David Bowie: The Last Five Years

This programme contains some strong language.

# Something happened on the day he died

# Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside

# Somebody else took his place

# And bravely cried... #

Always remember that the reason that you initially started working

was that there was something inside yourself that you felt

that if you could manifest it in some way,

you would understand more about yourself

and how you coexist with the rest of society.

# How many times does an angel fall?

# How many people lie instead of talking tall?... #

People have either really accepted what I do or they absolutely

sort of push it away from them. I guess that's what I am, you know?

But I would love to feel that what I did

actually changed the fabric of music.

Even though I seem to superficially change such a lot,

a style does come through.

By virtue of the fact that I'm getting older,

it's given me quite a scope on what I can draw from

within my own catalogue of albums.

# Look up here

# I'm in heaven

# I've got scars that can't be seen... #

Hello, hello, hello!

# It's your lucky day!... #

# Where are we now? Where are we now?... #

I think that David's music is totally autobiographical.

He's telling you everything if you just know what to look for.

# The moment you know You know, you know... #

He was a kind of provocateur.

# Where in the fuck did Monday go? #

He offered an alternative to people.

And that, to me, is a great artist, you know,

someone who can offer that for generations to come.

This is one human being who has single-handedly changed

basically the course of my life.

And you can't say that about most people.

# Loving the alien... #

# Watch that man

# Oh, honey, watch that man... #

# Blue, blue, electric blue That's the colour of my room... #

# I'm looking for a vehicle I'm looking for a ride

# I'm looking for a party I'm looking for a side... #

# We can be heroes

# Just for one day. #

CHEERING

I had this poetic, romantic, kind of juvenile idea

that I would be dead by 30.

Suddenly you're 30 and you're 40, then you're 50 and 57 and all that,

and it's a new land, you know, I pioneer.

# You've got your mother in a whirl

# She's not sure if you're a boy or girl

# Hey, baby, your hair's all right

# Hey, baby, let's stay out tonight... #

-It's a big tour you're starting, isn't it?

-Yes, it's going to go on

for months and months, but I think we're up for it.

How do you feel right now?

Pretty relaxed, you know.

I enjoy the songs a lot, so I'm going to have a good time.

I'm going to be honest with you,

the happiest I've ever seen that man

in 42 years that I've spent

on and off with him, was that tour.

I'd never seen him like that before.

-You!

-# Rebel, rebel

# You've torn your dress

-# Rebel, rebel

-Your face is a mess

-# Rebel, rebel

-How could they know?

-# Hot tramp, I love you so... #

-You bet!

At a certain time in your life, you get to a point where

you do feel freer and you don't

really care what people think

and you can be yourself

and you can laugh at things

and you can not take things maybe so seriously.

# Hey, baby, let's stay out tonight... #

When it came to the Reality tour

I think he had decided that he was going to take down

that kind of screen, if you like, and be David Bowie.

Not in a cheesy way,

but he allowed more access to himself.

On guitar, from Dublin, fair city, Gerry Leonard.

CHEERING

Actually, he's from Tunbridge Wells,

but it always gets a good applause when I say that.

I'm not really very keen to put on much of a theatrical show, you know,

in terms of big sets and elephants and fireworks and things like that.

But of course, it doesn't mean that I won't go back on my word

because that's part and parcel of what I do for you.

It's part of my entertaining factor, is lying to you.

His sense of humour was on.

He always had one anyway,

but publicly he didn't show it as much, you know what I mean?

There was that serious artist thing going on, you know,

during some of the tours.

The Reality tour wasn't like that because there were some nights

I was falling down laughing at some of the shit

that he would say or do or that happened.

These must be albums that nobody ever bought,

-so they're going real cheap.

-Did you see the guy last night?

They've got Lodger and Tin Machine... That figures.

We're that some truck stop up in Montana

and I'm at...you know those machines

that you never win at, or you put in the quarter

and then the claw comes down and picks up the stuffed animal?

THEY CHEER

I do it and I actually get the thing out.

And it's the two of us,

it's this competition of who's going to get the stuffed animal.

I think it's a kind of a 50-50 thing. So I'll take that one.

That's just not the David that I had known in earlier years.

That's brilliant.

Some of the fun and games that were going on,

I think that really was who he was, you know.

There you go.

The real David was the one that you saw

at the time of the Reality tour.

He was always funny, he always had a funny sense of humour.

He was always joking about things.

De-de-de-de-de!

LAUGHTER

There was a sense that David looked

as young and as youthful as ever on that tour.

It did seem like he had the gift from the gods, you know,

that he was never going to get old.

# Never ever gonna get old. #

It's a lie, but it's only a little lie.

He looked so good and youthful at the same time.

And one night I said,

"You look really good in that suit."

And for some reason, the way I said it,

he said, "I'm happily married."

So I didn't realise how I was saying that, but, yeah,

he just looked great...

all the time.

# Billy rapped all night about his suicide

# How he'd kick it in the head when he was 25

# Just speed jive

# Don't want to stay alive when you're 25... #

Playing All The Young Dudes, that's just such an anthem, really,

in a way, it was almost like church, you know,

when you really do feel like you have this congregation of people

and everyone's singing and the whole place is swinging.

# All the young dudes... #

Yeah, you at the back.

# Carry the news... #

In the St George T-shirt.

# Carry the news... #

It was just an incredible connection to the audience, I think,

for that show, for pretty much the whole show.

# Carry the news... #

He just got into tunnel vision,

like he was going to make this not just successful,

but just be prepared to play it

because there was a lot of music every night.

We were doing two-and-a-half-hour sets.

And, you know, you have to really be physically capable to handle that.

Going on tour excited him very much,

but he said to me, flat out, "I'm tired."

So I think he fulfilled all his wishes and dreams

and maybe he got a little oversaturated in touring.

We got to Prague, and then during the show,

David was sweating profusely

and unable to sing.

And then he started to hunch over.

