Bowie Said Fan Acceptance Allowed Him to Change Constantly

One of David Bowie’s greatest accomplishments was his ability to be a true chameleon when it came to his music and how he visually presented himself thoughout the years.

In a recently unearthed 2002 MuchMusic (Canada) interview by then-VJ George Stroumboulopoulos, Bowie spoke about how fan acceptance of his art constantly motivated him to change what he was up to creatively.

“When it does work, I think that funnily enough the one thing that it does do is set me up for wanting to change again,” explained Bowie. “When things work, I kind of want to leave them alone because it is like – point proved. It is like, if I do this and this and I create this situation and then it is accepted then, I find, that’s been validated and now I can move on. That’s why I probably tend to grasshopper about. I don’t often stay with something that seems to be successful. I don’t understand if it is just perversive me or if it really is an unrelenting need to do something else. I suppose it must be a mixture of the two. I don’t know. But I don’t need to be continually validated, you know what I mean?”

You can check out more of this 2002 interview here.