//Brian Eno + David Bowie interviewed by Anthea Turner for British breakfast TV at Flowers, east London, October 1994. This was to publicise the charity art show/auction Little Pieces From Big Stars. By this time the pair were collaborating again, on 1. Outside. For reasons now lost to me, I drove Brian to the gallery early that morning.//

I interviewed David Bowie a couple of the times in the 90s, having met him via fund-raising idea contributions I made to the music industry’s favoured charity, War Child. In the preceding months he had been an enthusiastic contributor to the art events Little Pieces From Big Stars (1994) and Pagan Fun Wear (1995).

This interview took place in the summer of 1995 when Bowie was promoting 1.Outside, notable in that it marked a return to collaboration with Brian Eno (who I also interviewed at the time for his work on that as well as another collaboration, with Jah Wobble on the ambient project Spinner).

Bowie had emerged from the maligned Glass Spider/Tin Machine period a couple of years earlier with more creditable, if not particularly memorable efforts, including The Buddha Of Suburbia soundtrack. He was also actively ploughing a furrow into the visual arts and already mutating as a musician and performer, soon to become a familiar presence on the international festival circuit and engaging in sorties into jungle manifested in the follow-up album Earthling (for which I also interviewed him).

Ideas crackled off Bowie throughout the conversation; Eno once told me that working with him on a song in the studio was like watching a fast-motion film of a flower blossom.

In our chat, Bowie even flew a kite about producing an album based around a fictional character Nathan Adler every year until 2000 culminating in a Robert Wilson-style epic theatrical production at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music. Of course these never came to fruition.

How did you come to hook up with Brian Eno again?
When Brian came to my wedding in 1992, I had instrumental pieces for what would eventually become a third of Black Tie White Noise – music that I composed to be played in the church and at the party afterwards. He explained he was working in a not dissimilar area and I was starting on The Buddha Of Suburbia, where I pretty much started to survey the territory I wanted to be involved in. After a series of conversations, working with Brian really came together in early March 1994.

So it’s no coincidence that you have ended up following the same paths?
We seem to work in a circular fashion. Interestingly enough, we found that both of us lost heart tremendously in the Eighties because of the lack of musical dialogue which existed. Brian went off and did all kinds of installation art work and geared his particular music towards that. I didn’t do very much until I met Reeves Gabrels and started working on Tin Machine.

And then the Nineties kicked in?
For us both, the Nineties started around 1988. You felt things creatively picking up again.

How do you work together?
Our conceptual parameters are not that dissimilar. Brian would often set tasks which would define the movements of the day and then we would work according to that plan, which he would redefine in the studio. This is a great way to start because, as Brian often says, “When you ask musicians to jam, the common ground will always be the bloody blues.” So you always end up with these endless, boring bloody blues pieces. Brian’s thing is to break the structure from the beginning of the day and enter into a feeling of improvisation from new places.

Was it a good fit from the start or did you have to ease yourselves back into the working relationship?
Oh, I can’t tell you how easy it was. It was almost as though no time had been wedged in, like we were carrying on from the third album together. The chemistry between us is just tremendous. I’m not quite sure what it is, but it’s probably about the differences between us. Where Brian will take things from low-art and elevate them to high-art status, I tend to do exactly the opposite, which is to thieve from high art and demean it down to street level!

And you meet on the common ground?
Exactly. On the pivotal point, on that crossbar, is where we meet. One element which is missing from the collaboration this time around is Robert Fripp.

Why?
It could be because I have such a strong relationship with Reeves Gabrels. I have to say, and this is not derogatory to Reeves, that he is not that dissimilar in his approach to playing his guitar as Robert. You could also ask: why not Adrian Belew? There are a pool of guitar players which Brian and I tended to use when we worked together in the old days. We know we want somebody who is technically very skilled but has the intelligence to move away from cliche. And I have developed a very strong friendship and relationship with Reeves. Everybody was virtually handpicked for the album. I looked for musicians who would not find themselves in an inhibiting or embarrassing position when asked to do things which musicians maybe aren’t generally comfortable with.

Like: “Put this frock on!” Or: “Play like a fried egg”?
[Laughs] Exactly, or: “Be a tree!” Tell some hardened session musician that and you just get charged treble time!

Was it deliberate that you chose certain people from different stages of your career?
It was coincidental that everybody ended up representing some clear point in the work that I’ve done. Those particular musicians are the ones who are the most open to experimentation. With Mike Garson, for example, we could just say:”Mike, just be yourself,” and it’s so nutty that there was no need to set parameters.

