THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.14 - BOWIEWALLOW PT.2

Episode Date: March 24, 2016

Adam Buxton considers how he and others responded to the death of David Bowie in early 2016. Featuring contributions from the director of Bowie's last 2 videos, Johan Renck, Jonathan Ross, who nerds out about Bowie's career with Adam and musician Gaz Coombes covers a Bowie classic exclusively for the podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There will be swearing! My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan Hey, how you doing? Adam Buxton here. Thank you very much indeed for downloading part two of this Bowie wallow. I'm just trudging up quite a steep hill here. So I'm getting a little breathless because I'm old and I wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled and I do not dare to eat a peach. Just a delicious jazz apple. They sent me a free mug after I mentioned jazz apples before. It's the big time for buckles.

So I don't need another mug, by the way, if you're listening, jazz apple guys. So listen, part two of the Bowie wallow. And what can you expect? Well, the main body of this podcast will be a conversation between myself and Jonathan Ross. His radio show on Radio 2 for a long time, BBC Radio 2, was one of the best radio shows there ever was. He actually talked to Bowie on that show and then had Bowie on his TV chat show. Their paths crossed professionally a few times and he was always a massive Bowie fan and I've known him for a while so we got together to talk all about him. If you were a big Bowie fan then you probably would have done the same sort of thing with your pals it was very

comforting and cathartic to um talk about Bowie that week and and I mean it's something that I always like doing anyway crapping on about music and music that I love so that's what Jonathan and I will be doing later on in the podcast. At the end of the podcast is a cover of one of my favourite Bowie songs by Gaz Coombs. You know Gaz Coombs. He used to be in Supergrass. And now he is a brilliant solo artist. His last album, Matador, was a smash. But right now, you are going to hear from Johan Renck. He's a Swedish man, a male Swedish man, and he directs music videos and commercials. He's directed episodes of TV shows like Breaking Bad and Vikings. I love Vikings. And he's done a Walking Dead episode, I think. And he's worked with Madonna and Kylie and

lots of pop heavy hitters. And he also directed a TV show called The Last Panthers for Sky. And in the course of doing that, he got in touch with Bowie, just out of the blue, towards the beginning of last year, 2015, to ask if Bowie would be up for doing some theme music. And he expected to be knocked back immediately. But Bowie was someone who'd seen his work and liked it and he responded positively and said well look I've got this track I'm working on Black Star and so an embryonic version of that track ended up being the theme tune to The Last Panthers Bowie then continued to work on it and it became this 10-minute epic that you can hear

on the Black Star album and he got in touch with Johan and said how about doing a video for the song then and I spoke to Johan on Skype in the course of putting together the Bug Bowie Special. Now, Bug is a show that I've been doing since 2007. Every few months at the BFI, I sit there with my laptop and play music videos, read out YouTube comments and ponce around. And, of course, this year we felt that we ought to, wanted to do a Bow Bowie special and one of the videos that we show is the Lazarus video Bowie's last ever of course with him looking frail and lying there in bed with a bandage around his eyes with his his little button eyes. And I spoke to Johan about that video and about working with Bowie in those last months. And here are some

sections of what he said. In the filler of all men In the filler of all men Stands a solitary candle In the center of it all In the center of it all, in the center of it all, you are mine. He emailed me and said, look, I need to Skype with you. This is July of last summer. And I say, of course, and I'm in Sweden at this time, in my summer house in Sweden. And he calls me up on Skype and he says he says look i have something i want to tell you that or

that i have to tell you because i think it's it's enormously important for our ongoing work here and i said yeah sure what's up and he says uh you know he basically looks me in the eye on skype and says uh well i have to tell you that i'm very ill and that i'm probably going to die he said i need to tell you this because i want to be in the video for Blackstar but I'm not sure I'll be around so we have to talk about a replacement you know that's what he said to me on Skype but I think he I don't think that was his agenda really what I thought his agenda was that he was aware of the fact that he was ill and that he was probably going to pass away and he wanted me to be aware of this because he wanted that to be a part of the

of the fabric of what would make this video you know that I as the director of the video would know that he was ill and was going to pass away you know me personally I found it very hard to take all this in obviously we were at the same time spitballing ideas and talking about this video you know and sending things back and forth to each other. So in my mind, I think I went through it as if he's ill, he will be going through therapy and all of these chemotherapy and radiation, whatever it is. He will battle cancer for a number of years and he will be very ill, but then he will probably make it. That was my thoughts on it. But all along, he obviously knew more than that you

know so we spent that summer collaborating around the black star video which is a very ambitious video you know it's a 10 minute long song in my mind it deals with reflections on mortality and on aftermaths on legacies and trajectories you know because in my mind also what happens if when you're a young songwriter i'm sure everything you write has a forward trajectory but at some time in life if you're a creative if you write songs paint pictures take photos make films whatever I have a feeling that you start you know reversing that process and become more contemplative and and reminiscent and your your work sort of becomes rather backwards directed and I don't mean that in a negative way but what I mean it becomes reflective you come to a point in life when you

