- ♪ Something happened on the day he died ♪
♪ Spirit rose a meter and stepped aside ♪
♪ Somebody else took his place ♪
♪ And bravely cried ♪
Always remember that the reason
that you initially started working
was that there was something inside yourself
that you felt that
if you could manifest it in some way,
you would understand
more about yourself
and how you coexist
with the rest of society.
♪ How many times does an angel fall ♪
♪ How many people lie ♪
♪ Instead of talking tall ♪
People have either really accepted what I do
or they've absolutely
sort of pushed it away from them.
I guess that's what I am, you know?
But I would love to feel that what I did
actually changed the fabric of music.
♪ ♪
Even though I seem to
superficially change such a lot,
a style does come through.
By virtue of the fact that I'm getting older,
it's given me quite a scope
on what I can draw from within my own
catalog of albums.
♪ ♪
♪ Look up here ♪
♪ I'm in heaven ♪
♪ I've got scars that can't be seen ♪
♪ ♪
'Allo, 'allo, 'allo!
It's your lucky day!
♪ ♪
♪ Where are we now? ♪
- I think that David's music
is totally autobiographical.
He's telling you everything
if you just know what to look for.
- ♪ The moment you know ♪
♪ You know you know ♪
- He was a kind of provocateur.
- ♪ Where the fuck did Monday go? ♪
- He offered an alternative to people,
and that, to me, is a great artist.
You know? Someone who can
offer that for generations to come.
♪ ♪
- This is one human being
who has single-handedly changed
basically the course of my life,
and you can't say that about most people.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Loving the alien ♪
♪ Watch that man ♪
- ♪ Oh, honey, watch that man ♪
- ♪ Blue, blue, electric blue ♪
♪ That's the color of my room ♪
♪ I'm looking for a vehicle ♪
♪ I'm looking for a ride ♪
♪ I'm looking for a party ♪
♪ I'm looking for a side ♪
♪ We can be heroes ♪
♪ Just for one day ♪
♪ ♪
I've this poetic, romantic, kind of juvenile idea
that I would be dead by 30,
but suddenly you're 30 and you're 40.
Then you're 50 and 57, and all that,
and it's a new land, you know?
- Sure. - I'm a pioneer.
♪ Got your mother in a whirl ♪
♪ ♪
♪ She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl ♪
♪ Hey, baby ♪
♪ Your hair's all right ♪
♪ Hey, baby, let's stay out tonight ♪
- It's a big tour you're starting now, isn't it?
- Yeah, it's gonna go on for months and months,
but, uh, I think we're up for it.
- How do you feel right now?
- Pretty relaxed, you know.
Uh, I enjoy the songs a lot,
so, uh, I'm gonna-- I'm gonna have a good time.
♪ You're ♪
♪ ♪
- You know, I'm gonna be honest with you.
The happiest I've ever seen that man
in 42 years that I spent, on and off, with him,
was that tour.
I--I'd never seen him like that before.
- ♪ You're ♪
♪ Rebel, rebel ♪
- ♪ Put on your dress ♪
♪ Rebel, rebel ♪
- ♪ Face is a mess ♪
♪ You're a ♪
♪ Rebel, rebel ♪
- ♪ How could they know? ♪
♪ Hot tramp, I love you so ♪
- ♪ You bet ♪
- At a certain time in your life,
you get to a point where
you do feel freer
and you don't really care
what people...
Think, and you can be yourself
and you can laugh at things
and you can not take things, maybe, so seriously.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Hey, baby, let's stay out tonight ♪
- When it came to the "Reality Tour,"
I think he had decided that he was gonna take down
that kind of screen, if you like...
- Thank you!
- And be David Bowie,
not in a cheesy way,
but he--he allowed more access
to himself.
- On guitar, from Dublin's fair city,
Gerry Leonard.
Actually, he's--
He's actually from Tunbridge Wells,
but he always gets the good applause
when I say that.
I'm not really very keen to put on
much of a theatrical show, you know,
in terms of big sets and elephants and fireworks
and things like that.
Of course, it doesn't mean that
I won't go back on my word, because that's, you know,
part and parcel of what I do for you,
as part of my entertaining factor
is lying to you.
♪ ♪
- His sense of humor was on.
He always had one anyway,
but publicly,
he didn't show it as much.
You know what I mean? There was that
serious artist thing going on, you know,
during some of the tours.
The "Reality Tour" wasn't like that,
because there was some nights I was falling down laughing
for some of the shit that he would say or do
or that happened.
- These must be my albums
that nobody ever bought,
so they've gotten really cheap.
Look, they got "Lodger" and "Tin Machine,"
Isn't that because...
- We're at some truck stop in Montana,
and I'm at-- You know--you know those
machines that you never win at
where you put in the quarter
and then the claw comes down
and it picks up the stuffed animal?
- Yeah, good boy.
- Oh!
Oh!
- I do, it, and I actually get
the thing out of it,
and it's the-- But it's the two of us.
It's this competition
of who's gonna get
the stuffed animal.
- I think it's kind of
a 50/50 thing here,
so I'll take that one... - Oh, cut--
It was Cat's money.
That's just not the David
that I had known in early years.
That's brilliant.
- Some of the fun and games that were going on--
I think that really was
who he was, you know?
The real David was the one that you saw
at the time of the "Reality Tour."
He was--he's just-- He was always funny.
He always had a funny sense of humor.
He was always joking
about things.
- All right.
- Oh, you're doing your bird.
- Dun-dun-dun-dun.
- Guess the movie.
- There was a sense that David looked
as young and as youthful
as ever on that tour.
It did seem like he had
the gift from the gods, you know?
That--that he was never gonna get old.
- ♪ Never ever, ever gonna get old ♪
♪ ♪
That's a lie, but it's only a little lie.
- He looked so good
and youthful at the same time
and one night, I said,
"You look really good in that suit,"
and for some reason, the way I said it--
He said,
"I'm happily married."
So I didn't realize what I--
How I was saying that.
But yeah, he just looked great,
all the time.
- ♪ Billy rapped all night ♪
♪ About his suicide ♪
♪ Kick it in the head when he was 25 ♪
That's just speed jive.
♪ Don't wanna stay alive ♪
♪ When you're 25 ♪
- Playing "All the Young Dudes,"
that's such-- Like an anthem, really.
In a way, it was almost like church,
you know, when you really do feel like
you have this congregation of people
and everyone's singing
and the whole place is swaying.
♪ All the young dudes ♪
- Yeah, you in the back!
♪ Carry the news ♪
- In the St. George T-shirt!
♪ Dudes ♪
- ♪ Carry the message ♪
♪ One more ♪
- It was just a--
An incredible connection
to the audience, I think, for that show,
for pretty much the whole show.
♪ Boogaloo dudes ♪
♪ Carry the news ♪
♪ ♪
- He just got into tunnel vision,
like he was gonna make this
not just successful,
but just be prepared to play it,
because it was a lot of music every night.
We would go in
2 1/2-hour sets,
and, you know, you have to really
be physically capable to handle that.
♪ ♪
- Going on tour excited him very much,
but, uh, he said to me, flat-out,
"I'm tired,"
so I think, um,
he fulfilled all his wishes and dreams,
and maybe he got a little over-saturated
in the touring.
♪ ♪
- We got to Prague,
and then, during a show,
David was sweating profusely
and unable to sing.
- And then he started to hunch over.
