Philip Glass: Me and David Bowie

From a radio interview in Houston:

The words ‘music’ and ‘guilt’ don’t go together for me. I got involved with doing benefit concerts and raising money for different kinds of organizations and I often put together all kinds of people to play. Sometimes it could be a string quartet with the Kronos Quartet, but it could be Paul Simon, or it could be David Bowie, or it could Iggy Pop… I’ve played with all these people. Part of the fun of doing these concerts is playing with someone who I’d never played with before.  I remember years ago we did a concert for a place called Tibet House – which is a cultural center in New York – and David Bowie was going to play on the concert. Then he told me, ‘Well, we have to rehearse.’ Now, we had never rehearsed before. I usually got together the day before, pick out the songs, then play them. Not David. We had to get together two days before and have a whole rehearsal of his songs. That was really intense.  So, sometimes really nice things can happen like that, that I wouldn’t really have planned. Those aren’t guilty pleasures. They’re pleasure pleasures.

Listen to the full interview here.