have to reflect and and I think also in being that type of artist you also come to a point when you have to when you will no matter who you are you will think of your legacy so you know in me listening to Blackstar the lyrics of the song he speaks about the day of execution and there is an element of of death definitely in the song to me was more about facing your deathbed and what that entails in terms of your your the aftermath and the heritage you leave behind, you know. When we had shot Black Star and was editing it, or even before that, actually, he sent me and said,

hey, I have another song I want to do a video to. Actually, he sent me that quite early, the same summer, I think. But it kind of fell off the map a bit because I was so busy in Black Stars I couldn't really deal with another video in the middle of that but then that resurfaced sometime in in October or November he said to me I want to make a very simple video of this I want this to be just a performance video as I listened to the song and actually just the title of the song I hit him back and I said look you might consider me banal but I really feel with this title of the song I want you to be in a bed and I felt a little uneasy about suggesting this because again I knew he was ill and I didn't want him to think that I was sort of putting him in a deathbed but to me

it was much more about the biblical aspect of Lazarus you know but he immediately responded I sent him a drawing of what I wanted the set to be and how I looked at and a few reference pictures and he just said yeah man I love it let's do it um in my mind I was making a video with you know a nod at the biblical aspect of Lazarus and and and to me it wasn't necessarily a hospital bed but maybe more an asylum bed or some some bed for somebody who who needs other type of care but I think in his mind, I mean, I would never second guess him, but I think he saw something else in it. I think he saw a deathbed in it. So we were working on the same ideas at all times,

but with two slightly different paths. Look up here, I'm in heaven I've got scars that can't be seen I'm in heaven. I've got scars that can't be seen. Like most of the songs on the Black Star album, Johan's video for Lazarus took on a very different tone after Bowie's death and seemed laden with clues and references, not only to his condition at the time, but to his career as a whole. I asked Johan specifically about the choice of the black outfit with white painted stripes

that Bowie wears while grooving around in the second half of the video. It's the same kind of outfit he wore on the back cover of Station to Station in 1975. In that picture, he's lying on his side, sketching the symbol for the Kabbalah tree of life. I also asked Johan about the image of the woman clawing at Bowie from beneath his bed in the Lazarus video. The woman under the bed in the Lazarus video came from me. I wanted to have some kind of, you know know the representation of childhood fears you know somebody in the closet somebody under a bed and those kind of things so it's pretty you know in some way a pretty simple idea for me just to have the presence of something um something to

fear and obviously in my mind also it's you know which was not openly shared between us, but we both knew that it to some extent also represented the disease, I guess, or the idea of a disease or something like that. So it was nothing more complex than that. It was a pretty sort of childish idea of your fears coming at you. The outfit from station to station, David, i was in his office and he said you know we were talking about various outfits for the second character in the last series video and he said what about this thing and i said yeah but you've been there before you know and said yeah that's why i want to do it again i want i want i want it to be an echo you know um and i i liked

it a lot you know and and i didn't ask again more about it because he he would have his reasons for this he has you know the the depth of references and his career and the connotations of that will mean so much to him and and it's no I have no business even asking why you know unless I couldn't understand it or agree with it you know but it was an outfit that made complete sense for me, for that character anyways. The video for Lazarus was shot just weeks before Bowie died. Johan didn't realise how little time David had left while they were working until he spoke to Bowie's producer Tony Visconti following Bowie's death.

Just before we shot the Lazarus video, David had gotten word from his doctors that we're terminating treatments, there's nothing we can do, this is the end. So he knew that when we were shooting that video. I obviously didn't know it and even shooting that video which was a little bit messy because that video the bed was built up high on a wall you know it's mountain on a wall to be able to do the shots I wanted to do and David would climb up on ladders and strap himself in a bed and you know there was nothing in his behavior suggesting that he was more ill than before or that he had reached the final stage.

He was as funny as ever. I mean, for instance, you know, in the end of the video in which when David sort of goes into this closet and closes the door, that came up as an improvised idea on the day of the shoot. You know, saying like, hey, wouldn't it be funny if you went back into, you went into the closet. All your fans would sort of be wondering, what does this mean? David Bowie has gone back into the closet, you know, on a nod on big sexuality and those kind of things.

And he would laugh and say, yeah, we're definitely going to do that. But in his mind, it's more like, I don't know. But I mean, it's clearly him walking into a coffin and closing his door, you know, if you think about it. I don't know how I would have dealt with all of this if I knew the outcome you know that that he was actually going to pass away pretty much on the the same time as the Lazarus video would come out you know and I remember you know I that the same week that he that it was his birthday which is the 8th of January you know when the Lazarus video was going to come out. That Monday, I think, as I was sitting and watching the video, was something that didn't work for me.

Something was wrong. It felt a little too precious or something like that. So I just called my post guys and said, hey, make it sort of one by one aspect ratio. Make it completely square. I want it to feel more homemade. It feels too, you know know it's feeling too precious so they sent me a test run of that which I passed said to him look look I really want to make this video square it feels sort of more makeshift and less try too hard you know and I really like what it does it becomes a little

more claustrophobic blah blah blah so I sent it to him and he said yeah man let's do it you know he answered I love that you know and And that was sort of that week. And on the Friday of that week, I sent him an email to say happy birthday and happy day of birth for your new album. And he never replied. And then on the Saturday, I mailed him something else. I don't really remember what it was. So I had another little note there.

