Chapter Eleven: MTV Idol (1980-1985)

Talk about a tough actor follow and in less than an hour David would have to do just that. It was July. David was on his way to perform at the British stage of Live Aid, the Transatlantic All Star benefit concert to raise money for Ethiopian famine relief. He had been one of the first headliners to lend their name to the event, opening the floodgates for a host of rock and roll a listers like Elton John, You to The Who and Paul McCartney to sign on. The

weather it thankfully cooperated. It was a beautiful summer's afternoon without a cloud in the sky. The same couldn't be said for inside the helicopter, which was fogged by the cigarettes. David anxiously chain smoked. The pilot could barely see his instrument panel through the haze, and begged him repeatedly to stop, but David just ignored him. He needed something to steady his nerves. His hands trembled as he drew each cigarette to his lips. Perhaps it was just the turbulence, but

his whole body seemed to shake. It wasn't the prospect of following Queen that had him spooked. Heck those kids, please. He knew Freddie back when he was just another guy selling you's clothes at Kensington Market. David remembered him well. Freddie was on his hands and knees one day, fitting David with a pair of suede boots when he muttered something about starting a band of his own. David's only experience with success at that point was Space Oddity, but

he was already pretty jaded. Why would you ever want to get into this business, he replied. Ultimately. Freddie didn't listen to David, probably for the best. From David's present point of view in the helicopter, he was doing quite well. Good for him, No following Queen wasn't a concern, nor was the prospect of performing for a televised audience of over a billion people in a hundred and ten countries around the globe. He wasn't even troubled by the fact

that his band had only rehearsed three times. No, the problem was the twelve minute flight from central London to the stadium. You see, the starman hated to fly. After years of stubbornly refusing any sort of air travel, he'd begrudgingly begun taking planes. But helicopters. That was just ridiculous. What kind of death trap was this? How much longer? He constantly asked the pilot during their brief time in the air. But it was the only way to get

to Wembley. Heavy traffic surrounding the stadium made it imposse able to get the steady stream of artists in and out in a timely manner. There was, after all, a strict schedule to keep The entire event had been timed with military precision to keep pace with the satellite broadcast of the corresponding concert occurring simultaneously across the Pond in Philadelphia. Everything about the day had grown somewhat larger in scope than anyone in anticipated across the country. It was all

anyone was talking about. There was no escaping it. As David drove to the helipad, he could hear the radio reports spilling out of every car on the road. The drive had taken him past the house where he was born in Brixton, and the sidewalks were eerily quiet. Everyone was indoors, glued to their television sets, all tuned to the same channel. No one had seen anything like this before, at least not since the moon landing. There was a

similar sense of optimism in the air. The Union of Talent and Technology seemed to make good on the umanitarian promise of Woodstock a decade and a half earlier. The Flower children had grown up, and now they were in charge, and they were determined to use their power for good. It's a laughable notion when considering the greed is good ethos of the eighties, but just for one day, a

brighter future seemed in reach. David's helicopter touched down in a cricket field behind Wembley, where a motorcid was on hand to whisk him inside the stadium. As he exited the car and as Cris Blue Suit, a hungry horde of two photographers scrambled to get their shot to the uninitiated. The firestorm of flash bulbs would seem terrifying, but he loved this bit. The nerves were gone, the flight was over, The hard part of the day was done. Now only had to do. Would sing a few songs in front

of a billion people, a fifth of the planet. Only David Bowie can make him look easy. Hello and welcome to Off the Record, the show that goes beyond the songs and into the hearts and minds of rock's greatest legends. I'm your host Jordan Runtug. This season explores the life, or rather lives of David Bowie. Today's episode looks at David in the eighties, a time that saw him grow from a famous artist to a global superstar, A one

man brand bolstered by the fresh force of MTV. David embraced the exponential growth of mass media and shamelessly corded mass popularity. He got it, but the success changed his reputation in a way that was irreversible. Up till then, he was the world's most famous outsider. To all who felt marginalized or misunderstood. He'd been a towering example of power, strength, grace and courage. Now his move to the mainstream read as a reject action of those who felt mothered and

looked to him as their patron voice and guardian. Bowie himself would struggle with the impact of his creative choices in this period. Was he a sellout? It was a classic case of careful what you wish for. David Bowie closed out the seventies with the song that began it for him, Space Oddity. The saga of Major Tom had brought David his first notoriety, launching him into the decade he'd grow to dominate. Now, he unveiled a new version of the track on a New Year's Eve television special

in Britain. Instead of the technical tour to force heard on the original, he delivered a stripped down acoustic rendition, just drums, piano and David's furiously strummed twelve string guitar. This new version was striking, almost shocking, and its sparsity. Instead of the lushly orchestrated lift off section, he offers

just twelve seconds of silence. The interplay between ground control and major Tom becomes an intensely passionate, solitary vocal shorn of the production pyrotechnics, it goes from being a theater piece to something more personal. He was practically naked. David Bowie had been many things over the last ten years, but rarely as unadorned self. It was a fitting way to end the decade that, as one paper noted, would

have been pretty boring without him. The musical book end not only appealed to his sense of dramatic symmetry, but also helped him in taking stock of the last ten years. The character of Major Tom had come to him in nineteen sixty nine after years of commercial failures. It was a time when his dreams of artistic success were starting to fade. He had been dropped by his label and his girlfriend had just left him. Flash forward a decade. He was famous around the globe and was in the

midst of a messy divorce. He'd gotten what he wants. It was it worth it? Knowingly or unknowingly. David and his doomed space Man had been on parallel journeys. Like Major Tom, David adventured out into the furthest regions of the human experience, far above the world. Also, like Major Tom, he felt like he'd had little choice in the matter. Sure, he'd signed up to go on the journey, but he

hardly realized what it would entail. As the fame, drugs, business pressures, and personal problems mounted, he nearly drifted into the abyss. The force was just too much to alterra trajectory. Life became something that was inflicted on him a series of increasingly out there occurrences. Often this is the point when casualties occur. Yet through some combination of strength, will and luck, he regained control. Towards the end of his time in Berlin in the late seventies, he told a

friend that he had quote grown up at last. David would face challenges and pain in the future, but he would never be quite as lost again. For a man who was loath to look backwards, processing his past would be a crucial part of moving forward. He'd long confounded critics with as many faces. Now he was searching for a through line. You have to accommodate your pasts within your persona, he'd later say, of the period. You have

to understand why you went through them. You cannot just ignore them or put them out of your mind and pretend they didn't happen, or just say oh, I was different. Then he'd absorb all of his alter egos into one, a strong, self assured artist who could be whatever he wanted on demand. David Jones would just be David Bowie, the ultimate character. His reflective mood carried over into his creativity. David poured over old demos and session tapes as he

geared up to start work on a new record. The remarkable three year creative streak with Brian Eno had yielded the groundbreaking records forever known as the Berlin Trilogy, but now their partnership was coming to an end. A new decade called for a fresh start. I felt I was becoming static, David would say, I wanted to break away. Every few years, I have to redefine what I'm writing. I had to do it when I went to Berlin,

and now I had to do it again. His reacquaintance with Major Tom inspired him to write an update on the Spaceman saga, checking in to see what ten years had drift had done to him. The Astronauts journey had driven him the drugs. Now he was addicted and risk taking permanent leave of his senses. Once more, David used Major Tom as a lyrical proxy for himself. The song was called Ashes to Ashes, and he addressed listeners with uncharacteristic frankness. Do you remember a guy that's been in

such an early song. I've heard a rumor from ground control. Oh no, don't say it's true. Ashes to Ashes, funk to funky. We know Major Tom's at junkie strung out in Heavens High, hitting an all time low too many. It seemed to be an almost literal depiction of his mid seventies crisis, a time when his music was going from the funk of young Americans to the supremely funky avant garde station, the station he battled substance abuse in

the City of Angels, strung out in Heavens High. Then he departed for Europe, hitting an all time low that ultimately produced the album of the same name. But he saves the most damning lines for the lacerating lament of the bridge. I never done good things. I never done bad things. I never did anything out of the blue.

Years later, David would single out the words as crucial to understanding as meaning those three particular lines represented in tinuing returning feeling of an adequacy over what I've done, He'd say, I have a lot of reservations about what I've done, inasmuch as I don't feel much of it as any import at all. Denigrating the image of the hero from his breakthrough hit was certainly a bold move

for Bowie. The act of outlining Major Tom's tragic fall from Grace had much the same effect of killing off Siggy Stardust on stage. By destroying his own creation, is set him free to charge into the new decade, unfettered by his past. Perhaps that's why David called the track ashes to ashes in death. There was a rebirth if the song was a chronicle of the rough and tumble

road that had led him to the eighties. The video featured his first overt acknowledgement of a younger generation of artists that had followed in the trail that he blazed. Such reckoning is always a bittersweet moment in a pop star's life. Rock and roll is, after all, a young person's game. By acknowledging the younger crowd, you admit that you're not a part of it. It's not a long,

logical leap to consider yourself old. Being young didn't interest Bowie as much as being new, or at least perceived as such. Constant reinventions had staved off the inevitable staleness that comes with a long career in the public eye. But being fresh forever it was simply impossible. He was only thirty three, but he was already being treated as a star from another era. Time was no longer waiting

in the wings, it was beating at his door. Was the dawn of the first post Bowie decade, and there was already a kind of ziggy revival taking place in Britain. The kids whose lives have been forever changed by watching David and Veils starman to the masses during his appearance on Top of the Pops eight years earlier. We're growing up now and in some cases already making names for themselves. Just look at bands like Joy Division, XTC, Susie and

The Banshees, and a short time later you too. Even David's electro experiments with Eno inspired British kids to invest in since inform groups like Depeche Mode and The Human League. For a time, David paid little mind to these upstarts. Punk had passed him by completely. He'd been in Germany when the first wave it crested in London. Aside from his tour with Iggy Pop, he rarely engaged. But when he began to hear electro tinged art pop singles that seemed to his ears a little too close to his

recent work, that got his attention real quick. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Despite David's reputation for borrowing influences and styles freely, he wasn't exactly gracious when people paid him the same uh compliment. David was more tolerant of a new subculture springing up around London

known as the New Romantics. Most were recovering punks who become distancing themselves from the movement due to a combination of changing tastes and it's increasing reputation for attracting skinheads and nationalists. Instead, many punks reverted back to the glam

rock that they've been raised on. The alternative attitude in general flamboyance that had led them to mohawks and piercings made them feel right at home in the theatrical realm of ziggy They suited up in velvet and ruffles, and decked themselves out and costom jewelry and elaborate sexually ambiguous makeup, setting the stage for new waivers like Boy George and Duran Duran. The burst of nostalgia for the early seventies

sparked renewed passion for Bowie. New romantic dance clubs held dedicated Bowie Knights where they blasted Jeane Genie and Rebel Rebel like it was still in three The most famous of these hot spots was called Blitz, a wine bar inexplicably decorated with images of the Nazi blitz Creeg from World War Two. Every Tuesday, hundreds of Bowie fans turned up in their glam finery, forming a line that stretched around the block. Admission was not guaranteed. They had a

pretty strict door policy. Even Mick Jagger was turned away one night, supposedly for being drunk and borish. But when Bowie himself showed up to Bowie Knight, they were a little more accommodating. Hell, it was like God himself had showed up, and the crowds parted like the Red Sea. He'd come not just to check out the scene, but also the recruit extras for the Ashes to Ashes music video, due to be filmed later that week. He rounded up a handful of suitably stylish clubvers and told them to

meet at his hotel on a few days. To these Bowie worshippers, it was like they died and gotten to Heaven. It wasn't heaven exactly, but a frigid beach on the English coast, not much to look at in person, but director David Mallett worked as technical magic, turning the visuals into with jarring fever dream fantasy, using the early computer graphics program Paintbox the radically alter the colors of the film. He rendered the sky a hallucinogenic black and the ocean pink.

So it seems slightly dated now, this was some of the earliest technology available to achieved such an effect, and its use added to the exorbitant cost of the video some five hundred thousand dollars then or almost two million dollars today, making it the most expensive video ever made at the time. Bowie appears in several guys is, most notably a puro style clown that recalls his early mime days.

He also donned outfits for a major tom like astronaut and an impatient at a psych ward, quite possibly a reference to his half brother Terry. He strolls the beach draped in these relics of his past, as the new Romantic Kids follow quite literally in his footsteps. The clip would be a pivotal moment in the history of music videos, helping kick off the MTV age a year early. The

song would be the centerpiece of the new album. David began recording with Tony Visconti in February of Night after years of plucking song fragments from studio experimentations with Eno or jam sessions with his band. These sessions mark David's returns to slightly more traditional composition. Rather than improvised the lyrics as he'd done for much of the Berlin trilogy, he took a two month break to craft the words

and melodies. His focused approach is reflected in the songs, among the most melodic and commercial that he'd produced in years. In addition to Ashes to Ashes, another highlight was Fashion, a relentless dance stomper that took aim at slaves the style. In a way. It was the spiritual sequel to his song Fane. Deconstructing the image that was so essential to

the very notion of celebrity. He tackled a similar subject on teenage Wildlife on the flip side, Screamed Like a Baby is an unsettling tale the ugly price one pays for failing to fit in the society. The paranoid themes continue on the song Scary Monsters, which finds David running scared from a stalker. The track would lend its name to the album's ultimate title, Scary Monsters and Super Creeps.

The record was released in September of nineteen eighty, just in time for David to conquer a new stage Broadway. That summary had been offered the lead role in the production of The Elephant Man. The show was based on the life of John Merrick, a severely deformed man whose job as a circus attraction at the turn of the century earned him a living but little compassion. David threw himself into preparation for the role with his usual verve.

He embarked on a self directed research trip, visiting the British hospital where Marek had been treated. He examined his clothes, including the hood he had been forced to wear to shield his disfigured face from the public. He even saw his misshapen skeleton, a testament to the extreme physical pain that Merrik constantly endured, exacerbating his emotional anguish. The experience left David in tears. It evoked his strongest boyhood feeling

of being alone. He was especially moved by the model Church America, constructed out of cardboard, a poignant symbol of his desire for beauty and tranquility in his own troubled life. David felt a kinship for the late Merrick. Both were smart, articulate, sensitive souls who spent much of their life as performers being dismissed as freaks. His co stars were the first to witness David's stunning portrayal of Merrek. His talent was

bigger than his ego, which is rare. One cast mate would recall David has showed makeup and prosthetics, fearing that it would reduce the character to a caricature. Instead, he played him the hard way, with grotesque facial ticks and torturous movements. The expressions of physical agony were so intense that he required chiropractic treatment after each performance. His background as a musician made him an excellent listener, a subtle

but crucial skill that all actors must master. The winning instant praise from his cast mates the pre show jitters remained, as he told journalists at the time, this is the most terrifying position I've ever put myself in. Ever. The show was scheduled to open in Denver that July, before moving briefly to Chicago and finally Broadway. David stood backstage minutes before the curtain went up for his first performance,

very seriously wondering what on earth am I doing? He needed the worried the show was a triumph, So is his Broadway debut that September, which drew a dazzling array of figures from David's past, like Elizabeth Taylor and Andy Warhol. Even his former manager Ken Pitt flew over from England to catch a performance. He always knew that David had what it took to be an actor, even when David himself couldn't care less, and he was thrilled to see

him on the Great White Way. The reviews were effusive, and so were the groups of Bowie die hards who couldn't resist shouting Starman or Ziggy at some point during each show. The cast grew to expect it. They were disturbed to see how closely David's life mirrored that of the circus freak he played on the stage. Everywhere he went he was chased by mobs of people. Yes, they

loved him, but it was frightening. Nonetheless, for one show, he had to be driven to the theater hidden in a garbage truck and slithered into the venue through a basement window. When the show towards Chicago, major hotels were unable to guarantee his privacy, so David was forced to stay at a grubby apartment above a local department store. Even then, his residence was discovered and his clothes were stolen by over zealous fans. If he could even call

them fans, it was hard to tell. The line got even more blurred when the cast recognized the same group of six girls who showed up to every performance for a week. They were kind of hard to miss, always in the front row, with funky clothes and dyed hair. At first, they thought the kids were just unusually devoted. Bowie remembered the sweet dedication of the Sigma kids back

in Philly. Then one night, during curtain call, the six girls stood up in tandem, clutching metallic items from their purses. Security intervened before they could get very far and hustled them out of the building, but it was still unsettling. David never found out what they intended to do, but it's doubtful that it was anything good. David arrived home there was Manhattan Loft on the night of December eight and heard the news John Lennon had been shot murdered

outside his Upper West Side apartment. His wife, Yoko Ono, was at his side. They were coming home to tuck in their five year old son. David's mind went blank. The information was impossible to process. His initial numbness soon gave way to anger. What the hell is going on with this world? He repeatedly screamed between tears. He would recall A whole piece of my life seemed to have been taken away, A whole reason for being a singer and songwriter seemed to be removed from me. It was

almost like a warning. He was left with his memories. John had gone from a hero to a mentor, an elder brother who advised him on business. Being a celebrity and had to communicate effectively and efficiently through music. It's very easy, John told him as they collaborated on the track fame In. Say what you mean, make it rhyme and put a backbeat to it. It was classic Lennin, honest, unpretentious, and achingly sincere. More than just a giver of sage

rock star advice, Lennin was a good friend. A few years back, they bumped into each other by sheer chance at a hotel in Hong Kong. David was passing through following a tour with Iggy Pop. John was just on vacation, a favorite activity after clearing up his immigration issues that have prevented him from traveling for much the seventies. He loved setting out for far flung locales with just a small briefcase containing his wallet and a T shirt. He was a freeman. As soon as Lennon and David saw

each other in Hong Kong, the fund began instantly. First, they went to a fancy resort restaurant, but the atmosphere proved too stuffy, so they went for a swim, and then they browsed the street markets, where John found the kiosks that sold Beatle style jackets. He couldn't resist posing in one for Bowie's polaroid camera. As the day grew late, they slunk around the backstreets to, according to David, at

least find a place to eat monkey brains. Members of a Chinese gang recognized the two superstars and brought them to a back room, where they persuaded them to take shots of snake's blood, which got them hopelessly stoned. John then tricked David into eating something called a thousand day egg, an egg cooked in urine and buried a manure not for a thousand days, but was disgusting all the same. The rest of the night was a bit of a blur. They wound up at a strip club, were excited patrons

bought them an unhealthy number of beers. John, who was never great at handling his booze, started mouthing off, and soon they were escorted out. The scene ended with an indignant John pounding on the door shouting, let me back in. I'm a freaking beetle. The mere mention of the B words sent Bowie into hysterics. He'd never seen him pull. The FAB four card was now the middle of the

night outside of back Alley Hong Kong strip club. Really the time I can't believe you said that, David said, between tears of laughter, Say it again, I dare you. I'm a freaking beatle, Jump bellowed as they both collapsed in heaps of giggles. And now he was gone. It was inconceivable. The shocking crime hit so close to home, and it could have been even closer. Detectives told David that he was next on the hit list of Lennon's killer.

Investigators reportedly found a flyer for The Elephant Man in the Gunman's Hotel room with David's name circled in black. He bought a front row ticket for the production, scheduled the day after Lennon's murder. It was a fallback if his deadly mission with John failed. He would wait for David at the stage door of the Booth Theater, named for the brother of John Wilkes Booth, who shot Abraham

Lincoln in the middle of a play. In another erie coincidence, John and Yoko also had front row seats for the same show as John's murderer. None of them made it. When David stood before the spotlight that night, he found it hard not to focus on the three empty seats just beyond the stage. I can't tell you how difficult that was to go on. He later said, I almost didn't make it through the performance. The producers offered to let David take some time off from the Elephant Man,

but David wouldn't hear of it. He also declined and their offers to rework the show, minimizing the amount of time that he needed to be on stage. But he did take other precautions. He hired a bodyguard, an ex Navy seal who was trained to kill. This was a common response after Lennon's murder in the Rock community. Keith Richards took it a step further, carrying a gun for

self protection. David and others took courses designed to teach high profile figures to interact with fans and the safest possible way, educating them on possible warning signs and threats from stalkers or even killers. Intimate encounters like he'd had with the Sigma Kids in Philly all those years ago, were now a thing of the past. John and David had both loved New York for the freedom had offered they could go out together and stroll the streets without

any hassle. For brief moments they could live normal lives. Two days before his death, John marveled at these simple pleasures to a journalist, I can go out this door right now and go to a restaurant. Do you want to know how great that is? For David, that freedom was over and he never did get it back. David told producers that he planned to leave The Elephant Man after his contract was up. He performed his final show

on January four, just weeks after the murder. A proposed stadium tour for his new album, Scary Monsters and Super Creeps was abandoned. Instead, he returned to his home in Switzerland. The Scary Monsters and Super Creeps were just too real. After David took his final bows for The Elephant Man in January of one, he returned to his home in Switzerland, where he secluded himself for the better part of a year.

Instead of music, he said his focus on being an attentive, loving father to his son, Zoe, who was nearing his tenth birthday that spring. David had been an infrequent presence in the boys early years, often called away for tours and recording dates. Now he was eager to make up for lost time. He was a hands on dad, driving Zoe to school and visiting on parents night. When David had dinners with rock star friends like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, he brought Zoe along and bragged about the

boys skill on the sports field. They went on trips to the zoo and even on safari to Kenya. They bonded over many things, but music wasn't one of them. Zoe would sit backstage at David's concerts, bored out of his mind, waiting for Dad to finish work so they could go home. Performance life just didn't interest him. David gave Zoe an impressive assortment of instruments to try to spark his interest saxophone, guitar, piano, drums, but it just

wasn't happening. Instead, Zoe was much more taken by their movie nights. Dvid would sometimes wheel out a primitive video player the size of a shopping cart for Star Wars viewing parties with friends. David fostered the boys growing passion by getting him an eight millimeter camera and showing him how to make little stop motion films with his toy

action figures. He also taught him the basic process of movie making like storyboarding, screenwriting, lighting and editing, sowing the seeds for his future career as a successful film director, and there is legal name Duncan Jones. In many ways, they were less like father and son and more like a pair of brothers, with David learning as much from Zoe as the boy did from him. Having a son helped cure David of his more nihilistic tendencies a decade earlier.

His work reflected a man obsessed with dystopia and the apocalypse. As he's sang on the Diamond Dogs track, you'll be shooting up on anything. Tomorrow's never there. Now he was a little more optimistic about a bright future. My son keeps me remembering that there is a tomorrow, he'd say. For someone who's fearlessly freaky as David, he could be

a surprisingly straight laced dad. He later enrolled the boy in the highly disciplined and also highly exclusive British boarding school Gordonston, which counted Prince Charles and other members of the royal family among its all male graduates. When Zoe dyed his hair a punkish green and red as a teen, David was aghast, and he uttered that famous phrase familiar to parents all over the world. You are not going out looking like that. Even Zoe had to laugh at

the absurdity of it all. David Bowie was telling him that he looked weird. In addition to being a better father, David did all he could to be a better son. His relationship with his mother, Peggy had never been an easy one, especially since she grumbled about him in the press back in the mid seventies. Over time, they reached a tentative understanding, and slowly the iciness between them began

the fall. David kept his distance, but he was sure to send your tickets to his shows, which she attended with pride. Nine eight gig in London was the scene of a minor breakthrough. Peggy was sitting in a private box thumbing through her copy of the tour program. When the door opened. There stood David in full makeup and stage costume, grinning from ear to ear. They hadn't seen each other face to face and so long for a moment.

