Playboy Classic: David Bowie

When he wasn't

redefining music

and bending

gender perceptions,

the 29-year-old

rock star was

effortlessly

manipulating

the media

A

mong the most influential rock musi­cians in history. David Bowie has changed musical genres almost as often as he's changed his fashion—and sexu­ality. Howie's greatest albums, from Hunky Dory to The Rise and Fall of Xiggy Slardu.il and the Spiders From Mars, from Young Americans to Sta­tion to Station, are indisputably some of the mosl important rock recordings of the past four decades. He was tin- diva of glam rock, inspiring everyone from the Rolling Stones to Klton John to Queen to T. Hex—but he also released soul, traditional rock-and-roll and disco hits, \jii\y Gaga. Madonna and Michael Jackson learned from his outrageous makeup, wardrobe and stage personal*. And lie kept the public guessing about his sexuality. Was he straight? Cay? Hi? All of the above?

Howie, whose real name is David Jones, is now 66 years old and still making music—his new album. The Next Day, is his first in 10 years. He was 29 when he did the Playboy Interview with Cameron Crowe, the rock journalist who went on to write and direct such movies as Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous. It was 1976. a year after the slar had announced that he'd given up on rock. "I've rocked my roll" is the way he put it. "It's a boring dead end. The last thing I want to be is some useless fucking rock singer." Crowe quickly learned that Howie had lied, and in fact there was no letup in recording or louring for decades. At the time of the interview. Crowe reported: "Bowie is expertly charming, whether in the company of a stuffy film executive, another musician or a complete stranger. He is fully aware that he is a sensational quote machine. The more shock­ing his revelation...the wider his grin. He knows exactly what interviewers consider good copy, and he gives them precisely that. The truth is prob­ably inconsequential."

PLAYBOY: Let's start with the one question you ve always seemed to hedge: How much of \our bisexu-iility is fact and how much is gimmick? BOWIE: It's true—I am a bisexual. Hut I cant deny that I've used that fact ccn well. I suppose it's the best thing that ever happened to me. Fun too. PLAYBOY: Why do you say its the best thing that ever happened to you?

BOWIE: Well, for one thing, girls are always pre­suming that I've kept my heterosexual virginity for some reason. So I've had all these girls try to get me over to the other side again: "C'mon. David, it isn't all that bad. I'll show you." Or better yet. "We'll show you." I always play dumb.

On the other hand—I'm sun1 you want to know about the other hand as well—when I was 14, sex suddenly became all-important to me. It didn't really matter who or what it was with, as long as it was a sexual experience. So it was some very pretty boy in class in some school or other that I took home and neatly fucked on my bed upstairs. And that was it. M\ first thought was. \\ ell. if I ever get sent to prison. I'll know how to keep happy. PLAYBOY: Which wouldn't give much slack to your straighter cell mates.

BOWIE: I've always been very chauvinistic, even

in my boy-obsessed days. But 1 was always a

gentleman. I always treated my boys like real

ladies. Always escorted them properly and. in

fact. I suppose if I were a lot older—like 40 or

50—I'd be a wonderlul sugar daddy to some little

queen down in (continued on page 142)

DAVID BOWIE

(continued from page 105)

Kensington. I'd have a houseboy named Richard to order around. PLAYBOY: How much of that are we sup­posed to believe? Your former publicist, the celebrated ex-groupie Cherry Vanilla, says she's slept with you and that you're not gay at all. She says you just let people think you like guys.

BOWIE: Oh, I'd love to meet this impostor she's talking about. It sure ain't me. That's actually a lovely quote. Cherry's almost as good as I am at using the media. PLAYBOY: Yet the fact remains that you've never been seen with a male lover. Why? BOWIE: Oh, Lord, I got over being a queen quite a long time ago. For a while, it was pretty much 50-50, and now the only time it tempts me is when I go over to Japan. There are such beautiful-looking little boys over there. Little boys? Not that little. About 18 or 19. They have a wonderful sort of mentality. They're all queens until they reach 25, then suddenly they become samurai, get married and have thousands of children. I love it. PLAYBOY: Why, at a time when nobody else in rock would have dared allude to it, did you choose to exploit bisexuality? BOWIE: I would say that America forced me into it. Someone asked me in an interview once—I believe it was in 1971—if I were gay. I said, "No, I'm bisexual." Seventy-one was a good American year. Sex was still shocking. Everybody wanted to see the freak. There was very little talk of bisexual­ity or gay power before I came along. When they told me that a drag-queen cult was forming behind me, I said, "Fine, don't try to explain it; nobody is going to bother to try to understand it." I'll play along, abso­lutely anything to break me through. All the papers wrote volumes about how sick I was, how I was helping to kill off true art. In the meantime, they used up all the space they could have given over to true artists. That really is pretty indicative of how com­pelling pretension is, that it commanded that amount of bloody writing about what color my hair was gonna be next week. I want to know why they wasted all that time and effort and paper on my clothes and my pose. Why? Because I was a danger­ous statement.