And I remember on the Sunday being a little grumpy that he hadn't answered my emails, which was a very strange thing because then on the Sunday being a little grumpy that he hadn't answered my emails, which was a very strange thing. Because then on the Monday early morning when I got woken with the news, the first thing I felt was like, what a fucking cunt I am who's feeling butthurt because he's not answering my fucking stupid emails when the man is actually lying in bed surrounded by his family dying. with emails when the man is actually lying in bed surrounded by his family dying you know so so so it was a lot it was a very very very very strange day that Monday that was devastating obviously you know even more devastating than I could ever imagine I was actually absolutely crushed bluebird Now ain't that just like me Oh I'll be free Just like that

bluebird Oh, I'll be free Director Johan Renck was talking to me there. Thanks very much, Johan. Death, eh? I think it's overrated. I'm sure Bowie's liver cancer was a long way from being a picnic, even a really, really bad picnic with ants and wind that keeps blowing everything over and you've forgotten the corkscrew.

But I was impressed and heartened that he continued to work right into those last weeks. I hope I can still do something I love in my last days. And yes, of course, I'm talking about paintballing. This is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success. talking about paintballing. This is an advert for Squarespace. I love browsing your videos and pics and I don't want to stop. And I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop. These are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace.

Just visit squarespace.com slash Buxton for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch, use the offer code Buxton to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace. of success on your face with Squarespace. Yes. The week after Bowie died, I spent half an hour or so talking with Jonathan Ross, another Bowie nut, who, unlike me, actually met his hero on several occasions and even became quite pally with him.

After an awkward ten minutes or so, when I could barely hear what Jonathan was saying because of the wheezing and snorting from his adorable gang of pug dogs, we moved into another room and talked Bowie good times and some bad times too. Oh, and a note. When, towards the end of our chat, Jonathan mentions a phone conversation that Ricky had with Bowie, He's talking about comedian Ricky Gervais. In case you were wondering why Bowie would call Ricky Martin to suggest clowning around on a chat show. Hope that makes everything clear. The baby spiders would get scared and search frantically for their mother. But the glass spider would have long gone, having known that the babies would

survive somehow on their own. Oh, the glass spider had blue eyes almost like a human's. They shed tears at the winter turn of the centuries. I went to see the glass spider tour. I went to see Let's Dance, the first time I saw him live, and Glass Spider. Glass Spider was pretty terrible, I thought. But he was trying to do something. He was trying to put on a show. But he was trying to do something.

He was trying to put on a show. What was he trying to do there? Because you've seen Todd Haynes' film, Velvet Goldmine, presumably. Yeah. And that's an odd artefact in its own right. I quite like it. There's a lot to like in it. I like the fact it exists. Well, exactly, exactly.

There's a lot of strange stuff. And certainly if you're a Bowie fan or a fan of Iggy Pop or any of those people, it's well worth a look. But there's a version of a Bowie-like figure in that film towards the end that Haynes seems to be saying

is this corrupted, commercialised version of Bowie that looks like the glass spider Bowie with that uh blonde bouffant see i imagine bowie was probably mystified if he if he was aware of that kind of perception of what he was doing then because i'd like you i'm sure since she died i found myself looking at more old clips and i've discovered more stuff on youtube than i had previously even been aware of and i was watching the 1980s show you know that great american tv thing he did which

was it's got a bunch of tracks from pinups on it and he did a couple of things i think from aladdin saint yes with the astronauts yeah and it's you know on a far too smaller stage yes far too cheap and shitty a set and there's very much you can really see the influence of the early lindsey kemp style bow there, the kind of movement, dancing, the staging. Two awful, incredible costume changes. It's not that different. It's just slightly, maybe slightly different in tone. And maybe it's the perception that we had.

Maybe we came to Glasspider thinking, well, this is him trying to replicate the success that he had with Let's Dance. Yeah, and perhaps it just wasn't. It was bad timing at that point. Well, as I understand it, he was a bit unhappy and off the rails again then, as I understand it. You know, Let's Dance was him coming back incredibly healthy. Yeah.

He'd really cleaned himself up, he'd gone out, and he'd wanted to have hits, but wanted to have hits where he obviously had something to say still within them. He looks, I think, I feel that he is at his most beautiful in his let's dance face don't you think like in china girl i would say no i would say still for me it's low yeah that cover of low yeah yeah that one shot on the cover of low for manifold no one wore a wide brim fedora like bowing we've both tried i know i know you've cried and you look like you look like a sort of

like 1920s via my republic cartoon of a businessman i look like one of the anthill mob i look like a sleazy euro mp i look like george galloway on a bad day so it's like we can't pull that off we've made peace with that yeah but he you know and like so many i mean how many bowie looks did you try because for the last the only time in my life i've ever dyed my hair and i was very much influenced by i'm very excited about punk very punk threw myself into punk as much as I felt I could to the extent I had to retake my exams one year because I'd missed so much school it was the perfect age I was 16 17 when that all happened but I tried dyeing my hair blonde for let's dance I did it at home and it actually came out ginger and I just looked like Tintin

and it was kind of humiliating to go to that gig, wanting to be Bowie, and then seeing a sea of other young men pouring out of Milton Keynes Station, which is where he gigged. It was the closest I'd ever done, or we'd better dye blonde hair than me. But seeing that impact, seeing literally, I mean, it was like being at a rally, seeing tens of thousands of people all gathered,

all not just to enjoy the music, but trying to look like him and be him. To emulate the look, yeah. Which you don't get at other gigs. You know, you don't get that. I mean, maybe, I tell you who maybe had that influence early on, Woxy Music. Right.

