1971: The Year That Music Changed Everything (2021) s01e03 Episode Script
Changes
I came to London in March of 1970.
There's something about my life
about getting to places slightly late.
I went to Apple for
some reason or other.
They had already done
the concert on the roof. I missed that.
And the building
was kind of hollow and empty.
And then, all of a sudden, it was over.
The small gathering on Savile Row
is only the beginning.
The event is so momentous
that historians may one day view it
as a landmark in the decline
of the British Empire.
The Beatles are breaking up.
The Beatles have changed so many lives
that the need for them still exists.
The hope that they
represent still exists.
And as long as that exists
then they have to exist.
We're all in it together.
If the Beatles don't exist,
you don't exist.
It was a horrible feeling
that it might be all over.
They inspired that whole generation
to go and conquer the world.
The whole youth culture
could not have happened without them.
What I feared was the establishment
was gonna claw back pop music
to where it had been pre-Beatles.
Awful, awful light entertainment.
I've been sitting here all day
Thinking
As we got into 1971,
you could see they did not want
the counterculture.
They did not want youth movements.
It was them and us.
Now my days are gone
Memories linger on
Thoughts of when I was boy
The dream's over.
- In 1971
- Music said something.
The world was changing.
We were creating the
21st century in 1971.
Myself and, I guess,
a certain contingent of musicians
at the beginning of the '70s
wanted to manufacture
a new kind of vocabulary
about what rock music was
and could become.
The history of rock could be recycled
in a different way.
We were fed up with the hippies.
We wanted to go somewhere else.
I was writing for Rolling Stone,
and a friend of mine
who had become the West Coast publicist
for Mercury Records called and asked
if I wanted to interview
this obscure English artist
that they were trying to publicize
because he was unknown.
I'd never heard of him.
And he sent me
The Man Who Sold The World
which I didn't really like
very much at all,
but I wasn't about to turn down
a trip to San Francisco.
So I went.
I remember he emerged from the plane
and he was wearing a dress
and carrying a purse.
And I felt terribly intimidated.
You know, he was really pretty.
KSTN,
KSTN-FM Stockton. Your official station.
David is with us. How you doin', David?
- Good to see you.
- Thank you very much.
Have you been in this country before?
No, it's the first time in the States.
- Wow. How do you like it so far?
- Yeah. Great. Incredible.
It says here
that you are one of those Englishmen
who has happened upon the pop scene
and just captured
the hearts and minds of
minds of nearly all
of the audiences that have heard him.
- Isn't that wonderful?
- Wow. Yeah.
- Did you know that? Yeah.
- I'm quite a guy.
I mean, being truthful, his career
was not doing well in those days.
He was kind of a cult artist,
and his sales weren't that high at all.
After we made The Man
Who Sold The World,
he went with a manager
called Tony Defries.
And Tony Defries didn't like the album.
And he sacked our band.
Even me. I lost him. I lost contact
with him for at least a year.
The idea was to create a new entity.
We were deconstructing David
and reconstructing Bowie.
That was the footing we were on in 1971.
I'm reading this bio here
because I just received it here.
And some interesting things
about you here.
Did you know this,
that your name was David Robert Jones
Oh, yeah.
but that Davy Jones
of the Monkees claimed the name
- Yeah.
- and you became David Bowie.
There was one party
in the Hollywood Hills
that was intended to introduce him
to the LA cognoscenti,
but the cognoscenti were greatly
outnumbered by these starlet types.
And they didn't know
what to make of him.
They were incredulous.
A guy in a dress
sitting in the lotus position
singing Jacques Brel songs.
I kind of wished that he'd consulted
with me, because I
I would've said, "No Jacques Brel.
They're not gonna get it."
And they didn't.
An hour into the party, everyone hearing
that an Andy Warhol superstar
was having a party up the road,
everybody essentially left
the Bowie party
including Bowie.
I don't know what all that was about.
I landed there, and I found that
all I could do was radio shows
and the odd private house where I
would play for whoever we could get in.
So I can't really
give you an honest opinion
of what I thought of American audiences
because I didn't see any.
The music industry
has not been easy on weirdos ever.
And in 1971,
he was struggling very much.
Trying to find where he was going,
whether he ever would.
He'd been rejected and rejected, he'd
made records that hadn't gone anywhere,
and then just been ridiculed
as a freak in a dress.
Most people would've given up.
By then,
everything was so polarized in America.
People had burnt out,
and they're cynical and they're angry.
The "peace and flowers" love thing
was well over.
Looking back on it now,
it's hard to understand how bad it was.
The jury hearing the charges
against Charles Manson
and three girl members
of his so-called "Family"
brought in its verdict this afternoon.
All were found guilty of murder
in the first degree.
To his family of followers,
Manson was a kind of god.
But to the California police,
he was something quite different.
A car thief, pimp and Satanist
who'd masterminded eight murders,
at least.
Members of the so-called "Family"
talked to a BBC 24 Hours team
soon after Manson had been arrested.
Well, when I first met him,
the man talked to me,
and he says, "Why don't you come up?
And the rules are that, you know,
there is no rules."
This drawing is a drawing of awareness.
And I think that Charles Manson
is the most totally aware person alive.
You tried to show Charlie your picture?
But sadly enough, you know, like, he's
aware of everything that's truly evil
as well as everything that's truly good,
and I feel that he's a victim.
At that point in time
if you had long hair,
you were judged immediately.
You were a drug addict. You were a
freak. You were an enemy of the state.
So parents and children
hated each other.
America, there's a phenomenon
of parents thinking that
that they depict
satanic qualities in children.
And really,
they don't like their children.
So many parents really hate their
children in the United States.
Did you read in the paper the other day
about that father in a western state?
His son grew long hair,
and the father got angry.
The son refused to cut it,
and he went into the bedroom
and got a shotgun and shot his son dead.
Just over long hair.
We moved to LA when it was
all groovy, peace and love,
flowers and bubbles,
and people thought
that we were kind of a joke
as we looked so, you know, heavy and
sinister and threatening and everything.
And then Charles Manson happened,
and the demise of the Beatles happened.
The timing just fell into place
for what we were doing.
Right now there's a young man
who calls himself Alice Cooper on stage.
The hippie thing, I thought,
was extremely phony.
I just thought it got syrupy as hell.
"Everybody love everybody."
You know, 'cause everybody was on drugs.
Come on. You know, quit bullshitting.
You know, this thing is really stupid.
We had been concentrating
on doing this avant-garde music.
We didn't even try to write hit singles
until it became obvious
that we weren't gonna be eating
unless we did.
You know, Alice has always been
very hip to what's happening,
and we knew
that we wanted to appeal to kids.
And we were thinking,
"What is the target audience
for record-buying public in America?"
And it was 18 years old.
Okay, here on The Barry Richards Thing,
we have Alice Cooper with us,
and that's the name
of the whole group, right?
