Speaker 1: Off the Record is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Late in the evening of January seven, two thirteen, David
Speaker 1: Bowie received an email from his producer Tony Visconti. Two
Speaker 1: hours and thirty minutes to go, it read. David grinned
Speaker 1: at the screen and fired off a quick response, Now
Speaker 1: it's two hours and twenty six minutes. The old friends
Speaker 1: were counting down the minutes to the release of David's
Speaker 1: latest single, where Are We Now, his first new music
Speaker 1: in a decade since his heart attack on stage at
Speaker 1: a German festival in two thousand four, he'd effectively abandoned
Speaker 1: his role as a public figure. That was the word
Speaker 1: on the street at least, and David was happy to
Speaker 1: keep it that way. His silence stoked rumors that his
Speaker 1: days as a rock star were permanently behind him. There
Speaker 1: were no tours, no albums, no songs, no major in
Speaker 1: views for the latter half of the two thousands. David
Speaker 1: Bowie was retired. Instead, he reverted back to David Jones,
Speaker 1: a father, husband, and anonymous New Yorker. In just a
Speaker 1: few hours, that would all change. Bowie was about to
Speaker 1: make his comeback, though only a few people on the
Speaker 1: planet knew it. He'd recorded a new album entirely in secret,
Speaker 1: going to heroic lengths to keep it under wraps. It
Speaker 1: was like something out of a spy movie. Code names
Speaker 1: were employed, nondisclosure agreements ensure that David's skeleton crew kept
Speaker 1: their mouths shut. Everything was on a need to know basis,
Speaker 1: and consequently, very few people knew a thing. Not even
Speaker 1: the head of David's label, Sony, was aware of David's
Speaker 1: plans until just a few weeks before his big announcement. Naturally,
Speaker 1: the exact was thrilled. A new Bowie album was always
Speaker 1: cause for celebration. But what about the PR campaign, he asked.
Speaker 1: Publicity pushes require months of prep work and strategizing. There
Speaker 1: is no PR campaign. David replied, We're just going to
Speaker 1: drop it on the eighth of January. That's it. The
Speaker 1: countdown had commenced five four three two one. Where Are
Speaker 1: We Now? Was quietly uploaded to iTunes. Just after midnight
Speaker 1: in New York, a video for the melancholic Piano ballad
Speaker 1: was added to YouTube with no fanfare. The only notice
Speaker 1: was a small message on David's mostly dormant website. It
Speaker 1: announced both the song and an upcoming album called The
Speaker 1: Next Day, due out two months later in March. David
Speaker 1: and Tony had their eyes glued to their computers for
Speaker 1: a few minutes, nothing happened. Then the avalanche began. Message
Speaker 1: boards melted down, Twitter went into overdrive, blogs blew up.
Speaker 1: TV news programs treated the event like a musical second coming.
Speaker 1: The shock was universal. There had been nothing from David
Speaker 1: Bowie for years, and then boom, like the bolt of
Speaker 1: lightning that had once graced his face, he was back.
Speaker 1: Not only was he back, he had an entire album,
Speaker 1: the announcement, the song, the art, the video, all without
Speaker 1: a single leak, not even a hint to the world
Speaker 1: at large. Remember this was almost a full year before
Speaker 1: Beyonce's surprise album dropped. No one had seen anything like this.
Speaker 1: It was like magic, as if he'd conjured everything out
Speaker 1: of thin air instantaneously. There's no other way to say it.
Speaker 1: David went viral. On one hand, it was a personal first.
Speaker 1: On the other, he had been perfecting the art of
Speaker 1: herality for nearly fifty years. Just look at his album covers,
Speaker 1: TV appearances, videos, magazine interviews and fashion statements. Now, by
Speaker 1: harnessing the infrastructure of the Internet that had been so
Speaker 1: quick the champion David had crafted the perfect moment for
Speaker 1: the era. The fame David had sung about in nine
Speaker 1: had drastically altered by two thousand thirteen, mutated and magnified
Speaker 1: exponentially through camera phones, social media, and the seven digital
Speaker 1: news cycle. Celebrities were scrutinized like never before and stripped
Speaker 1: of every ounce of privacy. The easiest defense was to
Speaker 1: embrace it and share every detail of daily minutia. The
Speaker 1: thought of hiding something huge like an album drop from fans,
Speaker 1: not to mention getting away with it was unfathomable. In
Speaker 1: David's early days, he'd been told to act like a star,
Speaker 1: even though at the time he was just a nobody. Now,
Speaker 1: actual stars were going out of their way to broadcast
Speaker 1: their own normality, making themselves relatable and accessible, allowing people
Speaker 1: to see themselves in Where's the Fun In that The
Speaker 1: illusion was gone. It was antithetical the David's whole m O.
Speaker 1: I always had a repulsive need to be something more
Speaker 1: than human. He once said, I felt very puny as
Speaker 1: a human. I thought, the hell with that. I want
Speaker 1: to be superhuman. The surprise release of Where Are We
Speaker 1: Now was both an act of rebellion and the declaration
Speaker 1: that he was still superhuman. Stars were meant to project
Speaker 1: an aura of otherness that transcended the every day. In
Speaker 1: spite of this intrusive new world, David's mystique remained intact. Plus,
Speaker 1: it was fun. How often does a global headline make
Speaker 1: you smile? To top it off, it was David's birthday.
Speaker 1: He was sixty six years old. Three years later, he'd
Speaker 1: release more music on his birthday. This time he would
Speaker 1: be his last. Hello and welcome to Off the Record,
Speaker 1: the show that goes beyond the songs and into the
Speaker 1: hearts and minds of rock's greatest legends. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jordan Runtug. We've come to the end of our season
Speaker 1: on the life, or rather lives of David Bowie. Today's
Speaker 1: episode starts and ends with a birthday, a former pagan
Speaker 1: ritual that has evolved over millennia into an annual celebration
Speaker 1: of life. This seemed like an appropriate finale. We begin
Speaker 1: in when David re entered public life after a lengthy
Speaker 1: absence with Where Are We Now, his first new song
Speaker 1: in a decade, and we'll end with Black Star, his
Speaker 1: final album, released on his sixty ninth birthday in January
Speaker 1: of It's a record that many believed was his parting
Speaker 1: gift as he faced down the illness that would claim
Speaker 1: his body two days later. Intentional or not, it's a
Speaker 1: fitting goodbye, one that high lights his creative daring and
Speaker 1: his fearless spirit. Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, Major Tom,
Speaker 1: the Cracked Actor, a ladin Sane. David Bowie had many
Speaker 1: guys is over the years, but for much of the
Speaker 1: late two thousands in early he was mostly known as
Speaker 1: a ghost. He was a fleeting apparition on the sidewalks
Speaker 1: of Manhattan, his home for the majority of his adult life.
Speaker 1: Bowie spottings usually took a moment to register because he
Speaker 1: looked so aggressively normal, though common sense would suggest otherwise.
Speaker 1: On some level, people expected him to stroll the Soho
Speaker 1: streets dressed in a silver suit, orange hair and glad glitter. Instead,
Speaker 1: he was a middle aged man in a taddy gray hoodie,
Speaker 1: skinny jeans, and work boots. More often than not, he
Speaker 1: was doing mundane things like grocery shopping at the corner store,
Speaker 1: or struggling to hail a cab, or sweating it out
Speaker 1: out at a local gym. He was so successful at
Speaker 1: being low key that he mostly managed to evade the
Speaker 1: dreaded paparazzi. On the rare occasions when he was snapped,
Speaker 1: he had a tendency to slip the photographer the finger.
Speaker 1: A true New Yorker, he'd stopped speaking to the press
Speaker 1: and for a time stopped contacting his friends, including Tony Visconti,
Speaker 1: prior to his heart attack on two thousand four is
Speaker 1: Reality Tour. They planned to record not one, but three
Speaker 1: new albums, including an electronic a side project sort of
Speaker 1: a techno tin machine, but then the subject was dropped.
Speaker 1: He gave up his share of the studio they rented.
Speaker 1: He just wasn't interested in writing music anymore. He told
Speaker 1: one friend that he didn't have anything to say. I
Speaker 1: just need some downtime, he insisted. He was fed up
Speaker 1: with the music industry and no longer wished to participate.
Speaker 1: When a plaque was erected at London to honor the
Speaker 1: site where the Ziggy Stardust covered was shot, David was
Speaker 1: nowhere to be found. He turned down repeated request to
Speaker 1: represent Queen and Country at the Olympics in London, where
Speaker 1: he was asked to perform heroes. Even the blog on
Speaker 1: his personal website went without update for years. While living
Speaker 1: in Berlin. Decades earlier, David had told a friend, I
Speaker 1: became a rock star. It's what I do, but it's
Speaker 1: not my whole life. Clearly he retained the sentiment. In
Speaker 1: the New millennium. Many would cite his heart attack as
Speaker 1: the reason for his public retreat. Rumors circulated that David
Speaker 1: was dreadfully ill, and news outlets had their ow bits
Speaker 1: ready to roll. The Flaming Lips even released a song
Speaker 1: inn called is David Bowie Dying? David's friends denied it,
Speaker 1: claiming that he was planning a step back even before
Speaker 1: his health scare. In the midst of the reality tour,
Speaker 1: David told pianist Mike Garson at to this, I'm going
Speaker 1: to just be a father and live a normal life.
Speaker 1: Now that David was happily married to wife Aman and
Speaker 1: raising young daughter Lexi, the cons of fame finally outweighed
Speaker 1: the pros the scale and steadily tipping for years. In
Speaker 1: the beginning, fame was a means to an end, away
Speaker 1: to get the resources to create as he saw fit.