The follow-up to that, now that I've decided to talk a little more—if only to you—was, "How dare he have such a strenu­ous ego?" That, in itself, seemed a danger to some people. Am I, as a human being, worth talking about? I frankly think, Yes, I am. I believe myself with the utmost sincerity. PLAYBOY: But aren't you having trouble getting other people to believe you? Take, for example, your well-publicized farewells to showbiz. You've retired twice, swear­ing you'd never have another thing to do with rock and roll. Yet you've just finished a six-month world concert tour, promoting your newest rock-and-roll album, Station to Station. How do you rationalize these contradictions?

BOWIE: I lie. It's quite easy to do. Nothing matters except whatever it is I'm doing at the moment. I can't keep track of everything

I say. I don't give a shit. I can't even remem­ber how much I believe and how much I don't believe. The point is to grow into the person you grow into. I haven't a clue where I'm gonna be in a year. A raving nut, a flower child or a dictator, some kind of reverend—I don't know. That's what keeps me from getting bored. PLAYBOY: What else do you do to keep from getting bored? BOWIE: You name it. PLAYBOY: How about drugs? BOWIE: What year is it now? Seventy-six? I suppose I've been knocking on heaven's door for about 11 years now, with one sort of high or another. The only kinds of drugs I use, though, are ones that keep me work­ing for longer periods of time. I haven't gotten involved in anything heavy since 1968. I had a silly flirtation with smack then, but it was only for the mystery and enigma of trying it. I never really enjoyed it at all. I like fast drugs. I hate falling out, where I can't stand up and stuff. It seems like such a waste of time. I hate downs and slow drugs like grass. I hate sleep. I would much pre­fer staying up, just working, all the time. It makes me so mad that we can't do anything about sleep or the common cold. PLAYBOY: How much have drugs affected your music?

BOWIE: The music is just an extension of me, so the question really is, "What have drugs done to me?" They've fucked me up, I think. Fucked me up nicely and I've quite enjoyed seeing what it was like being fucked-up.

PLAYBOY: Then you agree with the reviewer who called your Young Americans album "a fucked-up LP from a fucked-up rock star"? BOWIE: Well, The Man Who Sold the World is actually the most drug-oriented album I've made. That was when I was the most fucked-up. Young Americans probably is a close second, but that is from my current drug period. The Man was when I was holding on to some kind of flag for hashish. As soon as I stopped using that drug, I realized it damp­ened my imagination. End of slow drugs. PLAYBOY: That doesn't sound much like the guy who was recently busted in upstate New York for possession of eight ounces of marijuana.

BOWIE: Rest assured the stuff was not mine. I can't say much more, but it did belong to the others in the room that we were busted in. Bloody potheads. What a dreadful irony— me popped for grass. The stuff sickens me. I haven't touched it in a decade. PLAYBOY: In the song "Station to Station,"

though, you do refer to cocaine

BOWIE: Yes, yes. The line is "It's not the side

effects of the cocaine...I'm thinking that it

must be love." Do the radio stations bleep

it out?

PLAYBOY: None that we've heard. Did you

have any reservations about using the line

in the song?

BOWIE: None whatsoever.

PLAYBOY: One might easily construe it as

advocating the use of cocaine. Or is that

the message?

BOWIE: I have no message whatsoever. I

really have nothing to say, no suggestions

or advice, nothing. All I do is suggest some

ideas that will keep people listening a bit longer. And out of it all, maybe they'll come up with a message and save me the work. My career has kind of been like that. I get away with murder.

PLAYBOY: You claim you like to work all the time, yet you release only one album a year. What exactly do you do between record­ing sessions?

BOWIE: I write songs and screenplays and poems, I paint, I do Kirlian photography, I manage myself, I act. I produce, I record, sometimes I tour. I could give you five new and unreleased David Bowie albums right now. I could just hand them over. I've got an incredible backlog of material. Work, work, work....

PLAYBOY: Do you ever relax? BOWIE: If you're asking whether or not I take vacations, the answer is no. I find all my relaxation within the context of work; I'm very serious about that. I've always thought the only thing to do was to try to go through life as Superman, right from the word go. I felt far too insignificant as just another person. I couldn't exist think­ing all that was important was to be a good person. I thought, Fuck that; I don't want to be just another honest Joe. I want to be a supersuperbeing and improve all the equipment that I've been given to where it works 300 percent better. I find that it's possible to do it.

