Chapter Twelve: Heathen (1987-2004)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Off. The record was a production of I Heart Radio.
David Bowie was in the middle of performing his song
Reality when he first felt it, a sharp pain in
his shoulder. He was June two four and he was
playing a show at the Prague. The venue was sweltering,
he was dripping with sweat. Besides that, he looked as

(00:23):
good as ever, fit, stylish, and much sprightlier than his
fifty seven years should have allowed. The thrashing rocker he
sang was about staring down your own mortality, accepting it.
Now my sight is fading in this twilight, he sang.
Then the pain hit. Suddenly. He couldn't catch his breath.
He could barely manage the next line. Now my death

(00:46):
is more than just a sad song. Then he stopped
singing entirely. His bandmates glanced over, alarmed. They saw him
hunched forward, clutching his chest and shoulder, looking pale, almost translucent.
His eyes were wide. He seemed scared. Even the audience
could tell something was badly wrong, and their expressions changed

(01:08):
from joy to concern. A bodyguard was summoned and let
him off the stage. The band continued without him for
a few numbers while David rallied in the wings. He
hated to cancel shows. There were nights when he kept
a bucket just out of the spotlight in case he
needed to be sick. He went back out to continue.
He struggled valiantly through China Girl and Modern Lover, but

(01:31):
stumbled during the ten minute epic Station a Station excused
himself once more. After taking more time to recoup, he
gave it one more shot, singing two more songs while
seated on a stool, But then he finally gave in
and took his premature bows. A doctor told him it
was just a trapped nerve, nothing to worry about. He

(01:51):
was given the go ahead to perform at a festival
in Germany. Two days later. It was there on stage
before people that he'd suffer a heart attack. Hello and
welcome to Off the Record, the show that goes beyond
the songs and into the hearts and minds of rock's

(02:12):
greatest legends. I'm your host, Jordan Runtug. This season explores
the life, or rather lives of David Bowie. Today, we're
looking at Bowie, the rock and roll elder statesman. Throughout
the nineties, he continued to change and challenge inspiring new
generations with his work. Far be it from David to

(02:32):
go gently into middle age, but more than ever, he
enjoyed life off the stage. David had a second chance
at marriage and fatherhood and was deliriously happy in both.
He'd faced his demons and wonted. Now he faced his
own mortality. That would be a much more difficult battle.

(03:02):
It was a hot, hazy night in Nassau back in
a bar band wrapped up their set in a tiny
tourist watering hole. As they started to pack up, a
group of older guys sidled up. We want to play
a few songs, mind if we borrow your gear? They
asked for a bar band in the Bahamas. This was

(03:22):
a fairly common request. It's always the same dudes on vacation,
have a few beers and want to relive the glory
days of their high school garage band. Here comes another
tuneless version of Louis. Louis happens all the time. These
guys looked like a yuppies, probably in town for a
business conference, although one of them did look kind of familiar.

(03:45):
The stage crashers stepped up and grabbed their respective instruments.
If they bothered to introduce themselves to the forty or
so American travelers. It certainly didn't learn them any special attention.
The name Tin Machine meant nothing to these sun burn
and boozers bent over their umbrella drinks. But one by
one I zeroed in on the lead singer. Is that

(04:08):
David Bowie? No wait, I think it is no, that
can't be him. He's got a beard. But it was
David Bowie. And he loved every messy minute of this
five song guerrilla gig. The raw excitement gave him such
a buzz for years. He meticulously stage managed each one

(04:29):
of his performances, the lighting, props, and makeup, even the
slightest gestures of his hands and face. Everything was engineered
from maximum theatricality. Now devoid of drama and backed by
his three friends, he could just rock. That is, after all,
why he come to the Bahamas in the first place.

(04:50):
He spent most days at a local studio working on
a new album. But it wasn't a David Bowie record,
Make no mistake. This was a band like the Beatles
of the Stones. He was his latest transformation, and in
a way it was his most radical. He was no
longer David Bowie superstar. He was David Bowie, lead singer

(05:11):
of the band Tin Machine, just one of the guys.
But of course he could never just be one of
the guys. He was David Bowie backed by a bunch
of guys who, regardless of their formidable musical talents, were
not David Bowie. At first, it all seemed rather dubious.
He wasn't the first forty one year old man to

(05:32):
start a band with a few friends. On the surface,
it seemed like classic symptoms of a midlife crisis, up
there with buying a sports car and getting a tattoo.
It was indeed a strange move for such an unashamed individualist.
Back in the sixties. His tenure and a string of
bands would always be comically short lived. He'd storm off

(05:53):
for one reason or another with a gleefully selfish cry
of numero uno mate, that's who he was looking out
for number one these days, of course, he had nothing
to prove. He was ready to have some fun. The
endeavor was less a reaction to middle age and more

(06:13):
of a reaction to his dismal last record, seven's Never
Let Me Down. The title was amusing because the disc
succeeded in letting down pretty much everyone. Released just after
his forty birthday, the glossy pop had been scrubbed of
anything that bore even the slightest suggestion of grit or experimentation.

(06:33):
Even the addition of his old Bromley school friend and
fellow rock titan Peter Frampton failed to liven up the proceedings.
Even David was horrified by the songs. It wasn't played
with any conviction, He'd say, it was studiofied to such
an extent that halfway through the sessions I was going
out to lunch and just leaving everyone else to it.

(06:55):
Perhaps to distract from the subpar material, David promoted never
let Me Down. This most ambitious tour ever. It recalled
the epic stage production of Diamond Dogs in four, but
being the eighties, it was much bigger than Diamond Dogs
in every sense, more of everything, more dates, more seats,
more money. The set for what would become known as

(07:17):
the Glass Spider Tour was touted as the biggest ever,
costing an outrageous ten million dollars. Named for the album
track about a mythological rachnid, The centerpiece of the production
was a massive glass spider that loomed sixty feet over
the stage. Weighing three hundred and sixty tons, It required
a jaw dropping forty three trucks just to transport it.

(07:40):
Three hundred people worked in ships for poor straight days
to assemble the set for its American debut in Philadelphia
that July. In a twist worthy of spinal tap, David
discovered that the gargantuan spider was too big to fit
into many indoor arenas. He hastily had a smaller junior
spider build at no small cost. For David's entrance, he

(08:04):
was lowered inside a translucent spider's belly while a fleet
of dancers repelled down from the scaffolding above the stage.
In a bid to make this a multi media event,
the elaborately choreographed songs were broken up by short films.
The overamped guitar duels between Frampton and Carlos Alamar often
descended into a sort of headbanging parody. Songs were chosen

(08:26):
less for their audience appeal and more to serve the
plots for a series of vignettes. For the big finale,
David appeared on top of a radio tower wearing a
gold lamat leather suit decked out with a pair of wings.
Then he slid down to the stage to perform his encore.
It was, in a word, ridiculous. On paper, it was

(08:49):
a success, press reports declared at the most lucrative tour
of David's career, selling three million tickets. In retrospect, some
would cite the show as a watershed for arena rock,
paving the way for acts like You Two and Madonna
to mount their own theatrical productions. But the Glass Spider
Tour is seldom remembered as a triumph too many It's

(09:14):
smacked of an aging man trying too hard. Despite all
of the props and flamboyance, it read as plotless and pointless,
an overblown, self indulgent spectacle. David's productions had always been
characterized by taste and style, even back in the low resource,
ziggy Stardust days when he had to make do with

(09:34):
homemade costumes and doing his own makeup. Yet now that
money was no object, the Glass Spider set looked cheap, pathetic,
observed one critic, Like an amateur theater production, said another.
Though Bowie initially enjoyed the Vegas style, absurdity of it all.
He quickly grew tired of the hassle and tired in general.

(09:57):
In advance of the tour, he'd submitted himse off the
twelve hour rehearsals six days a week. He also insisted
on overseeing all technical aspects of the production himself. By
the time the tour kicked off in March, he was
already exhausted. The rigorous choreography didn't exactly help. This is
the most physical tour that I've ever done, he said.

