“I have this dream. I’d like to host a satellite television show and invite all the biggest bands onto one stage. Then I’d come out with a great big wheelbarrow of machine guns and ask them, ‘Now how many of you are gonna do anything? How many are going to pick up a gun and how many of you are gonna cling to your guitars?'”

Before he can pick up the thread again one feels the need to question Bowie on the seriousness of his tirades. He answers with an impatient huff that seems to ask, how much longer will it take you silly mortals to understand? “I have to carry through with my conviction that the artist is also the medium. The only way that I can be this abrasive as a person is to be this confoundedly arrogant and forthright with my point of view. I can only do that by believing in my point of view with sincerity. And I do. I honestly believe everything that I’ve said. I believe that rock & roll is dangerous. It could well bring about a very evil feeling in the West. I do want to rule the world. There’s always a pendulum swing, right? Well, we’ve had the high with rock. It’s got to go the other way now. And that’s where I see it heading, bringing about the dark era. That we weenie boys with our makeup and funny clothes and whatnot, I feel that we’re only heralding something even darker than ourselves. ‘Cause we were never dark ourselves. We just bounded around the periphery. Lou [Reed] is not evil. Iggy isn’t evil. There’s something else. And it’s evil because it supplements people’s sensitivity. Just look at Led Zeppelin. Our natural inclination to be adventurous with our brains is being repressed. I don’t like or approve of loud rock & roll.”

That’s why he broke up his backing group, the Spiders from Mars. “I gave them more life than I intended. And I was also getting honestly bored. There’s only so much you can do with that kind of a band. I wanted no more to do with that loud thing. Hurt my ears. Wasn’t pleasing my mind too much either. Since then, poor Mick [Ronson] has completely missed his vocation. From his faulty solo career right on down. I’ve been disappointed. He could have been amazing. I just don’t know. Christ, I haven’t spoken properly with him in years. I wonder if he’s changed.”

One reminds Bowie of a remark Ronson made to Melody Maker that “David needs someone around him to say ‘Fuck off, you’re stupid.’ He needs one person who won’t bow to him…”

Bowie grins. “I’ve got God. Who’s Mick got?” He turns stern. “I promised myself I wouldn’t talk about rock & roll. Now look what I’ve done. Let’s talk about something else.” He picks his appearance on the Grammy awards as the next topic. “Did you see it? It’s on videotape in the next room if you didn’t. You really should see it. It’s only a minute. You see, the Grammies were very significant for me. It was like walking a tightrope. There were mostly aging middle-class show business people in that audience. It was a question of entertaining them or coming off like just another rock singer. I really did feel I was David Bowie and not a rock singer. It was very strange. Strange, strange, strange.”

“There are very few who have broken out of rock and into any other medium, much less films. I’m determined to do it. The media should be used. You can’t let it use you, which is what is happening to the majority of rock stars around. And as for touring, I honestly believe that it kills my art. I will never ever tour again.”

Several months later, Bowie apparently changed his mind and announced that on February 2nd he would kick off a 34-date North American tour. “The tour,” Bowie explained, “will make an obscenely large amount of money which I desperately need to set up my media-production company, Bewlay Bros.”

The tour is a turnabout for Bowie; the production company is consistent with his previously stated goal of breaking the “dreaded circle” of being a star enmeshed in the music business. “I’m optimistic enough to think that of any rock singer, I’ve got a better chance of escaping. One person who I admire, quite honestly, is Frank Sinatra. He’s broken out. He hates the fucking music business game and so do I. I refuse to play it. I’ve never made an album capitalizing on the success of the previous one.”

“I want to be an impact on myself. I’d much rather take chances than stay safe. Like in the movie I’m doing. Everything’s against me. I’m going into a dead straight, nonmusical role. No singing. And I will be bloody good. I have to be. ‘Cause if I ain’t, that’s it. Another rock singer… is still a rock singer. If that’s the case, I want to go out like Vince Taylor.”

Vince Taylor?

“Yeah. He was the inspiration for Ziggy. Vince Taylor was an American rock & roll star from the Sixties who was slowly going crazy. Finally, he fired his band and went onstage one night in a white sheet. He told the audience to rejoice, that he was Jesus. They put him away.” David Bowie straightens up, removes the straw hat and rakes several fingers through his orange hair.

“Think you can use any of that?”

Cameron Crowe, Rolling Stone, February 12, 1976

Playboy, September 1976

A candid conversation with the actor, rock singer and sexual switch-hitter

He was once a scruffy, honey-haired folk singer. Then the foppish leader of a Beatles-prototype pop band, The Buzz. Then an adamantly bisexual balladeer. Then a spacey, cropped-red-haired androgynous guitarist backed by a band called the Spiders from Mars. Then a soul singer. Then a movie actor… and finally, a smartly conservative, Sinatraesque entertainer. David Bowie, it’s safe to say, would do anything to make it. And now that he has made it, he’ll do anything to stay there.

At 29, David Bowie (born David Jones in Brixton, England) is far more than another rock star. He is a self-designed media manipulator who knows neither tact nor intimidation. There is but one objective to his bizarrely eclectic career–attention. Without it, he would surely wither and die. Before a crowd of paying customers, if possible.

In April 1975, Bowie splashily announced he had given up on rock. “I’ve rocked my roll,” is the way he put it. “It’s a boring dead end. There will be no more rock ‘n’ roll records or tours from me. The last thing I want to be is some useless fucking rock singer.” That was the second time he’d made such a statement. He had first announced a rock retirement during his encore at a huge outdoor London concert in 1973, after which he went on to release “Diamond Dogs” and to book a three-month American tour.

