2001 and beyond

Following the end of the Hours… campaign David enjoyed a period out of the public eye lightly peppered with some key spectacular live performances. For two consecutive years, he has pledged his support to the Tibet Freedom House shows at New York’s Carnegie Hall alongside luminaries such as Philip Glass, Patti Smith, Moby and Beastie Boy Adam Yauch to aid the campaign for a free Tibet. Each year has seen a very different performance from David, one year had Moby on guitar delivering a rocking version of “Heroes” and the next saw a string driven rendition of the rarely performed Space Oddity with Adam Yauch on bass.
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There is never a “quiet” time in the life of David Bowie and during this period, David was bestowed the honor of being voted the most influential artist of all time by the UK’s tastemaker tome the NME. In addition, another life changing event took place, the birth of David and Iman’s first child Alexandria Zahra Jones. Bowie took this time to savor fatherhood but also used the time to write a series of new songs which would form the basis for a new album.

David was in New York on September 11th, and in the aftermath David showed support for his adopted city by performing a short but emotional set at The Concert for New York City at Madison Square Garden. He opened the show with a raw rendition of the Simon and Garfunkel classic America and followed with an uplifting and barnstorming rendition of his own “Heroes”. All of those whom attended the show and the millions of folk whom saw the show broadcast live on TV can’t help but to have been moved by the sentiments expressed in both of the songs David performed.
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Following on from that emotional night, the series of new songs that David had started work on led to a much heralded reunion with Tony Visconti which in turn resulted in a new album Heathen and a change of outlook towards the music industry and the setting up of his own label Iso Records which has now linked up with Columbia Records to release what is probably the most eagerly awaited album of his career.

“Tony and I had been wanting to work together again for a few years now,” says David. “Both of us had fairly large commitments and for a long time we couldn’t see a space in which we could get anything together. As spring came around, last year, things began to ease up. I told Mark Plati and my band that I was going to disappear for a while and put this thing together with Tony. They were very understanding, they’ve worked with me long enough to know that we would be back together again before long.”
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So, diaries cleared, Bowie and Visconti set about compiling what you might call a location report, just outside of Woodstock in New York State. “I’d been told by guitarist David Torn of a new studio that was near completion called Allaire. Tony and I [took] a trip up a few weeks before we started work there, just to suss it out. In fact, T-Bone Burnett was working there with Natalie Merchant at the time. It’s remote, silent and inspirational. We couldn’t believe what a find it was.”
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So taken was he with the setting, David didn’t come back to New York again until the record was complete, living in the grounds with his family and eating in a communal dining room. A famously early riser, he put that to good use as Heathen began to come sharply into focus. “I’d get up around six most mornings and spend them in the studio putting together my chord structures and melodies and words, finding sounds that I wanted to use. Then around ten, Tony would get in and we’d go to work.”
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Bowie’s old friend Pete Townshend’s contribution to the album, playing lead guitar on Slow Burn, was not his first with Bowie, as listeners to Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) will remember. Foo Fighters Dave Grohl took the lead on the Neil Young cover I’ve Been Waiting.

For a further surprise, there’s more Bowie instrumentation on Heathen than anything in memory. “I was delighted that so much of what I played remained on the finished work. That’s me playing drums over my own loop on the Pixies cover Cactus. In fact the only thing I didn’t play on that track was bass. That was Tony Visconti. Nearly all the synth work on Heathen is mine and some of the piano.”

And the title? “Heathenism is a state of mind”, says Bowie. “You can take it that I’m referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any God’s presence in his life. He is the 21st Century man. There’s no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs, but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.”
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Some of the new songs such as Slow Burn and Afraid from Heathen got their first public airing in early May of 2002 at the Robert De Niro organized Tribeca Film Festival in New York which was put together to help revitalize the spirits of the downtown area.
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The release of Heathen was accompanied by a series of concerts across Europe and the USA most notably David’s curatorship of the prestigious two week long British Meltdown arts festival involving acts as diverse as The Legendary Stardust Cowboy, Suede, comedian Harry Hill, Coldplay, Television and The Dandy Warhols. David performed Low in its entirety alongside Heathen as part of the festival.
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A year later the Reality album was launched with the world’s largest interactive ‘live by satellite’ event and was followed by the rapturously received and critically acclaimed A Reality Tour of the world.

Apart from the odd rare sighting at a charity function and one or two snatched paparazzi shots, David has kept an extremely low profile, popping up for two stunning performances with Arcade Fire in Central Park 2005 and again in September 2006 at New Yorks Radio City Hall. That certainly woke everyone up! In 2006 he joined Pink Floyd legend Dave Gilmour on two of Floyd’s best-known songs – Arnold Layne and Comfortably Numb at the Royal Albert Hall.
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2006 also saw Bowie return to acting with the Chris Nolan-directed The Prestige (#1 at the box office).
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In May 2007, Bowie was the curator of the highly successful 10-day High Line arts and music festival in New York. In June, he was honored at the 11th Annual Webby Awards (known as the “Oscars of the Internet”) with the Webby Lifetime Achievement Award for pushing the boundaries between art and technology. Later in 2007, Bowie starred as himself in an acclaimed episode of Extras, Ricky Gervais’ series on HBO.

2012 saw the erection of a plaque in Heddon Street, London to commemorate the extraordinary influence of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and of course David himself. A large group of media and fans assembled for the occasion; were treated to a moving speech from Gary Kemp who said, “Ziggy was the ultimate messianic rock star, and with him David Bowie successfully blurred the lines not just between boys and girls, but himself and his creation. Bowie was Ziggy come to save us – and I bought him hook, eyeliner and haircut. It seems right that it should be the job of a fan boy and I am very honored.”
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Further excitement accompanied the announcement in 2012, that the David Bowie Archive had given unprecedented access to the prestigious Victoria and Albert museum for an exhibition to be curated solely by the V&A. It is the first time a museum has been given access to the David Bowie Archive.

2013

On January 8, 2013, quite without fanfare and out of the blue, David Bowie did something nobody really expected.  He released a new single entitled ‘Where Are We Now’ and announced the release of a new album in March.  The album, ‘The Next Day’ is Bowie’s 30th studio album and his first new album in 10 years.

The next chapter has surely been written by this most mysterious and important of artists…

2016

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