(10:20):
It's relentless, it never stops. I'm bruised as hell. I
feel like a worn out rag doll. He struggled to
cope with the punishing number of dates. Some nights his
voice gave out, forcing Carlos Alamar to step in and
cover for him. David grew cranky, and he began to
lash out at the band and crew, blaming them for

(10:42):
the lukewarm reviews. When the show's wrapped in New Zealand
that November, he ceremoniously burnt the spiders, said in a field.
Back home in Switzerland, he found himself at loose ends.
He obviously wasn't gonna tour like that in anytime soon.
Nothing he did seemed to be working, and his record label,

(11:05):
E M I was always there to let him know.
The conglomerate had shelled out some seventeen million dollars for
a five record deal in two but since then his
sales figures had taken a downward turn, marked the first
time in seventeen years that Bowie's name didn't appear in
the charts at all. In corporate speak, there was concern

(11:27):
about the declining prospects of a viable product. In other words,
they theority was washed up past it. I spent force.
David was starting to get flak about his age from
all sides. During press conferences for the Glass Spider Tour,
he fended off questions about arthritis and lame jokes about

(11:47):
renaming it the Antique road Show. He managed the grin
and bear it without throttling any journalists. But when Kim
Gordon of the ultra hip a rock band Sonic Youth
described Bowie in an interview as quote old fart, it hurt.
He seriously considered retiring all together and focusing on painting.
I thought I should make as much money as I

(12:08):
could and then quit. He later admit, I didn't think
there was any alternative. I thought I was obviously just
an empty vessel and would end up like everyone else,
doing these stupid shows and singing Rebel Rebel until I
fall over and bleed. David's path forward revealed itself from
the form of a cassette he'd received during the Glass
Spider tour. His public relations officer had slipped him a

(12:32):
tape of her husband's music. His name was Reeves Gribrels.
When David got around to playing reeves tape months after
the tour wrapped, he was thoroughly impressed by his unique
bluesy guitar. David called him up almost immediately, inviting him
to his Swiss home. The collaborate. Reeves have been an
avowed Bowie fan since his teenage years, but he found

(12:55):
his hero surprisingly insecure and deeply unhappy. David can fighted
that the multimillion dollar E m I deal made him
feel duty bound to deliver hits, but the pressure to
be commercial left him creatively stifled. The success he'd had
earlier in the decade, but the global smash Let's Dance
left him confused about who he was singing to. In

(13:16):
his own words, he'd lost his vision Instead, with reeves encouragement,
he put the audience aside and revisited the music that
made him excited. They poured over David's favorites Hendricks, Cream,
John Lee Hooker, Buddy Guy, and Junior Wells. These formative
influences would be the basis for the sound of David's

(13:38):
new project, Tin Machine. A decade earlier, David had escaped
the crushing tyranny of the top forty life by fleeing
to Berlin and his aggressively uncommercial ambient explorations with Brian Eno.
Now he took a similar approach, this time fleeing into
a garage band. It allowed him to deconstruct the carefully

(14:01):
assembled musical persona that had taken over his life. Like
his Glass Spider tour, it had grown bloated and overblown.
Now he could get back to the basics, and the
results were liberating. Rather than continue to court the mass
appeal heater and but Let's Dance, he'd simply stop trying
and just do what he wanted. Tin Machine was David's

(14:23):
abrupt left turn to take him away from the middle
of the road. It led to a creative dead end
according to most critics, but at least he enjoyed the ride.
For a rhythm section, he tapped brothers Tony and Hunt Sales,
sons of TV comedian Soupy Sales. They were twin dynamos
who'd earned their stripes backing Iggy Pop and his lust

(14:45):
for Life period before Iggy rudely dismissed them with the
scathing line you're like heroin, I don't need you. Tales
of the sales excesses and bad behavior. Legendary drummer Hunt
was described by one band as the kind of guy
who quote consumes his own body weight and dangerous substances
every day bassis Tony had been involved in a nasty

(15:08):
car crash that sent a stick shift through his chest
and left him legally dead for several minutes. His memory
was still a little shaky from the multi month coma,
and his bandmates often had to shout the chord changes
at him midsong. The brothers joined Reeves and Bowie in Switzerland,
adding a dose of chaos to the sessions. It was

(15:28):
volatile but productive. The first day yielded a new song,
an unadorned retro blues called Heavens in Here. It was
a sign of the fruitful partnership that would continue when
recording formerly began at Compass Points Studios in the Bahamas.
Some thirty five tracks coalesced in just six weeks, including
one rockabilly two and that would give the band its name.

(15:51):
Most were recorded live, often in a single take. In
between songs, the Sales brothers would call up their comedian
father blasted the his dirty jokes through the studio p a.
This set the tone for the productive, yet rowdy sessions.
The Sales brothers were not the least big cowed by
Bowie's reputation, and hectored him into leaving the rough edges

(16:12):
and raw improvised words. The resulting lyrics or uncharacteristically obscenity
laden and some might say unsophisticated, but they give the
tracks a punkish edge in many ways, predicting the grunge
explosions still a few years off to hear David tell it,
the decision to make the project a true four way
partnership was obvious. I think this has got to be

(16:35):
a band, David said at the end of an early session.
You guys don't listen to me anyway. It was the
first time he'd embraced a group banner since his days
with the Spiders from Mars, and even then it was
his name out front. This time it was a gang
of equals, equal pay and equal attention, though in practice
it was less like a democracy and more like a

(16:56):
shouting match, with a mild mannered Reeves on one side
as David deputy and the facto musical director and the
rambunctious sales brothers on the other. David adored all of it,
the teasing, the rough housing, the fighting, the whole sweaty
four guys in a basement vibe. It was everything that

(17:17):
had been missing from his musical life since his days
in the King Bees. As a teen, a new, neatly
trimmed beard signaled this new image, and so did another
classic rock star accessory, a much younger girlfriend, Melissa Hurley,
was a twenty year old soloist with the Los Angeles
Chamber Ballet. Talented, intelligent, and beautiful, she was hired as

(17:41):
a dancer for the Glass Spider tour. Each night, she'd
pose in the audience as a screaming fan, only to
be dragged up on stage to dance seductively with David.
Her effortless splits always managed to impress from this silly
bit of stage business, their relationship blossomed. They made a
cute cup bowl almost twenty years David's jr. She playfully

(18:03):
tried to update his style with hats and scarves with
brightly colored eighties patterns. He'd play along for a few
days before quietly losing them. She even got him to
wear a thong at the beach, which led to merciless
teasing from his bandmates. David loved to bring Melissa to
art museums and elegant restaurants, the older man showing his

(18:23):
love the world. David was enjoying his time as the
frontman for a rock group, but the all for one,
one for all charade was becoming hard to maintain. When
Tim Machine released their self titled debut in May of nine,
many reviewers simply ignored the whole band thing and just
described it as a new David Bowie record. David tried

(18:46):
to combat this by insisting that all interviews be conducted
with the whole band. Usually their quotes were telling as
hunt sales. Joked to one journalist, the thing that makes
us differ from other bands is that the lead singers
a millionaire, and of course he was right. Their low
key club tour that summer may have looked like an
old school rock and roll road show as they traveled

(19:07):
by bus and played cards and ate it greasy spoon diners,
But it was David who handed them each a thousand
dollars in cash to buy product suits for their first gig.
Sure they were equal, but David's wealth made him a
little more equal to everyone who didn't happen to be
in Tim Machine. It all seemed disingenuous, just another pretentious

(19:31):
character from David Bowie. This time he's posing as the
frontman for some obscure rock band. The records sold decently,
moving some two million copies, but the critical reactions mixed.
Some found the raw, stripped down music exhilarating, citing it
as his most exciting work in years. Others were turned

(19:51):
off by their frattiness and phon nous. How can you
build yourselves as a piste off, punky olt rock band
when you have a superstar frontman and three virtuoso level musicians.
David himself started to moan about the bad press. The
same people who had mocked the Glass Spider tours overblown
pomposity now rejected his straight ahead rock approach. I can't

(20:14):
get anything right, David complained, I can't go big, I
can't go small. Whichever way I go is wrong. At
a time when he seemed more than happy to put
his past behind him, David was presented with a business
opportunity that was too good to pass up. At the
dawn of the nineties, the transition from vinyl to c

(20:34):
D was in full swing. Legacy artists like David, we're
making a killing by reissuing their classic albums on this
new digital format. Most acts did so with minimal attention
to detail. Even the Beatles CD rollout was a notorious
calamity with poorly remixed songs and cheap looking packaging. David
was determined to avoid the same trap. He only agreed

(20:57):
to the reissue if each CD contained something of value,
unreleased bonus tracks or other outtakes the common practice. Now
he was one of the first to do it. David
took it a step further by haralding his arrival on
CD with a new rarities filled box set called Sound
and Vision. To promote the remarketing of his life's work.

