Hearing the news of Bowie’s death made me go listen to Blackstar, which is excellent, his best work in I don’t know how long. His voice aged exquisitely well. So did his restless sonic adventurism: the man never settled in a style for very long. This particular one suits him.
Like many members of my age cohort, I first encountered Bowie in the movie Labyrinth. My sister, stepbrother and I were totally obsessed with it, and pretty much more out the VHS tape. I had no use for this part of the movie as a kid, but Babsy Singer drew my attention to the song as an adult. The 80s-tastic sound notwithstanding, it’s a beauty.
In high school, my nerd friends circulated a mixtape (on cassette! The eighties!) called Invisible Thread. It was made by one of the older and cooler members of the D&D tribe. The name referred to a line spoken by a teacher of ours: “Has anybody seen the invisible thread?” The tape introduced me to a lot of interesting things: Shriekback, for instance. It also included “Ashes To Ashes”, which at the time I didn’t like very much. It made me uncomfortable. I heard the odd Bowie song on the radio, too: “Ziggy Stardust” and “Rebel Rebel” and “Let’s Dance” and probably others. I knew “Space Oddity” just sort of by cultural osmosis.
It took me until young adulthood to really go deep into Bowie fandom. I started being able to hear the melodies and harmonies, to notice the production touches (mostly unconsciously.) Many of my friends were devoted to Bowie, especially the LGBT ones, but also the depressive weirdos. Bowie very much seemed to be one of us, except enormously more charismatic and self-assured.
I don’t know how Bowie felt about fan remixes, but this interview makes me suspect he would have been in favor.
“The way I see it, if you’re an inventor, you invent something that you hope people can use.”
–David Bowie pic.twitter.com/GM4FH3fByu— Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) January 11, 2016
The unaccompanied vocals from Ziggy Stardust are easy to find online, and I’ve taken a swing at several of them. Bowie’s voice is otherworldly by itself, and it sounds perfectly amazing through Auto-Tune and vocoder.
I’d bet that Bowie was delighted by the usage of “Heroes” in Moulin Rouge. The movie references “Diamond Dogs,” too, which I believe makes Bowie the only artist to appear twice.
I don’t know when Generation X collectively decided that Bowie was extremely cool, but I’m pretty sure it coincided with this:
I’m particularly impressed by Bowie’s handling of the black music that influenced him so much. His first few bands played straight blues, with one named directly for a Willie Dixon song. In general, Bowie treated black music with greater respect than anyone else in his generation of white rock stars. When he made his move into “plastic soul” in the seventies, it wasn’t painful or embarrassing. Quite the opposite; that’s my favorite of his material after Ziggy Stardust.
Bowie could do authentic soul because he didn’t just imitate or appropriate. He always had his own weird self front and center. This is why “Young Americans” and “Fame” sound great today, and not dated or racist. That’s probably also why Bowie got booked on Soul Train.
I follow a lot of black musicians, critics and fans on Twitter and Facebook. There’s been an outpouring of respect for Bowie from them today, particularly over things like this:
https://twitter.com/rembert/status/686577074149167104
The beginning of “Soul Love” is a tight enough breakbeat that J Dilla found it worthy of sampling. There’s no greater endorsement than that.
Rest in peace, David Robert Jones. Thanks for all the music.
See also: an in-depth look at “Space Oddity”