I’m a dude, man
Remembering David Bowie
Tony Blackburn introduced me to David Bowie early one morning in the bathroom as I was getting ready for school. Forty four years later Sarah Drummond messaged me early one morning as I was getting ready for work to say it was time to say our final farewell to him. Between these two events was a fantastic voyage in which we explored identities, discovered possibilities, and opened strange doors that we’d never close again. He was a sage, mentor and guide to a whole generation: specifically MY generation. David Bowie presented life as an art work to be constantly reworked and reinvented, and finally approached his own death as a performance piece gifted to those who had taken this dazzling and illuminating voyage with him.
Back in 1972, if you were a freak, a geek, a misfit, if at school they called you a wanker, a bender, a poofta, if you drove your mama and papa insane and nobody was sure if you were a boy or a girl then one person, and actually only one person, spoke for you and to you. So there I was in the bathroom, leaning back on my radio as Tony Blackburn played Oh You Pretty Things — the first song that spoke to me. I didn’t have an older brother, but if I had then he’d be back at home with his Beatles and his Stones. Dylan, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, The Who — much as we loved them — never spoke to us and certainly never spoke for us, often presenting a model of masculinity that was curiously conventional. Through those strange doors opened by Bowie stepped Roxy with its pair of androgynous Brians, Iggy, Patti, Joy Division, Boy George, The Smiths — so many people who elevated being a social misfit and gender ambiguity into an art form.
I still don’t know what I was waiting for as that fifteen year old in suburbia, but Bowie provided a whole new set of possibilities expressed through, but not restricted to music. On the Saturday following my first listen of Bowie I went into town and bought his new Hunky Dory album, spending the afternoon round at my friend Martin’s house playing it on repeat for a few hours till we had learned all the words (and with the Bewlay Brothers alone that’s no mean feat). That fifteen year old could not have imagined that his future self in his sixties would still enjoy the new music Bowie created. Back then we were told that we would ‘grow out’ of pop music; we didn’t realise that this new music would grow up with us — we were beginners at the art of creating a new culture, with eyes completely open, but nervous all the same.
Music was to make and mark our memories, but more importantly it pointed to new futures. Pop music is (or should be) a fusion of hedonism and idealism and Bowie’s mastery of expressing this through music, performance and art not only helped my generation make sense of the 1970s, but empowered us to change it. At its best pop was most powerful and inspiring when it pulled society along with it.
As 1972 continued Bowie underwent the first of his many remarkable metamorphoses. People stared at the makeup on his face as he became the special man and his band became Ziggy’s band. I read the interview with him in Melody Maker where he openly discussed his bisexuality and watched him on Top of the Pops with his arm draped around Mick Ronson. That summer I saw for the first time two guys holding hands. That July London held its first Pride parade.
One of the first openly gay men I ever knew was Bill. We ended up living in the same house for a time. Bill and I were listening to Low which he’d bought that morning on its release (January 1977 I recall). Like every other Bowie album it was unlike any other that had preceded it, and we were loving it. He was even more of a fan than I, and being older than me I always respected his thoughts on culture and politics. I asked him why he loved Bowie so much and he said “Because he was the first person to give me permission to be who I am.” Bill was sadly never able to enjoy the final couple of decades of Bowie’s fantastic voyage.
Just in that one year of 1977 Bowie released Low and Heroes, co-writing and producing Iggy Pop’s The Idiot and Lust for Life — four seminal albums in ten months. I doubt if there is another year as revolutionary and as vital as 1977 was for music — first albums by The Clash, The Jam, Chic, Blondie and Talking Heads, the amazing Marquee Moon by Television, Glad to be Gay by Tom Robinson and Patti Smith’s second LP. An amazing year, but one which Bowie just simply towers over with albums that actually didn’t sell particularly well. My favourite quote from an Iggy Pop interview is when he likens their relationship to that of Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle: “At times it was like having Professor Higgins say to you: ‘Young man, please, you are from the Detroit area. I think you should write a song about mass production.” He did. It’s called Mass Production.
I stuck with Bowie, simply because as I grew up, so did he and his music. It never failed to surprise and illuminate. Even Tin Machine. And as I embarked on a career (of sorts, often in new towns) so certain principles from his work and practice resonated and have always stayed with me — you use a persona to communicate and illuminate, you keep changing and abandon familiar recipes and you give away your best stuff, you bring others up with you, and the integrity thing. He not only turned his fans onto the music of his own musical heroes, but in producing some of their best work, brought their careers back to life — Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, John Lennon and Mott the Hoople.