This time, Bowie ate his words of farewell even more spectacularly. Last November, he arranged an interview by satellite from his Los Angeles home with England’s most popular talk-show host, Russell Harty, to explain that he had a new album of double-fisted rock ‘n’ roll, “Station to Station.” What’s more, Bowie rambled on, he would soon be embarking on a six-month world-wide concert blitz. The government of Spain, meanwhile, demanded emergency use of the satellite to tell the world that Generalissimo Franco had died. Bowie, always the bad boy, refused to give it up.

Bowie is not the most loved man in the music business. Still, he has made his mark. When he first appeared on an American stage, in 1972, he was humping his guitarist, wearing full make-up and sporting lavishly feminine costumes. He instantly created a new genre–glamor rock–that yanked rock out of its innocence. Mick Jagger and The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Alice Cooper, Todd Rundgren, Lou Reed and a host of glitter bands, such as Queen, Roxy Music, Slade, T. Rex and Cockney Rebel, followed suit.

Once Bowie had turned everybody’s head on that first U.S. tour, it wasn’t long before his then-current LP about a doomed rock demigod, “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars,” shot to the top of the charts. His three previous albums–all stiffs in their day–began selling wildly. The press leaped to proclaim Bowie the Next Big Thing we’d all been craving since the demise of the Beatles. Just as quickly, it turned to attack the phenomenon. There was, it seemed, something about Bowie’s bisexual band wagon that wasn’t quite… healthy.

Musicians and critics banded together to revolt against Bowie’s decadence. But Bowie had already assumed a new, equally ludicrous facade–disco soul. Suddenly, this frail, faggy hard rocker was bumping and grinding out rhythm-and-blues. And it worked. Bowie racked up two huge hits, “Young Americans” and “Fame.” Then came the ultimate acceptance: He became one of the very few whites ever to be invited to appear on “Soul Train.”

To accommodate the wide base of his success, Bowie has since assumed the posture of grand old entertainer, wearing black formal trousers and vest over a white shirt. “Station to Station” reached the sacred gold status of $500,000 worth sold. His subsequent world tour, just completed, was a sellout at every stop.

Now, in Bowie’s biggest year yet, the onetime glitter king/queen of rock is threatening to keep a promise for once. He has always claimed to be a genuine film star, and his performance in Nicolas (“Walkabout,” “Don’t Look Now,” “Performance”) Roeg’s recent release, “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” has won lavish praise. The choice of Bowie to play the title role was, according to The New York Times, “inspired. Mr. Bowie gives an extraordinary performance.”

We figured it was about time to catch up with Bowie’s crusade – as he has explained it – to rule the world. Free-lance journalist and Rolling Stone contributing editor Cameron Crowe was sent to visit with the most arrogant superstar to invade the media in the Seventies. His report:

“My talks with Bowie began as far back as early 1975. Few of our sessions were marathon affairs. No matter how stimulating the conversation, after any longer than an hour of sitting still, Bowie could barely contain himself. ‘Can we just take a short break?’ he’d blurt. Not waiting for a reply, he would then shoot to his feet and dart in another direction: sometimes to write a song or two, other times to dash off a painting. In one instance, he ended a session by asking for a random list of 20 items. I gave it to him. He studied the list for ten seconds, handed it back and recited it from memory. Backward and forward.

“Bowie is expertly charming, whether in the company of a stuffy film executive, another musician or a complete stranger. He is fully aware that he is a sensational quote machine. The more shocking his revelation, from his homosexual encounters to his fascist leanings, the wider his grin. He knows exactly what interviewers consider good copy; and he gives them precisely that. The truth is probably inconsequential.”

PLAYBOY: Let’s start with the one question you’ve always seemed to hedge: How much of your bisexuality is fact and how much is gimmick?

BOWIE: It’s true – I am a bisexual. But I can’t deny that I’ve used that fact very well. I suppose it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Fun, too. We’ll talk all about it.

PLAYBOY: Why do you say it’s the best thing that ever happened to you?

BOWIE: Well, for one thing, girls are always presuming that I’ve kept my heterosexual virginity for some reason. So I’ve had all these girls try to get me over to the other side again: “C’mon, David, it isn’t all that bad. I’ll show you.” Or, better yet, “We’ll show you.” I always play dumb.

On the other hand – I’m sure you want to know about the other hand as well – when I was 14, sex suddenly became all-important to me. It didn’t really matter who or what it was with, as long as it was a sexual experience. So it was some very pretty boy in class in some school or other that I took home and neatly fucked on my bed upstairs. And that was it. My first thought was, Well, if I ever get sent to prison, I’ll know how to keep happy.

PLAYBOY: Which wouldn’t give much slack to your straighter cellmates.

BOWIE: I’ve always been very chauvinistic, even in my boy-obsessed days. But I was always a gentleman. I always treated my boys like real ladies. Always escorted them properly and, in fact, I suppose if I were a lot older–like 40 or 50 – I’d be a wonderful sugar daddy to some little queen down in Kensington. I’d have a houseboy named Richard to order around.

PLAYBOY: How much of that are we supposed to believe? Your former publicist, the celebrated ex-groupie Cherry Vanilla, says she’s slept with you and that you’re not gay at all. She says you just let people think you like guys.

BOWIE: Oh, I’d love to meet this impostor she’s talking about. It sure ain’t me. That’s actually a lovely quote. Cherry’s almost as good as I am at using the media.

PLAYBOY: Yet the fact remains that you’ve never been seen with a male lover. Why?

BOWIE: Oh, Lord, I got over being a queen quite a long time ago. For a while, it was pretty much 50-50; and now the only time it tempts me is when I go over to Japan. There are such beautiful-looking little boys over there. Little boys? Not that little. About 18 or 19. They have a wonderful sort of mentality. They’re all queens until they reach 25, then suddenly they become samurai, get married and have thousands of children. I love it.

