David Bowie Gives Graduation Speech At Berklee College of Music: “Music Has Been My Doorway of Perception” (1999)

I have lit­tle to add to the tidal wave of remem­brances and trib­utes in the wake of David Bowie’s death. Seems near­ly every­one has a sto­ry about how his music, his per­sis­tence, his gen­eros­i­ty, his genius, his unabashed weird­ness changed their lives. What he taught me as a young teenag­er was that the phrase “just be your­self” can just as well mean “be who­ev­er you can dream up,” and damn the pre­de­ter­mined roles and mean­ing­less stig­ma. Hard­er than it sounds, but Bowie pulled it off like no one before or since.

Bowie was, writes Sara Ben­in­casa, the “patron saint of… weirdos of all stripes, and that most dan­ger­ous crea­ture of all: the artist.” He did not shy away from pre­tense; he embraced it as his spe­cial méti­er. In 1999, Bowie deliv­ered the com­mence­ment address at Boston’s Berklee Col­lege of Music, where he received an hon­orary doc­tor­ate along with Wayne Short­er. In his speech, he says, he learned ear­ly on that “authen­tic­i­ty and the nat­ur­al form of expres­sion wasn’t going to be my forte.”

In fact, what I found that I was good at doing, and what I real­ly enjoyed the most, was the game of “what if?” What if you com­bined Brecht-Weill musi­cal dra­ma with rhythm and blues? What hap­pens if you trans­plant the French chan­son with the Philly sound? Will Schoen­berg lie com­fort­ably with Lit­tle Richard? Can you put hag­gis and snails on the same plate? Well, no, but some of the ideas did work out very well.

Thus began his exper­i­ments with iden­ti­ty that first took shape in the fan­tas­tic crea­ture, Zig­gy Star­dust, his “cru­sade,” as he calls it, “to change the kind of infor­ma­tion that rock music con­tained.” Speak­ing of Zig­gy, Bowie tells a sto­ry about play­ing “grot­ty… workingman’s clubs” in “full, bat­tle fin­ery of Tokyo-space­boy and a pair of shoes high enough that it induced nose bleeds.”

Informed by the pro­mot­er at one such bar that the only bath­room was a filthy sink at the end of the hall, Bowie balked. “Lis­ten son,” said the pro­mot­er, “If its good enough for Shirley Bassey, it’s good enough for you.” From this expe­ri­ence, he says, he learned that “mix­ing ele­ments of bad taste with good would often pro­duce the most inter­est­ing results.”

The speech is packed with wit­ty anec­dotes like this and self-dep­re­cat­ing asides. Most of the sto­ries, as you can hear in the video excerpt at the top of the post, are about Bowie’s “great­est men­tor,” John Lennon. Lennon, says Bowie, “defined for me, at any rate, how one could twist and turn the fab­ric of pop and imbue it with ele­ments from oth­er art­forms, often pro­duc­ing some­thing extreme­ly beau­ti­ful, very pow­er­ful and imbued with strange­ness.” Indulging his love for high and low cul­ture, Bowie under­cuts his ele­vat­ed talk of art-pop by describ­ing his and Lennon’s con­ver­sa­tions as “Beav­is and Butthead on ‘Cross­fire.’”

Bowie ends his speech with a heart­felt, and dare I say, authen­tic sum­ma­ry of his life in music. His only piece of advice, writes Boston.com: he urges the Berklee grad­u­ates to “pur­sue their musi­cal pas­sion as if it were a sick­ness.”

Music has giv­en me over 40 years of extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ences. I can’t say that life’s pains or more trag­ic episodes have been dimin­ished because of it. But it’s allowed me so many moments of com­pan­ion­ship when I’ve been lone­ly and a sub­lime means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion when I want­ed to touch peo­ple. It’s been both my door­way of per­cep­tion and the house that I live in.

I only hope that it embraces you with the same lusty life force that it gra­cious­ly offered me. Thank you very much and remem­ber, if it itch­es, play it.

Read the full tran­script of the speech here, or below the jump:

Thank you. Thanks very much. Rock­ers… Jazzers… Sam­plers… That was a fan­tas­tic con­cert last night. I think both Wayne and myself were just so moved to hear our com­po­si­tions com­ing back at us through your ears and abil­i­ties. It was dyna­mite. You don’t know how much we appre­ci­ate it.

I chat­ted with some of the stu­dents last night and I asked one of them if he could give me a good joke to start today off with and also his worst fear.

He said, “I’ll give you both. How does a tuba play­er answer the tele­phone? Hel­lo, Domi­noes.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Oh, I should remind you that any­body left over from the pro­ceed­ings today can join my wife and I at [local piz­za place] Lit­tle Ste­vie’s for a slice. Dunkin Donuts, then, alright?