- Yeah.
- It's also your name.
- Yes, it's my name.
- Are you gonna do "Eighteen?"
Yeah, yeah, "Eighteen."
All right, this is the new 45
from Alice Cooper, "Eighteen."
We were shocked that it was a hit.
But it was so simple and so "duh"
that it worked on the radio.
And the song was giving
the 18-year-old guy, at least, a voice.
Lines form on my face and hands
Lines form from the ups and downs
I'm in the middle without any plans
I'm a boy and I'm a man
I'm eighteen
And I don't know what I want
Eighteen
I just don't know what I want
Eighteen, I gotta get away
I've gotta get outta this place
I'll go runnin' in outer space
Oh yeah
For years now,
the young have been drifting away
to a world of their own,
unable or unwilling to accept
what the established order has to offer.
They wonder aloud about a system
that produces material riches
and creates emotional poverty.
A system that leaves many of its young
with no sense of self-worth,
no sense of importance in the home,
no useful role in society.
'Cause I'm eighteen
I get confused every day
Eighteen
I just don't know what to say
When you have that hit single
it's the Willy Wonka golden key because
it means you're generating money.
And so everybody's listening now,
and you're not this freak show.
You're suddenly viable.
We represented the
great disenfranchised.
It was a new audience.
Britain, so they say, is now rather like
the morning after the night before.
The party's well and truly over.
The image or, if you like, myth
of the swinging '60s
has given way to the sober '70s.
We've grown up a little, all of us.
And there has been a change,
and we are a bit freer and all that,
but it's the same game.
Nothing's really changed, you know.
People are living in fucking poverty
with fucking rats crawling over 'em.
It's the same, only I'm 30 and a lot of
people have got long hair, that's all.
Three boys in their early teens,
and one aged 11,
growing up in the East End of London.
Already these four lives
are lives at risk.
Already the future shadows them.
Do you ever think about
getting old and everything like that?
Think about? I am old.
I already think I'm old, you know.
For the new generation coming in,
there was a vacuum.
Bands like the Stones, and the Who,
and obviously the Beatles,
had led us through the '60s.
But the younger generation
were looking to find what they loved.
The younger kids
feel really kind of neglected, you know.
They haven't got their own music.
They haven't got their own culture.
They haven't got a say yet in anything.
I remember seeing
A Hard Day's Night in Brooklyn,
and I saw that London
where it was the Beatles going
to drinking clubs
and gambling clubs and all that.
And I was very
disappointed when I arrived
to see that the UK
was pretty old-fashioned.
It was actually quite a drab place.
It was time to come up
with something different,
but the Beatles were
a hard act to follow.
The thing is,
the Beatles weren't just a pop group.
They weren't popular entertainers.
They were artists
in the real sense of the word.
So as we got into 1971,
if you were a pop group
with screaming girls
you were not gonna get good reviews
in Melody Maker and NME.
The musical snobbery
was really growing at that time.
It's much more fulfilling nowadays
because the audiences
are much more educated.
The people are very aware.
Even some of the chicks are aware
of what kind of strings and things
are used
on certain bass guitars
and things like that.
Love comes to you and you follow
Bands were taking themselves
a bit too seriously.
They were becoming slightly pretentious,
overblown.
And it was rather frowned on by some of
the more superior rock critics
to have hit singles.
Sharp distance
When I started on Radio 1,
I was given an acetate of a single
that I could take onto my first program
and play as an exclusive.
And it was "Ride a White Swan."
He was one of the few people
at that moment
who was driven to appeal
to 13, 14, 15-year-olds.
There was very few people
making good singles, I think, you know.
So that's when I figured
I ought to make some singles.
'Cause I like singles. It's, like,
a three-minute adrenaline buzz.
Wear a tall hat like a druid
In the old days
Wear a tall hat and a tattooed gown
Ride a white swan
Like the people of the Beltane
Wear your hair long, babe
You can't go wrong
Catch a bright star
And a-place it on your forehead
Say a few spells
And baby, there you go
Take a black cat
And a-sit it on your shoulder
And in the morning you'll know
All you know, oh
After David went with Tony Defries,
I just blanked him
from my consciousness.
And Marc was the one I went with.
They were friends, not that they were
in collusion with each other,
but they both started playing
at the same time
with their image as pop stars.
Marc was a chameleon.
When I first met him, he was a hippie
sitting playing an acoustic guitar
on a Persian rug, you know.
He had emerged in '65 when he was a mod.
And now Marc was beginning to move across
into that blurred line, androgynous look.
A sort of embryonic
'70s rock and roll style.
I always remember hearing
"Ride a White Swan" on the radio
and thinking that he was amazing.
And then seeing him.
And he was the first person to really
wear the eye shadow and do the glam thing.
And that's how he walked around.
That was Marc in the street,
when he came to dinner.
And everything that Marc did was fun.
It was a time when most of the
rock and roll bands
were very masculine.
The idea of dressing androgynously
was new and refreshing.
But, you know, when it came to music,
he had a '50s mind.
He jumped back a generation,
playing Chuck Berry guitar.
And he was writing rock and roll songs.
When "White Swan" was a hit,
I realized that something was changing.
You know,
the kids were getting a bit younger,
and they were selling out the concerts.
Which they hadn't done before,
to be honest.
And then I put out "Hot Love"
and it went straight to number one.
And then all the audiences were
were predominantly chicks mostly
after my balls.
Which was very cute.
Well, she's my woman of gold
And she's not very old, ah ha ha
She's my woman of gold
And she's not very old, ah ha ha
I don't mean to be bold
But may I hold your hand?
Once Marc got his first hit single
the hippie emphasis on spirituality
was virtually abandoned.
And he started to be very sexual.
Well, she ain't no witch
And I love the way she twitch, ah ha ha
I'm her twopenny prince
And I give her hot love
I talked with some of the fans
that came to see the shows.
A lot of 12, 13, 14, 15-year-old girls.
And I asked, "What is it about Marc?"
And some of them
were crying in their efforts
to express their emotion for him.
I've come out of the front door
of the Newcastle City Hall
to speak with some of the people
who saw the concert tonight.
- Did you enjoy it?
- He was gentle and pretty
What particularly do
you like about them?
They're just lovely, and gorgeous
- Did you enjoy the concert tonight?
- And I think he's got beautiful hair.
- You enjoyed it did you?
- It was lovely!
For the younger girls, you know,
the new generation coming in,
he was just so exciting
because they wanted liberation.
Liberation of expression
and liberation of thought.
Yet another row about sex education.
The schoolchildren and their parents,
their teachers, are all, today,
in the middle of an atmosphere
where information about sex
has never been freer.
The upheaval that followed
the making by Dr. Martin Cole
of the sex education film for
adolescents called Growing Up
has opened, once again,
all the old thorny debates
about just how much children
want and need to know,
ought to be told,
by whom and at what age.
