00:00In the notoriously fickle world of pop music, only a few artists have ever managed to carve out a continually evolving career that spans several decades of creative development.
00:10David Bowie, musical superstar and one of the world's biggest celebrity icons, has achieved precisely this.
00:17His idea of filming Walter Tevis' science fiction novel about an outsider sort of blossomed into fruition when he saw Bowie in the BBC Cracked Actor documentary.
00:31Because he just saw this otherworldly man talking sort of semi-incoherently in the back of a car and thought, blimey, I've got my lead performer here.
00:41I think by that time, he'd been famous for five years. He was confident enough in his success and in his abilities as a musician and a singer and a songwriter to take this step and that his fans would follow him.
00:57My point is to communicate for myself, first and foremost. And if I have a public that was willing to follow me and keep going with me, that's great. But if I start losing them or dropping them off, there's nothing much I can do about that. I didn't start writing for that reason.
01:13I bet you if you asked Bowie, he'd say it's one of those songs that just came through him. Like McCartney with Yesterday, he woke up and it was in his mind. Keith Richards with Satisfaction, woke up with that riff. And I bet you if you asked Bowie, Heroes, I bet you he didn't sweat over that song, I bet it just flowed.
01:29And that's why musicians are the luckiest fuckers on earth. Because I don't get it and you don't get it and he don't get it. But it just comes to them and they just... And then they make millions of pounds and go and live in Berlin. Bastards.
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