I’ve got a mes­sage here for the admin­is­tra­tion from my some­times-col­lab­o­ra­tor and fel­low musi­cian Reeves Gabrels, ex-alum­ni. It says here, “I haven’t for­got­ten that $900 I owe from my last semes­ter. I should point out that this has been owed since the spring of 1980. I read recent­ly in Alle­gro that they are hold­ing an unclaimed check for me back­dat­ing from my days with Tin Machine.”

Well, that should wipe out about $30-worth right there.

As always on occa­sions like this, I real­ly nev­er know what to do—which is pret­ty much the way that I’ve han­dled my career as a musician/writer. I guess any list of advice I have to offer to a musi­cian always ends with “If it itch­es, go and see a doc­tor.” Real world! But that’s not going to be of any help today.

My some­times-col­lab­o­ra­tor Bri­an Eno described him­self as a non-musi­cian. In fact he tried to get it put into his pass­port as his work def­i­n­i­tion. [fak­ing British cus­toms offi­cer voice] “Non-musi­cian? Made any records?” [imper­son­at­ing Bri­an Eno] “Of course not. I’m a bloody non-musi­cian.” Any­way I’d describe myself, I think, as a bit of a non-musi­cian. I took class­es, ini­tial­ly, after see­ing the Lit­tle Richard band in a film with, at that time Britain’s fore­most bari­tone jazz play­er Ron­nie Ross. I was about 14 and I gave him a phone. I found his num­ber in the phone book and he very kind­ly took me on. But I quick­ly found that what was writ­ten as “be doo boo doo­bie doop ba doo bip …” That’s a George Red­man com­po­si­tion, West Coast band, 60s you would­n’t know about it.

“Be doo­biee doo­bie doop a doop bip,” when I start­ed play­ing it, came out as “bdzzzz dzzzzz zzzz.” So it seemed that authen­tic­i­ty and the nat­ur­al form of expres­sion was­n’t going to be my forte. In fact, what I found that I was good at doing, and what I real­ly enjoyed the most, was the game of “what if?” What if you com­bined Brecht-Weill musi­cal dra­ma with rhythm and blues? What hap­pens if you trans­plant the French chan­son with the Philly sound? Will Schoen­berg lie com­fort­ably with Lit­tle Richard? Can you put hag­gis and snails on the same plate? Well, no, but some of the ideas did work out very well.

So, I learned enough sax­o­phone and gui­tar and what’s euphemisti­cal­ly called “com­poser’s piano” to get my ideas over to prop­er musi­cians, as we have here today. And then I went on a cru­sade, I sup­pose, to change the kind of infor­ma­tion that rock music con­tained. I adored Coltrane, Har­ry Parch, Eric Dol­phy, Vel­vet Under­ground, John Cage, Son­ny Stitt. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I also loved Antho­ny New­ley, Flo­rence Fos­ter Jenk­ins, John­nie Ray, Julie Lon­don, the leg­endary Star­dust Cow­boy, Edith Piaf and Shirley Bassey.

A word about Shirley Bassey. Dur­ing the very ear­ly days of Zig­gy Star­dust, we often used to play these fair­ly grot­ty clubs called the “work­ing­man’s clubs.” They were sort of like night­clubs but you got a cheap meal. The whole fam­i­ly would come. A round of beer. A rock act. A stripper—sometimes one in the same. Well, back­stage one night I was des­per­ate to use the bath­room. I was dressed in my full, bat­tle fin­ery of Tokyo-space­boy and a pair of shoes high enough that it induced nose bleeds. I went up to the promoter—actually I tot­tered over to the promoter—and I asked, “Could you please tell me where the lava­to­ry is?”

And he said, “Yeah, look down that cor­ri­dor. On the far end of that wall. You see that sink? There you go.”

I said, “My good man, I’m not tak­ing a piss in the sink.”

He said, “Lis­ten son, if it’s good enough for Shirley Bassey, it’s good enough for you.”

From which I learned that mix­ing ele­ments of bad taste with good would often pro­duce the most inter­est­ing results. So, in short, I did­n’t feel com­fort­able as a folk singer or an R&B singer or a bal­ladeer. I was drawn more and more to the idea of manip­u­la­tion of signs, rather than indi­vid­ual expression—a con­cept that real­ly had its start in the late 50s with Pop Art and by the ear­ly 70s I found myself mak­ing what British writer Simon Fricke described as “art pop.”

