Speaker 1: Off the Record is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Off the Record.
Speaker 1: I'm your host Jordan Runtug, Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Our latest chapter examines David Bowie at the dawn of
Speaker 1: the seventies. It was the decade he'd grow to dominate,
Speaker 1: but the beginning was not very auspicious. David had experienced
Speaker 1: the first taste of fame with Space Oddity, but as
Speaker 1: he'd later sing, the taste was not so sweet. The
Speaker 1: song came and went, and David was in danger of
Speaker 1: being labeled that most sorry of artists, the one hit wonder.
Speaker 1: It was a transitional time for David as he sought
Speaker 1: to solidify his look and his sound. He morphed from
Speaker 1: the space folk hippie of Space Oddity to the godfather
Speaker 1: of glam behind the Man who Sold the World, and
Speaker 1: finally the androgynous tune smith who'd release his breakthrough but
Speaker 1: wonderfully eccentric Hunky Dory. The album would open with the
Speaker 1: song Changes, destined to become one of his signature tunes.
Speaker 1: It was something of a personal anthem at the time.
Speaker 1: David face ages in management, changes in homes, changes in musicians,
Speaker 1: and then his personal style. The changes were mostly good
Speaker 1: ones and set him up for the success that was
Speaker 1: just around the corner. The episode opens with perhaps the
Speaker 1: most significant moment of this exciting period, his first trip
Speaker 1: to the United States. Bowie touched down at Dullest International
Speaker 1: Airport in Washington, d C. On January. This was a
Speaker 1: major occasion for him. He'd been America Mad as a team.
Speaker 1: The moment was a triumph until he was detained by
Speaker 1: custom officials for his speminine clothes. He received a warmer
Speaker 1: welcome from Ron Oberman, his press agent sent to greet
Speaker 1: him by his label, Mercury Records. This wasn't just strictly business.
Speaker 1: Ron was joined by his entire family, his mom, his dad,
Speaker 1: and his younger brother, music journalist Michael Oberman. David had
Speaker 1: wanted to spend his first night in the States with
Speaker 1: a typical American family, and that's exactly what he got.
Speaker 1: The future Starman crash landed at the Oberman's sub urban
Speaker 1: home in Silver Springs, Maryland, where he was welcomed like
Speaker 1: one of their own. They all piled into the car,
Speaker 1: and the senior Oberman's treated their newly and large family
Speaker 1: to dinner at a local steakhouse. The Oberman's hospitality for
Speaker 1: shadow the warm embraced bowl had received from America throughout
Speaker 1: his career. His first night in the United States has
Speaker 1: gone down in Bowie. Laure is an important early step
Speaker 1: in his journey to global superstardom. The trip is the
Speaker 1: plot of a new film, Stardust, a movie that's been
Speaker 1: deemed controversial first liberal reinterpretation of historical events. Ron Oberman,
Speaker 1: an instrumental force in Bowie's early career, sadly died in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, but his brother Michael recounted the famous visit
Speaker 1: and his new book Fast Forward, Play and Rewind one
Speaker 1: part memoir. The book also collects his interviews with over
Speaker 1: a hundred rock legends, ranging from Janice Joplin and James
Speaker 1: Brown to the Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, Leon Russell, Emmett Rhodes,
Speaker 1: Little Feet, and of course David. I was lucky enough
Speaker 1: to speak with Michael about his remarkable career the music
Speaker 1: journalist and that special night with David Bowie and his
Speaker 1: parents living room back in Well, oh Man. I have
Speaker 1: so many things I want to ask you. I guess
Speaker 1: before I asked you about Bowie's first Night in America.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about the very first time
Speaker 1: you spoke to him. A few years earlier, in nineteen well,
Speaker 1: my brother had sent me a copy of Space, and
Speaker 1: I had also been subscribing to New Musical Express and
Speaker 1: Melody Maker Um because I as a writer for a
Speaker 1: major newspaper, I wanted to know what was going on
Speaker 1: with the British music scene and the of course I
Speaker 1: had subscriptions to American journals to like bill Board and
Speaker 1: eventually Rolling Stone. The interview with with David in sixty
Speaker 1: nine was very brief. I asked him a couple of
Speaker 1: questions and it was done, and I wrote my piece. Obviously,
Speaker 1: fast forwarding to seventy one, it was a totally different story.
Speaker 1: You know. At the time of Space Oddity, that's all
Speaker 1: I knew about Ellie. He was not a household name
Speaker 1: in the United States in nineteen sixty nine, and in
Speaker 1: fact in seventy one he was far from a household
Speaker 1: name because people have already forgotten Space Obity. It was
Speaker 1: a brief introduction Hello, arranged by my brother since my
Speaker 1: brother worked for Mercury Records, and that was it. And
Speaker 1: around this time and this is all in your incredible
Speaker 1: book Fast Forward Play and rewind You interviewed hundreds of
Speaker 1: rock legends. I mean, there's my favorite is this picture
Speaker 1: of you at the Watergate Hotel with James Brown. It's
Speaker 1: just it's unbelievable. Me. Who are some highlights from you
Speaker 1: for that era? Um? You know? My favorite interviews really
Speaker 1: maybe Joni Mitchell because she wasn't granting interviews at that
Speaker 1: time and I got one with her. UM Jim Morrison
Speaker 1: backstage at the Spectrum Theater in Philadelphia. There was my
Speaker 1: Janis Joplin interview. It was Janis Joplin had lining with
Speaker 1: the Jeff Beck Group opening for her, and at the time,
Speaker 1: the Jeff Beck Group, the lead singer was Rod Stewart,
Speaker 1: the bass player was Ron Wood, keyboard player was Nicky Hopkins,
Speaker 1: and the gig was at the Alexandria, Virginia Roller Rink.
Speaker 1: This was before there were really concert halls. So I
Speaker 1: interviewed Jeff Beck in the dressing room and Janice's driver
Speaker 1: comes up to me says she would like to do
Speaker 1: the interview at a hotel. There were two shows, one
Speaker 1: at four pm and one at eight pm, and he
Speaker 1: would drive me to the hotel and bring me back
Speaker 1: to my car. So I go there and she's got
Speaker 1: a suite, So there's a bedroom in the living room
Speaker 1: and I'm sitting on the couch waiting for her to
Speaker 1: come in, and on the coffee table in front of
Speaker 1: me is a bong and the bottle of Southern Comfort.
Speaker 1: And Janice comes in her favorite and she's wearing a
Speaker 1: low cut kind of Mexican peasant blouse and she had
Speaker 1: just done a great show. She's kind of sweaty, and
Speaker 1: she leaned over and grabbed the bottle of Southern Comfort
Speaker 1: while saying to me, would you like a drink? And
Speaker 1: I said, no, not while I'm working. And when she
Speaker 1: leaned over, one breast came out of her blouse totally
Speaker 1: and it stayed out for the entire interview. Now I'm
Speaker 1: a twenty year old guy trying to interview Janice Joplin,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to look her in the eyes. So there,
Speaker 1: you know, people asked me, what do I remember? I
Speaker 1: certainly remember her breast. And there are moments like that
Speaker 1: Grateful Dead Almond Brothers Midnight till six Am show at
Speaker 1: the Fillmore East. I set up an interview with Jerry
Speaker 1: Garcia for after the show, which means six thirty in
Speaker 1: the morning at the hotel. And I'm in a room
Speaker 1: in a hotel room with Jerry Garcia, bab were one
Speaker 1: of their managers, John McIntyre and A Roady, And once
Speaker 1: again there's a coffee table, but on this coffee table
Speaker 1: there's a gallon jug of like cheap wine, gallow wine.
Speaker 1: Pig pen must have been nearby, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: break the ice somehow, and I was kind of an
Speaker 1: amateur magician back then, so I had crumpled up in
Speaker 1: my hand a ball of something called flash paper, and
Speaker 1: they tested joint around to me, and I made it
Speaker 1: a habit not to smoke or drink when I was
Speaker 1: doing an interview, and when they tasted me the joint,
Speaker 1: I dropped the ash into my hand and a ball
Speaker 1: of flame shot out of my hand from the flash paper.
Speaker 1: Jerry Garcia grabbed the jug of wine and doused my
Speaker 1: hand with wine from people was on fire, and of
Speaker 1: course they were tripping. And what happened since the interview
Speaker 1: turns into me explaining flash paper and flashpots, and soon
Speaker 1: after that the Grateful Dead began using flashpots on stage,
Speaker 1: so I think about moments, and you know, was it
Speaker 1: a coincidence that they learned about flash paper from me?
Speaker 1: Or was it providence? You know? So obviously having David
Speaker 1: Bowie spend the day with me and my parents and
Speaker 1: my brother was great. But if you could put yourself
Speaker 1: in my shoes for a minute, this was my job.
Speaker 1: But not only was it my job, I was the
Speaker 1: same age as most of these artists, so there was
Speaker 1: a simpatico that was there already. I had long hair,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. You know, it was such a heavy
Speaker 1: time for me because at a young age here I
Speaker 1: was interviewing the cream of the crop of the music industry.
Speaker 1: And what you see in my book is I think
Speaker 1: about a hundred and ten or a hundred and fifteen
Speaker 1: interviews of the three hundred that were published, of the
Speaker 1: five hundred that I did, because there were a lot
Speaker 1: of interviews that I did that I just never ran
Speaker 1: um the interviews weren't weren't good, that was just stoned
Speaker 1: or drunk, et cetera. And then you know, I'll go
Speaker 1: to an oddball interview, the legendary start Us Cowboy. How
Speaker 1: many people in the United States had interviewed the legendary
Speaker 1: start Us Cowboy when paralyzed came out not many, I imagine,
Speaker 1: not many, no, no, And then to have that connection
Speaker 1: later on with legendary start Us Cowboy and David Bowie.
Speaker 1: You know, it just still blows my mind. Oh it
Speaker 1: is incredible. I mean, I guess taking us up to
Speaker 1: tell me about going to the airport to meet him.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was the whole family, your mom, dad,
Speaker 1: you Ron. I mean I picture like a cooler Griswolds
Speaker 1: just kind of like shot up at the airport. It's amazing. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the nice thing is my brother had hung
Speaker 1: with Bowie in London in nineteen sixty nine, and then
Speaker 1: over the two year period between sixth nine and seventy one,
Speaker 1: my brother dealt with Bowie and his management company quite
Speaker 1: a bit, So it was old home Home week for him.
Speaker 1: For me, it was really because my brother had flown
Speaker 1: in from Chicago. For me, it was driving my parents
Speaker 1: out to Dullars because as much as it was interesting
Speaker 1: for them to meet David Bowie, they wanted to see
Speaker 1: their son who had been living in Chicago and working
Speaker 1: for a record company. So we all get there and
Speaker 1: we were probably expecting him to come out of customs
Speaker 1: about forty five minutes before he actually did. Um. I
Speaker 1: think they probably held him up a little bit just
Speaker 1: because of the way he looked, where he was dressed, etcetera. UM,
Speaker 1: which you know, look, my brother and I had long hair.
Speaker 1: David boy had long hair. David when he arrived at
Speaker 1: the airport was in a calf length kind of flared
Speaker 1: coat that looked like a dress. And you know, this
Speaker 1: was a Dullis airport in Virginia, and I guess they
Speaker 1: were having some fun with him in customs. I mean,
Speaker 1: Nixon's America. I can't imagine taking kindly to to to
Speaker 1: a man in a dress arriving on their shores. That
Speaker 1: makes that makes a lot of sense, I guess for
Speaker 1: the time absolutely. I mean, it's funny this morning. When
Speaker 1: I did my radio interview in London, we talked about
Speaker 1: those times because we had a war in Vietnam going
Speaker 1: on and music played a big part in in the
Speaker 1: the war movement. David Bowie's music did not play a
Speaker 1: big part in it, but what was going on at
Speaker 1: that time, you know. To take you to a day
Speaker 1: in time, the Mayday demonstrations and I helped to organize
Speaker 1: the music for that Washington d C. I saw the
Speaker 1: saw the largest mass arrest in US history, twelve thousand
Speaker 1: peaceful protesters handcuffed in zip tie handcuffs and taken to
Speaker 1: RFK Stadium as a holding cell. And this was in
Speaker 1: May seventy one. Yeah, still holds a record. And you know,
Speaker 1: when you know, I hate to get current. Put January
Speaker 1: six at the Capitol violent protesters. Hardly any of them
Speaker 1: were arrested. They all put in zip ties. And yet
Speaker 1: in in seventy one there were probably seventy thousand people
Speaker 1: there for the music and the May Day anti war
Speaker 1: protests and twelve thousand arrested. It was amazing. So we
Speaker 1: arrived at a seminal time in the United States history,
Speaker 1: and he was he didn't fit in musically, the man
Speaker 1: who sold the world. First of all, let let me
Speaker 1: say something about Mercury Records. God bless my brother who
Speaker 1: passed away. He did the best job he could for
Speaker 1: Mercury promoting acts. But Mercury, there's a reason why Graham
Speaker 1: Parkers sang this long Mercury poison, and part of it
Speaker 1: was Mercury didn't know how to promote LPs. They promoted
Speaker 1: a lot of forty five at the time, you're you're
Speaker 1: talking about Keith with nine point six, you're talking about
Speaker 1: the Left Bank pretty Ballerina. But album groups were not
Speaker 1: you know, it was mercury poisoning. So they didn't know
Speaker 1: what to do with Bowie The Man Who Sold the
Speaker 1: World was too dark of an album for them. And
Speaker 1: but my brother believed in them, and the whole idea.
Speaker 1: The movie start Us comes out, okay, and they they
Speaker 1: have a disclaimer at the beginning, the beginning of it
Speaker 1: that you know, it's a lot of fiction, Well it
Speaker 1: is mostly fiction. There are a few facts in there
Speaker 1: in the movie. They make you seem to think that
Speaker 1: Bowie was surprised when he got to the United States
Speaker 1: that he couldn't perform, but he knew that before he
Speaker 1: came over. He didn't have a work visa at the time.
Speaker 1: In order for a British group to play paying gigs
Speaker 1: in the United States, an American group had to play
Speaker 1: paying gigs in Great Britain. Okay, so there was a
Speaker 1: tip for tat there was a tradeoff. I think the
Speaker 1: British invasion of groups earlier had caused that rule to
Speaker 1: happen because a lot of British groups were doing concerts
Speaker 1: here and kind of knocking Americans off the stage. So
Speaker 1: David was not surprised and my my my parents took
Speaker 1: him in like he was one of their children. I mean.
Speaker 1: The funny thing is the actress who plays my mother.
Speaker 1: Have you seen the film start us? I haven't yet know.
Speaker 1: I really suggest you're watching it on video on demand.
Speaker 1: It's really a dreadful movie. So I endorsements. I say,
Speaker 1: you know, well, first of all, they have Marc Maron,
Speaker 1: who was fifty six years old, playing my brother who
Speaker 1: was twenty seven at the time that Bowie arrived. They
Speaker 1: have Mark Maroon dropping the F bomb in almost every scene,
Speaker 1: and my brother never cursed in his life. They have
Speaker 1: my mother say to David Bowie at the airport, wait
Speaker 1: until you try my Kasha varnishkas. Well, my mother never
Speaker 1: made a Jewish aditional life. Then there is a there's
Speaker 1: a scene in my parents house where supposedly we were
Speaker 1: having dinner in the dining room with a younger brother
Speaker 1: and sister that I to this day don't know that
Speaker 1: they ever existed, but in the film they do. And
Speaker 1: we didn't have dinner in the dining room. We went
Speaker 1: to a place called Emerson's Restaurant. But in that scene
Speaker 1: in the dining room, the actor who plays me, David
Speaker 1: even acknowledges. Hey, Michael, the actor who plays me, says
Speaker 1: to David, are you a novelty act? Now? Oh my god,
Speaker 1: how embarrassing for me. My brother Unfortunately, you know, he
Speaker 1: had to mention the last year's his wife. He didn't
Speaker 1: even know if this movie was being made. But I
Speaker 1: had offered Salon Pictures six months before the filming started
Speaker 1: to give them background on that seventy one trip, and
Speaker 1: the Paul Van Carter, the producer of the film, said,
Speaker 1: I will put Gabriel Range, the director, in touch with you. Well,
Speaker 1: months went by, I get a call British accent. Oh Michael, yes,
Speaker 1: Gabriel Range, you the director of startus O. Gabriel Great,
Speaker 1: I guess you want to talk to me about my
Speaker 1: brother and what happened on that trip. He said, oh wow,
Speaker 1: we just finished shooting the film eighteen days in Hamilton, Canada.
Speaker 1: And I said, okay, well, I know Mark Marion plays
Speaker 1: my brother, which I think is a big mistake, but
Speaker 1: can you tell me a little bit about the film.