He looked over, and I looked over at him,
and I went, "There's something really wrong."
I said-- And I went, like--
And I signaled to his floor manager,
and I went, "Boss, you're not okay."
- The security person ran out and took him off the stage.
Just took him away.
- It was a little mysterious to everybody
as to what it might be,
because it really did come out of the blue.
- I just was thinking, "Okay, he's seeing the doctor.
Maybe they've given him a shot, or whatever."
Then we got ready to go to the Hurricane Festival.
- We'll leave this one for you,
for me, for my band,
for our families.
Thanks very much.
- We played the entire set,
and it seemed, you know, normal.
Not as--quite as-- As energetic
and as charged
as the performances before.
♪ ♪
- ♪ But I'll drink all the time ♪
♪ ♪
♪ 'Cause we're lovers ♪
♪ ♪
♪ That is a fact ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Yes, we're lovers ♪
- We finished the show...
- ♪ And that is that ♪
- And then it seemed like
David was in a lot of pain
and obviously something was wrong.
- They sent an ambulance, and took him away.
We went back in the vans, um, with the band,
and he went off in an ambulance that night.
- I think we were told that, um,
he had a mild heart attack
and that his life wasn't in danger,
but that was it. We were going home.
- He said he wasn't gonna work for a while
and, uh, he wasn't sure
if he'd ever record again,
or tour again.
He just wanted to take time off.
♪ ♪
- I think any kind of unexpected thing,
like a heart attack-- It makes you
reevaluate things, and I--
But I never thought he'd stop working.
♪ ♪
- We would exchange emails about things that were
interesting to each other or relevant,
but there wasn't a lot of contact.
♪ ♪
- It's hard to figure out David,
you know, and I stopped trying to figure him out.
Just hope the phone would ring,
and/or get an email from him,
and I did.
♪ ♪
- Having not heard from him for a while,
I suddenly got an email
to see if I was available
to come and play on the album.
I received, then, an email from the management
about the fact that if I was going to do this,
it would have to be secret,
and if I
said anything about it,
I would be in big trouble...
Legally.
♪ ♪
- I got an email,
really out of the blue, from David.
"Do you want to come
and work on some new songs for a week?"
Uh, "P.S.,
uh, keep schtum."
♪ ♪
- Once we got to the studio,
one of the first things he did
was hand out NDAs to everybody:
these papers to sign. It's the first time
that I'd ever been asked
to do something like that for him.
♪ ♪
- The hours were very short,
compared to normal.
By 6:00, that was it, no matter what,
and some days, even earlier than that.
That was not the David Bowie
that I ever worked with before.
Ever. I've never seen that.
He would go in there
and stay there until
he was spent or done,
but this was like a...
"Mm. I'm leaving.
6:00. See you."
♪ ♪
- He really wanted no pressure on him
to release an album.
There was no press release saying
"Expect a Bowie album on this date."
This way, he could finish every song to perfection.
♪ ♪
- I'm much more interested
in the process of life
and what is it that we're--
We're uncovering with our every move?
The celebrity side of it-- I couldn't give a sausage.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh ♪
♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh ♪
♪ Stars are never sleeping ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh ♪
♪ Dead ones and the living ♪
♪ We live closer to the earth ♪
♪ Never to the heavens ♪
♪ The stars are never far away ♪
♪ The stars are out tonight ♪
- David!
Mr. Bowie! Mr. Bowie!
David, can you wave?
- ♪ The stars must stick together ♪
- "The Stars Are Out Tonight" song
is about David's attitude towards celebrities.
He's had a good dose
of other people's celebrity,
which, uh, he found distasteful.
♪ ♪
- There were definitely things on his mind
and he'd been ruminating over,
and it was all coming out now.
It was like he was birthing the stuff.
♪ ♪
- He was trying a lot of things.
He had to flex his muscles,
to get back in shape, like a runner,
or an athlete. That's what he had to do.
You know, we just would throw these songs at the musicians,
and they haven't heard them before.
So we have David Torn on this track.
For instance, the intro-- If I play David Torn...
♪ ♪
And that's his role in this, you know.
- I had this loop-- Something like this going,
which sounded like this,
and I was moving it in and out
while the-- While the whine was happening.
♪ ♪
- And I remember also that he was changing his vocal
over the chords to create different sections,
so we kind of had the idea to, uh,
put some little different guitar riffs
to kind of signify
the changes over that.
♪ ♪
- I put Torn and Leonard together--
Torn and Leonard.
♪ ♪
Very complementary.
♪ ♪
Okay.
♪ ♪
- It's that kind of-- Almost a Motown kind of--
I don't know where that kind of comes from.
- Very Motown-y, yeah.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Sugar pie, honey bunch ♪
- But he never said anything about doing that.
- That's right. - We kind of assumed.
- If you've got a smile,
you're going in the right direction, you know?
If you get that kind of, like,
you're just like, "Oh, no,
I wasn't thinking that at all."
You know?
- And it made me think of another song
which is a David song,
which was, uh,
"China Girl."
- David would come to the studio with
pages full of lyrics, and start scratching them out.
Up until the last minute, he would keep revising,
and sometimes, he would come in and
just re-sing one line.
♪ ♪
- "Stars Are Out Tonight." I think that's
one of my favorite songs
on the record, actually.
I think that song was a--
For lack of a better word,
a good piss-take...
In a way,
on--on what fame has become,
which just is out-of-control machine.
♪ ♪
- You know, David had great, grand ideas.
To become well-known, famous,
was for him, initially,
was to have the resources
to realize what his ideas were.
He really does come from that spirit.
Um, he just didn't want to be famous per se.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Da-da-da-da ♪
I just wanted to make a really big name for myself.
I wanted to make a mark.
♪ Just look through your window ♪
♪ Look who sits outside ♪
- David had quite an edgy personality.
He was intrigued by edgy stuff.
He wanted to do many things.
He loved the idea of theater.
He loved the idea of acting.
He loved the idea of working with actors.
- ♪ Ah ♪
♪ Beautiful baby ♪
♪ And my heart's aflame ♪
♪ I'll love you till Tuesday ♪
♪ My head's in a whirl ♪
♪ And I'll love you till Tuesday ♪
- He loved the idea of working with musicians.
Being one himself,
he always
was looking right and left, or over his shoulder,
uh, at what might be,
or what-- "What could I do next."
- It took me all the '60s
to try everything that I could think of
to find out exactly what it was
I wanted to do anyway,
but just about the end of the '60s,
it just started to come together.
♪ Strange games they would play then ♪
♪ No death for the perfect men ♪
♪ Life rolls into one for them ♪
♪ So softly ♪
♪ A super-god cries ♪
Through circumstances,
I'd run into a drummer
called John Cambridge,
and Tony Visconti and Mick Ronson,
and we'd put together a band called Hype.
It was probably my first costume band.
As far as I'm aware, that was the very first
so-called "glam rock" gig.
♪ No pain of flesh ♪
♪ No power too great ♪
- Hype was very important
to David's development.
This was the only way he could see
at that time
that he could, uh,
be famous, become famous,
and become-- Become well-known,
and it wasn't quite the right incarnation,
because he was not yet
dyeing his hair orange,
and he hadn't taken on
the Ziggy persona yet.
- ♪ And he was all right ♪
♪ The band was all together ♪
♪ Yes, he was ♪
♪ All right ♪
♪ The song went on forever ♪
♪ And he was ♪
♪ Awful nice ♪
♪ Really quite out of sight ♪ And he sang...
