David Bowie has been at the forefront of the cultural conversation since his death on Jan. 10 — and now, new clips from an unaired 2003 interview with 60 Minutes and an intimate personal statement from his ex-wife Angie are revealing more of Bowie’s inner world.
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“Searching or music is like searching for God,” Bowie says in the clips, which were found in CBS’s archives. “There’s an effort to reclaim the unmentionable the unsayable, the unspeakable — all those things.”
Stripping away the costumes and spectacle of his work, Bowie saw himself as a writer on a spiritual search, “looking for a way into communicating with other people.”
“I never saw myself as a singer,” he says. “I would’ve much preferred other people to have done my songs. Then I wouldn’t have had to put all that makeup on.”
In another clip, Bowie expresses the importance of having a “sense of place” in his songs, such as the influence of Berlin on works like “Heroes” and London’s role in creating Ziggy Stardust.
The full list of clips can be found on the 60 Minutes Overtime website.
Meanwhile, on Sunday, Bowie’s ex-wife Angie Bowie wrote in the Daily Mail about her marriage with the musician, which eventually made her feel like she was “hanging on by [her] fingertips.”
“We were young and beautiful and this was London, ground zero for the bold,” she recalled of their open relationship. “Free love was just what you did. Threesomes, foursomes, fivesomes, I was never a one-man woman, or a one-woman woman either. For David, offers from men and women were abundant to the point of being overwhelming.”
The couple split in 1980 after 10 years of marriage, and Angie Bowie never heard from David or their son again.
Even then, “airbrushed out of his life,” Angie Bowie recounts the undeniable impact of their time together.
“I was shocked, completely unprepared for his death,” she wrote. “I simply hadn’t expected him to die before me. No one knew he’d been fighting an 18-month battle with cancer and that his latest album Blackstar was his farewell. I thought he was indestructible.”
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