Speaker 1: And he says, well, it's about the road trip that
Speaker 1: David and your brother took across the United States and
Speaker 1: your brother's beat up old station wagon. Well, that road
Speaker 1: trip never happened. It never occurred, So you know, here
Speaker 1: I am. And then I on November when the film
Speaker 1: went on video on demand in the state, and it
Speaker 1: didn't go on video on demand in Great Britain until
Speaker 1: last week, which is why I've been getting all these
Speaker 1: calls from from England. I watched it on November and
Speaker 1: I sat here with my partner Mary Jane, watching the
Speaker 1: film and saying, oh, my god, you know my mother.
Speaker 1: That's not my mother, you know me? And it really
Speaker 1: you know it. It skips a lot of important moments.
Speaker 1: I've had some family members and friends that have shown
Speaker 1: around on their first trip to the States, and it's
Speaker 1: always fun for me to see what they zero went
Speaker 1: on as being uniquely American and special to them. I remember,
Speaker 1: I add some family from Italy common They were totally
Speaker 1: taken by chocolate chip cookies. For some reason. I was
Speaker 1: wondering how David reacted to America for those first hours here.
Speaker 1: Was there anything he picked up on that was really
Speaker 1: unique and special to him about the United States? Well,
Speaker 1: the strange thing is you would think that here David
Speaker 1: Bowie has arrived in the US for the first time,
Speaker 1: and his wish that he told my brother wasn't He
Speaker 1: spent his first day with an American family, So it
Speaker 1: was really him asking us more questions than us asking him.
Speaker 1: He wanted to about my father's work, he wanted to
Speaker 1: know about my writing. And when we went to the restaurant,
Speaker 1: we talked about film, we talked about writing. He discussed
Speaker 1: mime a little bit, and I tried to be really
Speaker 1: nice because mime is probably my least favorite art form
Speaker 1: in the world. You're not alone in that. And when
Speaker 1: I was on the student union board at the University
Speaker 1: of Maryland, one of the people that we booked was
Speaker 1: Marcel Marceau and yeah, so um there was it was
Speaker 1: almost like it wasn't somebody from from London. It was
Speaker 1: just somebody who was from another city in America who
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about what we were doing. Um. I
Speaker 1: had no idea at that point, but because I was
Speaker 1: going to be doing a second story with on on David,
Speaker 1: which didn't appear until and it wasn't really me interviewing
Speaker 1: the while he was here in the DC area I wanted.
Speaker 1: I wanted that could be more of a friendly thing.
Speaker 1: I had no idea what was going to happen on
Speaker 1: this three weeks in the United States, and my brother
Speaker 1: would fill me in. We talked on the phone almost
Speaker 1: every day. Um. So, you know, in in the movie
Speaker 1: Start Us, they have David doing an unpaid gig for
Speaker 1: a bunch of vacuum cleaner salesman and that's supposed to
Speaker 1: be funny, and I guess it was a little humorous
Speaker 1: in the movie, but it never happened. Um, David didn't
Speaker 1: come with equipment, he didn't come with the band. He
Speaker 1: knew that he was not and they make a big
Speaker 1: deal of this in the movie. I was he was
Speaker 1: shocked that he arrived in America and he couldn't perform.
Speaker 1: He was a gentleman. Um it was. It was interesting
Speaker 1: because this He ended up back at my house in
Speaker 1: Tacomo Park, Maryland, and one of the bands I was
Speaker 1: managing at the time, because besides being a writer, I
Speaker 1: was managing artists, was called Sky Cob. The drummer's name
Speaker 1: was Marcus Cuff. Marcus is now the premier tattoo photographer
Speaker 1: and motorcycle photographer in Los Angeles and when he left
Speaker 1: Sky cob he was a drummer in Emmy Lou Harris,
Speaker 1: his Angel band. And so Bowie comes back to my
Speaker 1: place and the Scott Cobbs in the living room when
Speaker 1: they've got a bong and they're passing it around and
Speaker 1: David does not partake, and they ignored David. It was like,
Speaker 1: who is this freak? You know? And that really pissed
Speaker 1: me off. And to this day for Marcus, every time
Speaker 1: I talked to him in l A, I bring it up.