- ♪ All ♪ - ♪ All night ♪
♪ All night long ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Ooh, how I sighed ♪
♪ When they asked if I knew his name ♪
♪ Oh, he was ♪
- ♪ All ♪ - ♪ All right ♪
The real characterization
really didn't kick in till the Ziggy.
I mean, I was always quite a shy kid,
and I didn't come alive on stage.
I just got even shier,
but I found I didn't get so shy
if I sort of adopted a character,
so it was a convenience
as well as a very bright theatrical idea.
♪ Didn't know what time it was ♪
♪ Lights were low ♪
♪ I leaned back ♪
♪ On my radio ♪
♪ Some cat was laying down some ♪
♪ Get it on rock and roll ♪
♪ He said ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Then the loud sound did seem to fade ♪
♪ Came back like a slow voice ♪
♪ On a wave of phase haze ♪
♪ That weren't no DJ ♪
♪ That was hazy cosmic jive ♪
♪ Uh-huh ♪
♪ ♪
♪ There's a starman ♪
♪ Waiting in the sky ♪
♪ He'd like to come and meet us ♪
♪ But he thinks he'd blow our minds ♪
♪ And there's a starman ♪
♪ Waiting in the sky ♪
♪ He told us not to blow it ♪
♪ 'Cause he knows it's all worthwhile ♪
♪ He told me let the children use it ♪
♪ Let the children lose it ♪
♪ Let all the children boogie ♪
- Have you always wanted to be a star?
- Yeah.
It's more than being a star.
What it is, really, is I want to be
productive.
I'm not content to be
just a rock-and-roll star all my life.
I am trying to be one at the moment,
because I need it for a particular reason,
so I can get off and do other things.
♪ There's a starman ♪
♪ Waiting in the sky ♪
♪ He told us not to blow it ♪
♪ 'Cause he knows it's all worthwhile ♪
♪ He told me ♪
♪ Let the children use it ♪
♪ Let the children lose it ♪
♪ Let all the children boogie ♪
♪ ♪
- You could feel that David
wanted to be the greatest artist
and the next Elvis Presley.
You could feel it from every pore of his body.
♪ ♪
He would bring me up to his suite
and we would watch Elvis Presley videos
and Frank Sinatra,
and we'd have discussions
about it,
and he would do certain moves,
and does this seem right and natural, all that.
I mean, he was interested
to look at those people
and set such icons
as his goals.
- Oh, yes, David wanted to be famous.
David wanted to be an icon
like he is now.
He would say things to me like
"You have to be someone that
"thousands and millions
"of people
"want to listen to
and--and believe in."
♪ ♪
But he once said, too,
that being super-successful
was like living in a goldfish bowl,
and it was for him,
because people became
totally obsessed with him.
- ♪ Fame makes a man ♪
♪ Take things over ♪
Do you know that feeling you get in a car
when someone's accelerating very, very fast,
and you're not driving, and you get
that thing in your chest when you're being
forced backwards, and you think, "Ooh,"
and you're not sure whether you like it or not?
It's that kind of feeling.
That's what success was like.
The first thrust
of being totally unknown,
to being what seemed to be
very quickly known.
It was very frightening for me.
♪ Fame puts you there ♪
♪ Where things are hollow ♪
♪ ♪
- I'm not sure if he can handle it consistently,
because it is a demanding mistress
that doesn't take "no" for an answer
and is on-call 24 hours,
and so it makes you
a little bit more paranoid
than you used to, doesn't it?
And now we're being looked upon
as we have to deliver something.
The minute you go outside, "Ooh, let me look
a certain way. I'm famous now."
- ♪ Fame ♪
- ♪ What you need is in the limo ♪
- ♪ Fame ♪
- ♪ What you get is no tomorrow ♪
- ♪ Fame ♪
- ♪ What you need you have to borrow ♪
- ♪ Fame ♪ - ♪ Fame ♪
♪ ♪
- ♪ Fame ♪ - ♪ Mine, it's mine ♪
♪ Is just his line ♪
♪ To bind you to crime ♪
- ♪ Crime ♪ - ♪ Crime ♪
- Do I have to do it for, uh...
- Because this rock-star thing--
You once described it as being
a "dreadful existence."
- In a sort of, um,
a very luxuriant mental hospital...
- So you can rehearse in...
- Where you're sort of
put in a padded room
and meals are brought to you, and the only time
you're sort of let out on your lead
is when you're supposed to go and earn money for
just about everybody else except yourself.
♪ Is it any wonder ♪
♪ I reject you first? ♪
♪ Fame, fame, fame, fame ♪
♪ Fame ♪
♪ Is it any wonder ♪
♪ You're far too cool to fool ♪
♪ Fame ♪ - ♪ Fame ♪
- Did David enjoy being a star?
I would say what he said to me.
"It's great
"when you want to get tickets for a concert,
"when you want to get backstage and see your friends,
"or if you want a good table at a restaurant,
but the rest of the time, it's a pain in the ass."
And I think that's
pretty much a verbatim quote.
I watched him deal with it
too many times.
That was his view on it.
- I didn't--we didn't--
- I find this an incredible intrusion.
Fuck off.
- That's the--you know that's the only bit
we're gonna use, don't you?
- Yeah.
I know when to pick me lines.
Yeah, that's better.
♪ ♪
- Once he experienced the fame,
and all that comes with that,
I think he was done with it.
And he was done with it,
and I think he realized
he made a deal with the devil
and it'd be the rest of his life
trying to undo that.
♪ ♪
- Happy hump day, Phil.
- Ha! I didn't get humped. You?
- Yeah.
- Some people, huh? They just get lost.
- Well, it's more exciting
than anything we've got around here.
- Well, I wouldn't say that.
We have a nice life.
- We have a nice life.
- The idea that he had for
"The Stars Are Out Tonight" video
was that there were celebrities
that were stalking normal people
to study them,
and then he whipped out the photograph
of Tilda Swinton,
and I was like,
"Okay, that's fantastic."
You know, him and Tilda
were to play the normal couple.
David really wanted to play up
the androgyny card,
because, you know, I mean,
he is the androgynous being
that we've grown up with.
♪ ♪
So I cast boys in the girl's parts
and girls in the boy's parts.
- ♪ Are never sleeping ♪
- At that stage, I think he was
able to definitely
sit back and reflect on
what fame meant,
and I think that song, in a way,
is kind of like-- That's why it's
"the stars are never sleeping."
It's like, you can't escape it.
- ♪ They know just what we do ♪
♪ That we toss and turn at night ♪
♪ They're waiting to make their moves ♪
♪ For the stars are out tonight ♪
- ♪ Tonight ♪
- Eventually, the celebrities--
They are in their home.
And when they come into the home,
there's a transfer that happens...
♪ ♪
And now, the normal people
are dressed like celebrity,
and the celebrities have succeeded
in becoming the normal people.
You know, as an artist, you collect things,
and he's had years of
not having to put things out,
and so he's collecting things
he wants to sort of
hold up a mirror and say,
"Hey, look at this over here.
Look at this over here,"
and, you know, comment on it,
but make it, you know,
in an artistic way.
♪ ♪
- ♪ The stars are out tonight ♪
♪ Living ♪
♪ ♪
- Do you ever look back?
- Uh, only with fond amusement,
you know, 'cause I've done
such a lot of work in 40 years
and it's only recently
that maybe I've started to
write in a kind of, uh,
autobiographical way,
and this maybe something to do with age
and the way that one matures.
