Every devout music fan has a David Bowie ‘Eureka!’ moment. I knew of his work as a youngster, but my real discovery came via Nirvana.
I was a blossoming 12-year-old skater punk in November 1994, when the Seattle alt-rock band dropped their Unplugged album, featuring Kurt Cobain’s hair-raising cover of Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World.” It was downright revelatory. I was introduced to The Vaselines, Lead Belly, and the Meat Puppets, and reintroduced to a familiar man: David Bowie. My parents had played his biggest hits at home from time to time, but this was different. This was mysterious, dangerous, hip, magnetic, edgy. My pals and I investigated together, borrowing records from our older brothers and sisters, and rocking out, wide-eyed and mystified. It was a familiar ‘60s/’70s rock and roll sound, one we loved, but far more adventurous, and the into-the-unknown lyrics of space, love, and the infinite turned us on, big time. It felt like a true discovery. As I’d find over the next few decades, Bowie’s career was one of constant discovery, for both his fans and himself, of ever-evolving personas, images, fashions, and sounds. That constant flux came to an end Sunday, January 10, 2016, when Bowie lost an 18-month-long battle to liver cancer. His last effort, his 25th album Blackstar, was released just two days earlier on his 69th birthday.
LISTEN TO DAVID BOWIE’S BLACKSTAR IN PRIME MUSIC
Born David Jones on January 8, 1947 in London, the singer-songwriter would assume many identities over his 50-year-plus musical career. He started playing saxophone at age 13 and at 20 he entered the music business like many up-and-coming British rockers of the time: as an acoustic guitar-toting folky. In 1967, he released his self-titled debut, which failed to chart on either side of the Atlantic. But his next release, led by the No. 1 U.K. single “Space Oddity,” kick started a career that would only stop morphing with his death. A slew of hits and artistic peaks followed and helped define the ‘70s—“Starman,” “The Jean Genie,” “Life on Mars?,” “Rebel Rebel,” “Diamond Dogs,” “Young Americans,” “Fame,” “Golden Years,” “Sound and Vision,” “Heroes.” He also co-wrote and produced Mott the Hoople’s All the Young Dudes album, revived former Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed’s career with glam flair on Transformer, collaborated with John Lennon, and produced Iggy and the Stooges’ Raw Power before working on (and touring behind) Iggy Pop’s solo breakthrough albums The Idiot and Lust for Life.
In his first full decade as an artist, he transformed from a folk troubadour to an androgynous glam rock alien (Ziggy Stardust), a cocaine-obsessed future-funk explorer (The Thin White Duke), and a recovering arty in search of new sounds (Berlin albums Low, Heroes, Lodger). In the coming years, he’d work with Queen (“Under Pressure”), Chic mastermind Nile Rodgers, blues guitar legend Stevie Ray Vaughan, Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger, Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, indie rock royalty Arcade Fire, and dive head first, musically, personally, and visually, into new wave, hard rock, and techno sounds. Finally, with Blackstar, he’d work with a jazz quartet to explore a world of dark textures, cryptic songwriting, and eerie lyrics about humanity’s weaknesses.
Bowie was also an actor, and, in many ways, his acting and musical careers were one and the same. He first starred as Thomas Jerome Newton in 1976’s sci-fi flick The Man Who Fell to Earth. He played the lead in a 1980 theatrical production of The Elephant Man and a vampire in Tony Scott’s 1983 horror film The Hunger. He worked with the most-respected directors in the business, including Julien Temple (Absolute Beginners), Martin Scorsese (The Last Temptation of Christ), and David Lynch (Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me). He was Jareth the Goblin King in the musical Labyrinth, and played himself in Zoolander, the TV show Extras, and the Vanessa Hudgens film Bandslam. He even lent his voice to SpongeBob SquarePants. In his final months, Bowie co-wrote a surreal, off-Broadway sequel to The Man Who Fell to Earth, called Lazarus, that’s currently running in New York City, and he starred in a pair of music videos for Blackstar. In the video for the song “Lazarus,” Bowie is in a hospital bed with his eyes covered by a shroud. “Look up here, I’m in heaven,” he sings. “I have scars that can’t be seen / This way or no way / You know, I’ll be free / Just like that bluebird / Now ain’t that just like me?”
Blackstar was his final act—he was literally working against life’s clock to deliver a gorgeous swan song for us all. And it was quintessential Bowie, bowing to no one, always looking forward.
Tony Visconti, Bowie’s longtime producer who worked on Blackstar, posted a statement on his Facebook page: “[Bowie’s] death was no different from his life—a work of art,” he wrote. "He made Blackstar for us, his parting gift. I knew for a year this was the way it would be. I wasn’t, however, prepared for it. He was an extraordinary man, full of love and life. He will always be with us.”
Bowie’s music was highly visual, from the vivid stories in his songs to his flashy, gender-bending fashion statements and music videos. Fittingly, his music has appeared in many movies—Quentin Tarantino used “Cat People (Putting Out Fire)” in 2009’s Inglourious Basterds. John Hughes used “Young Americans” in Sixteen Candles and the lyrics to “Changes” as the epigraph to The Breakfast Club. David Lynch used Bowie songs in Lost Highway. Bowie’s music appeared in everything from Moulin Rouge to Starship Troopers. Wes Anderson based the entire soundtrack to 2004’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou around acoustic covers of Bowie’s late-‘60s and ‘70s hits all sung in Portuguese by Seu Jorge.
One of the most memorable Bowie movie moments is a scene from The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The 16-year-old protagonist Charlie, in love for the first time, stands in the bed of a pick-up truck as it speeds through a tunnel, the lights flickering in a blur as they accelerate to the sound of Bowie’s star-crossed anthem “Heroes.” “I, I will be king / And you, you will be queen,” Bowie howls. “Though nothing, will keep us together / We could steal time, just for one day / We can be heroes, forever and ever / What do you say?” Charlie lifts his arms, closes his eyes, and flies with the truck as the synths and throbbing groove rise.
“In this moment, I swear,” Charlie says in a voiceover, “we are infinite.”
Bowie’s life—his music, his art, his entire existence—was a masterclass demonstration of the infinite, of infinite possibility, infinite artistic choice, and infinite rebirths and beginnings. Don’t let his lesson pass you by.
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