045 Rebel Rebel transcript (David Bowie)

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[00:00:00] Amit: Welcome to Famous and Gravy, a podcast about quality of life as we see it one dead celebrity at a time. Now for the opening quiz to reveal today's dead celebr.

[00:00:10] Michael: This person died 2016, age 69. In 1973, he abruptly announced his retirement. That was when I was born. I wasn't there for the retirement announcement. It didn't stick

[00:00:24] Friend: Gene Wilder?

[00:00:25] Michael: Not Gene Wilder. In the mid 1970s, he made pro fascist pronouncements that he would later disown.

[00:00:34] Friend: I'm not getting it.

[00:00:35] Michael: In the 1980s he had a Broadway run and the demanding title role character of the elephant man

[00:00:42] Friend: Was Abe Vigoda in the elephant man?

[00:00:44] Michael: Not Abe Vigoda, but boy, what a good guess. His son is a director. Best known for the 2009 film Moon starring Sam Rockwell.

[00:00:55] Friend: Oh, I've seen that. John hurt?

[00:00:58] Michael: Not John Hurt. He suffered a blow in a teenage brawl that caused his left pupil to be permanently dilated.

[00:01:06] Friend: That doesn't help. Um, Rip Torn?

[00:01:09] Michael: Not Rip Torn.. I really want to do him on the show. He experimented with startling transformations, often playing up an androgynous image. He was the thin white Duke major Tom and Ziggy Stardust.

[00:01:24] Friend: Oh, oh, oh God Crap. David Bow. David Bowie. David Bowie. Right. David Bowie.

[00:01:29] Michael: Today's dead celebrity is David Bowie .

[00:01:33] Friend: Oh my God.

[00:01:36] Archival: Yet another David Bowie. Is this the real one this time? Well, um, I think so, yes. Why did you change so often? I mean, what was the need for it?

Was it just a gimmick? Being a Capricorn, I didn't want to expose myself to the public, so I developed a series of characters which fell in line with the material that I was writing. So did the roles that you played on stage then kind of take you over sometimes in private life, yes. So you're not, this is, this is really you.

This is not, you just still sort of playing the role of s the role often carries over, so they all built up and became a mess. So behind that all the time was a real David Bow at times. Yes.

[00:02:17] Michael: Welcome to Famous and Gravy. I'm Michael Osborne.

[00:02:21] Amit: I'm Amit Kapoor.

[00:02:22] Michael: And on this show we choose a celebrity who died in the last 10 years and review their quality of life. We go through a series of categories to figure out the things in life that we would actually desire and ultimately answer the question, would I want that life today?

David Bowie died 2016, age 69.

Who is the big one?

I think it's the biggest. The biggest. I think he's the most famous person we've done on the. I thought about this. Okay. Fame to me is not just recognizability or recognition, it's

[00:02:56] Amit: people who sing a song called to Fame .

[00:02:58] Michael: Well, that helps. It's also depth of connection with the masses.

Okay. When I made this argument with Alison and she's your wife for, for new listeners out there, right? She said, what about Nelson Mandela? And I'm like, we don't know him that much. He may be more known in the history books. Same thing with Muhammad Ali. Same thing with Neil Armstrong. But in terms of feeling like the masses know him, if we're talking a kind of breadth and depth quality to fame, yes.

Then I think David Bowie is the most famous person we've yet done. Unfamous

[00:03:30] Amit: and great. You've hit upon an interesting formula. The breath times death. Yeah. Equals fame. Category

[00:03:35] Michael: one. Grading the first line of their obituary. David Bowie, the infinitely changeable, fiercely forward looking songwriter who taught generations of musicians about the power of drama, images, and personas died on Sunday, two days after his 69th birthday.

[00:03:55] Amit: Interesting. Yeah. That last tag. That last tag. But the lack of proper nouns. Normally who launched to fame is Ziggy Stardust. Yeah. Best known for space oddity. Something like that

[00:04:08] Michael: on some level looks kind of short. I think that this is gonna take a minute to dissect. Can.

[00:04:12] Amit: May we start with the adjective, chug fest at the beginning, infinitely changeable.

[00:04:17] Michael: And then following that fiercely forward looking songwriter who taught generations of musicians about the power of drama, images, and persona.

[00:04:27] Amit: Okay. I want to talk about the I C F F

[00:04:29] Michael: I C F. Okay. Infinitely changeable, fiercely forward looking. Yeah. And then taught.

[00:04:34] Amit: Yeah. So infinitely changeable. No doubt about it.

Yes. Right. That's gonna come up throughout this episode. Correct. He reinvented different personalities to hide behind or embrace or bring about, whatever you wanna call that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fiercely forward looking.

[00:04:47] Michael: Yes. Like he is looking to the next thing as soon as he finished the last thing,

[00:04:51] Amit: or while he's in the current thing, he's already looking

[00:04:54] Michael: fiercely ahead.

Yeah. Maybe he's one way or another. I think that that is dead on accurate. Fiercely forward looking is, I think extraordinarily well put. Songwriter, you know, not performer, not pop star. That's sort of an interesting choice. I think maybe the right one. And that's how he would describe himself. Mm-hmm. . But you know, you and I have had conversations about like, How he describes himself is not necessarily, you know, what the obligation of us to describe him is.

Yes. So, you know, David Bowie, oh, you know, I'm the songwriter.

[00:05:25] Amit: I think it's fine because they proceeded it with infinitely changeable. Yeah. And so that already implies that he is more than the noun that we're gonna modify. Yeah.

[00:05:33] Michael: All right. But then I think the thing that you fly a second ago taught generations Yes.

Of musicians. Yes. Yeah. That's an interesting word

[00:05:41] Amit: to use. It's very active. Right. I would expect influenced, um, but taught

[00:05:47] Michael: what is teaching, I guess, you know, there's teaching that takes the form of modeling behavior, you know, showing how it's done. And then there's teaching that is like actual direct instruction where, you know, you kinda walk somebody through how you think about things or how you come up with ideas.

I think the connotation here is the. Hmm. I'm actually sort of impressed with it. You know, if you're just reading this, you can kind of blast past that word and not notice taut generations. Right. It's

[00:06:15] Amit: bold. It is bold. It was a new year. They were like, this is 2016 motherfucking I'm gonna do as an act. You know

[00:06:22] Michael: what you taught generations about the power of drama, images and personas?

I mean, there's nothing in there about music, right? He talk generations of musicians about all these other things that surround music. That is extraordinarily well said. That the thing about Bowie is it's not just the music, it's all the stuff happening. The album artwork, the live performances, the characters, he adopts the theater of the thing.

You know what I mean? Yep. Wow.

[00:06:47] Amit: What, and then what? A first line of an open, and then the capstone died two days. Two days after his 69th birthday. Why that? Why'd they put that in? , are you thinking what I'm thinking like that he was a sex addict and they wanted to like throw in the number 69. Okay. You said it.

I didn't say

[00:07:01] Michael: it, but yeah.

[00:07:02] Amit: I didn't say anything. I merely insinuated your, your 14 year old nine where he was going.

[00:07:07] Michael: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. Why else mentioned two days after his 69th birthday. They don't play with that phrase. It's a whole separate sentence. I usually read it when we do these episodes, but, uh, usually it's not woven into the first line.

[00:07:21] Amit: Yeah. I mean, cuz they did leave out the drug addiction and the sex addiction. Yeah. And this is perhaps a tasteful partial illusion.

[00:07:27] Michael: I, I don't know why they made that decision. I mean, I guess it's,

[00:07:30] Amit: listen, we're dealing with a bold obituary writer here. I perhaps one that we

[00:07:34] Michael: haven't dealt with before. Like if you slow down and pace yourself through it, there's like a lot going in here.

It's dense.

[00:07:40] Amit: Yeah. I like it. I mean, I love brevity when they nail it and I love when they get creative and wordy. Yeah. And I don't like the middle ground. And I think they did. Pretty close to nailing it on the former,

[00:07:51] Michael: you know, usually when you have brevity and economy, it's also got some real like creativity with the wordsmithing.

Yes. With the actual verbiage. Right. That is not here necessarily. There's no words that I haven't seen in 15 years , and that I need to go to the dictionary to look up. Yeah.

[00:08:09] Amit: So that perhaps maybe my demarcation as well. Very well and succinct, but you know, not perfect.

[00:08:15] Michael: Lyrically, you know what I would say about this?

Like this is actually a really good representation to Bowie. The meta of this first line of this obituary. I'm not talking about the sentence itself, but all the stuff that surrounds this sentence, it feels like appropriate to who David Bowie was. One last thing before we give our grades. David Bowie, not his real name.

David

[00:08:34] Amit: Jones. Yeah. And I think that the New York Times is just honors that

[00:08:37] Michael: I think that's right. I think it's like what we know him for. Had they said David Jones, better known as David Bowie, we would've been like, what? You

[00:08:44] Amit: know? Yeah. Most people wouldn't know that. This is different though, because his kids took the last name Jones.

He

[00:08:49] Michael: never officially changed it. He signed contracts to the end of his day. Davy Jones. Yes. Yeah, and the whole reason he changed it was cause of the monkeys. All right, let's grade this son

[00:08:57] Amit: of a bench. What, what you I'm, I'm giving it a nine. Love the brevity. Miss a tiny bit of creativity. I agree

[00:09:03] Michael: with that.

I'm gonna give it a nine too, for the exactly the same reasons. I also really like that. The more I look at it, the more I see, which again, I think is very true to Bowie. It's art. It is art. Let's move on. Category two. Five Things I love about you here. Amit and I work together to come up with five reasons why we love this person, why we want to be talking about them in the first place.

Okay. I wrote, picked Up where The Beatles and Bob Dylan left off. I was thinking about The Beatles, which I think are the greatest rock band of all time. And that's not just because of the musical output, but it's also because of the musical journey that one of the things that's so exciting about the Beatles, even to this day is to watch the progression in sophistication of songwriting and orchestration and everything.

Album to album, you see this major leap from help to rubber soul, to revolver, to sergeant Peppers. It's like each time they're trying to one up themselves. You can contrast that with what most bands do, like the Rolling Stones, where they get a little bit more adventurous, but it's pretty conservative in terms of their music writing approach.

The Beatles are different, and Dylan was different, especially in the 1960s and into the seventies, like he's reinventing himself. Album to album. I think when The Beatles break up in the late sixties and when, you know, Bob Dylan has sort of gone electric and he is not as much in favor, there's a little bit of a void there in terms of who is going to pick up this mantle of what it looks like to evolve album to album.

And I think Bowie's entire career is nothing but that. Every album is a surprise and an adventure. Some of them fucking suck and I, I don't love all of them, but I do think that there is this legacy that was created that like, would rock and roll be important and like, would it evolve? After the 1960s, and I think Bowie carries that legacy forward.

I'm closer to the golden.

[00:11:25] Amit: Do you think this was fierce foresight in that he sees an opening in bringing about this genre, this avan garde style of music?

[00:11:33] Michael: I think it's some serendipity. I mean, I think he's got the, all the right influences. He does some stuff in the sixties, like he, he doesn't break until he's 25 years old. And that's a little older for rock stars, like there are some albums in his early and are you familiar with the whole Laughing Nome thing?

Laughing,

kind of ridiculous. I mean, there is a like hippy-dippy phase with Bowie. He, he doesn't really begin to break until Space Oddity. And then after that it's like, man, us old the World, then Hunky Dory, then Ziggy Stardust. But I, so I think he's like grabbing from these things. I think that there's a combination of seeing a void and being the right man at the right time.

We had a humorous and sartorial edge on things I think that we felt was missing in rock. And we knew that there had to be something new and hey, we're probably it . Yeah. I mean, we'd looked around and say, well hey, there ain't much else's, it's all so boring. What do I want to see on a stage that would really make me excited?

And I think we went about doing that.

[00:12:36] Amit: Okay, so I picked up the baton.

[00:12:38] Michael: So I picked up the baton and I love that about him. You know, and, and I, there's this sort of like little brother quality to that, that I'm just a very big fan of.

[00:12:45] Amit: Okay. And I like what you said that it's not, you know, it wasn't entirely intentional.

It was, it was a mix of serendipity and style that it was right time, right place.

[00:12:53] Michael: The other thing is that he didn't, I don't think, recognize that I heard him in an interview say like, I never saw myself as part of that crowd. Like I didn't feel like I belonged. And he's like, which is crazy, because from 72 to 76, I could not have been more of a rock star.

There was a real feeling of inadequacy. And in that area, I never really felt like a rock singer or rock star or whatever. And I always felt a little bit outta my element. Again, not from elitist things at all, is that I really didn't think I played as well as, He had a little, what sounded to me like imposter syndrome.

Yes. Anyway, that's

[00:13:24] Amit: my number one. Okay. My number two, power of persuasion. So two stories that I came across that I both really, really liked, uh, have to do with slash of Guns n Roses, , and actually have and Lou Reed. Yeah. So, um, slash so his relationship to slash is he was actually a professional partner with Slash's mother, who was one of his costume designers.

They later became intimate partners. They were lovers for a

[00:13:50] Michael: while, which isn't special for David Bowie.

[00:13:53] Amit: No, there was, there was a lot of them. Slash's mother calls up David Bowie at some point after Guns N Roses is really, really rising. Perhaps even pass their peak and was like, talk to him and he basically convinced us slash to get off the hard stuff.

Yeah. I think he had this gift of relatability because he wasn't this big powerhouse, loud voice. I think he had this relatability of saying, I see what you're seeing. And I've been there and he used that for the right reasons.

[00:14:19] Michael: Trent Resner of Nine-Ish Nails describes a similar experience. They

[00:14:22] Amit: almost the same thing.

Trent Resner again got off the really hard stuff because of David Bowie. Yeah. And the other example was Lou Reed. So they went to dinner sometime in the mid seventies. A group of them, including Bowie's wife at the time, is manager and maybe head of a label, and they invited Lou Reed along who had at that point, sunset

[00:14:40] Michael: his musical career.

Yeah. Velvet Underground was not, had not hit. I mean, Bowie actually is kind of credited with resurrecting Lou Reed in some extent.

[00:14:47] Amit: And that's exactly my point. They, they point to this exact after dinner conversation that, you know, Bowie and Lou Reed are at a booth somewhere at some bar and Bowie just talks 'em into coming outta retirement.

Yeah. And in the biography I read it said that this was a service to musicians and fans alike everywhere. That Bowie basically said, you're not done yet.

[00:15:08] Michael: Boy, that's really good. You know, one bit of trivia on Lou Reed. So the saxophone on, uh, walk on the Wild Side was played by the guy who taught Bowie saxophone as a teenager.

Power of persuasion.

[00:15:29] Amit: Power of persuasion, through

[00:15:30] Michael: relatability, through relatability. Say more about why. Love

[00:15:34] Amit: that. If you can relate to somebody and hit that part of their heartstrings to say either, I understand you. I see you, but you're not seeing something that I'm seeing. And if you can do that with a level of believability and in these two instances, turn their life around for the better.

Yeah. You've thereby changed two lives and cascaded down to the many other lives that they changed

[00:15:57] Michael: do I guess, the play devil. So that's, I'm saying that's impact. Is there a good form of persuasion without relatability? I guess there's salesmanship,

[00:16:03] Amit: I guess. I mean, there's carrots and there's sticks and then there's, yeah.

I don't know what relatability is. Maybe it's hummus. Yeah. Um, and probably homeless. That's, but, but you know, that's the smoothest, creamiest way of persuasion .

[00:16:17] Michael: Sure, sure. So thing number two is homeless. No.

[00:16:20] Amit: In, in a certain way. Yeah. But that's, you, you bring up a good point. Is there a form of persuasion that is good, that is not relatable?

Yeah. And I think there is, I think there is tough love. Yeah. Which does work. And I think incentive also works. Yeah. And they're not bad, but this is a uniquely personal feature and attribute that is either gifted or cultivated that he

[00:16:43] Michael: had. It kind of gets back to the word teach too. The best form of instruction and teaching is like, Combining personal experience.

Mm-hmm. , which is I think ultimately what you're talking about. Yeah. Okay. That's actually a pretty good segue to my number three. Okay. This was my way of getting a lot in, but I wrote inner and outer space. Okay. I love that. He is kind of a sci-fi rock star and I'm not sure we have another one like it. Not in everything he does, but certainly with Space Oddity and Ziggy and you know, major Tom comes up again and Ashes to Ashes, which is a, you know, 1979 ish hit, you know, this album, earthlings and Black Star, like I got to know a fair amount of the catalog and every time Bowie goes into space, I'm kind of excited about it.

Small bit of trivia. He's from the same town as HG Wells. I don't think that's coincidence, but I said Innerspace too. I think that he creates creative opportunity through character, that he makes somebody up, or he decides to adopt a persona, and that there's space and created inside between his creative soul and his creative core.

And that the canvas, the persona platform that he's then creating upon. And I think that we are all doing a version of this. You know, this is the Shakespeare quote where life is a stage and we're all sort of performing characters, but he kind of went a level deeper with that. Even the name David Bowie, you know, he's sort of performing David Bowie his whole life, right?

And then characters that David Bowie creates. And I think part of the reason that he has a fan base that is so devoted and protective of him is that there's something about that act that. Gets out a deep feeling of alienation that makes people who have a hard time feeling seen, feel seen. If I've been at all responsible for people finding more characters in themselves than they originally thought they had, then I'm pleased because that's, uh, that's something I feel very strongly about.

That one isn't totally. Um, what one has been conditioned to think one is that, that there are many facets of the personality, which a lot of, a lot of us have trouble finding. I remember the first time I kind of became a little bit of a Bowie fan because, you know, we came about an M T V era and I didn't care for Bowie in the 1980s.

I encountered him at exactly the worst time in his career when some of the worst music he ever did, and I don't know, and the Bowie fans will point to that. So I was pretty dismissive of him for most of. You know, young life. Then I was traveling in New Zealand. I had this friend Josh, who I really liked.

We had all kinds of stuff to talk about. We worked at a, the building site together and I remember one day he showed up and he was wearing a David Bowie t-shirt and I gave him shit about him. I'm like, Bowie, and I remember Josh looking at me going, Bowie's good, right? But I'm like, he is really Bowie. That was when I first got turned onto all the early seventies stuff, and I've been approaching.

Episode as like, okay, I'm gonna take this opportunity to get familiar with the rest of the catalog and I've really been thinking about it as a bottle of wine. Now's the time to crack open the wine and, and get to know Bowie. And I would say over the course of getting ready for this episode, that I've fallen in love with the guy.

I mean, I've really fallen in love with the guy. And I think part of it is to this point about he understands some sort of inner loneliness, that he really speaks to the human condition in a profound way. I don't know if I love all of his music, Amit, but I get it now. I get why people feel the way they do about Bowie in a way I did not before.