♪ ♪
- Then...
♪ ♪
I don't recall
David on the sessions
really talking a lot about
being old.
I think maybe he would joke that
he would wear his slippers, you know.
He had his slippers brought down,
and he would pop his slip-- You know,
when he got to the studio, he would pop his slippers on.
We made a few jokes about that.
- ♪ Where are we now? ♪
♪ Where are we now? ♪
♪ ♪
- So David came in with a piano demo
This was the DB piano-- David Bowie piano.
♪ ♪
It's got a combination of piano
and strings on the patch.
I couldn't take the strings off,
so those strings are
him playing at home.
♪ ♪
- We found this kind of atmosphere
in the demo.
The next time we played that,
it was when we went in the studio
and Zack was there.
♪ ♪
- I should add the drum.
♪ ♪
- David's instruction, I remember,
specifically was,
"One...
One."
He just said, "Emphasize the one,"
so...
♪ ♪
- If I add David,
it's practically it.
♪ ♪
That's...
- ♪ Where are we now? ♪
♪ Where are we now? ♪
♪ ♪
♪ The moment you know ♪
♪ You know you know ♪
- Out of the blue, he called me up
and said he'd like to talk to me about something.
He explained this situation,
that he had been secretly working on this track,
and I was like, "Oh, that's fantastic."
You know,
"What do I have to do with it?"
and he goes, "Well, I'd like you to make
the video for that."
♪ ♪
Oh, that's quite a task, you know?
I was thinking
this big-budget video, you know,
and I was thinking, "God, to do this justice,
"you know, it has to be this
"momentous video, you know,
"that's gonna break the silence
of all these years," you know,
and David said,
"No, I want to do it, like,
"in your studio.
"It'll be these figures.
Very simple, rough."
♪ ♪
- These figures were something I was making
like, fairly exclusively,
and did a number of exhibitions of them,
and David, of course, loved these figures.
You know.
- ♪ Just walk in the day ♪
- I did a rough sketch, and I was like,
"This is what you had in mind, right?"
This rough-hewn stretched face, you know.
It's not very flattering,
but that's exactly what he wanted
to look actually beyond
what the years had done to him.
It's a strange-- You know, through the...
Here, he's leaving.
He's had enough.
He's like, "Stop going on about my face."
- ♪ Where are we now ♪
- So the idea was that
he wanted all this stuff
in the studio situation,
and we kind of arranged things around
and we talked about transparency
and reflection,
and as this was coming together,
I said to him, "You know,
people can read into every part of this."
- This one is perhaps the most deliberately
a nostalgic look into his past,
and, um, he's talking about all the old places...
- Yeah. - That he frequented in Berlin,
and it's deliberately sad.
He's in the latter part of his life.
Those days are gone.
- Yeah.
♪ ♪
- Berlin was the first freedom I'd had from
all the so-called trappings of, uh, celebrity
and, uh--and my own problems.
Really, I'm quite fond of
that freedom that it gave me.
♪ ♪
I put myself in a very anonymous situation
in a quite working-class part of Berlin, Turkish area,
and started to live a different life,
and I tried to distance myself
from the very drug-oriented lifestyle
that I'd been leading.
♪ Had to get the train ♪
♪ From Potsdamer Platz ♪
It was just a tremendous place to be,
and the music was some of the most rewarding,
for me as an artist, in my life.
♪ ♪
♪ I ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I will be king ♪
♪ ♪
♪ And you ♪
♪ You will be queen ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Though nothing ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Will drive them away ♪
♪ ♪
♪ We can beat them ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Forever and ever ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Oh, we can be heroes ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Just for one day ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I ♪
♪ I can remember ♪
- ♪ I remember ♪
- ♪ Standing ♪
♪ By the wall ♪
- But you can't read "Where Are We Now?"
as just a nostalgic story about Berlin at all.
You know? But I mean, really,
it's much more how memories
affect the way we move forward or not.
- The Song for Norway T-shirt--
I said, "That's very cheeky,"
and he goes, "I know."
It was something like that.
And, uh, he never explained
why he wore it.
♪ ♪
- The name is Hermione Farthingale,
and I absolutely adored her.
I mean, she was the real first love in my life,
and she was a ballet dancer
and, uh, a very good I--singer,
and, uh, she played a little bit of
bed/sitting room guitar.
You know, that kind of folk guitar that every girl
could--that looked beautiful could play in those--
I don't know why, but all the beautiful girls
could play a little bit of acoustic guitar.
She was doing a film called "Song of Norway,"
and she fell in love with one of
the actors on it, and she left me for him
God, I didn't get over that for such a long time.
It really broke me up.
- I did see David when
he'd just separated from her,
and he was very, very upset.
I think it was also
he was working with her,
so it was a double thing
that he'd lost his girlfriend
and he'd lost someone in his--
In his, uh, band.
I don't know which one was the worse,
to be honest, but, uh,
yeah, it hit him pretty hard.
- I think he wanted to release something
that would cause a lot of ripples
and, uh, question marks all around,
and he was able to get that with this.
♪ ♪
- ♪ As long as there's sun ♪
♪ ♪
♪ As long as there's rain ♪
♪ ♪
♪ As long as there's fire ♪
♪ ♪
♪ As long as there's fire ♪
- I knew this was about Berlin,
and I thought it was really, really sweet
and quite nostalgic, but, uh,
the thing that really made me teary-eyed
was when I saw the video for it.
Oh, my gosh.
You know, I thought,
"I'd never expect him to look back.
You know, this is a new thing for him."
♪ ♪
- I think, because of my orientation
towards the apocalyptic,
I think it rather hones that
low-level anxiety,
especially the--you know,
the event of a new child.
My daughter really sort of focused my
fears and apprehensions.
I mean, what a disappointing 21st century
this has been so far, you know?
♪ ♪
- I have to say, this track has swagger.
All this loose playing-- It's all on purpose.
But we didn't want it to get too fancy,
and it had to sound like a bunch of high school kids
playing their instruments.
♪ ♪
Very, very cheesy-sounding,
but perfect for this song,
because of the lyrical content of the song,
about this, you know, person called Valentine
who, uh, is a mass murderer.
♪ ♪
- I mean, "Valentine's Day,"
from a musical point of view,
that's--that is way old.
That's like, old-school.
All those chord changes,
that whole thing.
But if you listen to the lyrics,
there's subject matter there.
- ♪ Valentine told me who's to go ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Feelings he's treasured most of all ♪
- There had been a number of incidents
prior to creating this song
that had moved him.
I think he was really troubled
by this trend of
people going and shooting kids.
- ♪ The teachers and the football star ♪
♪ ♪
♪ It's in his tiny face ♪
♪ ♪
♪ It's in his scrawny hand ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Valentine told me so ♪
♪ He's got something to say ♪
♪ It's Valentine's Day ♪
- But he really wanted to bring the audience
into the mind of that killer,
and, uh, that transition
from sort of the David that we know
to this other character
that he was inhabiting in this song
was, uh, very shocking, really.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Valentine told me how he'd feel ♪
♪ ♪
- ♪ Ooh ♪
- ♪ If all the world ♪
♪ Were under his heels ♪
- Being right there in front of him
and seeing him pull this out of himself--
You know, it was a--
It was quite terrifying to watch.