(21:18):
He agreed to temporarily leave the dingy tim Machine clubs
behind and revert back into his stadium god incarnation. He
agreed to a tour, one that was unlike any he'd
ever undertaken. For the first time, he didn't have an
album of new material, no new guys, persona or concept
to get behind the sound and vision tour was purely

(21:40):
a celebration of past glories. For a man who hated
looking backwards, the idea of the Greatest Hits tour made
him uncomfortable To cope, he boldly announced that this would
be the last time he'd ever performed beloved titles from
his back catalog. This was to be a fond farewell
before consigning title was like Ziggy Stardust, Heroes and Space

(22:02):
Oddity to history. To make it more interactive, he introduced
a phone poll and asked fans to vote on what
songs to include in his set. One prankish music outlets
started a campaign to gather votes for the Laughing Gnome
David's cringeworthy sixties Novelty Number. David was amused, but ultimately

(22:23):
declined to include the song. The trek would consist of
a d eight shows in twenty seven different countries. Slightly
traumatized by the negative response to the elaborate Glass Spider tour,
he took a minimalist approach this time around. The stage
set was dominated by a massive, state of the art
digital screen. It displayed various videos of David through the years,

(22:46):
with which the slightly older flesh and blood David would interact.
Though he'd cite the tourists as most enjoyable since the
early Ziggy start US dates, it felt at times forced.
The experience seemed to underscore is increased LEAs schitzoid career motivation.
David never truly squared his desire for both cult credibility

(23:06):
and blockbuster mainstream income. This dichotomy was illustrated perfectly on
the Sound and Vision tour when several dates included a
lengthy mid show pause for a message from the sponsor
a beer brand, killing the musical momentum in the process.
God only knows what his Tin Machine bandmates would have
said to that. So which was it? Was David a

(23:31):
rough and ready rock or rebel, or was he an
arena idol with mass appeal? For David, those two identities
existed in conflict with one another. It was a problem
common for his peers. The first generation of rock stars
were now reaching their forties, and there was no precedent
for making the transition into middle age. Like many David

(23:52):
found themselves at a crossroads. Would he continuous attempts to
break new ground, or, except that his best days were behind,
find him to move forward? He risked ridicule. To look backwards,
he risked becoming a parody. He pondered all this as
he absolutely thumbed through a magazine on a flight between concerts.

(24:13):
Then his eyes landed on a stunning woman who graced
his page. He elbowed his seat mate to point her out.
This girl's interesting, David said. Her name was a mon.

(24:36):
David Bowie met the love of his life on October.
It was just days after he'd wrapped his Sound and
Vision tour. One date Farewell That was musical past. That
wasn't the only goodbye on the tour. His relationship with
Melissa Hurley had come to an end. Despite reports of
their engagement. It was an undramatic parting of the ways.

(24:59):
David in years her senior would say that it had
become quote one of those older men younger girls situations.
It became obvious to me that it just wasn't going
to work out as a relationship, and for that she
thanked me one of these days. He arrived in Los
Angeles that fall, perfectly content in his bachelor of them,
I felt that was it for me, he'd recall. I

(25:20):
didn't want, need, or desire any more permanent relationships. Then
he received an invite to a birthday party for a
hairdresser friend named Teddy Anteline. David would say it was
love at first sight when he first saw Hman Muhammad
Abdulma that night. Technically they had met a handful of
times before, backstage at one of his gigs, and at

(25:41):
various other celebrity functions, but the point remains clear. His
attraction was intense and instant. I was naming the children
the night we met, he would say, I just fell
under her spell. For David, Imman was the perfect mix
of sparkling intelligence, unshakable confidence, and other worldly beauty. Underline

(26:03):
that last part, David was unequivocable about his first impressions.
I found her intolerably sexy, he'd later say. She was
born in nineteen fifty five and Somalia to a family
who prided themselves on intellectual excellence. Her father was a
diplomat and her mother a position. Their vaulted social status

(26:26):
couldn't protect them from a military coup, and they fled
on foot to neighboring Kenya when she was a teenager.
It was there that she studied political science at the
University of Nairobi, working her way through school with a
waitressing gig and a job as a local translator, putting
her five language fluency to good use. One day between
classes in she was spotted on the street by famed

(26:49):
American photographer Peter Beard. Beard was impressed with her obvious
beauty and asked if she'd ever been photographed. Moms offended.
Oh God, she thought, here goes another white man who
thinks we've never seen a camera before. She agreed to
sit for a shoot provided Beard pay the eight thousand
dollars for her college tuition. Beard, who knew a good

(27:11):
investment when he saw it, agreed. He used his formidable contacts,
the Getty Mans, signed to one of Manhattan's top modeling agencies, Wilhelmina,
who had represented the likes of Lauren Hutton and Angelica Houston.
Like David Iman, was preda naturally wise in the ways
of medium manipulation, she played along with the bizarre and

(27:33):
sort of racist Cinderella backstory the agency concocted for They
cast their latest discovery as a nomadic Somali cattle girl
who spoke no English. It was all fabrication, Eman admitted,
But I was definitely not the victim of it. I
was an accomplice. I knew exactly what was going on.
She was less wise about the fashion industry. When photographed

(27:55):
for Vogue, she apparently never heard of the fashion Bible.
It was also her first time wearing makeup and high heels.
I was like a dear cought in the headlights of
a car, she would remember. She proved to be a natural,
able to convey complex emotion through minute manipulations of her
hands and face, just like David and his talents. For mine,

(28:16):
even the m O was similar. You have to give
people fantasies, She'd say. You have to create illusions all
the time. Iman would come to dominate the fashion landscape,
and much the same way David did music. The world's
biggest designers saying her praises. Eve St Laurent would refer

(28:37):
to her as flawless. Karl Logerfeld would call her one
of the greatest models in the world. I used her
from the start. Bill Blast would say, the truth is
she's a great actress. Future supermodels like Naomi Campbell and
Tyra Banks would cite her as both a trailblazer and
a mother figure. By the time she met David, she'd

(28:58):
retired from the runway and embarked on her second successful
career as a businesswoman with her own cosmetics line, recently
divorced from NBA star Spencer Haywood. She was, like David,
wary of getting into another long term relationship. I had
no intention of getting married again ever, she'd say, and
somebody in music never like a hole in the head.

(29:21):
I definitely didn't want to get into a relationship with
somebody like David. Yet he won her over with charm
and a little persistence. Two weeks after they started casually dating,
she flew to Paris for business. When she returned to
l A, David was on the tarmac to meet her,
flowers in hand. Photographers had a field day. David didn't

(29:43):
care when it came to courtship. He was old fashioned,
a classic English gentleman. It was the little things that
melted her heart. The way he held the door for her,
the way he got down in the middle of a
street to tie her shoes when her laces came undone.
On the fourteenth of every month, he'd send her flowers

(30:05):
for their mini anniversary. He loved to read to her,
just like her father had done. I fell in love
with David Jones, she'd say, not David Bowie. Both were
mature masters of their respective fields. Both were secure, both
financially and personally. As Iman would note, we've both lived
a bit on the wild side, and we're both deep

(30:28):
down home bodies. For all their similarities, their differences complimented
one another well. Iman was grounded with a strong singular identity.
That's what I needed my life, David would say, someone
who doesn't have a fractured personality, very down to earth.
Iman's parents liked David, but they would have preferred if

(30:50):
he was Somali or Muslim, or at very least black. Still,
that didn't stop David from proposing in October, a year
after they'd met. He had arranged the moment with the
same care he lavished on his stage shows. They were
in Paris, and he rented a boat to take them
up and down the scene as the pianist he hired

(31:11):
played April in Paris, David got down on one knee.
The ring dated from the eighteenth century. They'd spotted it
together while shopping in Florence. When David returned to get it,
he discovered that someone else had already bought it, so
David used his special bowie privileges to track down the
new owner and buy it off him. The couple also

(31:32):
marked their union in a more modern way and a
more permanent one tattoos. David opted for a figure riding
a dolphin on his left calf, all overlaid with the
Japanese translation of the Serenity Prayer. The unusual illustration was
inspired by a book he'd recently read, called A Grave
for a Dolphin, in which a European protagonist finds a

(31:53):
sense of peace during his wanderings in Somalia. The character
reminded David of himself. Emma On shows a more literal
symbol for her tattoo, a bowie knife above her ankle,
with the word David written on the handle. She also
got his name in Arabic lettering tattooed on her stomach.
David proposed again a few days later on stage at

(32:14):
the Paris Olympia Theater, where he was playing a gig
with Tin Machine. He'd reunited with his merry band of
rockers not long after wrapping his sound and vision commitments.
Aman joined him for some of the dates, giving her
an early taste of having a road warrior as a husband,
but she ultimately went home early, correctly observing how many
times can you hear the same songs? She wasn't the

(32:35):
only one that grow tired of David's band executed. David's label,
E M I were also less than thrilled by David's
latest musical Foray. After all, they'd shelled out millions for
David Bowie, not Tin Machine, whoever they were. They balked
at the prospect of releasing a second Tin Machine record,
forcing David to find another label. The public seemed equally

(32:57):
bored by their sophomore offering, called apropriately enough Tim Machine Too.
The aggressive mash of feedback and distortion held some catchy
melodies and strong songs, notably Goodbye Mr Ed, Shopping for Girls,
and the thundering lead single You Belong in Rock and Roll.
Bowie himself would rate the album among his all time favorites.