Boys and girls
often have sexual intercourse
long before they are
ready to have babies.
Beneath the bebop moon
There is nothing wrong with this,
and many people believe
that sexual experience in adolescents
is essential for normal development.
People have been getting along very well
since the dawn of time
without sex education.
And why, in the last four or five years,
has this been thrust upon us?
Early in adolescence, a boy will notice
that he can become sexually excited.
I was shocked by the sheer
clinical joylessness of the film.
Sex should be fun, it should be
thrilling, it should be exciting.
And that film, I think,
might almost put people off for life.
People want to know the facts.
I like the straightforward approach.
And I think this is what's necessary.
We don't want your morals.
But now you're 15.
What is it you want to know about sex
that any teacher can tell you?
It's the positions. Stuff like that.
And the way how it's done.
You want technical instructions?
Yeah.
Do you want to know about relationships?
Emotion? Love?
Well, it would be helpful.
I had come to London
about a year before then.
I basically left America because
I couldn't stand being there anymore.
But it was also an odd time in London.
The London underground press
was still in full ramp and swing.
And Portobello was the scene.
And yet, you know, Britain had
a conservative government then.
People were trying to keep the lid on.
OZ magazine,
like a number of other
underground publications in Britain,
symbolized the clash between
two conflicting notions of morality.
There can be few people these days
who haven't heard the phrase
"underground press."
Frequently they are publications
which shock and offend many people.
He's a journalist who started
the controversial
underground magazine, OZ.
It seems to me there's an attitude
towards sex which is different.
It's now become much more libertarian
and guiltless.
OZ, for example,
is extraordinarily hard to read.
Not merely is it hung up on drugs
to an extent which is quite amazing
to anyone who's not actually on drugs,
but it is physically difficult to read.
OZ was another planet.
Provocative, outrageous, sexual.
It was all consciously over the top.
I never gave it
a lot of serious credibility.
But then somebody
got his or her nose out of joint
that OZ had crossed a line
in terms of obscenity.
I have several members
of the underground press
here in London with me today.
I gather it's becoming
a hazardous occupation.
Jim, you want to tell us about
the problems OZ has been having?
Just before Christmas,
we had been busted big time
after we'd invited schoolchildren
to help edit an issue of OZ.
That issue was intended for
- young-ish readerships. It was
- No, it wasn't.
It was intended for the usual OZ
readerships. That's the whole point.
The police are trying to say
it was intended
to go into the schools specifically
and to disrupt schoolchildren.
It was merely produced
by schoolchildren.
We just got 'em 48 pages of, you know,
color and glossy paper
and they could put in what they wanted.
And basically, that's what's got us
into all of this trouble.
Well we were quite shocked
with one or two things
that they wanted to do,
but whatever they wanted to do
was fine by us.
And they all saw it
as a wonderful opportunity.
The judiciary and the government
still hadn't caught on
that there had been a tectonic shift in
the way young people thought and acted.
OZ was doing the unthinkable,
actually telling teenage kids,
"Don't get nervous about sex."
At that time, conservatives of one sort
or another went completely berserk.
At last,
the permissive society is under attack.
This Manchester rally reaffirms the
stand which Christians are taking
against the rising tide of pornography.
We believe in purity and love
in sexual life.
We are especially concerned
about pornographic literature
on sale in this city.
Welling inside the British people
is the desire to rebuild
the moral fiber of this country,
which has been under attack,
There's no doubt about that.
It's been under attack.
People began to talk about this
as a turning point in society.
It was a sort of crisis
of moral authority.
I was working as a secretary at OZ.
It just did feel that the establishment
was out to get them.
Freedom of expression seemed to me
a basic human right.
You know, unarguably something
we had to defend,
even if sometimes it went beyond
the bounds of what I liked.
I really did not like the cover
of that issue.
I thought, "How could Jim and Felix
have chosen that cover?"
Look, we didn't think it through,
frankly.
We had the idea of using the double
spread of the naked blue lesbians.
And when it was suggested,
we both began to laugh.
It was sort of erotic,
but it was just a fantasy, really.
But we hadn't even looked at it properly.
And then I noticed the blow job.
And we said,
"Oh, we'll put one of the pictures
of the schoolkids in front of that.
That'll settle that."
We had already been charged with
publishing obscene material,
which was just a very minor charge.
But they had decided to up the ante
in changing it to a very serious offense
of conspiracy to corrupt public morals.
To implant in the minds of children
improper and unsavory desires,
or something like that.
We think it's disgusting fascism.
And Yoko and I are gonna propose to
Richard Neville, so then he can marry us,
and then he'd be British
and they can't deport him.
So that's solved that one.
It was amazing how much support
there was in the youth
and artists and musicians.
Bands were part of the counterculture.
They were part of us.
And I think a lot of the music reflected
the complex position
of our younger generation.
Don't you know you're driving
Your mamas and papas insane?
Oh, you pretty things
Don't you know you're driving
Your mamas and papas insane?
Let me make it plain
Gotta make way for the Homo Superior
Look out at your children
See their faces in golden rays
Don't kid yourself they belong to you
They're the start of the coming race
The earth is a bitch
We've finished our news
Homo Sapiens have outgrown their use
All the strangers came today
And it looks as though
They're here to stay
I'd just got back from America.
And I'd just moved to Haddon Hall
in Beckenham.
And everything seemed all systems go.
"All right, I understand
what I've got to do now."
At the weekends
we'd be down at Haddon Hall.
And David was just busy
writing his songs, always.
By then, he was already
starting work on the new album.
And, you know, David was absorbing.
I mean, he was like a sponge,
taking what he needed from other people
and making it his own.
For me, it felt like absolutes
were breaking down.
As much as I admired artists who perceived
music as being all of their life,
for me, personally, I wanted to do
something more, something broader,
which brought in other art forms.
And make rock more representative
of what contemporary culture felt like.
The '60s were a coda
to the rest of the century.
It was like the questions
were raised then,
but still, there was an idealism
which, in itself, had its own absolutes.
And its own belief that there was
an answer to particular things.
And I think the '70s showed conclusively
that everything we knew was wrong.
I think it's important
to point out the fact
that a culture is an experiment.
It may work and it may not.
And we have to start asking that
question about our own way of life.
People were born here, lived here,
got married from here, brought
their own families up again here.
I don't think you'll ever get
the community feeling
that we had here.
You'll never get it in flats
because they're not real.
This is all sort of artificial now.
In 1970, it was stated that there were
nearly two million unfit houses.
A state of limbo,
when the present is not permanent
and the future
only an unguaranteed promise.
The children play in dirt and filth,
and are happy because
they know no better.
Me being a World War II baby,
as time went by in my youth,
things just got better and better.
So I had no understanding
that things might get bad again.
People were trapped.
