Bowie generous with his time talking about music

One of the first albums I bought with my own money was David Bowie's "Let's Dance" (to pay for it, I racked up $3.35 an hour saying, "Welcome to Burger King") — then I went to college, worked hard, and 21 years later, I was interviewing David Bowie.

It's surreal when you realize you get to ask any question you want of a famous person who shaped about a third of your tastes in art, music, visuals and aesthetics.

Bowie was so nice and generous with his time, I eventually had to kind of end the interview, because he was talking as if we were chatty acquaintances. (I wasn't special. For years to come, musicians told me Bowie was great like that with everybody.)

Bowie told me his most famous songs seemed like albatrosses after a while, but he eventually stopped feeling under pressure.

"I think that in a lot of the '70s, I really got it right," he said.

On the other hand, he felt as if he'd taken a misstep in the late 1980s by trying to "second-guess the audience and write stuff for them and do stuff for them that they would want."

Was Bowie satisfied his work would last into the future?

"Into the future," he repeated the premise. "Ah, I don't really think too much that way. I'm OK today about it all."

Bowie told me he knew he was still influencing bands "in a populist way" to mix-and-match genres on a pallet, and that made him happy. "Pretty cool," he said.

Bowie died Sunday on my older sister Tree's birthday. I called Tree on Monday to reminisce about Bowie, because it was her record player that indoctrinated me to his music.

Bowie was perfect for Tree because she was an outsider child in the then-reprehensible South. She dated men from the Middle East (you can imagine how that went in Little Rock, Ark., circa 1975). Her drag queen friends threw high-heel shoes at homophobes who screamed slurs at them.

Bowie, like Alice Cooper, was an idol for outsiders like Tree and her friends.

"He was androgynous. He went for the gay-male-looking thing. He wasn't ashamed of anything. He flaunted it. He was cool. People admired that," Tree said.

As Tree and I were talking, a quote was making the rounds on Twitter, advice from an old Caitlin Moran essay called "10 Things Every Girl Should Know." No. 9:

"When in doubt, listen to David Bowie. In 1968, Bowie was a gay, ginger, bonk-eyed, snaggle-toothed freak walking around south London in a dress, being shouted at by thugs. Four years later, he was still exactly that — but everyone else wanted to be like him, too. If David Bowie can make being David Bowie cool, you can make being you cool."

Bowie, Tree said, was a breakout from America's old John Wayne cowboy days.

And Tree reminded me of something I'd tried to forget.

"Today is the anniversary of Mom dying," she said. "This time three years ago, I was standing in her living room ..."

Mom. She liked Bowie. But she was more into Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart, singing "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy" in her Chevy. I can't tell you how much I hope Mick and Rod are hanging in there.

BATTLE BOURNE

So many tourists will be uploading videos of the new Jason Bourne movie being shot on the Strip, someone with editing skills could probably piece together a separate movie out of them.

Joyce Lupiani (a former RJ co-worker) began compiling Bourne reports from Instagram, Facebook and Twitter on Monday for KTNV-TV, Channel 13, including this nugget:

"Aria guests are being told Bourne 5 will film there Jan. 11-15, simulated gunfire," @VitalVegas Tweeted.

"He's always walking through casinos with a backpack!" a guy commented on Alexis Anttila's Facebook video of Matt Damon walking through the casino with a backpack. (Anttila wrote, "Seems to be a really friendly guy.")

There's no title for the film yet. "Battle Bourne" would be an obvious play off of Nevada's official slogan, "Battle Born," but does that even make sense?

HOOKERS AND COCAINE

Local KVVU-TV, Channel 5, reporter Ophelia Young was interviewing people buying lottery tickets at the California border when she asked a ski-capped, bearded guy what he'd spend the winnings on.

"Bunch of hookers and cocaine," he said.

Later, the guy reportedly said on radio station KLUC-FM, 98.5 he was caught off guard, "She kind of made me feel a little dumb out there, so I gave her a dumb answer," he's married with two kids, he wouldn't actually buy hookers and cocaine, and, "My wife would kick my ass."

Doug Elfman can be reached at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman. On Twitter: @VegasAnonymous