The news that David Bowie passed away at the age of 69, surrounded by his family and friends, filtered through on Monday morning. It sent the internet into meltdown and spawned warm tributes from his fans in London, New York and right across the world. It turned out he had been battling with cancer for eighteen months and his last futuristic, jazz-flecked album Blackstar, which was released only last week, was a fitting last word from the man who always did everything on his own terms. He had even written his final chapter, turning his own death into an artistic statement that will be pored over for years to come.
Born David Jones in Brixton in 1947, he emerged from the folk and mime artist scenes of the 1960s. Under the guise of David Bowie he first landed upon the mainstream gaze with his 1969 hit ‘Space Oddity’. There followed a career of trailblazing, genre-splicing and character studies, crucially every shift embraced by Bowie as he inhabited each new character and sound, each time helping us to understand an ever changing world. On the glorious ‘Life On Mars’ video his shock of red hair and pale-blue suit set the tone for the androgynous anti-hero Ziggy Stardust, a gender bending alien from Mars. And when he draped his hand across guitarist Mick Ronson‘s shoulder on Top Of The Pops during a performance of ‘Starman’ Bowie was for the first time seriously challenging 1970’s norms surrounding sexuality and gender. From the dystopic Aladdin Sane, the American dandy of Young Americans’, with its blue eye-d soul sound that then consumed him, to the Thin White Duke of Station to Station and the Berlin era Heroes, Low, and Lodger, David Bowie pushed the envelope of his sound, look and expression. The influence of Brian Eno upon Bowie’s work opened up doors on new worlds for everyone from the new Romantics to the post punks. It was (and still is) daring, adventurous and endlessly shifting: Bowie’s output in the 1970s was perhaps the most remarkable creative run in musical history.
1980’s Scary Monsters would see him once again riding the zeitgeist in the memorable ‘Ashes to Ashes’ video that featured Visage’s Steve Strange amongst its extras. Then came the commercial reawakening of the Let’s Dance era that saw Bowie harnessing the disco-pop sound of Nile Rodgers and fashioning it in his own image. Whilst his work was to become patchier and more sporadic throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with musical styles, including industrial and jungle.
A multi media post-modern artist with an almost attention deficit disorder approach to creativity, his acting roles ranged from the sublime (The Man Who Fell to Earth) to the ridiculous (Labyrinth) he was also a painter, a writer, a fashion icon, a wit, a man with a seemingly never ageing face full of sharp, artful angles and a cackling mouth full of teeth.
Since his death there have been tributes from everyone including Madonna, Marc Almond, Billy Bragg, Duran Duran, Brian Eno, Alison Moyet, Kanye West and every person that was inspired by his unique artistry. Perhaps it is all a recognition that Bowie was a true original, an utter genius? Fashion, culture and music was never the same again once he’d manipulated it; there was music and culture before Bowie and then after Bowie and they were two very different worlds. Having touched the lives of people for over fifty years, he was a beacon for outsiders everywhere. In death, he will continue to be so. Suffice to say David Bowie isn’t just one of the most influential musicians ever, he was one of the most visionary artists of his age. Here some of our writers each offer their most memorable David Bowie song as a meagre tribute to an unforgettable artist. Here’s to you David, the stars do look very different today.
Bill Cummings
James Marriott: ‘Letter To Hermione’
I came across this song very late, around three years ago. I was sat in my Dad’s car waiting for him and the radio was unexpectedly bursting with songs I hadn’t heard before but which I felt like I’d always known. For that hour or so, it felt like I was six years old again, soaking in new experiences, but better, because the waiting didn’t feel so long. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard this song before. Why wasn’t it part of the accepted canon of Bowie classics I’d grown up with? Yet somehow in the melody, Bowie’s tearful singing and the self-disgust with which he spits “by mistake” lay a nostalgic rush. In 1976, Tony Visconti arrived at the Low sessions with a machine that ‘fucks with the fabric of time’. In 2015, all of Bowie’s music does that.