He looked over, and I looked over at him,

and I went, "There's something really wrong."

And I signalled to his floor manager

and I went, "Boy, you're not OK."

The security person ran out and took him off the stage,

just took him away.

It was a little mysterious to everybody as to what it might be

because it really did come out of the blue.

I was just thinking, OK, he's seen the doctor,

maybe they've given him a shot or whatever.

Then we got ready to go to the Hurricane Festival.

We leave this one for you, for me, for my band, for all our families.

Thanks very much.

We played the entire set and it seemed, you know, normal,

not quite as energetic,

and as charged as the performances before.

# But I'll drink all the time

# Cos we're lovers

# That is a fact

# Yes, we're lovers... #

We finished the show...

..and then it seemed like David was in a lot of pain,

and obviously something was wrong.

They sent an ambulance and took him away.

We went back in the vans with the band

and he went off in an ambulance that night.

I think we were told that he'd had a mild heart attack

and that his life wasn't in danger,

but that was it, we were going home.

He said he wasn't going to work for a while

and he wasn't sure if you'd ever record again or tour again.

He just wanted to take time off.

CAR HORNS BLARE

I think any kind of unexpected thing like a heart attack,

it makes you re-evaluate things, but I never thought he'd stop working.

We would exchange e-mails about things that were interesting

to each or relevant, but it wasn't a lot of contact.

It's hard to figure out David, you know,

and I stopped trying to figure him out.

Just hoped the phone would ring or get an e-mail from him.

And I did.

BAND REHEARSE

Having not heard from him for a while, I suddenly got an e-mail

to see if I was available to come and play on the album.

I received then an e-mail from the management about the fact

that IF I was going to do this, it would have to be secret.

And if I said anything about it, I would be in big trouble...legally.

I got an e-mail really out of the blue from David.

Do you want to come and work on some new songs for a week?

PS, keep shtoom.

Once we got to the studio,

one of the first things he did

was hand out NDAs to everybody,

these papers to sign.

It was the first time

I'd ever been asked to do something like that for him.

The hours were very short compared to normal.

By six o'clock that was it, no matter what.

And some days even earlier than that.

That was not the David Bowie that I ever worked with before,

ever, I'd never seen that.

He would go in there and stay there until he was spent or done.

But this was like, "I'm leaving, six o'clock. See ya."

He really wanted no pressure on him to release an album.

There was no press release saying expect a Bowie album on this date.

This way, he could finish every song to perfection.

I'm much more interested in the process of life

and what is it that we're uncovering with our every move.

The celebrity side of it, I couldn't give a sausage.

# The stars are never sleeping

# Ooh-hoo-ooh-hoo, ooh-hoo-ooh-hoo

# Dead ones and the living

# We live closer to the Earth

# Never to the heavens

# The stars are never far away

# Stars are out tonight... #

-WOMANS VOICE:

-David.

David, give me a wave.

The Stars (Are Out Tonight), the song,

is about David's attitude towards celebrities.

He's had a good dose of other people's celebrity,

which he found distasteful.

He had different things on his mind he'd been ruminating over

and it was all coming out now,

it was like he was birthing this stuff.

He was trying a lot of things,

he had to flex his muscles to get back in shape,

like a runner or an athlete, that's what he had to do.

You know, we just would throw these songs at the musicians,

they'd never heard them before.

So we have David Torn on this track.

For instance, the intro, if I play David Torn...

MUSIC TRACK ALTERNATES WITH GUITAR

That's his role in this, you know.

I had this loop, something like this, going.

Which sounded like this.

And I was moving it in and out while the line was happening.

And I remember also that he was changing his vocal

over the chords to create different sections,

so we kind of have the idea to put some little different guitar riffs

to kind of signify the changes over there.

I put Torn and Leonard together. Torn and Leonard.

Very complementary.

OK.

It's almost a Motown kind of thing.

-I don't know where that kind of comes from.

-Very Motown-y, yeah.

# Sugar pie, honey bunch... #

But he never said anything about doing that.

-That's right.

-We kind of assumed.

If you've got a smile, you're going in the right direction.

If you get that kind of like...

he's like, "No, I wasn't thinking that at all."

And it made me think of another song which is a David song,

which was China Girl.

David would come to the studio with pages full of lyrics

and start scratching them out.

Up until the last minute, he would keep revising.

And sometimes he would come in and just re-sing one line.

Stars (Are Out Tonight),

I think that's one of my favourite songs on the record, actually.

I think that song was, for lack of a better word, a good piss take...

in a way...

on what fame has become, which is this out-of-control machine.

You know, David had great, grand ideas.

To become well-known, famous, was for him, initially,

was to have the resources to realise what his ideas were.

He really does come from that spirit.

He just didn't want to be famous per se.

I just wanted to make a really big name for myself.

I wanted to make a mark.

# Just look through your window

# Look who sits outside... #

David had quite an edgy personality. He was intrigued by edgy stuff.

He wanted to do many things,

he loved the idea of theatre, he loved the idea of acting,

he loved the idea of working with actors.

# Oh, beautiful baby and my heart's aflame

# I'll love you till Tuesday

# My head's in a whirl and I'll love you till Tuesday... #

He loved the idea of working with musicians.

Being one himself, he always was looking right and left

or over his shoulder at what might be

or, "What could I do next?"

It took me all the '60s to try everything I could think of

to find out exactly what it was I wanted to do anyway.

But just about the end of the '60s, it just started to come together.

# Strange games they would play then

# No death for the perfect men

# Life rolls into one for them

# So softly, a super god

# Cries... #

Through circumstances,

I'd run into a drummer, called John Cambridge, and Tony Visconti

and Mick Ronson, and we put together a band called Hype.

It was probably my first costume band.

As far as I'm aware, that was the very first so-called glam rock gig.

# ..No flesh, no power to... #

Hype was very important to David's development.

This was the only way he could see, at that time,

that he could be famous, become famous and become well-known.

