Never meet your heroes, they say. Josef Winkler went even further back and met the man who made HEROES – and that was actually really great. But of course he almost died before that.
I interviewed David Bowie – criminals came to my aid!
Dramatic first movement, right? But I can do that too sense of drama cannot describe intensely enough what has surrounded me since that morning in spring 2002 when I trudged into the hallways of the ME editorial office, which were swept with legends (then still Munich-Giesing) and with the NewsOfTheDay had been confronted. You’re still chewing on the breakfast butter pretzel when it says: Folks, there’s a new Bowie album coming, and we were offered a 30-minute interview in New York, one of only two “slots” for the entire German press – Josef could do that make! Aha. Too much of an honor, dear colleagues, and now excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom, have a heart attack.
Briefly to classify: Although in the 90s he – careful, technical term – not so great albums, David Bowie was on that day in spring 2002, as on pretty much every other day since June 1972, the brightest star in the wide firmament of pop, an otherworldly presence, untouchable over all lowlands, forever in his own league, the most flamboyant Feger, the greatest guy, The Main Man. And for me personally, alongside the Beatles and Pink Floyd, one of the patron saints of my pop musical and stylistic socialization; his poster hung in my youth room when I was still a peasant boy in Chiemgau forking hay.
Never meet your heroes?
So it was not at all difficult for me to blow the jitters, which routinely afflicted me more or less agonizingly in the run-up to interviews, in this highly special case into a blazing hellfire of nervousness. Oh heavens – David Bowie! Everything you need in advance of such high profile Termins (screeching!) could get on my nerves, was doubly and three hundredfold important here. David Bowie! Wow, now you can finally ask him everything you always wanted to ask him! Yes – and what was that again? What have I always wanted to know from David Bowie that you couldn’t have read about in one of the approximately 30,000 interviews that the good man or arms had given in the last 30 years? How do you approach someone who has heard and seen everything? My brain was blank! scream. Come on, calm down, boy. It will be okay. But remember: Failure is not an option. It is estimated that the entire German press and 50,000,000 Bowie fans would also like this date. If you screw that up, you can let yourself be embalmed in eternal shame in front of yourself, in front of the readers, in front of your colleagues, in front of the universe that sausages you with these lifetime chance and, well, in front of David Bowie… Oh heavens. David Bowie! How high was the risk of being traumatized and never being able to put on a Bowie record again, according to the old cowardly wisdom “Never meet your heroes”? Come down.
What I heard over the next two weeks, reading and learning more about Bowie than I had in 15 years, and the battered second-hand LPs I bought on Interrail in London from a bargain basement in 1990 (it was too expensive upstairs ) in Portobello Road kept his nerves afloat knowing that Bowie wasn’t a journalist glutton like his old chum, the notoriously nasty Lou Reed, but—again, technically speaking—a nice guy. But that also meant: If you mess up with him, it’s your own fault. I’m already feeling a lot better.
But what does that actually mean? Define “fucked up”. Let’s say: Not getting the most out of such a unique encounter. Such “people interviews” in entertainment and pop “journalism” are rarely about grilling the other person hard and really getting to the bottom of him/her (“Shut up: why have you scaled back the subtle folk influences on the new album?!”). Rather, to get the most lively and meaningful conversation going, with the goal of a text that is ultimately multifaceted and worth reading. The whole thing usually takes place in a very small amount of time, into which a discussion sheet with as many of the noted topics and questions as possible has to be squeezed, which is why as an interviewer – while at the same time listening attentively so as not to miss any “hints” worth checking out – you have the next questions in your head and keeps an eye on the clock – you have to watch out like a gundog that the Chose doesn’t drift into bla bla for valuable minutes and if necessary have the heart to interrupt a star who is chattering away.
Wide awake, quick-reacting and quick-witted performance was required here – starstruck with blackout tip over from the chair: rather bad. Enormously helpful – keyword “half the battle” – for the initiation of a successful conversation it is there to have a somehow original start with which it is possible to “get” the interviewee without having to use stumpy opening phrases. But as my note file of possible questions grew and grew, I was sorely lacking such a door opener. And that’s where crime came to my rescue.
What David Bowie has in common with an art heist
On April 20, 2002, just days before I left for New York, there was a spectacular art theft in Berlin: unknown persons broke into the Brücke Museum in Dahlem and stole nine style-defining works of German Expressionism, including the 1917 painting “Roquairol ‘ by the painter Erich Heckel. Fascinating fact: During his “Berlin time” in the late 1970s, the Brücke Museum was a favorite place for art fan David Bowie to visit, and “Roquairol” featured the cover photos of his own album HEROES, which he made in Berlin, as well as that of THE IDIOT inspired by his temporary roommate Iggy Pop, with their peculiar hand gestures resp. postures. And now this painting was stolen? If that wasn’t something you would have liked to ask David Bowie about now. What a coincidence, I had an interview appointment with him the day after tomorrow! So let’s go.