(33:18):
But it didn't connect with audiences, failing to break the
top twenty in the UK. It did even worse in
the US, where it failed to break a hundred and
twenty on billboard. After that, David's enthusiasm for the band
began to cool. Nothing against the guys, but his priorities
were changing professionally and personally. I no longer need attention,

(33:39):
he said, somewhat dubiously. At the time, I wondered the
adoration of the masses, the audience, because I was incapable
of one, the one communication. I used to feel nothing
without my work. Now I no longer feel guilty if
I'm not working. Now he had him on and she
had him. They were legally married on April. It was

(34:02):
a quiet service at the city hall in Lausanne, Switzerland,
but the public ceremony for family and friends a few
weeks later, on June six, was significantly less quiet. It
took place at the St. James Church in Florence, with
the hovering news helicopters and cheering crowds. David and Aman
retreated like foreign dignitaries. They received a police escort to

(34:24):
the church, blowing red lights and causing traffic jams. All
throughout the ancient city. Friends like Yoko Ono and Brian
Eno were on hand for the fifty minutes service, which
featured music David had written especially for the day. Stylist
Teddy Anteline, who first introduced the couple, did their hair.
The groom wore a white tie suit, the better to

(34:46):
show off as glowing tan, topped off with a silver
stud in his ear. The bride wore an oyster colored
dress with a train. She walked down the aisle to
the sound of a Bulgarian folk song. David's twenty one
old son, Zoe now going by Joey, stood by his
father as best man. Afterwards, guests were invited to party

(35:08):
at a former Medicia State where they danced to David's
own mixtape. The night ended with riverside fireworks before the
new husband and wife turned in just after midnight. The
next day, they set out for a month long honeymoon
to Bali in Japan, a trip that a mom would
call divinely sexy. To describe the moment as a turning

(35:28):
point in David's life would be both cliche and an understatement.
When Presston interviews to name his greatest achievement, he'd unflinchingly answer,
marrying my wife, nothing else counts. David would mark the
occasion with a new record, a new David Bowie record.

(35:50):
The Tin Machine were no more. There was no big
bust up and not even a formal split. Some would
say the end came the moment he shaved his beard.
It was highly symbolic. After a few years of pretending
to be an outsider, he wanted his old life back.
His memories of the band mirrored their mixed reviews. When
it worked, it was unbeatable, He'd say, some of the

(36:12):
most explosive music that I've ever been involved in or
even witnessed. But when it was bad, it was so
unbelievably awful you just wanted the earth to open up
and take you under. The band was an absolutely necessary
step and his artistic path, helping him break out of
the boring MTV cycle he found himselves in with Let's Dance.

(36:33):
It got him back to his roots and recalibrated his
creative compass, and it all led him straight back to
the guy who helped him make Let's Dance. For his
new record, he teamed up with Nile Rodgers, co producer
and sonic architect of David three global blockbuster. It was
a move that would strike something close to David is confusing.

(36:54):
He just spent years trying to put that part of
his career behind him. Now it seemed like he was
going backwards. Perhaps he was caaving the pressure from his
label who wanted him to get serious and deliver hits,
or perhaps it was just too personal to be a
band project. From the start, he intended the record, Black Tie,

(37:14):
White Noise, to be, in his own words, his wedding album.
It opens with a euphoric instrumental piece called the Wedding,
which he composed for the nuptials in Florence, complete with
ringing church bells. The tune is a marriage of Western
and Eastern modes, signifying their own cultural union. He reprises

(37:34):
the theme for the closing track, the Wedding Song, on
which he sings of his angel for Life. The album
also contains the song Jump They Say, inspired by suicide
of his elder half brother Terry. Never before David publicly
voiced his feelings on this devastating loss. The lyrics are oblique,

(37:56):
but Terry's ghostly presence as felt through references to madness
and death, The specter of David's late brother can also
be felt in another song, the techno funk cover of
I Feel Free, originally by Cream. Decades earlier, David had
taken Terry to see the band perform. Terry had set
young David's imagination a light by showing him around the

(38:19):
jazz haunts of Soho as a schoolboy. Now, David was
thrilled to reciprocate by taking his elder brother to his
very first psychedelic rock show. But the irre splitting music
triggered a psychotic episode in Terry and early manifestation of
the schizophrenia that would derail his life. Midway through the show,
Terry fled the theater and collapsed on the sidewalk outside,

(38:42):
tormented by visions of hell fire. It was a pivotal
moment in David's life, one that marked a permanent split
with the man who had been his dear friend, protector
and mentor. David would remember Cream playing I Feel Free
in the Distance, the soundtrack to his own law Denocence.
His choice to cover the song on Black Tie White

(39:04):
Noise was made all the more poignant by the addition
of guitarist Mick Ronson. Mick had been David's main collaborator
and on stage foil during his formative Ziggy years, delivering
bone crunching guitar solos in addition to the lush orchestral
arrangements for David's early gems. Their relationship had been strained
since David famously jettison the Spiders from Mars during his

(39:26):
Ziggy Stardust retirement show. When Ronson made his own bid
for the Spotlight with a solo record, David felt betrayed
and the two stopped speaking. It would take almost a
decade for them to perform together again. Relations finally began
to fall in three when David brought Ronson out as
a special guest on one of his serious Moonlight Tour dates.

(39:47):
They stayed in touch after that, but mostly kept their distance.
The next time they share the stage was in April
at a tribute concert for Freddie Mercury, who had recently
died of an age related illness. Ronson's own health crisis
brought a somber edge to the already melancholic event. He'd
been diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer and knew his time

(40:09):
could be measured in months. The news triggered a flood
of emotions in David, who invited Mick into the studio
to record one more time together for old Time's sake.
It would be his first appearance on a Bowie record
in twenty years, and it was also his last. Mick
Ronson died weeks after the release of Black Tie, White

(40:30):
Noise in the spring. He was forty seven years old.
David was in the midst of his press tour and
honored his following bandmate frequently during interviews. Of all the
early seventies guitar players, Mick was probably one of the
most influential and profound. David told TV host ar Senio
Hall days after his death, I miss him a lot. Curiously,

(40:54):
David failed to attend Ronson's tribute concert, a decision that
puzzled fans and rankled ron and his loved ones. He'd
done it for Freddie Mercury, why not Mick. The truth
was complicated, as is often the case when David grappled
with sentimentality. Friends recalled David listening to Old Spider's era
recordings and the weeks after Ronson's death and being moved

(41:17):
to tears by the guitarist virtuosity. Many who interacted with
David over the years, but declare him an ice man,
incapable of foraging an authentic emotional connection. In reality, the
feelings were likely too much to bear. It was just
easier to move forward. David was in the midst of

(41:37):
a creative renaissance. He followed Black Tie, White Noise a
few months later with one of his greatest and most
overlooked albums. It was the soundtrack to a four part
television film based on the novel The Buddha of Suburbia,
about a young Indian man caught between the old world
and new values as he comes of age in South London.
David loves the book. He'd to himself The Boddho of

(42:01):
Suburbia during his arts lab years and Beckingham. He was
such a fan that a magazine sent him to interview
the books author, Hanive Kureshi, a fellow Bromley boy who
had even attended the same school as Bowie. At the
end of the interview, the author mentioned that the BBC
was adapting the book for a movie. Mostly as a joke.
He suggested Bowie do the music. Within days, they were

(42:23):
both in a recording studio. Bowie worked on the BBC's
Tight Time schedule writing and recording the music, and just
six days he also worked on the BBC's tight budget,
a pittance that left him thoroughly amused. Though only the
title track was actually featured in the film, it was
categorized as a soundtrack album and marketed accordingly. That is

(42:44):
to say, it was barely marketed at all when it
was released in November of the Buddha of Suburbia became
David's first album in twenty two years not to make
the UK charts. It wasn't even released in the States
until Despite its obscurity, or perhaps because of it, David
would cite the record as a favorite. On some level,

(43:07):
he was probably relieved to avoid the hoopla that accompanied
chartbusting sales. When a reporter asked if he planned on
launching a tour to promote Black Tie, White Noise, he
only laughed, heavens no, I'd like to, but it takes
up so much time. I think I lost a lot
of my life doing that iman and completely redefined David's existence.

(43:28):
She's changed my life, David said, I give far more
over to her than before, so it takes a wedge
out of what I would be throwing into my work.
The idea of getting married and then immediately running away
for ten months on tour seemed like, in his words,
a disaster. Instead, they traveled the world together, from Bali
to southern England, the grounds of King Arthur's mythical Camelot.