Bill Cummings: ‘Life on Mars’
I heard the news today, oh boy… I first heard David Bowie through my Mum; she saw Ziggy, she had Hunky Dory on vinyl. That album stunned me as an eleven year old; the scope, the vision and the grandeur of the songwriting. That albums dramatic centrepiece the glorious string-led, almost music hall of ‘Life on Mars’ is an expansively vast song that offered a window to another world. It still ranks up there as one of my favourites. While the hippyish, long-haired look Bowie adopted on the cover artwork was somehow otherworldly, magical and different to young eyes, Hunky Dory was his dramatic, playful and revelatory precursor to the Ziggy album and that for me it possess some of his best songwriting.
He spoke to me as someone with a restless creative spirit; a veracious consumer of influences; a towering ever evolving artist and a sheer artistic inspiration. But most of all proof to me that outsiders like myself, could not only have a place in this universe but also shape it.
Simon Godley: ‘Quicksand’
Seeing him play at Leeds Town & Country in August 1997 on the Earthling tour it seemed entirely apposite that when he came on stage, in a diaphanous white shirt, strumming an acoustic guitar and singing the opening lines to ‘Quicksand’, he floated into our presence like some extra-terrestrial being. He did not appear to be of this world. Now that he is no longer of this world, this is something that is so much harder to accept. Such is the pleasure and meaning that David Bowie brought to my life his death is utterly disbelieving.
Liam Whear: ‘Rebel Rebel’
It basically told all the freak kids out there that you’re gonna be alright. You’re a human being. Celebrate yourself.
Lyle Bignon: ‘Sound and Vision’
By the time I first heard this song in the mid-Eighties as a wide-eyed young pop fan I’d already been exposed to the eclecticism of Ziggy Stardust, Young Americans, Station to Station, Heroes and Let’s Dance, so Bowie doing swinging jangly pop on ‘Sound and Vision’ came as no surprise.
But there was something about the bass and pounding snare on the number, combined with that rhythm and lead guitar, that really grabbed my attention. Bowie’s voice and words seemed to speak of a new era of music ahead, yet Mary Hopkins‘ backing vocals recalled something of the glamour of late Sixties R&B.
The Thin White Duke’s part in the record beyond writing it is pure magic; laying down his voice 45 seconds into the three minute song (reportedly after the musicians had left the studio) makes us wait, and wait, for Bowie’s ‘ultimate retreat song’ to come alive.
That one man can have such a profound effect on the human race through his art is truly awe-inspiring. To you David.
Alisha Ahmed: ‘Modern Love’
Let’s Dance was released the same year I was born and this song has remained one of my favourite ever since. Ethereal and ageless as he’s always appeared to me today immortality seems less charming when you see the people who defined your concept of the world departing it… but some would say he’s not gone, he just returned to his planet… So Godspeed you Starman!
Charlie Darling: ‘Beauty and the Beast‘
Despite Bowie’s vast catalogue of songs, styles, moods and feelings this track always comes back to me as my favourite. For no reason, no hidden logic, no deep meaning or philosophy. I just like it.
Andrew Morrison: ‘Let’s Dance’
Just a unique artist in terms of body of work. I’ll say ‘Let’s Dance’ – for that is the track I immediately played when I was woken up to be told of his death. Because it pulls together his artistic side but, ya know, has an incredible meld with essentially a Chic record at the same time. Sure, it has the worst aspects of Studio 54 culture and coke written all over it but…that groove….that riff…and that sweat….and that beautiful man. Caps to you, David xx
Andy Page: ‘Boys Keep Swinging’
I will pick ‘Boys Keep Swinging’ – aged nine, this was the first time a Bowie record had really entered my consciousness. I was knocked sideways and had to buy it, I had never heard anything like it before. I played it over and over – I had no idea really what it was all about but loved it all he same.
Jonathan Wright: ‘Joe the Lion’
I was given a tape of Ziggy Stardust by my uncle when I was about eight. I didn’t play it a lot at first. A few years later my much cooler older brother bought ‘Heroes’. This is when my Bowie obsession began. I’d known a decent amount of his hits for years, but it was hearing songs like ‘Blackout’, ‘The Secret Life of Arabia’ and especially ‘Joe the Lion’ that really excited me. They sounded like nothing I’d ever heard. This was in 1999, I can only imagine what these thrilling songs must have sounded like back in the 70s. It was great to find that every album of his I bought the following year were filled with many more of these thrilling and unique moments.
