Tragic to hear the heart breaking news about David Bowie, suddenly all the apocalyptic, end of days imagery from the new video makes much more sense…. I just wish I hadn’t given the videos I’d seen such a public bashing on Facebook now.
I think I’m not alone here, like most fans of rock & pop I could take some of his albums more than others but that was the simple joy of the man in a world of increasingly vapid homogenised pap he’d be always relied upon to offer up something different, at times challenging, even esoteric… sometimes woefully so. But boy weren’t we glad he was there doing it, a real artist and each release was an event which was bound to offer up hours of geeky muso chatter in the pub. Like a lot of people I’m utterly unoriginal in favouring his more pre-Glam swagger years of Hunky Dory and the Ziggy/ Diamond Dog years.
Some artists you can always forgive their indiscretions such as the infamous time he pulled up in Neo-Fascist themed black shirted imagery and gave a pseudo Roman salute to the gathered press and crowd. A few people still held that against him but that’s to forget he was (although off his tits whilst doing so) attempting to tap into the current theme of playing around with shock factor imagery and particularly that associated with the 1930s Fascist movements which punk would then run with right up until rock against racism and was later adopted by certain Industrial groups (only our Morrissey’s still playing with that sort of thing).
Of course he was no more a genuine fascist that Russell Brand is a firebrand Left wing revolutionary but it was still possibly his biggest mistake and sin with the musos and commentators for many years after often cropping up in critical media appraisals until the 00s
…. Think we all agree we could have done without ‘Dancing in the street’ though, that came a close second to toying with Fascistic imagery for the offence it caused.
It’s really pretty amazing when you ponder the origins of the man who would become the quintessential music chameleon quite happy to arrive on the scene once the ground work had already been done and acquire a bit of the cool around it for himself as he did so brazenly with New Romanticism, of course some might argue that without Bowie there would never have been both Punk or New Romantic movement so he was simply reclaiming his own. But going from the evidence of his early 1960s work and failures it really is shocking he could eventually reach such dizzying heights as pop’s grand old man and near demigod. He certainly put the hours in, sad to think that there are a fair few modern pop stars with record contracts and all manner of commercial enterprises going who (and seemingly take pride in) doing the least amount of work for their creativity and status. Bowie did it the hard way at a time when looking a bit ‘different’ or even having long hair as a man could earn you a sound kicking on the street. At the height of his Glam years he had inspired an army of young lads (and more oddly young women) to adopt similar gender bending fashion, andcrazy colour hair as their own and run the gauntlet of judgmental and hostile 1970s British mainstream attitude. That sort of thing would bleed into punk’s dress up box and from there we get plenty of pretty diverse offshoots.
Each generation has ‘their own’ Bowie incarnation, some had the good era and some the …well, less so, but each could lay claim to distinct look, feel, tone for their decade and for me it was his ‘Earthling’ and Nomad Soul era. I loved it at the time although the album has had very little play time on the stereo since the mid-2000s so I think this is as good a time as any to have another listen.
God bless you sir you were a true mensch of the music world.
