ON THE OUTSIDE OF MAINSTREAM IN ALBUM, TOUR
USA Today  09-12-1995
By: Edna Gundersen  
 
NEW YORK - David Bowie started singing Rock 'n' Roll 
Suicide in 1972. Now he may enact it.
After eulogizing his greatest hits in 1990's Sound + Vision 
tour, rock's restless chameleon vowed to bury them forever, 
preferring to enter the '90s empty-handed. He hasn't changed 
his tune and is ready to face the consequences on his first 
tour in five years, starting tonight in Hartford, Conn.
"How do you commit commercial suicide?" the British rocker 
muses. "Well, you do this: play songs from an album that 
hasn't been released yet, and complement it with obscure 
songs from the past that you've never done on stage."
Bowie's current set list boasts such spacey oddities as Joe 
the Lion, Teenage Wildlife and Andy Warhol, plus selections 
from 1993's barely heard Black Tie White Noise and the 
radical, disturbing technoise of new album Outside, due 
Sept. 26. He'll also team with opening act Nine Inch Nails, 
purveyors of cutting-edge industrial din and one of rock's 
many Bowie junkies.
Bowie's commercial value may have eroded since 1983's big-
selling Let's Dance album, but his legend as vanguard and 
visionary looms large, especially in the music of such Bowie 
disciples as NIN's Trent Reznor, Smashing Pumpkins, Stone 
Temple Pilots and Nirvana, whose faithful cover of Man Who 
Sold the World added Gen-Xers to Bowie's fan base.
"I thought it was extremely heartfelt," Bowie, 48, says of 
Kurt Cobain's version. "In the past five years, I became 
aware how my music affected this generation of bands. Until 
this point, it hadn't occurred to me that I was part of 
America's musical landscape. I always felt my weight in 
Europe, but not here. It's lovely."
Adopting a surfer dude accent, he blurts, "It's totally 
cool."
The architect of plastic soul and glam rock keeps ch-ch-
changing and has no use for Golden Years nostalgia. Let's 
not dance, he suggests. But will he stumble on this tour by 
eschewing road-tested favorites?
"I prefer a magnificent disaster to a mediocre success," 
says Bowie, ensconced in his sleek offices high above Fifth 
Avenue's noisy Labor Day parade. "I cannot with any real 
integrity perform songs I've done for 25 years. I don't need 
the money.
"What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as 
an artist and that I still have something to contribute. It 
just doesn't work for me to go on being Major Tom. I don't 
want to end up in Las Vegas."
Bowie hasn't fled his past entirely. Outside marks a reunion 
with avant-garde producer Brian Eno, his collaborator on the 
landmark '70s trilogy of albums: Low, Heroes and Lodger. 
Though more assaultive and less ambient, Outside bears a 
resemblance. Bowie says his hefty output entitles him to 
construct hybrids.
"It's like a painter repeating significant motifs in his own 
work, creating a personal vocabulary," Bowie says. "I now 
have my own currency, 24 albums worth."
He and Eno reconnected at Bowie's 1992 wedding, where they 
played passages of each other's compositions at the 
reception and grinned at the resulting ebb and flow of 
couples on the dance floor.
"We realized we were both interested in nibbling at the 
periphery of the mainstream rather than jumping in," Bowie 
says. "We sent each other long manifestoes about what was 
missing in music and what we should be doing. We decided to 
really experiment and go into the studio with not even a 
gnat of an idea."
They were inspired by a visit to a psychiatric hospital in 
Maria Gugging, Austria. Started as an experiment in the 
'50s, the clinic is a lifetime home to mentally ill patients 
with profound artistic gifts, so-called "outsider" artists.
"They don't live on this planet," Bowie says with 
admiration. "The value of this work is that the artists 
don't feel the sense of judgment on them. . . .  We felt a 
sense of exhilaration watching them work."
During his studio improvs with Eno, Bowie created a handful 
of eccentric characters, then assembled them in an 
unsettling short story, The Nathan Adler Diaries, a non-
linear tale of a detective investigating ritual murders 
committed as artistic acts. In provocative songs such as I'm 
Deranged and Voyeur of Utter Destruction (as Beauty), 
Outside retells the surreal yarn set in 1999.
Reviving his long-retired trademark of donning masks, the 
former Ziggy Stardust and Thin White Duke adopts seven new 
identities. His chilling artist/killer swoons that "reeking 
flesh is as romantic as hell." Outside's theme of 
neopaganism emerges in graphic body piercing scenes in new 
video The Hearts Filthy Lesson, directed by Sam Bayer (the 
lensman behind Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit).
Bowie is no Christian Coalition poster boy, and his album is 
sure to push Bob Dole's buttons. Yet he sees art's 
controversial flare-ups of violence as purging, not 
destructive.
"Popular culture has always addressed our fears and 
anxieties," he says.  "I understand why there is so-called 
gratuitous sex and violence in art. It's not just to make a 
buck. That's such an easy way of looking at it. It's 
psychologically important to society to have Shakespearean 
darkness expressed and those gladiatorial things played 
out."
On the surface, Outside is a futuristic fantasy. Underneath, 
it confronts reality. Bowie's fragmented lyrics and Eno's 
otherworldly disarrangements convey a society in the throes 
of fin de siecle panic.
"At the end of 1,000 years, it must express itself in a far 
more manic way," says Bowie, predicting turmoil in the 
transition to a new millennium. "There's an unconscious 
feeling you won't get through to the other side. Probably, 
the most difficult task you'll have on Jan. 1, 2000, is 
deciding what to eat that day."
Irrepressibly good-humored and self-deprecating, Bowie is 
effusive on the joys of daily existence. He interrupts an 
interview to point out a balloon sailing past his window.
"It's so sweet," he marvels. "One of the loneliest things to 
see in the city is a balloon, especially a blue one. It's 
sad. Little metaphysical spirits floating amid the 
skyscrapers."
Bowie is engrossed in music projects but not maniacally 
ambitious. He's nearly abandoned acting, except for his role 
as Andy Warhol in director/painter Julian Schnabel's biopic 
of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat: Build a Fort, Set It on 
Fire. Bowie's chief focus is his marriage to Somalian 
supermodel Iman.
"I'm obscenely happy," he gushes. "My relationship with my 
wife is so grounded. I've never been so happy domestically 
in my life."
The couple splits time between homes in Switzerland and New 
York, but may relocate to his native England to start a 
family. Consequently, fans may see him on stage less often.
"I'm not a touring animal," he admits. "It's extremely 
vegetating to be on the road."
Rather than cling to the youthful rebellion that fueled his 
heyday, Bowie relishes midlife challenges.
"I'm approaching 50, and I cannot express to younger people 
how great it is to be this age. I, like them, would never 
have believed it. It's like describing the taste of a peach. 
They'll find out when they get here."


copyright 1995 USA Today