PLAYBOY: Why, at a time when nobody else in rock would have dared allude to it, did you choose to exploit bisexuality?

BOWIE: I would say that America forced me into it. Someone asked me in an interview once–I believe it was in ’71–if I were gay. I said, “No, I’m bisexual.” The guy, a writer for one of the English trades, had no idea what the term meant. So I explained it to him. It was all printed–and that’s where it started. It’s so nostalgic now, isn’t it? ‘Seventy-one was a good American year. Sex was still shocking. Everybody wanted to see the freak. But they were so ignorant about what I was doing. There was very little talk of bisexuality or gay power before I came along. Unwittingly, I really brought that whole thing over. I never, ever saw the word gay when I first got over here to America. It took a bit of exposure and a few heavy rumors about me before the gays said, “We disown David Bowie.” And they did. Of course. They knew that I wasn’t what they were fighting for.

Nobody understood the European way of dressing and adopting the asexual, androgynous everyman pose. People all went screaming, “He’s got make-up on and he’s wearing stuff that looks like dresses!” I wasn’t the first one, though, to publicize bisexuality.

PLAYBOY: Who was?

BOWIE: Dean. James Dean did, very subtly and very well. I have some insight on it. Dean was probably very much like me. Elizabeth Taylor told me that once. Dean was calculating. He wasn’t careless. He was not the rebel he portrayed so successfully. He didn’t want to die. But he did believe in the premise of taking yourself to extremes, just to add a deeper cut to one’s personality.

James Dean epitomized the very thing that is so campily respectable today – the male hustler. It was part of his incredible magnetism. You know, that he was… a whore. He used to stand on Times Square to earn money so he could go to Lee Strasberg and learn how to be Marlon Brando. He had quite a sordid little reputation. I admire him immensely – that should take care of any question you may have about whether or not I have any heroes.

PLAYBOY: Thanks. Now what about your posing in drag for the cover of the English album of The Man Who Sold the World?

BOWIE: Funnily enough, and you’ll never believe me, it was a parody of Gabriel Rossetti. Slightly askew, obviously. So when they told me that a drag-queen cult was forming behind me, I said, “Fine, don’t try to explain it; nobody is going to bother to try to understand it.” I’ll play along, absolutely anything to break me through. Because of everybody’s thirst for scandal–look at how big People is–they gave me a big chance. All the papers wrote volumes about how sick I was, how I was helping to kill off true art. In the meantime, they used up all the space they could have given over to true artists. That really is pretty indicative of how compelling pretension is, that it commanded that amount of bloody writing about what color my hair was gonna be next week. I want to know why they wasted all that time and effort and paper on my clothes and my pose. Why? Because I was a dangerous statement.

The follow-up to that, now that I’ve decided to talk a little more – if only to you – was, “How dare he have such a strenuous ego?” That, in itself, seemed a danger to some people. Am I, as a human being, worth talking about? I frankly think, Yes, I am. I’ve got to carry through with the conviction that I am also my own medium. The only way I can be effective as a person is to be this confoundedly arrogant and forthright with my point of view. That’s the way I am. I believe myself with the utmost sincerity.

PLAYBOY: But aren’t you having trouble getting other people to believe you? Take, for example, your well-publicized farewells to showbiz. You’ve retired twice, swearing you’d never have another thing to do with rock ‘n’ roll. Yet you’ve just finished a six-month world concert tour, promoting your newest rock ‘n’ roll album, Station to Station. How do you rationalize these contradictions?

BOWIE: I lie. It’s quite easy to do. Nothing matters except whatever it is I’m doing at the moment. I can’t keep track of everything I say. I don’t give a shit. I can’t even remember how much I believe and how much I don’t believe. The point is to grow into the person you grow into. I haven’t a clue where I’m gonna be in a year. A raving nut, a flower child or a dictator, some kind of reverend – I don’t know. That’s what keeps me from getting bored.

PLAYBOY: What else do you do to keep from getting bored?

BOWIE: You name it.

PLAYBOY: How about drugs?

BOWIE: What year is it now? ‘Seventy-six? I suppose I’ve been knocking on heaven’s door for about 11 years now, with one sort of high or another. The only kinds of drugs I use, though, are ones that keep me working for longer periods of time. I haven’t gotten involved in anything heavy since ’68. I had a silly flirtation with smack then, but it was only for the mystery and enigma of trying it. I never really enjoyed it at all. I like fast drugs. I’ve said that many times. I hate falling out, where I can’t stand up and stuff. It seems like such a waste of time. I hate downs and slow drugs like grass. I hate sleep. I would much prefer staying up, just working, all the time. It makes me so mad that we can’t do anything about sleep or the common cold.

PLAYBOY: Do you remember the first time you got stoned?

BOWIE: On grass? I’d done a lot of pills ever since I was a kid. Thirteen or fourteen. But the first time I got stoned on grass was with John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin many, many years ago, when he was still a bass player on Herman’s Hermits records. We’d been talking to Ramblin’ Jack Elliott somewhere and Jonesy said to me, “Come over and I’ll turn you on to grass.” I thought about it and said, “Sure, I’ll give it a whirl.” We went over to his flat–he had a huge room, with nothing in it except this huge vast Hammond organ, right next door to the police department.

I had done cocaine before but never grass. I don’t know why it should have happened in that order, probably because I knew a couple of merchant seamen who used to bring it back from the docks. I had been doing it with them. And they loathed grass. So I watched in wonder while Jonesy rolled these three fat joints. And we got stoned on all of them. I became incredibly high and it turned into an in-fucking-credible hunger. I ate two loaves of bread. Then the telephone rang. Jonesy said, “Go and answer that for me, will you?” So I went downstairs to answer the phone and kept on walking right out into the street. I never went back. I just got intensely fascinated with the cracks in the pavement.