And that's what the important thing
about glam rock is.
They took this on and things changed,
things shifted.
Young kids have principles.
They don't like what their parents like,
and they don't even like
what their older siblings like.
In 1971, all of a sudden
the more you glittered,
the bigger your personality.
T. Rex! T. Rex!
"You've got the teeth of the hydra
upon you.
You're dirty, sweet and you're my girl."
That's nice.
"Wear your unclean new vest
and shoes and cuffs full of eagles.
You're dirty, sweet and you're my girl."
"Get on.
Get it on, get it on, get it on."
Well, you're dirty and sweet
Clad in black, don't look back
And I love you
You're dirty and sweet, oh yeah
Well, you're slim and you're weak
You've got the teeth
Of the hydra upon you
You're dirty, sweet and you're my girl
Get it on, bang a gong, get it on
Get it on, bang a gong, get it on
He asked me to do Top of the
Pops and I said, "Absolutely."
He wrote very simple,
classic rock 'n' roll.
But Marc was so outrageously cocky
and fabulous.
He would come around and say,
"I sold a million records this morning."
And I went, "Great!
How fabulous for you."
Well, you're built like a car
My first experience
of seeing girls screaming
was at a concert in Croydon.
It suddenly exploded.
I have some footage I took
on Super 8 film.
It's backstage, it's in black-and-white,
and a girl is biting a piece
of Marc's hair.
That was the beginning of the craziness.
Get it on, bang a gong, get it on
Marc was like someone
who was traveling through.
Get it on, bang a gong, get it on
He was just stopping off for
a couple of years and then going away.
And of course he went away too soon.
I've been reading recently, Marc,
an article which suggests that you are
the successor to the Beatles.
Well, you're windy and wild
You've got the blues in your shoes
And your stockings
You're windy and wild, oh yeah
Well, you're built like a car
You've got a hubcap diamond star halo
You're dirty, sweet and you're my girl
"Sex is a part of it, but it's sex
by courtesy of the magic prince,"
and I presume that means you.
"Who is going to
deflower the young virgin
- in an atmosphere of blissful romance."
- That sounds nice. I like that.
I am talking to a sick nation!
A sick nation!
I think the whole
of what's called "Western civilization"
is totally decadent to the point
that I have no expectation whatever
that it will recover any moral sanity.
I was wondering which people
you thought you appealed to most,
or whether it's, you know,
really just young girls.
They're not all just young girls here.
I mean, I think
They are mostly young girls here, Marc.
Let's not get away from the fact.
I'd say there are 90% young girls.
Yeah, 200 people. You know.
200 people.
I have nothing against them. I'm just
saying that they are mostly girls.
It's very nice.
Marc was very pop.
And he loved it. He liked being a star.
But maybe the image
tripped him up in a way.
It's very hard to straddle
going from a pop sensibility
into being taken seriously.
Really difficult.
But Marc Bolan enabled young guys
to see that they could
express themselves like that.
That guys would now wear makeup.
Which had not been allowed before,
absolutely not.
Unforgettable television experience
coming your way.
This will either knock you out
or offend you, one of the two.
We don't care which
as long as you react.
This is where we separate the teenagers
from the adults
as we present the always outrageous
and sometimes offensive Alice Cooper.
Our attitude was
you grab 'em by the throat.
You're gonna talk about us tomorrow.
That was really our attitude.
We weren't gonna be subtle,
we were gonna be sensational.
It got to the point where
if you go to a concert,
all you're gonna see is a guitar solo.
A drum solo.
You know, how far can that go?
You wanna see something
that you're gonna go home
and talk about
and scare your parents with.
1971,
that dark character
really started to take hold
and become the powerful image
of what we were doing.
Body
We would do the song
"Black Juju" with Alice in the makeup,
the spider eyes, and the middle of
the song would bring everything down.
Click, click, tick, tick.
And Alice would be swinging a watch,
hypnotizing the audience.
Bodies need rest.
We all need our rest.
Sleep an easy sleep.
Rest.
It didn't work every night.
Sometimes you'd hear hecklers,
but other nights
you could hear a pin drop.
Rest.
Every single person
would be staring at Alice.
Rest.
Rest.
Give your evil soul to yourself.
And open your eyes
and be rather than seem to be.
But come on back to us.
A form of conditioning
or reconditioning or restructuring
of a group of young people
to believe in crime,
and violence and murder.
You have eyes. Open them.
After the show, people would come back
and they would tell us
what that all meant.
They had figured it all out.
We wouldn't try to explain it because
there wasn't really an explanation
other than, you know,
it's just a visual theatric, that's all.
But we had tapped into
this powerful thing.
Sometime in early '71,
the proposition was put to David
by the organizers of the Glastonbury
Fair that they'd like him to perform.
The train stopped miles
from where Glastonbury was.
We had to walk to get to the place.
David's wearing his big floppy hat
and his floppy trousers
and his long hair.
We walk down the road
and eventually we get to a field
where the festival is gonna happen.
Which has turned into
pretty much unscheduled chaos.
It tends to be a bit muddy.
Have you got any boots with you?
You do? Nice.
Very much looking forward to seeing you.
And see you later on tonight.
And it will be beautiful, I promise you.
Girl with a heart
That keeps on changing
Girl with a mind that's moving on
Picking up on things
That life's afforded
Loosen up on teathers
Foreseen she's on
You don't know
Come on, now, keep on changing
Come on, girl, little I want the jive
Come on, love
'Cause it ain't gonna bother me
David went on early
in the morning of the next day.
At dawn.
And he was gonna perform new material.
I think you know how
I feel at the moment.
It's
fucking cold as hell.
It's gettin' a bit better.
We were there at 5:00 in the morning
and the sun was literally
just starting to peep up.
And he's up there on the stage.
Most people were still asleep or heading
for a place to have a pee or something.
I still don't know
What I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets and
Every time I thought I'd got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
Now I placed myself to face me
But I've never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I'm much too fast to take the test
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Ch-changes
Don't have to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Ch-changes
Just gonna be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time
Thank you.
Yeah.
There are many people
who remember Glastonbury
as being a landmark of Bowie.
It wasn't.
As a songwriter, David was beginning
to realize who he was.
But he hadn't discovered that ability
to project himself off of the stage.
I was all ready to go
down to Glastonbury
when Richard said,
"Jim, the trial is on Monday.
You can't possibly go to Glastonbury,
take acid, and be ready for the trial."
"Yes, that's okay. No problem.
I always can wing it. It's easy."
So I reluctantly didn't go.
That's how unseriously I took the trial.
I thought it would just be
a piece of cake.
How wrong I was.
Certain songs,
they stay with you forever.
She was writing from her heart.
We really were holding up
a mirror to our society.
The incredible feeling
of nothing's impossible.
Bowie came to New York.
I was so single-minded.
It didn't fit into the
mainstream society.
