Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie: 2 (Ex:Centrics)

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When explaining the genesis of the Lazarus script, co-writer Enda Walsh told the Financial Times that the pair ‘began to talk about death … about morphine. How the brain would wrestle with itself or what it would see in the moments before death. [Bowie said:] “Can we structure something about that?”.’ They talked about the psychotherapeutic noir of Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective and Bob Fosse’s cinematic ode to mortality All That Jazz (1979). ‘We discussed drugs and the drunken state a lot. How to construct something and place it behind the eyes of someone who is totally out of it. The film [Roeg’s adaptation] does it so brilliantly. We thought, we can do that on stage, too’.

Cold Lazarus, episode 4 ‘Finale’ (1996) is available to watch on YouTube. The whole series of Cold Lazarus is available to stream on Channel 4 (online). One of Potter’s masterpieces, The Singing Detective (BBC, 1986) has Michael Gambon as a writer, Philip Marlow, recovering from a vicious bout of psoriatic arthritis in a hospital ward. The second episode is entitled “Heat.” Kardos’ book lists a number of fascinating parallels between Singing Detective and Bowie’s last works. CO: The idea of him doing a show with the McCaslin quartet [as McCaslin said he and Bowie discussed in 2015] is…just incredible.CO: It’s amazing to think of Bowie sitting there going “am I past it? Do the kids not want to hear from me anymore?”

LK: The group I was with were like “What was that? Did you like it? I don’t know, I think I loved it. I hated it.” Sketch of ‘somnambulist for Lazarus video’. 2016, David Bowie Is… V&A. Steve Schapiro portrait from 1975, and still from ‘Lazarus’ video CO: For me “Dollar Days” feels like an epilogue, the calm after the storm, a song about wanting to go home but knowing you will never go home again. Love is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix by James Murphy for the DFA – Edit)’ 2013. Directed David Bowie. Cold Lazarus (Channel 4/BBC, 1996), was, along with its twin production Karaoke, Potter’s last work, written as he was dying from pancreatic cancer and produced after his death in 1994.

CO: I’m glad it’s being staged more. At first, it was just this two-month off-Broadway run in this small theater, so it felt like a secret thing that lot of fans didn’t know about because they couldn’t see it. The missing piece of the puzzle. CO: The demoing is far different from the old days when he’d go into the studio and tell Carlos Alomar, “okay, this is in A major, and have this funk riff here, and let’s work this out.” What a feast of thoughts and interpretations we have been awarded by this amazing man, I am so grateful to DB for the continuing fun. The demoing comes into its own in the late period, the particularity of the choices that David makes tended to get translated. Tony bought his own Zoom unit so he could figure out how to work with it. Reportedly David would say things like ‘I like the way I did it [on the demo], I don’t see why I have to do it again.’ So the demoing is bleeding into the end results.

Very appreciative of this conversation with Leah and cannot wait for my physical edition. Some thoughts on some of the points in your talk: Kardos, Leah(2015) In:Burnard, PamelaandHaddon, Elizabeth, (eds.) Activating Diverse Musical Creativities: Teaching and Learning in Higher Music Education.London, U.K. : Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 223-240. ISBN 9781472589118 CO: The recurrence of stars is another one. Towards the end, he’s playing with the idea of a star aging, or dying, like a red giant . CO: It’s amazing how much of a through line Newton is for Bowie. I heard “Looking For Water” playing a while ago and thought “that’s another Newton song.” Is it strange how much he identified with the character? CO: I have wondered what a full album of Bowie/Schneider would have been like, but I wonder if it was best as this one-off thing.He worked so hard on it and I felt the need to really go deep on it in the book because he devoted and sequestered a lot of his time on it in his final two years. It deserves a deep diving analysis, absolutely. Lindsay Kemp’s 1970 televised version of Pierrot in Turquoise, for which Bowie sang “When I Live My Dream” and other compositions. Lots of dreams, mirrors, bedrooms, killings. Dr. Kardos’ point about Bowie camouflaging his compositional adventurousness with claims of non-musicianship is encapsulated by one anecdote Bowie related in, I think, the 1987 cover interview in Stone where he recounts suggesting a chord-structure for “Never Let Me Down” to Carlos Alomar and Alomar politely modifying it from something Bowie good-naturedly jokes would otherwise have been “ponderous and funereal,” his natural reflex. I think of “Dancing Out in Space” as an example of the ponderous-and-funereal tendencies in a pop love song fully unfurled, and I find it both catchy *and* haunting.

About the author: Leah Kardos is a senior lecturer in music at Kingston University London, UK, where she co-founded the Visconti Studio with music producer Tony Visconti. She specialises in the areas of record production, pop aesthetics and criticism, and exploring interdisciplinary approaches to creative practice. Bowie, 2008: “I’ve never been keen on traditional musicals. I find it awfully hard to suspend my disbelief when dialogue is suddenly song. I suppose one of the few people who can make this work is Stephen Sondheim with works such as Assassins.“How music technology can make sound and music worlds accessible to student composers in Further Education colleges CO: You go a lot into Bowie’s “late voice” which you describe wonderfully as having the “wow and flutter of ancient tape.” Kardos, Leah(2014) Folio of compositions and critical commentary.(PhD thesis), The University of Queensland.