- Damn, I really, if only
I'd had a go at that.
I didn't strive for success;
I strived to do something
artistically important.
I am of the impression that bad things
are something that really
are important to one's life.
All the mediums are rather like painting,
and you can use the same tools
and work within all the different mediums.
Adapting to the idea of
being kind of mainstream
I found very difficult indeed.
Thank god this is visual!
The possibilities are almost limitless:
what can we do now?
The work is never finished
until the viewer contributes himself.
I don't know why but ever
since I was really young
I thought, I didn't ever
have a problem making money,
whatever I did.
As I get older I get more and more selfish
about what it is that I want to do
that I find satisfying.
- He was an English singer,
songwriter, artist, painter,
record producer, and actor.
- He was a popular music
icon for over four decades.
- His flamboyant appearance
was a cornerstone of his image.
- He's David Bowie, and here are his
top 10 rules for success.
- When I was 18 or 19, I think,
I had a whole set of
people that I looked up to.
I don't think I ever,
I think you're only influenced
to a certain extent.
I think what happens is
that you look at somebody
and think that maybe something you had
as a small seed in your own mind,
you see maybe that
person has extended that,
or gone quite a long
way with what you think
you might like to do, and you think,
"Yeah, that person's doing
what I'd really like to do,
"and that's what could happen,
"that's why I can do with what I've got."
So that kind of influence, I'm proud
if I have been influential
on people in that way,
that's really good.
Because there's a certain kind of regret
that when you haven't been
adventurous with your ideas,
when you get into a later life
and you haven't even tried
to do some of the things
that you really wanted to do
and you can look back and say,
"Damn, I really, if only I'd a go at that,
"you know, things might
have been different,
"or I would at least know
if I could do it or not."
And the people I looked
up to when I was a kid,
like William Burroughs
and like Little Richard
and like John Lennon,
they did it, you know,
and I thought, "Well I might
make an absolute fool of myself
"but I'm going to go for it too."
- [Interviewer] You've strived
for success since you're 16.
You've achieved success and
now you sit in your green chair
looking back on it all,
and what do you say?
- Not true; I didn't strive for success,
I strived to do something
artistically important.
And success, over here, I believe,
is very much in the
kind of material world.
So can I just say that before we start?
I wanted to do something
artistically valid.
You can learn from tragedy,
I think you can ...
I'm not sure that a bad experience is,
in America they're so keen
for you not to have a bad experience.
They spend half their lives
trying to avoid bad
things happening to them.
I'm of the impression that bad things
are something that really
are important to one's life
and bad experiences are not
necessarily a bad experience!
- Creative juices come
from bad experiences.
- They do, yeah, but it's,
I don't think they should be
looked at negatively at all.
If I'm writing and recording,
I find I don't need to paint.
But if I'm not doing very
well and I can't write,
there's a kind of a block or blank there,
then I revert to painting and it kind of,
it opens up like a watershed of ideas
and associations and things.
So it's kind of, it's
almost a device to help me.
I often find that one medium
helps the other, you know?
Because I always go back to that analogy
that all the mediums are
rather like painting,
and you can use the same tools
and work within all the different mediums.
And so I can understand
what I'm trying to say
often by painting it
first, and then I think,
"Now I know what I'm trying to write,"
and I can go back and write it.
- [Interviewer] Both
musically and lyrically?
- Yeah.
- Adapting to the idea of
being kind of mainstream
I found very difficult indeed.
But looking at it in a fairly sober light,
I felt that I could
deal with it, you know,
and I just couldn't.
I was so beat by the whole
three-ring circus thing about it
and trying to reach a wider
and wider audience, you know,
without any kind of feelings
of artistic passion at all.
I didn't really believe in
the material I was doing.
And indeed some of it
was very good material.
But I just had lost the belief in myself
as a creative artist.
And I got introduced to Reeves Gabrels
as a guitar player and
just a good guy that I met.
And he just very simply said,
"You've just got to stop
doing this, you know.
"There's no way out.
"Just stop doing it; do
what you like doing."
I said, "But you don't understand,"
he said, "Yes I do understand;
I've read all the books."
And that was it really, and
I just stopped doing it.
And I formed Tin Machine with
the really quite clumsy idea
that I could just disappear
into a band anonymously.
I found my exit from all
that mainstream stuff
through Tin Machine.
I mean that was my Holy Grail at the time.
It was, "Ah, this is the truth!"
I don't find it very
exciting anymore, generally.
I think it's got to get a
lot more dangerous again.
We're working on it!
I think it's probably good to step back
from one's work for a while
and try something totally new.
I think it does revitalize
your original enthusiasms.
And that's what it has been like for me
over the last few years.
And now that I have
ventured back into something
that's very personalized, it does seem
that there's been a lot brewing,
and it is just, "Phew!"
Thank god this is visual!
Whatever I go on the road
on the road with again
will have to be something that
I have the utmost belief in.
Which is a great way to start again,
for me, for the '90s, for my age.
We're at this peculiar
crossroads in rock now,
where there's so many
of us approaching 40s
and will shortly be in their 50s.
So it's kind of a brave new world for us.
So the possibilities are almost limitless;
what can we do now?
Do we do what is the
usual, predictable thing,
which is an artist carries
his repertoire with him
throughout his career.
But as we were doing new
things when we first started,
we should also continue
to do new things now.
For some people, what I
might consider rubbish
might actually have a real strong trigger
to somebody else the way they look at it
and what they need from it.
You know, an artist these days,
especially since Marcel
Duchamp and all that,
the work is only one aspect of it.
The work is never finished
until the viewer contributes himself.
The art is always only half finished;
it's never completed until
there's an audience for it.
- Of course.
- And then it's the combination of
the interpretation of the
audience and the work itself.
It's that gray area in the middle,
is about what the work is about, I think.
I don't know why but ever
since I was really young
I thought, I didn't ever
have a problem making money,
whatever I did.
So really it was a choice of
what was I going to do for it,
and I just had a passionate
affair with music.
And it was a very amorous
affair with music.
As I get older I get more and more selfish
about what it is that I want
to do that I find satisfying.
And it's definitely how one
should spend one's life.
Because you know, if
you make yourself happy,
a little bit of that sunshine
can spread onto others!
- Thank you guys so much for watching!
I hope you enjoyed.
I'd love to know which of
the top 10 clips that you saw
meant the most to you,
had the biggest impact.
Leave it in the comments below
and I'm going to join in the discussion.
- And if there's a famous entrepreneur
that you want Evan to
feature in a future video,
leave that in the comments below too.
- Thank you guys for watching;
continue to believe;
and we'll see you soon.
- See you soon.