And it wasn't quite the right incarnation

because he was not yet dyeing his hair orange

and he hadn't taken on the Ziggy persona yet.

# And he was all right

# The band was all together

# Yes, he was all right

# The song went on for ever

# And he was awful nice

# Really quite out of sight

# And he sang all night

# All night long

# Oh, how I sighed

# When they asked if I knew his name... #

The real characterisation really didn't kick in till the Ziggy.

I mean, I was always quite a shy kid.

And I didn't come alive on stage, I just got even shier.

But I found I didn't get so shy if I adopted a character.

So it was a convenience,

as well as a very bright theatrical idea.

# Didn't know what time it was The lights were low

# I leaned back on my radio

# Some cat was laying down some get-it-on rock and roll, he said

# Then the loud sound did seem to fade

# It came back like a slow voice on a wave of phase

# That was no DJ That was hazy cosmic jive

# There's a starman

# Waiting in the sky

# He'd like to come and meet us

# But he thinks he'd blow our minds

# There's a starman

# Waiting in the sky

# He told us not to blow it

# Cos he knows it's all worthwhile

# He told me Let the children use it

# Let the children lose it

# Let all the children boogie... #

-Have you always wanted to be a star?

-Yeah.

It's more than being a star.

What it is really is that I want to be productive.

I'm not content to be just a rock and roll star all my life.

I am trying to be one at the moment

because I need it for a particular reason

so that I can get off and do other things.

# There's a starman

# Waiting in the sky

# He told us not to blow it

# Cos he knows it's all worthwhile

# He told me Let the children use it

# Let the children lose it

# Let all the children boogie... #

You could feel that David wanted to be the greatest artist

and the next Elvis Presley.

You could feel it from every pore of his body.

He would bring me up to his suite

and we would watch

Elvis Presley videos and Frank Sinatra

and we'd have discussions about it

and he would do certain moves and "Does this seem right and natural?"

I mean, he was interested to look at those people

and set such icons as his goals.

Oh, yes, David wanted to be famous, David wanted to be an icon,

like he is now. He was saying things to me like,

"You have to be someone that

"thousands and millions of people

"want to listen to and believe in."

But he once said, too,

that being super-successful was like living in a goldfish bowl.

And it was for him because people became totally obsessed with him.

# Fame makes a man take things over... #

You know that feeling you get in a car when someone's accelerating

very fast and you're not driving and you get that thing in your chest

when you're being forced backwards and think, oh,

and you're not sure whether you like it or not.

It's that kind of feeling. That's what success was like.

The first thrust of being totally unknown

to being what seemed to be very quickly known.

It was very frightening for me.

# Fame puts you there where things are hollow... #

I'm not sure if he can handle it consistently

because it is a demanding mistress

that doesn't take no for an answer

and is on call 24 hours.

So it makes you a bit more paranoid than you used to, doesn't it?

And now we are being looked upon as we have to deliver something.

The minute you go outside - let me look a certain way, I'm famous now.

# Fame

# What you need is in the limo

-# Fame

-What you get is no tomorrow

# Fame

# What you need you have to borrow

-# Fame

-Fame

-# Fame

-"Mine, it's mine!"

# It's just his line to bind you to trying

# Crime... #

This rock star thing,

you once described it as being a dreadful existence.

In a sort of very luxuriant mental hospital...

..where you're sort of put in a padded room...

..and meals are brought to you

and the only time you're let out on your lead is when you're supposed to

go and earn money for just about everybody else except yourself.

# Is it any wonder I reject you first?

# Fame, fame, fame, fame, fame

# Is it any wonder You're far too cool to fool?

# Fame... #

Did David enjoyed being a star? I would say what he said to me.

It's great when you want to get tickets for a concert,

when you want to get backstage and see your friends

or if you want a good table at a restaurant.

But the rest of the time it's a pain in the ass.

And I think that's pretty much a verbatim quote.

I watched him deal with it too many times.

That was his view on it.

-I think we did...

-I find this an incredible intrusion.

Fuck off!

-You know that's the only bit we're going to use, don't you?

-Yeah.

THEY LAUGH I know when to pick me lines.

Yeah, that's better.

Once he experienced the fame, and all that comes with that,

I think he was done with it.

He was done with it.

And I think he realised he'd made a deal with the devil

and it would be the rest of his life trying to undo that.

Happy hump today, Phil.

-I didn't get humped. You?

-Yeah.

Some people, huh? They just get lost.

Well, it's more exciting than anything we've got around here.

I wouldn't say that.

We have a nice life.

We have a nice life.

The idea that he had for The Stars (Are Out Tonight) video

was that there were celebrities

that were stalking normal people to study them.

And then he whipped out the photograph of Tilda Swinton.

And I was like, OK, that's fantastic,

you know, him and Tilda were to play "the normal couple".

David really wanted to play up the androgyny card because,

you know, he is the androgynous being that we've grown up with.

So I cast boys in the girls' parts and girls in the boys' parts.

At that stage, I think he was able to definitely sit back

and reflect on what fame meant.

And I think that song, in a way, is kind of like

stars are never sleeping, you can't escape it.

# They know just what we do

# That we toss and turn at night

# They're waiting to make their moves

# For the stars are out tonight

# Tonight. #

Eventually, the celebrities, they are in their home.

And when they come into the home, there's a transfer that happens.

And now, the normal people are dressed like celebrities,

and the celebrities have succeeded in becoming the normal people.

You know, as an artist, you collect things,

and he's had years of not having to put things out,

so he's collecting things.

He wants to, sort of, hold up a mirror and say,

"Hey, look at this over here, look at this over here."

You know, "Comment on it, but make it, you know... In an artistic way."

# The stars are out tonight, yeah. #

-'Do you ever look back'?

-'Er...

'Only with fond amusement, you know,

'cos I've done such a lot of work in 40 years.

'It's only recently that maybe I've started to write

'in a kind of autobiographical way,

'and this may be something to do with age,

'and the way that one matures.'