Peggy was dumb struck before blurting out, you didn't have to come up here and see me, David replied, you're my mum. That this minor courtesy was a big deal. Gives some indication of how strained their relationship had been, but the baby steps added up. He flew Peggy to New York to see him in The Elephant Man, introducing her to each member of the cast and crew. They exchanged letters, spent holidays together, and fell into a routine of warm, regular contact. I've gotten closer to her, David

said at the time. I think the recognition of the frailty of age makes one more sympathetic to the earlier strains of the parent child relationship. For much of one David was unusually absent from the columns of entertainment magazines and trade papers. Several unfavorable contracts were due to expire the following year, and he was more than content to wait them out. One was with his former manager, Tony

de Freeze. The lawsuit that terminated their partnership seven years earlier gave the Frieze a sizeable percentage of David's record income. Through everything David released till then, the Frieze got a chunk of the sales. As a result, David was less than motivated to get back in the studio. He didn't like the idea of making his ex associate rich off his own Sweat and Blood. David's deal with his label

r c A was also up in two. He'd become disillusioned with his longtime musical home, especially after the tepid response to his Berlin experiments with Brian Eno. All c A had responded to Low, an album that's now hailed as a groundbreaking masterpiece, by sending him a formal rejection letter. David had to throw his weight around to get it released as he saw fit. The incident left him convinced that our Cier had lost faith in him as an artist.

He believed they weren't promoting his new work, instead preferring to repackage is more commercial past on greatest hits albums and other cash in collections. They viewed him as a product, pure and simple, he thought, and he wanted out as soon as possible. David's two major musical offerings from one

We're both collaborations. The first was the title song for the film Cat People, which saw him pair with the Italian electro pioneer Georgio Moroder, famous for Donna Summer's robo disco hits, interesting but mostly as a curio in the Bowie cannon. The other song as a somewhat bigger reputation. It began David was recording Cat People and Mountains studios in Montrose, Switzerland. By chance, Queen was working at the studio next door. David decided to stop by and say

hello to the band. He'd known those guys since forever. David remembered Freddie Mercury standing down front at his early gigs, practically taking notes on his flamboyant attire and stage moves. His influence on Queen was no secret, but they had the musical talent and originality to pull it off, David would admit. Of all the more theatrical rock performers, Freddie took it further than the rest. Queen was in the

midst of recording their album Hot Space. Initially, they tossed around the idea of David's singing background on the song. They were working on, a slinky R and B number called cool Cats, but it just wasn't coming together. Instead, they started jamming on an unfinished Queen song called Feel Like. Freddie and David faced off for an improvised vocal battle, each trying to outdo the other. Was Scott Syllables sung with superhuman levels of passion. The music coalesced around a

repetitive riff by bassist John Deacon. It became the hallmark of the song under Pressure. Neither Bowie or Queen or sure whether it should ever see the light of day. It seemed too raw, almost half baked. Eventually, someone on the business end realized that a duet between the two biggest British music acts of the last decade would probably do quite well. It did, reaching number one in the UK.

Under Pressure was released on Queen's label E M I. David was in no mood to give our ci a something good instead for the final release he owed them. Before his contract was up, David turned in a five song EP the soundtrack to the play by Berthold Brecht called Ball. David had grown fascinated by the German dramatist during his years living in Berlin, and eagerly accepted a role in a version of the play broadcast on the

BBC in March of now teen two. Like most of David's finest performances, the role wasn't too much of a stretch. The character of Ball was a wandering, sexually promiscuous, egocentric poet who occasionally drank too much. In short, the classic Brectian anti hero. It was a role David was born to play. The performance earned praise, as did the soundtrack. As a piece of art, it had all the integrity in the world. The tasteful arrangements were recorded at Hansa's

studios in Berlin. Was some of Breck's original pit musicians, and David's vocals were strong, showcasing his range in a way he seldom could in his pop career. But baroque stylings of tragic chance from an early twentieth century drama. This was never destined to set the charts on fire. It seemed like Bowie's perverse revenge against our Cer for dismissing Low and the rest of his Berlin trilogy. It was like he was saying that wasn't uncommercial. I'll show

you uncommercial. In any event, the release ended dave It's association with our c a closing a chapter that began with Hunky Dorry in vent One. One of the last links to his past was now severed. Before diving back into the rock and roll rat race, Bowie spent most of nine eight two further developing his acting chops. He

appeared in two feature film roles that year. The first was The Hunger, an overwrought vampire flick most notable for its sensationalized love affair between leading ladies Kathine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. The movie was directed by Tony Scott, whose brother Ridley had directed David in an ice cream advertisement back in nineteen sixty nine. Ridley Scott had graduated from Ads to Blade Runner by this point, but The Hunger

was not blade Runner. Bowie plays an eighteenth century vampire living in modern day New York, tarling Manhattan's discos for Blood Don't Us. Following The Elephant Man and Ball, The Hunger was lowbrow in the extreme. It was build rather optimistically as a modern classic of perverse fear. Well, they had the perverse part right at least. The movie was panned upon its release, but filming was not without its

high points. David and Susan Sarandon enjoyed a brief affair, though her radical liberal tirade started a grade on him after a while. Zoe also visited him on the set, further stoking his passion for movie making. He was there the day they shot the scene where David's character ages two hundred and fifty years. Unfortunately, no one warned the poor kid and he burst into tears at the side of his father. As an ultra elderly man. David, on the other hand, loved the makeup because he could walk

around in public completely unnoticed. On more than one occasion he snuck out to the pub to have a rare taste at true privacy. Filming brought him back to England for his first substantial stay in years, and as a rival, brought a flood of unhappy memories. Many concerned his elder half brother Terry. After years of being shuttled in and out of the Cane Hills Psychiatric Hospital, Terry could bear

it no longer. He threw himself out of a second story window of the facility in an apparent attempt to take his own life. He suffered a fractured arm and leg, but survived. A few weeks later, hospital staff were stunned when David turned up to see Terry bearing gifts of cigarettes, books, and a cassette player. They hadn't seen one another in years, and spent an hour talking alone, just the two of them, just like they did in their bedroom while those years ago.

Then it was time to go. David promised Terry he'd return. Terry excitedly told his nurses that his famous little brother was coming back to rescue him and take him away from this terrible place. His brother was David Bowie. You know, he could do anything. But David never came back. One of his aunts took shots at him in the press, accusing him of ignoring his stricken brother, turning his back on the family, and generally being heartless. But of course

that wasn't true. David certainly never stopped loving Terry. He would be one of the most influential figures in his life, but the bonds between them had been broken beyond repair. The man David had known in his youth, the wild, free thinker who set his soul alight with beat, poetry and free jazz, it was no longer there. He was gone, consumed by mental illness. Authentic communication was made all but impossible. David would say, I've never been able to get through

to Terry about how he really feels. I guess nobody has. Seeing what his beloved brother had become was too much to bear. A painful reminder of what had been and what will never be again. Once The Hunger wrapped, Dave had left England for the South Pacific to shoot his part in the World War two drama Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. It was something of a one eighty from The Hunger.