PLAYBOY: Did you ever get into acid?

BOWIE: I did three times. It was very colorful, but I thought my own imagination was already richer. Naturally. And more meaningful to me. Acid only gives people a link with their own imagery. I already had it. It was nothing new to me. It just sort of made a lot of fancy colors. Flashy lights and things. “Oh, look. I see God in the window.” So what? I never needed acid to make music, either.

PLAYBOY: How much have drugs affected your music?

BOWIE: The music is just an extension of me, so the question really is, What have drugs done to me? They’ve fucked me up, I think. Fucked me up nicely and I’ve quite enjoyed seeing what it was like being fucked up.

PLAYBOY: Then you agree with the reviewer who called your Young Americans album “a fucked-up LP from a fucked-up rock star”?

BOWIE: Well, The Man Who Sold the World is actually the most drug-oriented album I’ve made. That was when I was the most fucked up. Young Americans probably is a close second, but that is from my current drug period. The Man was when I was holding on to some kind of flag for hashish. As soon as I stopped using that drug, I realized it dampened my imagination. End of slow drugs.

PLAYBOY: That doesn’t sound much like the guy who was recently busted in Upstate New York for possession of eight ounces of marijuana.

BOWIE: Rest assured the stuff was not mine. I can’t say much more, but it did belong to the others in the room that we were busted in. Bloody potheads. What a dreadful irony – me popped for grass. The stuff sickens me. I haven’t touched it in a decade.

PLAYBOY: In the song “Station to Station”, though, you do refer to cocaine.

BOWIE: Yes, yes. The line is, “It’s not the side effects of the cocaine… I’m thinking that it must be love.” Do the radio stations bleep it out?

PLAYBOY: None that we’ve heard. Did you have any reservations about using the line in the song?

BOWIE: None whatsoever.

PLAYBOY: One might easily construe it as advocating the use of cocaine. Or is that the message?

BOWIE: I have no message whatsoever. I really have nothing to say, no suggestions or advice, nothing. All I do is suggest some ideas that will keep people listening a bit longer. And out of it all, maybe they’ll come up with a message and save me the work. My career has kind of been like that. I get away with murder.

PLAYBOY: You claim you like to work all the time, yet you release only one album a year. What exactly do you do between recording sessions?

BOWIE: I write songs and screenplays and poems, I paint, I do Kurlien photography, I manage myself, I act, I produce, I record, sometimes I tour. I could give you five new and unreleased David Bowie albums right now. I could just hand them over. I’ve got an incredible backlog of material. Work, work, work…

PLAYBOY: Do you ever relax?

BOWIE: If you’re asking whether or not I take vacations, the answer is no. I find all my relaxation within the context of work; I’m very serious about that. I’ve always thought the only thing to do was to try to go through life as Superman, right from the word go. I felt far too insignificant as just another person. I couldn’t exist thinking all that was important was to be a good person. I thought, Fuck that; I don’t want to be just another honest Joe. I want to be a supersuperbeing and improve all the equipment that I’ve been given to where it works 300 percent better. I find that it’s possible to do it.

PLAYBOY: Would you give us some examples of your self-improvement?

BOWIE: When I started writing, I couldn’t put more than three or four words together. Now I think I write very well. I’m finding that if I just look at something and think, A man did that, I realize I can do it, too. And probably better. I didn’t know anything about films, either. I mean, nothing at all. So I went out, got hold of a lot of the greatest films and worked it all out for myself. Very logically done. Now I have an excellent knowledge of the art. I became a bloody good actor, I’ll tell you. And I’ll be a superb film maker as well. It’s only a matter of deciding what you want to do.

PLAYBOY: Surely, you doubt yourself sometimes.

BOWIE: Not so much anymore. About two years ago, I realized I had become a total product of my concept character Ziggy Stardust. So I set out on a very successful crusade to re-establish my own identity. I stripped myself down and took myself apart, layer by layer. I used to sit in bed and pick on one thing a week that I either didn’t like or couldn’t understand. And during the course of the week, I’d try to kill it off.

PLAYBOY: What was the first thing you attacked?

BOWIE: I think my lack of humor was the first thing I picked on. Then prissiness. Why did I feel that I was superior to people? I had to come to some conclusion. I haven’t yet, but I dug into myself. That was very good therapy. I spewed myself up. I’m still doing it. I seem to know exactly what makes me sad.

“I consider myself responsible for a whole new school of pretensions–they know who they are. Don’t you, Elton? Just kidding. No, I’m not.”

PLAYBOY: Doesn’t taking yourself apart all the time tend to make you a little schizophrenic?

BOWIE: The four of me will have to talk about that. Am I schizophrenic? One side of me probably is, but the other side is right down the middle, solid as a rock. Actually, I’m not schizophrenic at all. I think that my thought forms are fragmented a lot, that much is obvious. I often think of six things at one time. They all sort of interrupt one another. Not very good when I’m driving.

PLAYBOY: Do you ever have trouble deciding which is the real you?

BOWIE: I’ve learned to flow with myself. I honestly don’t know where the real David Jones is. It’s like playing the shell game. Except I’ve got so many shells I’ve forgotten what the pea looks like. I wouldn’t know it if I found it. Being famous helps put off the problems of discovering myself. I mean that. That’s the main reason I’ve always been so keen on being accepted, why I’ve striven so hard to put my brain to artistic use. I want to make a mark. In my early stuff, I made it through on sheer pretension. I consider myself responsible for a whole new school of pretensions – they know who they are. Don’t you, Elton? Just kidding. No, I’m not. See what I mean? That was a thoroughly pretentious statement. True or not, I bet you’ll print that. Show someone something where intellectual analysis or analytical thought has been applied and people will yawn. But something that’s pretentious–that keeps you riveted. It’s also the only thing that shocks anymore. It shocks as much as the Dylan thing did 14 years ago. As much as sex shocked many years ago.