HE PLAYS INTRO

And then...

HE PLAYS A CHORD

'I don't recall David on the sessions

'really talking a lot about being old.'

I think maybe he would joke that he would wear his slippers, you know?

He had his slippers brought down, and he'd pop his slippers...

You know, when he got to the studio, he'd pop his slippers on.

We'd made a few jokes about that.

# Where are we now? Where are we now?... #

So, David came in with a piano demo.

PIANO MUSIC PLAYS

This is the DB piano - David Bowie piano.

It's got a combination of piano and strings on the patch.

I couldn't take the strings off,

so those strings are him playing at home.

We found this kind of atmosphere in the demo.

The next time we played that

was when we went in the studio, and Zach was there.

I should add the drums in here.

DRUMBEAT STARTS

David's instruction, I remember specifically, was...

-IN TIME WITH RHYTHM:

-"One."

Yeah.

"One."

He just said, "Emphasise the 'one'."

So...

HE PLAYS SONG RHYTHM

If I add David, it's practically it.

PIANO PLAYS

It's...

# Where are we now? Where are we now?

# The moment you know You know, you know... #

Out of the blue, he called me up,

and said he'd like to talk to me about something.

He explained the situation,

that he had been secretly working on this track,

And I was, like, "Oh, that's fantastic," you know?

"What do I have to do with it?"

And he goes, "Well, I'd like you to make the video for that."

"Oh, that's quite a task."

You know, and I was thinking, this big-budget video, you know,

and I was thinking, "I have to do this justice, you know,

"it has to be this momentous video that's going to break

"the silence of all these years," you know?

And David said,

"No, I want to do it, like, in your studio,

"it'll be these figures - very simple, rough."

These figures were something I was making fairly exclusively,

and did a number of exhibitions of them,

and David, of course, loved these figures, you know?

# Just walking the dead... #

I did a rough sketch, and I was like,

"This is what you have in mind, right?

"This rough-hewn, stretched face, you know? It's not very flattering."

But that's exactly what he wanted -

to look, actually, beyond what the years had done to him.

It's a strange, you know... Through the...

Here he is leaving.

He's had enough!

HE LAUGHS

He's like, "Stop going on about my face!"

# Where are we now?... #

So, the idea was that he wanted all this stuff in the studio situation,

and we kind of arranged things around,

and we talked about transparency and reflection,

and as this was coming together, I said to him, "You know...

"..people can read into every part of this."

This one is perhaps the most deliberately nostalgic

look into his past, and...

-..you know, he's talking about all the old places...

-Yeah.

..he frequented in Berlin, and it's deliberately sad.

He's in the latter part of his life. Those days are gone, you know?

Berlin was the first freedom I'd had

from all the so-called trappings of celebrity, and, er...

And my own problems.

Really, I'm quite fond of that freedom that it gave me.

I put myself in a very anonymous situation,

in a quite working-class part of Berlin, Turkish area,

and started to live a different life,

and I tried to distance myself from the very drug-oriented lifestyle

that I'd been leading.

# Had to get the train

# From Potsdamer Platz... #

It was just a tremendous place to be.

And the music was some of the most rewarding

for me as an artist in my life.

# I

# I will be king

# And you

# You will be queen

# Though nothing

# Will drive them away

# We can beat them

# For ever and ever

# We can be heroes

# Just for one day

# I

# I can remember

# I remember

# Standing

# By the wall... #

But you can't read Where Are We Now?

as just a nostalgic story about Berlin, at all, you know?

But, I mean, really,

it's much more how memories affect the way we move forward, or not.

The Song of Norway T-shirt - I said,

"That's very cheeky," and he goes, "I know," or something like that,

and he never explained why he wore it.

'Her name is Hermione Farthingale, and I absolutely adored her,

'I mean, she was the real first love in my life.

'And she was a ballet dancer, and a very good little singer,

'and she played a little bit of bed-sitting room guitar,

'you know, that kind of folk guitar

'that every girl that looked beautiful could play in those days.

'I don't know why, but all the beautiful girls

'could play a little bit of acoustic guitar.

'She was doing a film called Song of Norway.' HE CHUCKLES

'And she fell in love with one of the actors on it,

'and she left me for him.

'God, I didn't get over that for such a long time.

'It really broke me up.'

I did see David when he'd just separated from her,

and he was very, very upset.

I think it was also, he was working with her, so it was a double thing,

that he'd lost his girlfriend, and he'd lost someone in his band.

I don't know which one was the worst, to be honest, but...

Yeah, it did hit him pretty hard.

I think he wanted to release something that would cause

a lot of ripples and question marks all around,

and he was able to get that with this.

# As long as there's sun

# As long as there's rain

# As long as there's fire

# As long as there's fire... #

I knew this was about Berlin,

and I thought it was really, really sweet, and quite nostalgic.

But, er...

The thing that really made me teary-eyed

was when I saw the video for it.

Oh, my gosh, you know? I thought...

I'd never expect him to look back, you know?

This is a new thing for him.

CAR HORN BLARES

SIREN WAILS

'I think because of my orientation towards the apocalyptic,

'I think it rather hones that low-level anxiety.

'Especially with, you know, the advent of a new child.

'My daughter really sort of focused my fears and apprehensions.

'I mean, what a disappointing 21st century

'this has been so far, you know?'

I have to say, this track has swagger.

All this loose playing, it's all on purpose.

But we didn't want it to get too fancy, and it had to sound

like a bunch of high school kids playing their instruments.

Very, very cheesy-sounding, but perfect for this song,

because of the lyrical content of the song,

about this, you know, person called Valentine, who is a mass-murderer.

'I mean, Valentine's Day,'

from a musical point of view,

that is way old, that's like old-school,

all those chord changes, and the whole thing.

But if you listen to the lyrics, there's subject matter there.

# Valentine told me who's to go

# Feelings he's treasured most of all... #

There had been a number of incidents prior to creating this song

that had moved him.

