David Bowie was unabashedly himself, in all his weird ways, both on stage and in interviews. Let’s look at a few examples of interviews where David Bowie was either weird, off the cuff, or downright confrontational.
BBC, 1964
Always outspoken, David Bowie made his debut on television for something other than his music. Rather, in 1964, Bowie appeared on a BBC segment for the show Tonight as a teenager. The segment covered the emergence of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men, which was founded by Bowie and his young contemporaries at school.
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“Well I think we’re all fairly tolerant,” said Bowie, then referred to as Davey Jones. “But for the last two years we’ve had comments like ‘Darling!’ and ‘Can I carry your handbag?’ thrown at us, and I think it just has to stop now.”
It’s hard to tell if the organization was formed as a joke, or if Bowie was trying to get people to think of how pointless and stupid their strict adherence to gender roles was at the time. Either way, it was quite a strange (but fascinating) introduction to the young man who would later become David Bowie.
‘The Dick Cavett Show’, 1974
This is definitely a weird one. It’s also a bit of a sad one, considering Bowie was dealing with crippling addiction to drugs at the time. Bowie appeared on The Dick Cavett Show in 1974, noticably gaunt, white, and clearly struggling to get through the interview.
The clip is a hard watch. However, thankfully, Bowie made a move to Berlin shortly after this interview, along with his pal Iggy Pop. The two got sober there, and Bowie wrote and recorded his Berlin trilogy of albums that are among his greatest career works.
MTV, 1983
This example of David Bowie getting weird in interviews isn’t exactly “weird.” Moreover, it was a great example of how little interest Bowie had in being a pleasant, easygoing rock star or following the status quo. When something needed to be said, he said it. And one great example is this 1983 interview that he did with MTV, where he famously called out the then-young broadcasting company for not playing music videos created by black artists.
In the clip, Bowie puts the interviewer, Goodman, on the spot.
“Having watched MTV over the past few months, it’s a solid enterprise with a lot going for it,” said Bowie. “I’m just floored that by the fact that there’s so few black artists featured on it. Why is that?”
Goodman, trying to save face, tries to rationalize that black artists might not be well-received by many places in the United States, particularly in the Midwest.
“I’ll tell you what, maybe The Isley Brothers or Marvin Gaye means something to a black 17-year-old,” Bowie replied. “And surely he’s part of America as well. Do you not find that it’s a frightening predicament to be in? Is it not possible [that] it should be a conviction of the station to be fair?”
What a legend.
Photo by White/Sunday People/Mirrorpix/Getty Images
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