Flashback Q&A: David Bowie on Life, Death, and Spirituality
David Bowie during David Bowie’s 50th Birthday Celebration Concert in 1997 at Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York, United States. (Photo by Ke.Mazur/WireImage)
David Bowie wasn’t going to lay back and die quietly. He loved life and considered every moment of inactivity a terrible waste of time. One of the most fascinating characters to become a pop-culture icon, Bowie relished making offbeat ideas acceptable to the mainstream – or at least his huge fanbase – whether he was dabbling in glam, ambient, new wave, garage rock, electronic, avant-jazz, or something else entirely.
So for his swansong, Blackstar, he decided to make an atypical record that strayed beyond the limiting confines of rock music. Working with his longtime producer, Tony Visconti, he recruited four New York avant-jazz musicians to provide experimental flair to the creative and highly experimental process. No one but Bowie and Visconti knew it at the time, but the album would be his last, and he wanted it to be strange and special. As extraordinary as it is that he created one of his most fascinating records during a year in which he was dying from cancer, the kind of dedication and artistry emblematic of Bowie’s career.
Related: David Bowie’s 10 Best Albums
Bowie was a stunning songwriting, poet, philosopher, and human being. Though he was larger than life onstage and addressed musical ideas and subjects that many of his peers considered far too risky, he wasn’t arrogant or pompous and often could be seen walking around New York’s East Village without an entourage. For 25 years he enjoyed a spiritual, satisfying life with his wife, Somali-American supermodel Iman, who grounded him and kept him inspired to try new things.
The key to a fulfilling and exciting life, he told me in 1997, is to always treasure the moment and constantly strive to discover new areas of interest. “You mustn’t live in the past; that’s vital,” he said from a record company conference room during an intimate, career-spanning interview. “And don’t consider that the high points in your life were things that happened in the past. I’ve got a couple friends who are most firmly rooted in the past. Their lives stopped in 1978 and they’ve just stayed there. Everything they talk about and refer to is back then. An hour of that drives me up the wall. Yes, there were great shoulders on those suits, but you can’t live only on this terminal reminiscence. That’s such a waste of a life.”
Related: David Bowie’s Best: 10 Tracks That Sold the World on Rock’s Greatest Change Agent
Although Bowie was hugely popular, he never enjoyed the vapid side of pop culture and, though he knew he was talented, he didn’t believe he was more important than anyone else and felt intensely grateful that the type of art that excited him also allowed him to enjoy a long and successful career.
The following archival ‘97 interview, conducted around the time of his Earthling release, features words of wisdom that an excited and enthused Bowie shared about his innovative approach to songwriting, his ideas about spirituality, and the personal epiphanies and uncertainties that came from aging.
YAHOO MUSIC: In your music you’ve frequently taken on nihilistic subject matter with a sense of optimism or at least enthusiasm. Do you think mankind is on an ever-progressing path to self-enlightenment, or spiraling towards its own extinction?
DAVID BOWIE: I think unwittingly, by his own treachery, he gives the impression he’s into auto-destruction, but if that’s the way it is I still think you have a choice to be negative or positive about the future, and I’ve opted to be positive. I believe, basically, what we are doing is dismantling an archaic spiritual life. It’s something that we cannot deal with anymore in a medieval fashion. The organized religion that we have doesn’t really pertain to the way that existence does manifest itself in late 20th century. I think the adage that you have to destroy God to reinvent him is very applicable to these times. To remain positive, I also believe that what we’re looking at is not the fragmentation of an old society, but the pieces that we will eventually use to rebuild a new one.
Does the transition from the 20th to the 21st century bring with it a new series of values and ideals?
It’s a good starting point even if it’s only symbolic. I think it’s a raison d'être to re-arm ourselves with the spiritual life. I think we do need that. We’re a Godless lot. I look out into the future and I see Gnosticism [the belief that “the world is flawed and earthly life is filled with suffering,” so humans “suffer from the frequent recognition that they are strangers living in a world that is flawed and absurd, “ according to Gnosis.org). There’s a wonderful book by the literary critic Harold Bloom called The American Religion. He really pinpoints what American religion is and how it works, and why Americans claim God as being their own. He’s in fact a Jewish Gnostic, which is very interesting. And he has a lot of empathy with a one-on-one relationship with God – maybe not quite so personal as that. I think that it probably becomes a lot more ephemeral than a simple one-on-one relationship. But the idea of not actually having to cow-tow to an organized religion – to expect that the priest is the only person to get you into the portals of your relationship or your dialogue with God – that, in fact, you can venture into a spiritual life all on your own without having to adhere to a certain set of constraints and rules. And I am very much in favor of that. And I think somewhere between Gnosticism and Buddhism is where the future spiritual life will be. But what that’s got to do with the new record, I don’t know. Hey man, it really rocks! [laughs]
Related: ‘David Bowie Changed My Life’: Nile Rodgers Remembers His ‘Let’s Dance’ Collaborator
How do you incorporate that kind of thinking, which is obviously important to you, in your music?
