(audience cheering)
So, that was epic.
Yeah (Conan laughs).
The little drive we took.
That little drive was epic.
Everybody in the outside world out there,
they crush real tight to the monitor
and I pushed my way through them.
And there's this like, epic thing-
Just trying to watch this little strange journey we took.
Yeah, and thanks Max for the rebel thing.
(audience laughs)
My pleasure.
You work-
You get a royalty on that too.
Yeah, you work with Springsteen, right?
[Max] Yes.
Yeah, my drummer also, Zachary, was also with Springsteen.
Not at the same time as you.
That's right, and he did Wembley.
Wait, there was a drummer in the wings to replace Max,
if anything went wrong?
I always wonders who that guy was.
(Conan laughs)
But he just showed up.
[Conan] He was just sitting there.
He comes along hopefully every week, yeah.
You've got the coolest hair in rock and roll.
Thank you very much.
I have to say that right now.
(audience cheers)
Does he not?
Doesn't he have the-
He doesn't think so, the guy there.
What, there's one guy in there?
Yeah. No, he thinks
he can do a little better.
It's because he has just no hair.
(Conan laughs)
He's looking for his mousse right now.
First of all, congratulations.
I beg your pardon?
Yeah, yeah, congratulations.
The birthday concert, I want to talk about this,
your 50th birthday.
Yeah.
Most people get a cake. Yeah.
And a dreary party. Yeah.
You have a Madison Square Gardens Super concert.
[David] Yeah, yeah.
It's on pay-per-view.
[David] Yeah.
This is when you know you've made it,
when your birthday is a pay-per-view event.
(audience laughs)
That's the sign that you've actually accomplished something.
The Garden thing meant a lot to me, in a way,
because my first trip to America in '71,
I flew over especially to see the comeback show of Elvis
and it was on at the Garden.
So we share the same birthday, so it was-
[Conan] You and Elvis have the same birthday?
Yeah, we were drinking buddies way back.
(audience laughing)
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
I used to fly over to Memphis,
and we'd go out for the night on the Raz.
[Conan] Uh-huh.
Big Cadillac, big, big Cadillac.
Is there any truth to any of this?
No.
I was told that was true.
(Conan laughing)
I just had to ask.
I've read it.
It's such a cool image.
He sent me a telegram once.
Uh-huh, okay, I understand.
(David laughing)
Yeah, now I believe nothing.
In fact, you're not David Bowie.
Hair comes right off.
Everything you knew is not rehearsed, yeah.
I wanted to ask you, one of the things you've done
that's so amazing, when you think that
you've reached this point in your career,
you've managed to stay relevant in music.
And it's probably through
all the different transformations you've made.
Well-
The different characters that you've portrayed.
Well, a few years ago, I joined relevance anonymous.
(Conan laughing)
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
We'd just sit and share our ideas
and everybody else would network.
[Conan] Yeah.
And give us feedback and suggestions
of how we keep relevant.
Who didn't get into relevance?
I don't want to miss anybody.
I've got to stop right there.
(audience laughing)
I want this to get real mean real fast.
No, no, no.
I want to actually just take a brief walk
down memory lane.
But first of all, just to look at some of
the different characters.
Liz, put these up 'cause it's good
to refresh everybody's memory.
Of course there was the young David.
(audience cheers)
This was you early on.
Then there was Ziggy Stardust, of course.
(audience cheers)
A favorite of many.
Then there was the thin, white Duke, of course,
my personal favorite.
(audience cheers)
And then there was a period there where you were trying-
I didn't like that.
You were trying different personas.
No, no, no, no, no, don't do this to me.
No, I don't know if other people remember this.
We reviewed this once on the show,
but you were trying different personas
that I don't think quite had the commercial appeal.
Yeah.
There was the suave hunchback.
[David] Yeah.
[Conan] Do you remember this at all?
(audience laughs)
[David] Ernie Stardust.
[Conan] Yeah, there was the buck tooth wizard.