(43:52):
My idea of an experience is a yacht cruise with
them on, He'd say, I want to be with her,
She's my soul mate. Their devote into each other was total,
as far from a show biz marriage as one could get.
One Christmas Human made David slippers, waking up an hour
before his six am alarmed to Hambroiderer's initials. David made

(44:13):
strenuous efforts to get healthy for his new bride. He
gave up drinking and took up jogging. He even tried
to quit smoking, but that habit proved harder to kick.
He's still inhaled upwards of sixty Marlboro lights a day,
burning them down to his knuckle before lighting the next
with the ashes of the first. He tried books, tapes,
even a hypnotist, but the couch, he said, only gave

(44:36):
him a sore bum. The time he'd previously spent on
music instead went to the visual Arts. He began developing
his art collection, purchasing works by Damien Hurst, David Bamberg,
and Jean Michelle Baskiot. David appeared in the Late Street

(44:57):
Artists biopic Playing of All People Andy Warhol. Much as
he done for The Elephant Man, David did his research.
He visited the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and handled some
of his personal effects, even borrowing the pop Art Titan's
wig for the film. He read extensively on art history
and attended lectures. David even joined the editorial board for

(45:20):
Modern Painters magazine. He continued to paint himself, pursuing a
passion that dated back to his days at Bromley Tech
as a student in the art class taught by Peter
Frampton's father Owen. In his own mind, he had always
seen himself as less of a musician and more of
a painter, had gone astray. In April, David held his

(45:41):
first solo exhibition at a London gallery, displaying portraits, sculptures
and images generated through computers, his new favorite tool. Art
critics were suspicious of paintings by those of David, Silk
rock music, being traditionally viewed as a lesser art form,
and the reviews were predictably savage. The word embarrassing cropped

(46:02):
up at least once. And then there was another of
David's visual projects, wallpaper That's right. David Bowie created a
line of wallpaper produced in tandem with Laura Ashley. To
be fair, this wasn't your grandma's wallpaper. One design included
a charcoal drawing of a mythological half man half bull

(46:22):
creature known as a minotaur. The critics, not to mention,
David's fans, were baffled. One reviewer was bold enough to
ask if the wallpaper was David's artistic suicide note, but
David seemed to take it a lot less seriously than
everyone else. I chose wallpaper because of its status as
something completely incongruous, He'd explained. I haven't completely lost my

(46:45):
sense of irony. I'm midway between high art and low art.
I'm a mid art populist and a postmodernist Buddhist who's
casually surfing his way through the chaos of the late
twentieth century. When David and Human wished to further escape
the chaos of the late twentieth century, they flew to

(47:06):
the island of Mystique, an outpost for wealthy British expats
and the Grenadines, just off the coast of South America.
David had first visited the island in six when Mick
Jagger and his girlfriend Jerry Hall invited him down to
their estate for Christmas. David immediately fell in love with
the remote, tropical paradise. In His ongoing competition with Mick

(47:28):
made it all the more appealing. Bowie, after all, was
always anxious to keep up with the Jaggers. Soon David
at his own plot of land and a team of
workmen constructing a compound. It was exact specifications. It was
a fantasia of Asian influences. There were Japanese gardens with
ornamental koi ponds and a Balinese dining pavilion that overlooked

(47:49):
the mountains of Britannia Bay. The main house was stocked
with fourteen cargo containers of antiques from all around the world.
Mostique became David's sanctuary, where he could read, paint and
work on the screenplay he'd been tinkering with for years.
When even that became too taxing, he could take a
dip in the sea or eat some lobster or just

(48:11):
watch the sunset with him on. He would later describe
the home of somewhere where he had absolutely no motivation
to do a thing. Inevitably, David would be drawn back
into his music. He'd rekindled his connection with Brian Eno,
his co conspirator on the boldly experimental Berlin Trilogy. The

(48:33):
pair hadn't worked together since nineteen seventy nine's Lodger. In
the intervening years, you Know would become one of the
most in demand producers in music, overseeing groundbreaking releases for
Talking Heads, You Two, and Divo, all of whom were
deeply influenced by the work he'd done with Bowie. Reunited
at David's wedding, they each played pieces of their own

(48:54):
music at the reception, and we're thrilled by the response
on the dance floor. This spark talks for a new album,
which they hoped would be the most uncompromising of their careers.
For a fresh approach, they visited the Googing Psychiatric Hospital
near Vienna, where a group of patients were housed in
a combination clinic and artist commune. There they could give

(49:15):
free reign to their creative impulses. And express themselves outside
of the usual parameters placed on artists. David Andino brought
some of their outsider artwork back with them to their
studio Touchstones for their New Outlook sessions in Montrose, Switzerland
took on the atmosphere of an avant garde art happening
when they began in March, and all star lineup of

(49:38):
Bowie collaborators have been assembled, including Berlin Trilogy veteran Carlos Alamar,
ex Spider from Mars, Mike Garson, Tim Machine bandmate, Reeves
Gabrel's drummer Sterling Campbell, and Basis Erdal Kazilka. Paints, charcoal,
canvas and paper were left around the studio just in
case anyone wanted to express themselves visually when they were playing.

(50:01):
As much as he did on Heroes and Lodger, Eno
employed his trust the Oblique Strategies cards to prime the
creative pump with unorthodox suggestions, but this time he took
it a step further, devising a complex role playing game
to break the players out of their usual habits and
self limiting mindsets. At the start of the sessions, he

(50:21):
passed a card to each musician that contained information about
their character. You're on the third moon of Jupiter and
you're the house band, read one. You're the morale booster
of a small, ragtag terrorist operation. You must keep spirits
up at all costs, said another. Bowie's card informed him
that he was a town crier in a society where

(50:43):
all media networks have tumbled down. The experiments continued as
they play it as well. Sometimes, you know, would have
the musicians listen to motown oldies through their headphones as
they recorded a totally unrelated song, just to see how
the music in their ears has impacted the vibe of
the new track out of context. These approaches seem like

(51:05):
the comical whims of an eccentric producer, but there was
a method to the madness. It was intended to keep
the music from jelling too much and becoming too homogenized
too In ENO's words, coherent. The interesting place is not chaos,
and it's not total coherence, he would explain, it's somewhere
on the cusp of those two. Bowie took a similar

(51:26):
approach with his lyrics. He updated the William Burrows style
cut and paste technique that he used on Diamond Dogs.
This time he fed bits of poems and magazine articles
into a computer program that randomly reconfigured sentences and phrases,
much as he had while making Low. David started getting
concerned notes from his label, wondering what the hell he

(51:48):
was doing. That's when David knew they were onto something good.
The experimentation paid off. They completed some thirty five hours
of backing tracks in just ten days. Is then it
took David a year and a half to whittle it
down and craft the songs, and there was a single narrative, or,
as he put it, a nonlinear gothic drama hyper cycle.

(52:11):
It was a return to the sci fi concept albums
that he'd largely avoided since Diamond Dogs. This time he'd
craft a fictional dystopian realm that was more ambitious than
any he'd ever attempted. Over the early months, he added
a series of spoken words sigus or monologues to flesh
out the surreal murder plot. It was somewhat dense and convoluted,

(52:35):
more akin to a graphic novel than an album, featuring
not one but seven protagonists. Based on a short story
he'd written called The Diary of Nathan Adler, the tale
follows the dismemberment of a fourteen year old runaway whose
body parts are intended for use in an art piece.
Detective Nathan Adler, who works in the government's newly formed

(52:56):
Art Crime Bureau, is tasked with determining what is legally
acceptable as art and what's trash. It's a biting comment
on both the turn of the millennium anxiety and also
the art scene of the era. Perhaps the poor reviews
David received at a solo exhibition provided some inspiration. David

(53:16):
called the album One Outside. Despite the numeral and its
title and the to be continued teas at the end,
the four sequels he supposedly had planned never materialized, even
with the unresolved cliffhanger, It's his definitive work of the nineties.
At seventy five minutes, it's David's longest record, a sprawling

(53:37):
epic that confounds and intrigues. As with the best of
his work, it manages to meld a host of disparate
contemporary musical influences in a way that's both fresh and original.
One Outside was released in September at the height of
the brit pop craze. It was a time when bands
like Swede, Pulp, Supergrass and Blur ruled the air waves, reverently,

(54:00):
following in the footsteps of the British rock forefathers, of
whom Bowie was an esteemed member. The hit parade was
choked with the sound that David himself had helped engineer,
and it would have been easy for him the court
success by imitating his imitators. Instead, he challenged listeners with
the trip hop techno of I'm Deranged and the electro

(54:20):
free jazz of A Small Plot of Land. There were
eno esque textured soundscapes like the motel and Wishful Beginnings
and the hard edged industrial rock of The Heart's Filthy Lesson.
This latter song became the album's lead single, a suitably
uncompromising choice. It's so packed with goth doom that director
David Fincher selected the song to play over the closing

(54:43):
titles of A serial killer drama seven. The deliberately controversial
music video was directed by Sam Beer, who done the
same for Nirvana Smells Like Teen Spirit. It was a
nightmarishly gory horror movie montage of skulls, candles, and troubling
items and jars. The grim griminess expressed Bowie's growing fascination

(55:05):
with blood rights and neopaganism, but most missed these references
and found themselves simply terrified by the visuals. The video
was banned by MTV, which surely must have pleased a
renegade like Bowie. After more than twenty years as a
public figure, he still had the power to shock and
outrage with his new bloody, rusted razor blade aesthetic. David

(55:28):
aligned himself with artie shock rockers like Marilyn Manson and
Nine Inch Nails, the ladder of which was a growing
influence on him. While recording one Outside, he often listened
to The Downward Spiral, which was released just weeks before
sessions began in March. As fate would have it, Nine
Inch Nails as Trent Resner, listened to Bowie's album Low

(55:50):
on a daily basis while recording The Downward Spiral. It
seemed logical that their pass with Cross, but many were
surprised when they announced the joint us tour, set to
kick off in the summer of Nine Inch Nails opened
the show, paying tribute to the headliner with versions of
Scary Monsters and Subterranean, before bringing out the man himself.

