It was here at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1973,
that David Bowie performed his final concert
as Ziggy Stardust.
Thanks very much. Bye-bye. We love you.
A year later, I made my film Cracked Actor for the BBC.
Bowie was in America on the Diamond Dogs tour.
I caught him in the midst of an intensely creative time.
But it was also physically and emotionally gruelling.
We met in hotel rooms in the early hours of the morning.
We snatched conversations in the back of limousines.
He was fragile, exhausted and wasted -
struggling with the madness of rock stardom.
CHEERING
By the end of that tour,
Bowie had killed off his extraordinary cast of characters -
his alter egos -
and moved on to the more wholesome, soulful Young Americans.
David Bowie's had an amazing career
but for the last decade he's been silent until now.
First he surprised us with a new album
and now his legacy is being revisited in an exhibition at
the V&A Museum.
Tonight, Imagine looks at a decisive moment
in David Bowie's personal and creative life -
Cracked Actor.
# You've torn your dress
# And your face is a mess
# Got your transmission and your live wire... #
INTERVIEWER: I wonder if you get tired of being outrageous.
I don't think I'm outrageous at all. At all? No.
How would you describe yourself?
Er...er... David Bowie! Uh-huh.
I'm reluctant to judge what category you fit into. Good!
But I hoped YOU would say it yourself. No.
I'm really old-fashioned. I like moving from one area to another,
to keep me excited and interested,
and to keep the people who see me and buy records excited as well.
# Rebel, rebel!
# Rebel, rebel! #
Don't worry if you didn't understand that. I didn't, either.
David, it's wonderful to have your old-fashioned entertainment around.
But it would be nice if you weren't being evasive or discussing riddles.
GUITAR INTRO: "Quicksand"
# I'm closer to the golden dawn
# Immersed in Crowley's uniform
# Of imagery.
# I'm living in a silent film
# Portraying Himmler's sacred realm of dream reality
# I'm frightened by the total goal
# Drawing to the ragged hole
# And I ain't got the power...
# Any more
# No, I ain't got the power
# Any more. #
# I could fall asleep at night as a rock 'n' roll star. #
CHEERING
July 3rd, 1973. The Hammersmith Odeon in London.
David Bowie plays the part of Ziggy Stardust for the last time.
Ziggy was Bowie's most celebrated role, a weird and fated rock star -
a parody of a rock star, AND an extension of Bowie's personality.
# Ziggy played guitar,
# Jamming good with Weird and Gilly, and the Spiders from Mars.
# He played it left-hand,
# But he made it too far.
# Became the special man,
# Then we were Ziggy's band
# Ziggy really sang, screwed-up eyes and screwed-down hairdo,
# Like some cat from Japan
# He could kill 'em by smiling,
# He could leave them to hang... #
Ziggy became a spectacular success.
So, ironically, did his alter ego, David Bowie.
Then, at the height of his fame,
in front of thousands of screaming fans, David Bowie killed him off.
Thank you. Bye-bye. We love you.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
CHEERING SLOWS AND STOPS
He was born David Robert Jones in Brixton in 1947.
At 17, he was playing saxophone in his own band.
He studied mime, combining it with music to create a new rock theatre
in which he played characters like
Major Tom, Aladdin Sane and Ziggy Stardust.
Two years ago, he came to America
and buried Ziggy somewhere between New York and Hollywood.
ARETHA FRANKLIN: # Looking out on the morning rain,
# I used to feel so uninspired
# Ooh... And when I knew I had to face another day,
# Ooh... Lord, it made me feel so tired.
# Before the day I met you,
# Life was so unkind,
# But you're the key to my peace of mind.
# 'Cos you make me feel,
# You make me feel,
# You make me feel like a natural woman.
# When my soul was in the lost and found... #
Since you've been in America,
you've picked up on the themes of American music and culture.
How has that happened? There's a fly floating around in my milk.
There's a foreign body in it,
and it's getting a lot of milk! It's kind of how I feel.
I'm a foreign body here. I couldn't help but soak it up.
I hated it when I first came here. I couldn't see any of it.
Look - a wax museum. A bleeding wax museum in the middle of the desert!
You'd think it'd melt.
What made this important to you?
With your background, why were you intrigued by all this?
Er...
It filled a vast expanse of my imagination.
I was always pretty imaginative.
Imagination can dry up wherever you're living, in England,
if there's nothing to keep it going.
It supplied a need in me, America. It became a myth land for me.
I think every kid goes through it. I just got onto it earlier.