David played a British prisoner of war, a man racked with guilt for failing to protect his handicapped brother throughout his tormented childhood. Once again, David found himself in a role that allowed him to draw on feelings from the depths of his soul. He would admit as much when speaking to a reporter when the film opened at the con Film Festival in three. I found in the character all too many areas of guilt and shortcomings that are a part of me, he said. I feel tremendous guilt

because I grew so apart from my family. I hardly ever see my mother, and I have a half brother I don't see anymore. It was my fault. We grew apart and it's painful, but somehow there's no going back. By the end of two, David was finally free of his legal obligations to his record label and his former manager. I'm massive psychic weight had been lifted, and he also stood to make a great deal of money for the first time in his professional life. An enormous portion of

his income wouldn't be going to management. If there was ever a time to score a massive smash, this would be it, though it's strange to think now. Up to this point, David had never been a commercial success on

a truly global scale. His base in England had always been kind to him since breaking UK sales records with Ziggy Stardus back in two British fans could always be counted on to push his releases into the upper echelons of the charts, but aside from his duet with Queen, his top forty success in the US was limited to just three singles in Young Americans Fame and Golden Years. His albums were well reviewed and sold in healthy numbers, and he was certainly known around the world, but more

as a character than as a commercial force. It had always been part of his illusion, dating back to his main Man days project the image of success, but totald gargantuan blockbuster sales figures had so far eluded him. With his next record, he wanted to change that. The incentives

were many. He would make a mint with his new financial deal and stick it to his ex associates, who had doubted him for the first time since showcasing his avant garde streak on Station A Station nearly seven years earlier. He would actively pursue a hit. More than that, he would wage an all out assault on the worldwide music markets. Now into his mid thirties, practically ancient in rock terms, he was aware that it may be his last chance.

He cleaned house creatively just weeks before sessions were due to begin for his new album. He parted company with his tried and true co producer Tony Visconti, a friend since the sixties and the guiding hand during the Berlin Trilogy and Scary Monsters record. Instead, he turned to Nile Rodgers.

Nile helped to find the sound of the late seventies with the quicksilver electro funk of his band Chic and the chart topping single t He'd produced for Diana Ross and Sister Sledge, But the anti disco backlash at the start of the decade had been hard on Nile two. He'd had a string of flops. Like so many important meetings in Bowie's life, it happened by chance or at least carefully arranged happenstance. They met in the fall of two at an ultra hit Manhattan nightclub called The Continental.

Nile walked in just before closing time with Billie Idol, who was a little worse for the wear. Suddenly, Billy's eyes grew wide. There's David Bowie, he exclaimed, or at least that's what he was trying to say. The word Bowie was slightly obscured by the vomit that suddenly sprayed out of his mouth. Nile was shocked, and not by his friends poorly times spew that was David Bowie. He was expecting ziggy stardust, not this average look guy drinking an orange juice by himself. Hell, the guy was in

a suit. This was the early eighties. Everyone had shoulder pads and fox tails hanging off their jackets. David was the least freaky guy in the place. Despite the inauspicious start, their intro would prove memorable. Nyland David hit it off right away. R and B was an immediate point of connection. Nile was old friends with David's Young Americans era collaborators like Carlos Alamar Luther Vandross and Dennis Davis like them. He was impressed by the depth of David's musical knowledge.

They talked till dawn. Then a few days later, David s Nile the producer's next album just like that, but he had a crucial directive Nile, David said, I really want you to make hits. They met up a short time later at David's new home at Chateau style Residents in the Swiss town of Blazon. The purpose of the visit was mostly just to get to know one and there. It all seemed casual, but Nile recognized that he was being programmed. David was downloading his influences into his new collaborator.

They thumbed through copies of his extensive vinyl collection, poring over the vibrant, colorful album covers from the nineteen fifties, some of which he'd purchased as a boy back in Bromley. The Isley Brothers doing Twist and Shout, Henry Mancini's swinging theme to Peter Gunn, James Brown Elmore, James Johnny Otis, Stan Kenton. This was the stuff that had made him want to make music in the first place. He'd recently become reacquainted with these oldies, passing the long hours on

film sets with homemade mixtapes. It was very non uptight music, and it comes from a sense of pleasure and happiness. He'd later explained. There's an enthusiasm and optimism on those recordings. David showed Nile a vintage shot of his hero Little Richard, looking too cool for this world in a red suit, hopping into his red Cadillac convertible. Even though it was from the past, it also looked like it could be from the future, Nile Darling, David said as he pointed

to the image. I want the album to sound like this. David walked into Nile's bedroom one morning, strumming a new song and his old war torn twelve string guitar. It sounded almost folky, like something Peter, Paul and Mary or the Birds would have done. I think it's gonna be a hit, David said. Nile didn't quite get it at first. He thought it was a prank or even some kind of a test. He called a mutual friend in New

York to get a gut check. Would David play me a crappy song just to see if I'm some sort of a yes man. The answer came back no, so David was serious. That meant Nile had his work cut out for him. David called the song Let's Dance, but how the hell was anyone going to dance to that? He'd have to funk it up, which was after all, what Nile Rodgers did best. Slowly, a production plan began to take shape, borrowing from many of the run since David had shared. The stacked vocal oz from Twist and

Shout became the songs intro. The horn blasts from the Peter Gun theme were lifted to punctuate David's verses. Like all the best stuff, it came together fast. David and Nile books twenty one days at New York's Power Station studios in December. It only took them seventeen days to record and mix the whole album. It was the easiest record either of them had ever made. There was no one to answer to. David didn't have a record contract and paid for the sessions out of his own pocket.

As Nile would later say, it felt like just me and David against the world. There was only one minor disagreement whether to use a young hot shot guitarist named Stevie ray Vaughan, who was just starting to make waves with his Texas blues collective Double Trouble. Nile thought it was a little too derivative, like a retread of Albert King's stuff, but Bowie had seen Evie at the Montre

Jazz Festival and insisted they give him a chance. Stevie laid down his part for six tracks, instantaneously tearing off rips on his old beat up Fender Strat. The rest of the crew were handpicked by Nile, including chic bandmates and his usual session pros, filling out the sound that he dubbed modern big band rock. For the first time, David didn't play a single instrument on his own album. He trusted niles proven track record as a hit maker and pretty much left him to it, affording him a

degree of control rare for one of his co producers. Often, David would just hang out in the lounge to the studio watching TV as Nile worked as digital sorcery. Then Nile would invite David in and blow his mind with the playback. David would later admit, with a touch of resentment, it was more Nile's album than mine. Nile would more or less agree, later saying, but we spent the entire session sitting on the sofa while I made his record. The record it in question was Let's Dance. If David

had desired commercial material, it succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Catchy, accessible, and radio friendly in the extreme, The tracks helped fuel a bidding war between a host of record labels. On Freddie Mercury's recommendation, he signed with E M I, negotiating himself a deal valued at a reported seventeen million dollars. It was the first serious money that he'd ever had.