PLAYBOY: You’re saying sex is no longer shocking?

BOWIE: Oh, come on. Sorry, Hugh. Sex has never really been shocking, it was just the people who performed it who were. Shocking people, performing sex. Now nobody really cares. Everybody fucks everybody. The only thing that shocks now is an extreme. Like me running my mouth off, jacking myself off. Unless you do that, nobody will pay attention to you. Not for long. You have to hit them on the head.

PLAYBOY: Is that the Bowie success formula?

BOWIE: That’s always been it. It’s never really changed. For instance, what I did with my Ziggy Stardust was package a totally credible, plastic rock ‘n’ roll singer–much better than the Monkees could ever fabricate. I mean, my plastic rock ‘n’ roller was much more plastic than anybody’s. And that was what was needed at the time. And it still is. Most people still want their idols and gods to be shallow, like cheap toys. Why do you think teenagers are the way they are? They run around like ants, chewing gum and flitting onto a certain style of dressing for a day; that’s as deep as they wish to go. It’s no surprise that Ziggy was a huge success.

PLAYBOY: Is that why you said you became Ziggy at one point?

BOWIE: Without even thinking about it. At first, I just assumed that character onstage. Then everybody started to treat me as they treated Ziggy: as though I were the Next Big Thing, as though I moved masses of people. I became convinced I was a messiah. Very scary. I woke up fairly quickly.

PLAYBOY: Do you ever worry about your fans’ giving up on you – not wanting to hear Bowie as a soul singer or whatever?

BOWIE: Well, they must understand what my trip was in the beginning. I’ve never been a musician.

PLAYBOY: What have you been?

BOWIE: The unfortunate thing is that I’ve always wanted to be a film director. And the two media got unconsciously amalgamated, so I was doing films on record. That creates your basic concept album, which becomes a bit of a slow pack horse in the end. Now I know that if I’m going to make albums, I’ve got to make albums that I enjoy musically, or else just make the fucking film. A lot of my concept albums, like Aladdin Sane, Ziggy and Diamond Dogs, were only 50 percent there. They should have been visual as well. I think that some of the most talented actors around are in rock. I think a whole renaissance in film making is gonna come from rock. Not because of it, though, despite it.

PLAYBOY: But you’ve said that you find rock depressing and sterile, even evil.

BOWIE: It is depressing and sterile and, yes, ultimately evil. Anything that contributes to stagnation is evil. When it has familiarity, it’s no longer rock ‘n’ roll. It’s white noise. Dirge. Just look at disco music–the endless numb beat. It’s really dangerous.

So I’ve moved on. I’ve established the fact that I am an entertainer, David Bowie, not just another boring rock singer. I’ve got a film out, Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth. And I’ll be doing a lot more, taking a lot of chances. The minute you know you’re on safe ground, you’re dead. You’re finished. It’s over. The last thing I want is to be established. I want to go to bed every night saying, “If I never wake again, I certainly will have lived while I was alive.”

PLAYBOY: Let’s go back to disco music. You say it’s a dirge, yet you had the biggest disco hit of last year in Fame and you scored again this year with Golden Years. How do you explain that?

BOWIE: I love disco. It’s a lovely escapist’s way out. I quite like it, as long as it’s not on the radio night and day – which it is so much these days. Fame was an incredible bluff that worked. Very flattering. I’ll do anything until I fail. And when I succeed, I quit, too. I’m really knocked out that people actually dance to my records, though. But let’s be honest; my rhythm and blues are thoroughly plastic. Young Americans, the album “Fame” is from, is, I would say, the definitive plastic soul record. It’s the squashed remains of ethnic music as it survives in the age of Muzak rock, written and sung by a white limey. If you had played Young Americans to me five years ago and said, “This is an R album,” I would have laughed. Hysterically.

PLAYBOY: How about if we had said, “This is going to be your album five years from now”?

BOWIE: I would have thrown you and the record out of my house.

PLAYBOY: What did you think of Barbara Streisand’s recording your song “Life on Mars”?

BOWIE: Bloody awful. Sorry, Barb, but it was atrocious.

PLAYBOY: You’re not noted for cordial relationships with other artists. Yet there was the rumor that you flew to Europe to spend a sabbatical with Bob Dylan. What about it?

BOWIE: That’s a beaut. I haven’t even left this bloody country in years. I saw Dylan in New York seven, eight months ago. We don’t have a lot to talk about. We’re not great friends. Actually, I think he hates me.

PLAYBOY: Under what circumstances did you meet?

BOWIE: Very bad ones. We went back to somebody’s house after some gig at a club. We had all gone to see someone, I can’t remember who, and Dylan was there. I was in a very, sort of… verbose frame of mind. And I just talked at him for hours and hours and hours, and whether I amused him or scared him or repulsed him, I really don’t know. I didn’t wait for any answers. I just went on and on about everything. And then I said good night. He never phoned me.

PLAYBOY: Did he impress you?

BOWIE: Not really. I’d just like to know what the young chap thought of me. I was quite convinced that what I had to say was important, which I seem to feel all the time. It’s been quite a while since somebody really impressed me, though.

PLAYBOY: Could another musician impress you?

BOWIE: Gil Evans; Ricky Ricardo, maybe. I like meeting other artists, but they rarely impress me. Regular people do, people who aren’t playing power games. I know power plays immediately and I’m better at it than most of them, so I discount them in a flash.