I think he was really troubled by this trend

of people going and shooting kids.

# The teachers and the football stars

# It's in his tiny face

# It's in his scrawny hand

# Valentine told me so

# He's got something to say

# It's Valentine's day... #

He really wanted to bring the audience

into the mind of that killer,

and that transition from the David that we know

to this other character that he was inhabiting in this song

was very shocking, really.

# Valentine told me how he feels

# If all the world were under his heels... #

Being right there in front of him,

and seeing him pull this out of himself - it was, er...

It was quite terrifying just to watch.

# It's in his tiny face

# It's in his scrawny hand... #

I really wanted to introduce a weapon into the video,

and David was really against it.

He didn't want any guns, he didn't want any blood.

But he was very much aware of making a statement about gun control

and the importance of that, in his own style.

To defeat the divisive forces that would take freedom away...

I want to say those fighting words...

"From my cold, dead hands!"

CHEERING

# Valentine, Valentine

# It's in his scrawny hand

# It's in his icy heart

# It's happening today

# Valentine, Valentine... #

He was very interested in society, you know, what makes people operate,

what makes societies operate,

and that was one of his less cryptic and more straight-up lyrics

that he's ever written.

'I'm not an original thinker.

'What I'm best at doing is synthesising those things

'in society or culture, refracting those things,

'and producing some kind of glob

'of how it is that we live at this particular time.'

# Pushing through the market square

# So many mothers crying

# News had just come over

# We had five years left to sigh in

# News guy wept when he told us

# Earth was really dying

# Cried so much that his face was wet

# Then I knew he was not lying... #

He let you know, something's not right here,

so that's the best I knew.

He didn't come up with the solutions,

but at least he could express, and others could resonate with that.

# A girl my age went off her head

# Hit some tiny children

# If the black hadn't 'a pulled her off

# I think she would have killed them... #

'I'm not a Dylan, and I'm not a...

'I'm not somebody who can sit down

'and stoically write a clear picture of what's happening, you know?

'But I can leave a very strong impression of how I feel about it.'

-# Five years

-# Five years

# Mmm-doo-doo, yeah

# Five years

# Doo-doo-doo, yeah

# Five years

# Doo-hee, yeah

-# Five years

-# Five years

# That's all we've got. #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

APPLAUSE BECOMES RHYTHMIC

ELECTRO INTRO PLAYS

'It's very hard to not continue

'to readdress the same subject matter endlessly.

'I mean, I just have a certain niche that I work in.

'A lot of it, until recently,

'tends to be about alienation, and being on the outside of things.'

# It's the darkest hour

# You're 22

# The voice of youth

# The hour of dread... #

'That tends to be where I feel more comfortable as a writer,

'but I think one keeps readdressing that situation,

'and trying to express it in a different way.

'I guess that's what I do.'

# Love is lost

# Lost is love

When I spoke to David on the phone, it was definitely,

"Don't say a word about this,"

In fact, we even had a code word for it,

so if anybody intercepted the phone calls,

they wouldn't know we were talking about the album.

So, the album was actually codenamed The Table.

HE LAUGHS

There was a lot of discussion

about what the album would be called at the time.

It was quite gratifying to know that not even David Bowie

has everything planned out.

So, it was possibly going to be called Love Is Lost...

..possibly going to be called The Next Day...

possibly going to be called Where Are We Now?

The thing that started the concept for the design was this photograph.

It's from the '70s, and he said,

"I want to do something with this photo for the cover."

Which I found quite puzzling.

He was looking back on his life, even looking at that image.

I really struggled with using the image,

and then it took Bowie to say, "Jonathan...

"Why don't you just turn the image upside down?"

And within that moment, he subverted his whole history.

So, the process was to go through every record cover,

every printed image of him, and see how we could subvert it.

The cover of "Heroes" really had that youthful image of Bowie

looking forward to the future, and the square obliterates it.

It's existentially talking about someone who's coming closer

to the end of their life, and looking back on the past.

I really wasn't sure about it at the time,

to the point that in fact, the night before it was sent off

to the record company, I wrote to him and said, "Are you sure?"

And he actually said to me,

"No, have faith, Jonathan, this is a good idea, it's an original idea."

# I'd rather be high... #

I think he was subverting people's expectation

because of the years away, so he could play with his image.

He wasn't a young man desperate to be original.

He was someone who'd lived life,

and was not up for playing the game of being in the media all the time.

Bowie was incredibly happy

that we'd managed to keep this thing secret all this time.

We had accomplished something unique

in a time when everybody knows everything.

He was quite attracted to all the furore

around an album being released, but he wanted to play the right way.

# Then we saw... #

-REPORTER:

-Hello. David Bowie is back in sound and vision

with his first new album in a decade.

-REPORTER:

-He hasn't performed since 2006,

and has rarely been seen in public since then, but now he's back.

-REPORTER:

-But after a bout of ill-health,

it was thought he had retired. Wrong.

-REPORTER:

-His new album, his first in ten years,

shot to the number one spot last weekend.

In fact, it's the fastest-selling of the year so far,

having shifted over 100,000 copies in less than two weeks.

# The night was always falling

# The peacock in the snow

# And I tell myself

# I don't know who I am... #

He just stopped giving interviews many years ago, and, erm...

this is something that he needed to do, I think, for himself.

He couldn't have his life examined any longer,

he didn't want any speculation about his life.

I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist

to fulfil other people's expectations.

If you feel safe in the area that you're working in,

you're not working in the right area.

Always go further in the water than you feel you're capable of being in.

Go a little bit out of your depth,

and when you don't feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom,

you're just about in the right place to do something exciting.

The way David works, he just keeps evolving, evolving, evolving.

David's always looking for that new element, and unique musicians,

to be the carriage for his new ideas.

Maria Schneider is an amazing jazz composer,

and how she could have been off my radar, I don't know,

because she suddenly appeared in my life through David,

and when I heard her compositions,

it was everything David and I loved about big band music,

that it was discordant and strange and ethereal.

Out of the blue, David called.

-"Hello?"

-SHE CHUCKLES

And then I proceeded to start to talk to him about the idea

that he had to collaborate on a song.

David brought a little demo of Sue, so, I listened to it,

and immediately heard this.

DISCORDANT CHORDS

I said, "Where do you want this to go?"

So, it's... It's pretty bright-sounding, you know,

and he said, "Oh, I want it to be really dark,"

so, then I started playing around

with ways in which I could make that...

..that melody dark, and I just fooled around over here,

and then I looked at him, and I said, "OK, let's try this."

CAR HORN BLARES

Maria Schneider said,

"You have to listen to this guy, Donny McCaslin."

Donny had a band.

This band were trained jazz musicians,

so we had more colours to the palette.

Then I just worked on it on my own a little bit,

and then David came over,

and then I presented him with all these sketches of ideas,

and said, "OK, let me play you lots of different things,"

and he would either say,

"Yeah, yeah," or, "Oh, I really like that!"

You know, and if it's got a real reaction from him, then I said,

"OK, maybe that's the direction."

So, I just kind of tried to feel him out.

It was adventure.

Adventure, adventure, "Let's try this, let's try that,

"let's make it as far-out as possible.

"Let's go somewhere no-one's ever gone before," you know?

And when we recorded it, it was like, six hours or something.

-Yeah.

-So, he comes out, then he lays down the vocal for the whole song -

seven, eight minutes.

-So, he's been in the studio all day long...

-Just sitting there!

Just sitting there, listening, you know, taking this all in,

goes out, a little "one-two-three" on the mic, and then, boom.

# Sue

# I got the job

# We'll buy the house

# You'll need to rest

# But now we'll make it... #

So, I remember doing this interview with Tony Visconti.

The interviewer asked us both,

what was David's relationship to jazz music? Something like that,

and Tony's response was that he thought that that influence

had always been there in David's music,

but it was just sort of underneath the surface,

and that now, it was just, you know, out there.

# Sue, I pushed you down beneath the weeds

# Endless faith in hopeless deeds... #

Of course, when this thing was released,

there were all sorts of comments.

Some people were just absolutely hating it,

and some people were loving it,

and some people didn't know what to think.

# Goodbye. #

This is David Bowie. He's not going to pigeonhole even himself.

Imagine how ridiculous he would have looked, you know,

if he'd kept dying his hair orange when he was 65 years old?

Orange hair and platform shoes, you know? He's smart.

The radical shift between Sue and The Next Day

is like when he did the ambient music of Low and "Heroes"

with Brian Eno.

# Dun-dun-dun-dun... #

HE CHUCKLES

Oh, I'm going to play that again!

# Dun-dun-dun-dun... #

Oh, wow! I'm feeling Low.

Brian Eno's methodology is a little bit different

than any methodology I've ever encountered.

That's not rock and roll.

Rock and roll is,

"Hey, man, I've got this great riff, listen to this, waaah!"

You know?

But when you start experimenting with soundscapes,

which is what they were doing, it makes other things come to light.

David was listening to a few German bands back then

that were at the epicentre of electronic music,

and I think that the electronical part was too much.

That's why he had an R&B, a black rhythm section, being,

"You want a machine? Let me give you a funk band..."

INTRO TO "SOUND AND VISION" PLAYS

"..but I'll add all the electronic stuff on top of that."

Otherwise, he might take the chance

of sounding like European electronic music,

which he did not want to reproduce.

I'd gotten into the idea of real experimentation in music

with the new sounds of Europe,

and it was this kind of hybrid thing that appealed to me so much.

The idea of mixtures

has always been something that I've found absolutely fascinating.

# Blue, blue, electric blue

# That's the colour of my room

# Where I will live

# Blue, blue

# Pale blinds drawn all day

# Nothing to do, nothing to say

# Blue, blue

# I will sit right down

# Waiting for the gift of sound and vision... #

I was just amazed that David was the kind of person that he was,

because I wasn't expecting that.

I was expecting something, sort of...

superhuman, strange, walking in...

SHE CHUCKLES

..and he presented himself so normal.

As a matter of fact, the doorman from downstairs called me and said,

"There's a... What's your name? Oh, David, here to see you."

And I thought, "Oh, dear!"

Can I just stop for a second? Did I just say he was normal?

-There was really nothing normal about David Bowie!

-SHE CHUCKLES

But anyway...

When I was around 17, 18, what I wanted to do more than anything else

was write something for Broadway.

I wanted to write a musical, had no idea of how you did it,

or how musicals were constructed, but the idea of writing something

that was rock-based for Broadway really intrigued me.

I thought that would be a wonderful thing to do.

When we first talked,

quite quickly, he said, "I want to do a musical,"

and I said, "Great," and he said,

"all I know is that it's called Lazarus,

"it's going to be called Lazarus, and it's based on the character

"I played in The Man Who Fell To Earth, in the movie,

"Thomas Jerome Newton."

Thomas Newton is an alien.

He can't get home, he's relegated to this Earth.

He is...

in the world, but not of it.

Outsiders, marginalised people,

people that don't belong, that are...

That feel displaced, not at home,

even when they have a house, like Newton,

rich, you know, on Earth, but lost on Earth.

It resonated with him.

My initial reaction was,

"I've got the chance to do a musical with David, which is wonderful.

"But it sure ain't going to buy me a yacht!"

# Oh, say can you see... #

That was my amused comment to myself.

But he said, "I want to see this. I want this on."

OK...

So, erm... Thank you very much...

But just before we were due to start a small workshop,

I was asked to go to David's office in New York at a specific time,

and when I walked in the room, David was on Skype.

And then he said,

"I need to explain something to you,

"because I'm not going to be able to be around a lot

"during this workshop...