(56:12):
After duets on reptile and hurt. They seated the stage,
The Bowie and the crowd generally couldn't have cared less
for David. The tour was an act of stubborn artistic bravery. Firstly,
it opened themselves up to accusations that he was a
rock and roll Peter Pan, trying to prove that he
could still keep the pace with the young guys. Moreover,

(56:34):
his fan base hardly overlapped with that of Nine Inch Nails.
As soon as the band said they're on stage farewells,
there was a mass exodus towards the arena doors. The
audience were mostly teenagers. They didn't want to stay for
this old timer. David made no effort to be accommodating,
stacking his set almost exclusively with tracks from one outside.

(56:55):
As he'd mischievously explained, I slip on stage after a
set by the most rest of band ever to conquer
the top forty. I don't do hits. I performed lots
of songs from an album that hasn't been released, and
the older songs that perform are probably obscure even to
my oldest fans. I use note theatrics, no videos, and
often no costumes. It's a dirty job, but I think

(57:17):
I'm just the man for it. He liked the challenge
of winning over and in different audience, like his excursions
with Tin Machine. It made him feel exhilarated, inspired, and
maybe a little youthful. But it made pretty much everyone
else feel confused. Even Reisner was surprised by how the
tour was shaking out. His gargantuan success hadn't changed the

(57:40):
fundamentally shy Bowie super fan that he was at heart.
He was daunted by the prospect of touring with his hero,
and found himself desperately hoping that he wouldn't bump into
David backstage before a show. It was just too intimidating.
Reisner was at a particularly unhappy point in his life,
drowning and drugs and self loathe him. The adoration of

(58:02):
the audience seemed like mockery in his depressed state. He
was low, and David recognized it. He'd been there and
it was still familiar. He did what he could to
offer some big brother style advice to his young friend,
delivered with compassion and a warm arm around his shoulder.
You know, he said, there's a better way here, and

(58:23):
it doesn't have to end in despair or death. David
himself was a living example, a happy person, insanely in love,
still making art that was fearless. It could be done,
and Resner would get there someday. David had gone through it,
and now he led by quiet example. His music had

(58:44):
inspired many to get into the industry, now his aging
inspired many to survive it. David Bowie turned fifty years

(59:05):
old on January eight. His birthday was treated as a
major historical milestone by the world press. There were retrospectives
on the BBC and profiles and magazines and newspapers. Many
of his rock star brethren had tried to downplay the
fact that they were now half a century old, but
not David. The following day, he threw himself a party.

(59:27):
Nothing crazy, just an intimate, low key gathering at Madison
Square Garden with twenty thousand fans and hosts of artists
on the cutting edge of the music scene. Clearly as
dramatic flair hadn't paid at with age. He appeared on
stage looking his most ziggy like in years, with a
lacey frock coat topped off of the red dyed rooster

(59:48):
cut pale pancake makeup and thick lashings of mascara. At first,
he stuck the selections from One Outside and his upcoming
album Earthling before revisiting his golden oldies the help of
his famous guests. Turns out he wasn't going to retire
those songs after all. There were appearances by The Cures,
Robert Smith, Foo Fighters, the Pixies, Frank Black and Sonic

(01:00:12):
youth Billy Corgan appeared during the second encore to perform
All the Young Dudes and a raucous Geene Genie. Organizers
for the paper Review Extravaganza tried to pressure David into
inviting safe choices classic rock piers like Mick Jagger Tina Turner,
but The Birthday Boy refused. In fact, his only contemporary

(01:00:33):
was Lou Reed, warmly introduced as the King of New York.
Towards the end of the show, the band launched into
Happy Birthday as David, looking genuinely surprised, was presented with
the birthday cake with Trick Campbell's. He thanked fans who
followed his career for decades and welcomed those who were
new to his music. I don't know where I'm going

(01:00:54):
from here, he said, but I promise I won't bore you.
It was an event befitting ahead of state, which in
many ways is what he'd become. For much of his career.
He'd been a political Now he was chummy with Tony Blair,

(01:01:15):
the first baby boomer Prime Minister, presented him with a
Lifetime Achievement Award at the Brits the English equivalent of
the Grammys. He was offered a life peerage in the
English House of Lords, but Bowie had no interest in
being a baron. He would also turn down a knighthood
from the Queen. I'm indifferent to royalty, he explained. Accepting
one of those things would make me feel owned, and

(01:01:37):
I'm not owned by anybody. But he showed his British
pride on his next album, Earthling, released in February. On
the cover, he wears a long overcoat emblazoned with a
distressed Union jack. Though he didn't embrace the jangly sound

(01:01:57):
of the britpop explosion, he was caught up in the
Cool Britannia movement that swept the globe like a second
coming of Swinging London as it had in the sixties.
This wave of British creativity touched on all areas of
the arts. There were films like Danny Boyle's Train Spotting,
visual art from Damien Hurst and Tracy Emmon. Fashion was

(01:02:18):
represented by Kate Moss and Alexander McQueen, who designed Bowie's
coat for the Earthling cover. The war torn flag was
Bowie's way of owning his status as the Old Guard.
He was one of the originals. Though he recorded Earthling
in New York City, he pronounced his English accent in
a way that he seldom had since his day's, imitating

(01:02:39):
Anthony Newley on his debut record instead of the baroque
poppy favored back in nine seven. David of the nineties
dove deeper into the sound of electronic club music, known
alternately as jungle or Drummond bass. Both names evoked the
rapid fire rhythms, thundering beats and slashes of fuzzed out
guitar heard at raves and cross the UK. Five days

(01:03:02):
after returning from his outside tour, David entered the Manhattan
recording space owned by composer Philip Glass to begin work
with producer Mark Platty, a man well versed in the
comparatively new art of digital production. Guitar parts and drums
were recorded live and then processed through a sampler, were
distorted through a synthesizer. Songs like Little Wonder, Telling Lies,

(01:03:24):
I'm Afraid of Americans, and Dead Man Walking were custom
made to be remixed by DJ's for the dance floor.
It would be David's first album recorded entirely digitally. David
was intrigued by the concept that music could be made
on the small laptop that he carried with him everywhere.
The ease with which one could make him manipulate sounds
opened the door for whole new realms of experimentation and spontaneity.

(01:03:49):
David had been an early adopter of home computers, embracing
them as a valuable tool for his work and life.
Although for a while he needed help turning it on.
It came in handy for setting lyrics or for graphic design.
He coordinated elements of Seven's Glass Spider Tour via email,
long before most people had even considered such a notion.

(01:04:10):
Email would become a preferred method of communication for the
rest of his life. I'd be completely lost without it,
he'd say in the early nineties, way before the rest
of us would echo the sentiment. In later years, he
was known to bombard friends with the YouTube videos that
had caught us attention. It soon became apparent to David

(01:04:31):
that the computer was more than a mere gadget, but
a mechanism that was fundamentally alter culture and the very
way human beings processed the world around them. He sensed
the change would be exponentially greater than the advent of
television due to the interactive potential of the Internet. This
wasn't just a communications system, it was, in his words,

(01:04:52):
an alien life form. He predicted a nonlinear society capable
of recombining and re contextualizing information. Happidly, it sounded like
one of his mid seventies sci fi plots, on par
with Ziggy or Hunger City, but it was all scarily prescient.
I think the potential for what the Internet is going
to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable,

(01:05:15):
he told a skeptical BBC News reporter in It's gonna
crush your ideas of what mediums are all about. Music,
he felt an especially rock and roll, had lost its immediacy,
its urgency, and its power as a change agent. Instead,
he believed that spirit continued on with the Internet. I

(01:05:35):
wanted to be a musician because it felt rebellious, he said.
It felt subversive, It felt like one could affect change.
The Internet now carries the flag of being subversive and rebellious.
The monoculture was crumbling. The singularity had disappeared. We'd entered
an age of pluralism. The fragmentation that Bowie had felt
within himself was now being illustrated on a grand global scale.