- ♪ His tiny face ♪
♪ ♪
♪ It's in his scrawny hands ♪
- I really wanted to introduce a weapon into the video,
and David was really against it.
He didn't want any guns,
he didn't want any blood.
But he was very much aware of
making a statement about gun control,
and the importance of that, in his own style.
- To defeat the divisive forces
that would take freedom away,
I want to say those fighting words...
♪ ♪
"From my cold, dead hands."
- ♪ It's in his scrawny hand ♪
♪ It's in his icy heart ♪
♪ It's happening today ♪
♪ Valentine, Valentine ♪
- He was very interested in society.
You know, what makes people operate,
what makes societies operate,
and that was one of his less cryptic
and more straight-up lyrics that he's ever written.
- I'm not an original thinker.
What I'm best at doing is, uh, synthesizing
those things in society or culture
refracting those things
and producing some kind of glob
of how it is that we live at this particular time.
♪ Pushing through the market square ♪
♪ So many mothers crying ♪
♪ News had just come over ♪
♪ ♪
♪ We had five years left to sigh in ♪
♪ ♪
♪ News guy wept when he told us ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Earth was really dying ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Cried so much that his face was wet ♪
♪ That I knew he was not lying ♪
♪ ♪
- He let you know something's not right here.
So that's the best I knew.
He didn't come up with the solutions,
but at least he could express
and others could resonate with that.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Girl my age went off her head ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Hit some tiny children ♪
♪ ♪
♪ If the black hadn't've pulled her off ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I think she would have killed them ♪
I'm not a Dylan and I'm not a--
I'm not somebody who can sit down
and stoically write a clear picture
of what's happening,
but I can leave a very strong impression
of how I feel about it.
♪ Five years ♪
- ♪ Five years ♪
- ♪ Do-do-do-do, yeah ♪
- ♪ Five years ♪
- ♪ Do-dun-a-ga-da-he-eh ♪
- ♪ Five years ♪
- ♪ Didn't hear ya ♪
♪ Five years ♪
- ♪ That's all we've got ♪
- ♪ Five ♪
♪ ♪
- It's very hard to not continue to re-address
the same subject matter endlessly.
I mean, I have a certain niche that I work in,
A lot of it, until recently, tends to be about alienation
and, uh, being on the outside of things.
♪ It's the darkest hour ♪
♪ You're 22 ♪
♪ ♪
♪ The voice of youth ♪
♪ The hour of dread ♪
That tends to be where
I feel more comfortable as a writer,
but I think one keeps re-addressing that situation
and trying to express it in a different way.
I guess that's what I do.
♪ Love is lost ♪
♪ Lost is love ♪
♪ ♪
- When I spoke to David on the phone,
it was definitely,
"Don't say a word about this."
In fact, we even
had a code word for it,
so if anybody
intercepted the phone calls,
they wouldn't know we were talking about,
um, the album.
So the album was actually
code-named "the table."
♪ ♪
There was a lot of discussion about
what the album would be called at the time.
It was quite gratifying to know that
not even David Bowie has everything planned out.
♪ ♪
So it was possibly even called "Love is Lost."
♪ ♪
Possibly going to be called "The Next Day,"
possibly called "Where Are We Now?"
- ♪ Say hello to the lunatic men ♪
- The thing that started the concept for the design
was this photograph.
It's from the '70s and he said,
"I want to do something with this photo
for the cover,"
which I found quite puzzling.
He was looking back on his life,
even looking at that image,
I really struggled with using the image,
and then it took Bowie to say "Jonathan,
"why don't you just
turn the image upside-down?"
And within that moment,
he subverted his whole history
So the process was to go through every record cover,
every printed image of him,
and see how we could subvert it.
♪ ♪
The cover of "Heroes" really had
that youthful image of Bowie
looking forward to the future,
and the square obliterates it.
It's existentially talking about
someone who's coming closer to the end
of their life and looking back
on the past.
I really wasn't sure about it at the time,
to the point, in fact, where the night before
it was sent off to the record company,
I wrote to him and said, "Are you sure?"
And he actually said to me,
"No, this is--have faith, Jonathan.
"This is a good idea.
It's an original idea."
- ♪ I'd rather be high ♪
- I think he was subverting people's expectation
because of the years away,
so he could play with his image.
He wasn't a young man
desperate to be original.
He was someone who lived life
and was not up for playing the game
of being in the media all the time.
♪ ♪
Bowie was incredibly happy
that we'd managed to
keep this thing secret all this time.
We had accomplished something unique
in a time when everybody
knows everything.
He was quite attracted to
all the furore around an album being released,
but he wanted to play it the right way.
- ♪ Then we saw ♪
- Hello, David Bowie's back in sound and vision,
with his first new album in a decade.
- He hasn't performed since 2006,
and has rarely been seen in public
since then, but now he's back.
- But after a bout of ill health,
it was thought he had retired. Wrong.
- His new album, his first in ten years,
shot to the number one spot last weekend.
In fact, it's the fastest- selling of the year so far,
having shifted over 100,000 copies
in less than two weeks.
- ♪ The night was always falling ♪
♪ The peacock in the snow ♪
♪ ♪
♪ And I tell myself ♪
♪ I don't know who I am ♪
♪ ♪
- He just stopped giving interviews
many years ago,
and, um, this is something that
he needed to do, I think, for himself.
He couldn't--he couldn't have his life examined
any longer. He didn't want
any speculation about his life.
♪ ♪
- I think it's terribly dangerous
for an artist to fulfill other people's expectations.
If you feel safe
in the area that you're working in,
you're not working in the right area.
Always go a little further into the water
than you feel you're capable of being in.
Go a little bit out of your depth,
and you don't feel that your feet are
quite touching the bottom,
you're just about in the right place
to do something exciting.
- The way David works.
He just keeps evolving, evolving, evolving.
David's always looking for that new element
and unique musicians
to be the carriage
for his new ideas.
♪ ♪
Maria Schneider is an amazing jazz composer
and how she could've been off my radar,
I don't--I don't know, because,
uh, she suddenly appeared in my life through David.
And when I heard her compositions,
it was everything David and I loved
about big band music:
that it was discordant
and strange and ethereal.
♪ ♪
- Out of the blue, David called.
I said, "Hello?"
Then--and then
proceeded to start to talk to him about
the idea, uh, that he had
to collaborate on a song.
♪ ♪
David brought a little demo of "Sue,"
so I listened to it
and immediately heard this:
I said, "Where do you want this to go?"
So it's-- It's pretty bright--
You know, sounding, and he said, "Oh,
I want it to be really dark."
So then I started playing around with
ways in which I could make that--
That melody dark,
and I just fooled around over here
and then I looked at him and I said,
"Okay, let's try this."
- Maria Schneider said,
"You have to listen to this guy, Donny McCaslin."
Donny had a band.
This band were trained jazz musicians,
so we had more colors to the palette.
- Then I just worked on it on my own a little bit.
And then David came over,
and then I presented him
with all these sketches of ideas
and said, "Okay,
let me play you lots of different things,"
and he would either say,
"Yeah, yeah, I r-- Oh, I really like that."
You know, if it had got a real reaction of him--
From him, then I said, "Okay, maybe that's
the direction," so I just kind of
tried to feel him out.
♪ ♪
- It was adventure.
Adventure, adventure.
Let's try this, let's try that.
Let's make it as far-out as possible.
Let's go somewhere no one's ever gone before.
You know?