So there was no calculated attempt for this to be a summation, to collide different aspects of your career, particularly with Brian?
It honestly didn’t come from that place. It was a question of, would these musicians accept the fairly unusual recording process? In my mind, I looked at every one and tried to put them into that situation. These were the ones which would be able to do it. The first time around [for Low, Heroes and Lodger], we had some who were almost irritated at some of the things Brian and I wanted to do. That doesn’t make for an enjoyable set of sessions so we thought, let’s really look for people who will do what we want to do.

Why impose a concept on the album? Weren’t you worried about the reaction?
Firstly, we don’t think there are any concept albums [laughs]. Secondly, we didn’t impose a concept, it grew in parallel with the improvisations we were doing, the thematic device or idea of a story, however non-linear it might be. In March 1994, we worked on a three-hour improvisational piece which was mainly dialogue. Brian gave me the job of a griot [an African storyteller]. As a result, characters started to develop, so there was semblance of a narrative. Last December, Q asked me to do a diary of my past 10 days, which I thought might be a bit boring – going to a studio, coming home and going to bed. So I wondered what this character Nathan Adler would have been doing. Rather than 10 days, it became 15 years in his life! So I wrote that story for them, pulling on the elements of that improvisation. Then I realised this was a great skeleton to put the texture on.

It sounds like a parallel process to your work in the visual arts. I heard you’re creating art by feeding charcoal drawings through computers.
Yes! A lot of it is one thing appropriating from the other. It’s an accumulative thing. The subject of the album may be the story of Nathan Adler. The content is actually the texture of 1995. The story is the skeleton and the flesh and blood are the feeling of what it’s like to be around in 1995. In fact, this is an ongoing series of albums. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance, by a narrative device, to chronicle the final five years of the millennium. The over-ambitious intention is to carry this through to the year 2000.

What, with an album a year?
Yes!

Does Virgin [his record company at the time] know about this?
Sort of! I don’t actually know whether it would be yearly or every 18 months but it would be a Swiftian idea, using it as a signpost to what is happening now.

What do you think of the UK groups who have come up over the past couple of years?

I like Tricky very much and I like PJ Harvey tremendously but, because I spend more time in the US, I know more about American acts and I have had some quite considerable feedback backwards and forwards with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. We’re touring together in the States and Canada and we’ll see how we get on with each other. In different ways we have very similar approaches and he tells me he is very influenced by stuff Brian and I did in the late Seventies.

How are you going to present the new album live?
I’m not going to present the new album theatrically, it’s far too ambitious a project. A wonderful thing to accomplish would be something along the lines of Robert Wilson’s work – a piece of epic theatre, an eight-hour piece, a bit of a Nicholas Nickleby; you know, you bring your sandwiches. Maybe we could produce it as major piece at the Brooklyn Academy in the year 2000. For me, it’s attractive to be working with something which resembles Brecht’s work, the pieces he did with Weill. The Rise & Fall Of Mahagonny was always a tremendous influence on me. The idea of trying to recreate those kinds of situations in rock has always been attractive and I feel that is what I’m possibly moving back towards.

You’re also becoming an active visual artist. Was this sparked by your contributions to Little Pieces From Big Stars?

No, I’ve always drawn, painted and sculpted but it also seems to be linked to the advent of the Nineties. Things have changed a lot in my personal life. Generally, life has been so buoyant for me since the late Eighties. I find that I’ve become a lot more open in what I wish to do, be, and say. It’s always something which was private and I don’t really understand why. I’ve done five or six shows, nothing like Brian who has done something like 70 installations. I’m building up to my sixth show [in New York in December] so now I’m feeling like an old hand.

Are you returning to films [Bowie’s parodic portrayal of Andy Warhol in Basquiat had been deemed his most successful movie-acting outing since The Man Who Fell To Earth]?
Well, I enjoyed the hell out of it, because I know director Julian Schnabel and everybody in the cast extremely well – I’ve known Dennis Hopper for something like 20 years, Gary Oldman nearly a decade and also Chris Walken and Willem Dafoe. It was almost a workshop situation and wasn’t too long because Julian only had me there for 10 days so at least I was working full out without too much sitting around.

So will there be more film projects?
Not if I can help it. I don’t enjoy the process. Unless you’re the director, it’s extremely boring and I’m not a born actor in terms of film.

One last question. Is the piano part from Raw Power [the title track of the 1972 Iggy & The Stooges album “produced” by Bowie] deliberately included in [the album’s single] The Heart’s Filthy Lesson?
Aha! [sounds perplexed]. I really don’t know.

It wasn’t intentional but I should say yes, it was a post-modern observation which I’ve been planning for years!

Tags: 1.Outside, 1995, Brian Eno, David Bowie, Jah Wobble, Robert Fripp, Robert Wilson, Spinner, Virgin, War Child