(01:06:00):
There were no longer era defining cultural figures like Elvis,
or the Beatles, or even himself. Now it's subgroups in genres.
He'd say, it's about the community. It's becoming more and
more about the audience. He imagined the ways that the
Internet would not only change the way that content is delivered,
but how it would redefine the relationship between the user

(01:06:21):
and the provider, and the long term effects that would
have on intellectual property. Music itself is going to become
like running water or electricity, he said. At the turn
of the millennium, a decade before streaming services became prevalent.
You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring,
he warned, as fellow musicians, because that's really the only
unique situation that's going to be left sensing the sea change.

(01:06:45):
Bowie responded accordingly. In November, he released the song Telling
Lies on his website, making it the first downloadable single
by a major artist. To help launch Earthling, he held
a cyber cat best of his concert from Boston, though
few people had a strong enough Internet connection to view
it properly. The following year, he ventured to change that

(01:07:09):
by launching bowie Net, his own high speed internet service
that offered a host of exclusive Bowie centric content, ranging
from video feeds, chat rooms, and q and a sessions
with Bowie himself. This wasn'theard of for a musician of
Bowie's caliber. If a performer had a website at all
in the nineties, it was just a digital billboard to

(01:07:30):
shill their latest album or tour. Bowie Nett was a
social network before the term existed. David greeted those who
entered his cyber home with a message, I welcome all
you web travelers to the first community driven Internet site
that focuses on music, film, literature, painting, and more. The
purposes interactivity and community. Everybody has a voice. David was

(01:07:54):
a regular in his chat rooms, posting under the handle
sailor at us. With most celebrities, his information on the
world came through handlers and representatives, many of whom had
a vested interest in his reaction or response. With the Internet,
David could get the info for himself unfiltered. I love
the chat rooms because you get to hear what people

(01:08:16):
genuinely think, he said. The communication between me and my
web audience has become more intimate than it's ever been.
It's a feeling I enjoyed because it's new to me.
It's adventurous. It's a new position of what the artist is.
It's a demystification. Bowie would lose ours hold up in
his home office, known as the Bunker. When he wasn't

(01:08:39):
lurking in his own chat rooms, he indulged his curiosity
on the web or purchased obscure collectibles on eBay. Sometimes
his Internet excursions carried on late into the evening, which
created a bit of tension in his marriage. Iman wasn't
too happy because I just never came to bed, he admitted.
Once you start surfing at night, you can really break

(01:08:59):
up a relationship. You've got to be very careful about that,
he cautioned. Towards the end of the computer game company
Edo's Interactive asked Bowie to provide music for an adventure
video game they were developing called a Micron the Nomad Soul.
The programmers sweetened the deal by offering to turn David

(01:09:21):
Iman and even members of David's band and two characters
in the game. How could a futurist techno nerd resist?
Sessions for the game soundtrack evolved into a full fledged
Bowie album called Ours, and its rollout was an appropriately
digital affair. The cover art was unvailed on Bowie's website
or the album will be made available as a digital

(01:09:42):
download prior to its release on CD, another first for
a major artist. But the real master stroke was the
cyber song contest, offering one lucky fan the chance to
write four lines of lyrics the album track, What's Really Happening,
a hummed melody, was shared to Bowie's website and budding
writers were encouraged to give it their best shot. Bowie

(01:10:03):
was inundated with over eighty thousand submissions. The winner, an
Ohio college student named Alex Grant, was given a fifteen
thousand dollar publishing contract. And flown to New York to
watch David record his words grown inside a plastic box.
Micro thoughts and safety locks. Hearts become outdated clocks ticking

(01:10:23):
in your mind. The entire event was webcast, allowing fans
to watch as a new Bowie song was completed before
their very eyes. After the daring and bombastic Earthling and
one outside hours found David at his most introspective. Themes
of mortality crop up on tracks like Thursday's Child, The

(01:10:44):
Dreamers and The Standout Survive. There was, after all, a
lot to be reflective about. It was the fall in
the end of the millennium encouraged many to take stock.
The year marked an end, but it also signaled a
new beginning. It certainly was for David and Iman. Just

(01:11:04):
two months into the new year, they announced that they
were going to be parents. They've been trying for a
baby for years, but several rounds of IVF proved fruitless. Ultimately,
they conceived naturally. Iman credited the successful conception to a
traditional African remedy holding a borrowed baby. In this case,
the child was supplied by fellow supermodel Christie Brinkley during

(01:11:27):
a Vogue photo shoot. Their little girl was born on
August two thousand at Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital. David cut
the umbilical cord himself, weighing in at seven pounds four ounces.
They called her Alexandria Zara Jones, her name inspired by
the ancient Greco Egyptian seat of culture. She is wonderful,

(01:11:48):
David gushed, and probably I believe the most intelligent child
that's ever been born. A father again at fifty three,
he was thrilled, except that is for one thing. I
don't do nappies, he admitted, the dreaded diaper duty. Aside,
he was a devoted father, He cleaned up his last
remaining vice, finally kicking his multiple pack a day smoke

(01:12:10):
habit for good. Cognizant of his spotty paternal attendance record
during his son's early years, David insisted he wouldn't tour
as much. I don't want to make the same mistakes
with Lexi, he said. As David was reappraising his approach
to fatherhood, he became an orphan himself. His mother, Peggy,

(01:12:33):
died at an English nursing home just a few months
after Lexi's birth in April of two thousand one. She
was eighty seven years old. Her death came out of
the blue and was a horrible shock to David. The
chilliness that had characterized their relationship in his youth had
thawed by the eighties, when they spent holidays and vacations together.
He cared for her, even spoiled her. It's unclear whether

(01:12:56):
he got the acceptance that he craved and returned. I'm
sorry to hear about your mom, a friend told him
after the funeral. You know, I don't think she ever
took to me, David replied. Trouble was, I don't think
she ever took to me either. David's daughter became the

(01:13:18):
center of his world. A year after her birth, he
described his main job as daddyfying, and it brought him
untold joy. To be honest, I really have to pull
myself together to focus on music, he said. Sometimes it
almost feels like a distraction. He began a period of nesting.
After years of flitting between houses all over the world,

(01:13:39):
he set down roots in New York. The New Soho
apartment he shared with Iman and Lexei became his primary residence.
I can't imagine living anywhere else, he'd say. I am
a New Yorker, he loved it for all the same reasons.
John Lennon had love to mention other UK stars, all
too familiar with the ferocity of British paparah see. In

(01:14:01):
New York, they could be anonymous and move around without
a photographer's lens shoved in their face. If David threw
on a cap and some jeans, he could be almost anyone.
He didn't much go for disguises, but he found that
pretending to read a Greek newspaper allowed him to ride
public transport with minimal hassle. He was an early riser,
waking up at six to venture out on dawn walks

(01:14:23):
around the city. Sometimes he brought Lexie and her stroller,
other times he just went solo. After getting his groceries
in the Boutiquie Dean and de Luca market nearby on Broadway,
Bowie could often be found browsing the rows of books
at McNally Jackson's. It was like he was back in Berlin,
strolling with no security, grabbing coffee at his regular cafe,

(01:14:45):
running into his neighbor Moby in the corner deli. He'd
still go to concerts on occasion, anointing the new breed
of NYC bands like The Strokes, Interpoll and the Yeah
Yeah Yeahs with a backstage visit, but for the most
part he was a homebody by his own admission. Having
a family and sticking around to be present for it

(01:15:06):
level amount moving him from a life of action to
one of contemplation and reflection. This retrospective mood is apparent
on David's new project, an album revisiting early songs he
wrote back in the mid sixties called Toy. The proposed
album included Liza Jane, the first recording had ever released
back in Other titles like Hole in the Ground were

(01:15:31):
of a similar vintage, but never recorded. Label troubles would
halt the album indefinitely. Those some tracks would trickle out
as B sides or bonus songs. Well, much of it
leaked out on the internet in too many it remains
something approaching the Great Lost Bowie album. The experience left

(01:15:53):
a bitter taste in Bowie's mouth, leading to his departure
from his label soon after, but the Toy recording rekindle
a working relationship with Tony Visconti, David's longtime friend and collaborator.
The two had fallen out just prior to two s
Let's Dance Sessions, when David rather rudely booted him as
co producer in favor of Nile Rodgers just weeks before