♪ ♪
- I mean, recording it was, like,
six hours or something...
- Yeah. - So he comes out,
then he lays down the vocal for the whole song,
seven, eight minutes,
so he's been in the studio all day long...
- Just sitting there.
- You know, we're just sitting there,
listening--you know, taking this all in,
goes out, a little one-two-three on the mic,
and then, boom.
- ♪ Sue ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I got the job ♪
♪ ♪
♪ We'll buy the house ♪
♪ You'll need to rest ♪
♪ But now we'll make it ♪
- So I remember doing this interview
with Tony Visconti.
The interviewer asked us both,
you know, what was David's relationship to jazz music,
something like that,
and Tony's response was that
he thought that that influence
had always been there in David's music,
but it was just sort of underneath the surface,
and that now, it was just,
you know, out there.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Sue, I pushed you down ♪
♪ Beneath the weeds ♪
♪ Endless faith ♪
♪ In hopeless deeds ♪
- Of course, when this thing was released,
there were all sorts of comments.
Some people were just absolutely hating it
and some people were loving it
and some people didn't know what to think.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Good-bye ♪
- This is David Bowie.
He's not gonna pigeonhole even himself.
Imagine how ridiculous he would have looked,
you know, if he kept dyeing his hair orange
and he was 65 years old
with orange hair
and platform shoes, you know.
He was smart.
♪ ♪
The radical shift between "Sue" and "The Next Day"
is like when he did the, uh, ambient music
of "Low" and "Heroes"
with Brian Eno.
- ♪ Dun-dun-dun-dun... ♪
Oh... And he'll play that again.
♪ Dun, dun, dun, dun ♪
Oh, wow, I'm feeling low.
Brian Eno's methodology
is a little bit different
than any methodology
I've ever encountered.
That's not rock and roll.
Rock and roll is, "Hey, man, I got this great riff.
Listen to this."
You know?
But when you start experimenting
with soundscapes,
which is what they were doing,
it makes other things come to light.
David was listening to a few German bands back then
that were at the epicenter
of electronic music,
and I think that the
elec-tronic-al part
was too much.
That's why he had a R&B, a--
A black rhythm section,
being, "You want a machine?
Let me give you a funk band."
But I'll add all the electronic stuff
on top of that.
Otherwise, he might take the chance of
sounding like European
electronic music,
which he did not want to reproduce.
♪ ♪
- I'd gotten into the idea
of real experimentation in music,
with the new sounds of Europe
and it was this kind of hybrid thing
that appealed to me so much.
The idea of mixtures
has always been something that I've found
absolutely fascinating.
♪ Blue, blue, electric blue ♪
♪ That's the color of my room ♪
♪ Where I will live ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Blue, blue ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Pale blinds drawn all day ♪
♪ Nothing to do, nothing to say ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Blue, blue ♪
♪ ♪
♪ I will sit right down ♪
♪ Waiting for the gift of sound and vision ♪
- I was just amazed that
David was the kind of person that he was,
because I wasn't expecting that.
I was expecting something sort of
superhuman, strange, walking in
and he presented himself so normal.
As a matter of fact,
the doorman from downstairs
called me and said,
"There's a--what? What's your name?
Oh, David, here to see you."
And I thought, "Oh, dear."
♪ ♪
Can I just stop a second? Did I just say he was normal?
There's really nothing normal about David Bowie.
You know? But anyway...
♪ ♪
- When I was around 17, 18,
what I wanted to do, more than anything else,
was write something for Broadway.
I wanted to write a musical.
Had no idea of how you did it
or how musicals were constructed,
but the idea of writing something
that was rock-based for Broadway
really intrigued me. I thought, "That would be
a wonderful thing to do."
♪ ♪
- When we first talked quite quickly
he said,
"I wanna do a musical,"
and I said, "Great,"
and he said, "All I know
"is that it's called Laz--
"it's gonna be called 'Lazarus, '
"and it's based on the character I played
"in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth'
in the movie, Thomas Jerome Newton."
♪ ♪
- Thomas Newton is an alien.
He can't get home.
He's relegated to this Earth.
He is in the world, but not of it.
♪ ♪
- Outsiders, marginalized people,
people that don't belong,
that are disp--
That feel displaced,
not at home,
even when they have a house,
like Newton.
Rich, you know, on Earth,
but lost on Earth.
It resonated with him.
♪ ♪
- My initial reaction was,
"I've got the chance to do a musical
"with David, which is wonderful,
but it sure ain't gonna buy me a yacht."
♪ Oh, say, can you see ♪
- That was my amused comment to myself,
but he said, "I want to see this,"
you know, "I want this on."
- Okay.
So, uh, thank you very much, Sophia.
- Just before we were due to start
a small workshop,
I was asked to go to David's office in New York
at a specific time,
and when I walked in the room,
David was on Skype,
and then he said, "I need to explain something to you,
"because I'm not gonna be
"able to be around a lot
"during this workshop.
"Which doesn't mean that I'm
"not gonna be totally involved in it.
"It just means that I can't be there sometimes,
"because I'm having treatment
because I have, uh, a cancer."
I was shocked,
but his attitude was
that he was gonna be okay.
And that was kind of the end of the conversation.
- I'm here to get you out of this apartment!
Get you home to your planet!
I think we should build a rocket!
- But of course, once we started,
sort of, rehearsal,
he was there a lot.
He was sort of in and out and in and out,
you know, so...
♪ ♪
So he would go, "Oh, let's remove that
"scene, and can I write a-- Can I write a song?
I feel as if I should write a song here,"
and he was really excited about that.
♪ ♪
- He was ill, and, um, he said, uh,
writing the musical was on his bucket list.
You know, getting finally writing a musical
and all that.
So that's the only time
he got a little bit, you know, sentimental, maybe,
like I've got to do these things.
- Stupid animal! Stupid creature!
- Why don't you tell me what's going on?
- Because I can't.
- I think that David intended it to be a play
that's supported by music,
rather than a musical that's supported by dialogue.
- ♪ But the film is a saddening bore ♪
- It's about as far from a typical West End
or Broadway show as you could get.
He wanted this to be an art piece.
- ♪ As I ask you to focus ♪
♪ Sailors fighting in the dance hall ♪
♪ Oh, man, look at those cavemen go ♪
♪ It's the freakiest show ♪
- I'd heard that he wanted to do a musical since--
Someone said the mid-'70s or something or other,
and I thought, "Oh, God,
"we're beginning something that feels
"very, very close to his heart
and his head and where he's at."
♪ ♪
- ♪ Ronda ♪
I really had it in my mind
to do a musical of "1984."
It was a book that I'd loved all through my youth,
but of course, I didn't really take into account
the second Mrs. Orwell,
who, when she got wind of what we were doing,
absolutely put her foot down and said,
"Not having rock-and-roll people
"work on my late husband's
great piece of work."
And I thought, "Oh,
sorry, I'll do me own version then."
- That's a naught.
- 2015!
- This is the beginning of a film
called "Diamond Dogs,"
and I've put naught in here
because I didn't know what year it's set in.
- Wanting to do something
like write a musical for "1984"
and then not being able to do it,
via the album "Diamond Dogs,"
kind of gelled into this thing
that we later toured in America.
- David had the idea of
using dance and mime,
uh, with two vocalists,
myself being one...
- ♪ Jean Genie ♪
- And Gui Andrisano,
who had been a child star.