PLAYBOY: Surely you doubt yourself sometimes.

BOWIE: Not so much anymore. About two years ago, I realized I had become a total product of my concept character Ziggy Stardust. So I set out on a very successful crusade to reestablish my own identity. I stripped myself down and took myself apart, layer by layer. I used to sit in bed and pick on one thing a week that I either didn't like or couldn't understand. And during the course of the week, I'd try to kill it off. PLAYBOY: What was the first thing you attacked?

BOWIE: I think my lack of humor was the first thing I picked on. Then prissiness. Why did I feel that I was superior to peo­ple? I had to come to some conclusion. I haven't yet, but I dug into myself. That was very good therapy. I spewed myself up. I'm still doing it. I seem to know exactly what makes me sad.

PLAYBOY: Doesn't taking yourself apart all the time tend to make you a little schizophrenic? BOWIE: The four of me will have to talk about that. Am I schizophrenic? One side of me probably is, but the other side is right down the middle, solid as a rock. Actually, I'm not schizophrenic at all. I think that my thought forms are fragmented a lot, that much is obvious. I often think of six things at one time. They all sort of interrupt one another. Not very good when I'm driving. PLAYBOY: Do you ever have trouble decid­ing which is the real you? BOWIE: I've learned to flow with myself. I honestly don't know where the real David Jones is. It's like playing the shell game. Except I've got so many shells I've forgot­ten what the pea looks like. I wouldn't know it if I found it. Being famous helps put off the problems of discovering myself. I mean

that. That's the main reason I've always been so keen on being accepted, why I've striven so hard to put my brain to artistic use. I want to make a mark. In my early stuff, I made it through on sheer pretension. I consider myself responsible for a whole new school of pretensions—they know who they are. Don't you, Elton? Just kidding. No, I'm not. See what I mean? That was a thoroughly pre­tentious statement. True or not, I bet you'll print that. Show someone something where intellectual analysis or analytical thought has been applied and people will yawn. But something that's pretentious—that keeps you riveted. It's also the only thing that shocks anymore. It shocks as much as the Dylan thing did 14 years ago. As much as sex shocked many years ago. PLAYBOY: You're saying sex is no longer shocking?

BOWIE: Oh, come on. Sorry, Hugh. Sex has never really been shocking; it was just the people who performed it who were. Shocking people, performing sex. Now nobody really cares. Everybody fucks every­body. The only thing that shocks now is an extreme. Like me running my mouth off, jacking myself off. Unless you do that, nobody will pay attention to you. Not for long. You have to hit them on the head. PLAYBOY: Is that the Bowie success formula? BOWIE: That's always been it. It's never really changed. For instance, what I did with my Ziggy Stardust was package a totally credible, plastic rock-and-roll singer—much better than the Monkees could ever fabri­cate. I mean, my plastic rock-and-roller was much more plastic than anybody's. And that was what was needed at the time. And it still is. Most people still want their idols and gods to be shallow, like cheap toys. Why do you think teenagers are the way they are? They run around like ants, chewing gum and flit­ting onto a certain style of dressing for a day; that's as deep as they wish to go. It's no sur­prise that Ziggy was a huge success. PLAYBOY: But you've said that you find rock depressing and sterile, even evil. BOWIE: It is depressing and sterile and, yes, ultimately evil. Anything that contributes to stagnation is evil. When it has familiar­ity, it's no longer rock and roll. It's white noise. Dirge. Just look at disco music—the endless numb beat.

PLAYBOY: You say it's dirge, yet you had the biggest disco hit of last year in "Fame," and you scored again this year with "Golden Years." How do you explain that? BOWIE: It's a lovely escapist's way out. I quite like it, as long as it's not on the radio night and day—which it is so much these days. "Fame" was an incredible bluff that worked. I'm really knocked out that people actu­ally dance to my records, though. But let's be honest; my rhythm and blues are thor­oughly plastic. Young Americans, the album "Fame" is from, is, I would say, the definitive plastic soul record. It's the squashed remains of ethnic music as it survives in the age of Muzak rock, written and sung by a white limey. If you had played Young Americans to me five years ago and said, "This is an R&B album," I would have laughed. Hysterically. PLAYBOY: What did you think of Barbra Strei­sand's recording your song "life on Mars"?

BOWIE: Bloody awful. Sony, Barb, but it was atrocious.

