Monday 11 January 2016

Aladdin Sane



I thought I was dreaming, or still liberally mixing dream into reality, when the radio came on this morning at 7:30 and announced that David Bowie was dead.  Wait, what?  I thought I must have been mishearing a review of his recently-released album Blackstar, or the career summary accompanying the announcement of some award he'd just got.  But, no.  Wow.

I've often thought of writing a Bowie post, but I've already written much of what little of interest I have to say about him in the posts Walking the Dead and  Being There.  Besides, Bowie's output has been of minimal interest to me since about 1977.  There have been many "Bowie" avatars since then, of course, but "my" Bowie(s) was/were the one(s) that released an unbroken string of outstanding albums from Hunky Dory (1971) to Heroes (1977).  Just seven years!  Of those albums, the first three – Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane – are the ones that enlivened those crucial dating-and-dancing years.  Even now, the first bars of "Rebel Rebel" or "Gene Genie" get me instantly up on my feet, before I remember who, what and how old I am, and the state of my knees and ankles, and quickly sit back down.  We used to call it "bopping", you know...

Era-defining "bopping" tracks aside (dum, dum, dum, da-da da-dum, dum, dum -- poor little greenie...), I do have a soft spot for neglected, thoughtful, and atmospheric masterpieces like "Bewlay Brothers", "Rock'n'Roll Suicide", and "Time", and the less-frequently played rockers like "Panic in Detroit", especially where he has avoided the temptation to ladle his dafter, more histrionic vocal mannerisms all over the cleverness of his lyrics.  No-one has put their stamp on the edgy, angsty glamour of the teenage Moonage Daydream like David Bowie.

I think it is true to say, however, that Bowie's originality, as such, can be overstated; he was a talented borrower and shaper of ideas and sounds from disparate sources.  He looked for inspiration in places few other popular artists would think to look -- William Burroughs, sci-fi, drag queens, mime, kabuki theatre, and so on -- with the consequence that ordinary kids like me and you might take a look there, too.  We might not like or understand what we found, but our horizons will have been broadened a little.  Although I think the jury is still out on whether the "gender-bending" of 1970s Glam Rock helped or hindered the causes of feminism and gay rights.

And, after all, simple originality is overrated.  At his best, what Bowie understood was how to make pop out of art, and not the other way round.  This is not what you'll hear in all the instant obituaries, but it's probably a far more significant achievement.  Nobody dances to Harrison Birtwistle.

7 comments:

amolitor said...

Yup.

Ziggy Stardust was very important to me one summer. Very very important. I still own a copy and play it every now and then. The bastard could write.

My favorite will anyways be the kitschy bit with Bing Crosby, though. Two lovely generous performers doing a thing. What else can you ask for?

Mike C. said...

I imagine you belong to the generation that, in Britain, saw "Starman" performed on BBC's "Top of the Tops" in 1972 aged around 12/13 and were at college during Bowie's post-"Berlin" phase. I think he "belongs" to that generation more properly -- I worked as a teaching assistant during my 1972 "gap year", and whereas for my generation there was always a certain irony about Bowie and his posturing, I could see a cultish devotion developing among my younger charges. Golden years...

*My* posturing idiot was Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, but that's another post...

Mike

Dave Leeke said...

As I've pointed out in my own post, Bowie had already started to try out his Ziggy persona five months earlier on Whistle Test. For some of us that TOTP performance wasn't quite as shocking as we had had time to catch our breath. But the cultural phenomenon of the media frenzy in the post-Bowie World is an interesting one.

I look forward to your Anderson post.

Dave

Mike C. said...

Dave,

Started posting again? About time. Sandie, ZD, et al. were huge "Ziggy Stardust" fans when it came out, but "Passion Play" had also just come out, and I had other fish to fry. I've always liked "Hunky Dory" a lot, though.

Mike

Dave Leeke said...

Ah, of course you and I went to see Jethro Tull performing "Passion Play" at Wembley. I never realised how far Wembley was from Stevenage by train in those days.

I love "Hunky Dory" it is now officially my favourite DB album.

Yep, started blogging again. Slammed my funk and realised I'm essentially just a lazy bastard. Expect plenty more poorly thought out opinion soon.

Dave

Mike C. said...

Was that where it was? I thought it was at the Rainbow, or maybe that was another gig -- I saw them a few times.

"Slammed my funk"?? That phrase doesn't occur even *once* on Google!

Mike

Dave Leeke said...

Ah . . . an interesting one. According to my well-thumbed Collins English Dictionary, funk means, in this case, "to avoid doing something through fear". However, for me the phrase came via the either the MM or the NME writing in the late 1970s about Richard Thompson's return to songwriting and recording after his mid-70s hiatus.

Then again, maybe I dreamt it all and it was all just a bad stilton cheese inspired dream. Just like Dali and "The Persistence of Memory".