MUSIC FOR FILMS 2 (MAY, 2022) – STOCKWELL, THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH – TRANSCRIPT
CLIP: ‘THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH‘ (1975)
How did you find me?
Your record. It took me a while, but I traced you.
DAVID BOWIE:
Did you like it?
RIP TORN:
Not much.
DAVID BOWIE:
I didn’t make it for you, anyway.
RIP TORN:
Who’d you make it for then?
DAVID BOWIE:
For my wife. She’ll get to hear it one day. On the radio.
RIP TORN:
We hear most everything on the radio these days.
GRAMS: ‘THE DOVE’, BRIAN ENO ‘MUSIC FOR FILMS‘
CLIFF MICHELMORE:
Now exactly who’s being cruel to you?
DAVID BOWIE:
Well, I think we’re all fairly tolerant. But for the last two years, we’ve had comments like “darling,” and “can I carry your handbag?” thrown at us. I think it’s just had to stop now.
CLIFF MICHELMORE:
It’s all got to stop.
GRAMS: ‘BEWITCHED, BOTHERED AND BEWILDERED’ JERRY GRAY & HIS ORCHESTRA
DAVID BOWIE:
Well Vince Taylor was this nightmare of a guy. I met him in Gioconda one day and the guy was right out of his tree. I mean he was playing with half a deck. I mean this guy was bonkers. Absolutely the genuine article. And then one day I remember on Tottenham Court Road, he dragged out this world map and we were crouching on all fours outside Tottenham Court Road Tube station, and he was showing me where all the aliens had their bases under the Arctic, and like in this mountain. And there’s people stepping over our map. And I’m thinking “what the hell am I doing in the middle of rush hour with this bonkers American looking at a map of the world, and he’s telling me — I thought “there’s something in this, I’m going to remember this, this is just too good”.
FRENCH INTERVIEWER:
What are your intentions when this craze is over?
VINCE TAYLOR
My own personal intentions is to keep on singing rock and roll because most singers, when they become a top named rock and roll artist, they try to change immediately to be a big all around entertainer, which I don’t think is a good thing.
GRAMS:’BRAND NEW CADILLAC‘ VINCE TAYLOR
DAVID BOWIE:
Then I heard that in France — he went over to France and became quite a big hit over there as one of their competitors to Johnny Halliday, you know. And that one night he gone on stage without his band, but dressed in white robes and told everybody that indeed he was the coming Messiah. My office approached Mrs Orwell, because I said “office, I want to do ‘1984’ as a musical, go and get me the rights.” So they duly trooped off to see Mrs. Orwell, who in so many words said “you’ve got to be out of your gourd, you think I’m turning this over to that?” You know, if it was like Fagin’s gang that had gone absolutely apeshit and they were living on the tops of buildings. And I got that from my father’s work at Doctor Barnardo’s homes, because Doctor Barnardo and Lord Shaftsbury had once gone on the top of the roofs of the City of London and found all these urchins living up there. And that always stayed in my mind as being an extraordinary image of all these kids living up on the roofs of London, you know. And so I had the Diamond Dogs — were living on the roofs of London, you know, and they were like, they were all little Johnny Rottens and Sid Viciouses really.
DAVID BOWIE:
And in the death
As the last few corpses lay rotting on the slimy thoroughfare
The shutters lifted in acient Temperance Building
High on Poacher’s Hill
And red mutant eyes gaze down on Hunger City
No more big wheels
Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats
And ten thousand peoploids split into small tribes
Coveting the highest of the sterile skyscrapers
Like packs of dogs assaulting the glass fronts of Love-Me Avenue
Ripping and rewrapping mink and shiny silver fox, now legwarmers
Family badge of sapphire and cracked emerald
in the day of the dog
the year of the diamond dog
this ain’t rock and roll its genocide.
GRAMS:’DIAMOND DOGS’ DAVID BOWIE
SOUND OF TUBE TRAIN ARRIVING AT STATION
TUBE ANNOUNCER:
This station is Stockwell.
GRAMS:’BLUE BAYOU‘ ROY ORBISON
LOCATION 1. BUNHILL FIELDS
TIM:
Through sleepy eyes, how happy I’d be. Gonna’ see my baby again, gonna’ be with some of my friends. Maybe I’ll feel better again on Blue Bayou. The planet Earth is blue, but there’s something we can do. Some are born to endless night. Some are born to pure delight. And since this is a re-imagining, a reboot of our ‘Music for Films’ about David Bowies’ ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ — which is also a kind of psychogeographical exploration of London, London not only the streets and the buildings and the ecology, the trees and the pigeons, but also London and the imagination, London and literature — there is no better place to be and there is no better person to share this time with, than Lambda Award winning author, poet, activist, cultural critic and living saint, Roz Kaveney.
ROZ
Gosh.