♪ ♪
It kind of worked with the input that we had
from Toni Basil,
in terms of choreography.
- But when I met him the first day
in his hotel suite,
the set was there.
The set was already a little mock-up set.
- ♪ We feel that we are paper ♪
♪ Choking on you nightly ♪
♪ They tell me, son, we want you ♪
♪ Be elusive, but don't walk far ♪
♪ For we're ♪
- He had the cityscape
and a set list.
So for me,
the set list was my thread
of what ideas I could come up with
in collaboration with him
to make this theatrical piece happen.
- ♪ But I love you ♪
♪ In your fuck-me pumps ♪
♪ And your nimble dress that trails ♪
♪ Oh dress yourself ♪
- At that time, there was not
really a lot of rock stars
that focused on theatricality.
A lot of them thought it was corny,
or they were afraid to approach it.
So I knew he was a great performer,
extremely theatrical,
that would just always be outside the box,
always be walking on the edge.
♪ ♪
- ♪ In the year of the scavenger ♪
♪ The season of the bitch ♪
♪ Sashay on the boardwalk ♪
♪ Scurry to the ditch ♪
♪ Just another future song ♪
♪ Lonely little kitsch ♪
- "Diamond Dogs" was probably the most difficult
one to choreograph, because
we were on long pieces of rope.
And the idea was to
tie him down
without fully disabling him
and, uh, tripping him up.
♪ ♪
- ♪ There you go whoo ♪
♪ Call them the diamond dogs ♪
It was hideously pressurized for me.
I had these awful tensions and stresses
but the physicality of performing a show like that
was alarmingly strenuous.
♪ Oh, honey ♪
♪ You're so bad ♪
- "Diamond Dogs" is a series of vignettes
of what could happen
when society breaks down,
so it was more sketchy,
rather than a story from beginning to end.
♪ ♪
- I started getting into the idea of writing
a kind of a non-narrative
that just had situations within it
and the audience kind of joins up the dots
their own way, in the way
they want to make it.
They'd remake the material they're offered.
♪ Just one day, I say ♪
♪ Oh, honey ♪
♪ You're so bad ♪
♪ Best I ever had ♪
♪ ♪
- He brought me another song to work on.
And I said to him, "I would love to do this,
"but I just--I can't, David.
I'm recording an album with my own band."
♪ ♪
And then, I said to him,
"I think you should do a record
with Donny's group."
He said, "Really, you think so?
You think they'd want to do that?"
and I said, "You kidding me?"
and I said, "I think it would be amazing."
♪ ♪
- I got an email from him and--
Basically saying that
he would really like to record different tunes with us.
There was a sentence that he said--
Something like, you know,
"It would be my dream
"to record a few songs
with the Donny McCaslin group."
I think that that sentence
was kind of, like, wow.
♪ ♪
Whatever he was going through, health-wise, at the time,
one thing that was really inspiring
was how, from the first day,
the first note, he was just
totally in it.
- By the time I joined you guys,
I was not aware of anything,
and I was actually--
Even being ignorant of all this,
I was struck by how healthy and energetic
and in great spirits he was.
♪ ♪
- So David had a lot of vocal ideas
that needed to be done.
We have him singing this.
- ♪ In the villa of Ormen ♪
♪ In the villa of Ormen ♪
♪ Stands a solitary candle ♪
♪ Ah, ah ♪
♪ In the center of it all ♪
♪ Your eyes ♪
- Now, the reason it sounds so good
is that's just one David Bowie singing,
but with his voice put up a fifth interval.
- ♪ On the day of execution ♪
♪ ♪
♪ On the day of execution ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Only women kneel and smile ♪
♪ Ah, ah ♪
♪ At the center of it all ♪
♪ Your eyes ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Your eyes ♪
- He asked me if I would be interested
in perhaps putting some images to this song,
and then began, you know, a couple of months of
a very interesting collaborative process.
He would send me drawings
that he would literally say,
"Do what you want with these drawings,"
you know?
He would have this character that he drew
with the man with sort of gauze,
you know, across his face,
with two buttons for eyes,
and we named him "Button-Eyes."
♪ ♪
And he also sent me an image of a spaceman
with a skeleton inside.
- ♪ Ah-ah-ah ♪
- To me, it was 100% Major Tom, you know?
A character that he had, you know,
revisited and used over his career.
- Major Tom, for him,
was like some sort of talisman or something.
He was really along for the ride with David,
and the idea of space,
I think, represented--
Maybe it represented freedom.
- Major Tom still means a lot to me.
It was the first time I'd been able
to create a character
that, uh, was very credible,
and I think for any writer, that's a high point.
He preceded all the others,
and I suppose one has his special place for him.
I do.
♪ Ground control to Major Tom ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Ground control to Major Tom ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Take your protein pills ♪
♪ And put your helmet on ♪
- What is it with spaceships?
- Well, it's--it's
an interior dialogue
that you manifest physically.
It's my little inner space, isn't it?
Writ large.
I wouldn't dream of getting on a spaceship.
It would scare the shit out of me.
I have absolutely no interest or ambition
to go into space whatsoever.
I'm scared, going down the end of the garden.
♪ Though I'm past 100,000 miles ♪
♪ I'm feeling very still ♪
♪ And I think my spaceship knows ♪
♪ Which way to go ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Tell my wife I love her very much ♪
♪ She knows ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Ground control to Major Tom ♪
♪ Your circuit's dead ♪
♪ There's something wrong ♪
♪ Can you hear me, Major Tom? ♪
- Major Tom was a really great device
to keep returning to.
Maybe there was some little,
you know, obviously a bit of, maybe,
sentimental attachment to it,
because it represented a lot
in terms of how he became known to us
and became famous.
- ♪ The shrieking of nothing is killing ♪
♪ Just pictures of Jap girls in synthesis ♪
♪ And I ain't got no money ♪
♪ And I ain't got no hair ♪
Something please the air.
- ♪ But I'm hoping to kick ♪
♪ But the planet is glowing ♪
♪ Ashes to ashes and funk to funky ♪
♪ We know Major Tom's a junkie ♪
♪ Strung out in heaven's high ♪
♪ Hitting an all-time low ♪
- He just would take these bits of the past
and fashion the future out of them,
and Major Tom was a big part of that.
♪ ♪
And he's been looking for home
for, you know, how long?
50 years or something.
You know, a long time,
Major Tom's been trying to
find peace and rest, and he found it in "Blackstar."
Major Tom is home, finally.
- "Blackstar," you know-- It's really wildly open
to interpretation.
And, uh, I think he enjoyed this very much,
like any artist.
Any great artist wants you to stand back
and look at the work
and analyze it,
and--and feel things from it,
and you might not feel the same things.
The idea of art
is to stimulate your own imagination.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Ooh-ooh-ooh ♪
- You know, after a week or two
of us, uh, having these chats
about Button-Eyes and the spaceman,
I get a text message from him, said, uh,
"I need to Skype with you. Can you Skype?"
And he's saying, "There's something I have to tell you,"
um, and I said, "Sure."
And then he says,
"I have to tell you that I'm very ill
and that I'm probably gonna die."
You know? You know,
utterly out of the blue.
You know, just like that.
- Let this be only coming from me,
but I think part of the way I reacted
also was I felt
that when he was saying that,
I thought for a brief second
that he looked scared, actually.
♪ ♪
And then, a second later, he would joke about it.
You know.
Over the next six or eight months,
the disease or illness was never mentioned,
and he was in no way, in my mind,
you know, affected by his illness.
