I found this post very hard to write; I'm not sure I've done it justice. I don't think I realised before last Monday how much I would care when Bowie died. I definitely didn't imagine I would ever lay flowers at his mural, but I did. In a way, it's no surprise, I was obsessed by Bowie in my teens - he accounted for about half of all the CDs I owned at one point - to put this into context, I owned sixteen of his albums before a single one by Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones. I adored him, and this was despite my teens coinciding with his prolonged creative slump and his ill starred foray into drum and bass. But I spent more of the 2000s excavating the roots of pop music than delving into modern experimentation, listening to people who grew up with Johnny Cash, not those who listened to Bowie. But when he died, I realised I remembered every album in far greater detail than almost anything else I've ever listened to.
I don't think I'm alone in that. I've read a lot of of the appreciation, and the analyses of how important he was and why. I note that you'd be a lot better off if you started reading about Wednesday because the first few days had some dodgy analysis in, by some people who clearly hadn't listened to everything recently either.
There were pieces banging on about the 'Berlin trilogy' which only namechecked tracks from 1972-4 (As an aside, I find the term Berlin 'trilogy' lazy and inaccurate. Lodger has very little in common with the other two). But I'd also note that the devotees of Bowie didn't talk too much about all the the weirder, more experimental music they then listened to, but rather how much he inspired other acts, almost all of whom were closer to the mainstream than he. That's no bad thing. While the coverage repeatedly praised his uniqueness as an artist, they also point to the unique role in Britain we've accorded him. He was our accepted window onto the weird stuff; the acceptable face of the avant-garde.
Now no-one starts there, and the vision, brilliance and bravery to aim for that and deliver is extraordinary. Given the volume of the tributes, I don't have to do any detail here. I did like
this by Dylan Jones (see the end) and I thought the Economist was typically judicious in a
rare two page obit about where the real value is (I've mentioned this
before). They had a
lovely graphic as well. Even the inevitable from Fact to Fiction was mediocre, rather than typically terrible. It is also definitely worth listening to Mitch Benn's the
Fat Pink Duke which we've repeated from last year. We should luxuriate in this level of coverage; we will only get this again when Dylan dies. None of it really explains why I loved him. For some, his being an outsider crashing into the mainstream made all the difference. I am obviously not an outsider, but I am very grateful that he brought the esoteric to pop and kept it there. I am very much in favour of the esoteric.
Most people aren't, which is why Bowie was so important - transgressive, inventive, endlessly curious. There is no comparable artist that took such a range of odd, weird interests and obsessions, made them central to their output, sold in the millions, and then changed everything because they got bored. There are plenty of odd people with strange interests. They tend not to be pop stars. They certainly aren't very successful pop stars. That's a testament to his artistic ambition, but it's also a testament to his charisma: that magnetic, shape-shifting personality and wonderful cleverness that remains on view throughout. And I think that's an essential component, because while the restlessness that made him search out ever more obscure new genres makes him fascinating to follow, it does make him exhausting. And no-one can possibly like it all. When I was first discovering Bowie (early 1970s version), he released
Earthlings, which, although on a re-listen is nowhere near as unpleasant as I remember, is never going to be the genre for me. A friend of mine told me it was the only Bowie album he'd ever thought was any good. All pop frontmen are charismatic, but few if any attempt to get over that hurdle of proving yourself again every time. He was an exceptional man.
And he leaves a body of work that is genuinely special, affecting and wonderful. Others can and have said much about the fashion and the theatre and the rest, but the quality of the music is what everything rests on. After he died, I listened to everything (except Tin Machine - I've always been scared to listen to Tin Machine). Some of them I haven't listened to for a long time. Some were really bad, and there is no disguising that everything after
Let's Dance just isn't as good as what preceded it - soberingly too, I realise now I am already older than Bowie was when that was released. But the volume and pace of output through the 1970s is still bewilderingly brilliant. For me, though
Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust and
Station to Station remain the obvious pinnacle, there is so much scattered around the rest in almost all his albums that it's a hopeless task to gather up the pieces. Better instead just to listen to them, and be very grateful that you can.
In the end, I think I loved him because I couldn't believe he existed. There is no way anyone would imagine that mix of cleverness, art and weirdness being transmuted into the music he made. I won't see his like again and I will miss him terribly; we all should.