He gave Mott what was certainly the best song he’d written which, for me, captured the identity of my generation more than any other. The band would almost certainly have broken up had not a hit come their way — he loved their music so much he gave them the song to keep them going. Charles Shaar Murray described the song as “one of that rare breed: rock songs which hymn the solidarity of the disaffected without distress or sentimentality”. It is a joy of a song that makes you want to buy some drugs and watch a band.
Then at the height of his stadium rock fame what does he do? He performs Baal for the BBC, a play written by Bertolt Brecht when he was a student. Remembering Marie A is a beautiful song from Baal, perhaps Bowie’s finest cover. I remember watching it on TV with my dad who was never close to being a Bowie fan but who said at the end “actually he’s not bad really, is he?” No dad, he wasn’t bad. Even with my dad he had the power to charm.
I also remember watching Alan Yentob’s brilliant and ground- breaking film about Bowie with my dad, which I think it’s fair to say he was less impressed with. The irony here of course is that I spent many of my teenage years wanting to look like Bowie only to end up looking like the old chap who interviewed him.
According to an economic analysis I read a few years ago, the UK has never had such a marked fall in living standards since the ten year period bookended by Bowie’s Aladdin Sane and Let’s Dance albums. Which only goes to prove that Bowie gets you through times with a catastrophic collapse of living standards better than a catastrophic collapse of living standards gets you through times with no David Bowie — which I fear Brexit will prove.
It’s been said that part of Bowie’s genius was his ability to pluck sounds and musical ideas out of a whole variety of different genres — some very obscure — and integrate them in his own work. The other part of his genius was his ability to write wonderful songs that nobody else has been able to cover — with the exception of Mott The Hoople’s wonderful cover.
Then the fantastic voyage appeared to stop. For a decade. He had appeared to run for the shadows, away from fame and the creativity impulse. His daughter was born the same year as our son, and as Calum grew up I could understand why he was certainly happier in the shadows of our culture, content to have created our memories and to have inspired all those passionate bright young things (who were now older and inspiring others) so he could focus on his own passionate bright young thing.
Early in January 2013 we returned from a week away with friends in the Highlands. The day after our return I woke up, and as Hazel went down to make coffee I checked The Guardian on my iPad for the news. Bowie has a new single. We watched the video of this amazing new song. I tweeted: “David Bowie has a new single out today about Berlin. Today is a fucking good day. Some of us have been waiting 10 years for this. Worth every minute.” And so we enjoyed a single and then a new album and a slew of great videos.
With me, the latest Bowie album is always the best Bowie album, and so it was right up to then end. As my friend Steve Platt wrote: “I can think of very few artists who took their own impending death, looked it full on in the face and used it for one final sparkling flourish of creativity in the way that Bowie did with Black Star.” I bought it on the Friday when it came out at HMV, and played it all weekend except of course I never actually heard him when he sang “I know something is very wrong”. First thing on the Monday I learned from Sarah that he had left us. The earth can be a bitch.
Like so many people I miss his presence in my life hugely. He was there as a guide for a time, and then more as an inspiration and often as a cultural barometer. Yes it was rooted in the music, but it went far beyond that. I am just fortunate to have been a passenger on his fantastic voyage, learning creative strategies and above all values that have enabled me to at least try to be better at what I do.
The post-Bowie world is a frightening one. With Brexit, Trump and the general insanity and unmoored judgements that are ripping us away from any sense of stability, we have to find new ways of dealing with with the world. Major Tom is no longer a junkie. He probably works for an alt-right opinion website. But I have no doubt that younger generations will find a way through and rekindle the flames of idealism for creating a better future.
As for my generation, we are at least left with a sense of who we are. The Bowie journey has, as Bill said to me “given me permission to be who I am”. Yes in part it was about the dancing and looking divine, it was about the strange fascination, but most critically it was about being proud to be whoever you are and what you stand for — pride in your identity, whatever that is, and how you can use that to change things for the better.
I’m not a freak, a geek, a misfit, a wanker, a bender or a poofta. I’m not David Bowie and I’m certainly not Alan Yentob.
I’m a dude, man.