- ♪ Something happened on the day he died ♪
♪ Spirit rose a meter and stepped aside ♪
♪ Somebody else took his place ♪
♪ And bravely cried ♪
♪ I'm a blackstar ♪
- This is, uh, a tradition
that David and I always had.
Like, how can we mangle the voice?
Eh, you know, how can we change it
and make one person sound like many people
and in many different contexts
and in many different spatial areas?
- ♪ I'm a blackstar ♪
♪ Way up, oh, honey ♪
♪ I've got game ♪
♪ I see right so white ♪
♪ So open-hearted pain ♪
♪ I want eagles in my daydreams ♪
♪ Diamonds in my eyes ♪
♪ I'm a blackstar ♪
- David is like some, like, bizarre skeletal choir
doing "I'm a blackstar, I'm a blackstar."
It's this weird thing. It's--
It makes this whole section very supernatural.
- ♪ Somebody else took his place ♪
♪ And bravely cried ♪
♪ I'm a blackstar ♪
♪ I'm a starstar ♪
♪ I'm a blackstar ♪
- I imagine it must have been cathartic for him.
He was working tirelessly, both on "Blackstar"
and on "Lazarus"
at the same time.
Um, perhaps the catharsis
surrounding "Lazarus" was unique
in as much as its execution
required him to relinquish control
and allow so many other people
to take it and make it happen.
- Countryside disappears beneath our feet.
- You know, I mean, I must say, you know,
there were times when David and me
would be reading scenes together.
You could feel him more in there.
- This isn't happening.
I'm still inside my head.
- You know, you forget-- You forget that
actually, he's--he's--
Of course, we forgot that he was dying.
- I'm done with this life!
- The cast, of course, never knew.
Only me, uh, Ivo, and Robert.
- And so a new universe.
I'll dream big up there.
♪ ♪
And although always stuck inside my breaking mind,
♪ ♪
I've stepped off the Earth and into a better place.
- David didn't want "Heroes" in "Lazarus,"
because "Heroes" had become
like an anthem.
He wanted a song
that would have sent everyone out,
slitting their wrists.
♪ ♪
Ivo and Enda
persuaded him that if "Heroes"
was treated, musically,
in a different way,
it would work
for the ending of "Lazarus."
♪ ♪
- ♪ I ♪
♪ I will be king ♪
♪ ♪
♪ And you ♪
♪ You will be queen ♪
- It's a reflective-- It's a beautiful moment.
"Heroes" is melancholy instead of triumphant.
♪ ♪
- Through his relationship with this girl,
and her re-awakening him
to his vitality,
Newton is brought back to life,
that he may ready himself to die,
perhaps.
Or not.
♪ But we could be safer ♪
♪ Just for one day ♪
- In this catharsis moment at the end with the "Heroes,"
you know, when things clear up,
he cuts loose everything which
what in a normal life of a normal human being
is important.
♪ We can be heroes ♪
- And then he has to let go
every hope,
just accepting,
well, his own death, at the end.
♪ We can be heroes ♪
♪ ♪
♪ We can be heroes ♪
- So the last thing that you see is
Michael C. Hall is still on stage, alive,
but in his mind, he's
flying away into the stars.
That's the last image.
- ♪ Just for one day ♪
♪ ♪
- I didn't expect David to be there
at our opening night.
We had heard that he was getting weak,
but he so wanted to be there, and, uh,
and he turned up, and he watched it,
and then afterwards, and he took the bows with us.
It was very, very sweet.
- You know, he got through the night,
but I really am convinced that
he was fighting death
and he wanted to continue and to continue
and then afterwards, we were sitting a little bit,
talking behind stage,
and he said, "Let's start the second one now,
the sequel"...
"To 'Lazarus.'"
- The last thing I remember David saying to me
after, you know, the hugs and the smiles
and after, uh,
after that opening night performance,
was "I think it went well tonight, don't you?"
That's the last thing
I remember him saying, and I said, "Yeah,
I think it did."
♪ ♪
- After the musical opened,
I got a call saying
"David would love to see you,"
and so I went over to see him,
and he was in his bedroom,
and we chatted.
It was all very lovely.
Peaceful.
And so then we walked to the elevator
and he said, "You're a genius,"
to me, and I said, "No, no, no.
"I'm not a genius.
"I'm just the producer.
You're the fucking genius."
And, um,
we had a hug,
I got in the elevator.
That was it.
Last time I saw him.
♪ ♪
- David said, "I just want to make
a simple performance video,"
I immediately said,
"The song is called 'Lazarus.' You should be in a bed."
♪ ♪
To me, that had to do with
the Biblical aspect of it, you know?
The man who would rise again.
And it had nothing to do with him being ill.
That was only because I liked the imagery of it.
You know.
♪ ♪
I found out later
that the week we were shooting
is when he found out
that this is--it's over, you know?
We'll end treatments, or, you know,
in whatever capacity that means that--
That his illness has won.
♪ ♪
- ♪ Look up here ♪
♪ I'm in heaven ♪
♪ I've got scars ♪
♪ That can't be seen ♪
♪ I've got drama ♪
♪ Can't be stolen ♪
♪ Everybody ♪
♪ Knows me now ♪
♪ ♪
- I've watched him record,
and he's in that song,
in that feeling, in that moment.
He would stand in front of the mic,
and for the four or five minutes he was singing,
he would pour his heart out.
The audio picked up his breathing
between those lines.
- ♪ Look up here, man ♪
♪ I'm in danger ♪
♪ I've got nothing left to lose ♪
♪ I'm so high, it makes my brain whirl ♪
♪ Dropped my cell phone down below ♪
- It wasn't that he was out of breath.
He was, like, hyperventilating in a way.
Like, getting-- Getting his energy up
to sing this, to deliver this song.
- ♪ I'll be free ♪
- He was quite stoked.
Like I--like I like to say, in the zone,
and I could see him through the window
that he was, you know, really feeling it
♪ ♪
- ♪ Oh, I'll be free ♪
♪ Ain't that just like me? ♪
- A man on top of his game.
It's brilliant, absolutely brilliant,
and the saddest lyrics to hear--
Hear them now.
It's nine minutes past 7:00.
Well, the shock news has only just been
officially confirmed.
David Bowie is dead.
- David Bowie, rock and roll rebel,
actor, and cultural icon,
has died at age 69.
- We lost David Bowie, uh, this morning...
um, and it's a big deal.
- ...have the news crews
and fans from all around the world
leaving full tribute... - ...In downtown Manhattan,
and you can see behind me... - He is David Bowie.
- ...Like his life, has shocked
fans laying flowers from his...
- Even the Archbishop of Canterbury
was a fan.
- ♪ Heaven loves ya ♪
♪ The clouds part for ya ♪
♪ Nothing stands in your way ♪
♪ When you're a boy ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Clothes always fit ya ♪
♪ Life is a pop of the cherry ♪
♪ When you're a boy ♪
It's been a incredibly full life,
and, uh, apart from the drugs in the '70s,
I think little of it has been wasted
in terms of I've been able to
sort of harness every moment in a way.
I'm--I'm a really lucky chap.
♪ Favorite things ♪
- And legacy. What-- How would you like
your legacy written?
- I'd love people to believe
that I really had great haircuts.
♪ Boys ♪
♪ ♪
♪ Boys keep swinging ♪
♪ Boys always work it out ♪