Speaker 1: Simply put, fame was freedom these days, it was oppressive.
Speaker 1: Aside from scoring prime concert tickets or a good table
Speaker 1: at a restaurant, fame was, to use David's words, a
Speaker 1: pain in the ass, so he opted out. In a sense.
Speaker 1: His heart attack, relatively minor as far as courtiac matters go,
Speaker 1: was like Bob Dylan's mythical motorcycle crash in nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: after which he was barely seen in public for a
Speaker 1: year and a half. The severity of the accident is debatable,
Speaker 1: but it had given the sixties poet laureate an excuse
Speaker 1: to stop rest and reassess and raised his family and
Speaker 1: the serenity of the Catskill Mountains. David followed Dylan's lead,
Speaker 1: purchasing a sixty two acre estate near the Upstate town
Speaker 1: of Woodstock. He'd been captivated by what he called the
Speaker 1: spirituality of the region while recording Heathen in two thousand one.
Speaker 1: I love mountains, he once said. I'm a capricorn. I
Speaker 1: was born to be gallivanting on a peak somewhere. When
Speaker 1: I got up there, I flipped at how beautiful it is.
Speaker 1: There's a barrenness and a sturdiness and the rugged terrain
Speaker 1: that draws me Most of his time was spent in
Speaker 1: his New York apartment building, a former chocolate factory on
Speaker 1: Lafayette Street in downtown Manhattan. His fifty square foot home
Speaker 1: was packed with books, most purchased down the street from
Speaker 1: McNally Jackson his favorite bookshop. It was history stuff, mainly
Speaker 1: the favorite of middle aged men everywhere. David deva hour
Speaker 1: and everything he could find on the topic, often finishing
Speaker 1: a book a day. When he wasn't reading, he was
Speaker 1: painting or making charcoal sketches, drawing inspiration from the mini
Speaker 1: museum of modern art that filled his living room. He
Speaker 1: wasn't precious about it. He'd fallen out of love with
Speaker 1: one piece, a large metal sculpture, and he indulged his
Speaker 1: daughter's childlike whims to beat it with a hammer. He
Speaker 1: doated on his daughter, taking her for walks and proudly
Speaker 1: attending her school functions. But he also liked his own company.
Speaker 1: I've never actually been bored, he once said. Looking out
Speaker 1: a window and watching people is quite enough to keep
Speaker 1: me occupied for half an hour. His quiet existence left
Speaker 1: him fulfilled in a way that rock stardom never had.
Speaker 1: David's more of a home body than I am Imman
Speaker 1: admitted at the time, at least I go to parties
Speaker 1: once in a while. David's long nights were clearly over.
Speaker 1: Once he called the front desk of his apartment comp
Speaker 1: X to complain that his neighbor was blasting music too loud. Granted,
Speaker 1: the neighbor in question was Courtney Love, but it was
Speaker 1: nine am and she was listening to Fleet with Max
Speaker 1: Rumors and a volume she claims was quite respectful. Relations
Speaker 1: with other neighbors were warmer. Most remembered, David is very
Speaker 1: polite and a pure gentleman. One day he got stuck
Speaker 1: in the building's elevator. A teenaged boy who lived down
Speaker 1: the hall tried to raise his spirits by singing, here
Speaker 1: am I sitting in a tin can far above the
Speaker 1: world down the elevator shaft. David saw the humor and
Speaker 1: perked up. When he did leave the house. It was
Speaker 1: often at dawn. He cherished as early morning strolls, relishing
Speaker 1: what he once called the city's magical transfer of power
Speaker 1: from the architectural to the human. Sometimes he'd get a
Speaker 1: hearty yo bowie from a local, but more often than
Speaker 1: not he was left alone. He frequented the dusty record
Speaker 1: shops in Greenwich Village in search of rare vinyl. Fans
Speaker 1: thumbing through the Bowie section were sometimes stunned the spot
Speaker 1: the man himself across the aisle, just another great diver.
Speaker 1: He was known to get presciutto di Parma sandwiches and
Speaker 1: a bombologni at a neighborhood Italian grocery store. When he
Speaker 1: wasn't feeling that, he got a chicken sandwich with watercrest
Speaker 1: and tomatoes from Olives on Prince Street. The smell of
Speaker 1: freshly baked chocolate chip cookies sent his sweet tooth into overdrive,
Speaker 1: and he usually grabbed one of those two. He was
Speaker 1: a regular at Cafe Reggio, an ancient coffee bar where
Speaker 1: he could be seen sipping a cappuccino outside and writing
Speaker 1: in his ever present notebook. Just up the street was
Speaker 1: Washington Square Park, David's favorite place in the city, a
Speaker 1: haven for generations of self proclaimed freaks. At one time.
Speaker 1: You could have heard Woody Guthrie singing there, or Alan
Speaker 1: Ginsberg read poetry. Just a few blocks away. It was
Speaker 1: a Electric Ladies studios where he'd cut fame his first
Speaker 1: American number one all those years before the song had
Speaker 1: been a meditation on the shallowness of show business notoriety.
Speaker 1: These days, he was happy to leave it all behind
Speaker 1: his appreciation for art of all kinds and never wavered.
Speaker 1: I love seeing new theater, he told one reporter who
Speaker 1: managed to snag a brief quote. I love seeing new bands,
Speaker 1: art shows, everything I get everywhere, very quietly, he added,
Speaker 1: and never above fourteen Street, New York's official demarcation point
Speaker 1: between the bohemian and the establishment. He caught art house
Speaker 1: films at the Angelica Theater, sometimes sneaking in the multiple
Speaker 1: movies if he felt like it. It's so easy, he'd marvel.
Speaker 1: His norm core attire and newly gray hair eliminated the
Speaker 1: need for any type of the skies. But to be
Speaker 1: extra cautious, he sometimes carried around a Greek language newspaper
Speaker 1: to convince passers by that he was just a Greek
Speaker 1: tourist who happened to look an awful lot like David Bowie.
Speaker 1: It worked like a charm. A friend of his, who
Speaker 1: it should be noted, was not famous, once gushed at
Speaker 1: length about an art exhibit he'd recently seen. The friend
Speaker 1: urged David to go see it, before stopping himself Oh,
Speaker 1: you can never go there, there's too many people. David
Speaker 1: gave a sly smile and said, oh, you'd be surprised
Speaker 1: the places I'm able to go. He was never reclusive,
Speaker 1: a fact that spared him the sad fade of people
Speaker 1: like Greta Garbow or J. D. Salinger, whose passion for
Speaker 1: privacy had the unfortunate effect of drawing even more attention
Speaker 1: to themselves. Instead, David hid in plain sight. He attended
Speaker 1: charity gallas and fashion events with a man cutting a
Speaker 1: dapper but silent figure as they walked the red carpet
Speaker 1: arm in arm. In two thousand nine, he attended the
Speaker 1: premiere for Moon, a feature film directed by his son Zoe,
Speaker 1: now going by the more conventional name Duncan Jones. David
Speaker 1: also gave a handful of performances, all one offs where
Speaker 1: he's sang just two or three numbers. The first on
Speaker 1: stage endeavor following his heart attack was at the Fashion
Speaker 1: Rocks event in September of two thousand five. For reasons
Speaker 1: known only to himself, he came dressed in a bandaged
Speaker 1: arm and a black eye. He seemed uncharacteristically nervous as
Speaker 1: he's sang life on Mars with just piano accompaniment. Perhaps
Speaker 1: he was gun shy after the dramatic end of his
Speaker 1: last show where he wound up in the hospital. He
Speaker 1: chilled out later in the evening when he performed two
Speaker 1: songs with one of his favorite new bands, Arcade Fire.
Speaker 1: He must have enjoyed himself, because a week later he
Speaker 1: climbed on stage at their Central Park gig to help
Speaker 1: do a twosong encore. Then and may have two thousand six,
Speaker 1: David paid tribute to Pink Floyd founder Sid Barrett by
Speaker 1: joining the band's guitarist David Gilmore on stage in London
Speaker 1: for two songs. In addition to being a formative musical influence,
Speaker 1: Sid's abandonment of fame in favor of an elusive suburban
Speaker 1: existence surely must have resonated with David. Six months later,
Speaker 1: on November nine, two thousand and six, he did a
Speaker 1: three song set at to Keep a Child Alive benefit
Speaker 1: at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom. He played wild as the
Speaker 1: Wind Fantastic Voyage and also changes as a duet with
Speaker 1: Alicia Keys. There was brief talk of a proper comeback
Speaker 1: show at a New York festival he was curating in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, but it ultimately came to nothing. I'm
Speaker 1: not thinking of touring, he said in New York Times
Speaker 1: profile of them on I'm comfortable he never would tour again.
Speaker 1: David also kept busy with his acting, playing a series
Speaker 1: of offbeat roles in the late two thousands. He took
Speaker 1: the part of the iconoclastic inventor Nicola Tesla in two
Speaker 1: thousand six Is the Prestige, but only after director Christopher
Speaker 1: Nolan quite literally begged him to do it. He was
Speaker 1: more willing to lend his services to a small budget
Speaker 1: indie film called August. Like most everything else he did
Speaker 1: these days, it was a passion project. He also voiced
Speaker 1: a character for SpongeBob square Pants, Lexi's favorite cartoon, but
Speaker 1: his most notorious role in this period was for Ricky Gervais.