It really felt like the new era.
Christ. We are the future.
There's something about my life
about getting to places slightly late.
I went to Apple for
some reason or other.
They had already done
the concert on the roof. I missed that.
And the building
was kind of hollow and empty.
And then, all of a sudden, it was over.
The small gathering on Savile Row
is only the beginning.
The event is so momentous
that historians may one day view it
as a landmark in the decline
of the British Empire.
The Beatles are breaking up.
The Beatles have changed so many lives
that the need for them still exists.
The hope that they
represent still exists.
And as long as that exists
then they have to exist.
We're all in it together.
If the Beatles don't exist,
you don't exist.
It was a horrible feeling
that it might be all over.
They inspired that whole generation
to go and conquer the world.
The whole youth culture
could not have happened without them.
What I feared was the establishment
was gonna claw back pop music
to where it had been pre-Beatles.
Awful, awful light entertainment.
I've been sitting here all day
Thinking
As we got into 1971,
you could see they did not want
the counterculture.
They did not want youth movements.
It was them and us.
Now my days are gone
Memories linger on
Thoughts of when I was boy
The dream's over.
- In 1971
- Music said something.
The world was changing.
We were creating the
21st century in 1971.
Myself and, I guess,
a certain contingent of musicians
at the beginning of the '70s
wanted to manufacture
a new kind of vocabulary
about what rock music was
and could become.
The history of rock could be recycled
in a different way.
We were fed up with the hippies.
We wanted to go somewhere else.
I was writing for Rolling Stone,
and a friend of mine
who had become the West Coast publicist
for Mercury Records called and asked
if I wanted to interview
this obscure English artist
that they were trying to publicize
because he was unknown.
I'd never heard of him.
And he sent me
The Man Who Sold The World
which I didn't really like
very much at all,
but I wasn't about to turn down
a trip to San Francisco.
So I went.
I remember he emerged from the plane
and he was wearing a dress
and carrying a purse.
And I felt terribly intimidated.
You know, he was really pretty.
KSTN,
KSTN-FM Stockton. Your official station.
David is with us. How you doin', David?
- Good to see you.
- Thank you very much.
Have you been in this country before?
No, it's the first time in the States.
- Wow. How do you like it so far?
- Yeah. Great. Incredible.
It says here
that you are one of those Englishmen
who has happened upon the pop scene
and just captured
the hearts and minds of
minds of nearly all
of the audiences that have heard him.
- Isn't that wonderful?
- Wow. Yeah.
- Did you know that? Yeah.
- I'm quite a guy.
I mean, being truthful, his career
was not doing well in those days.
He was kind of a cult artist,
and his sales weren't that high at all.
After we made The Man
Who Sold The World,
he went with a manager
called Tony Defries.
And Tony Defries didn't like the album.
And he sacked our band.
Even me. I lost him. I lost contact
with him for at least a year.
The idea was to create a new entity.
We were deconstructing David
and reconstructing Bowie.
That was the footing we were on in 1971.
I'm reading this bio here
because I just received it here.
And some interesting things
about you here.
Did you know this,
that your name was David Robert Jones
Oh, yeah.
but that Davy Jones
of the Monkees claimed the name
- Yeah.
- and you became David Bowie.
There was one party
in the Hollywood Hills
that was intended to introduce him
to the LA cognoscenti,
but the cognoscenti were greatly
outnumbered by these starlet types.
And they didn't know
what to make of him.
They were incredulous.
A guy in a dress
sitting in the lotus position
singing Jacques Brel songs.
I kind of wished that he'd consulted
with me, because I
I would've said, "No Jacques Brel.
They're not gonna get it."
And they didn't.
An hour into the party, everyone hearing
that an Andy Warhol superstar
was having a party up the road,
everybody essentially left
the Bowie party
including Bowie.
I don't know what all that was about.
I landed there, and I found that
all I could do was radio shows
and the odd private house where I
would play for whoever we could get in.
So I can't really
give you an honest opinion
of what I thought of American audiences
because I didn't see any.
The music industry
has not been easy on weirdos ever.
And in 1971,
he was struggling very much.
Trying to find where he was going,
whether he ever would.
He'd been rejected and rejected, he'd
made records that hadn't gone anywhere,
and then just been ridiculed
as a freak in a dress.
Most people would've given up.
By then,
everything was so polarized in America.
People had burnt out,
and they're cynical and they're angry.
The "peace and flowers" love thing
was well over.
Looking back on it now,
it's hard to understand how bad it was.
The jury hearing the charges
against Charles Manson
and three girl members
of his so-called "Family"
brought in its verdict this afternoon.
All were found guilty of murder
in the first degree.
To his family of followers,
Manson was a kind of god.
But to the California police,
he was something quite different.
A car thief, pimp and Satanist
who'd masterminded eight murders,
at least.
Members of the so-called "Family"
talked to a BBC 24 Hours team
soon after Manson had been arrested.
Well, when I first met him,
the man talked to me,
and he says, "Why don't you come up?
And the rules are that, you know,
there is no rules."
This drawing is a drawing of awareness.
And I think that Charles Manson
is the most totally aware person alive.
You tried to show Charlie your picture?
But sadly enough, you know, like, he's
aware of everything that's truly evil
as well as everything that's truly good,
and I feel that he's a victim.
At that point in time
if you had long hair,
you were judged immediately.
You were a drug addict. You were a
freak. You were an enemy of the state.
So parents and children
hated each other.
America, there's a phenomenon
of parents thinking that
that they depict
satanic qualities in children.
And really,
they don't like their children.
So many parents really hate their
children in the United States.
Did you read in the paper the other day
about that father in a western state?
His son grew long hair,
and the father got angry.
The son refused to cut it,
and he went into the bedroom
and got a shotgun and shot his son dead.
Just over long hair.
We moved to LA when it was
all groovy, peace and love,
flowers and bubbles,
and people thought
that we were kind of a joke
as we looked so, you know, heavy and
sinister and threatening and everything.
And then Charles Manson happened,
and the demise of the Beatles happened.
The timing just fell into place
for what we were doing.
Right now there's a young man
who calls himself Alice Cooper on stage.
The hippie thing, I thought,
was extremely phony.
I just thought it got syrupy as hell.
"Everybody love everybody."
You know, 'cause everybody was on drugs.
Come on. You know, quit bullshitting.
You know, this thing is really stupid.
We had been concentrating
on doing this avant-garde music.
We didn't even try to write hit singles
until it became obvious
that we weren't gonna be eating
unless we did.
You know, Alice has always been
very hip to what's happening,
and we knew
that we wanted to appeal to kids.
And we were thinking,
"What is the target audience
for record-buying public in America?"
And it was 18 years old.
Okay, here on The Barry Richards Thing,
we have Alice Cooper with us,
and that's the name
of the whole group, right?
- Yeah.