PLAYBOY: How did you become a rock ‘n’ roller, anyway?

BOWIE: Truth? I was broke. I got into rock because it was an enjoyable way of making my money and taking four or five years to puzzle my next move out. I was a painter before that, studying commercial art at Bromley Technical High School. I tried advertising and that was awful. The lowest. But I was well into my little saxophone, so I left advertising and thought, Let’s give rock a try. You can have a good time doing that and usually have at least enough money to live on. Especially then. It was the Mod days; nice clothes were half the battle.

PLAYBOY: But nice clothes cost money.

BOWIE: At the time, not necessarily. I lived out of the dustbins on the back streets of Carnaby. Carnaby Street was actually, at one time, quite fashionable–before it became known to everybody in London. The very best young designers were down there and because they were very expensive Italians, if any of the shirts had a button off or anything like that, it would go in the dustbin. We’d go around and nick all the stuff out of the dustbins. Entire wardrobes of clothes for, well, nothing. All you had to do was sew a button on or stitch a sleeve. I remember when I used to steal everything. Had to look fashionable. We all were caught up in that game of wanting to be the next Elvis Presley, hopping from tinny band to tinny band. I went through a group called David Jones and the Buzz, another called David Jones and the Lower Third, even a mime troupe called Feathers.

PLAYBOY: What was it like to be a mime?

BOWIE: Oh, listen, it’s very easy to be a mime. There wasn’t much competition. I was only reasonably good. My technique was quite poor, actually, but nobody really knew. I’ve got a very good body and it does things I want it to do, but I’m still not disciplined enough to ever compete with a Marcel Marceau. Mime helped me learn a lot about body language. That’s all.

PLAYBOY: Didn’t your wife, Angela, have something to do with getting you your first recording contract?

BOWIE: Angela and I knew each other because we were both going out with the same man. Another one of her boyfriends, a talent scout for Mercury Records, took her to a show at The Roundhouse, where I happened to be playing. He hated me. She thought I was great. Ultimately, she threatened to leave him if he didn’t sign me. So he signed me.

PLAYBOY: And how was the situation with your mutual boyfriend resolved?

BOWIE: I married Angela and we both continued to see him.

PLAYBOY: Why did you marry her?

BOWIE: Because I realized that she’d be one of the very few women I’d be capable of living with for more than a week. She is remarkably pleasant to keep coming back to. And, for me, she always will be. There’s nobody more demanding than me. Not physically, necessarily, but mentally. I’m very strenuous. Very intense about anything I do. I scare away most people I’ve lived with.

PLAYBOY: Were you in love with Angela?

BOWIE: Never have been in love, to speak of. I was in love once, maybe, and it was an awful experience. It rotted me, drained me, and it was a disease. Hateful thing, it was. Being in love is something that breeds brute anger and jealousy, everything but love, it seems. It’s a bit like Christianity – or any religion, for that matter.

PLAYBOY: What do you believe in?

BOWIE: Myself. Politics. Sex…

PLAYBOY: Since you put yourself first, do you consider yourself an original thinker?

BOWIE: Not by any means. More like a tasteful thief. The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from. I do think that my plagiarism is effective. Why does an artist create, anyway? The way I see it, if you’re an inventor, you invent something that you hope people can use. I want art to be just as practical. Art can be a political reference, a sexual force, any force that you want, but it should be usable. What the hell do artists want? Museum pieces? The more I get ripped off, the more flattered I get. But I’ve caused a lot of discontent, because I’ve expressed my admiration for other artists by saying, “Yes, I’ll use that,” or, “Yes, I took this from him and this from her.” Mick Jagger, for example, is scared to walk into the same room as me even thinking any new idea. He knows I’ll snatch it.

PLAYBOY: Is it true that Jagger once told you he was hiring the French artist Guy Peellaert for the jacket of a Rolling Stones album and you ran right off to hire Peellaert for your own album, Diamond Dogs, which was released first?

BOWIE: Mick was silly. I mean, he should never have shown me anything new. I went over to his house and he had all these Guy Peellaert pictures around and said, “What do you think of this guy?” I told him I thought he was incredible. So I immediately phoned him up. Mick’s learned now, as I’ve said. He will never do that again. You’ve got to be a bastard in this business.

PLAYBOY: Any other artists you’d especially like to hire?

BOWIE: I really wanted Norman Rockwell to do an album cover for me. Still do. I originally wanted him for the cover of Young Americans. I got his phone number and called him up. Very quaint. His wife answered and I said, “Hello, this is David Bowie,” and so on. I asked if he could paint the cover. His wife said in this quavering, elderly voice, “I’m sorry, but Norman needs at least six months for his portraits.” So I had to pass, but I thought the experience was lovely. What a craftsman. Too bad I don’t have the same painstaking passion. I’d rather just get my ideas out of my system as fast as I can.

PLAYBOY: Some psychiatrists would call your behavior compulsive. Does the fact that there is insanity in your family frighten you?

BOWIE: My brother Terry’s in an asylum right now. I’d like to believe that the insanity is because our family is all genius, but I’m afraid that’s not true. Some of them – a good many – are just nobodies. I’m quite fond of the insanity, actually. It’s a nice thing to throw out at parties, don’t you think? Everybody finds empathy in a nutty family. Everybody says, “Oh, yes, my family is quite mad.” Mine really is. No fucking about, boy. Most of them are nutty–in, just out of or going into an institution. Or dead.

PLAYBOY: What do they think of you?

BOWIE: I haven’t a clue. I haven’t spoken to any of them in years. My father is dead. I think I talked to my mother a couple of years ago. I don’t understand any of them. It’s not a question of their understanding me anymore. The shoe’s on the other foot.

