There are some people (and bands) that you take for granted I guess it is an accepted fact that most people, for example, like Queen and the Beatles and David Bowie. These are things you don't speak about because it is just accepted although I did have a conversation with my Dad a couple of years ago and I suggested that Bowie was the greatest songwriter that Britain has ever produced.
My case is thus: he has consistently pushed the boundaries of music for 6 decades and his standards, whilst there have been moments that are less preferential than others, he has been a trailblazer. I didn't get his late '70's output till more recently and whilst I thought his success in the '80's was a sell out, he didn't like the commercial success either so maybe on some level we agreed. His '90's output produced the "Earthling" album and the single "Little Wonder" which I love to bits. I bought the single and the album at the time and still have that song on my phone.
People may argue that Lennon and McCartney were better but individually they were patchy at best, neither of them cutting their own way through music after the demise of the Beatles ("Band on the Run" was an exception). Led Zeppelin? Love them to bits but all gone by the '80's and were they as influential as Bowie? I guess that could be argued within a certain genre of music.
What about the songwriters, Elton John started off in the right way but was never an innovator and despite the immense success, he has an undeniable talent for hits but he doesn't push the boundaries of music and wasn't as influential.
There are many others that didn't make it as big but it was Bowie's grand picture that we watched, it was his vision and it was his art, a cinematic career of image and music, he was androgynous before it was popular, cheek bones cut like a supermodel and a natural "shining" that the camera loved and he knew exactly how to work it. The late '60's to early '70's with the acoustic and glam rock vision of Ziggy Stardust (kickstarting the career of Mott the Hoople with "All the Young Dudes"), then the stripping down of music and becoming the Thin White Duke and the Berlin years (kickstarting the career of Iggy Pop) and embracing the keyboard before the '80's. And then the "Under Pressure" single, the duet with Queen that reinvented them for the '80's and the spaceman vision before his commercial resurrection and in my view, despite the success, he was following rather than leading for the first time.
Many superstars we feel that we know, we either hear stories about what arses they are or how kind they are or they are animal lovers but I can freely admit that I in no way feel that I know Bowie in the slightest, he has spent his career as an enigma, as alien to the human race as the songs he sang and the roles he portrayed. He was obviously driven in his art and was a chameleon of the sort we have never seen before, drawing on his knowledge of the avante garde and the stars of the '30's and '40's to create images out of time and distant to us.
My favourite photograph of all time is a black and white shot of Bowie. I was eating in Pho on Wardour Street a year or so back and the building opposite displays various images of different people and one time they had a Bowie shot and it was a simple black and white but it was stunning, a great photographer with the perfect model creates its own magic. I've never seen it since but I must find it and when I do I will share it.
And what about the car crash performance with him and Bing Crosby and "the Little Drummer Boy"? Hilarious with a spaced out Bowie and Crosby wondering who the hell he was, cringe worthy to watch but the stuff of legends and essential Christmas viewing.
My daughter is only 17 but devastated, my wife loved his theatrics and the fact that he was the fore runner to everything in popular music that she adores and I remember putting on "Diamond Dogs" on my Dad's record player in the early '70's and loving "Rebel Rebel". I shed a tear this morning because he was something special, I never understood him but like all of us, I rode his coat tails and spent many moments mesmerized by something that was larger than life and sometimes frightening but always interesting
Anyway, here is David Bowie, truly one of a kind and I feel blessed to had him through all of my life till now. He helped create one hell of a soundtrack to my life that includes several of his songs and I will always be grateful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MAez6oC5F4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v--IqqusnNQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VLS-P9m0BM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UT2oqEHwvUY
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