Where people, you bought into the style package. And these were the first people to present themselves. I mean, it was interesting. I've been exchanging a few emails with Danny Baker since Bowie's death. And he said one thing which really struck me. He said, look, it's very difficult for the last couple of generations who came after us to understand.

There was a time when pop culture was not the dominant culture by any stretch, where people like Bowie were not... No-one was being packaged and sold to us, and someone had to do that for themselves and say, I want to present this experience, despite a kind of almost complete antipathy that was in media back then. There was, you know, you had to search, search, search for images. They weren't printed in the paper every day. You never saw pictures of pop stars in the paper or people who were recording artists, you know, unless they were arriving somewhere with someone else or leaving somewhere.

Yeah. You know, you never saw on television shows about people like that. They were few and far between. You know, they were very, very rare. And he kind of led the way with that kind of thing. And that's one of the reasons, I think, why, one of the many reasons why we're all feeling this loss so keenly, because he created the modern world. He created the culture of today to an extent.

He's not responsible for the worst aspects of it, but I think certainly he created this world where popular culture and avant-garde ideas blended into entertainment were considered worthy of serious attention. them the courage to express themselves in unconventional ways, whether it was, you know, if they felt like misfits or they had sexuality that they were afraid to express, then Bowie gave them the courage to express that. I was never one of those people. You know, I was just a kind of fairly ordinary middle class boy, heterosexual, didn't have too many worries and hang-ups that I needed help with in that way. And in fact, I was a little scandalized early on by some of the things I read about Bowie. And now there are some kind of negative bits and pieces dribbling out about some of his more unpleasant excesses in the early 70s, you know, when there were underage groupies around and when everyone was at that kind of thing you know that for me he was kind of a creepy figure in some ways

and he certainly was for my dad i yeah well your dad i think your dad would have been scared of like you know i imagine kenny everett terrified your father as well oh yeah absolutely yeah no he was your dad was a very we're going as a litmus test your father as well. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, he was. Your dad was a very... We're going, as a litmus test, your father is kind of pretty much as far into the alkaline as possible. Exactly, exactly. I remember seeing him on Top of the Pot was doing Gene Genie, I think.

It was either Gene Genie or Rebel Rebel. It was one of those two. I was fucking terrified. He was terrified because he did look like an alien. Yeah. I didn't understand what was going on. What I knew was it was incredibly exciting and I thought about it for a long while afterwards,

but I was scared of him. Yeah. And then it was the music that I listened to that made me fall in love with him. Exactly. There's no doubt that he gave a voice to people who might have felt there were things that you couldn't and shouldn't say.

Yeah. And that you couldn't and perhaps weren't able to recognise in yourself comfortably couldn't and shouldn't say yeah and that you couldn't and perhaps weren't able to recognize in yourself comfortably because there were no figures out there who were prepared i mean one of the things about him that's so interesting i think is the fact that he you know he has always had something to say you might not always agree with it but he's always had and his work wasn't empty posturing i mean you look at the number of people who've tried to be Bowie. There were people out there who thought, OK, make-up, extravagant clothes, you know, a weird set, that would be enough.

That isn't enough. That wasn't enough. What he had to back that was this incredible kind of craft wizardry when it came to constructing songs. And a kind of ravenous curiosity as well. Yeah, I mean, the fact that he turned so many people on to new ideas, the fact that you knew, even if we all only pretended to read the books he'd read, we were still talking about that.

I was thinking about that, because he used to tour with, like, a big mobile library. Well, famously, for many years, he was reluctant to fly. He didn't fly, so he would take one of those big, kind of like... Steamer chest or something. Steamer trunk. He'd take that on when he went to... I remember seeing a photograph of him leaving

to go and film Man Who Fell to Earth. I think I saw it many years after he'd done that. And that was opened up and it had Nietzsche in there. That's right. There was Marx in there, and of course he was in Colin Wilson. And all these names that we may well not have heard of. Burroughs, I think the first time I heard about William Burroughs

was because of him, you know. Some of which I would go on to read and some of which I would pretend to read. But certainly I think he opened the eyes to that. The fact that he went out and had a love affair with Japan, I think that helped colour my desire to know a bit about Japanese culture, which was then, which has become a lifelong passion of mine. But the fact that he came back with Japanese-inspired theatricality

and clothing from some of the more avant-garde designers there. And we saw at the time he'd just been this kind of high weirdness, and now we look back and see as this kind of progressive genius. And that's what he was, I suppose. There's a lot of talk about transgressive and progressive behaviour these days, and he was progressive in the best sense, wasn't he? And then he kind of walked the walk. He wasn't, you know, another phrase right now,

he wasn't a slacktivist in any sense. He wasn't someone who'd wear a T-shirt saying, this is what a feminist looks like and do nothing about it. He was someone who went out there and presumably, I mean, because I didn't know him terribly too well, I knew him very, very slightly, but you know that his life was infused and informed by those ideas thoroughly. It wasn't a superficial thing, you know,

and he was, seemed to be certainly someone who was um greedily keen to explore the world to explore what had to offer to explore other people's ideas and he obviously read all the time art was very important to him i mean art was something he needed he fed off of he lived for to an extent you know he wrote for that modern painters review for a little while uh you know so obviously that was a side of his life which was certainly not done for any other reason than he wanted to do it. Because what gain is there writing for a non-profit little modern art review but with a kind of like tiny iconoclastic group of people

who weren't really welcoming to others anyway? But that was something which he cared about. Well, I suppose the gain would be to be thought of in the way that he wanted to be thought of. But he didn't publicise that. I mean, I was always slightly wary, and this is unfair, I was very slightly wary of Pete Townsend's intellectualising when he became an editor, Faber.

And I thought, yeah, you know, really? They really want you to be an editor? You know, they're using your celebrity and you're falling for it and you're using the prestige that seems to give you. Well, I didn't know Bowie was doing those things. I wasn't aware. Bowie didn't inflict a lot of his artwork on us.

There were pieces that we saw and we knew existed. That's true. But he wasn't someone who put his own paintings on the cover of every album, which he could have quite easily done and we'd have lapped it up. But what he would do is he would seek to work with artists who inspired him

and he would put their work on the cover. I mean can't remember the name of the guy but that photographer who did the cover of lodger and lodger that's a spectacular that's great concept photograph completely out there and you know that came from bowie you know bowie knew his work and went i want to work with you and he didn't there wasn't a big deal about that that wasn't like oh i found this artist it was like that was put out for mass consumption by us in the most kind of like, you know, there was a real finesse there. It's like, I'm going to introduce you to something without you knowing I'm introducing you to something.

And I'm not gaining cachet from this. I am sharing something with you that has meant something to me. And this is the thing I find fascinating. I mean, I think what we're mourning really is the loss of a great, great artist who used all the things that he had access to in creating his statements and one of the things he used best of all was his body was his and you think he was given this incredible canvas to work with the most beautiful face the most incredible physique there's a quote i'm

reading from elton john which is not particularly relevant but i'm finding it now anyway where someone asked him why he used to dress as Donald Duck on stage and someone's wearing those stupid glasses. And he said, well, I can't dance like Jagger and I don't look like Bowie. So I've got to do something. And Bowie did have this incredible gift, which was the genetics involved there. And when you add that

to it, but he didn't just walk out there. He wasn't Mick Jagger, who of course is fine if you like that kind of thing. I've never ever been excited about the Rolling Stones in my entire life. Not once. I mean, seriously, not once. XR on Main Street? Who cares?

Give me any New York Dolls album. I know what you mean. Any Rolling Stones album. Because the ideas weren't there for me. It felt to me too prosaic. Well, exactly. I love this girl. She doesn't love me back.

Or I'm screwing a lot of people aren't i lucky or because they were trying to be authentic they were keeping it authentic for the blues yeah but i didn't feel it was i well i agree with you though um it is it's inauthentic it's just these um guys doing their version of the blues and there was something you know bowie's detractors would always say oh he's just a magpie and he's just uh nicking this and he's nicking that and i don't think he stole ideas i think he was influenced by ideas as any artist is yeah and then they were filtered through his unique perspective and normally came out different stronger either more appealing or

less appealing but they they informed his work but they did not in any way dominate or color it to the extent where he didn't have ideas to add to it you know you think about you look up music for Airports where it's called the Eno album that kind of we see as the birth of ambient music and the whole chill I think you think okay is it discreet? Clearly that fed

into Low and that German period a little bit there but it's no actually the B side of Low doesn't sound like an Eno album the B side of Low, I'm saying B side of course, side two I guess it would be bit there but it's actually the b-side of low doesn't sound like an eno album the b-side of low i'm saying b-side of course side two i guess it would be more but uh people with only experience music by cds don't know what i'm talking about here yeah the interesting thing about music being served up in those days was that you know you flipped it over when you flip that over you entered a different world yeah he knew that uh and they designed it that way and it was a radical

and revolutionary music which was somewhat influenced by his experience with Eno and what Eno had done before but it was also experienced by Ken perhaps and Tangerine Dream. Oh yeah. That kind of weird, those layers and that kind of thing and also there was a whole new sound in there but that was still essentially Bowie.

No one else. And that's what I think is fantastic, was where you can listen to, and even when he went into stuff which was a bit more conventional. I mean, there's been a quote this week from Niles Rogers talking about working with him on Let's Dance.

