Bowie: The Man Who Changed the World

David Bowie has an announcement to make.

Let's now go over live by satellite

to beautiful downtown Burbank in Los Angeles.

It's nice to see you, David. You look well.

- What color is your hair? - Which bit?

The center bit at the top above where your nose would be.

Well, what color is it look?

Well, it looks a bit something out of the end of Straw Dogs.

Something out of the end of Straw Dogs.

You've got an announcement to make to us all, David.

You are changing your plans for the future,

and you've got something up your sleeve for 1976?

Yes. Um...

I'm touring,

but I'm coming back to England in May to, uh...

play shows and, uh...

look at you and look at England.

- And be there, be English. - Again?

Well, as always, but English in England.

What's brought you back? Are you short of money,

or are you short of the feeding of live audience a bit?

I'm short of England more than anything else.

What, why? You do know that the England you left two years ago

is not the England you are going to come back to.

Yeah, well, this Thursday is nothing like last Thursday,

but it's just as important. I'd miss it if it wasn't after Wednesday.

You know that the pop scene at this end,

the pop world has changed somewhat since you left?

No.

- Have you heard of the Bay City Rollers? - Yes.

Well, you know that they are appealing to a kind of large,

mass-hysterical audience of young people who wave a lot of stuff around?

Now, I wonder what kind of audience you are going to come back to face.

I don't know, what do you think?

You may have to create a whole new scene for yourself.

No.

Can't qualify that, I'll just come back and play my songs.

- One, two, three. - Yeah!

Few musicians have pushed the boundaries

quite as spectacularly as David Bowie.

During a career spanning half a century, he was an innovator unlike any other.

I've been doing this for a whole century.

Uhm, and I'm really very comfortable doing it.

It feels... It's very fulfilling.

Pop star, composer, showman, actor, producer,

David Bowie symbolized versatility like few musicians could.

The constant evolution of his style, sound, and artistic persona

had a colossal influence on popular culture.

- David, hi, nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you.

How very, very good to be here tonight.

I can't quite believe how much rubbish I've written in my life.

'Cause you know when you go through all the tapes,

you find all the things you never wanted to release.

And you kind of find out, it becomes very apparent why.

So... But some of it it's just too funny, so I have to put it out.

He brought a theatricality to the pop world

which gave him a very strong image.

He thought very theatrically,

and he thought about presentation.

It just won't stop.

My personal need to entertain has changed a lot.

I think when I was young, I was about creating theatricality,

and creating a more artificial kind of parallel reality on stage.

And as I've gotten older, especially over the last five or six years,

I've really fallen into the comfort of actually just interpreting the songs.

If you want to cause a stir,

then wear a dress at a press conference in Texas

which is what David did.

He looked weird.

Everything about him was right to be a star,

against all odds in a way.

As far as style is concerned,

I don't really think that I want to have a style.

And sort of, "Oh yeah, that's a David Bowie sound",

I'd much prefer to be sort of a free agent,

and move from one thing to another as my enthusiasms take me.

When you thought about what to wear on this tour,

did you think of what it would look like translated onto thousands of fans?

I just wanted something very simple, you know, simple outline.

- Yeah? - So, what we're wearing tonight.

The landscape of fashion has changed,

but it's changed because of people like David Bowie.

That concept of androgyny,

and the science-fiction look, and the colors, the dyed hair.

This was all red meat to designers.

Clearly, David was a genius in that area as well.

When you come back to England, you're not presumably coming back

with the glamor and glittery Ziggy Stardust thing, are you?

Uh-huh.

Are you coming back as that?

Well, I don't know yet. I haven't even worked on it.

I think it'll probably...

It'll be a lot more spontaneous.

You haven't planned your wardrobe? You haven't planned a figure?

You haven't planned an image, whatever that may mean?

I think the image I may adopt may well be, me.

I'm sort of inventing me at the moment.

You mean reinventing you yourself?

Yeah, self-invented.

From the waist upwards?

- Yes, jolly uncomfortable. - What you're going to wear?

Are you going to wear a little suit, a straight suit or--

I know what songs I'm gonna sing, which is the most important thing.

