Month: July 2001

I know you’ll all want to join me in congratulating proud parents, UltraStar supremo Howard and his lovely wife Liz, on the birth of baby Maya Caroline Jackowitz. Maya was born on July 14th, 2001 at 3:23 pm and weighed in at a healthy 6lbs, 14.5 ounces. HJ, Liz and Buster are “supremely delighted”, and both baby and family are all doing great.

If you do have any baby girl problems you ever need to work out Maya, just give Alex a call. She’s coming up to her first year now, so I’m sure she can give you some helpful advice and pointers in the right direction. 🙂

As you know, this period includes David’s very last performance as Ziggy Stardust for NBC’s taping of ‘The 1980 Floor Show’. If you’ve never heard the remarkable version of ‘I Got You Babe’ that David performed with Marriane Faithfull, now’s your chance. Also receiving it’s debut radio broadcast is the live version of ‘1984’/Dodo’ from the same show. Both of these live versions have only ever been available on bootlegs. Here’s just one of David’s memories of the recording of the show from tonight’s instalment:

“I did one particular song, can’t remember what it was now, (It was ‘The Jean Genie’, Gorgonzola brain – Blammo) but I had a strange kind of string knitted costume made with three hands on. Two of them on my chest, looking like I was being gripped from the back…And a third one on my crotch. I nearly started a riot with the Americans. They said: “Oh we can’t show that, that’s subversive.” We went through hell, so I had to take the hand of my crotch. And then of course they didn’t like the black pouch piece that was down there, that the hand was stitched to…so I had to change all that.”

He then drew comparisons with a problem that has erm…dogged him throughout his career:

“So, like the ‘Diamond Dogs’ thing that they airbrushed the dick off, I was having more erasure problems. It followed me all through the Seventies.* It’s funny that I can remember the costume and not the song, totally indicative of what the time was like.”

*On a historical note you may remember David has had censorship problems relating to “down there” several times apart from the above mentioned examples, the inner gatefold of ‘Aladdin Sane’ and the US version of ‘Tin Machine II’ are examples that spring to mind.

This morning’s Guardian newspaper here in the UK has in its G2 pullout section a wonderfully entertaining e-mail correspondence between David Bowie and Tracey Emin. The “edited transcript of their correspondence” is explained thus: “When David Bowie decided to set up a virtual gallery for art students, he began an email discussion with Tracey Emin about art, drugs and fame.”

We will be posting David’s full unedited text tomorrow, but in the meantime here follows a few excerpts from the Guardian piece:

Bowie on “Popping out”: “For me, living in downtown New York and without the all-pervading British press on 24-hour call, it’s a non-existent problem. “Popping out” is carried out several times a day hereabouts, though of course I do find it expedient to have a train of Lincoln town cars following me at a crawl in case I get a sore ankle.”

Bowie on fatherhood and Alex’s effect on his “golden years”: “She’s already affected them. The added dimension to life, of course, is inescapable. Thinking for and on Alex’s behalf. Trying to second-guess how she will develop. Continually looking for ways that I can help her. All that.”

Bowie on fame: “I certainly fancied my own spoonful of it when I was young. I was more than downcast to find that fame brought nothing more than good seats in a restaurant. There is nothing there to covet.”

Bowie on drugs: “Mmm… having experienced drugs, the work is never the same again. Station to Station was a drug album. Low and Heroes were not. Never Let Me Down was. It’s all contradictory.”

Emin on Bowie: “Throughout my life your music has had a big influence on me. I remember at the age of 14 vomiting at the end of Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide after drinking a bottle of sherry, and in later years sailing down the Nile listening to Young Americans on a Walkman full blast.” To which David replied: “I also remember vomiting at the end of Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide. I remember vomiting at the end of quite a few songs.”

David and Tracey have been friends for some time, and you may remember David’s piece about Ms Emin for Modern Painters back in the October 1997 edition of the magazine, entitled: “It’s Art Jim, but as We Know It”, written around some chats in Dublin with Tracey. Anyway, you can read the full transcript of today’s Guardian piece here.

At the end of the piece is a plug for the Bowieart Window Pain Project and The Goldsmiths visual arts postgraduate degree shows 2001, which run from 20th – 23rd July. Visit www.goldsmiths.ac.uk for details. The Goldsmiths visual art postgraduates can be seen on BowieArt from tomorrow.

On a final note, the cover of G2 has a piece entitled ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’, but be warned, this harrowing and tragic story doesn’t deal with the trials and tribulations of TJ Newton, but with the horrific story of Mohammed Ayez, who, after freezing to death as a stowaway in the wheel bay of a London-bound Boeing 777, ended up an unrecognisable mess in a superstore car park in west London. Mohammed Ayez’s body fell from the wheel bay as the aircraft started it’s decent to Heathrow. His was the fourth body to be found in the area in similar condition, and no doubt, will not be the last.)

I’m sure you all recall the furore that surrounded the publication back in 1998 of ‘Nat Tate – An American Artist: 1928 – 1960‘. The book, written by William Boyd and published by 21 Publishing, was launched in NY on April 1st 1998 when David Bowie read excerpts at the launch which was held in the studio of Jeff Koons.

People who clamed to be familiar with the tragic artist and his paintings (Nat Tate ended his life after burning nearly all of his work), were left more than a little embarrassed when the UK newspaper, The Independent, exposed the book for the hoax that it was. Nat Tate never ended his own life in 1960, because he never had a life to end.

William Boyd discusses the whole hilarious episode tonight on Channel4 at 23:40 GMT in the series Identity Crisis. Tonight’s episode is called ‘Lies’.

Thanx to Rochelle for the pointer.