And he said the interesting thing was when that came out, he'd heard, apparently Bowie said to someone, I've got this here, I'm Phil Collins. In a good way. He said that in a good way. What he meant was i'm because phil collins dominated poppy music sure yeah he's massive i'm on the radio i'm selling

records and of course he wanted to sell records i know just because he wanted to earn a living yeah but because he wanted people to hear his music and he wanted to feel uh part of it he wanted to feel um um valid yeah and and you know um current and in the moment yes because that kind of acceptance was like the last piece in the puzzle in a way for some of his stuff wasn't it? but when you think back about an album like

Station to Station which has two or three incredibly accessible yeah golden years classic songs but then has that long beautifully delivered version of Wild As The Wind. Oh, mate, yeah. Yeah, which is almost as good as Nina Simone's version. Well, it's, yeah, it is.

I mean, it is. It's amazing. It's different, but it's incredible that he would lay that out there. I remember as a kid when I bought the album, I was like, I don't know, was that 76? 76, I think. Yes. 75 it was recorded, 76 it came out, yes. So I was like 15 when it came out.

I remember getting up and thinking, what the fuck is, what's this song? And then just wanting to hear it again and again and again. I suspect, and I think I've heard unseen quotes, where he always felt somewhat limited by being a singer. And he would not have wanted to be a singer. And it's no coincidence, I think, that the last few albums

the last two albums in particular have had that kind of have not been as accessible have not had songs with the shape and the feel of popular music in the way that we he was writing even up to reality yeah you know they're not that way and they've gone more in the direction if we do have to draw another name in scott walk Scott Walker and I know that he admired and liked Scott Walker's early work and obviously found his later work perplexing and attractive in the way that I think

we all did, I mean did you see that big Scott Walker documentary recently which Bowie's talking about Scott Walker 30th century man yeah and he's laughing about some of the latest sounds and just the that's right the meat punching yeah and you think well that hey you know that's the other thing about boys he had a real sense of humor but he also had uh a lack of uh pretentiousness about what he did and he also i think didn't really understand what he meant to us he did at times

and other times he didn't he was doing my show one time, and Ricky phoned me and said, Bowie's going to be on your show again. I said, yeah, of course. And he said, he phoned me and said, would I like to come on with him? He had an idea that while he's performing,

you and me come out behind him like we're decorating the set and start knocking stuff over. Like an old Malcolm Wise routine. I thought, well, that's the worst thing I've ever heard in my life. Can you imagine Bowie fans sitting at home and then these two fucking idiots come out behind him and ruin him?

Because as fans, we both, you know, you just wanted to see him. I wanted to see him doing anything. And I was always disappointed when it was over. I mean, I remember waiting and knowing that he was going to be on that Mark Boland show when Heroes came out. Desperately waiting to see it. And then it coming on and first of all being a bit surprised and disappointed by the haircut, which I think was Bowie's worst ever haircut. But I remember just, and Heroes of course, was this magnificent hand grenade that went off in all our lives.

But I remember thinking, really, do you not realise what your appearance means to me as a fan? Never mind the fans watching watching just me in the room i don't want to be the jerk coming out behind you and ruining this for some kind of cheap laugh yeah and but then i think he was probably for him hearing david bowie sing was no treat you know for him that's what he could get in the shower if he wanted for us it was a little oasis whenever it happened it was something we know it would nourished us yeah um but i love the fact that he not only saw it as something that we could subvert and play around with but also that it was such a shit idea we had to make it funny the fact that me and ricky falling over and knocking over some planks it's like something

you see at sunday night in london playedroom in 1963 with you know it would have been Norman Wisdom and Tommy Cooper you know far better comedians and then me and Ricky not that I'm a comedian anyway but you know what I mean I love the fact that he saw it in that light and I thought well that's certainly humanized him in my eyes yeah a lot when I do it no of course not I found a way of politely defusing it and saying, you know, I think, I think I even said to him, it's a special thing for us to see you perform. And I cannot, in good conscience, be involved in diminishing that moment for people. Well, you very kindly took me and Joe along to Maida Vale to see the show. When he played that little Radio 2 gig, which was incredible. Yeah, and that was the first time he'd played Beaulieu Brothers in 10 years. Well, that's really thanks to Joe indirectly,

because I remember Bowie spoke to me beforehand. He'd asked me if I'd introduce him. Of course, whenever I got that kind of offer from him, it was like I just couldn't believe my luck. And I said, yeah, of course, I'd be incredibly upset if someone else was doing it. And it was a gig, and I went down and saw a little bit of the rehearsal as well, and those sort of memories are obviously cherished.

But he spoke to me like a week or two before, and he said, I'm doing this gig, and we're going to do this stuff, and this stuff, that's what he said. And he actually said to me, is there anything you'd like to hear me play? And I thought, okay. So I remember thinking, okay, I'm not going to throw away this chance here. I mean, my inclination, well, you know, I can't choose a favourite life on Mars.

He's obviously out there for all of us, but, you know, I'd heard him do that. So I spoke to Joe. I saw Joe before you, and I said to Joe, oh, Bowie's doing this thing, and I want you to come, but he said, is he going to play? And Joe said, you know, he's never done Beauty Brothers Live, that I'm aware of.