It was­n’t so much about how I felt about things, but rather, how things around me felt. To put it sim­ply, I had dis­cov­ered the Eng­lish­man’s true place in rock and roll. This all sounds, I sup­pose, quite dis­pas­sion­ate, but believe me, still, even now, when I hear the most fan­tas­tic solo being played on a CD and it’s on the fade­out, I still rush over to the vol­ume switch and bring it up in pro­por­tion to the way it’s fad­ing down, so I can catch that last note. It still is very much my life. It’s impos­si­ble for me to talk about pop­u­lar music with­out men­tion­ing prob­a­bly my great­est men­tor, John Lennon. I guess he defined for me, at any rate, how one could twist and turn the fab­ric of pop and imbue it with ele­ments from oth­er art­forms, often pro­duc­ing some­thing extreme­ly beau­ti­ful, very pow­er­ful and imbued with strange­ness. Also, unin­vit­ed, John would wax on end­less­ly about any top­ic under the sun and was over-endowed with opin­ions. I imme­di­ate­ly felt empa­thy with that. When­ev­er the two of us got togeth­er it start­ed to resem­ble Beav­is and Butthead on “Cross­fire.”

The seduc­tive thing about John was his sense of humor. Sur­re­al­is­ti­cal­ly enough, we were first intro­duced in about 1974 by Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor. Miss Tay­lor had been try­ing to get me to make a movie with her. It involved going to Rus­sia and wear­ing some­thing red, gold and diaphanous. Not ter­ri­bly encour­ag­ing, real­ly. I can’t remem­ber what it was called—it was­n’t On the Water­front, any­way, I know that.

We were in LA, and one night she had a par­ty to which both John and I had been invit­ed. I think we were polite with each oth­er, in that kind of old­er-younger way. Although there were only a few years between us, in rock and roll that’s a gen­er­a­tion, you know? Oh boy, is it ever.

So John was sort of [in Liv­er­pool accent] “Oh, here comes anoth­er new one.” And I was sort of, “It’s John Lennon! I don’t know what to say. Don’t men­tion the Bea­t­les, you’ll look real­ly stu­pid.”

And he said, “Hel­lo, Dave.” And I said, “I’ve got every­thing you’ve made—except the Bea­t­les.”

A cou­ple of nights lat­er we found our­selves back­stage at the Gram­mys where I had to present “the thing” to Aretha Franklin. Before the show I’d been telling John that I did­n’t think Amer­i­ca real­ly got what I did, that I was mis­un­der­stood. Remem­ber that I was in my 20s and out of my head.

So the big moment came and I ripped open the enve­lope and announced, “The win­ner is Aretha Franklin.” Aretha steps for­ward, and with not so much as a glance in my direc­tion, snatch­es the tro­phy out of my hands and says, “Thank you every­body. I’m so hap­py I could even kiss David Bowie.” Which she did­n’t! And she prompt­ly spun around swanned off stage right. So I slunk off stage left.

And John bounds over and gives me a the­atri­cal kiss and a hug and says “See, Dave. Amer­i­ca loves ya.”

We pret­ty much got on like a house on fire after that.

He once famous­ly described glam rock as just rock and roll with lip­stick on. He was wrong of course, but it was very fun­ny.

Towards the end of the 70s, a group of us went off to Hong Kong on a hol­i­day and John was in, sort of, house-hus­band mode and want­ed to show Sean the world. And dur­ing one of our expe­di­tions on the back streets a kid comes run­ning up to him and says, “Are you John Lennon?” And he said, “No but I wish I had his mon­ey.” Which I prompt­ly stole for myself.

[imi­tat­ing a fan] “Are you David Bowie?”

No, but I wish I had his mon­ey.

It’s bril­liant. It was such a won­der­ful thing to say. The kid said, “Oh, sor­ry. Of course you aren’t,” and ran off. I thought, “This is the most effec­tive device I’ve heard.”

I was back in New York a cou­ple of months lat­er in Soho, down­town, and a voice pipes up in my ear, “Are you David Bowie?” And I said, “No, but I wish I had his mon­ey.”

“You lying bas­tard. You wish you had my mon­ey.” It was John Lennon.

These are just a few moments from my life. This moment is very def­i­nite­ly yours. Thank you so much for indulging me for the last 10 min­utes. I hope it’s been rea­son­ably inter­est­ing for you.

Music has giv­en me over 40 years of extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ences. I can’t say that life’s pains or more trag­ic episodes have been dimin­ished because of it. But it’s allowed me so many moments of com­pan­ion­ship when I’ve been lone­ly and a sub­lime means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion when I want­ed to touch peo­ple. It’s been both my door­way of per­cep­tion and the house that I live in.

I only hope that it embraces you with the same lusty life force that it gra­cious­ly offered me. Thank you very much and remem­ber, if it itch­es, play it.

via Boston.com

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

David Bowie’s Final Gig as Zig­gy Star­dust Doc­u­ment­ed in 1973 Con­cert Film

How “Space Odd­i­ty” Launched David Bowie to Star­dom: Watch the Orig­i­nal Music Video From 1969

David Bowie’s First Amer­i­can Fan Let­ter And His Evolv­ing Views of the U.S. (1967–1997)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness