It is funny, but I seem to really fully embrace artists when they are at their core fans’ & critic’s low ebb: Beatles- White Album, Rolling Stones- Some Girls, U2- Achtung Baby, REM- Automatic For The People. I have listened to & collected David Bowie since 1969 with the release of Space Oddity (a song I still listen to). That is 40+ years of living with David Bowie in his many incarnations & personas. But, my favorite era for David Bowie was not Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke, Alladin Sane, or the Brian Eno lean years of Low. I love David Bowie of the Let’s Dance era of the mid-1980s. That album, along with Tonight was the soundtrack of the very best time of my life. Modern Love, Let’s Dance, China Girl… songs that mixed blue-eyed soul with an Industrial edge & pop sensibilities. I thought David was in his best voice & his sexiest during this time.
David Bowie was born David Robert Jones on January 8, 1947 in Brixton, London, & went by Davie Jones until someone else with that name became famous & he told his manager that- “I am not going to be anyone’s Monkee. Bowie has contributed 5 decades of popular music & has frequently reinvented his music & image. He is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. He has been cited as an influence by many musicians & is known for his distinctive voice & the intellectual depth of his work.
How much fun would it be to have Elizabeth Taylor & David Bowie over for cocktails?
As a multi-instrumentalist, he is famous for playing the guitar, piano & saxophone; but also plays the harmonica, drums, cello, marimba, bass guitar, koto, & stylophone. He rose to fame with the heady 1969 folk rock single Space Oddity & moved on to become a glam rock icon with the album The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars (1972). Subsequent albums have explored blue-eyed soul, electronica & new wave, often pre-dating these genres’ popularity or even the point at which they were defined as genres. Bowie is one of the most influential rock musicians from the 1970s to the present. He has sold an estimated 136 million albums in his career & has been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Bowie has enjoyed success as a painter, web-designer, sculptor, Broadway- actor starring in The Elephant Man, & movie actor starring in many films including Labyrinth, Basquiat, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, The Hunger, The Prestige & Zoolander.
On September 11, 1977, David Bowie appeared alongside Bing Crosby for the filming of Crosby’s annual Christmas special, shortly before Crosby’s death. Their duet of Little Drummer Boy proved to be one of the most influential moments of music history as the 2 singers bridged the generations with a single song.
“Interesting…. On announcing that I am bisexual, I don’t think it was a mistake in Europe, but it was a lot tougher in America. I had no problem with people knowing I was bisexual. But I had no inclination to hold any banners or be a representative of any group of people. I knew what I wanted to be, which was a songwriter & a performer, & I felt that bisexuality became my headline over here for so long. America is a very puritanical place, & I think it stood in the way of so much I wanted to do.”
Footnote: David Bowie’s son- Duncan Jones diected one of the best films of 2009- Moon.
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