I went, oh, you're right, you know, I've never heard that. Hang on, this doesn't sound like Joe. Joe said that to me. What? Yeah, Joe knew that man. Joe Cornish? Joe was in this room and we started trying to sing Beaulieu Brothers at the piano and he mocked my lack of vocal range.

That was Joe Cornish. There's a side of Joe you haven't seen, obviously. Clearly. This is terrible that this is where this has come out. So I then said to Bowie, I don't think you've ever done Beauty Brothers live. I was talking to a couple of fans, and he went, oh, okay, I'll do it then.

Yeah. I'm thinking, holy fuck, he's going to do it. And he even says on the thing when he did it, he didn't say how it came out. He said, I haven't done this one. I don't think I've done this live. Yeah. For a long, long time.

I did it once before, and I have to get the words out of it because there's a lot of words in it. And he got a sheet of paper and read it, did this incredible version of it. And I remember I certainly felt, and I have to get the words out because there's a lot of words in it and he got a sheet of paper and read it did this incredible version of it and I remember I certainly felt and I think others did

that that was a very special moment yeah he nailed it it was great because it's an incredible song and the band nailed it as well they were an incredible band

he was touring with I've got another story from that period that you might enjoy I think it's quite a funny story I hope so anyway which is that the night I was DJing for him

right so this is when he was he was curating the meltdown. And he managed to get New York Dolls back on. No, no, he didn't do New York Dolls. Sorry, that was Marcy. He got television back together. And I was out that night. I was working, so I couldn't go and see television, which I loved to have seen.

So he said to me, will you DJ? Of course I said yes. And I'd never actually DJed before for anyone. And I've only DJed for two people in my life now. It's a pretty good track so far David Bowie and Yoko Ono so David asked me and I thought well I remember asking you

because you always did those you have I think very wide and excellent musical taste you got me excited about the Pixies when I hadn't really bothered listening to them before yeah Bowie always loved them so I said okay I'd gladly do it and you gave me

a selection of tracks and some of which were good all of which were good and I showed it to Bowie so when I actually turned up there I was doing two sets

that night the first set was going to be I believe yeah yeah no I think it was a warm up gig before he started and then I was doing one afterwards

okay so it was before and after this two part show and the first part of his show was going to be new material from I guess I think reality and even

and whatever the other one was and then there was going to be a break and he said he was going to do all of the B side of Low which he did live and of course that's not necessarily a crowd pleaser but I was delighted the opening band from that with the Dandy Warhols who did an

incredible thing they just did a really long kind of sonic jam that was awesome yeah it was great they didn't do a hit they just did this thing which is how i imagine because i remember even the eagin the stooges before they rehearsed they would just jam and get in sync with each other and i'm amazing like that and i remember sitting there thinking this is awesome already so and it was great that bowie saw in them something which perhaps we didn't all see because they were seen as a bit disposable so the first set I did

I tried to play some of the music you'd suggested and a few for myself so I put some of the tracks I put in that you had a bit of Cornelius oh yeah great

a bit of Yoko right went down terribly went down terribly the audience no one there no one cared put on War

Low Rider your suggestion no one cared come on War Low Rider your suggestion no one cared put on one Bowie track place went fucking nuts I went oh now I see what they want

they want Bowie put on a Lou Reed track place goes oh I see so basically all I really need here is Transformer and Bowie albums

which of course I hadn't bought many of them with me so I phoned home and I went guys can someone go to my office there's a look in the D section or the B section course i hadn't bought many of them with me so i phoned home and i went guys i'm i can start going my office there's a look in the d section or the b section the boy just put every bowie cd

in there for me lenny lou reed bit of iggy uh maybe not the hoopoe let's go crazy t-rex go on so during the first part of informal life someone came and found me in the audience and gave me a tesco carrier bag with loads of seed thank you very much thank you thank you while everyone's trying to watch

Bowie and I'm clutching this bag and Bowie had said if you'd like to come and see me

in between come and see me so of course I went backstage to see him I go backstage

to see him clutching his carrier bag he comes out of his dressing room barefoot the god is there barefoot

he's just performing incredibly he's done hits hits hits hits

and you know Jonathan I'm thinking of doing I'm thinking of doing, I'm thinking of doing, you know, Low. I'm doing, what's that song, you know, the one that just happened, and that track where he goes,

Ooh-hey-oh-hey-oh, Ooh-hey-oh-hey-oh-hey-oh. Wasawa. Yeah. Wasawa. So love you. Right, so he said, he said, you like Low, don't you?

It's your favourite album, no? I said, it is my favourite of your albums. Yeah. Yeah, he said, what do I sing? Of course, I've got a kind of lyric blindness anyway but certainly that track, I always assumed he was just making noises, so I went it's a made up language

I didn't want to mix it, I didn't know I went, I think, is it I said, oh, hang on I've got it here, we could listen to it now, I'll get it out, so I went to get it out of the bag I'm standing in the hallway still, he hasn't invited me into his dressing room, he's standing there barefoot looks magnificent

as I reach in the bag too excited I push them all through the bottom so all of his CDs fell out around his bare feet so I immediately

get down on my knees so I'm on my knees in front of Bowie and Buffy as his band walk out they go and say to Mike Garson the genius keyboard player

who did that incredible riff on Aladdin he walks past and they stop and they start laughing at me as I'm scrabbling around at Bowie's feet with all his records spread out. And Mike Garson just went, I think that's the saddest thing I've ever

seen in my life. To Major Tom Your son gets dead There's something wrong Can you hear me Major Tom? Can you hear me Major Tom? Can you hear me Major Tom? Can you hear Am I floating round my tin can Far above the moon, planet Earth is blue,

and there's nothing I can do. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. Thanks to Jonathan Ross for talking to me before that mixed-up blast of space oddity there. My pre-ordered copy of Bowie's last album, Black Star, arrived hours after I'd read about his death. I'd heard the singles and a couple of older tracks already, and I liked them well enough. But of course, once he was gone and the truth about his last months emerged, everything on the album sounded completely different. Simultaneously sad, mysterious, and in the case of the last track, uplifting.

That track, I Can't Give Everything Away, immediately quotes the harmonica riff from the similarly propulsive and poignant A New Career in a New Town from the album Low. Here's I Can't Give Everything Away. And here's A New Career in a New Town. I Can't Give Everything Away also features a couple of euphoric solos. The first is from Donny McCaslin, who goes on a saxophone adventure that is as thrilling as it is heartbreaking. That's a sentence I never expected or wanted to say in my life, having grown up in the 80s, but that's what death and middle age do to a person.

The second solo, that is, is a lovely swooping guitar thing from Ben Monda that recalls Robert Fripp's guitar work on the track St Elmo's Fire from Brian Eno's album Another Green World. on the track St Elmo's Fire from Brian Eno's album Another Green World. That's a record that Bowie certainly loved. Lyrically, Bowie keeps it gnomic, though not laughing gnomic. I know something's very wrong. The pulse returns, the prodigal sons, the blackout hearts with flowered news, the skull designs upon my shoes.

I can't give everything away. For about two weeks after Bowie died, I listened to Blackstar exclusively, like a kind of a mad guy. It gave shape to a confusion of intense feelings about my dad, about Bowie, about getting older, about everything. But I Can't Give Everything Away was the one I kept coming back to. The day I first listened to it, and it immediately got its hooks in me, I made a voice note about it, getting emotional and acting as if it contained the meaning of life in a way that can happen when music's involved. Well, it seems fairly obviously a rumination on facing mortality and also an answer to all the people who were frustrated by his obliqueness and the artifice and the manipulation. And he's saying, come on, that's the game. That's what makes it fun. If I told

you everything, if I explained everything, it wouldn't be fun anymore it would just be like oh really no i could have worked that out for myself the the fun thing and the bit that makes your heart sore is not knowing everything completely and and the mystery and in the space created by that mystery, you can cultivate hope. Hope that there are secrets you don't know or fully understand, and the hope that there's something more to life than you suspect there is, and the hope that things might get better, and all kinds of hopes. better and all kinds of hopes. And he was saying, I think, I can't, I can't explain everything,

and you wouldn't want me to. And also, I've trained myself not to. And that's why you like me. And he was right. But it really hurt to listen to it. It was like being punched in the face by David Bowie, which probably wouldn't be that terrible a punch would it really I can't get

everything I can't get everything away I can't get it away away I'll be gone If he would be up for doing a Bowie cover for this podcast. And I was delighted when he said that he would. And even more delighted when I heard the finished result.

And he said this about it in his email. Five years was the first Bowie song I remember properly getting into. We were so obsessed as kids. We tried to rip off and sample the snare sound on our first Jennifer's EP. I also wanted to cover this one basically so I could sing the lines, it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor and I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there. Possibly my fave lyrics of all time. Anyway, I hope I didn't destroy it. And this version is appropriate and useful to you for the podcast. Big love, man.

Gaz. Thanks, Gaz. It is both appropriate and useful for the podcast. And I hope you don't mind if I dedicate it to my two dads and all the work of Paul Reiser and Greg Evigan. Take care. I love you. Bye. So many mothers sigh. News had just come over. We had five years left to cry.

News guy wept and told us. Earth was really dying. Cried so much his face was wet. And I knew he was not lying I heard telephones, opera house, favorite melodies I saw boys, toys, electric lines and TVs My brain hung like a warehouse I had no room to spare I had to crop so many things to store

Everything in there And all the fat skinny people And all the tall short people And all the nobody people And all the somebody people Never thought I'd meet so many people The girl my age went off her head Hid some tiny children

If the back hadn't of pulled her off I think she would have killed them The soldier with a broken arm Fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac The cart knelt and kissed the feet of a priest And the queer threw up at the side of the I think I saw you in an ice cream parlor

drinking milkshakes cold and long smiling and waving and looking so fine don't think you knew you were in this song and it was cold and it rained

So I felt like an actor And I thought of Ma I wanted to get back there Your face, your ways The way that you talk I kiss you, you're beautiful I want you to walk We got five years

Stuck on my eyes Five years, what a surprise Five years, my brain hurts a lot Five years, yeah, that's all we've got We've got five years stuck on my eyes Five years, what a surprise Five years, my brain hurts a lot Five years, that's how we've come Bye.