Speaker 1: David had become friends with the comedian after watching gervais
Speaker 1: BBC sitcom The Office. He loved it so much that
Speaker 1: he sent Ricky his version of a fan email. I watched,
Speaker 1: I laughed, what do I do now? dB? Ricky was
Speaker 1: a Bowie super fan and hadfortuitously just come home from
Speaker 1: purchasing a fresh CD copy of a Laddin saying it
Speaker 1: was kismut. As their relationship solidified, Ricky plucked up the
Speaker 1: courage to ask David to be in his new series Extras.
Speaker 1: Perverting his hero worship, he cast David as himself, but
Speaker 1: an especially mean version. He meets Ricky's character, a hapless
Speaker 1: dealist actor, and is inspired to write a song on
Speaker 1: the spot called Stupid Little Fat Man. Ricky sent David
Speaker 1: the suitably cruel lyrics he was to sing and asked
Speaker 1: him to put his own tune to it. Something retro
Speaker 1: cam Ricky's request, like a Life on Mars. Oh sure,
Speaker 1: David replied, sarcastically, I'll just whip up a quick Life
Speaker 1: on Mars for you. Huh. Ricky appreciated the absurdity of
Speaker 1: the suggestion and they both burst in the laughter, but
Speaker 1: David complied and the song is surprisingly catchy. The scene
Speaker 1: is easily the funniest single moment in David's career, as
Speaker 1: he leads a crowded pub through choruses of Little Fat
Speaker 1: Man with a pug nosed face while Ricky's character looks
Speaker 1: on mortified. He reprised the song on stage in May
Speaker 1: of two thousand seven, when David introduced Ricky at Madison
Speaker 1: Square Garden for his American stand up debut. This would
Speaker 1: be technically David Bowie's last ever live performance. Many fans
Speaker 1: conveniently forget this. Instead, they prefer to remember whose duet
Speaker 1: with Alicia keys On changes David's unofficial theme tune as
Speaker 1: his concert swan song. Dramatic, yes, profound, certainly, but there's
Speaker 1: a certain degree of poetry. And David, clad in an
Speaker 1: immaculate tux standing in the spotlight at somebody else's show
Speaker 1: singing an acapella song about a chubby little loser, it's
Speaker 1: a much more fun curtain call. Though he had abandoned
Speaker 1: his own musical ventures, David provided the odd backing vocal
Speaker 1: cameo for a number of artists. He passed on a
Speaker 1: song by Coldplay, bluntly telling Chris Martin that he didn't
Speaker 1: think it was any good, But he sang on tracks
Speaker 1: by the likes of Scarlett Johansson and the Danish alt
Speaker 1: rock group Cashmere. He particularly admired the Brooklyn band TV
Speaker 1: on the radio and saying harmonies on their two thousand
Speaker 1: six song Province. In the studio, he dispensed precious words
Speaker 1: of wisdom to the younger musicians stay strange, he advised,
Speaker 1: and don't bend to his closest friends. David seemed content
Speaker 1: to live in rock and roll exile. Then, in the
Speaker 1: fall of producer Tony Visconti, got the call, how would
Speaker 1: you like to make some demos? David asked. Tony did
Speaker 1: his best to hide his shock. He made it sound
Speaker 1: so casual, but David's revelation was in the same league
Speaker 1: as the Beatles deciding to get back together. It was
Speaker 1: no use trying to determine why or what had changed. Obviously,
Speaker 1: David finally felt he had something to say. Like early
Speaker 1: sessions for Low in nine six, David wasn't sure if
Speaker 1: these new songs would ever see the light of day.
Speaker 1: To keep the pressure off, he decided to keep the
Speaker 1: recording secret, allowing him creative freedom without speculation from fans
Speaker 1: and the media, or from meddling record label executives. He
Speaker 1: invited guitarist Jerry Leonard to the sessions with an email.
Speaker 1: The subject line read stumb, an old Yiddish word meaning
Speaker 1: stay quiet, keep it to yourself. David urged, don't tell
Speaker 1: a soul. Though he undoubtedly trusted his friends, David sent
Speaker 1: out non disclosure agreements just to be on the safe side.
Speaker 1: Within days, David, Tony Jerry, and drummer Sterling Campbell were
Speaker 1: in a tiny eight by eight dungeon of a rehearsal
Speaker 1: room in New York's East Village. Quarters were cramped, and
Speaker 1: the four men found themselves gasping for air as they
Speaker 1: sketched out David's songs from a little four track recorder
Speaker 1: he carried around. They met there every day for a week,
Speaker 1: tweaking chord structures as David sang wordless melodies on top.
Speaker 1: He prefaced each session by saying that it was all
Speaker 1: experimental and might not go anywhere. Let's just get together
Speaker 1: and make some music, he'd say. At the end of
Speaker 1: the week, David took the tapes in his backpack and
Speaker 1: disappeared for four months. Typical. By April, he was ready
Speaker 1: to work again, though still under the cloak of top secrecy.
Speaker 1: His commitment to privacy was tested before they had even
Speaker 1: recorded a note. Owners of the studios he booked couldn't
Speaker 1: keep their mouth shut for more than a day before
Speaker 1: leaking the news to the press. David immediately canceled. Instead,
Speaker 1: they switched the sessions to the Magic Shop, a studio
Speaker 1: conveniently located just steps from David's Soho apartment behind unmarked
Speaker 1: steel doors. The studio's presence on the busy city street
Speaker 1: was much like David's own. If you weren't looking, you
Speaker 1: didn't know it was there. Visconti visited the Magic Shop
Speaker 1: prior to the booking to stress the importance of secrecy
Speaker 1: for his anonymous V I P. Client. Even the studio's
Speaker 1: owner was unaware of who the sessions berefore until David
Speaker 1: walked in on May two than to begin recording. The
Speaker 1: studios interns were always sent home for the day whenever
Speaker 1: David held a session, and the in house staff was
Speaker 1: reduced to just two. Everyone involved was required to sign
Speaker 1: an n d A from the musicians and engineers all
Speaker 1: the way to the guy who brought David's double mocky
Speaker 1: auto coffee order from Lack Colombe down the street. Though
Speaker 1: strict about his privacy, they had a sense of humor
Speaker 1: about it all. But we became known as the Secret,
Speaker 1: as in has the Secret come in Today. At the
Speaker 1: end of each session, David would snatch the sheet music
Speaker 1: off of every music stand with a comedic flourish before
Speaker 1: dramatically locking them away in his briefcase as if they
Speaker 1: were government files or nuclear reactor codes. Sessions continued sporadically
Speaker 1: for the next two years. For comparison, Low had come
Speaker 1: together and around two months, never before one of his
Speaker 1: album has been so drawn out, gone with around the
Speaker 1: clock recordings sessions that had characterized young Americans and station
Speaker 1: the Station. Instead, they worked very humane hours in by
Speaker 1: ten am and home in time for David to have
Speaker 1: dinner with his family. Given the long gestation period, one
Speaker 1: would think that David's cover would have been blown at
Speaker 1: some point. There were a few close calls, like the
Speaker 1: time the Canadian band Metric arrived at the Magic Shop
Speaker 1: unannounced in the studio owner had to physically block the
Speaker 1: door and tell them to come back later. Another time,
Speaker 1: guitarist Earl Slick was outside the studio having a cigarette
Speaker 1: when he noticed the cameraman's tripod across the street. Everyone
Speaker 1: knew that Earl was one of David's go to guys,
Speaker 1: and a shot of him outside of a studio down
Speaker 1: the street from David's apartment was sure to raise some alarms.
Speaker 1: He stubbed out the butt on the sidewalk and beat
Speaker 1: a hasty retreat inside. David was able to keep things quiet,
Speaker 1: mostly because his team was so small. Back in the
Speaker 1: high flying main man days of the early seventies, his
Speaker 1: entourage had been enormous, with dozens of people looking after him,
Speaker 1: and that had ended in chaos and lawsuits. These days,
Speaker 1: he managed himself with the help of just two people,
Speaker 1: a business lawyer named Bill's is Black and his fiercely
Speaker 1: devoted p A Coco Schwab. His label deal stipulated that
Speaker 1: he didn't have an A and R rep supervising his work,
Speaker 1: a move that's highly unique in the music world. As
Speaker 1: a result, no one at Sony knew a thing about
Speaker 1: the thirty odd tracks he'd amassed. No one anywhere new
Speaker 1: a thing. During breaks in the sessions, Visconti would walk
Speaker 1: the streets of New York, listening the rough edits of
Speaker 1: their new songs and his headphones. On his strolls, he'd
Speaker 1: passed people in Bowie t shirts, a fairly ubiquitous site
Speaker 1: in downtown New York. He couldn't help but smile, boy,
Speaker 1: he thought to himself, If you only knew what I
Speaker 1: was listening to. David Bowie's new song where Are We Now?
Speaker 1: And it's accompanying video were released in the early morning
Speaker 1: of January eight, his sixty six birthday. A handful of
Speaker 1: Bowie file journalists were primed that something interesting would be
Speaker 1: landing in their inbox in the wee small hours, but
Speaker 1: other than that, there was nothing in the way of
Speaker 1: promotion or publicity. From both an artistic and a practical standpoint,
Speaker 1: he didn't need it. The headline snowballed instantly. The single
Speaker 1: became the top iTunes download by the end of the
Speaker 1: day and would shortly hit number six on the UK charts,
Speaker 1: his biggest hit in his home country since Absolute Beginners In.
Speaker 1: David joked to his friend Bono that for once he
Speaker 1: wasn't outshone by his birthday twin Elvis Presley. The message
Speaker 1: on his website referenced this time away, David's the kind
Speaker 1: of artist who writes and performs what he wants when
Speaker 1: he wants it, read when he has something to say,
Speaker 1: as opposed to something to sell. Throwing shadows and avoiding
Speaker 1: the industry treadmill is ferry David Bowie on the surface
Speaker 1: where are We Now? As a wistful remembrance of his
Speaker 1: time in West Berlin, a city that both technically and
Speaker 1: spiritually no longer exists. The passage of time is illustrated
Speaker 1: by the fall of the Berlin Wall, evoking a vivid
Speaker 1: before and after. David affects a weary croon frail with
Speaker 1: age to name check his old haunts. In the song,
Speaker 1: he wanders his former home, his one time clinic and sanctuary,
Speaker 1: and he finds that it no longer resembles the place
Speaker 1: he'd loved in the prime of his life. Had to
Speaker 1: get the train from pot stammer Platts, he sings, you
Speaker 1: never knew that I could do that. Indeed, this was
Speaker 1: never something he could have done. In the seventies. A
Speaker 1: busy transit hub prior to World War Two, pot stammer
Speaker 1: Platte station stood abandoned during Bowie's Berlin era, caught in
Speaker 1: the death strip between East and West that lay just
Speaker 1: outside of Hansa's studios, where Bowie was hard at work
Speaker 1: on Low and Heroes. The station reopened after the wall
Speaker 1: came down, marking just one of the many ways that
Speaker 1: Berlin had changed for the better. But the transformation gave
Speaker 1: Bowie a twinge of melancholy as he mourned a pass
Speaker 1: that was undoubtedly troubled, but still his own. On Where
Speaker 1: Are We Now, David is a man in the twilight
Speaker 1: of his life, singing of his lost youth and the
Speaker 1: ghosts that he sees at every turn. Memories come flooding
Speaker 1: back nights at the Jungle, a favored nightclub where he
Speaker 1: would dance with iggy pop, and trips to the glamorous
Speaker 1: Cadave department store, bike rise to the die Brucker Museum,
Speaker 1: or breaking new musical ground at hans As Studios, cherished
Speaker 1: moments for him that happened to be rock and roll myths.
Speaker 1: To the rest of us, it was an irreplaceable, unmissable experience,
Speaker 1: David once recalled of his years in Berlin and probably
Speaker 1: the happiest time in my life up to that point.
Speaker 1: The song is jarring for its nakedly nostalgic look at
Speaker 1: David's own personal past. He was never known for being
Speaker 1: overly sentimental or overly revealing. The words are almost as
Speaker 1: much of a surprise as the Out of the Blue release.
Speaker 1: Newly sixty six years old. He could be forgiven for
Speaker 1: being a little maudlin in a sense it was expected,
Speaker 1: But since when did David Bowie do anything that was
Speaker 1: expected of him, perhaps doing the predictable. The type of
Speaker 1: song that's appropriate for a man his age is the
Speaker 1: most unexpected thing of all. The music video suggests it
Speaker 1: might be a tease. Directed by Tony Ousler, it features
Speaker 1: images of Bowie's Berlin stopping grounds, including his former apartment
Speaker 1: in Schoonenberg. Housler's wife was cast in the clip due
Speaker 1: to a resemblance to Coco Schwab David's Closest Confident in
Speaker 1: the seventies. Their faces are projected onto a pair of conjoined,
Speaker 1: misshapen dummies. Electronic effigies behind them. Footage of Bowie's past
Speaker 1: flashes across a projection screen. The loft where they sit
Speaker 1: is littered with junk, like a family basement or a
Speaker 1: crowded attic. It's detritus of a life lived to the fullest.
Speaker 1: The real Bowie appears at the end of the video,
Speaker 1: standing off to the side, watching this puppet theater version
Speaker 1: of his memories before him. Juxtaposed with the flesh and
Speaker 1: blood Bowie, the dummies seem hopelessly hokey. It's performative in
Speaker 1: the nostalgia, a conceptual performance piece acted out for our pleasure,
Speaker 1: or is it in the video, the real David wears
Speaker 1: a T shirt that reads Song of Norway, a reminder
Speaker 1: of a very personal memory, one known by only a few.
Speaker 1: It was David was dating his first love, a dancer
Speaker 1: named Hermione Farthingale. They lived together and sang together. It
Speaker 1: was the happiest he'd ever been. Then Harmony left home
Speaker 1: to go abroad and film a small role in a
Speaker 1: movie called The Song of Norway. She fell in love
Speaker 1: with someone else on the set, and she ended her
Speaker 1: relationship with David. It was a formative experience in his
Speaker 1: young life, one that, by his own admission, messed him
Speaker 1: up for years to come. The Song of Norway is
Speaker 1: a summation of his earliest and deepest heartbreak and genuine
Speaker 1: and personal grief, seen alongside the images of Berlin, his
Speaker 1: very public past. David seems to be sending a message
Speaker 1: with the shirt. You may think you know all about me,
Speaker 1: but you'll never know how I felt, and you will
Speaker 1: never know me. David never explained the video or the song.
Speaker 1: He did no interviews for the release of Where Are
Speaker 1: We Now or his new album The Next Day, which
Speaker 1: was released a great acclaim in March, giving him his
Speaker 1: first UK number one album in twenty years. One critic
Speaker 1: described it as the greatest comeback album in rock and
Speaker 1: roll history, and there are many who agree. But David
Speaker 1: maintained his silence and the press for the rest of
Speaker 1: his life. The closest he ever came as a request
Speaker 1: from novelist Rick Moody, whose books David admired. Moody asked
Speaker 1: for a list of words that hinted at the themes
Speaker 1: of the album. David responded, but the list of forty
Speaker 1: two three for each song. The ones for Where Are
Speaker 1: We Now consist of interface, flitting, and mauer, the German
Speaker 1: word for wall. As is so often the case with
Speaker 1: David's art, the interpretation is up to you. Aside from that,
Speaker 1: David turned down all requests for interviews. Instead, Tony Visconti
Speaker 1: handled the press as best he could. He was emphatic
Speaker 1: about David's strong health, a frequent topic of tabloid gossip
Speaker 1: since his heart attack. He also went to great lengths
Speaker 1: to stress that the downbeat, slightly mournful lead single wasn't
Speaker 1: indicative of the rest of the album. Many of the
Speaker 1: songs on the next day are up tempo tracks beefed
Speaker 1: up by Earl slick and Jerry Leonard's crunchy lead guitar lines,
Speaker 1: but the mood of the album is indeed dark. Valentine's
Speaker 1: Day delivers a sobering message about gun control by referencing
Speaker 1: a two thousand eight school shooting. I'd Rather Be High
Speaker 1: ventures inside the mind of a seventeen year old soldier
Speaker 1: fighting in the desert. The title track alludes to religious
Speaker 1: tormentors and the hypocrisy of the church, and the album's
Speaker 1: closer Heat was so bleak that Visconti requested an explanation.
Speaker 1: It's not about me, David insisted. But the song The
Speaker 1: Stars Are Out Tonight certainly contained the kernel of David's
Speaker 1: personal experience with fame. In the song, he sings the
Speaker 1: stars are never sleeping, dead ones and the living. For David,
Speaker 1: there's no escape from the phenomenon that he once likened
Speaker 1: to a very luxuriant mental hospital. The only time you're
Speaker 1: let out, he said, is when you have to earn
Speaker 1: money for just about everyone but yourself. The clever video
Speaker 1: for The Stars Are Out Tonight subverts the notion of
Speaker 1: celebrity by depicting David and co star Tilda Swindon as
Speaker 1: ordinary folks. Who are hounded by famous people For all
Speaker 1: the heavy themes, the next day was remembered as the
Speaker 1: record where David Bowie faced his reputation. Nowhere is this
Speaker 1: more obvious and the art that accompanied the album it
Speaker 1: was the work of Jonathan Barnbrook, had previously designed the
Speaker 1: artwork for Heathen and Reality. The single art for where
Speaker 1: Are We Now took a shot of David performing in
Speaker 1: and rotated in a D and eighty degrees, literally turning
Speaker 1: his legacy on its head. The album went even further,
Speaker 1: obscuring the iconic cover of Heroes with a white square
Speaker 1: in the middle, on which the new title was written
Speaker 1: in simple black lettering. It ingeniously played with the expectation
Speaker 1: of David's history, which was always looming in the background
Speaker 1: no matter what he did. Around the same time, David's
Speaker 1: pass was put on display in a much more literal way.
Speaker 1: Curators at the vict Tory and Albert Museum in London
Speaker 1: had planned on doing an exhibition of artifacts that had
Speaker 1: belonged to Elvis Presley. When the king's estate pulled out,
Speaker 1: the organizers moved on to Elvis's birthday twin. Not only
Speaker 1: was David interested, but he'd done most of their work
Speaker 1: for them. Something of a pack rat by nature, he'd
Speaker 1: saved everything, costumes, props, sketches, all lovingly preserved in boxes
Speaker 1: and acid free tissue paper. He'd hired an archivist to
Speaker 1: tend to his massive memorability collection, totaling some seventy five
Speaker 1: thousand items from throughout his career, with new pieces being
Speaker 1: purchased all the time from auction houses and private sellers,
Speaker 1: David had cataloged his life. Perhaps he was hyper aware
Speaker 1: of his own iconography, or he was just more sentimental
Speaker 1: than most people gave him credit for. Though we distanced
Speaker 1: himself from the exhibit publicly, David, one of the most
Speaker 1: image conscious musicians of his generation, took an active interest
Speaker 1: in how his life was being presented. His background and
Speaker 1: the visual arts gave him an innate understanding of curation.
Speaker 1: He appreciated their non linear approach the storytelling. Rather than
Speaker 1: going chronologically, they organized the objects thematically, encapsulating the cities, people,
Speaker 1: and artists that had shaped David's work. Tony Visconti created
Speaker 1: a unique Bowie Mega mix from the master tapes of
Speaker 1: more than sixty songs to serve as a soundtrack as
Speaker 1: visitors floated through David's world. The only thing David refused
Speaker 1: to land was his cream colored saxophone, the one he
Speaker 1: wielded during his very first time on stage with the
Speaker 1: Conrads at a Pta fair in ninety two. It was
Speaker 1: just too precious to leave his care. The v n
Speaker 1: A curators had low expectations for the exhibit they called
Speaker 1: David Bowie Is, but it surpassed their wildest hopes when
Speaker 1: it opened in March of two thousand thirteen, becoming the
Speaker 1: fastest selling show in the museum's history. People were curious
Speaker 1: to see what the fiercely guarded Bowie had in his closet.
Speaker 1: After years without communicating with fans, David was eager to share.
Speaker 1: David Bowie Is eventually traveled to a total of twelve
Speaker 1: museums around the world, attracting some two million visitors. One
Speaker 1: of them was David himself. He took him on and
Speaker 1: Lexi soon after it opened in London, early one morning
Speaker 1: before the crowds. The experience was powerful. It was like
Speaker 1: he was dying and his life was flashing before his eyes.
Speaker 1: Vintage TVs, artfully arranged on the gallery floor flickered with
Speaker 1: images of his younger self performing There were the costumes,
Speaker 1: of course, Curators cherry pick sixty out of the several
Speaker 1: hundred available, displaying creations by Alexander McQueen, Vivian Westwood and
Speaker 1: Kansai Yamamoto. But that was just the start. They had
Speaker 1: the E. M. S. Briefcase synthesizer, the Brian Eno used
Speaker 1: on the Berlin Trilogy. He'd given it to Bowie in
Speaker 1: with a note look after it patch it up in
Speaker 1: strange ways. It's surprising that it can still make noises
Speaker 1: that nothing else can make. His beloved Oblique strategies cards
Speaker 1: were also thrown in for good measure. There were other
Speaker 1: gifts from famous friends. A doodle from John Lennon, sketched
Speaker 1: while in the studio recording Fame inscribed for video Dave
Speaker 1: with Love, a Western Union telefax from Elvis wishing him
Speaker 1: luck on his nineteen seventy six tour. Attendees could trace
Speaker 1: David's unshakable ambition, from hand drawn tor posters for early
Speaker 1: bands like the Conrads and the Delta Lemons to elaborate
Speaker 1: designs for the theatrical rock extravaganzas of the seventies. Then
Speaker 1: there was the assorted grab bag of ephemera keys to
Speaker 1: his Berlin apartment, the velvet underground test pressing that had
Speaker 1: sent his musical mind into overdrive back in nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: the coke spoon that had helped him through the Long
Speaker 1: Diamond Dogs tour, a tissue blotted with David Ziggy era
Speaker 1: lipstick displayed like a holy relic. A letter from formally
Speaker 1: confirming his new stage name, David Bowie. The contents of
Speaker 1: his existence were spread before him, arranged for public consumption.
Speaker 1: His life had become art. The reflection continued in with
Speaker 1: a new musical retrospective. It was the first to cover
Speaker 1: his entire half century career, from David Jones to David Bowie.
Speaker 1: The triple disc set featured three separate covers, each of
Speaker 1: David at different periods in his life, staring into a mirror.
Speaker 1: Though taken years apart, they're eerily similar enough to make
Speaker 1: one wonder if you've been planning this for decades. The
Speaker 1: first is his Ziggy Stardust incarnation, flame haired and freakishly
Speaker 1: pay all almost translucent. The next is the thin white Duke,
Speaker 1: dapper as ever in a suit in fedora, and finally
Speaker 1: the current Bowie, a handsome, if nondescript man in late
Speaker 1: middle age shot from behind. His face is almost completely
Speaker 1: out of frame, as if a man in retreat. All
Speaker 1: three covers bear the title nothing has Changed. Of course,
Speaker 1: the images tell a different story. Comparing as many selves,
Speaker 1: they could all be totally different people. The only giveaway
Speaker 1: or is mismatched eyes, a permanent reminder of the teenage
Speaker 1: tussle he'd had with his best friend all those years ago.
Speaker 1: Before there was ever a David Bowie, there were those
Speaker 1: eyes destined to become his trademark feature. The duality was striking,
Speaker 1: one steely, blue and strong, constantly scanning the horizon for
Speaker 1: what's to come, the other black and moody, damaged, looking
Speaker 1: inward at the equally dark places in his soul. The
Speaker 1: two perspectives formed a singular creative vision which led him
Speaker 1: the fame and fortune over the years. The face that
Speaker 1: had stared back at him in the mirror had changed
Speaker 1: radically through makeup, hair, clothes, and just the ravages of time,
Speaker 1: but those eyes remained constant. The title and art for
Speaker 1: Nothing Has Changed was a challenge to all who labeled
Speaker 1: David and attention seeking, changeling, or even worse, a musical chameleon.
Speaker 1: After all, a chameleon is a creature who changes to
Speaker 1: fit in with its surroundings. David never made any effort
Speaker 1: to fit in anywhere. With its provocative name, nothing has
Speaker 1: changed dared listeners to look closer and find the common
Speaker 1: thread in his wildly diverse work. The tracks went in
Speaker 1: reverse order, from his newest song all the way back
Speaker 1: to ninet Isaza Jane, the first recording he ever released.
Speaker 1: In a sense, it was full circle. The new song
Speaker 1: he recorded for the compilation Bear's the same jazz influence
Speaker 1: as he soaked up in the early sixties with the
Speaker 1: unwieldy name Sue or in the Season of Crime. The
Speaker 1: song was recorded with jazz composer Maria Schneider. David had
Speaker 1: seen her perform with her big band at Birdland, Manhattan's
Speaker 1: legendary jazz haunt. Together, they worked on an arrangement for
Speaker 1: his new song, with its lyrics inspired by a seventeenth
Speaker 1: century john Ford play called Tis a Pity She's a Whore.
Speaker 1: As they bonded over their shared love of players like
Speaker 1: Gil Evans and Stan Kenton, Maria recommended David check out
Speaker 1: the quartet led by the sax player in her orchestra
Speaker 1: Donnie mccastling. The group had a regular gig at fifty
Speaker 1: five Bar, a Granwich village hole in the wall. David
Speaker 1: dropped by to catch their set in June. Entering dank
Speaker 1: downstairs bar, he was transported back to the Soho clubs
Speaker 1: he frequented with his half brother Terry. As a team,
Speaker 1: it was like a homecoming. The wild howl of mccastl
Speaker 1: and Sacks reminded him of his passion for John Coltrane
Speaker 1: and Jerry mulligan. As a student at Bromley Tech, a
Speaker 1: guidance counselor had asked David what he wanted to be
Speaker 1: when he grew up. David had responded, without hesitation, I
Speaker 1: want to be a sax player in a modern jazz quartet.
Speaker 1: Somewhere along the way, his gold been derailed by rock
Speaker 1: and roll, but mccastlan and his band, these guys had it. Mccastlan, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: was keenly aware that a living legend was sitting just
Speaker 1: steps away in the tiny bar watching him play. No pressure,
Speaker 1: he channeled his nervous energy and it went unusually intense performance,
Speaker 1: and it didn't go unnoticed. David approached him afterwards. And
Speaker 1: said with genuine admiration, Wow, that was really loud. He
Speaker 1: stayed in touch with McCastle, and after the recording session
Speaker 1: for Sue emailing him new demos and song fragments to
Speaker 1: go over with his band. Amusingly, mccastlan was unfamiliar with
Speaker 1: the majority of David's work. His only real frame of
Speaker 1: reference was Let's Dance, and that was simply due to
Speaker 1: its ubiquity back in the eighties. He offered to do
Speaker 1: a deep dive in the Bowie's extensive back catalog, but
Speaker 1: David talked him out of it. That's old stuff, he said,
Speaker 1: I'm into different things now. Plans were set in place
Speaker 1: to record a new album with Donnie mccastlan's group. A
Speaker 1: day before sessions were due to begin in January of
Speaker 1: David called Tony Visconti to a meeting. Oh, thought Tony,
Speaker 1: this sounds ominous. He wondered if he was about to
Speaker 1: get fired. David greeted his old friends before saying I
Speaker 1: have something to show you. Then he removed his wool cap.
Speaker 1: He was complete lee bald, and his eyebrows were gone.
Speaker 1: I have cancer, he told Tony. He just come from
Speaker 1: a chemotherapy session. Tony got terry. David told him not
Speaker 1: to cry, and then the matter was dropped. Instead, they
Speaker 1: discussed the recording planned for the next day. David had
Speaker 1: more than he wanted to say. It was late one
Speaker 1: night in David Bowie was in the midst of his
Speaker 1: outside tour, criss crossing the United States by bus. Most
Speaker 1: of the entourage was asleep, but David was wide awake.
Speaker 1: He sat down with pianist Mike Garson, a veteran of
Speaker 1: the Ziggy Star Dust shows. Garson had been with David
Speaker 1: longer than any other musician. He was a valued collaborator
Speaker 1: and trusted friend. They started talking one of those expansive
Speaker 1: conversations that you have at one am. David had something
Speaker 1: he wanted to get off his chest. Years earlier, he'd
Speaker 1: seen a psychic and the reading had been disturbing. They
Speaker 1: had told him that David would die at age sixty
Speaker 1: nine or seventy. Though the meeting had occurred nearly a
Speaker 1: decade prior, he'd never forgotten it and it nagged at him.
Speaker 1: David was diagnosed with liver cancer in mid when he
Speaker 1: was sixty seven. Though he certainly fought with strength and bravery.
Speaker 1: The question of fate must have weighed heavily on his mind.
Speaker 1: The chemo treatments were grueling. Sometimes he would call Tony
Speaker 1: Visconti obstensively to talk shop, but also for some reassurance.
Speaker 1: Don't worry. The producer insisted, you're going to live one hopes.
Speaker 1: David reply in a voice barely above a whisper. Don't
Speaker 1: get too excited about that. Few outside David's innermost circle
Speaker 1: knew about his illness. Like the sessions for the next day,
Speaker 1: the information was shared on a need to know basis. Consequently,
Speaker 1: if you did, he threw himself into his work. It
Speaker 1: was the best bomb to take his mind off the
Speaker 1: painful treatment and the psychics unsettling prediction. In the early months,
Speaker 1: he settled in at the Magic Shop Studios along with
Speaker 1: Visconti and Donnie mccastlan's quartet. They drew inspiration from d'angelo's
Speaker 1: long awaited comeback album, Black Messiah, which had just been
Speaker 1: released a few months earlier. A little later, they dove
Speaker 1: into Kendrick Lamar's Wrap Opus to Pimp a Butterfly. The
Speaker 1: respective R and B and hip hop leanings of both
Speaker 1: were shot through with traces of jazz. It was a
Speaker 1: technique David would try to emulate on his new record.
Speaker 1: Avoid Rock and roll became the familiar refrain of the
Speaker 1: sessions as David turned his ear to other influences like
Speaker 1: experimental rap, trio death grips and electronic duo Boards of Canada.
Speaker 1: The recordings were split into roughly a week a month
Speaker 1: throughout the spring of The free flowing creative spirit was
Speaker 1: established on the first day when David told the group
Speaker 1: just go have fun. Anything you're hearing, I want you
Speaker 1: to go for it. Despite his health, his energy was high.
Speaker 1: David's eyes sparkled and he belted it on the mic
Speaker 1: like he was on stage at Wembley. His assistants dog Muffin,
Speaker 1: became something of a mascot for the sessions and always
Speaker 1: brought a smile to David's face. He and the band
Speaker 1: we'd eat sandwiches for lunch in the studio lounge, and
Speaker 1: they celebrated his birthday together when a mon stopped by
Speaker 1: was sushi. He was sixty eight years old. The unnerving
Speaker 1: countdown in David's head ticked on. Mortality had been a
Speaker 1: recurring theme in his music in recent years, but the
Speaker 1: words for this work in progress understandably cut a little deeper.
Speaker 1: The tone was obvious enough for Tony Visconti to approach
Speaker 1: David early on in the sessions You Can Eat Bastard.
Speaker 1: He said, you're writing a farewell album, aren't you. David
Speaker 1: didn't confirm or deny, he just laughed. By midyear, his
Speaker 1: prognosis looked good. He was responding well to the chemotherapy,
Speaker 1: and his cancer went into remission. David was cautiously optimistic, Well,
Speaker 1: don't celebrate too quickly. We'll see how it goes. By
Speaker 1: any metric, David Bowie had sampled more of life than
Speaker 1: anyone could ever hope to. Iman once said, I'd like
Speaker 1: to think there's nothing he hasn't seen. But there was
Speaker 1: one sizeable item the cross off his bucket list, a musical.
Speaker 1: He dreamed of writing one since he was a teenager
Speaker 1: aping Anthony Newley's Stagey Crew, and he'd been not so
Speaker 1: suddenly hinting at this ambition for years, and it influenced
Speaker 1: nearly everything he did, from his ziggy stardust alter ego
Speaker 1: to the over the top stage productions of the Glass
Speaker 1: Spider Tour. His album One Outside had been a sort
Speaker 1: of radio drama with songs and narration. Heck, the elaborately
Speaker 1: staged and choreographed Diamond Dogs Tour had originally been intended
Speaker 1: as a Broadway style version of George Orwell. David had
Speaker 1: danced around the idea of a musical for his entire career,
Speaker 1: and now he was ready to go for it. He
Speaker 1: called Robert Fox, a theater producer he'd known for decades,
Speaker 1: to try to figure out how to get the ball rolling.
Speaker 1: He told Fox that he wanted to write a musical
Speaker 1: based on Walter Tevis's book The Man Who Fell to Earth.
Speaker 1: David had starred in director Nick rogueventy six film adaptation,
Speaker 1: playing the role of the stranded alien known on Earth
Speaker 1: as to Almost Jerome Newton. Filmed in the midst of
Speaker 1: David's personal native in Los Angeles, the character had remained
Speaker 1: with him for months. Newton's loneliness and isolation informed the stark,
Speaker 1: emotional soundscapes of Low and Heroes. David's songs fit Newton's
Speaker 1: voice perfectly in a way he never fully shook Thomas
Speaker 1: Jerome Newton. They were psychically bonded. Acting as producer, Fox
Speaker 1: hired Irish playwright and the Walsh and avant garde theater
Speaker 1: director Ivo van Hove. Van Hove was a Bowie fanatic,
Speaker 1: but he had some scheduling issues. Bowie begged him to
Speaker 1: change his plans. We have to make it now, it
Speaker 1: has to happen. His urgency made Van Hove reconsider and
Speaker 1: workshops went ahead as planned. In New York, the play
Speaker 1: was called Lazarus, named for a new song David had
Speaker 1: written that was included in the production. It's sort of
Speaker 1: an enigmatic sequel to the Man Who Fell to Earth.
Speaker 1: The obtuse plot centers around the older Newton hold up
Speaker 1: in his apartment, dulling the pain of his heartbreak with
Speaker 1: cheap gin. He calls himself a dying man who can't die.
Speaker 1: Then he meets another lost soul, a thirteen year old
Speaker 1: girl who revives his corroded spirit and gives him hope
Speaker 1: that he can return home. Ultimately, she sets him free.
Speaker 1: If the David Bowie Is exhibition allowed David to see
Speaker 1: his life from an audience's perspective, then Lazarus, with his
Speaker 1: existential themes and its use of his back catalog of songs,
Speaker 1: allowed David to see his soul on display. Autobiographical details
Speaker 1: pop up frequently. At one point, Newton imagines visiting occupied Berlin.
Speaker 1: One character in the show describes Newton as quote, sort
Speaker 1: of sad, sort of unknowable in the way that you
Speaker 1: imagine reclusive, rich, eccentric men to be. They might as
Speaker 1: well be describing David. It's no coincidence that the little
Speaker 1: girl in the show is the same age that David's daughter,
Speaker 1: Lexi was when he co wrote it. Casting began in
Speaker 1: the fall of Robert Fox flew to New York for
Speaker 1: a preliminary meeting, expecting to see David. Instead, he found
Speaker 1: David's business manager waiting with an open laptop. David spoke
Speaker 1: to Fox through Skype and informed him of his condition.
Speaker 1: Because of his illness, he would have to miss some rehearsals,
Speaker 1: but his commitment to the project was total. He enjoyed
Speaker 1: the surreal experience of hearing other people sing his songs
Speaker 1: to him. He was especially taken with co star Christa
Speaker 1: Miliati's anguished version of Changes. When he first heard it,
Speaker 1: David turned to the producers and gasped, I'm so glad
Speaker 1: I wrote that song. They would describe his face during
Speaker 1: rehearsals as that of a delighted and amazed child seeing
Speaker 1: something brought to life that was unexpected and joyful. With
Speaker 1: actor Michael C. Halls the lead, the show went from
Speaker 1: the planning stages to opening its limited run at the
Speaker 1: New York Theater Workshop in just twelve months, warp speed
Speaker 1: as far as musicals are concerned. When David dropped by rehearsals,
Speaker 1: he was heard to mother and more than one occasion,
Speaker 1: I'd really like to see this. The producers understood the
Speaker 1: gravity of these words and acted accordingly. They got it done.
Speaker 1: Tickets to the entire run of Lazarus sold out within hours.
Speaker 1: David wasn't well enough to attend the previews, but he
Speaker 1: was there for opening night on December seven. The show
Speaker 1: was part sci fi drama, part rock spectacle, and part
Speaker 1: video art installation. Its dialogue was kept short, elliptical, opaque,
Speaker 1: and at times disorienting. The ending Bowie co wrote is
Speaker 1: hopeful but typically open ended. Newton and his Muse sing
Speaker 1: a poignant version of Heroes Bowie's celebration of the little
Speaker 1: triumphs that comprised daily survival. It's arranged as a delicate
Speaker 1: piano ballad. As it concludes, Newton lays on the floor.
Speaker 1: On the video screen behind him, his ghostly image blasts
Speaker 1: off on a rocket ship. It's unclear whether it's death
Speaker 1: or an escape from Earth, a place where he never
Speaker 1: truly felt at home. Perhaps it's both. David took the
Speaker 1: stage at curtain call, beaming and his T shirt and
Speaker 1: blazer at a dearly held dream had come true. The
Speaker 1: press noted how Grady looked. They hadn't caught on about
Speaker 1: his health. Almost no one knew a thing, but it
Speaker 1: was clear to the cast and crew that he was struggling.
Speaker 1: After his bows, he collapsed backstage. He was too sick
Speaker 1: to make it to the after party. But even in
Speaker 1: his weekends eight he told director Ivo van Hove about
Speaker 1: plans to start a second musical. Van Hove was thrilled
Speaker 1: at the prospect, yet he couldn't shake the sense that
Speaker 1: he would never see David again. David then left the theater,
Speaker 1: running the gauntlet of fans and photographers one more time.
Speaker 1: David Bowie had just taken his final bow. It was
Speaker 1: his last public appearance. From then on, he would communicate
Speaker 1: with fans only through his music. That fall, he released
Speaker 1: the first track from his sessions with Donnie mccastlan's group.
Speaker 1: It was called Black Star. The multipart suite is an
Speaker 1: uncategorizable blend of free jazz, atonal, Gregorian chants, and house
Speaker 1: influenced rhythms. At just under ten minutes, it's as long
Speaker 1: as song since Station the Station. That track had been
Speaker 1: the definitive document of his descend into hell forty years earlier.
Speaker 1: Black Star has more of an upward trajectory. It opens
Speaker 1: with an ominous drone. The sparse melody on spools as
Speaker 1: Bowie duets with himself to liturgical voices, intoning the words
Speaker 1: like a Byzantine mass or a spell in the villa
Speaker 1: of our men burns a solitary candle. He sings a
Speaker 1: fragile beacon of hope amid the darkness, or a humble
Speaker 1: memorial to a soul who was dead or dying. The
Speaker 1: overtones become even more unsettling with references to the day
Speaker 1: of execution. At the center of it all, he sings
Speaker 1: at the center of it all lines that echo notorious
Speaker 1: Satanist Alistair Crowley, a frequent Bowie muse. Suddenly, it's unclear
Speaker 1: whether this is a sacred rite or an occult ritual.
Speaker 1: David had engaged in the supernatural extensively during his spiritual
Speaker 1: crisis in the mid seventies, when he was driven to
Speaker 1: the brink of standard consciousness by self induced insanity. Now
Speaker 1: on the threshold of life and death, the constructs of
Speaker 1: day to day humanity were again melting away, and he
Speaker 1: contemplated those same themes again. But then the music changes direction,
Speaker 1: elevating listeners above the clouds with a piece that can
Speaker 1: only be described as heavenly. A different Bowie is there
Speaker 1: to greet us, singing earnestly and plaintively. Something happened on
Speaker 1: the day he died. Spirit rose a meter and stepped aside.
Speaker 1: Somebody else took his place and bravely cried, I'm a
Speaker 1: black star. I'm a black star. He repeats the refrain
Speaker 1: again and again. I'm not a film star, he asserts.
Speaker 1: I'm not a pop star. I'm not a Marvel star,
Speaker 1: I'm not a flamstar. I'm not a gangster. I'm a
Speaker 1: black star. In the months and years that followed, fans
Speaker 1: and critics would debate the meaning of David's personal rose bud.
Speaker 1: Most obviously, it follows his lifelong fascination with space, an
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial phenomena. In theoretical physics, a black star is a
Speaker 1: more recent tangent of a black hole. It's a collapsing
Speaker 1: star that's close to reaching singularity and space time ceases
Speaker 1: to exist within it. The star has died, yet it
Speaker 1: still releases its energy, and definitely, in short, it's interstellar immortality.
Speaker 1: Of course, the title would inspire a host of other interpretations.
Speaker 1: Most intriguing is a connection to Elvis Presley. The two
Speaker 1: had a strange kind of synchronicity. They had shared a birthday,
Speaker 1: a long time record label, and musical infamy. In nineteen sixty,
Speaker 1: Pressley had recorded a song called black Star, which featured
Speaker 1: the lyrics every man has a black star, a black
Speaker 1: star over his shoulder, and when a man sees his
Speaker 1: black star are he knows his time has come. The
Speaker 1: track would go unreleased until the nineties. It's certainly possible
Speaker 1: that David was inspired by his fellow Capricorn. He was
Speaker 1: a fan, after all, and apparently wrote his song Golden
Speaker 1: Years as an offering to the King, but it seems
Speaker 1: unlikely that Bowie wrote black Star as a response to
Speaker 1: an extremely obscure Pressley cut. There's also a persistent belief
Speaker 1: that the song title was an oblique reference to his illness.
Speaker 1: A black star is indeed a radiologic term for a
Speaker 1: type of cancer lesion, but for breast cancer, not the
Speaker 1: type David battled. Other black Star theories pushed the bounds
Speaker 1: of believability to their breaking point. It's named after a
Speaker 1: secret government space plane program, or David's friend most Deaf's
Speaker 1: hip hop group, or a Greek anarchist terrorist organization, or
Speaker 1: even an episode of the British drama Peaky Blinders, a
Speaker 1: show David was no to love. The last theory is
Speaker 1: pretty laughable, but the song did actually have its genesis
Speaker 1: and a TV program. Filmmaker Johann Rennick was directing a
Speaker 1: six part crime series called The Last Panthers and approach
Speaker 1: Bowie to do a theme tune. It was a total
Speaker 1: long shot, but to his surprise, David said yes. The
Speaker 1: result was an early version of black Star, which was
Speaker 1: reworked for David's album. When it came time to make
Speaker 1: a video for the song, it seemed only right that
Speaker 1: David asked Rennick. The pair worked together, with the director
Speaker 1: going off a series of David's sketches and rough storyboards.
Speaker 1: David appears in much of the short film as a
Speaker 1: figure they nicknamed button Eyes due to his white blindfold
Speaker 1: like a man as he sings on the day of execution,
Speaker 1: awaiting death. The video opens with a solar eclipse and
Speaker 1: an astronaut lying dead on a desolate landscape. His helmet
Speaker 1: opens to reveal a jewel encrusted skull. Later, a skeleton
Speaker 1: belonging to the doomed space man floats into the ether.
Speaker 1: Though Bowie never said definitively the identity of the astronaut
Speaker 1: was cleared to Rennick it was Major Tom, back for
Speaker 1: one final appearance. Unlike his other creations, David retained a
Speaker 1: special fundness for him. Since his debut in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: Major Tom became David's only true recurring character, cropping up
Speaker 1: and not only Space Oddity, but Nighties, Ashes to Ashes,
Speaker 1: and a remix of Hello, Space Boy. In more than
Speaker 1: just his first introduction to the public, he'd become a
Speaker 1: sort of totem for David. The persona had taken him
Speaker 1: higher and further than he'd ever dreamed. For all of
Speaker 1: his fascination with space, David would tellingly admit that the
Speaker 1: notion of space flight terrified him. I wouldn't dream of
Speaker 1: getting on a spaceship. He once said, you'd scare the
Speaker 1: hell out of me. Major Tom helped give him courage
Speaker 1: to go where he didn't dare as an ordinary man.
Speaker 1: In Black Star, Major Tom has finally come home, but
Speaker 1: by symbolically killing him off, David was killing a part
Speaker 1: of himself. The album Black Star was slated for release
Speaker 1: in October, but production delays on the music videos meant
Speaker 1: that the record hit shelves on January David sixty nine birthday.
Speaker 1: Two days later. The psychic would be proven right and
Speaker 1: Black Star would be consecrated as David Bowie's last record.
Speaker 1: It's a distinction that would forever color and possibly distort
Speaker 1: the songs that contained. Black Star has earned a reputation
Speaker 1: as David's knowing goodbye to his fans, a parting gift.
Speaker 1: In Tony Visconti's words, it isn't hard to see why.
Speaker 1: There are two many clues to make an amiric coincidence.
Speaker 1: Even the cover has a distinctly funereal air. It bore
Speaker 1: a simple black star with astral fragments that, with a
Speaker 1: little imagination, spell out Bowie, if you weren't looking, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't even know he was there. Borne out of discussions
Speaker 1: about black holes, the Big Bang, and the end of
Speaker 1: the universe, Jonathan Barnbrook's design evoked mortality. The vinyl edition
Speaker 1: had the star cut out of the sleeve, leaving the
Speaker 1: record exposed, allowing it to degrade over time, another comment
Speaker 1: on life's tendency to damage and wound. A morbid streak
Speaker 1: certainly ran through most of the songs, including the title track.
Speaker 1: A rerecorded version of Sue contains lines such as the
Speaker 1: clinic call the X rays fine and references to tombstones
Speaker 1: and graves. On dollar Days, he considers his successes and
Speaker 1: his failures, weighing them both as he contemplates the afterlife,
Speaker 1: which appears as the English evergreens of his homeland. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: these are poetic liberties, taken with his lyrics, words that
Speaker 1: David never lived to explain, and probably wouldn't even if
Speaker 1: he had, But there's little need for interpretation. On Lazarus,
Speaker 1: the last single David released in his lifetime, the facts
Speaker 1: are potent on their own. It takes its name from
Speaker 1: Lazarus of Bethany, a biblical figure that Jesus resurrects four
Speaker 1: days after his burial. The sickness will not end in death,
Speaker 1: Christ tells his followers. David wrote the song shortly after
Speaker 1: his cancer diagnosis. It's difficult to read the message as
Speaker 1: anything other than a dying man yearning for immortality, just
Speaker 1: one more rebirth. The opening lines are arresting. Look up here,
Speaker 1: I'm in heaven, David sings, as if speaking from beyond
Speaker 1: the grave. I've got scars that can't be seen. He
Speaker 1: punctuates the lines with furious slashes on a stratocaster given
Speaker 1: to him by his old friend and rival, Mark Boland.
Speaker 1: He received it the last time they met, just weeks
Speaker 1: before his fatal car crash at age. The instrument had
Speaker 1: becomes something of a talisman for his fallen musical brother,
Speaker 1: and perhaps a monument to David's own endurance and survival.
Speaker 1: I've got drama can't be stolen, he continues. Everybody knows
Speaker 1: me now. His work, never lacking at theatricality, will live on,
Speaker 1: and no one can take that away. This way or
Speaker 1: no way. You know. I'll be free, just like that bluebird.
Speaker 1: I'll be free, he concludes. The image evokes a poem
Speaker 1: by Charles Bukowski, a favorite of Boys who described his
Speaker 1: inner life, his privateself as his bluebird, one that he
Speaker 1: struggles to protect from the gaze of the unforgiving modern world.
Speaker 1: The long fade ends with a sax's howl, sounding uncannily
Speaker 1: like a human voice, expressing wordless sounds of raw grief.
Speaker 1: The music video brims with macab images. It opens with
Speaker 1: David writhing in a hospital bed. Some of the pain
Speaker 1: was undoubtedly real. To give the appearance of levitation, the
Speaker 1: bed was suspended from the ceiling. The disorienting angle makes
Speaker 1: his feverish malaise palpable. The scene is made all the
Speaker 1: more distressing by the metal button eyes on the blindfold
Speaker 1: that he claws in agony. Ancient Greeks would place coins
Speaker 1: on the eyes of dead bodies as payment for Karen
Speaker 1: the fairyman to carry the soul of the deceased across
Speaker 1: the river sticks to the underworld. The symbolism that, perhaps unintentional,
Speaker 1: is eerie. David works madly, wearing an outfit he wore
Speaker 1: forty years earlier as the thin white Duke. He looks
Speaker 1: fearful and frightened as he hurriedly scribbles, trying to finish
Speaker 1: his work before running out of time. Then he stalks
Speaker 1: off to a large wardrobe, climbs inside, and slams the
Speaker 1: door like the lid of a coffin, and then he's gone.
Speaker 1: It's tempting to interpret all this as a meticulously stage
Speaker 1: managed goodbye, the dramatic exit befitting the greatest thespian rock
Speaker 1: and roll has ever known. It's comforting to think that
Speaker 1: David Bowie knew something about the universe that the rest
Speaker 1: of us do not, and was able to plot the
Speaker 1: precise manner of his final bow. But that wouldn't be
Speaker 1: entirely accurate. Besides, do you really want to remember him
Speaker 1: as a man cowed by fate who willingly submitted to
Speaker 1: the inevitable and went down without a fight, not a chance.
Speaker 1: As Black Star was ready to release that winter, he
Speaker 1: was eagerly talking to Donnie mccastling about playing a series
Speaker 1: of intimate dates at some New York jazz clubs, and
Speaker 1: he was still plugging away at that second musical. I
Speaker 1: can't stop it, he emailed a friend. It's coming full
Speaker 1: force and I'm just creating and creating and creating. In
Speaker 1: the last week of his life, he faced times Tony
Speaker 1: Visconti to tell him he'd recorded demos for five new
Speaker 1: songs and wanted to get moving on a sequel to
Speaker 1: Black Star. Immediately, Visconti was thrilled, but then that was
Speaker 1: the last he heard from him. The tone of David's
Speaker 1: communications started to change. Old friends and partners began receiving
Speaker 1: emails that one described as slushy. In his final days,
Speaker 1: he sent a message to Brian Eno, thank you for
Speaker 1: our good times. Brian. He concluded they will never rot.
Speaker 1: He signed the message Dawn, just to keep it from
Speaker 1: getting too serious. This was classic David. He ended an
Speaker 1: email the Bromley schoolmate Jeff McCormick with thank you for
Speaker 1: being my friend all these years and I miss you
Speaker 1: lots now f off Amusingly, the last Twitter account that
Speaker 1: David followed billed itself as belonging to God. Coincidence maybe,
Speaker 1: or David Bowie was an expert level troll. David loved
Speaker 1: to play with expectations. He did it with everything, his music,
Speaker 1: his performances, his style, and we loved him for it.
Speaker 1: In the end, he used his own existence to play
Speaker 1: with us one more time, all in good fun. And
Speaker 1: it was all so fun, wasn't it. The final images
Speaker 1: of David released to the public show him dapper as
Speaker 1: ever in a perfectly tailored suit in Fedora, grinning from
Speaker 1: ear to ear, laughing in the face of death. May
Speaker 1: we all be so fortunate. Our expectations of an ending,
Speaker 1: learned from repeated story, film, narrative culture, gives us a
Speaker 1: completely unjustified set of expectations for life, David once said,
Speaker 1: and he's right. Humans compulsively look for the story arc
Speaker 1: and ourselves and others. It helps us find meaning and
Speaker 1: make order. And that's not reality in this case. Take
Speaker 1: David's music. He's been grappling with his mortality on albums
Speaker 1: for years. Any one of those could be held up
Speaker 1: as a fitting farewell, the zen acceptance of Heathen or
Speaker 1: the masterful comeback of the Next Day with the nostalgic
Speaker 1: where are We Now? Black Star is simply where the
Speaker 1: transmission stopped. The interpretation is on us. David would often say,
Speaker 1: what people see in my songs is far more interesting
Speaker 1: than what I actually put into them. The brilliance is
Speaker 1: in the ambiguity. Following the release of the Next Day,
Speaker 1: and David gently chastised cover designer Jonathan Barnbrook for describing
Speaker 1: his meaning behind the sleeve art. David didn't approve. When
Speaker 1: you do that, you devalue the end object, he insisted,
Speaker 1: and you leave it less open for people to understand.
Speaker 1: Make him wonder. Black Star is the same sort of
Speaker 1: cat and mouse game that he lived for. The closest
Speaker 1: he comes to tipping his hand is on the final track,
Speaker 1: I Can't Give Everything Away, As the last song on
Speaker 1: Bowie's last record, it's a fitting epitaph. Viewed one way,
Speaker 1: it's a plea for privacy after fifty years of giving
Speaker 1: himself over to the public, an explanation for keeping his
Speaker 1: illness under wraps. There are some things he simply must
Speaker 1: keep to himself. From another perspective, it's a stubborn refusal
Speaker 1: to abandon his earthly life, his hard won happiness, and
Speaker 1: all that he'd earned. He loved life, he loved his work.
Speaker 1: It's hard to give it up and give everything away.
Speaker 1: And finally, it's a playful tease. I can't tell you
Speaker 1: everything that would give the game away. Put the clues
Speaker 1: together and the song features a big one. The harmonica
Speaker 1: riff is taken from the low track. A new career
Speaker 1: in a new town, a song that harold it has
Speaker 1: moved to Berlin forty years earlier. It's a piece about
Speaker 1: moving on, starting fresh rebirth. For Bowie, the Buddhist death
Speaker 1: is the ultimate rebirth as far as clues go. It's
Speaker 1: a good one. But he can't give everything away. So
Speaker 1: who was this man? This collection of characters, masks and
Speaker 1: poses that we've explored over these episodes. Sorry to disappoint,
Speaker 1: but I don't know any more than you do, and
Speaker 1: that's sort of the fun of it. A curator for
Speaker 1: the David Bowie Is Exhibition admitted that after the multi
Speaker 1: year project was complete, he still was no closer to
Speaker 1: figuring out who David Bowie actually was. And I second
Speaker 1: that sentiment. We want David Bowie to be superhuman, in
Speaker 1: touch with the cosmos and a master of space and time.
Speaker 1: It makes a better story, but it is just a story,
Speaker 1: one that he told so skillfully. But in a way
Speaker 1: it obscures an even more amazing point. The fact that
Speaker 1: he was just a person like you and me actually
Speaker 1: makes it even more exciting. That means there's hope for
Speaker 1: us to be great too, no excuses, And yet he
Speaker 1: wasn't really like us, was he? The Psychics prediction the
Speaker 1: musical hints the exquisitely timed exit. It's enough to make
Speaker 1: you think. Was he ordained with all the worldly insights
Speaker 1: or guidance? Was he an alien mystics sent down to
Speaker 1: Earth to shake things up? I don't know myself, but
Speaker 1: I can tell you a story. It was November of
Speaker 1: David was filming the Lazarus music video. He knew something
Speaker 1: that the rest of the cast and crew didn't. A
Speaker 1: day earlier, he'd been told that his cancer had spread.
Speaker 1: There was no chance of recovery. The decision was made
Speaker 1: to stop treatment. He was over. David kept the news
Speaker 1: to himself, but he still showed up to work. The
Speaker 1: director suggested that he and the video by disappearing into
Speaker 1: the large wardrobe and slamming the door. David thought about
Speaker 1: it for a second before a big smile lit up
Speaker 1: his face. When the end came and everything was stripped away,
Speaker 1: he remained an artist, and what's an artist but an
Speaker 1: alien mystic? The wardrobe looked unmistakably like a coffin. It
Speaker 1: was perfect. Yeah, David said, that'll keep them guessing. Off
Speaker 1: The record is a production of I Heart Radio. The
Speaker 1: executive producers are Noel Brown and Shan t. Tone. The
Speaker 1: supervising producers are Taylor Kogne and Tristan McNeil. The show
Speaker 1: was researched, written and hosted by me Jordan run Talk
Speaker 1: and edited, scored and sound designed by Taylor she Coogne
Speaker 1: and Tristan McNeil, with additional music by Evan tire M.
Speaker 1: If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
Speaker 1: us a review. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.