"..which doesn't that I'm not going to be totally involved in it,

"it just means that I can't be there sometimes,

"because I'm having treatment, because I have a cancer."

I was shocked.

But his attitude was that he was going to be OK,

and that was kind of the end of the conversation.

I'm here to get you out of this apartment,

get you home to your planet.

I think we should build a rocket!

But, of course, once we started rehearsal, he was there a lot.

He was sort of in and out and in and out, you know?

So, he would go, "Oh, let's remove that scene, and can I write a song?

"I feel as if I should write a song here."

And he was really excited about that.

He was ill, and he said that writing the musical

was on his bucket list, you know, finally writing a musical,

and all that, so, that's the only time he got a little bit,

you know, sentimental, maybe, like, "I've got to do these things."

-Stupid creature!

-Why don't you tell me what's going on?

-Because I can't.

I think that David intended it to be a play

that's supported by music, rather than a musical

that's supported by dialogue.

# But the film is a saddening bore... #

It's about as far from a typical West End or Broadway show

as you could get. He wanted this to be an art piece.

# As I ask you to focus on

# Sailors fighting in the dance hall

# Oh, man Look at those cavemen go

# It's the freakiest show... #

I'd heard that he'd wanted to do musicals since,

someone said the mid-'70s, or something or other,

and I thought, "Oh, God, we're beginning something

"that feels very, very close to his heart and his head

"and where he's at."

'I really had it in my mind to do a musical of Nineteen Eighty-Four.'

'It was a book that I'd loved all through my youth.

'But of course, I didn't really take into account the second Mrs Orwell,

'who, when she got wind of what we were doing,

'absolutely put her foot down, and said,

'"I'm not having rock and roll people

'"work on my late husband's great piece of work."

'And I thought, "Well, sod it, I'll do my own version, then!"'

That's a nought.

This is the beginning of a film called Diamond Dogs,

and I've put nought in because I don't know what year it says.

Wanting to do something like write a musical for Nineteen Eighty-Four,

and then not being able to do it, via the album Diamond Dogs,

kind of gelled into this thing that we later toured in America.

# A small Jean Genie snuck off to the city... #

David had the idea of using dance

and mime with two vocalists,

myself being one...

..and Gui Andrisano, who had been a child star.

# Jean Genie, let yourself go... #

It kind of worked with the input we had from Toni Basil

in terms of choreography.

Well, when I met him, the first day, in his hotel suite,

the set was there.

The set was already a little mock-up set.

# We feel that we are paper

# Choking on you nightly

# They tell me Son, we want you

# Be elusive but don't walk far... #

He had the cityscape and a set list.

So, for me, the set list was my thread

of what ideas I could come up with in collaboration with him

to make this theatrical piece happen.

# But I love you in your fuck-me pumps

# And your nimble dress that trails

# Oh, dress yourself... #

At that time, there was not really a lot of rock stars

that focused on theatricality.

A lot of them thought it was corny, or they were afraid to approach it.

So, I knew he was a great performer, extremely theatrical,

that would just always be outside the box,

always be walking on the edge.

# In the year of the scavenger The season of the bitch

# Sashay on the boardwalk Scurry to the ditch

# Just another future song Lonely little kitsch... #

Diamond Dogs was probably the most difficult one to choreograph,

because we were on long pieces of rope,

and the idea was to tie him down, without fully disabling him, and...

-HE CHUCKLES

-And, er...tripping him up.

-# Hey, you dogs

-Whoo

# Call them the Diamond Dogs... #

'It was hideously pressurised for me,

'these awful tensions and stresses,

'but the physicality of performing a show like that

'was alarmingly strenuous.'

# Oh, honey

# You're so bad... #

Diamond Dogs is a series of vignettes of what could happen

when society breaks down, so it was more sketchy,

rather than a story from beginning to end.

'I started getting into the idea of writing...

'a kind of non-narrative, that just had situations within it,

'and the audience kind of joins up the dots their own way,

'in the way they want to make it.

'They remake the material they're offered.'

# Just for a day

# Oh, honey

# You're so bad... #

He brought me another song to work on.

And I said to him,

"I would love to do this, but I just...

"I can't, David, I'm recording an album with my own band!"

And then, I said to him,

"I think you should do a record with Donny's group."

He said, "Really, you think so? You think they'd want to do that?"

And I said, "Are you kidding me?"

And I said, "I think it would be amazing."

I got an e-mail from him, and...

Basically saying that he would really like to record

a few tunes with us.

There was a sentence that he said, something like, you know,

"It would be my dream to record a few songs

"with the Donny McCaslin Group," I think that...

That sentence was kind of, like, "Wow!"

Whatever he was going through health-wise at the time,

one thing that was really inspiring was how, from the first day,

the first note, he was just totally in it.

By the time I joined you guys, I was not aware of anything,

and I was actually...

Even being ignorant of all this,

I was struck by how healthy and energetic

and in great spirits he was.

So, David had a lot of vocal ideas that needed to be done.

You have him singing this.

BOWIE'S VOICE DOUBLE-TRACKED: # In the villa of Ormen

# In the villa of Ormen

# Stands a solitary candle

# Ah-ah

# Ah-ah

# In the centre of it all

# In the centre of it all

# Your eyes... #

Now, the reason it sounds so good is,

that's just one David Bowie singing,

but with his voice put up a fifth interval.

# On the day of execution

# On the day of execution

# Only women kneel and smile

# Ah-ah

# Ah-ah

# At the centre of it all

# At the centre of it all

# Your eyes

# Your eyes... #

He asked me if I would be interested

in perhaps putting some images to this song,

and then began, you know,

a couple of months of a very interesting collaborative process.

He would send me drawings, that he would literally say,

"Do what you want with these drawings," you know?

He would have this character that he drew,

the man with sort of gauze, you know, across his face,

with two buttons for eyes, and we named him Button Eyes.

And he also sent me an image of a spaceman with a skeleton inside.

