David Bowie #2

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Is David Bowie Retiring From the Road?
"I'm not thinking of touring. I'm comfortable," rocker tells 'New York Times'

Jun 07, 2010

A brief update on long-absent David Bowie was buried at the bottom of a long New York Times profile on the rocker's supermodel wife Iman this weekend. "I'm not thinking of touring," he said. "I'm comfortable." The news is hardly a shock - Bowie has been on an unannounced hiatus for the last six years - but his quote to the Times confirms there will be no new Bowie shows in the near future. What's he been doing with his time? "He draws, paints and collects 20th-century British art," the Times piece says.

Earlier this decade, Bowie released two strong back-to-back albums (2002's Heathen and 2003's Reality) and went on a world tour that many fans considered to be his best in decades. It was cut short, however, when he suffered a heart attack in the summer of 2004. Over the next two years he made surprise appearances onstage with Arcade Fire, Alicia Keys and Pink Floyd's David Gilmour. In 2006, Bowie announced he was going to stage a full concert at the inaugural High Line Festival in New York, but a few months later he backed out. "Due to ongoing work on a new project, David Bowie has announced that it will not be possible for him to perform," a statement read. Four years later, there’s been no sign of that "new project."

Prior to this break, Bowie hadn't taken more than two-and-a-half years off between albums since he began recording in 1964. It's now been nearly seven years since he released a single new track. On her Twitter in May 2009, Iman did suggest he's working on something when asked by a follower if Bowie was recording new music. "He’s cooking up something I'm sure you will love" was her response. A May article published by the AARP noted that Bowie was also working on a new album, but a rep for Bowie denied it to Rolling Stone.

Bron: rollingstone.com

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Honestly, no matter how thoroughly I prepare for an interview with a musician, I never can be totally certain of what might be revealed. I’ve been rattled more than once by a revelation from a musician for which there had been no previous report, but none more stunning than the one David Bowie gave me when the recording machine was turned off: according to Bowie, New York City police discovered that his name was second on a hitlist of targets of John Lennon’s assassin, Mark David Chapman.

At the time of Lennon’s December 8, 1980 murder outside of his Manhattan apartment, David Bowie was starring just blocks away on Broadway in the play “The Elephant Man”. “I was second on his list,” Bowie told me in the New York studio we shared near Madison Square Garden. ”Chapman had a front-row ticket to ‘The Elephant Man’ the next night. John and Yoko were supposed to sit front-row for that show, too. So the night after John was killed there were three empty seats in the front row. I can’t tell you how difficult that was to go on. I almost didn’t make it through the performance.”

The irony is that David Bowie’s first #1 hit “Fame”, from the “Young Americans” album, was co-written with Lennon who also played guitar on the track. And it was indeed their fame as rock stars which drew Mark David Chapman to stalk them, and subsequently, to murder Lennon.

Bron: In The Studio With David Bowie

Across the universe - David Bowie

David Bowie-Fame