PLAYBOY: You’ve often said that you believe very strongly in fascism. Yet you also claim you’ll one day run for Prime Minister of England. More media manipulation?

BOWIE: Christ, everything is a media manipulation. I’d love to enter politics. I will one day. I’d adore to be Prime Minister. And, yes, I believe very strongly in fascism. The only way we can speed up the sort of liberalism that’s hanging foul in the air at the moment is to speed up the progress of a right-wing, totally dictatorial tyranny and get it over as fast as possible. People have always responded with greater efficiency under a regimental leadership. A liberal wastes time saying, “Well, now, what ideas have you got?” Show them what to do, for God’s sake. If you don’t, nothing will get done. I can’t stand people just hanging about. Television is the most successful fascist, needless to say. Rock stars are fascists, too. Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars.

PLAYBOY: How so?

BOWIE: Think about it. Look at some of his films and see how he moved. I think he was quite as good as Jagger. It’s astounding. And, boy, when he hit that stage, he worked an audience. Good God! He was no politician. He was a media artist himself. He used politics and theatrics and created this thing that governed and controlled the show for those 12 years. The world will never see his like. He staged a country.

Really, I would like to be Prime Minister, but I think I’d have to set up my own country first. I don’t want to be Prime Minister of the old country. I’d have to create the state that I wish to live in first. I dream of one day buying companies and television stations, owning and controlling them.

PLAYBOY: Are you still obsessed, as you reportedly once were, with the fear of being assassinated onstage?

BOWIE: No. I died too many times onstage, man. And it’s really not too bad. No. I don’t have that paranoia anymore. I’ve now decided that my death should be very precious. I really want to use it. I’d like my death to be as interesting as my life has been and will be. And being assassinated is not quite a hero’s demise. Assassination is the… the snub. The Great Snub. It’s the ultimate result of that Wilhelm Reich philosophy–nobody will be allowed to be any more than we are–that most people subscribe to in their hearts. People aren’t very bright, you know. They say they want freedom, but when they get the chance, they pass up Nietzsche and choose Hitler, because he would march into a room to speak and music and lights would come on at strategic moments. It was rather like a rock ‘n’ roll concert. The kids would get very excited–girls got hot and sweaty and guys wished it was them up there. That, for me, is the rock ‘n’ roll experience.

PLAYBOY: You stated in Rolling Stone that you’d like to use your music to “rule the world… subliminally.” Would you care to elaborate?

BOWIE: I think subliminal advertising is great. If it hadn’t been outlawed, it would have gone out of advertising very quickly and straight into politics. I would have excelled at it. Think of it, an empty screen that people could stare at for an hour and a half and not actually see anything but leave with an entire experience in their heads.

Of course, Rolling Stone got hate mail. So did Dali in his day. He knew exactly what he was doing when he painted his paintings. He knew what all the objects meant. Should his work have been destroyed and he forced to paint a vase of flowers? The attitude that says the artist should paint only things that the proletarian can understand, I think, is the most destructive thing possible. That sounds a little like Hitler’s going around to museums and tearing modern paintings down, doesn’t it?

You mustn’t be scared of art. Rock ‘n’ roll is only rock ‘n’ roll. People hold it so sacred–mustn’t tamper, in case you find out that it really does govern kids. Those old Fifties antirock movies were right. rock ‘n’ roll records are dangerous to the moral fiber. But then, records are a thing of the past now, so who knows?

PLAYBOY: We’re not quite sure how you made the leap from subliminal advertising to reporting the death of the record industry, but since you have, what do you propose will happen to music in the future?

BOWIE: It will return to the sensitivities of the working class. That excites me. Sound as texture, rather than sound as music. Producing noise records seems pretty logical to me. My favorite group is a German band called Kraftwerk–it plays noise music to “increase productivity.” I like that idea, if you have to play music.

PLAYBOY: We give up. Let’s talk about movies. Why did you decide to do The Man Who Fell to Earth?

BOWIE: Well, I’ll tell you what happened. I was sent the script and was immediately intrigued with the character of Newton, who had a lot in common with me. He dreaded cars but loved fast speeds. He was physically emaciated; there were so many characteristics we had in common. One problem: I hated the script.

PLAYBOY: How did you get around that?

BOWIE: Nicolas Roeg, the director, came over to my house a number of weeks after he’d sent the script. He arrived on time and I was out. After eight hours or so, I remembered our appointment. I turned up nine hours later, thinking, of course, that he’d gone. He was sitting in the kitchen. He’d been sitting there for hours and hours and wouldn’t go upstairs, wouldn’t go into my room. He stayed in the kitchen. God, I was so embarrassed. I thought I would be embarrassed into doing the film. He said, “Well, David, what do you think of the script?” I said, “It’s a bit corny, isn’t it?” His face just fucking fell off. Then he started talking. Two or three hours later, I was convinced the man was a genius. There is a very strong story line, as it turns out, but that only provides the backbone to the meat of it. It works on spiritual and prime levels of an incredibly complex, Howard Hughes-type alien. I still don’t understand all the inflections Roeg put into the film. He’s of a certain artistic level that’s well above me.

PLAYBOY: Why did Roeg want you?

BOWIE: He had Peter O’Toole cast, but he couldn’t do the film. And I believe the editor of the film advised Nick to watch the documentary about me, Cracked Actor, that was on the BBC. Nick watched it and I guess it was my attachment to Ziggy, the alter ego, that captured his interest and imagination. And my looks helped, too. Roeg wanted a definite, pointedly stark face–which I had been endowed with.

PLAYBOY: How long did it take for you to adapt to the cameras?