# Ah-ah-ah... #

To me, it was 100% Major Tom, you know?

A character that he had, you know, revisited and used over his career.

Major Tom for him was like some sort of talisman or something.

He was really along for the ride with David,

and the idea of space, I think represented...

Maybe it represented freedom.

Major Tom still means a lot to me.

It was the first time I'd been able to create a character

that was very credible -

I think for any writer, that's a high point.

He preceded all the others,

and I suppose one has a special place for him.

I do.

# Ground Control to Major Tom

# Ground Control to Major Tom

# Take your protein pills and put your helmet on... #

-INTERVIEWER:

-What is it with spaceships?

Well, it's an interior dialogue that you manifest physically.

It's my little inner space, isn't it? Writ large.

I wouldn't dream of getting on a spaceship.

It'd scare the shit out of me!

HE LAUGHS

I have absolutely no interest or ambition

to go into space whatsoever.

I'm scared going down the end of the garden!

# Though I'm past 100,000 miles

# I'm feeling very still

# And I think my spaceship knows which way to go

# Tell my wife I love her very much She knows

# Ground Control to Major Tom

# Your circuit's dead There's something wrong

# Can you hear me, Major Tom?

# Can you hear me, Major Tom?

# Can you hear me, Major Tom? #

Major Tom was a really great device to keep returning to.

Maybe there was some little, you know,

obviously a bit of maybe sentimental attachment to it,

because it represented a lot in terms of how he became known to us

and became famous.

# The shrieking of nothing is killing

# Just pictures of Jap girls in synthesis

# And I ain't got no money and I ain't got no hair

# But I'm hoping to kick But the planet is glowing

# Ashes to ashes Funk to funky

# We know Major Tom's a junkie

# Strung out in heaven's high

# Hitting an all-time low... #

He just would take these bits of the past,

and fashion the future out of them,

and Major Tom was a big part of that.

And he's been looking for a home for, you know, how long,

50 years or something, you know?

A long time, Major Tom's been trying to find peace and rest,

and he found it in Blackstar.

Major Tom is home, finally.

# Ooh-ooh-ooh... #

Blackstar, you know, it's really wildly open to interpretation,

and I think he enjoyed this very much, like any artist.

Any great artist wants you to stand back and look at the work

and analyse it and feel things from it.

And you might not feel the same things.

The idea of art is to stimulate your own imagination.

# Ooh-ooh-ooh... #

You know, after a week or two of us having these chats

about Button Eyes and the spaceman,

I get a text message from him, it said,

"I need to Skype with you, can you Skype?"

And he's saying, "There's something I have to tell you."

And I said, "Yeah, sure."

And then he says, "I have to tell you that I'm very ill,

"and that I'm probably going to die." You know?

You know, utterly out of the blue, you know, just like that.

# Ooh-ooh-ooh... #

Let this be only coming from me,

but I think part of the way I reacted, also,

I felt that when he was saying that,

I thought for a brief second that he looked scared, actually.

And then, a second later, he would joke about it, you know?

Over the next six or eight months,

the disease or illness was never mentioned,

and he was in no way, in my mind, you know, affected by his illness.

# Something happened on the day he died

# Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside

# Somebody else took his place And bravely cried

BOWIE'S VOICE DOUBLE-TRACKED: # I'm a blackstar

# I'm a blackstar... #

This is a tradition that David and I always had, like,

how can we mangle the voice, you know, how can we change it?

And make one person sound like many people,

and in many different contexts, and in many different spatial areas.

# I'm a blackstar, way up, on money I've got game

# I see right, so wide So open-hearted pain

# I want eagles in my daydreams Diamonds in my eyes

# I'm a blackstar

# I'm a blackstar... #

David is like some bizarre, skeletal choir, doing,

"I'm a blackstar, I'm a blackstar," this weird thing.

It makes this whole section very supernatural.

# Somebody else took his place and bravely cried

# I'm a blackstar

# I'm a star star

# I'm a blackstar

# I'm a blackstar... #

I imagine it must have been cathartic for him.

He was working tirelessly,

both on Blackstar, and on Lazarus at the same time.

Perhaps the catharsis...

..surrounding Lazarus was unique, inasmuch as its execution

required him to relinquish control, and allow so many other people

to take it and make it happen.

Countryside disappears beneath my feet.

You know, I mean, I must say,

there were times when David and me would be reading scenes together...

You could feel him...more in there.

MUSIC PLAYS ON PIANO

This isn't happening.

I'm still inside my head.

You know, you forget, you forget that, actually he's...

Of course, we forgot that he was dying.

I'm done with this life!

The cast, of course, never knew. Only me, Ivo and Robert.

And so, a new universe I'll dream,

big, up there.

And although always stuck inside my breaking mind...

..I've stepped off the Earth, and into a better place.

David didn't want "Heroes" in Lazarus,

because "Heroes" had become like an anthem.

He wanted a song that would have sent everyone out

slitting their wrists.

Ivo and Enda persuaded him that if "Heroes" was treated musically

in a different way, it would work for the ending of Lazarus.

# I

# I will be king

# And you

# You will be queen... #

It's a reflective, it's a beautiful moment.

Here is this melancholy, instead of triumphant.

'Through his relationship with this girl,

'and her re-awakening him to his vitality,

'Newton is brought back to life,'

that he may ready himself to die.

Perhaps.

Or not.

HE LAUGHS

# But we could be safer

# Just for one day. #

There is a catharsis moment at the end, with "Heroes", you know,

when things clear up.

He cuts loose everything

which in a normal life of a normal human being is important...

-BOTH:

-# We can be heroes... #

.. and then he has to let go every hope, just accepting...

..well, his own death, at the end.

-BOTH:

-# We can be heroes

-BOTH:

-# We can be heroes... #

So, the last thing that you see is,

Michael C Hall is still on stage, alive,

but in his mind, he is flying away into the stars.

That's the last image.

# Just for one day. #

APPLAUSE