ENGAGED AND OFF DRUGS, BOWIE IS `A HAPPY GUY'
From the Salt Lak Tribune 12/27/91 p. C3
Byline: By Patrick MacDonald  SEATTLE TIMES

ENGAGED AND OFF DRUGS, BOWIE IS `A HAPPY GUY'

Need a little holiday cheer? Just talk to David Bowie.

Rock's chameleon legend, on tour with Tin Machine, the latest in his long line of musical incarnations, is
 deliriously happy. You could feel the glow through the phone line from San Francisco.

"It's a fantastic period in my life,'' he said in a light British accent. "And it's because my real soul 
life is excessively good. I'm feeling incredibly blessed and fortunate at the moment. My life is just really
happening.''

The main source for his happiness, he said, is his engagement to Iman, the African beauty who's been a top 
international model since the mid-1970s. Their marriage is planned for early next year.

He said he is closer to his son, Zowie, 20, than ever before. And he's won a 10-year battle with drugs and 
alcohol. ``I just don't do any of that anymore,'' he said. "So I'm a happy guy." 

The Tin Machine project is also a factor, because it lets him rock out every night in concert. The show is 
totally spontaneous, he said, which makes it daring and exciting.

"We have no set list whatsoever. We have a complete list of all our songs on the floor of the stage and we 
yell it out as we feel it. If you catch us on a bad night, it can be one of the most disastrous shows you've 
ever seen. But on a good night -- and fortunately with this band most nights have been good nights -- it really 
happens."

The Tin Machine show consists only of material taken from the band's two albums, plus a few cover tunes. Bowie 
laid to rest all his songs from other phases in his career after his world tour last year. He vows to never do 
them again. From now on, he's only looking forward.

He's undaunted by the fact that Tin Machine -- also including flashy guitarist Reeves Gabrels and a rhythm section 
of Hunt and Tony Sales, sons of Soupy Sales -- has been the least successful venture of his long, colorful career, 
which stretches back to the early '70s. The 1989 debut "Tin Machine" album was one of the worst sellers in EMI 
Records' history, and the recent follow-up, "Tin Machine II," on Polygram's Victory Music label, is off to a 
slow start.

"Tin Machine II" is much more together than the first album, with impressive work from Gabrels and better lyrics 
from Bowie.     He said some of the songs don't sound the same anymore, now that the band has been playing them 
on the road.

"I would say about one-third of the songs have gone through quite heavy transitions from their original forms.''

The cover of the new album has gone through some changes, too. It depicts four images of the same ancient Greek 
statue of a naked youth. Several American distributors refused to carry the album until Polydor covered the 
genitals on the statues.

He blames Puritan morality for the covering up of an ancient work of art, which is on public display at the 
British Museum.

"I think the ambivalence in America has come from that source, right from the beginning," he said. "I think 
that's why the pendulum swings so radically from left to right on morality issues."

Bowie spent some time in the Northwest earlier this year to film a part in David Lynch's upcoming "Twin Peaks"
movie.

Asked about Tin Machine's future, Bowie said he doesn't think about it. "To dwell on the past or the future too 
obsessively is really quite ruinous to one's psyche. It's incredibly important to keep in front of you the day 
itself . . . if you're notgiving yourself to the right now, then you're really committing some kind of emotional, 
spiritual suicide.

"There's a famous Chinese saying -- and here's my parting shot -- 'If we don't change direction, we may end up 
where we're heading.'"


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