BOWIE: “I was working [on “Diamond Dogs”] with an engineer named Keith Harwood, who unfortunately is no longer with us. He died in a car crash going home from the studio hitting the same tree that Marc Bolan did.”
They should cut that tree down.
BOWIE: “The British would never do that sort of thing. “That tree has been there for 500 years - killed a couple of rockers…..” (laughs)
“
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Bowie, interview with Guitar Player, 1997.
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my dad’s hands are still bigger than mine.
Imagine a world where David Bowie was a primary school teacher from 1965-1997. On reaching the age of 50, he decides to send off some songs he’s recently recorded in his shed. Do we really believe that record companies would eagerly sign up a 50-year-old man with no new ideas, wonky eyes, manky hair, LA teeth and a tartan suit, who talks like an animatronic statue in Picadilly’s Rock Circus? Of course not, because there’s already one Michael Bolton and the world isn’t crying out for another.
“
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Caitlin Moran wishes DB a very unhappy 50th birthday, The Times, 17 January 1997.
also: “This orange-faced bandwagon jumper that is Eighties and Nineties Bowie”
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David, on the other hand, played all his parts [on “Earthling’”] on a little travel guitar with a built-in amp and speaker.
Bowie: It’s all I need. It’s all Reeves would give me! It’s a self-esteem thing — I actually don’t think I’m worth a better guitar. Why give me a nice Gibson? Give me something I don’t feel so precious about. If it’s a real cheap guitar, I can do what I want with it, fuck it up, make it do silly things. If you give me a real guitar that real musicians play, I’m suddenly very insecure. I much prefer a cheap Parker.
Gabrels: There’s no such thing as a cheap Parker.
Bowie: In my case, there are. They give them to me. Or did I pay for that one?
Gabrels: That one’s mine. It doesn’t get much cheaper than that, does it, David?
“
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Bowie and Reeves Gabrels, interview with Guitar Player, June 1997.
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I’ve written hundreds of musicals in my head, but the thing that always puts me off is the thought of actually going along to watch a musical. They’re always so bloody awful that I never actually finished one off, in case it ends up on Broadway.
Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this… . The gods were bored, and so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, and so Eve was created. Thus boredom entered the world, and increased in proportion to the increase of population. Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Eve were bored together; then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en famille; then the population of the world increased, and the peoples were bored en masse. To divert themselves they conceived the idea of constructing a tower high enough to reach the heavens. This idea is itself as boring as the tower was high, and constitutes a terrible proof of how boredom gained the upper hand.
“
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Kierkegaard, “The Rotation Method” (Either/Or), 1843.
(cf. The Buzzcocks, “Boredom,” 1977.)
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Outtakes from “Five Years”
Some nice outtakes here: Alomar and Slick fighting for credit again on a Station to Station track (“Stay”), a lovely Gail Ann Dorsey version of “Ziggy” and, strangest of all, two Gerry Leonard pieces about latter-day Bowie songs (“Loving the Alien” and “Heathen”) suggesting perhaps there was a longer epilogue in the original cut.
