A couple of weeks ago, I posted a vintage interview with David Bowie from the BBC that included more footage from his Broadway turn in The Elephant Man than I have ever seen elsewhere. This is a follow-up to that, a personality profile from ABC’s 20/20 shot around the same time.

You don’t tend to think of 20/20 as being so cutting edge today, but this story must’ve been quite a startling thing for some Americans to have beamed into their living rooms 30 years ago. I can vividly recall my parents being very perplexed by this piece and why I thought David Bowie was “cool” in the first place. It just didn’t make sense to them.
 

 
Part II here.

Previously on Dangerous Minds
‘The Elephant Man’: David Bowie on Broadway, 1980

Well, back in 1980 Bowie was like the biggest thing in popular music around, so the networks were kinda forced to do pieces on ‘Bowie’, even though their shrinkwrapped approaches really fell apart when trying to capture some essence of Bowie or his music.

I still remember this hilarious piece Pia Lindstrom did that painted Bowie as this wild bisexual rock shaman and then, right after the piece, she interviewed Bowie in person. Bowie was of course his usual fairly introverted and thoughtful self, and Pia Lindstrom seemed completely disoriented and baffled that the real Bowie bore no semblance whatsoever to the media package she had put together.

Sadly they ran voice over on top of the practicing for Scary Monsters in the studio.  I love the first side of that album.

Man, he was good as the Elephant Man!

In the summer of 1976 my babysitter came to our house one morning, holding up her hand slightly away from her body.  Like beauty queens hold their hands when waving.  I asked what was with her hand and she proclaimed that David Bowie had touched it while walking by screaming fans at the concert the night before.

I had no idea why she would act that way…until I heard the album she brought with her and stared at the photo of the man on the cover.  From that point on I understood as deeply as I did thirty five years later….

A young woman I know, is an asst. teacher at a private school here in NYC where Bowie’s daughter with Iman was a student.  She was walking behind him down a hall at the school, not knowing who it was in front of her, carrying a box of marbles.  Bowie turned around and looked at her, when she immediately realized who it was she dropped the box with hundreds of marbles rolling all over the place.  She told me, “I saw him and literally lost my marbles”.  Indeed.