After a decade of worldwide fame, David had finally entered the financial realm of the Stones, Elton John and the Beatles. All that money had gone through in the seventies suddenly came back to me, he'd later marvel before clarifying, but I'm not wealthy. I'm rich, and there's a difference. The rich know how much money they've got. The wealthy don't. And that was just the beginning for Bowie's bank balance. Let's Dance was released on the fourteenth of April to

unprecedented commercial success. It eventually sold eleven million in copies, far more than any other album of his career. His new label, E M I would declare it their fastest selling release since the Beatles. Sergeant Pepper in the title track topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic for the first time in David's career, and he followed it up with a pair of Transatlantic top twenty hits,

Modern Love and China Girl. Even Bowie was taken aback by the reaction, believing he'd never actually surpassed his mid seventies apex I thought, well, I've had my big deal. This is where I am, He'd say. Then the explosion happened when that song was a hit, and that really threw me for a few months. It's just snowballed. It was unbelievable. The song's pervasiveness was due in large part to a gargantuan pr push by E M I, keen to kick off a fresh era for their newly acquired

prestige artist. They were TV specials, Home Videos and Stories, and Time and Newsweek, but the biggest factor was the advent of music television. Let's Dance was Bowie's first album of the MTV age for one of the most visually conscious artists of his generation. David took to the network immediately. Music videos were no new thing to him. He'd been doing them since the late sixties, when Ken Pitt shelled

out for a Space oddity promo. David was quick to realize that these music videos were not merely visual companion pieces for new songs. They were, in effect advertisements. Bowie, the son of a pr man and a former ad agency employee, was one of the first major artists to recognize the value, the necessity, even of building oneself into

a brand. His son kissed face and bright yellow popolore that featured so prominently in his videos became a logo for his one man corporation, beamed out across the air waves at regular intervals, alongside sneakers, swooshes and soda swirls. Critic Paul Trenko would observe that if seventy two was the year that mass media discovered David Bowie, three was the year that David Bowie discovered mass media. He was

an easy sell. The afprofescent music, the thoroughly charming charisma on display during his press tour, and of course, the pair of vibrant videos for Let's Dance and China Girl, directed by David Mallett and shot on location in Australia. David looks tanned, blonde, handsome and healthy. Everything about him is remarkably positive, including the underlying themes of the videos, which David summed up bluntly as it's wrong to be racist.

Let's Dance was a full throated endorsement of Aboriginal rights in Australia, and China Girl Trump's interracial relationships and satirizes Asian stereotypes as a way of condemning the west demeaning view of the East. These were messages of tolerance that everyone could get behind, miles away from the fascist flirtations

of the thin white Duke era. David also acted on his principles, becoming of the few artists to directly challenge the burgeoning MTV monolith on its questionable policy concerning videos by black artists. Nil Rogers had alerted David to the problems that many artists of color had getting mainstream play

for their music. The records Nile produced with Chic were perfectly in line with prevailing new wave of electropop sensibilities, yet they were automatically categorized as R and B and ignored by white stations who felt the music didn't fit their demo. It was musical prejudice. It didn't matter what they sounded like. Black songs were R and B and white songs were pop. This distinction carried over into MTVS early programming practices. MTV saw itself as a rock network,

and music by black artists wasn't considered rock enough. Even Michael Jackson wasn't immune to give his videos crossover appeal. He needed a Hollywood style epic with Three's Thriller or the guitar pyrotechnics of Eddie Van Halen on beat It. That same year, David halted an interview with an m t V VJ to ask point blank why they didn't play more black artists. The VJ offered a meek excuse, effectively saying that this music wouldn't resonate with audiences and

the flyover states. David didn't buy the argument. I'll tell you what the Isisley Brothers or Marvin Gay means to a black seventeen year old, he said, and surely he's part of America as well. Shouldn't it be a challenge to make the media far more integrated. It would be wrong to suggest that David forced anyone's hand or played a personal role in MTV's decision to broaden their playlists. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, change was inevitable,

but He's set an important example. But no amount of MTV plays could replicate the ground swell of publicity generated by a tour, especially the way David Bowie did them. He'd been away from the concert stage for five years, the longest stretch in his career. For Let's Dance, he launched the trek for the Ages, spanning sixteen countries over ninety six performances. It would be known as the Serious Moonlight Tour, own named for a delightfully nonsensical lyric and

Let's Dance. Not even David's rivals and the Stones could compete with such a gargantuan undertaking. It would become a definitive stadium event. Every show was sold out, with David playing to more than two and a half million people over the course of seven months. To prep, he trained like an athlete and started boxing obsessively, a significantly healthier alternative to the mounds of cocaine that had fueled prior tours, like the album it promoted, the serious Moonlight Tour was

designed to normalize David Bowie for a mass audience. As he said at the time, I was getting really piste off for being regarded as just a freak. This time, I won't be trying to put on a pose or a stance. You won't see weird ziggi or whatever. I was just gonna be me having a good time as best they can. That was my premise for this tour, to re represent myself. He played an active role in

every aspect of the production, including set design. A master stroke of modern minimalism, the stay, which was dominated by a large moonset piece and four enormous light columns affectionately dubbed the condoms. Weighing sixteen tons of piece. They set the mood for the career spanning setlist by bathing the arena and colored light. The band was styled and what could be best described as futurist tiki outfits, flushed with pastel zoot suits, wide brimmed hats, and the occasional sailor's cap.

The colors aimed to soothe and excite, transmitting sunshine and positive energy. David himself took the spotlight in a high cut jacket and bow tie, a masterclass in eighties style. He seemed to glow with health. David had effectively stopped doing drugs and barely even drank for most of the tour. He was a self professed good boy, cleaner than he'd been in years. His biggest vice with a cigarettes that

he chained smoked at all hours. Maybe he did a little line of blow every now and then with friends, but hey, he had a lot of friends. The tour attracted royals, politicians, movie stars, and titans of the entertainment world. David seemed to belong to everyone, and in a way he did. Yeah With Let's Dance, David Bowie had made the most accessible album of his life, a record everyone

could enjoy, certainly an admirable achievement. To some, it was a jubilant celebration after years of music mired in his own personal health scape. This wasn't the post apocalyptic holocaust of Diamond Dogs, or the coked out paranoia of Station a Station, or the emotional desolation of Low. For perhaps the first time on record, David Bowie was happy. Critic Charles Sharr Murray would rave that the record was quote a tribute to love and life that is as uncontrived

as anything he's ever done in his entire career. This album just goes straight to the heart of it. It's warm, strong, inspiring and useful. You should be ashamed to say you don't love it. Rolling Stone was a little more muted, calling it merely functional, but Mass Appeal had its drawbacks. Some were disappointed by the blindingly glossy sheen found on David's latest work. The concerns were summed up by critic Michael Watts, one of the few voices of outright descent

at the time. Bowie's new album seems to be a step sideways. He wrote, He's not doing anything particularly new, and I suspect for the first time ever, his fans are up there with him and he's not ahead of the game. In addition to happy, David could now be described with another word that was altogether new to him, safe, and from safe, it's a short journey to boring. On the album Diamond Dogs, David Bowie had painted a pretty bleak portrait of the year four then still a decade

in the future. He's sang of faceless forces, sucking thoughts out of u cranium and shooting up anything just to dull the pain of no tomorrow. But when finally arrived, it actually wasn't so bad. For a start, the overwhelming success of Let's Dance and the pact dates for the serious Moonlight Tour had made David seriously rich. For the first time in his life. He didn't have to worry about money, and he spent accordingly. Gone was the family

man Volvo and in its place a new Mercedes. He renovated his Manhattan apartment, painting in a vibrant red, and filled his new Swiss abode with art from London's finest galleries. Awards and honors poured in from all sides. His status as a bona fide MTV idol was cemented at the first ever Video Music Awards in four when the network presented him a coveted moon Man statue for the China

