Glastonbury 2000 diary – part two

In May and June 2000, ahead of his appearance at that year’s Glastonbury Festival, David Bowie kept an eight-part diary which was published in Time Out magazine. Here is the second instalment.

Another thing that I had forgotten is that I need a band. One great disadvantage of being a solo artist is that because I tour fairly infrequently and often only for a couple of weeks, stopping just before it gets boring, I have no immediate body of stout hearted fellows, proud and true, who know my songs inside out without the necessity of actually having to learn them.

I also find that if I’ve been off the road for a considerable time I too have simply no recollection of what the lyrics are. For the six show promotional for the ‘hours…’ album that I did last year I took along a ring-binder, the contents religiously studied which, once placed on a strategically placed music stand, I found I didn’t need after all as the form and words came flooding back at show time, presumably by osmosis. I shall forsake my prop this year though, if that many people can travel so far, to skid about in so much dung and mud solution then the least I can do is get the words of ‘Major Tom’ right.

Well, not Major Tom actually. I can’t face doing that one again yet. There are quite a few others too that I really need to lay off from performance for a few more years. It is still extremely hard for me to sing songs that I no longer enjoy because of my over-familiarity with them. But I’m trying really hard to do more than compromise for this Festival. I’ve sorted out around thirty songs that I think cover the last three decades of work and more than a few will hopefully be known by the greater majority of the audience.

The air conditioning is fixed. In one position unfortunately. Really Cold. And as the outside temperature plummets downwards again we no longer have to refrigerate meat.

Other Glastonbury diary entries:

• Part one – 15 May 2000
• Part three – 25 May 2000
• Part four – 1 June 2000
• Part five – 6 June 2000
• Part six – 7 June 2000
• Part seven – 9 June 2000
• Part eight – 11 June 2000