MUSIC: "Gone With The Wind" Theme
TOUR GUIDE: This area was at one time exclusively for movie stars,
producers, writers and so on.
Right in front of you is the home of Dean Martin.
Somebody was standing in that doorway.
Coming up to the right side of the coach
is the former home of Frank Sinatra.
'..Who also happens to be her stepfather.
'Sean Connery settled the fight.
'He obviously hasn't forgotten his James Bond tricks.'
MUSIC: "Cracked Actor"
# I've seen all the rest and the Hollywood highs,
# Best of the last, cleanest star they ever had.
# Stiff on my legend, the films that I made,
# Forget that I'm 50, 'Cos you just got paid.
# Crack, baby, crack, Show me you're real,
# Smack, baby, smack, Is all that you feel,
# Suck, baby, suck, Give me your head,
# Before you start professing that you're knocking me dead!
# Found yourself a trick down on Sunset and Vine,
# Since he pinned you, baby, You're a porcupine.
# Sold you illusions for a bagful of cheques,
# Made a bad connection, 'Cos I just want your sex.
# Crack, baby, crack, Show me you're real,
# Smack, baby, smack, Is all that you feel.
# Suck, baby, suck, Give me your head,
# Before you start professing that you're knocking me dead!
# Please stay... Just for a day.
# Oh, honey, you're so bad.
# Best I ever had.
# Oh, please stay! #
Grab the towel.
Plaster... Tissues for my eyes, please.
Can I have tissues for my eyes?
SIREN WAILS
I hope we're not stopped. Is there anything behind us?
There's an underlying unease here.
You can feel it in every avenue.
There's a superficial calmness they've developed
to underplay the high pressure here,
as it's a big entertainment industry area.
You get this feeling of unease with everybody.
The first time that it came home to me, and its strange fascination,
was when I came in on the train.
The earthquake was taking place when the train came in.
The hotel that we were in had tremors every few minutes.
It was just a revolting feeling.
Ever since then, I've been aware
of how dubious a position it is to stay here for any length of time.
PIANO INTRO: "Sweet Thing"
# It's safe in the city
# To love in the doorway.
# Strangle some screams from the dome.
# And isn't it me,
# Putting pain in a stranger
# Like a portrait of pleasure, Trails on a leash.
# Well, you see
# That I'm scared and I'm lonely
# So I'll break up my room and run
# To the centre of things.
# I know you wouldn't say
# Boys, boys, It's a sweet thing.
# Boys, boys,
# It's a sweet thing, sweet thing.
# If you want it, boys,
# Get it here thing.
# Oh, boys,
# It's a cheap thing, cheap thing, yeah. #
SAXOPHONE SOLO
# His set is amazing, it even smells like a street,
# There's a bar at the end, I can meet you and your friends
# Someone's scrawled on the walls: "I smell the blood of troubadours".
# Rolled-up scandals in other bars,
# Having so much fun with the poisonous people,
# Spreading rumours and lies, and stories they've made up.
# Some make you sing, and some make you scream,
# One makes you wish that you'd never been seen.
# There's a shop on the corner selling papier-mache,
# Selling bullet-proof faces of Charlie Manson and Cassius Clay.
# Buy some drugs and watch a band, Jump in a river holding hands! #
This is how I do cut-ups. I don't know if Brion Gysin and Burroughs
do it this way. It's how I do it.
I've used this method only on a couple of songs.
What I've used it for, more than anything else,
is igniting anything that might be in my imagination.
You can often come up with very interesting attitudes...
..to look into.
I tried doing it with diaries.
I found out amazing things about what I'd done and where I was going.
It seemed to predict things about the future,
and tell me a lot about the past. I suppose it's a Western tarot.
Anyway, let's see what happens.
# I'm an alligator.
# I'm a momma-papa
# Calling for you.
# I was the space invader,
# I'd be a rock 'n' rolling bitch for you.
# Keep your mouth shut,
# You're squawking like a pink monkey bird,
# I'm busting up my brains for the words.
# Keep your electric eye on me, babe,
# Put your ray-gun to my head.
# Press your space-face close to mine, love,
# Freak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah!
# Don't fake it, baby... #
I never wanted to be a rock 'n' roll star.
Honest, guv(!) I weren't even there!
But I WAS there. It excited me
just because it was there. That was enough.
I played saxophone, and I had to make up my mind whether
to play rock 'n' roll or jazz.
I wasn't good at jazz, but I could fake it on rock 'n' roll.