- It's also your name.
- Yes, it's my name.
- Are you gonna do "Eighteen?"
Yeah, yeah, "Eighteen."
All right, this is the new 45
from Alice Cooper, "Eighteen."
We were shocked that it was a hit.
But it was so simple and so "duh"
that it worked on the radio.
And the song was giving
the 18-year-old guy, at least, a voice.
Lines form on my face and hands
Lines form from the ups and downs
I'm in the middle without any plans
I'm a boy and I'm a man
I'm eighteen
And I don't know what I want
Eighteen
I just don't know what I want
Eighteen, I gotta get away
I've gotta get outta this place
I'll go runnin' in outer space
Oh yeah
For years now,
the young have been drifting away
to a world of their own,
unable or unwilling to accept
what the established order has to offer.
They wonder aloud about a system
that produces material riches
and creates emotional poverty.
A system that leaves many of its young
with no sense of self-worth,
no sense of importance in the home,
no useful role in society.
'Cause I'm eighteen
I get confused every day
Eighteen
I just don't know what to say
When you have that hit single
it's the Willy Wonka golden key because
it means you're generating money.
And so everybody's listening now,
and you're not this freak show.
You're suddenly viable.
We represented the
great disenfranchised.
It was a new audience.
Britain, so they say, is now rather like
the morning after the night before.
The party's well and truly over.
The image or, if you like, myth
of the swinging '60s
has given way to the sober '70s.
We've grown up a little, all of us.
And there has been a change,
and we are a bit freer and all that,
but it's the same game.
Nothing's really changed, you know.
People are living in fucking poverty
with fucking rats crawling over 'em.
It's the same, only I'm 30 and a lot of
people have got long hair, that's all.
Three boys in their early teens,
and one aged 11,
growing up in the East End of London.
Already these four lives
are lives at risk.
Already the future shadows them.
Do you ever think about
getting old and everything like that?
Think about? I am old.
I already think I'm old, you know.
For the new generation coming in,
there was a vacuum.
Bands like the Stones, and the Who,
and obviously the Beatles,
had led us through the '60s.
But the younger generation
were looking to find what they loved.
The younger kids
feel really kind of neglected, you know.
They haven't got their own music.
They haven't got their own culture.
They haven't got a say yet in anything.
I remember seeing
A Hard Day's Night in Brooklyn,
and I saw that London
where it was the Beatles going
to drinking clubs
and gambling clubs and all that.
And I was very
disappointed when I arrived
to see that the UK
was pretty old-fashioned.
It was actually quite a drab place.
It was time to come up
with something different,
but the Beatles were
a hard act to follow.
The thing is,
the Beatles weren't just a pop group.
They weren't popular entertainers.
They were artists
in the real sense of the word.
So as we got into 1971,
if you were a pop group
with screaming girls
you were not gonna get good reviews
in Melody Maker and NME.
The musical snobbery
was really growing at that time.
It's much more fulfilling nowadays
because the audiences
are much more educated.
The people are very aware.
Even some of the chicks are aware
of what kind of strings and things
are used
on certain bass guitars
and things like that.
Love comes to you and you follow
Bands were taking themselves
a bit too seriously.
They were becoming slightly pretentious,
overblown.
And it was rather frowned on by some of
the more superior rock critics
to have hit singles.
Sharp distance
When I started on Radio 1,
I was given an acetate of a single
that I could take onto my first program
and play as an exclusive.
And it was "Ride a White Swan."
He was one of the few people
at that moment
who was driven to appeal
to 13, 14, 15-year-olds.
There was very few people
making good singles, I think, you know.
So that's when I figured
I ought to make some singles.
'Cause I like singles. It's, like,
a three-minute adrenaline buzz.
Wear a tall hat like a druid
In the old days
Wear a tall hat and a tattooed gown
Ride a white swan
Like the people of the Beltane
Wear your hair long, babe
You can't go wrong
Catch a bright star
And a-place it on your forehead
Say a few spells
And baby, there you go
Take a black cat
And a-sit it on your shoulder
And in the morning you'll know
All you know, oh
After David went with Tony Defries,
I just blanked him
from my consciousness.
And Marc was the one I went with.
They were friends, not that they were
in collusion with each other,
but they both started playing
at the same time
with their image as pop stars.
Marc was a chameleon.
When I first met him, he was a hippie
sitting playing an acoustic guitar
on a Persian rug, you know.
He had emerged in '65 when he was a mod.
And now Marc was beginning to move across
into that blurred line, androgynous look.
A sort of embryonic
'70s rock and roll style.
I always remember hearing
"Ride a White Swan" on the radio
and thinking that he was amazing.
And then seeing him.
And he was the first person to really
wear the eye shadow and do the glam thing.
And that's how he walked around.
That was Marc in the street,
when he came to dinner.
And everything that Marc did was fun.
It was a time when most of the
rock and roll bands
were very masculine.
The idea of dressing androgynously
was new and refreshing.
But, you know, when it came to music,
he had a '50s mind.
He jumped back a generation,
playing Chuck Berry guitar.
And he was writing rock and roll songs.
When "White Swan" was a hit,
I realized that something was changing.
You know,
the kids were getting a bit younger,
and they were selling out the concerts.
Which they hadn't done before,
to be honest.
And then I put out "Hot Love"
and it went straight to number one.
And then all the audiences were
were predominantly chicks mostly
after my balls.
Which was very cute.
Well, she's my woman of gold
And she's not very old, ah ha ha
She's my woman of gold
And she's not very old, ah ha ha
I don't mean to be bold
But may I hold your hand?
Once Marc got his first hit single
the hippie emphasis on spirituality
was virtually abandoned.
And he started to be very sexual.
Well, she ain't no witch
And I love the way she twitch, ah ha ha
I'm her twopenny prince
And I give her hot love
I talked with some of the fans
that came to see the shows.
A lot of 12, 13, 14, 15-year-old girls.
And I asked, "What is it about Marc?"
And some of them
were crying in their efforts
to express their emotion for him.
I've come out of the front door
of the Newcastle City Hall
to speak with some of the people
who saw the concert tonight.
- Did you enjoy it?
- He was gentle and pretty
What particularly do
you like about them?
They're just lovely, and gorgeous
- Did you enjoy the concert tonight?
- And I think he's got beautiful hair.
- You enjoyed it did you?
- It was lovely!
For the younger girls, you know,
the new generation coming in,
he was just so exciting
because they wanted liberation.
Liberation of expression
and liberation of thought.
Yet another row about sex education.
The schoolchildren and their parents,
their teachers, are all, today,
in the middle of an atmosphere
where information about sex
has never been freer.
The upheaval that followed
the making by Dr. Martin Cole
of the sex education film for
adolescents called Growing Up
has opened, once again,
all the old thorny debates
about just how much children
want and need to know,
ought to be told,
by whom and at what age.
