Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Interview with David Bowie - San Francisco - 1986

Originally this article ran in the entertainment section of CNN.COM the following is the rough un-edited form untouched by editors in Atlanta - enjoy.

I don't know what to expect - I'm all a titter in antica-pation. My eyes are closed tightly and I'm floating on a wave of soul music and glam rock
. I've been trying to cover Bowie for the last 20 years, of which - I've been alive only six of them. I'm sitting at the top of the Mark Hopkins, vodka and tonic running a steady stream from my forehead - fernet stealing my nerves, half ofbolivia cheering me on. What will he be like? Does David Bowie sit down or does he just float - hover in mid air and contemplate life in a funky, funky disco ball? It's one of those transcendental moments of my life - I'm humming the words to Sorrow as I jot anything down into my notepad. I'm not nervous - nervous was prom night with thegerman foreign exchange student - tonight I'm...I'm at a loss.
Sorrow.
To America and thus the world, David Bowie is that representation of the Abstract fabulous being in all of us - oozing sexuality and not caring who steps in it. Dirty and Debonair - if the strokes are what you imaginebrooklyn to be like on half a gram and a 40 then David Bowie is that party all the cool kids were hitting up on mars.
He shimmers into the bar, long black sex kitten Iman on his arm, draped like a velvet cloak, a shadow of a sharp faced beauty.
He's the Jean Genie, the thin white Duke - the soundtrack to all my important break ups .
Bowie is wearing some kind of Safari outfit - he's wrapped himself in beige khaki shorts, matching short sleeved buttoned up shirt with a red and white checkered sash slung like abandolier , close cropped red hair, cigarette dangling haphazardly - constantly pacing his mouth but never quite leaving it - pale white skin and thin pink lips. His throat sticks out at an obscene angle and he smells faintly of musk oil and chalk. He's wearing a monocle which makes his blue eye appear much larger then its accompanying brown eye. He moves with intent of purpose and seems to constantly be gauging and readjusting himself to his surroundings.Iman is dressed in a simply black smock, the word "caution" embedded
into the pattern. Her eyes and the majority of her face are covered in a thin red veil with the exception of a cohiba cigarette jutting out, almost in a phallic manner. She's wearing matching black moon boots where as Bowie has knee high socks and off whitenikes - the swoosh symbol scratched off and replaced by a smiling crescent moon and a spoon.

ME
David Bowie, the voice of a generation hiding from the men who sold the world - what's this new project you've been working on?

DB
Well, it's a Jim Henson Picture. A dreamy, sleepy vision of coo-coo's and cocoa puffs, a girl who shimmies through a story of sinister simplicity. The go, go, go of the gone, gone gones.

The last bit he hums out. Tapping his hands on the bar to some crazy beat in his head

Me
Wow - that sounds amazing. Sort of like the man who fell to earth, which coincidentally was filmed in my home state.

DB
Oh, man, yeah - this is puppets and signing - big budget, crazy cosmic jive.

Me
This is a Jim Henson film, does this mean we're to expect Kermit the Frog and Ziggy Stardust sharing screen time?

DB
That's far out - you heard about that to? There's a starman waiting in the sky, he'd like to come and meet us but he thinks he'd blow our minds.

Iman whispers something in Bowies ear and he laughs - bares his fangs as he giggles.

Me
Whats so funny David Bowie?

DB
Nothing, just, well you know that song of mine "Knock on Wood"? It's got this all encompassing big budget categorically eighties quality about it that can only be referred to as fake and completely studio and that's what I pick up on you.

ME
Wait, what?

DB
Well, think about my song "Soul Love" there's a line, "all I have is my lovers love - love is not loving you" it's an allusion to the spinningduldrums of the record playing cosmic groovies , what I'm saying man, you're a suit. The tie, the white collared suit. Forget the movie - I'm David Bowie - what do you want to ask me? Get off the script.

Me
What would you ask you?


David Bowie pauses, squares his eyes dead on mine, bites his bottom lip, taps his left foot against the right foot of Iman, swirls an imaginary circle in the air in front of him and stands up.

I am completely overwhelmed as a journalist. I don't really want to ask him anything. I just want to experience him, breathe him in like smoke and exhale. I'm thinking of the piano to "Oh you pretty things" and wishing that I wasn't wasting the moment. I'm acutely aware of the fact that I'm arranging words to manipulate emotions and yet I'm surgically detached - starring from far away at the "freakiest show"
Begging myself the question again and again, Is there life on mars?
I loosen my tie.

DB
What does it mean, mate? Its like the story of Triptomelus, the greek demi-god who comforted Persephone's mother after the onset of winter. He rode a chariot driven by dragons on his way to promote agriculture. A vengeful and inimical King slew one of his dragons and thus denied his kingdom of advanced farming techniques. Don't you see it?

Me
David Bowie, what do you mean?

DB
To follow meaning is like hunting a cosmic chimera. It's getting lost on the far out beauty of the obscene, its the honesty in all the gibberish that marks us as incisive.

He's using his monocle to as an emphasis to his points, a crowd gathering curiously around us, ready and willing to cast their fates with him for lack of something better, eyes quick to gaze upon this golden calf of a man.

Shyly aware of the attention he sits back down and motions the bartender over. He orders a Negroni for Iman, a bitters and soda for himself. He stares into the drink. Foot still tapping against Imans, trying to keep the madness at bay.

I've nothing more to say to him, nothing I can say that wouldn't sound both stupid and contrived. We part ways at the roof of the Mark Hopkins where Iman and him jump into a waiting chopper. As the wind from the rotor blades kicks at my clothes and whips my hair I realize that sometimes art is best appreciated for what it is and what it means to you then what it is and what it means to the artists - because sometimes they have conflicting points of view. I leave the interview no better then when I came into it - wishing for no profound epiphany, I find none - only rock and roll where before there was nothing.