During a recent radio interview with BBC 6 Music, James Murphy, the musical mastermind behind LCD Soundsystem, recalled a conversation with David Bowie that helped inspire his decision to bring the band out of retirement. According to Murphy, Bowie, who was a friend and collaborator, pushed LCD’s ever-reluctant star to confront the challenges that were making him “uncomfortable” with the idea of a revival. Here’s the full quote:
I spent a good amount of time with David Bowie, and I was talking about coming back, putting the band together. And I was going through the hems and haws of it, and he said, “Does it make you uncomfortable?” And I said, “Yeah,” and he said, “Good. It should. You should be uncomfortable.” And the first thing that popped into my head was, “What the? What do you know? You don’t know what it’s like to be uncomfortable.” That was my thinking. Because of course I’m imagining that if I was David Bowie, I’d just be walking around flipping everybody off, like, “I’m David Bowie!” Like, nobody can say anything! Unless maybe Lou Reed’s there, and then he can be like, “Alright.” There are maybe one or two people that get to literally not—nothing can be said about them. But that’s not who he was ever in his life. He was always making himself uncomfortable. And it was such a great feeling of, like, you just don’t know what you are to anybody else.
As we know now, Murphy heeded that advice, and the fruit of LCD’s reunion, a new album called American Dream, is set to drop on September 1. The band has already released two new songs from the upcoming LP, “American Dream” and “Call The Police.”