David Bowie’s ‘Life on Mars’ Video Gets a New Remix from Original Director Mick Rock — Watch
David Bowie may have departed this mortal coil earlier this year, but the out-of-this-world talented multi-hyphenate’s spirit — and influence — will continue to live on for years (decades? centuries? millennia?) to come.
In that same vein, Parlophone is celebrating Bowie’s life and work with a brand new compilation album entitled “Bowie – Legacy,” which will hit shelves later this month. As part of this essential revisit to some of Bowie’s best-loved songs, “Life on Mars” music video director Mick Rock has recut the seminal video into a fresh new take (hard to do, considering the original is still damn fresh as is) and taken to The Guardian to explain some of his choices, both in the new version and the beloved original.
“David called me – if he wanted me to make a video, he’d call me one or two nights before – and said we needed to get another video together,” Rock remembered. “He liked to do them, and so did I – not that there was any budget. I somehow got hold of a completely white studio and that dictated the concept – it was as simple as that.”
The director added, “He took direction very well. He was willing to do whatever you wanted him to do…If he wanted to work with someone, he would let them get on with it. He would ask: ‘What do you want me to do, Mick?’ And then he would do his thing. It was never like pulling teeth with David, it was like pulling gems.”
That sort of generosity seems to have directly made the new cut possible, as Rock explained, “David gave me the copyrights for the four videos I had made for him, because I had never been paid for them – not that I had looked for any money. So when Parlophone contacted me about re-editing it I said: absolutely. I had a little gem and I wanted to polish it into a state where it was absolutely perfect.”
For Rock, the new cut isn’t an entirely new entity, but an epilogue to one of his favorite pieces of work. Check out the new video below, thanks to The Guardian.
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