Every Thursday I look back to the past
They say ‘never meet your heroes’, but that is exactly what happened to Dave and Steph on september 4, 2003. The brothers were invited to a tv studio in Paris, where their long time hero David Bowie was recording a tv special for the French tv channel France 2.
They weren’t invited to sit in the audience, Bowie himself wanted them as guests on the show – where he also performed several songs live on tv. Other guests included Damon Albarn, Francoise Hardy (for whom Stephen had already directed a video back in 1996), Moby, Mick Rock and Air.
Bowie discovered 2manydjs in 2002, when he heard ‘As Heard On Radio Soulwax Pt II’, and became a fan.
Last week, when David and Stephen were at BBC 6 Music, they told host Nick Grimshaw that Bowie admitted leaving messages on the 2manydjs website message board all the time:
And here’s the proof, a screenshot I took from that message board back in the day:
So it turned out it was the real David Bowie after all.
A year later, on the 2nd of July 2004, 2manydjs replaced Bowie as headliner for Rock Werchter. He had to cancel his show due to illness, and it was the first time a dj would headline the festival.
The quality of the video of the French tv show, which you can find at the top of this page, isn’t perfect and also the audio was dubbed in French. But you can hear Bowie say to host Guillaume Durand that he thinks these two young guys are the future of music.
When asked if they would like to remix one of Bowie’s tracks, Stephen – obviously a bit overexcited at the moment – said “No, because all of his songs are perfect”.
In the end, Soulwax nor 2manydjs ever made a remix for Bowie. But with the one hour homage of ‘Dave’, they made something far more unique in 2011.
It is rumoured that Bowie saw and approved the film.
They also used Bowie’s songs multiple times for the score of Dries Van Noten‘s runway shows, including his farewel show:
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