72 hours later I’m standing in the foyer of a star hotel in Tribeca, Manhattan, discreet luxury. classy Friendly people at the reception send me to a room on the 7th floor. Friendly people are waiting there and beg me – ah, Joseph from Munich! – to take a little more space. The interview beforehand is still ongoing, would you like a coffee? Yes, of course, but maybe I’ll faint right away, funny, right? The last few minutes pass in a strangely long time, the adrenaline and whatever else the organism has up its sleeve from times when it was a question of escaping saber-toothed tigers, works through you from the tingling toe to the dizzy crown of your head.
“Hi, I’m David!”
And then you’re led into this room, and then he’s sitting there. David Bowie. Ziggy Stardust. The one from the HEROES cover. The one from The Man Who Fell To Earth. The Thin White Duke. The one from the “Ashes To Ashes” video. The one with “Let’s Dance”. Good Lord: The one from your poster in the basement! In real. Stand up, smile, stretch out your hand, say “Hi, I’m David”, you don’t say “I know” – do you? I do not know it anymore. A brief moment in which the surreal shock of realization “clicks” with reality: The 30 minutes now begin in which the highly spectacular reality story line “The Life of David Bowie” and the still quite expandable name “The Life of Josef Winkler” meet and run together. The picture stutters briefly – or is that just you fiddling around with your bag? – while the two sync. And then you’re sitting there with David Bowie at a glass table with a cookie bowl on it. The cookie bowl is oval, and in case you still don’t get it, that guy is David Bowie. The famous eye: check. The distinctive laugh: check. The crooked teeth: unfortunately “done” a few years ago and now beautifully even. The knit sweater: what? Doesn’t matter. I put my metallic blue minidisc recorder on the table. Bowie leans over it and says admiringly: “Gurrreat colour!” – “It’s blue, blue, electric blue,” I reply, but I’m no longer sure whether it’s real or just in my memory. David Bowie has just euphorically praised my recording device – did I ever worry that this appointment could be difficult? Thanks for breaking the ice, and now wait until you hear my first question about the bridge museum – you will love it.
And so it is. Bowie has already heard about the theft and told how the security precautions in the museum were at least back then, and we take it from there. We glide through my catalog of questions, Bowie is charming and approachable, makes gags and faces and obviously has no need to give a honestly trying guy like me a hard time in any way. Is that the obligatory demeanor of a media professional who has lived in the USA for a long time? I should be fine. We shimmy from the past into the present, revolving around the new album HEATHEN. On one occasion, there is a critical moment when I get bogged down in formulating an ill-considered nonsense question and total cheese comes out; Bowie could now look blank and/or – horribile dictu! – roll his eyes, but he says “Hm, I haven’t looked at it that way, but…” and then answers a question that I might have wanted to ask like that in a rather interesting way, who knows. At the end he gives me a funny drug anecdote from his time in Los Angeles when he was stunned with cocaine.
Was that the best thing?
At least that’s how it feels at this moment, and I’m going all out now. We’re not getting together that young anymore, could I maybe ask for an autograph? I pull the cover of my LOW LP out of a cardboard sleeve, Bowie grins and signs it elaborately. And then I do something I’ve never done after an interview, for reasons of embarrassment, for decency, for hecticness, for thoughtlessness – but here and now it has to be: I pull out my snaps and ask if it would be okay if the press man take a picture of the two of us. “Sure,” says Bowie, and then we stand there and it “clicks” again and we say goodbye. Oh heaven! David Bowie! And briefly the picture jerky.
David Bowie liked me
Two days later the phone rings in the ME editorial office, and it’s Karin from Sony. That went pretty well, she heard, but my colleague in New York got nervous for a moment when I arrived with Bowie to take the photo. It wasn’t planned that way, apparently there was even a “briefing”, no pictures please or something. That was pretty cheeky of me, but it’s okay – Bowie must have found me quite likeable. Aha, soso, all right, haha, well, so what, me him too!
David Bowie liked me. You can’t write this sentence anywhere because it sounds so presumptuous, so made up, like fan fiction and of course completely unjournalistic. David Bowie liked me. You read it here first, 21 years later, and I promise you’ll never have to read it again. But deep down in the youthful room of my heart, this phrase is a treasure that I keep and that, when I look inside every now and then, very rarely, feels like a blessing donated by one of my patron saints. Forever, amen.
PS: “Roquairol” and the eight other stolen paintings from the Brücke Museum were recovered in Berlin-Tempelhof at the beginning of June 2002, and the three thieves were arrested. It is not known whether they had clients from pop journalism.