And I enjoy writing.
The only thing I was good at at school was composition.
I was terrible on grammar, but I wrote the best stories.
MUSIC: "Changes"
# I still don't know what I was waiting for
# And my time was running wild, a million dead-end streets.
# Every time I thought I'd got it made,
# It seemed the taste was not so sweet.
# So I turned myself to face me,
# But I've never caught a glimpse
# Of how the others must see the faker,
# I'm much too fast to take that test.
# Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...
# Turn and face the stranger... Ch-ch-changes!
# Don't want to be a richer man.
# Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...
# Turn and face the stranger... Ch-ch-changes!
# Just gonna have to be a different man.
# Time may change me,
# But I can't trace time.
# Time may change me,
# But I can't trace time. #
SAXOPHONE SOLO
I think we all feel the same way.
Music is an important part of our lives. We're big rock fans.
Bowie is the best. God.
He intentionally keeps himself a mystery.
He's always being somebody else on stage.
He keeps his own personality a complete mystery.
It adds to the aura and makes him a more interesting person.
MUSIC: "Aladdin Sane"
# Watching him dash away,
# Swinging an old bouquet... Dead roses.
# Sake and strange divine... #
It was my initial fascination with mime,
and expressing things with facial movements and body talk,
rather than articulating things.
I'd done as much articulating
as I felt was necessary with the actual songs.
If I was to present them visually,
I wanted my body to play an active part in the performance.
It's funny that very similar masks to the Kabuki stick masks
were used with the English mummers theatre.
They had very similar designs for faces.
There must have been some link.
# Ooh...
# You'll love Aladdin Sane... #
That is from the Aladdin Sane album.
Aladdin Sane was schizophrenic.
That's why there were so many costume changes.
He had so many personalities.
Each costume change was a different facet.
This is another Japanese costume.
These are all Japanese. Most of my clothes are Japanese.
I've always been very fond of Kabuki-style clothes.
That's another Aladdin Sane thing.
Aladdin Sane...
I thought a lightning bolt really represented him.
This was the first Japanese costume that I got.
It was originally worn by a woodland creature
in the Japanese theatre.
That's why it has little animals on it.
It says "Yamamoto kansai". Dry clean only!
Can you save this hanger?
I saw that a lot of my songs were very illustrative and picturesque.
I felt there were other ways of performing them.
I was never confident of my voice.
So I thought, rather than just sing, which would bore everyone,
I'd like to PORTRAY the songs.
That's how it started - wanting to portray the material I was writing.
I always found it was three-dimensional.
I wanted to give it dimension, other than it just being a song.
What time is it? 8.00 on the nose.
Has anybody said how long I've got?
They said ten minutes ago. Have they?
It's a quarter past eight start.
PIANO INTRO: "Time"
# Time is waiting in the wings,
# He speaks of senseless things,
# His script is you and me, boy.
# Time... It flexes like a whore,
# Falls wanking to the floor,
# His trick is you and me...
# Boy.
# Time...
# In Quaaludes and red wine,
# Demanding Billy dolls,
# Other friends of mine.
# Take your time!
# Sniper in the brain,
# Regurgitating drain,
# Incestuous and vain
# And many other last names.
# I look at my watch, It says 9.25.
# I think, Oh, God, I'm still alive.
# We should be home by now.
# Oh, li, li-li,
# La, la, la, la.
# Li, li, li-li,
# La, la, la, la-la... #
I'm leaving... I'm leaving.
# You are not a victim.
# You just scream with boredom.
# You are not evicting time.
# OHH! #
I never get bored. Like, the Stones...
I'll draw a different picture... The Stones get tired!
# Oh, you pretty things!
# Don't you know you're driving your mamas and papas insane.
# Oh, you pretty things!
# Don't you know you're driving your mamas and papas insane.
# Let's make it plain,
# Gotta make way for the Homo Superior. #
I like people who are AC-DC.
You know what I mean?
I'm not saying Bowie's the best...
# Oh, you pretty things!
# Don't you know you're driving your mamas and papas insane! #
I guess I'm living my fantasy. What's your fantasy?
Bowie. He represents it all to me.
Excitement, space... I'm just a space cadet. He's the commander!
You saw, for the last couple of years,
a lot of kids aping you, or looking very like you.
They would dress up very similar to you. How did you feel about it?
It started off like that. But over the last year, it's changing.
They're finding out things that are nothing to do with me,
but the idea of finding another character within themselves.