Girl visuals. His on stage charisma was so strong that the James Bond producer was considered casting him as a villain in the next Double O seven movie, a casting that tragically never materialized. David made the cover of Rolling Stone and was named Playboy's Man of the Year. Not tied to any single relationship, David was enthusiastically unattached. I've got a number of girlfriends that I see around the world, He'd say, I'm a bit sailor, like I suppose. Notably,

no mention of boyfriends. The bisexual relationships he's so publicly declared in his ziggy era now seemed to be a thing of the past. In the Rolling Stone cover story, he told journalist Kurt Loder that his homosexual dalliances were merely quote, youthful experimentation. Perhaps that's true. However, many you lauded David's coming out in the seventies felt a sense of betrayal, as if homosexuality or bisexuality had become inconvenient in the Reagan era, a time when aids the so

called gay play have further stigmatized the LGBTQ community. Some homosexual fans weren't bothered, believing that artists had no obligation to anything but their art, but others felt used to them. It was no different than MTV's reluctance to play black videos for fear of alienating Middle America. Being gay didn't play in the Heartland. The incident was indicative of David's

tricky maneuvering towards the middle of the road. The mainstream popularity of Let's Dance had given him so much, but it had also taken something away, something potent yet indefinable, danger, individuality, freakiness. For all of his career up to this point, David Bowie had challenged convention, gleefully dancing on the edge of social and cultural norms. Yes, he'd had some success in the seventies, but he remained at hard a fringe artist. To say he sold out with Let's Dance isn't fair

or even accurate. Yet something was irrevocably changed at least two fans who looked up to him as the patron saying of the weird, it's never pleasant when something that feels like your little secret becomes ubiquitous. It feels less personal, less precious, less special. It's human nature and iron clad rule of fandom. Bowie had been a comforting figure, summoned in countless teenage bedrooms with the spin of a record. Now is tanned face and perfectly quaffed blonde popolore made

the rounds on television every few minutes. He was a vision of hetero normalcy, or just plain old normalcy. What happened to daring to be different? There was an incident that occurred years earlier. It was the height of his ziggy androgyny, a time when he seems more alien than human. David asked the famous music producer about the final form he should take. How should I end up in a suit? The man responded, you can only be liberaci for so long. They both laughed, but it was true. For Bowie, a

suit was the last frontier. No more masquerades, no more masks, no more costumes, just a man in a suit. Too many fans, David's transition into a bronzed mtv ida would be his last major character shift. More than just his image, the rebelliousness that had fuelled his best work also seemed

to have deserted him, albeit temporarily. That had, after all, been what attracted David did the musician's life in the first place, But nearing his late thirties, there was little rebel against He was an obscenely rich rock star who spent his days skiing in the Alps with his adorable son before retiring to his exquisite home with one of any number of equally exquisite escorts. Life was good. Rather than falsify angst to fulfill any adolescent expectations, he chose

happiness and positivity. Wouldn't you Murtunely for fans, this had a somewhat disastrous effect on his musical output. His creative apathy is clear on his next album, Tonight. David made the record not because he had something to say, or even because he necessarily wanted to. For the first time in his career, he made the record for no other reason. Then it was time to make a record. E M I was anxious to capitalize on Let's Dance with an immediate follow up. They didn't much care what it was.

Apparently neither did David. Tonight was basically a covers album, but without the clear intention and quiet dignity of being a covers album. Five of the nine songs are covers. Three of these had originally been recorded by David's Berlin buddy Iggy Pop Don't Look Down, Neighborhood Threat, and Tonight. The latter was recast as a vaguely reggaeish duet with Tina Turner scrubbing every bit of Grit from Iggy's raw original.

Two of the four new songs on the album, Dancing with the Big Boys and Tumble and Twirl, were also co writes, with Iggy leading some of the wonder if the whole album was simply a scheme that just brings some cash to David's frequently broke friend. The track list is rounded out by a decidedly lackluster cover of the Beach Boys God Only Knows, and also an old soul number by Chuck Jackson called like Keep Forgetting. That left just two new originals solely penned by David, scraped together

from demos, Loving the Alien and Blue Gene. Both are high points of the album, but that's not saying much. In his defense, David had every right to be exhausted. It had been just a few months since wrapping the punishing serious Moonlight tour, and he probably would have rather been resting. The album's co producer, Hugh Pagum certainly seem to think so. He'd recall the Bowie's boredom during the sessions in Canada that spring was palpable. The public were

even less enthusiastic. It hit number one in the UK briefly with all of the advanced press, how could it not, But it vanished from the charts almost immediately, as if slinking away in shame. This was far from the transatlantic smash of Let's Dance, and the critics were quick to point it out. This album is a throwaway, rolling Stone, declared, and David Bowie knows it. He appeared almost apologetic while doing interviews to promote the record. In private, he referred

to it almost immediately as a bomb. Tonight was David's first major musical failure since The Laughing Gnome In in a sense, it flopped for much the same reason David had looked outward instead of inward for inspiration. I really liked the money I was making from the touring, he'd say, and it seemed obvious that the way that you make money is give people what they wanted. And the downside of that is that had just dried me up as an artist completely. More than that, he'd ceased to higher

collaborators who would push him. It was a tactical error common to many legacy artists of the sixties and seventies as they made their bumpy transition into the eighties. They tired young bucks who understood the new musical landscape. But these kids were too overawed by working with legends to offer constructive criticism and honest opinions. The results were generally tentative, unfocused, and in a word, bad. Hugh Pagem, no fan of the production work he did on tonight, summed it up best.

Who am I to say to Mr David Bowie that his songs suck? The strongest song on tonight is the Bowie original Blue Jean. It's an up tempo fifties pastiche the Bowie would jokingly referred to as quote a piece of sexist rock and roll about picking up the birds, taking a page from the same playbook Michael Jackson had used for Thriller. The single was launched with a twenty one minute short film called Jazz and for Blue Jean.

It was directed by Julian Temple, the man responsible for the notorious sex pistols mockumentary The Great Rock and Roll Swindle. David plays two characters in the clip. One is a appless Cockney nerd who attempts to impress a girl by introducing her to a wild and braddy rock star, also played by David. The plot is nothing revolutionary. The rock star steals the girl, but David's performance really sells it.

He plays it for laughs by poking funded himself and his career, slipping in numerous references to his drug use, hyperactive sex life, and of course, his music. I caught your tour in Berlin, Bowie the Nerd tells Bowie the Star, I thought they hung the music up too much on

light and trickery, bit over the top, don't you agree. Later, as the rocker makes off with this date, David the Nerd screams after him, your record sleeves are better than your songs in the case of tonight, this was certainly true. Julian Temple, who got to know Bowie closely as a friend over the years, would cite the short as an uncharacteristically revealing performance a rare moment when David Jones made

a public appearance instead of David Bowie. He played the shy guy with heart and compassion because at his essence, it was him. Temple would say, the ordinary version of himself that he plays in the film was the closest approximation of what David was actually like. It's the nearest thing to the real David that's ever appeared on screen. As far as the director was concerned, His near constant performance as David Bowie was a character that he based

on his brother Terry. Terry was the mad one. Literally, Temple would say, he was the wild one, the extrovert who devoured the underbelly of London. It wasn't David. Terry fed him all this fabulous stuff when David was still very young and impressionable, and he carried it with him throughout his life. Since the brothers last saw each other two years earlier, Terry had remained in Cane Hill's psychiatric hospital, his home for most of his adult life, despite David's

assurances he had and returned. On some level, Terry must have been used to his absences. David also didn't make it to his wedding day back in two He was busy playing his first ever gig as Ziggy Stardust, introducing his fantastical dream brother to the world. If Terry minded, he didn't show it. The marriage didn't last, and now he was alone in the psych ward. He kept the loneliness at bay by listening to his Kid Brothers albums on the cassette player. David had brought him on their

last visit. He was charming like David and well liked by the staff, often wandering around, singing and bumming cigarettes off the order lease. But whatever treatment Terry received wasn't helping. He fell in love with another patient, Wants. When she was discharged, their relationship came to an abrupt end. Terry was heartbroken and his underlying depression worsened. Just after Christmas,

he'd had enough. Terry climbed over the hospital wall and trudged through the snow until he reached a local train station. Hearing the rumble of the oncoming London Express train, he put his head on the tracks. The icy metal vibrated against the skull. The headlight appeared in the distance. Terry turned his head in the opposite direction, but the intensifying shakes and ear splitting whistle told him that death was getting close. At the last minute, he rolled out of

the way and down a muney embankment. Two railway workers had seen the whole thing and tried to tackle him. Before they could stop him, Terry shoved fistfuls of sleeping pills into his mouth. He lost consciousness before the paramedics arrived. He awoke in the same hospital where he had been treated two years before, when he tried to take his own life by jumping out a window. The last time David had appeared, Maybe he would again. Terry demanded that