Speaker 1: Um he could kick himself for not really having befriended
Speaker 1: David Bowie on that first day in the state. So
Speaker 1: there was nothing, you know, It was almost like it
Speaker 1: wasn't like I was walking into a dressing room to
Speaker 1: interview Jim Morris and David Bowie. It was all of
Speaker 1: a sudden had become a member of the Overman family.
Speaker 1: And that's that's really what it felt like. And I
Speaker 1: get I get a lot of mail now, email from
Speaker 1: Bowie fans who know the story of his first day
Speaker 1: in the United States and have seen the photo. That
Speaker 1: photo of me, my brother and David and my parents
Speaker 1: living from cow started appearing in British publications fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1: I mean that that picture is just fantastic. I mean
Speaker 1: it just looks so it's so surreal. It's like David
Speaker 1: Bowie at Ozzy and Harriett's house or something. It's the
Speaker 1: coolest photo. Yeah, you know it was. For years. I
Speaker 1: would get messages from people saying that must be a
Speaker 1: joint in his hand in the photo, and it's not.
Speaker 1: It's my father's business card. David was interested in my
Speaker 1: father's work managing a brewery um which played a part
Speaker 1: in my life to my fourth grade show until in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties. My father brought home hops Barley all
Speaker 1: the ingredients to beer, and that was my show and
Speaker 1: tell how to make beer in my fourth grade class,
Speaker 1: so to get popular. I think I was a little
Speaker 1: ahead of my time with homebrewing. Wow. I one of
Speaker 1: my my favorite parts of the story of David visiting
Speaker 1: your house's show is kind of giving him the tour
Speaker 1: and you showed him your nineteen Dodgers versus Yankees World
Speaker 1: Series ticket, which is cool on its own, but autographed
Speaker 1: by Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. How that still blows
Speaker 1: my mind? How did you get that Okay. My father
Speaker 1: as manager, a manager of National Bohemian Beer in he
Speaker 1: was the branch manager of the year. So the brewery
Speaker 1: gave us the use of the company plane and tickets
Speaker 1: to three World Series games New York Yankees versus the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Dodgers, the classic World Series of all time. And
Speaker 1: sitting in front of us, we had box seats between
Speaker 1: home plate and the third base it was humph Directly
Speaker 1: in front of us was Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
Speaker 1: And of course I was eight years old. I didn't
Speaker 1: know from Humphrey Bogart. My mother says, oh my god, Michael, yeah,
Speaker 1: get their autographs, And I thought, who are they? So
Speaker 1: I went over, you know, cube little boy and his
Speaker 1: little shorts and all, and excuse you because I get
Speaker 1: your autographs and they obliged, so the you know, and
Speaker 1: it's funny because the whole Lauren Bacall thing and then
Speaker 1: David Bowie with the album cover with that Lauren Bacall look,
Speaker 1: you know, it was yeah, yeah, just you know, there's
Speaker 1: a thread of DNA that just keeps popping up. What
Speaker 1: kind of impact does Bowie have on your life? Now?
Speaker 1: Because you were saying You've had a busy few months
Speaker 1: with the fiftieth anniversary of his first America trip and
Speaker 1: the at lease of the Stardust movie, plus the release
Speaker 1: of your own book. Is he a big figure in
Speaker 1: your life still? It's it's just it's blowing my mind.
Speaker 1: You know that all of this boist when main Man
Speaker 1: got in touch with me and wanted me to do
Speaker 1: one of their podcasts, and then that David Bowie fanatics
Speaker 1: and Great Britain heard. I was gonna do it, but
Speaker 1: in touch with me, don't do it? I said, why? Oh,
Speaker 1: David hated Tony DeVries at the end. You know, there
Speaker 1: was a very acrimonious breakup, and I thought, well, you know,
Speaker 1: when I did my Dude Village incident and saw that
Speaker 1: Tony Devrees was taking of what David made, I I
Speaker 1: thought that was akin to Colonel Parker and Elvis because
Speaker 1: that was the same arrangement. But Tony Duvrees really really
Speaker 1: launched David's career. But unfortunately David had a drug problem
Speaker 1: I think got very bad, and Tony had a zero
Speaker 1: pop tolerance for drugs. That was part of the breakup.
Speaker 1: So on David's part, it was is ripping me off
Speaker 1: and on Tony's part, I can't deal with the drug thing.