Aidan James Stevens: ‘Warzawa’
As a musician who has always been influenced by David, it seems silly that I spent my early career as a timid people-pleaser, creating what I thought everyone wanted.
What I truly wanted to do was right under my nose the whole time. Low taught me to create music for myself, first and foremost – to approach art and music with reckless abandon.
One evening, I came home to my wife excitedly thrusting an original pressing of Low in my face, and we put it on straight away. I instantly realised what I’d been missing – and what I truly wanted to do with my life – but it was hearing the paradoxically glorious and theatrically dark ‘Warzawa’ at that moment that taught me my maxim:
Be bleak. Be beautiful. Be difficult. Don’t ever be boring. I’ve been a much happier and more fulfilled person since. Thank you, David – for everything.
Phil Thetremoloking: ‘Heroes’
I first heard this song as a scared, confused, angry, lonely teenager feeling stifled by growing up in a small college town in Belgium. I was hooked right away from the opening chord. The majestically pulsing synths and wailing guitars, the robotic beat and Bowie’s gut wrenching vocals took me to another place every time. That one song did a lot in helping me realize there was more to life than the closed doors I saw all around me. Only years later, when I visited West Berlin and saw the Berlin Wall which at that time was still standing did I fully grasp the lyrics. The song was recorded at Hansa Ton studios which overlooked the Wall.
“I…I can remember…standing by the wall…The guns over our heads…and we kissed …as though nothing could fall”
Still one of my favourite songs of all time.
Ben P Scott: Station to Station
Bowie was the artist who played the most influential role in my early musical life. The moment I truly got into his music was the moment that I knew that music was always going to be my favourite thing from then on. Songs of such overwhelming power that they changed the way I heard music. I was about about 8 years old when I first discovered his music in about 1993, and about two years later I found a cassette copy of ‘Station To Station’ at HMV in Bristol. The opening title track is an extraordinary mini-opus that takes the ears on a journey, a paranoid multi-part groove powered by an extraordinary sense of motion, and one of the most infectious things I have ever heard. Despite being only six tracks long, ‘Station To Station’ is a masterpiece and that’s a fact.
Pick any of the albums at random and it’s very much like a lucky dip. Will you be listening to art rock, glam, industrial, metal, folk, funk or even jungle? You could find yourself anywhere. The same cannot be said for any other popular musician. Repeating the past would have felt like going back to square one, a waste of the progress made since. The present was always where he was, so why would he want to make it a wasted journey? And despite so many landmark records, not one albums even comes close to truly DEFINING Bowie, the otherworldly polymath who could never be pinned down.
The greatest artist of all time? Without a shadow of a doubt. Some people call Elvis the king of rock n roll. Some call Michael Jackson the king of pop. Bowie was the king of everything and always will be. Without him I wouldn’t be the person I am today. David Robert Jones, we salute you.
Tim Russell: ‘Lazarus’
A friend of mine today compared Blackstar to Johnny Cash bowing out with ‘Hurt’, but Bowie’s last album doesn’t make me feel I’m being manipulated the way IV did. This isn’t a dying man being wheeled up to the mic so he can falteringly croon ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ – it’s a man frantically trying to make up for lost time and create more art while he still can, to make sure we remember him as a creative force rather than as a legacy artist.
‘Lazarus‘ is one last incredible stab at greatness, an effortlessly easy entry into the Bowie canon, accompanied by a video which told us two weeks ago what we only learned this morning – that Bowie was dying. “Look up here, I’m in heaven…I’m so high it makes my brain whirl”, floating in the sky on a morphine haze, nearly 50 years after Major Tom. Hearing it now, and watching him retreat into the wardrobe at the end of the video, is devastating.
RIP David. Without you, much of the music I love today simply wouldn’t exist.