Boys and girls
often have sexual intercourse
long before they are
ready to have babies.
Beneath the bebop moon
There is nothing wrong with this,
and many people believe
that sexual experience in adolescents
is essential for normal development.
People have been getting along very well
since the dawn of time
without sex education.
And why, in the last four or five years,
has this been thrust upon us?
Early in adolescence, a boy will notice
that he can become sexually excited.
I was shocked by the sheer
clinical joylessness of the film.
Sex should be fun, it should be
thrilling, it should be exciting.
And that film, I think,
might almost put people off for life.
People want to know the facts.
I like the straightforward approach.
And I think this is what's necessary.
We don't want your morals.
But now you're 15.
What is it you want to know about sex
that any teacher can tell you?
It's the positions. Stuff like that.
And the way how it's done.
You want technical instructions?
Yeah.
Do you want to know about relationships?
Emotion? Love?
Well, it would be helpful.
I had come to London
about a year before then.
I basically left America because
I couldn't stand being there anymore.
But it was also an odd time in London.
The London underground press
was still in full ramp and swing.
And Portobello was the scene.
And yet, you know, Britain had
a conservative government then.
People were trying to keep the lid on.
OZ magazine,
like a number of other
underground publications in Britain,
symbolized the clash between
two conflicting notions of morality.
There can be few people these days
who haven't heard the phrase
"underground press."
Frequently they are publications
which shock and offend many people.
He's a journalist who started
the controversial
underground magazine, OZ.
It seems to me there's an attitude
towards sex which is different.
It's now become much more libertarian
and guiltless.
OZ, for example,
is extraordinarily hard to read.
Not merely is it hung up on drugs
to an extent which is quite amazing
to anyone who's not actually on drugs,
but it is physically difficult to read.
OZ was another planet.
Provocative, outrageous, sexual.
It was all consciously over the top.
I never gave it
a lot of serious credibility.
But then somebody
got his or her nose out of joint
that OZ had crossed a line
in terms of obscenity.
I have several members
of the underground press
here in London with me today.
I gather it's becoming
a hazardous occupation.
Jim, you want to tell us about
the problems OZ has been having?
Just before Christmas,
we had been busted big time
after we'd invited schoolchildren
to help edit an issue of OZ.
That issue was intended for
- young-ish readerships. It was
- No, it wasn't.
It was intended for the usual OZ
readerships. That's the whole point.
The police are trying to say
it was intended
to go into the schools specifically
and to disrupt schoolchildren.
It was merely produced
by schoolchildren.
We just got 'em 48 pages of, you know,
color and glossy paper
and they could put in what they wanted.
And basically, that's what's got us
into all of this trouble.
Well we were quite shocked
with one or two things
that they wanted to do,
but whatever they wanted to do
was fine by us.
And they all saw it
as a wonderful opportunity.
The judiciary and the government
still hadn't caught on
that there had been a tectonic shift in
the way young people thought and acted.
OZ was doing the unthinkable,
actually telling teenage kids,
"Don't get nervous about sex."
At that time, conservatives of one sort
or another went completely berserk.
At last,
the permissive society is under attack.
This Manchester rally reaffirms the
stand which Christians are taking
against the rising tide of pornography.
We believe in purity and love
in sexual life.
We are especially concerned
about pornographic literature
on sale in this city.
Welling inside the British people
is the desire to rebuild
the moral fiber of this country,
which has been under attack,
There's no doubt about that.
It's been under attack.
People began to talk about this
as a turning point in society.
It was a sort of crisis
of moral authority.
I was working as a secretary at OZ.
It just did feel that the establishment
was out to get them.
Freedom of expression seemed to me
a basic human right.
You know, unarguably something
we had to defend,
even if sometimes it went beyond
the bounds of what I liked.
I really did not like the cover
of that issue.
I thought, "How could Jim and Felix
have chosen that cover?"
Look, we didn't think it through,
frankly.
We had the idea of using the double
spread of the naked blue lesbians.
And when it was suggested,
we both began to laugh.
It was sort of erotic,
but it was just a fantasy, really.
But we hadn't even looked at it properly.
And then I noticed the blow job.
And we said,
"Oh, we'll put one of the pictures
of the schoolkids in front of that.
That'll settle that."
We had already been charged with
publishing obscene material,
which was just a very minor charge.
But they had decided to up the ante
in changing it to a very serious offense
of conspiracy to corrupt public morals.
To implant in the minds of children
improper and unsavory desires,
or something like that.
We think it's disgusting fascism.
And Yoko and I are gonna propose to
Richard Neville, so then he can marry us,
and then he'd be British
and they can't deport him.
So that's solved that one.
It was amazing how much support
there was in the youth
and artists and musicians.
Bands were part of the counterculture.
They were part of us.
And I think a lot of the music reflected
the complex position
of our younger generation.
Don't you know you're driving
Your mamas and papas insane?
Oh, you pretty things
Don't you know you're driving
Your mamas and papas insane?
Let me make it plain
Gotta make way for the Homo Superior
Look out at your children
See their faces in golden rays
Don't kid yourself they belong to you
They're the start of the coming race
The earth is a bitch
We've finished our news
Homo Sapiens have outgrown their use
All the strangers came today
And it looks as though
They're here to stay
I'd just got back from America.
And I'd just moved to Haddon Hall
in Beckenham.
And everything seemed all systems go.
"All right, I understand
what I've got to do now."
At the weekends
we'd be down at Haddon Hall.
And David was just busy
writing his songs, always.
By then, he was already
starting work on the new album.
And, you know, David was absorbing.
I mean, he was like a sponge,
taking what he needed from other people
and making it his own.
For me, it felt like absolutes
were breaking down.
As much as I admired artists who perceived
music as being all of their life,
for me, personally, I wanted to do
something more, something broader,
which brought in other art forms.
And make rock more representative
of what contemporary culture felt like.
The '60s were a coda
to the rest of the century.
It was like the questions
were raised then,
but still, there was an idealism
which, in itself, had its own absolutes.
And its own belief that there was
an answer to particular things.
And I think the '70s showed conclusively
that everything we knew was wrong.
I think it's important
to point out the fact
that a culture is an experiment.
It may work and it may not.
And we have to start asking that
question about our own way of life.
People were born here, lived here,
got married from here, brought
their own families up again here.
I don't think you'll ever get
the community feeling
that we had here.
You'll never get it in flats
because they're not real.
This is all sort of artificial now.
In 1970, it was stated that there were
nearly two million unfit houses.
A state of limbo,
when the present is not permanent
and the future
only an unguaranteed promise.
The children play in dirt and filth,
and are happy because
they know no better.
Me being a World War II baby,
as time went by in my youth,
things just got better and better.
So I had no understanding
that things might get bad again.
People were trapped.
And that's what the important thing
about glam rock is.
They took this on and things changed,
things shifted.