Speaker 1: Um and Bowie fanatics are really fanatical. It's it's almost
Speaker 1: once again a kid to Elvis Presley fans. He has
Speaker 1: such a great fan base. You said that you saw
Speaker 1: Bowie one more time years after he became your adopted
Speaker 1: English brother for that night. Tell me about the last
Speaker 1: time you saw him. I had a two year consulting
Speaker 1: contract in l A that took me out there one
Speaker 1: week a month, so I ended up staying at the
Speaker 1: Hotel Al Niko, which is a Japanese hotel, and one
Speaker 1: night at the depo, I'm at the bar and David
Speaker 1: Bowie walks in with nine inch Nails. They had been
Speaker 1: in concert delay that night, and on the end the
Speaker 1: other end of the bar is Soupy Sales. So I'm
Speaker 1: in the middle of the bar between nine inch Nails
Speaker 1: and Soupy Sales and David Bowie. So I'm I'm in
Speaker 1: total heaven, you know. I go over and say hi
Speaker 1: to David, renew my acquaintance, and then leave him and
Speaker 1: him be and I'm wondering what SUPI Sailor is doing here?
Speaker 1: And this guy walks over and sits down next to
Speaker 1: me in a tuxedo and he says, ah, that's David
Speaker 1: Bowie over there, isn't. I said, yeah, that's David. I
Speaker 1: said that Soupy Sales there, and he says, yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: that's Soupie there. There's a roast here tonight for my uncle.
Speaker 1: And in the ballroom. I said, who's your uncle? He says,
Speaker 1: Milton Burrow. So he brings Milton Burl out of the
Speaker 1: roast to the bar. So I'm at the bar with
Speaker 1: David Bowie, nine inch nails, Soupy Sales, and Milton Burrow.
Speaker 1: Well a joke, yeah, I know. And when that evening ended,
Speaker 1: I had watched because I was staying at a Nika
Speaker 1: one week a month for two years, and I had
Speaker 1: watched these people come in and put two bills on
Speaker 1: the bar and get a tiny snifter out of a glass,
Speaker 1: out of a bottle that was in a locked cabinet.
Speaker 1: And after this nine inch nails David Bowie thing, the
Speaker 1: bartender says, wow, let me buy you a drink. What
Speaker 1: would you like? And I said, I'll have what's in
Speaker 1: that lock? Did he do it? Yeah? Yeah he did.
Speaker 1: It was like three year old Brandy. It was like
Speaker 1: tasting silk in your mouth. It was pretty incredible. What
Speaker 1: did David say when he saw you? That must have
Speaker 1: been a shock for him. Well, he didn't realize who
Speaker 1: it was at first. Um, this would have been in
Speaker 1: the mid ninety nineties, so it had been twenty four years.
Speaker 1: And how many people has David met? But as soon
Speaker 1: as I said, Oberman, oh my god, how are you?
Speaker 1: You know? How's your brother? How? And you know he
Speaker 1: had just come off playing that night, And you know,
Speaker 1: I said every every fine, I said, my parents are
Speaker 1: still alive and they certainly remember you. Well, oh, give
Speaker 1: them my regards and say hello Iron for me. And
Speaker 1: that was it. Wow, what incredible code of to your
Speaker 1: bowie experience. What's next for you with your book coming out?
Speaker 1: Is there a sequel or what are you working on?
Speaker 1: You know, my book is sitting with HBO right now
Speaker 1: and with the head of production for HBO. I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going to come of that. Um. I don't
Speaker 1: know how they could. You know, they'd have to make
Speaker 1: a long series out of it. Um. It's been an
Speaker 1: interesting trip. And to think, Look, when I was five
Speaker 1: years old, I didn't think i'd live to see fifty.
Speaker 1: When I was fifty, I got out of the music
Speaker 1: business and became a wildlife photographer. So I left the
Speaker 1: wildlife for wildlife, and I never thought that at age
Speaker 1: seventy seventy one, I would be doing this book. It's
Speaker 1: been incredible. I thought that being out with great blue
Speaker 1: herons and all the eagles and all would uh put
Speaker 1: an end to my music business stuff. But this has
Speaker 1: been a really good trip for me writing this book.
Speaker 1: I've got a lot out off The record is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. If you liked what you heard,
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