Quite a few people, both fans and critics, were somewhat cynical and confused when James Murphy announced that he will reunite his band LCD Soundsystem only a couple years after they had broken up, especially since they had made such fanfare about their “final show” at Madison Square Garden back in 2011.
Some might be inclined to say that the whole ordeal seemed a bit of a publicity stunt, it turns out that the decision to reunite was influenced by an appropriately unorthodox figure.
Just a couple days ago, Murphy had revealed that he and the Thin White Duke had shared discussions about doing a collaborative album, whilst Murphy was assisting with several songs on Blackstar, the enigmatic star’s final record. Apparently, during those times, it was David Bowie himself who had convinced the frontman to revive the critically acclaimed dance punk outfit.
In a recent interview that he gave to BBC’s Radio 6 Music, Murphy revealed that it was David Bowie who convinced him that maybe he should revive his group. “I spent a good amount of time with David Bowie, and I was talking about getting the band back together,” he recalled. “He said ‘does it make you uncomfortable?’ I said ‘yeah’, and he said ‘good, it should, you should be uncomfortable.’”
That indeed sounds like something Bowie would say, and it was advice that Murphy took to heart. “I was imagining that if I was David Bowie, I’d just be walking around flipping everybody off — unless maybe Lou Reed is there,” said Murphy. “There are literally one or two people where nothing can be said about them. But that’s not who he was ever in his life, he was always making himself uncomfortable. There was such a great feeling of ‘you just don’t know what you are to anybody else.’”
In addition to revealing Bowie’s role in getting LCD Soundsystem back together, Murphy also talked about working with the Thin White Duke on his final album Blackstar and their plans to work more down the line. “I reached out to David and said, ‘I’d love to do a record just me and you’,” Murphy said. “He said, ‘It’s funny you mention that, please look me up when you get back to New York.’”
Photo Credit: Sharon Alagna
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