In two or three of the songs on Earthling there’s a subtext of that, and it’s laid down in a lot more populist kind of fashion. As I usually do, I incorporate the imagery of science fiction and I use it in that metaphysical sense. For me, it becomes my imagery for a spiritual life. All the aliens and the saucers, and all those things are this parade of mythological figures that we know that we need some kind of moral role models for, but we’re not sure where to find them anymore. We’ve tried popular culture and that doesn’t work either because it’s rubbish. So at the moment, there’s this tentative move to asking is there life on Mars? And it’s that great search again. Searching, is, indeed a great part of what the Earthling album is about, but it’s the same territory for me, I think, often. If there’s anything that’s a continuum of what I write, it is that, and it always has been. I’m quite predictable on that level. It’s probably just my own interior search and I just express it in a more public forum because I’m a rock singer. It’s something that I’m expected and allowed to do.
Do you find that experience leads to you ask new questions or address different subjects in your lyrics?
No, I don’t think so. One thing I’m very positive about with regards to rock, and most other art forms, is that they don’t actually provide any new information. I think the best a successful art form can do is mirror accurately the status quo. And rock does it very successfully. I think it’s a really accurate mirror. I don’t think myself or even Bob Dylan ever had any pertinent, original thoughts, but I think that we both may have or have had an ability to encapsulate how certain segments of society feel about things. I still think that rock is the greatest art form of the 20th century.
Throughout your career, you’ve evolved from one musical style to another in a near-chameleonic fashion.
Ever since I was a kid, it was never the stuff in the mainstream that ever intrigued me. The stuff that really made me excited was stuff that was happening on the outside of pop culture, whether it was visual or musical or in the cinema. And those are the things I would be influenced by. So for me, it’s been my mode of operation to always be pretty well plugged into the things that are on the outside. That’s what I listen to or look at when I’m at home. I don’t go and buy a Kenny Rogers album. I go and buy Glenn Branca. It’s about choice – it’s choice of lifestyle. And my lifestyle has always been toward the things that I find really vibrant and interesting and curious, and say something different to that which I know well. And also, I’m very wary of the tyranny of the mainstream. It dissipates and it makes vapid and stupid everything it touches. So it’s a place I try to pull away from as much as possible.
At the same time, you’ve been tapped into the underground for decades, yet much of what you’ve done has become mainstream.
It’s probably because I’m good at popularizing avant-garde or high art things. Not that I have any greater intellectual grasp of them, it’s just that I have an interest in them, and I think a lot of my peers don’t. So I’m like the only guy out there looking at this stuff. And then I come back and I tell people about what’s out there through my own music. It becomes the meat of what I do and how I work. So, in a way, I feel like I’m a popularizer of the avant-garde, and I put it on a level that everybody understands because that’s the way that I understand it. I don’t understand these things from some great, cerebral height. I’m just this guy who sees cool stuff and I take it and start doing something. I’ve always been really curious and quite adventurous in everything I see and do and where I go. I don’t feel there’s any door that’s closed to me, because I insist that it won’t be. So I kind of knock it down if it is.
Are there any boundaries or taboos you won’t explore?
Anything that I feel is really going to become destructive to my relationships with my friends and family. I think one of the downsides of being so pushy in an adventurous manner is you lose track of friends and family, which I did for considerable periods in the past. I virtually had no time for them. And you become a non-social animal sometimes as well. For me, it was the drugs more than anything else that created a wall that separated me from any real social contact. I don’t think I could ever allow that to happen again. I really find now that I’m actually quite a gregarious person. I really enjoy social life and I enjoy other people, which I didn’t know when I cut myself off that much.
To what do you attribute your longevity?
My role models are people like Neil Young, Patti Smith, and Frank Zappa. Also, there’s an ex-patriot American called Scott Walker, who lives over in Britain now. For me, he was always a role model. They were people who were not scared to go with their intuitive understanding of what they knew was right for them as artists. I want to be like that. That, for me, produces a kind of grace in those people getting older because there’s a sense of real understanding of who they are. They know who they are and what their strengths and weaknesses are, and I really admire that.