he be driven home to his mother Peggy's house. David will be waiting for me, he said. Instead, he was taken back to Cane Hill's psych ward. He went back to the station two weeks later and waited for the inbound train. This time, he didn't roll away. David got a call that morning from his mother Peggy, telling him that Terry was gone. He was David's immediate response is unrecorded, but not difficult to imagine. His hero, his protector, his muse,

his biggest influence, his big brother was dead. The loss was incalculable. There were eleven mourners at Terry's funeral. David wasn't among them. He stayed away, fearful of turning the service into a media circus. In his place, he sent a bouquet of flowers with a note that read, You've seen more things than we can imagine, but all these moments will be lost like tears washed away by the rain. God bless you, David. He hunkered down at his home

in Switzerland to recover. It took some time. He spent much of early plotting his next move, living a life that bordered on reclusive. As a friend would note, David did nothing by halves when he dropped out. He vanished, stunned by Terry's death and disoriented by the unfulfilling experience of making Tonight. He didn't seem to know what to do next. He told one confidante that he was facing an artistic crisis. Did he even want to be a

musician anymore? He regretted making the nakedly commercial Let's Dance, telling friends that it was a cop out. The self loathing left him guilt ridden, and he was unable to sleep at night. I was better off before, he moaned. At Least I kept up the fight. I had fantastic luck now what. He's seriously considered abandoning music in favor of the visual arts that had intrigued him as a student. Back at Bromley Tech, he painted and worked on a

long jest stating film script. He'd try anything except making a new David Bowie album. It just didn't interest him. Director Julian Temple was able to coax him out of his funk with the role in the movie Absolute Beginners, a period piece set in the late fifties, and the same Soho club Land He'd Proud with Terry as a timid schoolboy out way past his bedtime. David was moved by the project and composed two new songs for the soundtrack.

To record them, he'd assembled a group of session players, including guitarist Kevin Armstrong, bassist Matthew Seligman and drummer Neil Conti. At some point during the sessions in the spring, he casually of them about a benefit gig he agreed to do, but his usual touring band all at other commitments. It's just a little gig, will you do it? He asked. The little gig was live aid, an event witnessed by

a fifth the planet Earth. It was the brandchild of Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof, who had been moved to tears by a BBC news report documenting the Ethiopian famine that would kill upwards of a million people. Geldof and organized Britain's Biggest Acts to record a charity single called Do They Know It's Christmas? Over holiday season, but Bowie had been unable to participate this time. He wouldn't let Geldof down. Once Bowie signed on, other big names practically

tripped over themselves the follow suit. David wanted to do more than simply perform at the concert. That's what everyone else was doing, how boring. His first choice was a sing a duet with Mick Jagger from Space. That's right, Space, you know, the final Frontier. David actually had someone call NASA to see if they'd fly one of them up into orbit to duet with the other back down on Earth. Hey, he's made your tom after all, and it's for charity.

Someone eventually had to break it to David that NASA didn't rent out their space shuttles, so they moved on to a plan B, a transatlantic duet via satellite with mixed singing from Live aids American Stage in Philadelphia and David at Wembley For a song. They chose Bob Marley's One Love, thinking that the loping, laid back reggae beat

would suit the half second satellite delay. David and mixed management teams organized the conference call to try it out, with the two superstars swapping lines back and forth, Sadly, the technology wasn't good enough to make it work. The meeting quickly devolved into David and Mick, forever rivals, trying to outsing each other in the boardroom as their respective

handlers looked on awkwardly. They continue the showdown that evening at a nightclub, where they engaged in a hilariously intense dance battle, two peacocks, both pushing forty, competing for the attention of every female in the place. The night on the town inspired a new idea, although less ambitious than a space due they'd record a cover of the motown

chestnut dancing in the street. The Rolling Stone was a diva from the moment, as Limo pulled up at the session, demanding numerous retakes and generally prancing around like Nick Jagger, But their competition yielded good results as the two handed it up on the vocals. The whole ridiculous recording reaches an even higher level of absurdity thanks to the music video made up on the spot in just a few hours shortly after leaving the recording studio. There's nothing high

concept about it. The pair are literally dancing in the street. The public may be expected something a little better from these twin titans of British popular music, or at least something better than a karaoke level singing performance and I clearly improvised promo video. Initially intended to be a one off broadcast only once at Live Aid, the response was good enough to merit a single release, which raised badly

needed funds for famine relief. With the recording out of the way, it was time to focus on his live act. The preparation was pretty spotty. David was busy filming the Jim Henson Children's Fantasy Labyrinth, could only afford three afternoons to rehearse with his untested eight piece band, which now included technopop prodigy Thomas Dolby. For a while, they couldn't

even figure out what they were gonna play. David's assistant, Coco Schwab, arrived at their first rehearsal with a computer print out of all two hundred of David's songs for him to browse. It proved overwhelming, and he kept changing his mind. They were still tinkering with the set list at their last rehearsal. When it was over, they still didn't know what they were gonna play. Bowie would figure it out later. His parting words to his band were be lucky and where blue. They would need all the

luck they could get. There would be no dress rehearsal at the venue or even a sound check. They've never even had a chance to play their four songs set all the way through. They were going in cold July go time. Live Aid organizers had assembled the biggest airlifts since the Falklands War. David's chopper delivered him to the makeshift landing strip on a cricket field behind Wembley. A

wedding reception was taking place nearby on the field. Bowie stopped to wish them well, apologize for the noise, and pose for some pictures, a quick, lighthearted pit stop before performing for a billion people. He arrived just in time to see Freddie Mercury stride off stage, secure in the knowledge that he and Queen had stolen the show. Thank God, that's over, he screamed, before downing a double vodka. Freddie and David were thrilled to see on another and they

chatted for a few minutes. It was a playful, intimate atmosphere backstage, with everyone similarly famous, an odd sense of normalcy prevailed. Elton John wore a chef's hat and man the barbecue. David and Paul McCartney engaged in a faux boxing match for the camera. Bob Geldof, the Man of the Hour, was doubled over with a muscle spasm trying to crack his own back on a flight case. David

came over and gave him a quick massage. After greeting his friends and fellow rock star brethren, David retired to the shared dressing room a little more than a cracked mirror folding table and a child's makeup box. He had to freshen up and change, and it was immaculate, double breasted blue suit. It dated back to the Diamond Dogs era over a decade earlier, and he took great delight in telling all an earshot how well it's still fit. He looked good. Freddie, Mercury's boyfriend, had done his hair

the night before. Just before walking on stage, Freddie gave him a once over. If I didn't know you better, dear, I'd have to eat you, he said with a wink. The compliment was still ringing in David's ears as he stepped through the canvas flap and onto the stage. It was just after seven fifteen Thomas Dolby hit the intro for station, the station's TV C one five. David smiled, waved, dipped into his trademark bow legged stance and got it rolling.

So far, so good, then into Rebel, Rebel a little fast. David held on for Dear Life as a song lurched forward at breakneck speed. What would you expect from a band who rehearsed the grand total three times? He followed it up with modern love before sending it home with his show stopper heroes. He dedicated the song to his son, and to all the children, and to the children of

the world. As he looked out at the eighty thousand of static fans, many of whom were moved to tears, he must have rethought any ideas of musical Ironman come on, He'd missed this, He'd miss them. When the song was over, there was only one thing left to do, take a bow off. The record is a production of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are Noel Brown and shan Ty Tone.

The supervising producers are Taylor Kogn and Tristan McNeil. The show was researched, written and hosted by me Jordan run talk and edited, scored and sound designed by Taylor she coogn and Tristan McNeil, with additional music by Evan Tire. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,