David Bowie passed away Sunday at the age of 69, leaving behind an incredible musical legacy.
Back in 2003, he opened up about his process of creating during a series of interviews with CBS' 60 Minutes. Their story on Bowie never ran, but thanks to 60 Minutes Overtime, fans are now able to watch raw excerpts of these interviews and gain new insight to the rock icon's mind.
In one clip, Bowie said he wasn't "particularly fond" of his own voice. "I never thought of myself as a singer," he explained. "I thought that I wrote songs and wrote music, and that was sort of what I thought I was best at doing, and because nobody else was ever doing my songs, I thought I had to go out and do them."
In another interview with 60 Minutes, Bowie talked about being asked, "Why do you do what you do?" and struggling to come up with an answer. "I really had to think about that," he said. "I guess, I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I'm a writer...I write. I started examining the subject matter that i write about, and it really only boils down to a few songs based around...loneliness, to a certain extent, couple[d] with isolation, some kind of spiritual search, and a looking for a way into communicating with other people."
Bowie touched on spirituality again at a different point in the same interview. "Searching for music is like searching for God," he said. "They're very similar. There's an effort to reclaim the unmentionable, the unsayable, the unseeable, the unspeakable, all those things, comes into being a composer and to writing music and to searching for notes and pieces of musical information that don't exist."
Ultimately, Bowie told 60 Minutes he was grateful he ended up writing and performing his music. "I think generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing, and producing records, and singing," he said. "I think, in short, it's as cornball as that. You know? It really is what I do. And I'm so glad I chose that to be my profession...It's been just terrific."
More clips from Bowie's unearthed 2003 interviews with 60 Minutes can be seen at CBSNews.com
Tune in to E! News tonight at 7 and 11 p.m. as we continue to say goodbye to Bowie.