If I'm responsible for people
finding more characters in themselves, then I'm pleased.
One isn't totally what one has been conditioned to think one is.
We have many facets, which many of us have trouble finding,
and some of us find too quickly.
He's... He's from his own universe.
What universe is that?
Bowie universe.
Are you into the Bowie universe?
He's the centre. I was drawn to it.
How were you drawn to it?
I'm from Phoenix, and I just...
..came.
# Please trip them gently,
# They don't like to fall.
# Oh, by jingo.
# There's no room for anger,
# We're all very small.
# Oh, by jingo.
# We're painting our faces
# And dressing in thoughts from the skies,
# From paradise.
# But they think that we're holding a secretive ball
# Won't someone invite them, They're just taller children,
# That's all.
# After all. #
You know the feeling you get in a car,
when somebody accelerates very fast, and you're not driving?
You get it in your chest, and you're forced backwards.
You're not sure if you like it.
That's what success felt like.
The first thrust from being totally unknown,
to being very quickly known.
It was very frightening for me. I've tried to cope with it.
That's what happened. Some of those albums were me coping,
taking it all very seriously.
GUITAR INTRO: "Space Oddity"
# Ground control to Major Tom.
# Ground control to Major Tom:
# Take your protein pills and put your helmet on.
# Ground control to Major Tom:
# Commencing countdown, engines on.
# Check ignition, and may God's love be with you.
# This is ground control to Major Tom:
# You've really made the grade,
# And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear.
# Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare.
# This is Major Tom to ground control:
# I'm stepping through the door
# And I'm floating in the most peculiar way.
# And the stars look very different today.
# For here am I, sitting in a tin can,
# Far above the world.
# Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do.
# Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles,
# I'm feeling very still.
# And I think my spaceship knows which way to go.
# Tell my wife I love her very much. She knows!
# Ground control to Major Tom:
# Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong,
# Can you hear me, Major Tom?
# Can you...here am I, floating round my tin can,
# Far above the moon.
# Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do. #
Wasn't it dangerous to play the roles?
I didn't know I'd get mixed up.
I've been mixed up, man (!)
Really, one doesn't know.
One half of me is putting a concept forward.
The other half is trying to sort out my emotions.
A lot of my space creations are facets of me, I've since discovered.
I wouldn't admit that to myself at the time,
that I made them a personification of how I felt about things.
Ziggy would be something, and relate to ME.
Major Tom, Aladdin Sane... They're all facets of me.
I got lost at one point. I couldn't decide if I was writing characters,
if they were writing me, or if we were all one in the same.
# In a corner of the morning in the past
# I would sit and blame the master first and last.
# The roads were straight and narrow,
# The prayers were small and yellow,
# And the rumour spread that I was ageing fast.
# Then I ran across a monster who was sleeping by a tree.
# I looked and frowned and the monster was me!
# Well, I said "Hello", and I said "Yeah, hello".
# I asked why not, and I replied "I don't know".
# So we asked a simple blackbird who was happy as can be.
# He laughed insane and quipped "Kahlil Gibran".
# And I cried for all the others till the day was nearly through,
# For I realised that God's a young man, too! #
Would you say that Ziggy was a monster? Oh, he certainly was.
# Ziggy played for time, Jiving us that we were voodoo.
# The kid was just crass,
# He was the nazz, With God-given ass... #
When I first wrote "Ziggy", it was just an experiment.
It was an exercise for me.
He really grew sort of out of proportion.
He got much bigger than I thought he would ever be.
I didn't ever see Ziggy as big. Ziggy just overshadowed everything.
# Making love with his ego,
# Ziggy sucked up into his mind
# Like a leper messiah,
# When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band!
# Oh, yeah!
# Oo-ooh!
# Oo-oo-ooh!
# Now, Ziggy played...
# GUITA-AR! #
He's like the rock 'n' roll star who gets too big for his britches.
He gets really, really, really immensely popular.
And because of this, he gets kind of very corrupted.
It becomes his downfall. The song says:
"When the kids had killed the man, they had to break up the band."
I definitely think it's got a lot of Jimi Hendrix in it,
because there's so many references in the song.
"The kids had killed the man" -
Hendrix was getting so big
that his managers and his fans were giving him drugs,
and urging him to take it, and he was doing it to loosen up on stage.
It eventually killed him, and the band broke up.
Does Ziggy's death have to do with his own personality,
or with the circumstances he was in?
It was his own personality,
being unable to cope WITH the circumstances he was in...
..which was being an almighty prophet-like superstar rocker.
