Dream Interviews: David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave
Craig Johnson has been doing a good job of interviewing people who I’ve always wanted to see in Spike’s pages - so far he’s brought on board Pere Ubu’s David Thomas and Damo Suzuki, former Can man. He’s got a couple more up his sleeve too. I was idly thinking: who would I like to interview these days? Hunter S. Thompson has gone, sadly, so that chops it down quite a bit. But there are still definitely three distinct heroes of mine that I think wouldn’t have feet of clay in a conversation. I reckon all three would provide an enlightening and amusing couple of hours rather than being prima donnas.
Bowie, I think, besides being a consumately great interviewee - erudite, talkative, funny; wind him up and watch him go - would also be comfortable talking about stuff outside the usual parameters of an interview. Most conversations with the man who wrote The Laughing Gnome tend to wholly focus on his (admittedly fascinating) past with a cursory sop to whatever he’s doing right now. This, for people like me who own every Bowie album, isn’t that interesting. If I was to do an interview with Mr B., it would be wholly about The Future. What he thinks of it, what’s coming down the line, what he’s doing. Because, besides being a full-time Rock God, Bowie is also someone fully engaged with the world and a multi-millionaire to boot, so he’s got the time to ponder and twiddle with stuff that we’d otherwise never hear of. At least, that’s my theory. It’s all in the right questions to provoke answers that require a bit of thought - or get thoughts going.
With Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen, love their music as I do, I’d love to talk to more about books. Cave’s fascination with the Bible is well-documented, but I don’t think he gets much of a chance to talk about it during the usual press encounters. I’d love to know what modern stuff he reads if any, the size of his bookcases, what he’s suggesting to his kids etc etc. Ditto with Cohen - being steeped in the Jewish tradition of which I am almost wholly ignorant, Cohen’s poetry and prose often has other slants to it that lead me somewhere completely unfamiliar. The Favourite Game is one of my favourite novels - I wonder if Len can even remember it. Most of all though, I’d love to talk to these two because their sense of humour shines out from almost any documented exchange. Cave is sharp and self-deprecating, always a good combination, whilst Mr Cohen is charming and filthy in equal measure. I remember one interview with Q had him explaining a poetic line from his most famous song, ‘Suzanne’, which goes: “You’ve touched her perfect body with your mind”. “Yes,” mused Mr Cohen”. “I seem to remember that was because she wouldn’t let me touch her with anything else at the time…”
Henry Rollins and Andrew Eldritch would be good too. Both about books, again. But this post is too long already. It’s unlikely any of these will happen, but it’s still good to think about it.
Meanwhile, here’s spike’s list of previous interviews - nearly 60 and counting…
More on interviews:
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Other Splinters posts of interest:
- Birds On The Wire I’ve just discovered two inte…
- Hallelujah Terrific news - Leonard Cohen is goi…
- Leonard Cohen Live At Last
- Lucky Strike I idly entered some online competiti…
- 5 Musical Questions