David Bowie didn't just entertain.

He intrigued and provoked.

After 50 years in the spotlight,

the legendary musician somehow managed to retain a sense of mystery.

I never really thought that I could do it,

but in a way, my band egged me on to kind of be like this, you know.

And so, it's been less and less theater, more and more band and sing, sing, sing.

Along with The Beatles and Elvis Presley,

Bowie obliterated musical boundaries and defined what pop music should be.

Testing, we're back to rock and roll.

One, two, three, four, one, two.

We're talking about one of the most influential 20th-century icons of all.

Don't forget to tip your waitresses.

He left a permanent mark on more than one generation.

People I've talked to about you here

say you're a very personal person, if you know what I mean?

- People who go out with me? - No, to work with you.

I thought you said people who go out with me.

You're a very...

not secretive, but personal, keep things to yourself.

- Quiet. Quite quiet, yes. - Do you think you're shy?

No.

No, I'm not really shy. I'm just a bit quiet.

Do you think if you didn't keep things to yourself,

people wouldn't be surprised at what you did next?

I've never really thought about that. I'll let you know after the show.

- Okay. - I have to do a show.

Come with me?

I think he got to where he wanted to be

which was a kind of Lennon plateau, and it doesn't get any higher than that.

I don't believe that there've been really any major artists

that have had the creative portfolio that David had.

Quite rightly, you would say that The Beatles

affected the way young people thought.

And I think the same with Bowie.

Here is one of the people

who made the greatest difference in our world in our lifetime.

Sounds like a mighty big claim, but it's true.

It took years of work for David Robert Jones

to emerge as one of the most influential figures in music.

Growing up in the austerity of post-war Britain,

he came of age in the swinging '60s.

He was born in the Brixton suburbs of London in 1947

to mother Margaret and Bernardo's charity worker, Haywood John Jones.

David invited me down to his parent's basement.

There I was, at 14, with this kind of man from another planet,

as far as I was concerned.

It sounds silly now, but I'd never been to a working class house.

I was in culture shock, but that was my own limited upbringing.

His house, which was tiny,

and the two main seats of the parents who were there both facing the television.

And I remember the mother made us some tuna fish sandwiches,

but the parents didn't speak.

I'd never been into such a cold house. This is what shocked me.

I'd never visited a house where people didn't laugh

and make merry and be joyous, because it was just...

It was like a walking around with cement blocks on your shoulders.

I met his dad. It was sort of pretty bourgeois.

People say he was working class, but I don't think so.

He didn't struck that way to me.

David said to me, and I'll never forget this...

He said, "Whatever it takes, I want to get out of this place.

I never ever wanna grow up here."

David was introduced to rock and roll at an early age

through his elder brother Terry's record collection.

The recurring theme of mental instability in Bowie's early work

connects to Terry, who was institutionalized with schizophrenia

and committed suicide in 1985.

He did go and see his brother in the mental hospital.

I didn't realize the enormity of the impact on the family, actually.

And after that, he never mentioned his brother.

Well, I never met the brother 'cause he was institutionalized then,

but I did meet his mum, and she was just a very average lady.

I feel now quite sorry for the mother.

She was very stiff, very starchy.

You had no chance of getting to know her properly.

She was very reserved.

Quite often, later on, several years later,

the mother would be ringing up while David was starting to get more and more famous

and he often didn't want to speak to her.

So, Angie, of course, being the perfect hostess,

would be the buffer to say, "Oh, he's busy," or "Can't make it."

So, I don't know that he was that close with his parents.

By the time he was six,

the Jones family had moved to the suburban streets of Bromley in Kent.

David attended Burnt Ash Primary School,

and showed aptitude in singing and playing the recorder.

- It's inspiring how he went to our school. - I think you're possibly right.

He's the most famous ex-pupil of the school.

Twenty, thirty years ago, he was thought of as quite radical.

David Bowie appeared in the film Labyrinth.

Personally, I didn't understand him.

David Jones was recognized at school

as much for his vividly artistic dance

as he was for his vocals and flair for instruments.

I don't recall anyone having lessons.

You just listened to your records, if you could get any from America,