Related: David Bowie on the Charts: From ‘Changes’ to 'Fame’ and Beyond
Do you worry about getting older?
Not at all. Not even remotely. [Adopts old man’s voice] I can’t explain this to you, young man, but… [laughs]. I would never have believed when I was 25 that at 50 I would still have the enthusiasms or the appetites for life that I do have. I was fully convinced that I would be either completely burnt out, dead, or at least bored or boring or both. And it’s such an extraordinarily pleasant surprise to find that I really enjoy life. I still enjoy the profession I’m in. My chosen career and what I wish to do as a writer, it’s still great. In fact, there are probably times when I’m even more enthusiastic now about various aspects of what I do than when I was 25.
Like what?
I probably enjoy recording more now than I did then, because back then I wasn’t in the moment. I would be making a record, but thinking about what I was going to do next. It was almost like me being in the studio making the album was a hindrance because it was taking up time. Now, I find that I love the actual process of making an album. I really enjoy the fact that I’m good at what I do and it’s really fun putting all this stuff together. There are certain things to be gained from actually reaching a ripe old age.
Even though you’re music often sounds restless, you seem to be at peace. Do you attribute that to spirituality or anything in particular?
Ever since Iman and I got together, I just feel balance in my life for the first time, really. It’s just been terrific. It’s a wonderful relationship. Family is a beautiful thing.
Iman and David Bowie during David Bowie’s 50th Birthday Celebration Concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York, United States. (Photo by Ke.Mazur/WireImage)
Has age brought you wisdom?
Yes, it has: the wisdom of knowing there is no certainty whatsoever. I think when you’re younger you have some impression that you will, by a sequence of progress and evaluation, actually come up with an answer. And as you get older you realize that you should just relax into asking the questions and gaining the knowledge because, indeed, there is no answer – not that we get in this lifetime, anyway. I guess I even feel more freewheeling these days. I definitely feel more philosophically freewheeling. I’m just not so certain that anything I learned or was taught is right. I think experience has made me really scared of absolutes – absolute systems of government, absolute religions, absolute life – all these things I’m incredibly wary of now. I’m expecting imminently a new rising up of a more humanitarian civilization. It will just rise like the phoenix from the ashes.
You embraced electronica on Earthling. Some of the samples and drum machine passages on the record seem inspired by artists decades younger than you, and the music style, as a whole, appeals to a young, club-going crowd.
It might seem an awkward stance to take, but for me it’s almost a natural evolutionary thing to do, because it would inevitably be the kind of music that I would be listening to or involved with in some way. I also get quite territorial in terms of where industrial came from, because I think Brian Eno and I pretty much planted the seeds in the late '70s of where industrial would be doing, and I have the vanity of having a lot of young bands throw it back at me and tell me that indeed, it is so. So I kind of feel like it’s my right. I think for 20 years or so I’ve staked that out. That is my territory. That is where I operate. I do work on the cusp of new ideas and new things. That’s where I’m comfortable; it’s what keeps me excited and it’s why probably I still like being in music. I still see it as an adventure. I know there’s no safety net for me, and that’s what makes it still exhilarating. I never know quite where I’m going when I’m going there, but I know that as long as I’m a little bit out of my depth, then I’m going to do something quite exciting. It’s either going to be a great success or a glorious failure, but it’s going to be something. If I went back onto formula and did tried-and-tested ways of working, I just couldn’t live with myself very comfortably.
David Bowie and Trent Reznor during David Bowie in concert with Nine Inch Nails - December 1995 at Meadowlands Arena, New Jersey, United States. (Photo by Ke.Mazur/WireImage)
Were you inspired by musicians like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry on albums like Outside and Earthling?
I think it has been reciprocal. Trent Reznor’s influence on me was really a matter of focus, working on the tour with him in 1995. I was so impressed by the way he harnesses the energy he has and the focus that he has and the intent that he works at. It was a state in which I had not worked in many years, and it kind of reminded me of myself quite a way back. I remember that state of intensity. And I guess it probably pushed me into getting a little more aggressive about my approach to my music, not being quite so laid-back and comfortable. So I think it was that sense of aggression and that focus and dynamic that rubbed off on me. I think he’s got a terrific discipline in the way he works and writes and I think he will remain a very important artist.