He found he didn't know what to do with it once he got it.
It's an archetype. It's the definitive rock 'n' roll star.
It often happens. I was just trying to document it.
PIANO INTRO: "Rock 'N' Roll Suicide"
# Time takes a cigarette,
# Puts it in your mouth.
# You pull on your finger,
# Then another finger,
# Then your cigarette.
# The wall to wall is calling.
# It lingers, so you forget.
# Oh...
# You're a rock 'n' roll suicide.
# Too young to choose it,
# Too old to lose it.
# And the clock waits so patiently
# On your song.
# You walk past a cafe
# But you can't eat when you've lived too long.
# No, no...
# You're a rock 'n' roll suicide. #
Yes, I had a kind of strange...
..psychosomatic death wish thing, I think.
But that's because I was so lost in Ziggy.
It was all schizophrenia.
# My death waits
# To allow my friends
# A few good times Before it ends.
# So, let's drink to that
# And the passing time.
# But whatever lies behind the door,
# There is nothing much to do.
# Angel or devil, I don't care.
# For in front of that door
# There is you.
# My death waits there
# Among the leaves,
# In magician's mysterious sleeves.
# Rabbits and dogs and the passing time.
# My death waits there,
# Among the flowers,
# Where the blackest shadow, the blackest shadow cowers.
# Let's pick lilacs for the passing time.
# My death waits there,
# In a double bed,
# Sailors of oblivion At my head.
# So pull up the sheets against the passing time.
# But whatever lies behind the door
# There is nothing much to do.
# Angel or devil, I don't care.
# For in front of that door
# There is... #
AUDIENCE CHEER: "David!"
Thank you. APPLAUSE
HOWLING
And in the death,
as the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare,
the shutters lifted in Temperance Building high on Poachers Hill
and red mutant eyes gazed down on Hunger City. No more big wheels.
Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats,
and 10,000 peoploids split into small tribes
coveting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers,
like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts of Love Me Avenue,
ripping and re-wrapping mink and shiny silver fox - now leg-warmers.
Family badge of sapphire and cracked emerald.
Any day now, the year of the Diamond Dogs!
This ain't rock 'n' roll!
This is GENOCIDE!
CHEERING
MUSIC: "Diamond Dogs"
# In the year of the scavenger, season of the bitch,
# Sashay on the boardwalk, scurry to the ditch,
# Just another future song, Lonely little kitsch.
# There's gonna be sorrow, Try and wake up tomorrow.
# Will they come? I'll keep a friend serene.
# Will they come? Baby, come unto me,
# Will they come? She's come, been and gone!
# Come out of the garden, baby, You'll catch your death in the fog.
# Young girl, They call them the Diamond Dogs.
# Yeah, young girl, They call them the Diamond Dogs!
# Yeah, yeah! They call them the Diamond Dogs!
# Yeah, yeah! Call them the Diamond Dogs!
# Yeah, yeah, yeah! Call them the Diamond Dogs!
# YEAH! Call them the Diamond Dogs!
# Yeah, yeah, yeah! Call them the Diamond Dogs!
# Yeah, yeah, yeah!
# Call them the Diamond,
Call them the...
# Diamond Dogs!
# Beware of the Diamond Dogs!
# Beware of the Diamond Dogs! #
It looked as if you were tying up the ghost of Ziggy Stardust.
Yes, exactly. That's what happened.
It was trying to get rid of the damn character!
It was kind of following me around.
And hopefully...
See, I'm very happy with Ziggy.
I think he was a very successful character, and I played him well.
But...I'm glad I'm me now.
Glad I'm me (!) My God, I can trot 'em out!
# Time! Givin' it... Doin' it!
# Givin' it! Keepin' it back! #
That's cool. Next one. One, two, three, four...
# Get you when you're down! Nobody do it to get up! #
OK. That's good.
Right. Last section.
# Gimme, gimme! Yeah! Yeah! Doin' it!
# Takin' you... Sometimes! Lovin' it... Right!
# Givin' it... Doin' it! Givin' it... Keepin' it back! #
So, David Bowie becomes a soul singer.
# I'm only dancing!
# She turns me on!
# I'm only dancing!
# She turns me on... Yes, it makes it!
# Don't get me wrong...
# I'm only dancing!
# Oh, yeah!
# I'm only dancing!
# Oh...
# I'm only dancing!
# She turns me on,
# Don't get me wrong,
# I'm only dancing! #
Subtitles by Red Bee Media