[00:20:15] Amit: Okay. That's my number three. I have a lot to add to that, but this is man in the mirror stuff to me that I want to supplement. Your point, cannot

[00:20:22] Michael: wait for man in the mirror. Okay, on this episode, uh, you wanna say number

[00:20:26] Amit: four? I'm gonna go where I don't think you're gonna go at all. And I'm gonna go funny.

PR guy . See, he was a PR genius at this infinitely changing thing. Early, early, early foray into it. Before he even cut an album. His father was a, worked for a charity. Mm-hmm. in the uk, but he worked in outreach and pr. So his father kind of knew pr. Yeah. And they came up with a shtick to kind of get the very early David Bowie, not even David Bowie, I think it was, this was still David Jones at this point.

Yeah, it was, yeah. To get him on TV for these early versions of his bands. Yes. They created this organization called The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men. There's a video of this, this was in 1964. This is extremely Bob Einstein. Yes. . Right. And I think that's why I wrote like Bob Einstein in large letters next to him,

[00:21:16] Michael: they're tired of persecution.

They're tired of Tom. A 17 year old Davey Jones has just founded the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to long-haired men. Well, I think we're all fairly tolerant, but for the last two years we've had, uh, comments like Darling and, uh, can I carry a handbag thrown at us? And I think we all like long hair.

and um, we don't see why other people should persecute us because of this.

[00:21:40] Amit: This is Davey Jones. That's a nobody. Yeah. Right. But he still got on the BBC twice. . He's fed serious about it. Yeah. And then he actually, they got, they got a following on it so that, you know, apparently Davey Jones was barred from playing some dance hall performance cuz his hair was too long.

And he again goes and says, you know, this is, this is it. This is an example of prejudice. And there were actually some supporters that showed up and picketed this show with banners that said, be fair to long hair. Yeah. Outside of the BBC Television Center. So this was the early David Bowie as the theatric getting PR time.

And funny as hell. Yeah. You can look at this now as, as 1964 if it were today, than perhaps that this is a different thing having to do with sexuality and gender roles and stuff like this. But no, this is 1964 and this is a pure ass joke. Yeah. And it worked. Yeah. And it was funny. Yeah. .

[00:22:36] Michael: It's good. All right.

Um, I'll go number five. I wrote relationship to time precedence and transients. He was ahead of the curve on a lot of things. Most obviously gender fluidity. There's a moment that gets pointed out in 1975 when he is presenting a Grammy to Aretha Franklin, ladies and gentlemen and others, and the audience laughs and he.

And I mean, obviously you know, Ziggy is this deliberately androgynous image and he plays with that idea and comes out and pronounces himself bisexual, even though he is marries a woman. We'll get into all that later, but I do think one way or another you have to understand him as being ahead of the curve on gender fluidity.

He's right at the dead start of glam rock. He went disco early. He actually gets kind of a pass with the punk rock crowd because he was championing Iggy Pop, who was a kind of punk icon. He all but invents new wave. There's a video called Ashes to Ashes that's really worth a watch You watching, you're like, wow, what a crazy M T V video.

He came out with that and put a lot of production value into it. One year before M T V even existed, he very famously called out M T V for not having black people. Having watched MTV over the last few months, um, it's a solid enterprise with, and it's got a lot going for it. I'm just flawed by the fact that so few black artists featured on it.

Why is that? I think that we're trying to move in that direction that the company is thinking in terms of narrow casting, that's evident. And then a lot of early internet work in terms of, you know, he comes up with bowie.net, he wins a lifetime Webby award in 2007. He's the first major artist to put a downloadable song online.

Like all of these things are like years before anybody else was doing it. He was so ahead of the curve. So he is absolutely prescient, but he's also transient. He also recognizes that all of life is nothing but change. Right? He's got a song called Changes and it. Very true to him for the entirety of his career, that he's just not married to anything like he creates and then dismisses and moves on to the next thing.

This is the whole fierce, forward looking thing. I love

[00:24:53] Amit: that. I, it's like a, it's a non-attachment. I think

[00:24:55] Michael: that's a great way of putting it on it. Non-attachment is a great way of putting it because we are all attached to the present. We are all like, when I am in a good mood, I'm like, how do I just keep this good mood for forever?

Right. When I create something I'm really proud of, how do I replicate that and do it again? What were the instructions last time? You know? And he's so comfortable with transients and that makes him prescient, I think. Yeah. So that's my number five.

[00:25:20] Amit: Okay. I wanna add one thing to timing. Okay. So his first hit, space Oddity Yep.

Was released four days before Neil Armstrong. Em Buzz Aldrin landed on the

[00:25:29] Michael: moon. Yeah. There was some criticism that he was opportunistic about Space Oddity. Actually, let's recap five because I want to return to space Auto D with my Malkovich moment. Okay. I said picked up where The Beatles and Bob Dylan left off.

You said

[00:25:43] Amit: persuasive

[00:25:44] Michael: through relatability and hummus. Uh, I said outer and inner space. You said? Uh, funny PR machine. Funny PR machine. And I said relationship to time prescient and transients. Fucking great list. Okay, category three, Malkovich Malkovich. This category is named after the movie being John Malkovich, in which people take a little portal into John Malkovich mind and they can have a front row seat to his experiences.

So this is building a little bit on the prescient thing. Space Oddity is the song that really becomes his first breakout. It sort of has two lives cause he is with one manager who does a not great job of promoting it, and then he drops that person and gets another manager who kind of goes on a new campaign.

And Space Oddity is the thing that really, I think any Bowie fan would say. That's the first real hit. Even though he had put out some albums before. The inspiration for that song came when he watched Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey. Yes. It was actually a very specific scene in 2001. So, and David Bowie talks about going to that movie high and there's a scene, and I don't know if you remember the scene, I don't remember the last time you saw the movie was, but when an astronaut calls back home, he's trying to call his wife and uh, he gets his little daughter who's like this little four or five year old girl, but it's basically like FaceTime.

Now this is 1969 that this movie comes out, right? That's actually the moment that Billy points to with thinking about how lonely it has to be in space. That scene, everybody else who's watching it in that theater and everywhere else throughout time is mostly seeing like, oh wow. Communicate through space.

But what he's seeing there is alienation. What he's seeing is loneliness. What he's seeing is distance and how cut off and how scary and kind of horrible that is. And he. Takes that idea and brings it into what becomes Space Oddity. Hello? Hello. How are you? A squirt uh, are you coming to my party tomorrow?

I'm sorry sweetheart, but I can't. Why not? You know, daddy's traveling. Very sorry about it, but I just can't. Hi. I'm gonna send you a very nice present though. Have a nice birthday party tomorrow too, huh? Hi. I, I wonder like, what led up to him seeing that interaction? It's kind of sad, you know, cuz it's not, it's not obviously sad, but he sees sadness in it.

I love, love, love, love that he. A moment that the rest of us were missing and builds upon that. I think that that's something he does really, really well. Right. There's a sensitivity that, you know, in his stoned brain in 1969 in, in a movie theater that's like, ah, this, this would make a good song. Yeah. And it's the one

[00:28:41] Amit: that launches him.

Do you think he saw it as, you know, a way to tell a story of We're all lone? Whether Major Tom is out in space or not, but this is a way for for everyone else to sort of understand how loneliness is by an astronaut drifting into space.

[00:28:58] Michael: I don't know. I think what often happens with creativity is that you create something mostly by instinct and mostly through intuition, and then if it finds kind of value somehow, like then later you can say, this is what I think about what was going into that at the time.

But I don't think you're conscious of it as you're putting it together. I don't think he's like, I want to capture the feeling of loneliness. Let me write this song. But I think later he saw that because that's the kind of thing he's drawn to. So I think it's only in reflection that that becomes. . That's why I'm ov.

[00:29:32] Amit: Good one. Thanks man. Okay, so that was 1969, so I'm only flash forwarding us three years to 1972. So are you aware of the Elvis Bowie connection? Not really. So Bowie was born on Elvis's 12th birthday. Bowie from early on always wanted to be a star, always fascinated with fame in the Hollywood machine. So he really latches on to people like Elvis, little Richard especially.

Yeah, he absolutely loved, but he loved, which makes

[00:30:00] Michael: sense for the sort of androgynous nature of

[00:30:01] Amit: things, right? Yeah, totally. Yeah. And so 1972, uh, Ziggy Stardust has been created, invented the album is out, this is what David Bowie exists as, and he wanted to go see Elvis. And so he gets an opportunity.

There's a Madison Square Garden show that Elvis is playing at, and him and Mick Ronson mm-hmm. , his guitar player. Yep. Hop on a plane from London to New York to. Madison Square Garden, and they have front row seats in the middle. Bowie is in full Ziggy Stardust regalia. Yeah. The flame red mullet. When you walk into a 1972 Elvis concert, that is gonna stick out and your seats are in the front, in the middle.

Yeah. Thinking likely I have arrived. I am a rockstar. I am seeing my hero. I am in character. Yeah. As he walks and struts to his seats, the crowd sort of all gazes at him. There's a bit of an eruption. He looks up at Elvis. Elvis shoots him a look that Bowie described as, sit the fuck down. Who do you think you are?

Those were not the words, but that's how Bowie described it. . And so Bowie immediately just sits down and later putting his placed by Elvis. Yes. . And later describes it as absolutely humiliating and also unmissable. I love the duality of moments like that. Here I am realizing the dream. Oh God, there's much more to go.

And so I want to be inside the eyes and the feeling of the strut up. Yeah. And then I wanna be on inside the eyes. I don't think I want to feel the let down, but the fact that they can exist so close to each other, and I think what the brilliance of that moment is, goes exactly to the ever-changing part of David Bowie that you like.

There is no arrival. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That it's the, the second you think you're there. Yeah. You've got to look to how to let go of this moment and how to keep going. And that occurred to David Bowie in a matter of seconds as he walked into Madison Square Garden while Hound dog was being played live. .

[00:32:09] Michael: I mean, what's so funny is like, you know, I was feeling perfectly confident in my flaming red mullet and androgynous spaceman outfit until Elvis gave me that look.

And now I'm humiliated. Yes. You know, like, it's, it's crazy where we're looking for validation and where we're getting it from because he's at that point getting it from the audience, but he's not getting it from

[00:32:29] Amit: Elvis. And that's the only one that mattered at

[00:32:31] Michael: that point. Yeah. , that's really good. Uh, all right, good.

let's pause for a word from our sponsor.

[00:32:41] Amit: Michael, do you know one of the ways in which I'm cool? ,

[00:32:47] Michael: what did you have in mind?

[00:32:48] Amit: I have vinyl

[00:32:48] Michael: records. Oh, that is cool. Vinyl records are a lot of fun. I love studying the old covers and I love that the music is actually on the record. Right? It's like been

[00:32:57] Amit: engraved.

Totally. And you will never guess where I buy my vinyl records from.

[00:33:02] Michael: I would assume that you are going to

[00:33:05] Amit: garage sales. That is incorrect. I exclusively get my vinyl records at Half Price Books. I'm sorry, you said

[00:33:11] Michael: Half Price Books? That is correct. You're talking

[00:33:13] Amit: about vinyl records? Yes. Half Price Books is more than books, board games, vinyl records, CDs, movies, puzzles, and even brand new

[00:33:22] Michael: bestsellers.

My goodness. It's so much more than just books. Yes, but when it comes to books, I do know that Half Price Books is The Nation's largest new and used bookseller with 120 stores in 19 states, and Half Price Books is also online. At H pb.com.

Category four, love and marriage. How many marriages? Also, how many kids? And is there anything public about these relationships? I'll lay it out real quick. , this is just gonna take up the rest of the show as well. It could. There's two wives, Angie Barrett. Uh, 1970 to 1980. Bowie was 23. They divorced in 1980.

When he was 33. His. Zoe later changed his name to his birth name Duncan, uh, and took his, as you said, father's last name, Duncan Jones, director of Moon, which like, have you seen that movie? That movie's awesome. I haven't. Oh, it's really worth a watch. Yeah, it's really cool. I actually listened to, uh, an interview with Duncan Jones on W T F, and he and his mother are totally estranged.

She's like, haven't talked to her. I'm not gonna talk to her again. We'll get back to that. And then second wife, which pretty well known Iman, they marry in 1992. David was roughly 45, and they're married until his death age, 69. So 24 years. By all accounts, an incredible marriage. I mean, we'll get more into it.

the, I don't know if you saw the story of their wedding. They said they were gonna do it on some island, then they secretly did it in Florence. They were just trying to throw the media off. There's only 70 people at his wedding. There's a quote from Eric Idle who said, yeah, I was sitting there and I saw.

Bono, Yoko Ono and Brian Eno standing together in this like small, intimate crowd. Duncan, David's son was the best man, the one daughter Lexi, who's now a model. And last thing I wanted to say, before you and I talk about this, there was an interview with Iman where she talked about David Bowie. That is the whole reason I want her to do this episode.

Every time she speaks about him, I get emotional.

[00:35:22] Amit: How often

[00:35:23] Michael: do you think of him now? Every day and every minute. I have a necklace that I'm wearing under here that has his name on it. Uh, designer who was a friend of ours called Heady Silly Man, uh, sent to me, uh, a vest and I've worn it since that first week after David passed away.

People say your late husband. I said, don't call my husband late . He's not my late husband, he's my husband. He'll always be, he'll always be. In fact, I had a friend like, have you listened to her talk about him? You should do that and you should. You guys should do Billy on

[00:35:54] Amit: the show. But what you're talking about is age 45 and onward.

Correct. David Bowie, the age 18 to say 40 something is quite a story. The sex life, the open marriage. Um, yeah. , I mean everything. It's the, the, yeah. So much of this man's life revolved around just sexual exploration. Yes. Removing all intimacy from it. I think that's

[00:36:16] Michael: right. One of the biographies I read that authors fortunately has passed away, mark Spitz, he said, uh, history is littered with failed open marriages, including those of Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, Simone DeBoer, and Jean Paul sart.

Open marriages may be a genuinely progressive notion, but it's clearly easier in theory then in practice. I could not read this line without thinking of Tobias Fuke and arrest the development as a therapist. I have advised a number of couples to explore an open

[00:36:50] Amit: relationship where, where the couple remains emotionally.

Committed but free to

[00:36:55] Michael: explore extramarital encounters.

[00:36:58] Amit: Well, did it work for those

[00:36:58] Michael: people? ? No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but ,

[00:37:06] Amit: but it might work for us. That's how

[00:37:09] Michael: I felt about reading. Uh, David and Angie's marriage, this is weird and I'm sure you can counter it, the same thing.

He was pretty open, like he said to her before they got married. You know, I don't love you. Does that mean you have to separate yourself quite a lot from say, falling in love and getting very involved with a person? You as an artist would have to give up quite a lot of your time to them. Yes, and I can't do that.

That's what I was wondering. No, whether you do you do that? No, love can't get quite in my way because it, I. , um, I shelter myself from it incredibly. I think that there was a lot of sex and a lot of pardoning and I think that she, by all accounts, played an enormous role in sort of managing David Bowie's career in the early years.

Correct. It also sounds like it became a really destructive marriage, uh, as the drug

[00:37:58] Amit: worse rife with jealousy too. They're doing this open marriage and like the openness of all marriages. Um, he made a joke

[00:38:05] Michael: that they competed for the same guy, which is how

[00:38:07] Amit: they met. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they were both openly bisexual and they're both extremely promiscuous and extremely jealous of each

[00:38:15] Michael: other.

No, and I mean, I think you can make the case and people will make the case that for a period of time, David Bowie was a sex addict. Yeah.

[00:38:21] Amit: So, so I wanna, I wanna back up a little bit. So, at the, the rise of David Bowie in his early twenties, he made a, a public statement saying, I do not believe in love in its possessive form.

Yeah, right. He dates a lot. He sleeps around a lot. He is the ultimate sixties, seventies, sort of type of rockstar of every stereotype you wanna believe about the sex, drugs, and rock and roll. He also gives an interview saying that I am gay. Right. This was sometime in the early seventies. He declared himself gay before Elton John.

Did he, he himself gay before anybody did. Yeah. And gay at this point, like bisexual wasn't even that common of a term. Right. So by saying, I'm gay, all you're saying is that I like men. Yeah. He's not saying that I exclusively like men. He's just saying that I like men. Yeah. And so for decades he had affairs.

One night stands orgies with men and women. He liked young, he liked old. He certainly had a thing for black people. Yeah. Both men and women. I mean, there's just these, it does sound crazy. Life. It does sound like

[00:39:19] Michael: it's, he was largely drawn to women, like largely heterosexual, but wouldn't turn down homosexual Encount.

He was comfortable with it, which I'm sort of amazed by it. How can you not be amazed by

[00:39:31] Amit: it? That's a question that's speculative. Yeah. There's a lot of accounts of people, men saying that they were pursued by David Bowie. It's not that he necessarily is approached and says Yes, it's unknown. Yeah. And I don't think he was ever clear about that because he made this big pivot in his life.

[00:39:44] Michael: Well, I think after he bores the rocket ship of fame in the early seventies, people are throwing themselves at him, men and women, and he's saying yes

[00:39:51] Amit: to a lot of that. And he was shameless too, about using it to advance his career. Yes. With record executives and producers and TV execs and whatnot. But in

[00:39:59] Michael: particular, his first manager was a gay man.

And whether or not they had an affair or not, it was clear. He kind of played upon that man's attraction to David Bowie in order to advance his.

[00:40:10] Amit: Yes. Yeah. You know, like I said, with him and Angie, it was, it seems like it was horribly toxic. Uh, well, when we say toxic, hang

[00:40:17] Michael: on. I mean, this is the summer of love.

You know, this, this was a different time. I mean, I think that they were trying to be free artists. I think the relationship between the two of them turned toxic, if that's what you're saying. But I'm

[00:40:29] Amit: not sure. Yes. Turn turned. I'm not saying the falling in love was toxic. Yeah. Or,

[00:40:32] Michael: or even the promiscuity is necessarily toxic.

But

[00:40:35] Amit: I think performing this act of marriage and having no commitment behind it and bringing a child into the world and bringing a child. Into it. And then he'd put jealousy on top of jealousy cuz he would still date and partially commit to girlfriends while, or boyfriends while he was in marriage who would then get jealous of somebody who's not even their spouse.

I mean, the other

[00:40:54] Michael: thing that has to be brought up here is his cocaine use that takes off around the time Ziggy Stardust takes off. So Seth's 72 and he is like, got a quote about this later. Arguably did more cocaine than anybody else in the 1970s. Like he is an addict. A through and through. Yes. I mean, I Did you watch any of that interview with Dick Cavt or He is like I did, yes.