Young kids have principles.
They don't like what their parents like,
and they don't even like
what their older siblings like.
In 1971, all of a sudden
the more you glittered,
the bigger your personality.
T. Rex! T. Rex!
"You've got the teeth of the hydra
upon you.
You're dirty, sweet and you're my girl."
That's nice.
"Wear your unclean new vest
and shoes and cuffs full of eagles.
You're dirty, sweet and you're my girl."
"Get on.
Get it on, get it on, get it on."
Well, you're dirty and sweet
Clad in black, don't look back
And I love you
You're dirty and sweet, oh yeah
Well, you're slim and you're weak
You've got the teeth
Of the hydra upon you
You're dirty, sweet and you're my girl
Get it on, bang a gong, get it on
Get it on, bang a gong, get it on
He asked me to do Top of the
Pops and I said, "Absolutely."
He wrote very simple,
classic rock 'n' roll.
But Marc was so outrageously cocky
and fabulous.
He would come around and say,
"I sold a million records this morning."
And I went, "Great!
How fabulous for you."
Well, you're built like a car
My first experience
of seeing girls screaming
was at a concert in Croydon.
It suddenly exploded.
I have some footage I took
on Super 8 film.
It's backstage, it's in black-and-white,
and a girl is biting a piece
of Marc's hair.
That was the beginning of the craziness.
Get it on, bang a gong, get it on
Marc was like someone
who was traveling through.
Get it on, bang a gong, get it on
He was just stopping off for
a couple of years and then going away.
And of course he went away too soon.
I've been reading recently, Marc,
an article which suggests that you are
the successor to the Beatles.
Well, you're windy and wild
You've got the blues in your shoes
And your stockings
You're windy and wild, oh yeah
Well, you're built like a car
You've got a hubcap diamond star halo
You're dirty, sweet and you're my girl
"Sex is a part of it, but it's sex
by courtesy of the magic prince,"
and I presume that means you.
"Who is going to
deflower the young virgin
- in an atmosphere of blissful romance."
- That sounds nice. I like that.
I am talking to a sick nation!
A sick nation!
I think the whole
of what's called "Western civilization"
is totally decadent to the point
that I have no expectation whatever
that it will recover any moral sanity.
I was wondering which people
you thought you appealed to most,
or whether it's, you know,
really just young girls.
They're not all just young girls here.
I mean, I think
They are mostly young girls here, Marc.
Let's not get away from the fact.
I'd say there are 90% young girls.
Yeah, 200 people. You know.
200 people.
I have nothing against them. I'm just
saying that they are mostly girls.
It's very nice.
Marc was very pop.
And he loved it. He liked being a star.
But maybe the image
tripped him up in a way.
It's very hard to straddle
going from a pop sensibility
into being taken seriously.
Really difficult.
But Marc Bolan enabled young guys
to see that they could
express themselves like that.
That guys would now wear makeup.
Which had not been allowed before,
absolutely not.
Unforgettable television experience
coming your way.
This will either knock you out
or offend you, one of the two.
We don't care which
as long as you react.
This is where we separate the teenagers
from the adults
as we present the always outrageous
and sometimes offensive Alice Cooper.
Our attitude was
you grab 'em by the throat.
You're gonna talk about us tomorrow.
That was really our attitude.
We weren't gonna be subtle,
we were gonna be sensational.
It got to the point where
if you go to a concert,
all you're gonna see is a guitar solo.
A drum solo.
You know, how far can that go?
You wanna see something
that you're gonna go home
and talk about
and scare your parents with.
1971,
that dark character
really started to take hold
and become the powerful image
of what we were doing.
Body
We would do the song
"Black Juju" with Alice in the makeup,
the spider eyes, and the middle of
the song would bring everything down.
Click, click, tick, tick.
And Alice would be swinging a watch,
hypnotizing the audience.
Bodies need rest.
We all need our rest.
Sleep an easy sleep.
Rest.
It didn't work every night.
Sometimes you'd hear hecklers,
but other nights
you could hear a pin drop.
Rest.
Every single person
would be staring at Alice.
Rest.
Rest.
Give your evil soul to yourself.
And open your eyes
and be rather than seem to be.
But come on back to us.
A form of conditioning
or reconditioning or restructuring
of a group of young people
to believe in crime,
and violence and murder.
You have eyes. Open them.
After the show, people would come back
and they would tell us
what that all meant.
They had figured it all out.
We wouldn't try to explain it because
there wasn't really an explanation
other than, you know,
it's just a visual theatric, that's all.
But we had tapped into
this powerful thing.
Sometime in early '71,
the proposition was put to David
by the organizers of the Glastonbury
Fair that they'd like him to perform.
The train stopped miles
from where Glastonbury was.
We had to walk to get to the place.
David's wearing his big floppy hat
and his floppy trousers
and his long hair.
We walk down the road
and eventually we get to a field
where the festival is gonna happen.
Which has turned into
pretty much unscheduled chaos.
It tends to be a bit muddy.
Have you got any boots with you?
You do? Nice.
Very much looking forward to seeing you.
And see you later on tonight.
And it will be beautiful, I promise you.
Girl with a heart
That keeps on changing
Girl with a mind that's moving on
Picking up on things
That life's afforded
Loosen up on teathers
Foreseen she's on
You don't know
Come on, now, keep on changing
Come on, girl, little I want the jive
Come on, love
'Cause it ain't gonna bother me
David went on early
in the morning of the next day.
At dawn.
And he was gonna perform new material.
I think you know how
I feel at the moment.
It's
fucking cold as hell.
It's gettin' a bit better.
We were there at 5:00 in the morning
and the sun was literally
just starting to peep up.
And he's up there on the stage.
Most people were still asleep or heading
for a place to have a pee or something.
I still don't know
What I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets and
Every time I thought I'd got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
Now I placed myself to face me
But I've never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I'm much too fast to take the test
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Ch-changes
Don't have to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Ch-changes
Just gonna be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time
Thank you.
Yeah.
There are many people
who remember Glastonbury
as being a landmark of Bowie.
It wasn't.
As a songwriter, David was beginning
to realize who he was.
But he hadn't discovered that ability
to project himself off of the stage.
I was all ready to go
down to Glastonbury
when Richard said,
"Jim, the trial is on Monday.
You can't possibly go to Glastonbury,
take acid, and be ready for the trial."
"Yes, that's okay. No problem.
I always can wing it. It's easy."
So I reluctantly didn't go.
That's how unseriously I took the trial.
I thought it would just be
a piece of cake.
How wrong I was.
Certain songs,
they stay with you forever.
She was writing from her heart.
We really were holding up
a mirror to our society.
The incredible feeling
of nothing's impossible.
Bowie came to New York.
I was so single-minded.
It didn't fit into the
mainstream society.
It really felt like the new era.
Christ. We are the future.