BOWIE: Less than an hour. My first film, I couldn’t have worked with a director unless it was somebody I knew instinctively would become a mentor. I couldn’t have worked with someone I considered to be less than myself–and I have a very, very high opinion of my own abilities. Within the first hour on the set, I knew that I’d picked the right one. Just wait until I become a director, though. I’ll be tremendous.

PLAYBOY: Do you find acting more worth while than rock ‘n’ roll?

BOWIE: Rock ‘n’ roll is acting. All my albums are just me acting out certain poses and characters. That’s why I’m not entirely proud of a lot of my records – the visual side is sorely missed. My finally being on film simply makes it official. I’m sure I’ll take my following with me. They’re very faithful.

PLAYBOY: Steven Ford, the President’s 20-year-old son, is one of your biggest fans. What did you talk about when he visited you in Los Angeles?

BOWIE: Steven Ford? He likes to talk about horses. I told him I could ride horses English style. He said that he rode Western style and knew that riding English style was a lot harder. I agreed with him and said, “Yes, it has a lot more to do with etiquette and discipline than to do with horsemanship.” He agreed. That was it, really. I liked him very much. I asked him what he thought of using rock ‘n’ roll as a political vehicle.

PLAYBOY: And what did he say?

BOWIE: That’s when he started talking about horses.

PLAYBOY: Did he invite you to meet Gerald?

BOWIE: No. I invited myself. I said if I’m ever in the area, would he invite me down? He sort of reluctantly said yes. I don’t know what he’s worried about. I was a very butch gentleman with him.

PLAYBOY: How is your relationship with Elton John these days?

BOWIE: He sent me a very nice telegram the other day.

PLAYBOY: Didn’t you describe him as “the Liberace, the token queen of rock”?

BOWIE: Yes, well, that was before the telegram. I’d much rather listen to him on the radio than talk about him. Let’s do something else. Want to write a song?

PLAYBOY: Sure.

BOWIE: All right. We’ll call the song Audience and it’ll be about rock ‘n’ roll. All right? I’m gonna say, “Led Zeppelin is solid. They make you like a wall.” [Writes it down] Quick. Give me the name of an artist, someone in rock.

PLAYBOY: How about Stevie Wonder?

BOWIE: Good. “Stevie Wonder is growing and you love him most of all.” [Writes it down] He’s sort of the golden boy, everybody loves him. Who else? Name a good songwriter.

PLAYBOY: Joni Mitchell.

BOWIE: “Joni Mitchell has our hearts.” [Writes it down] She does, doesn’t she? OK, let me get my guitar. [Looks at what he’s written and begins strumming and humming softly] All right, here we go. [Sings] “Led Zeppelin is growing, erasing our minds / They make us feel stony, they make us go blind / Hey, Stevie Wonder, there like a wall / So good to lean on, the hardest of all…” Isn’t that a nice little tune?

PLAYBOY: Is that how you wrote “Changes”?

BOWIE: Naw, but that’s basically how I wrote most of the Diamond Dogs album.

PLAYBOY: What happened to Joni Mitchell?

BOWIE: She’s good enough, she doesn’t need me crooning about her. You see, of course, there are no rules to my writing.

PLAYBOY: We see.

BOWIE: You asked about other rockers, you got a song. Don’t complain. No respect. Who’s that comedian? Rodney Dangerfield. Don’t worry, Rodney. The new art is always catcalled. They hooted the Mona Lisa.

PLAYBOY: Do you feel you’ve been taken advantage of over the years?

BOWIE: Not taken advantage of. Exploited.

PLAYBOY: Are you suggesting you haven’t made all that you should have?

BOWIE: What, moneywise? Oh, Lord, no–we made nothing. All I’ve made is an impact and a change, which, of course, is worth a lot. I keep telling myself that. The best thing to say about it all is that it’s archetypal rock-‘n’- roll business. Read the reports of the Beatles, the Stones and a lot of other big entertainers and take some kind of amalgamation of all that; it’s a pretty accurate picture of my business. John Lennon has been through it all. John told me, “Stick with it. Survive. You’ll really go through the grind and they’ll rip you off right and left. The key is to come out the other side.” I said something cocky at the time like, “I’ve got a great manager. Everything is great. I’m a Seventies artist.” The last time I spoke to John, I told him he was right. I’d been ripped off blind.

PLAYBOY: You’re not a rich man? After five gold albums?

BOWIE: Now, yes, exceedingly. No! Wait, America! Not at all. Haven’t got a penny to my name. I’m pleading poverty at the moment, but I’m potentially very rich. Theoretically rich but not wealthy.

PLAYBOY: Are you as bitter about the music business as Lennon and Jagger have said they are?

BOWIE: No, no, no. You see, I needed to learn about it. You’ve got to make mistakes. It’s very important to make mistakes. Very, very important. If I glided through, I wouldn’t be the man I’m not today.

PLAYBOY: Last question. Do you believe and stand by everything you’ve said?

BOWIE: Everything but the inflammatory remarks.

Cameron Crowe, Playboy, September 1976

David Bowie – 1976 signature

Bonus

Cameron Crowe conducted both of the interviews with David Bowie; he was 19 years old at the time.

He doodled the above drawing on a paper while I interviewed him. He left the paper behind and I asked him to sign it. “It’s a self-portrait,” he said, and applied his signature.

Over the years I’ve come to interpret the drawing as a tiny cry for help, a cry he answered himself with the subsequent trip to Berlin and an entire lifestyle change. Bowie turned that dark period on its head, and went on to supply many more generations of fans with music and art and soul and inspiration. He careened beautifully into the future… where he will always be.

Cameron Crowe, 2016

In December 1975, Bowie stopped signing with “Bowie.” The signature shown here was one of the first “Bo” signatures Bowie adopted. He would continue to use “Bo” as his signature until his death in 2016. (source: davidbowieautograph.com)