Sniffing the whole time. I mean, he's tweaking, man. It's wonder he survived that ducked He would say as much too. Yeah. The

[00:41:20] Amit: entire thing was fueled with cocaine and sex. Yeah. And he was somehow married through it all. All

[00:41:26] Michael: right, so that's the relationship. What are we talking about? Desirability? . You wanna

[00:41:31] Amit: talk about the soulmate that he may have found in Ahman and the bliss of that marriage for the last 24 years of his life, which is a lot.

We've previewed what came before

[00:41:39] Michael: that, I think until Ahman, he had a misguided idea of what love. Yes, I think he would probably say as much. I don't think he found an equal or a soulmate prior to her. And I think he lived most of his life from what I could see in extreme gratitude that he did find that person.

You know, did he have to go through all of this with Angie and with groupies and cocaine use and the party heydays of the, of the sixties and seventies to get there? I don't know, but I do think, like I love that he does find what is, to me unmistakable in terms of like soulmate stuff with Iman. I think the

[00:42:18] Amit: David Bowie prior to age, he got married at 45.

I think he met Iman at 43 or 44. Yeah. Before that. Very much a sex addict sees his path to joy in variety, different genders, different races, different ages, different levels of fame. Just basically curing the on we. Yeah. And that's what he thought and that's what he latched onto. And I think the cocaine.

Really fueled that. What he found in the lesson that he came to learn, it took several decades till age of 45, was that the true love and the the intimacy feels better, more fulfilling and is in fact more joyous or dopamine producing, or whatever you want to call. Then that. So he had to go through that journey perhaps to get there.

I think that's missing an important piece.

[00:43:07] Michael: Okay. The relationship with the audience. I think that there is also a desire to feel validation and fulfillment through the anonymous crowd, through the masses, through the performances. And I think it's fucking confusing because he becomes famous at 25 and stays super duper unbelievably famous for basically the

[00:43:24] Amit: rest of his life.

So what's your point as that, as that relates to love?

[00:43:27] Michael: I think it just confuses the question. I think if what love and intimacy are all about is how am I seen and am I being seen in a way that is aspirational and is forward gazing and is, uh, true to me and is authentic and am I reciprocating that? It's one thing to be in that kind of relationship with single another individual, but if you add the experience of also.

The mass is on there. It confuses how you evaluate the what is important in any relationship. Question.

[00:43:57] Amit: Do you know that feeling

[00:43:57] Michael: you get in a car when someone's accelerating very, very fast and you are not driving, and you get that thing in your chest when you're being forced backwards and you think, ooh, and you're not sure whether you like it or not, is that kind of feeling, that's what success was like?

The, the, the first thrust of being, of being con totally unknown to being what seemed to be very quickly known. It was very frightening for me. And coping with it was something that I, I tried to do and that's what happened. That was me coping.

[00:44:28] Amit: You are not

[00:44:29] Michael: ready for love until you have some idea, like really clear idea of who you are.

And I think David Bowie didn't have for some pretty obvious reasons, a really clear idea of who he was until he was ready for it. I believe that she arrived at the right moment.

[00:44:48] Amit: And it takes some people a lot longer to get to who they are. And a lot of people don't know. A lot of people make that mistake, and that's what ends up really in a lot of failed marriages, more than people think that it's, oh, we just didn't get along.

It's, you don't really know yourself, and some people have to go through a lot more journeys and whatever. To get there. I think if you're built like David Bowie and need the validation and you love the attention as much as he got it. Cause aside from being a rockstar, he was also quite a beautiful man.

Like, you know, that's why everyone was throwing him at him and he couldn't resist that. Yeah. Right. Those insecurities inside of him could not resist that. Yeah. And so, yes, he didn't know who he was and the more famous he got and the more opportunities he got, the less he knew who he was. That's right. And so perhaps that was what he had to go through.

That's my point. So the question I wanted to get at, so knowing this very colorful history Yeah. That David Bowie had, how do you look at somebody like David Bowie who had hundreds of sexual partners, both men and women, and you are a man. How does a partner look at it? And that's what I don't know, it confuses me.

Right. Because we self-imposed limits cuz the partner

[00:45:57] Michael: think there's another way of looking at this where she says, you have been searching everywhere on earth for me. And

[00:46:05] Amit: you found me. What reminds you of

[00:46:08] Michael: him? Literally everything. Literally, because I have his music, I have his pictures, you know, and then my daughter Lexis.

Yeah. Do you still have something you're, you, you're wanting your wishing for? Yeah. If, if there is an afterlife, I'd like to see my husband again. That's the one I won't, and don't make me cry. .

[00:46:34] Amit: Yeah. Is there more to talk about here? Uh,

[00:46:38] Michael: I mean the answer is yes, but that's true with every category. , I think

[00:46:41] Amit: we need to move on.

Yes. No, I'm, I'm, I'm, okay. Let's, okay.

[00:46:45] Michael: Category five. Net worth. I saw 230 million. Yeah, that's what

[00:46:50] Amit: I saw. ,

[00:46:52] Michael: I don't have a lot to say about this. Was it what you

[00:46:54] Amit: expected

[00:46:54] Michael: or higher level? Uh, it was, uh, almost exactly what I expected, given his stature. I felt really good about this number and I didn't have a reaction to it.

But he also talks about not at least like I'm not a car guy, I'm not a materialistic guy. Most of the money I make goes back into creative endeavors. Yeah. And it's just, you know, winds up being a good investment and a lot of philanthropy. And, and this was a George Michael thing? Anonymous philanthropy?

Yes. Yeah. Okay. Category six, Simpson Saturday Night Live or Hall of Fame. This category is a measure of how famous a person is. We include both guest appearances on S N L or the Simpsons, as well as impersonations. I'm gonna go through this a little bit fast cuz it's actually only so interesting. Okay.

There are, I found three s n l appearances. There's a very famous one in 1979, this sort of German impressionist thing where he does Man Who Sold The World, the song that he had written back in 19, like 69 or 70 that was on the Space Oddity album. But it's like a, it's like one of the, some people describe it as one of the weirdest and best, you know, SNL performances of all time.

There was a 1990 appearance, this is around the time that he joined a band called 10 Machine, and then this one, I actually remember in the moment, the 19 99, 20 fifth anniversary. Did you see that? I did. I don't remember his, his rolling, he, he's there with, uh, Jerry Seinfeld introducing guests. It's actually a really feeling.

Jerry Seinfeld's says to, why are we out here together? Well, I'm hosting the show next week and you're the musical guest. They like to have a couple of heavy weights to open the season. Oh yeah, baby. Yeah. It's gonna be a big, big show. Yep. Are you gonna sing, uh, changes

Yeah. Are you gonna do the, uh, Lost sock bit . Yeah. See you next week. Yeah, yeah. See you then. So those are the appearances as a musical guest, uh, he was parod a lot. I saw Bill Hader skit. Uh, will Ferrell at play him in alongside John C. Riley with the little drummer boy parody? Yes. The whole Bing Crosby thing.

I think there's probably more. I didn't keep looking. The Simpsons he never voiced himself, which I was a little disappointed by. Yeah. I was kinda hoping he had. But there was at least five explicit rep references to David Bowie on episodes throughout the years. He does have a Hollywood star. He got it in 1997.

It was a, a site of a lot of adoration when he died. I don't know if you saw this, he was on Arsenio Hall in

[00:49:25] Amit: 1993. That's right. The.

[00:49:27] Michael: Yeah. And this is ac it is actually sort of a famous appearance because he amounts the death of Mick Ronson who played the guitar on, uh, on the early seventies stuff on, on Ziggy, and, and went to the Elvis

[00:49:36] Amit: show with him, and that's right.

[00:49:37] Michael: That's right. So that's it. And then there's two additional cameos we have to mention. The first is the, the SpongeBob Squarepants cameo. Yes. This is after he has his second child and she's really into budge. Bob, gentleman,

[00:49:52] Amit: what is art? Oh, oh, I know.

[00:49:55] Michael: Art is what happens when you learn to dream. Go ahead.

Dream Little.

And then my favorite, the extras episode with Ricky Dravet. Did you watch this? What are you doing? Uh, I'm in a sitcom. It's called When the Whistle Blows. You seen it? I haven't known. Is it any. Nice shit. Oh, just riffraff everywhere. I, I think I've sold out, to be honest. But yeah, it's difficult, isn't it?

Wouldn't it to keep the integrity when you're going for that first little bad man who sold his soul. The little chubby, little loser, national joke. Pathetic little fat man. No one's bloody laughing. The clown that no one laughs at. They all just wish he died.

[00:50:48] Amit: This is fascinating. Turn down Knighthood. Oh.

Was offered to be Sir David Bowie and said no. Wow. Yeah. I wondered why. Um, he just said there's no point. That's what he said. God. Okay. Uh, other people that have done that, very, very few. Stephen Hawking also did it. No shit. Uh, the writer Als Huxley.

[00:51:07] Michael: Eldest Huxley Yes. Of Brady New

[00:51:09] Amit: World Fame. Yeah. So very few people do do that.

Like, you look up these lists of who has turned it down and it's David Bowie's at the top of every single one of these lists. Mm-hmm. Uh, second piece of fame. Yeah. Do you remember Dirty Rotten Scoundrels? Oh yeah. Movie with Steve's Martin Michael. Love that movie. We were moments away from that being David Bowie and Mc Chatter.

No. Yeah. So they were apparently the director's preference, but they had deliberated and took a while to decide they're gonna maybe come around to Bowie and Jagger. But Bowie and Jagger being, they are moved on to different things and they ended up being Steve Martin and

[00:51:43] Michael: Michael King. . I think we're better off for it, but I love that.

I think so. I love that. That's good stuff. Well, okay, so I don't think there's a whole lot. I

[00:51:51] Amit: I I can, we can let off the show with saying this is indisputably the breath times death.

[00:51:56] Michael: Super duper fucking famous category seven over under, in this category, we look at the life expectancy for the year they were born to see if they beat the house odds.

And as a measure of grace, life expectancy for a British male. This was a little hard. There's not like one website that has all these, most of the stats started in 1950. I did find one that said 1945 and 1955 and 1945. It's 64.1 1955 at 67.66. He died at 69. So either way he is over. But it felt pretty premature.

Yes. And maybe it was just because he was secretive about his cancer. Yeah. He put out this album, black Story album comes out two days later he dies. Yeah.

[00:52:40] Amit: So he is over, but tragically over.

[00:52:42] Michael: Definitely tragic. Definitely shocking. Unmistakably, graceful. He used to, had a very handsome man throughout his life.

I mean, in, into his mid and late sixties. He looked great. Yep.

[00:52:53] Amit: Um, looked much better actually in like, in his fifties than he did

[00:52:56] Michael: in forties. Yeah. He looked a little more still dark. Oh, well, yeah. I mean, he looks like a wife in, you know, in the, in the mid seventies when he is 90 pounds and coked out of his mind and translucent.

Yes, I agree. , he looked, he looks better with a little bit of age. I don't know what, what to say, what to say. Well, what about the album Black Star?

[00:53:15] Amit: This is the one that he started to record after he knew he was dying.

[00:53:18] Michael: Yes. The last one seems like it was put together with knowledge that this is the last work of a dying man.

Yes. Yeah.

[00:53:26] Amit: Is that Grace Flat?

[00:53:29] Michael: Yeah, obviously. Right? Yeah. I think it's kind of brilliant. I do too. It's haunting, knowing that he's died.

[00:53:39] Amit: Look up here. I'm

[00:53:41] Michael: in heaven.

I've got scars that can't be seen.

Even though this feels like a tragic death given the hard living lifestyle, I think he was lucky to make it this long. Yes. I think incredibly graceful. I think it's hard not to look at this life and say a pretty complete

[00:54:10] Amit: life. Yeah. Counter lucky stars. Yeah. That

[00:54:13] Michael: you made it. Yeah. Aw. I think he did. I think that's why he kept going into space.

Yes. Shall we pause? Yeah. All right. Larry Bird alive. The rules are simple. Dead are alive. Correct? He's 66 years old. Shell Silverstein alive. I'm afraid the sidewalk has ended. No. Uh, and they did in 1999. . Oh, shoot. Really? That long ago. Jonathan Goldsmith, who's that played? The do he's most interesting man in the world.

Oh, dead. He's still with us at 84. Oh wow. I know. Good for him. Test your knowledge dead or live app.com. First of the inner life categories, man in the mirror. What did they think about their own reflection? I have never been more excited to talk about this category than David Bowie.

[00:55:10] Amit: Yes. I'm just gonna read my notes if I may.

Yeah. And then we can talk about, and let, let's just explain the category. This is not about physical appearance, this is about self-perception. That's correct.

[00:55:19] Michael: I don't think I've ever struggled so much. The I thing I know wasn't insecurity at first. He talked about that, that he had this one permanently dilated eye that his best friend, you know, in a boxing match at age 14 cuz he was arguing about a girl.

No, not arguing. He stole the girl. Yeah, yeah. actually, he like set up a date and he's like, she's not gonna make it and he wouldn't met her. Yeah. This, to go back to my notes, he does ultimately gain confidence through fluidity, I think. And he's obviously a very attractive man. I think he looks in the mirror most days and either says, I guess that's me today, but only for today.

or he looks in the mirror and says, there's my reflection. But you and I both know that's not me. So ultimately I think, yes, he does like his reflection, but only because he's willing to take it with a grain of salt. This is the whole transient thing, right? He is outwardly changing as much as he's inwardly changing.

So I think he's good with it because he understands the limitations of a reflection. But God, I had to think about this one.

[00:56:22] Amit: What did you have here? Yeah, I think we have different interpretations of the same thing. Interesting. So what I see is a man that was. Consistently on the brink of insanity, possibly for the first 40 to 50 years of his life.

Yeah. Schizophrenia ran in his family deeply. Yeah. Killed many of his aunts. Yes. Via suicide. They were, they were committed. And back then,

[00:56:43] Michael: and his older brother, Terry,

[00:56:44] Amit: that's the big one. Yeah. His older half-brother Terry, who was very much a best friend, mentor as much of an older brother can be,

[00:56:52] Michael: and as much as any biography tries to pinpoint, when did David Bowie become this creative force?

They come back to Terry as the, you know, person who turned him onto Coltrane and to On the road, Jack Kerouac. And he like emulated him and was trying to catch up with Terry his whole life. But then Terry does, he eventually get institutionalized and eventually kills himself. So

[00:57:12] Amit: he has schizophrenia running in the family.

He has, one of his characters was named Aladdin Saint. Yeah. Which a. Insane.

[00:57:20] Michael: Oh yes. I didn't put that together either. Jesus, that's very, very clever. That's

[00:57:24] Amit: that's a little clear. Yeah. That's so always on the brink of insanity. Always changing his look. You know, infinitely changing per the New York Times validation.

Needs it. Needs it. Needs it.

[00:57:36] Michael: Yeah. He's got, this man has really trying to fill a hole inside.

[00:57:39] Amit: Yeah. So in the late seventies when he makes young Americans. Yeah, right. There are stories about that. He had different occasions that John Lennon came over, I think once Paul McCartney came over once maybe, and Bob Dylan and he, he played it for him and they're all like, to turn it off, put on something else.

Yeah. And he was just like so despondent and hurt. He needed validation consistently. So I think he looks in the mirror glances once and says, let's go change. The flip side of this virtuous, maybe that that's impermanence. Maybe that whatever I see now doesn't really matter because it's just what I see now and whatever I change to be is what I'm gonna see then.

Yeah. But I don't think he could hold that gaze until well into the second half of his life. Yeah. And so I do not think he liked his reflection. Reflection in the mirror. I think it benefited his career. Yeah. Tremendously. I think physically he was attractive and beautiful throughout this whole thing, even when you called him translucent.

Yeah. But as far as acceptance, I'm going no way. The

[00:58:37] Michael: limitation of this category is binary and that we are summarizing a life, and that's impossible because I am certainly biasing this towards the. Later half. Cuz I, I don't disagree with anything you've said

[00:58:49] Amit: there. Listen Michael, the value is making the binary decision and then backing out into the reason.

Yeah. Cause that's where you get into the continuum. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. So we can forever debate Yeah. In going back and forth. But what is the strongest summation you have? There is value in making that. Yeah. And backing that out. I

[00:59:04] Michael: also suspect that there is initially a fascination with the mirror for David Bowie.

[00:59:09] Amit: Oh. Even quoted that like nine year old David Bowie. I love the Mirror. Yeah. Is what

[00:59:14] Michael: he was saying. Right. As opposed to, I don't know, Yogi Barra who I think we both were like, hey, probably didn't give a shit. I do think that there is a inquiry happening there that is as fascinating as anybody we've had on the show.

Yep. Okay. Next category, outgoing message, like Man in the Mirror. We wanna know how they felt about their own voice when they heard it on an answering machine or an outgoing voicemail. Also, would they have used the default setting and recorded it themselves? I'll let you go first.

[00:59:41] Amit: Sound of the own voice.

I mean, with a singer, this is always seems like it's a gi and I think it is with David Billy cuz it's a beautiful voice both in singing and in speaking. So I think it's an absolute yes. A more he's also, he's

[00:59:53] Michael: also got a gentlemanly quality, you know? Yes. Like I, I think, I really think Annie's an engaged speaker, like his interviews are great.

[01:00:00] Amit: Absolutely. Except for the 1974 Dick Cavitt. Well,

[01:00:03] Michael: and his deranged interviews are interesting, you know? Yeah. They're

[01:00:06] Amit: wonderful. Yeah. Um, the, the question is the vanity part. Yeah. Right. Is he too important to put it on there himself? Mm. Yeah. I think, yes. I don't think he would. I don't think he's gonna put it on there.

[01:00:18] Michael: I disagree. Really? Yeah. I think he would've recorded his own voicemail, in part because I do think he cares about his fans and I think he cares about the people around him. And I think that they would not just want, you know, the default setting. I think there's a generosity till you're saying he's too

[01:00:36] Amit: vain for it.

Yeah. In 2002 he gave an interview to Terry Gross. Yeah. On Fresh Air, and he, and he says, I should, I should have, I should have Sunset Ziggy Stardust a year or two before I did. I should have just put somebody else on there in a wig. Yeah. And had him play. Ziggy and I went and did my own thing. That's part of where I'm seeing this voicemail.

I see your

[01:00:53] Michael: point. He only played Ziggy for 18 months. I mean, it was actually a really short stent when it's all said and done. All right. Next category. Yep. Category 10 regrets. Public or private. What we really want to know is what, if anything, kept this person awake at night for public? I just simply wrote 1984 to 1988.

I think he regrets all four of those years.

[01:01:14] Amit: the his

[01:01:14] Michael: moneymaking pop pop years. Yeah. And he describes them as the Phil Collins years. But it, it's commonly accepted that you, you lost your artistic thread in the eighties, and I've seen you describe it as your Phil Collins period. What happened there? Poor off Phil, uh,

Oh, I wrote two albums where I felt I really pander to an audience what I believe they wanted, and I think they were artistically disastrous because of that. Uh, Tony Dere, his manager hurt in the early seventies, swindled him essentially. And lemme lemme

[01:01:42] Amit: just summarize why he regretted the, the Tony Dere thing and how he got screwed.

Yeah. So Tony Dere was a lawyer or claimed to be a lawyer. Yeah. And he basically told Bowie that I'm creating this management company and you get half of everything. Right. And then for, for five plus years, Bowie went and lived the most lavish lifestyle possible, as did Tony DeFreeze. Yeah. So Bowie's cut was half after all of those expenses.

Right. And his understanding without checking the contract was. Expenses first come out and then we split everything in

[01:02:12] Michael: half and they stayed mad at each other for the rest of their lives. By the way, the song Fame, did you know that was co-written with John Lennon? I did. I mean, I learned in the research.

I didn't know prior. I didn't know that. But it, that song was written around the time that David Bowie discovers that he has no money cuz he's been fucked over by his manager. And then John Lennon, in addition to saying Let's write a song together also is like, here's what you have to do to get out of this deal.

You've gotta get power. Like John Lennon like totally takes his older brother role in his life. Yeah. And coaches him. Yeah. The other thing that is sort of noteworthy about this under Pressure with Queen was, uh, 1980. And part of the reason David Bowie wanted to do it and it said, do not include my name in the liner notes, as he didn't want Tony to get any of that money.

So he just collaborated with Queen because he wanted to stay active as a musician, as a songwriter, like pops into studio in Switzerland to say hi to them. Bangs out that song in one day. That's one. One of the more memorable Bowie songs. Okay. And then I think the third very big one is his son Duncan's Formative Years.

This is also from the book, although there's no way to measure this in any forensic sense. It's possible that David Bowie did more cocaine than anyone else in popular culture. The Eagles, Elton John, the Stones, Rick James, Oliver Stone, Hollywood Henderson, or Julie, your cruise director. . I don't totally get that last bit, but I think Bowie like he, he, when he sobers up, he's like, you cannot be in relationship and have this kind of addiction.

The late seventies is also, you know, in some ways is most interesting phase. He's, this is the Berle End trilogy. He manages to, to get custody of Duncan. And it sounds like they spent a lot of time together in Switzerland, you know, for a period of time as he's trying to rebuild his wealth. I guess reading between the lines, like I, I'm sure with the.

Amount of fame and just the lifestyle that there was only so much engagement. But it does sound like he was actually a more involved father after a period of time than you would've thought. And that absolutely seems the case with a second child. Yes. I mean, he is like, you know, he was immediately a father.

Yeah. And changing poopy diapers it sounds like. I mean, I'm excited about it. And even saying I am getting fulfillment and, and love at home, which is what allows me to be a creative out in the world and not really care how, how some of my music is perceived or received.

[01:04:25] Amit: Yeah. Lucky for him that Duncan Zoe doesn't speak ill of him and that they had amended relationship and a very good Yes.

Relationship ultimately, cuz that could have gone way, way, way south and you would've

[01:04:35] Michael: expected it to, you know, just to say one more thing about the Coke. I mean, he was so coed out literally that. Had a witch on call. He actually got an exorcist to come to his

[01:04:44] Amit: house because he was coed up and thought that he was inhabited by the

[01:04:47] Michael: devil.

And he thought that they, that there were women who were trying to get him to impregnate and the devil's gonna come up. He got up really affected by Rosemary's baby. I mean, this is the whole thing about fascism. It, you know, he's not a fascist and he later totally backs away from these comments, but he was out of his mind in the mid seventies.

Yeah. It's very hard to have relationships when you're doing drugs and, uh, and drinking. I f for me personally anyway. And, uh, you become closed off, unreceptive, insensitive, all the dreadful things that you've heard every other pop singer ever say. And uh, I was very lucky that I found my way out of that.

Mm-hmm. , my relationships with my friends, my family, everybody around me are so good and have been for so many years now. I wouldn't do anything. To destroy that.

[01:05:34] Amit: Again, the other public regret, I think you just actually hinted at was the fascist comments, but there was one specific time that he was captured wearing all black, waving to the crowds, but it looked very, very much like he was giving sort of a Nazi salute and it was within Kyle Hitler.

Yeah. It was within the same period that he made sort of apathetic remarks towards Hitler and the Nazis and saying something like a good idea about execution or something to that effect. Yes,

[01:06:00] Michael: I did do a deep dive on that photograph and that's pretty debunked. That looks like a freak moment where his hand happened to be in the air and people made a lot out of this quote unquote Nazi salute.

He never did that anywhere else. And he's said over and over again that's not what

[01:06:14] Amit: that was. But the fact that he had the pro fascist Cummins before that. Correct. So just don't mix cocaine and pro fascism at all. I agree. , you hear that Donald Jr. One thing we're hearing

[01:06:28] Michael: uh, no comments. Um, Private. The only one I had is in the 1980s. He did downplay his earlier claim of bisexuality and said it was one of the dumbest things they ever did was coming out as gay. That was at the time that the AIDS crisis was beginning to heat up. He later was very, very active about being part of charities that were fighting, you know, the AIDS crisis, especially in Africa.

But it's weird. I think his importance as a l g BT Q icon is unmistakable for, for its very existence. But it, there's, it's not there in a lot of statements. He doesn't talk about it a whole hell of a lot. It almost feels kind of coincidental that he happened to be on the right side of these issue.

Because I think he's very clear that he's opportunistic about claiming homosexuality as an attention seeking measure when he is trying to get famous in the late sixties and early seventies. And then I think to back away from it in a way to like go more mainstream around the time of let's dance and some of the huge pop hits of the eighties.

There is a betrayal there. And I speculate that that's a private

[01:07:38] Amit: regret. So you're saying he regretted saying that he regretted it. Correct. Yeah, I agree with that because he was, he was a gay icon. And what does that do to those people? Yes, this is what I had for private regrets is that he let a lot of people astray.

All of these lovers that he took on and, and claimed that they were now his girlfriend or they were now his boyfriend and that, yeah. But he would continue to cheat on them. And there was a lot of broken hearts and there was a lot of tears. He was a pretty heartless bastard. Yeah. I think through that decade.

And he, I think he is

[01:08:04] Michael: selfish. Selfish leads to heartless. Yeah. And maybe those are the same

[01:08:07] Amit: thing, aside from an romance. He used people, I mean, I think two people that I saw that said this were David Glen, who was a guy from Deep Purple. Yeah. Yeah. Said David Bow just, you know, took him for what he needed and then threw him away.

Yeah. And I think the same can be said for Mick Ronson. This is what they said in the BBC

[01:08:23] Michael: documentary. Yeah. I think there are some truths to that. I mean, I think they did reconcile before Mick Ronson's death and he did play on his last album. I, I do think that the first half of his life. Has the classic signs of selfishness run wild.

An ego run wild attention seeking at all costs with a tremendous amount of talent behind it, which is why he is able to make so many great hits. But all the behavior is pretty, I don't know, detestable. Mm-hmm. .

[01:08:49] Amit: And I guess that's a private regret, I think. Yeah, I think that's a beautiful way to sum it up.

It's just detestable behavior.

[01:08:54] Michael: Yeah. Category 11, good dreams, bad dreams. Does this person have a haunted look in the eye? Something that suggests inner turmoil, inner demons, or unresolved trauma. So you alluded to this earlier, I really struggled because there is a lot of proximity to serious mental health.

And I think that he does direct that energy to creative output. Right. And I think that that's, that's what I was getting. I had a conversation with somebody the other day about Van Gogh who has like, you know, how would we describe Van Go's mental health conditions in some of his episodes today? I'm not even sure if we have a diagnosis yet.

He's one of the greatest impressionists of all time. Like there is a relationship between madness for one of a better word and great art. And I do think that Bowie is a Rio on that line. You know, I think that there's a real fear for him of going crazy the way he talks about gratitude in later years. I went good.

I said this is sort of the opposite of Diego Mena, where if I look into his eyes in the early years, those two colored eyes, that dilated pupil, I do think I see. Demons and darkness and something really scaring him. And I look at those eyes in later years and I see self-acceptance. Mm-hmm. , if I had to sum it up, I'm, God, it's so hard.

I'm gonna go Good dreams. Yeah. What do you got

[01:10:20] Amit: here? I went good. This, this may be expected. I was more confident in resounding good than I. Yeah. Well, because I think I so confidently said no for man in the mirror, and I think you hit on the outlet. I think this guy had demons on the brink of his entire life up until the nineties.

And fear. Yeah. And I don't know that he resolved it. I think he tried to snort it or he tried to sleep with it. Mm-hmm. . But he did have the outlets. Yeah. And I think he changed these personas and at least he was getting flushing some of it out. My characters came

[01:10:51] Michael: out from the need to not want to perform as myself.

I mean, I had a long time of making a character out of everything I did because I had, I really was very, very cautious and shy of my own. You kind of imbue that doppelganger with all one's own fears and, and, and, uh, feelings of inadequacy, and you put them on the doppelganger. Then one day you presume that if you kill that doppelganger, you will be free of all these things.

And of course that doesn't happen. You, I mean, when you think you've killed it off, they all are back in you and you have to really address those

[01:11:25] Amit: things. I think actually he slept well at night and he had good grams and, uh, it

[01:11:31] Michael: was resolved. His creative energy is not just in the studio and with a piano or with a guitar.

In the book I

[01:11:39] Amit: read, you know, they described who are his rivals, you know, and Mick Jagger was like a best friend of me type of thing. Yeah, Elton John was a rival at the time, but they said Andy Warhol was actually one of his biggest rivals. Yeah, because that's the type of artist that Bowie was, is that, you know, all sorts of different ways that he's reinventing and getting it out there and, and just trying to empty his mind.

And for that, I'm awarding him good

[01:12:00] Michael: dreams. Yeah, I think that's a really good answer. All right, category 12. Second to last category, cocktail coffee or cannabis. This is where we ask which one would we most want to do with our dead celebrity. This may be a question of what kind of drug sounds like the most fun to partake with this person, or another philosophy is that a particular kind of drug might allow access to a part of them.

We are most curious about. You probably know exactly where I went, don't you? What do you think I did? I think you went cannabis. Oh, I went coffee.

[01:12:27] Amit: Oh, okay. Okay, good. I'm glad because I sense genius. When I sense genius I asked for coffee. , .

[01:12:32] Michael: That's part of it, yes. Okay. But I also think he's an engaging conversationalist.

You know, people talk about how they put him at ease. God, who was it? Maybe it was Trenton Resner, Noahs Bono who said, you know, most of the time you meet your heroes and they say Never meet your heroes. It's like Bowie was the first person I met who like became bigger and better after I got to know him.

I think I would enjoy having a conversation with him about mass communication. I think his precedence around what mass media was going to be, what social media was going to be, what the relationship between. Have you seen that clip of him talking about the internet in the late nineties where he is like, this is gonna change everything, but what is it specifically about the internet?

I mean, anybody can say anything. There are always 2, 3, 4, 5 sides to every question. And, uh, that I believe has produced such a medium as the internet, which absolutely establishes and shows us that we are living in total fragmentation. I don't think we've even seen the tip of the iceberg. I think the potential of what the internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable.

I think we're actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying. It's just a tool though, isn't it? No, it's not. No, now it's an alien life form. I mean, he was way ahead of the curve and I would just love to sit down and have coffee with him and have him direct my eyes cuz I don't know exactly what I want to be paying attention to these days.

The things that he's attracted to as a fan of art are what I would most wanna pick his brand about. So coffee, what'd

[01:14:14] Amit: you do? Coffee. I mean, I, I, I just don't think the. The other substances would be any fun with him because he's just mastered them. Yeah. Too much. It's like even if he comes out as sobriety, he's just gonna, he's just gonna surpass and it's not gonna

[01:14:28] Michael: be any fun.

Yeah. It's funny, like we talked about it in the Diego Madonna episode. It's like, okay, obviously this, you know, cocaine, soccer, God, it turned against him. But there was a time when it would've been fun. I'm not sure I ever really liked, I would've never wanted to. Yeah. I don't know that they needed to partake in any David Bowie orgies.

Yes. I just had just be scared of what might what might happen in there. Yeah.

[01:14:49] Amit: Yeah. So, exactly. So I, I went coffee and what I, what I wanna know is, is his version of the narrative. Hmm. Right. So let's his own story. Yeah. So let's say, you know, you know nothing about David Bowie, but you see him from the year, you know, 1995 onwards.

Okay. Right. You see a kind of old guy and a kind of, ish guy. Yeah. Right. I wanna know how he looks back at the earlier times were they learning? Was, is there fondness, is there regret? And I'm saying they, there's obviously some of all of that. Yeah. But I wanna know his summation of it, because this is something I always wonder about, you know, that you see, you see, um, you see, you see young people, uh, anywhere, you know, below the age of 35 or 40 or 50 or or 20 or whatever, acting wild and crazy and selfish.

And they leave. A lot of people like hurt and they seem to all make peace with it later. But I wanna know how they actually look back at that time. Hmm. You know, would you do it again the same way? Was it the right thing to do? Is it, did it have to happen in order for you to find the piece that you found?

[01:15:59] Michael: Okay. I think we've arrived. VanDerBeek named Dr. James VanDerBeek, who famously said in Varsity Blues, I don't want your life. Ah, after everything we've talked about with David Bowie, the David Bowies,

[01:16:14] Amit: I think the plural of Bowie is Bowie.

[01:16:15] Michael: You know, he, when he came over it, he didn't even know how to pronounce it.

Bowie, Bowie, Bowie, . How old was, I don't even know how to pronounce it anymore. I've lost track. I always thought it was Bowie, but nobody in Scotland pronounces it like I pronounce it Boo . Oh, it does work a little bit better. Well, do you wanna be em or not?

[01:16:32] Amit: I think we have to talk through a couple of things, uh, at least myself, unless you're a little more resolute.

[01:16:37] Michael: So I think that there's a lot of things that point to, yes, I like the second half of life and I want the second half of life to be better than the first half of life. The discovery of true love alone is maybe worth it. The fulfillment that he feels that alone has me very, very one over. Not to mention just I think some incredible music.

Not all of it do I love, but I like a lot more of it than I did before getting ready for this episode. I don't think I have the same. Reticence that you have with the destruction that he left in his wake in the earlier part of his life. I like to believe in forgiveness and I like to believe in self-forgiveness.

The bigger thing is kind of the thing that hovers over all these conversations, the experience of fame. It looks especially exhausting here, and he is very clear on that. Like, I don't want anything to do with fame after he achieves it. There is a point in his life where he's all about it, where he is after it with a kind of hunger and ferocity and ambition that I think, you know, people who talk about, I don't know what it was about him, but you just knew he was gonna be famous and I think that was true because he really wanted it.

That occurs for him at age 25, and they're remaining 40 years, 44 years of his. You know, he had to deal with that very uncomfortable experience. But I also feel like he returns over and over again, almost without exception to creativity, to art. And it's sort of like, I've gotta get back to me. And he seems to be able to do that despite fame and despite the power and despite the very confusing self-perception he must have had both in front of the mirror as well as in front of the audiences.

I mean, yes, I think this is an exciting life. I think it's also the arc of it. I really, really like. And it's almost a yes despite the music, like it's almost indifferent to what the actual music is and was. I'm not saying yes because I'm a fan of Ziggy Stardust or a fan of heroes or, or any of it. I'm saying yes because this looks like a really good way to spend your time on Earth, as best you can tell in any given moment, and ultimately arrives at, I think, a very universal and powerful truth about what it means to be in love and committed in love.

He got there a little late, but it wasn't too late, and it looks like a very complete life. So yes, I want your life, David.

[01:19:21] Amit: I agree with so much of what you said, the culmination, the love is great. The life of art is great. I love the conclusion. I love how he dealt with the, uh, let's just call him demons.

The, the intersections he had the, with, uh, with everything that, that really occurred since, like you said, since the Beatles and Dylan, um, not just musically, but, but artistically and, and cinematically. Yeah. Um, not great evidence of close friendships. You know, there was the John Lennons and the Mick Jaggers, but there was the destruction, you know, there was the Thornton friendships.

I'm really holding on to that and I'm gonna come back to that. Yeah. In a second. I think he's lucky to have the relationship with his first child that he did. I think he irresponsibly got married and, and had that first child. Yeah, I agree in the power of forgiveness, but I don't think that a racist pain, it just alleviates it.

There's a line for me in there somewhere, and I can't draw where it is, but it seems like this 1970s, David Bowie crossed it in the way that he hurt people in misled people. Hmm. And I just, I, I heard it in a few voices, in a few quotes, and it's, the end does not justify the means for me entirely on this one.

I think that's where I am with this guy. And, and like you said, the, this is too much fame. He maybe had no choice but to be coed up for 10 years and claim to be exploring his sexuality when we still don't know whether that's what he was actually doing or if he was doing it for the attention or because he thought it was required of him.

Yeah. I don't like it and I don't think it's the path that I would wanna walk through to get to that level of legacy ingenious and influence that he got to. And this is just not one that I, that I'm willing to take. Today, so no. David Jones. I don't want your life. Michael, you are David Bowie in front of you.

As St. Peter the Unitarian proxy for the afterlife. You now have your opportunity to make a pitch.

[01:21:30] Michael: St. Peter. There is no question that a lot of my adolescence, early twenties, younger years were selfish, self-seeking, ego-driven. I wanted fame, I think I wanted power. I wanted to indulge in a certain level of hedonism.

But through that behavior, I was always trying to look inward. I was trying to fulfill some void inside me, and I used my body and my face and my likeness as a platform, as a canvas for experimentation. I think all of us ultimately are living lives of quiet desperation and we're alone. And I think I offered myself in a way to everybody else so that people who did not feel seen would feel seen.

I tried through art, creativity, music, performance, even miming to express what it felt like inside so that two souls could connect, so that other souls could connect and we that we, we could all realize that this is just an illusion that this is not real and that we are all. Ultimately alone and connected.

I think that's the great service I performed on Planet Earth and even a little bit beyond Earth when I could get there. So for that, I hope you'll let me in.

Famous and Gravy listeners, before you leave, I have a request. If you are interested in participating in our opening quiz where we reveal the dead celebrity, then send us an email. You can reach us at hello@famousengravy.com. Send us an email. We can find time for a recording. It's usually pretty fun and it only takes about five or 10 minutes.

We love hearing from you. So if you're in. Drop us a note. Thank you for listening to this episode. If you're enjoying our show and you don't feel like emailing us, then tell your friends about us. You can find us on Twitter. Our handle is at Famous and Gravy. We also have a newsletter, which you can sign up for on our website, famous en gravy.com.

Famous and Gravy was created by Amit Kapoor and me, Michael Osborne. This episode was produced by Jacob Weiss, original theme music by Kevin Strang. Thank you for listening. Tell your friends. See you next time.