(01:16:15):
recording was due to begin. Stung by the rejection, Visconti
refused David's invitation to mix sound for the resulting Serious
Moonlight Tour. Sure, the thinking went, give the hot shot
producer the glamour and leave me with the grunt work.
They didn't speak for a while after that. They came
together briefly to work on a song for the soundtrack

(01:16:36):
to Nickelodeon's The Rugrats movie, but the scene for the
song was cut and the track was amazingly dropped during
the Toy sessions. A few years later, David revived let
Me Sleep Beside You, an obscure nineteen sixty seven track
that has the distinction of being the first song he
and Visconti ever worked on together. Visconti wrote a new

(01:16:58):
string arrangement, which led to a coffee date, which led
to plans to make their first new album together in
twenty two years. In June of two thousand one, the
pair traveled the Visconti's drafty country home and upstate New
York workshopping songs like they had in the basement of
Hadden Hall all those years ago. Then they got to
work at a large studios, a recording facility in a

(01:17:21):
former luxury estate, carved into the high peaks of the
cat Skills. The vaulted wooden ceilings made it look like
a rustic cathedral. David couldn't help but be inspired by
the god's eye view of the mountains and reservoir. Outside
the massive picture windows. He could see for miles clear
through to Manhattan. Deer roamed the grounds while eagles kept

(01:17:41):
watch overhead. David traditionally derived his inspiration from urban environments,
but something about the stark natural scenery spoke to him
the moment he arrived. He later said, I knew exactly
what lyrics I was to write, although I didn't yet
know what the words themselves were. They came to him

(01:18:04):
early one morning. David had a habit of arriving at
the studio at sunrise to gather his thoughts alone, gazing
out the window at the deer grazing in the pre
dawn haze. He had an experience. The precise word for
it differs across cultures and theologies oneness, wholeness, enlightenment, loving, awareness, nirvana, zen.

(01:18:30):
It washed over him like a warm wave. The beauty
and fragility of existence became so clear. I couldn't believe
this was happening to me. David would recall the serenity
and the majesty of it, How beautiful the world is.
It all started coming in, and I honed in and
what it was I really had to say about my life.

(01:18:51):
It was magical. Words began pouring out of him. His
tears streamed down his face. He didn't want to write
what he had to a but he had to. The
feeling was odd, like someone else was guiding him. He
would describe the moment as a traumatic epiphany. His hard
won happiness was tempered by the irrefutable fact that everything

(01:19:14):
is temporary. It's a head spinning dichotomy, He'd say, the
lust for life against the finality of everything. Those two
things raging against each other that produces these moments that
feel like real truth. The words would form the basis
of a new song, Heathen At first past, the lyrics

(01:19:36):
appear to be a man leaving a lover, but the
object he addresses his life Heathen is about knowing you're dying,
David explained. It's a dialogue between a man and life itself.
It's a man confronting the realization that life is a
finite thing and that he can already feel it actually
going from him, ebbing out of him, the weakening of age.

(01:20:01):
It was more than just a little autobiographical. There are
times in our quiet lives when we're very happy, he'd say,
But there comes a point when you're not growing anymore
and your body's strength is diminishing. Especially in one's mid fifties,
you're very aware that that's the moment you have to
leave the idea of being young. You've got to let

(01:20:21):
it go. There was a nursery rhyme David remembered from
his childhood. This is the way the young men ride,
clip clop, clip clop, clip clop, clip clop. It starts,
then it ends with this is the way the old
men ride, hobbily, hobbily, hobbily down into the ditch. David

(01:20:43):
was keenly aware that these days he rode like an
old man. I wanted to give some sense of what
happens when you arrive at this stage, he said, do
you still have doubts? Do you still have questions and fears?
And does everything burn with as much luminosity as it
did when you were young? It was the inverse of nihilism.

(01:21:05):
This was gratitude. In his youth, he had often gambled
with his life. Now those days were behind him, he
wanted to stay. I love this work, he said, I
love this life. I'm so greedy not to want to
give it up. I just don't want to give it up.
It's hard to give it up. Heathen would become the

(01:21:28):
title track for his new album. For the first time
since The Buddha of Suburbia. David wrote all the new
material himself. The songs reflected David's tumultuous year in which
he lost a parent and became one again. The autumnal
lyrics grappled with feelings of loss, isolation, abandonment, and uncertainty

(01:21:49):
by David's own estimation. All of us work dealt with
these same themes, all of the high points of one's life.
He'd note Briley his greatest strength as a writer was
his ability, due to capture transitory nagging fear. It was
the dread that had defined his existence, the possibility that
there was no true spiritual life. The concept of heathen

(01:22:12):
is a godless century. Tony Visconti observed he was addressing
the bleakness of our soul and possibly his own soul.
The songs on Heathen would be colored by a national tragedy,
one that hit terrifyingly close to home for David. He

(01:22:34):
was upstayed in the studio one Tuesday morning in September
when he saw the news that a jet liner had
flown into one of the World Trade Center towers. He
immediately called him on back in their downtown apartment, where
she could see the building burn from their kitchen window.
They were on the phone when she saw a second
plane hit the tower. You're under attack, David said, get

(01:22:56):
out of there. Iman bundled Lexie and her stroller and
ran uptown to seek shelter at a friend's apartment. The
phone lines were jammed across the city, and for the
rest of the day, David didn't know whether his wife
and daughter were still alive. It was so so horrifying,
he would say, it was incredibly traumatic, one of the

(01:23:16):
nastiest days of my life. From the studio window, David
watched the orange smoke in the distance Snake towards the Sky.
The events of September eleventh gave extra residence to David's
powerful lyrics. The album was greeted with near universal praise
upon its release in June of two thousand two. His

(01:23:36):
best albums since Scary Monsters had been a familiar refrain
throughout his nineties creative resurgence, but now the lines seemed
to fit. David's modest tour featured concerts in each of
New York's five boroughs, an expression of love and thanks
for his grieving adopted home. His next album, two thousand threes, Reality,

(01:23:57):
was steeped in the urban angst of Manhattan. To promoted,
he planned an epic nine month, one hundred and twelve
date trek across Europe, America, Asia and Australia. At age
fifty six, it was an unusual time to embark on
the longest, most grueling tour of his career, but then again,
he was in the best shape of his life. Drugs

(01:24:18):
were long gone, plus he'd given up booze and kicked cigarettes.
He watched what he ate with the help of a
private chef, and he was working out boxing multiple times
a week with a trainer. With his casual sneakers and
skin tight black T shirt that showed off his slender frame,
he barely looked forty, but Tony Visconti sensed he was

(01:24:39):
tired before the tour launched that October. As the concerts progressed,
his body began to rebel. In November, he canceled a
show due to laryngitis, and the first leg of the
US tour was delayed for a week when he came
down with the flu. But this was all just a
precursor what was to come. For years, David denied rumors

(01:25:01):
of a secret cocaine induced heart attack delightful but untrue.
He'd insist, it's very romantic, but I've got a very
sound heart. But intimates, including Reeves Gabrels, claimed that he
often complained of chest pains on tour, but swore one
and all of secrecy. David didn't want to worry him
on but in June of two thousand and four it

(01:25:23):
became too much. On June, he ended a gig in
Prague early due to a shooting pain and his left shoulder.
A tour doctor told him it was a trapped nerve
and gave him the all clear to continue two days
later at the Hurricane Festival in Germany. The set seemed
normal to his band well, maybe not as energetic as

(01:25:44):
some of his previous performances. He ended his encore with
ziggy stardust Zo to his alter ego, His Nemesis, his
Dream Brother. It was note perfect. After taking his bows,

(01:26:04):
David climbed off the stage and collapsed in agony. An
ambulance was summoned and took him away. A German doctor
determined that it wasn't a trapped nerve that was bothering him,
but a blocked artery in his heart. They advised an
emergency angioplasty and put David under. As he drifted away
from the anesthesia, he must have been amused. The first

(01:26:27):
time he'd seen his hero A Little Richard perform, Richard
had feigned a heart attack mid song for dramatic effect.
Now David had the real thing, and he didn't miss
a beat. His bandmates looked on in disbelief as David's
ambulance sped off. The remaining tour dates were canceled. They
were going home. A few realized it, but David Bowie

(01:26:49):
had just given his last concert off The record is
a production of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are
Noel Brown and Shan ty Tone. The supervising producers are

(01:27:10):
Taylor Chicogne and Trista McNeil. The show was researched, written
and hosted by me Jordan run Talk and edited, scored
and sound designed by Taylor she coogn and Trista McNeil,
with additional music by Evan Tyre. If you like what
you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For
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(01:27:31):
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Chapter Twelve: Heathen (1987-2004)

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