Mr David Jones. Such a plain, common name for a man who ended up changing the entertainment world. Not long after Brixton-born musician Jones changed his surname to Bowie, he began turning pop music on its head.
While multiple David Bowie eulogies this week have highlighted the impressive way the singer created personas, just as enticing was how ruthlessly he destroyed them. A year after his debut, Ziggy Stardust suffered rock and roll suicide on-stage in July 1973. By the time we adjusted to the sleek-suited plastic soul crooner of hit singles Young Americans and Golden Years, Bowie had morphed into The Thin White Duke and escaped to the Eastern Bloc. As we rolled into the 1980s, a message from the action man revealed the Ashes To Ashes demise of Space Oddity’s Major Tom. There was little time to mourn the expiry of each Bowie identity, for a thrilling new musical phoenix would always rise from their ashes.
In his 1976 film role The Man Who Fell To Earth, Bowie’s alien character Thomas Jerome Newton suffers nausea from sudden movement. In reality, Bowie’s musical output suggested he routinely travelled at the speed of sound; we as fans would hear him long after he was already streaking ahead to his next destination.
Ever the benevolent music divinity, he’d send us strange clues to ruminate over while we tried to catch up. Bowie album covers, music videos and song lyrics offered tidbits for us to piece together like vigilant code breakers. While these clues sometimes led to us discovering new art via his collaborators, acolytes and idols, Bowie rarely gave us enough jigsaw pieces to truly solve his cunning puzzles. We had the trail of breadcrumbs, but never the baker’s recipes themselves.
Somehow, Bowie managed to remain a thoroughly enigmatic yet outwardly open-hearted musical identity. Neither as cold and ruthless as Lou Reed or as dangerous and disturbed as Iggy Pop, ‘70s Bowie was a genial rock god to millions, showing us a weird and wonderful world like a kindly benefactor. Bowie’s trip to the top of the pop charts with 1983’s Let’s Dance and his appearance as Jareth the Goblin King in the cult fantasy classic Labyrinth introduced a younger generation to his otherworldly prowess. His 1986 starring role was bewitching, camp and devilish – and further proof how fearlessly he’d explore unexpected territories, even if it meant dancing in tight jodhpurs with Jim Henson critters.
Bowie is gone, but his 50 years of creative output ensures each of us has a customised version of him to hold to our hearts. Tailored by time and place, we’re each gifted with different go-to memories of the iconic performer. Perhaps it’s an Aladdin Sane poster worshipped like a deity on a ‘70s bedroom wall? A stolen kiss at a school dance soundtracked by Modern Love? The unnerving strains of The Hearts Filthy Lesson soundtracking the credits in David Fincher’s jaw-dropping film Se7en? The mention of Bowie’s name sparks different thoughts for all, but in each case he took us by the hand and moved us with his music, art or fashion.
We will never hear new David Bowie music in his lifetime, but his back catalogue lies like an attic chest filled with familial treasures. As we mourn together in this global wake, take this opportunity to absorb elements of Bowie’s rich musical archive you’ve perhaps never explored or given yourself time to absorb: his glorious harmonica work on Low’s instrumental A New Career In A New Town, the industrial paranoia of Bowie’s Trent Reznor collaboration I’m Afraid Of Americans or the honest beauty of 1980s soundtrack offering Absolute Beginners. Bowie’s earliest successes found him exploring outer space, but later glories directed the focus inwards. When he removed his psychedelic spacesuit, Bowie could just as effectively hypnotise us with subtler examinations of love, fear and mortality.
After chasing his muse across the globe and absorbing the strange anachronisms of Japan, Germany and even Australia (other stars might have had bigger budgets, but few ‘80s music clips match Let’s Dance’s wonders of a tanned, peroxided and gloved Bowie playing his guitar in the Aussie outback), the pop culture magpie alighted in New York to plan his final act. Like a grand illusionist’s closing trick that leaves his crowd gasping, spellbound and aching for more, Bowie faded from public view with grace and tact. Not even imminent death could stop him: Blackstar’s artful reflections on his own end proves a masterful final gift of sound and vision.
Astronomy has long told us a dying star ends in a black hole, but we perhaps never realised the death of our Starman would leave such a big fissure in our universe. There are millions of Joneses in the world. But there will only ever be one David Bowie.
-Scott McLennan for Cool Accidents/I Like Your Old Stuff