PLAYBOY: You're not noted for cordial rela­tionships with other artists. Yet there was the rumor that you flew to Europe to spend a sabbatical with Bob Dylan. What about it? BOWIE: That's a beaut. I haven't even left this bloody country in years. I saw Dylan in New York seven, eight months ago. We don't have a lot to talk about. We're not great friends. Actually, I think he hates me. PLAYBOY: Under what circumstances did you meet?

BOWIE: Very bad ones. We went back to somebody's house after some gig at a club. We had all gone to see someone, I can't remember who, and Dylan was there. I was in a very, sort of...verbose frame of mind. And I just talked at him for hours and hours and hours, and whether I amused him or scared him or repulsed him, I really don't know. I didn't wait for any answers. I just went on and on about everything. And then I said good night. He never phoned me. PLAYBOY: Did he impress you? BOWIE: Not really. I'd just like to know what the young chap thought of me. I was quite convinced that what I had to say was impor­tant, which I seem to feel all the time. It's

been quite a while since somebody really impressed me, though. PLAYBOY: Some psychiatrists would call your behavior compulsive. Does the fact that there is insanity in your family frighten you? BOWIE: My brother Terry's in an asylum right now. I'd like to believe that the insan­ity is because our family is all genius, but I'm afraid that's not true. Some of them— a good many—are just nobodies. I'm quite fond of the insanity, actually. It's a nice thing to throw out at parties, don't you think? Everybody finds empathy in a nutty fam­ily. Everybody says, "Oh, yes, my family is quite mad." Mine really is. No fucking about, boy. Most of them are nutty—in, just out of or going into an institution. Or dead. PLAYBOY: What do they think of you? BOWIE: I haven't a clue. I haven't spoken to any of them in years. My father is dead. I think I talked to my mother a couple of years ago. I don't understand any of them. It's not a question of their understanding me anymore. The shoe's on the other foot. PLAYBOY: Are you still obsessed, as you reportedly once were, with the fear of being assassinated onstage?

BOWIE: No. I died too many times onstage, man. And it's really not too bad. No, I

don't have that paranoia anymore. I've now decided that my death should be very pre­cious. I really want to use it. I'd like my death to be as interesting as my life has been and will be. And being assassinated is not quite a hero's demise. Assassination is the...the snub. The Great Snub. It's the ultimate result of that Wilhelm Reich philosophy—nobody will be allowed to be any more than we are—that most people subscribe to in their hearts. Peo­ple aren't very bright, you know. They say they want freedom, but when they get the chance, they pass up Nietzsche and choose Hitler, because he would march into a room to speak and music and lights would come on at strategic moments. It was rather like a rock-and-roll concert. The kids would get very excited—girls got hot and sweaty and guys wished it was them up there. That, for me, is the rock-and-roll experience. PLAYBOY: How is your relationship with Elton John these days? BOWIE: He sent me a very nice telegram the other day.

PLAYBOY: Didn't you describe him as "the Liberace, the token queen of rock"? BOWIE: Yes, well, that was before the tele­gram. I'd much rather listen to him on the radio than talk about him. PLAYBOY: Do you feel you've been taken advantage of over the years? BOWIE: Not taken advantage of. Exploited. PLAYBOY: Are you suggesting you haven't made all that you should have? BOWIE: What, moneywise? Oh, Lord, no— we made nothing. All I've made is an impact and a change, which, of course, is worth a lot. I keep telling myself that. The best thing to say about it all is that it's archetypal rock-and-roll business. Read the reports of the Beatles, the Stones and a lot of other big entertainers and take some kind of amal­gamation of all that; it's a pretty accurate picture of my business. John Lennon has been through it all. John told me, "Stick with it. Survive. You'll really go through the grind and they'll rip you off right and left. The key is to come out the other side." I said some­thing cocky at the time like, "I've got a great manager. Everything is great. I'm a 1970s artist." The last time I spoke to John, I told him he was right. I'd been ripped off blind. PLAYBOY: You're not a rich man? After five gold albums?

BOWIE: Now, yes, exceedingly. No! Wait, America! Not at all. Haven't got a penny to my name. I'm pleading poverty at the moment, but I'm potentially very rich. The­oretically rich but not wealthy. PLAYBOY: Are you as bitter about the music business as Lennon and Mick Jagger have said they are?

BOWIE: No, no, no. You see, I needed to learn about it. You've got to make mis­takes. It's very important to make mistakes. Very, very important. If I glided through, I wouldn't be the man I'm not today. PLAYBOY: Last question. Do you believe and stand by everything you've said? BOWIE: Everything but the inflammatory remarks.

Excerpted from the September 1976 issue.

Sex has never really been

shocking. Everybody fucks

everybody. The only thing that

shocks now is an extreme.

Like me running my mouth

off, jacking myself off.