You have explored many different art forms over the years, including film and painting. Would it be fair to call you a bit of a renaissance man?
No, I just feel that I’m a bit lively. I’m just a curious old sod. I just want to know how everything works. I’m a nosy old bastard. I just have to know about things, and I can’t see how anybody can live on this planet and not want to. I get so despondent when people seem to curl up and die. They just don’t have any interest in living anymore. I want to shake them and say, “Look, it’s still great out there!” Every day is great. And to let these days just go by you is a waste of a gift you’ve been given. Life is a gift from God, and to waste it is a great sin. Go do something for somebody else, if you’re bored. Just don’t sit there being a lump.
What have you been exploring lately? What has been turning you on?
This is the most ludicrous thing, but there’s a museum in Los Angeles that’s really such a turn-on. It’s called David Wilson’s Museum of Jurassic Technology. David Wilson used to be a strange avant-garde filmmaker, and he’s put together a museum of things that could or could not be true. What I like about it is you’re not quite sure whether he made what you’re looking at or whether it was indeed found in the forests of South America or wherever. It really appeals to me as something I’d like to do. I think I fancy actually making some of the exhibits. I kind of like the idea of cobbling together a creature that never existed.
Is there power in disinformation?
Yes [laughs]. I do like the idea of that. I think there’s truth in everything, even lies. It’s like cybernetics in a way. That’s something that I feel is really still full of potential for the future. The idea of deconstructing systems, whether they’re political or social, and remanufacturing a new kind of system out of the pieces. That’s what I was saying earlier about not really believing in absolutes anymore. Not communism or capitalism or one truth, as though it was God-given to us, but to break them all down and put the different bits together and see what happens. To deconstruct systems and then reconstruct them in a new way, that’s what all this fragmentation is useful for. We shouldn’t think of them as pieces of the past, but as pieces of the future. And it’s our job to put together all the right kind of bits to construct a new society.
Related: David Bowie: His Life in Photos
From Ziggy Stardust to Earthling, you’ve addressed science fiction and extra-terrestrials. Are you still interested in space exploration? Is there life on Mars?
I find it kind of frightening and exhilarating at the same time. I expressly do believe in extra-terrestrial life. I think any rational person actually would. The idea that there’s water on other planets is indicative that there’s life, but secondly, of course, it’s the microbes and germs it contains that really worry me. I saw a film a few months ago on television, and the monster in it had come from water that was found on another planet, and it was sort of like this gigantic bowel syndrome. And there was this great piece of intestine that would roll around squashing entire cities. I guess that we really must be careful of the interplanetary bowel syndrome. I don’t think any of us are prepared for that. I think it’s the nature of the germ and microbe invasion that’s more scary than the idea of actual beings, in a way. Because I think it will be something that we have no control of whatsoever. So, God forbid if they ever start bringing the water back, don’t drink the water from Mars. That would be even worse than Akron or London tap water.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
Free time is a strange thing. That’s the time that you live for forgetting – your prize for doing all the work is free time. And I’m almost tempted to say, fortunately, no, I don’t have any free time. Because I just find that I’ve always got something to do, and even if I haven’t, I’ll make something to do. If I haven’t got something to do then I’ll do something like pick up every film that Fran?ois Roland Truffaut made and watch them all in a row for about a week. Let’s see the entire span in chronological order. I’ll create a little project for myself if I’ve got time to kill.
You have homes in many places and your music appeals to fans across the globe. Do you see yourself as a man or the world or the man who sold the world?
I see myself as one of the homeless, in as much as I don’t really feel the need for a home base. My definition of home for me, is being within my family and friends, and that, to me, is quite shelter enough. I feel very comfortable wherever I go. I find a pleasure in every society. There’s always some attribute that I find really interesting or commendable. I tend to look for the positive wherever I go and I tend to enjoy other cultures a lot. I love interaction between other cultures. The stranger the culture, the more at home I tend to feel.
What’s your favorite place to visit?
I’ve had quite a long relationship with Indonesia. I feel really responsive to it. I don’t know why, but I feel like I have a second home in Java. I don’t find it mysterious. I think I’m overwhelmed by North Bali, where the duality of their religion is so much a part of their lives. I think it’s an incredible way of living where it’s not just lip service to the idea of creation. Every single day is recognized and praised for being a gift. And it’s something that we in the West could certainly benefit from understanding, that we’re not to fritter all this away. These lives are very important.
See the rest of our David Bowie coverage HERE