I remember he was...
(audience laughs) (David laughing)
And then this is strange, your corn on the cob period.
I found confusing.
(audience laughs)
I don't know what... (audience clapping)
Yeah, that was your favorite, the corn on the cob.
That was mine, yes, yeah, yeah, that was very tasty.
You're free to use any of these, by the way,
if you want.
Thank you very much.
I don't know if this is true-
Yeah.
But I love finding these things out-
Yeah.
That you actually, when you were just starting out
you started in a mime troupe.
Yeah, we worked in a mime troupe.
There were several mime troupes in Britain
and it turned into a kind of a war
between mime troupes,
the war, the mime wars of 1968.
(Conan laughing)
You remember those Paris things,
the Paris riots?
Yes.
That wasn't actually a student socialist thing.
It was actually, it was the mime wars of Paris.
(Conan laughing)
And it was all these the mimes that were after
Jean Genalt, so that they could do the first version
of the maids.
[Conan] Uh-huh, uh-huh.
So, you're going to let me go with this?
(audience laughs) Yeah.
I'm gonna let you go and go.
Oh, so they run around with each other
with their priaprics.
[Conan] Uh-huh, oh wait, slow down.
Throttling each other in silence.
Now, were you actually in a mime troupe?
Did you do the thing in the box?
You never get the thing in the box.
I did the thing in the box.
Oh, get out of here.
[Woman] Do it!
We're gonna ask you to leave now.
(audience laughs)
You don't want me to do the thing in the box?
Do the thing in the box.
Yeah! Good, no.
Yes.
I've forgotten it.
You forgot it? Yeah.
Okay, hey, that was pretty good.
Thanks.
But you have to make this face.
Oh, oh.
That thing is- No I don't.
Yes.
(David laughs)
Yes, you legally do, or you're in a lot of trouble.
You did.
(David laughing)
There was a piece on the pay-per-view show that I-
Yeah.
It was quite visually interesting,
the scary monsters thing this was with-
Yeah. What was it?
Is that puppets?
There's media artist in America
that I like very much called Tony Oursler.
It's interesting that in the sixties,
all the painters and all the artists were really well-known,
like Andy Warhol.
And I guess in the eighties, it was Jeff Koons
and Julian Schnabel, but right now it's almost impossible
to think of a current artist
who's a household name in quite the same way.
So that's just an aside really kind of.
We had a clip here.
Do you want to explain, what this-
Yeah.
Do you want to show this clip here?
Yeah.
Liz, I don't know if this needs setting up,
but it's visually-
We'll just look at it.
Okay, look at it.
(intense music)
(audience cheers) That's disturbing.
That was another persona.
That's gonna be your next persona, is that what you said?
A head getting stepped on.
Yeah, we're just gonna get one of Tony's models
to actually do the vocals and I'll be underneath
on the floor.
[Conan] And the whole thing will work out.
Yeah.
I wanted to ask you, there was something
that they were playing here in America on MTV
round the clock for awhile.
And it was, in a sense, I've always wondered about
you singing Christmas songs with Bing Crosby.
Yeah.
And this is something that I guess you probably did
in '76, sometime around then.
Yeah. What was that like?
'Cause it's such a strange thing to look at.
You're almost polar opposites in some way,
and there you are together singing these Christmas songs.
Do you remember doing this and what it was like?
(audience laughs)
I remember doing it.
The communication factor was very strange.
I had more communication, in a way,
with Tony Oursler's dummies,
but it was that he didn't know who I was,
he couldn't remember my name,
and he just sat on the stool the whole day.
And I would, I'd be-
How were you brought in to him?
So it wasn't him saying,
"I love this whole Ziggy Stardust thing.
"I want to meet this guy."
He said that he just loved the heroes period.
Yeah.
(Conan laughing)
It was very influential on Bing.
He was a very big... he tried for months
to get Eno to work with him on his next-
(Conan laughing)
On this next album.
I would love to find those recordings.