Yesterday I had to travel about Fife and the Edinburgh area.
In St Andrews I spotted British Legion poppies (the small ones made of metal; presumably manufactured for those who think that the normal paper ones do not sufficiently show off their “patriotism” or generosity – but I call it their ostentation) at a checkout in the “M&S Food” there.
Later in a supermarket in North Queensferry, on the way home from a dinner at my eldest son’s, just inside the door was a stack of tins (well, nowadays they’re “plastics”) of Roses, Quality Street, Celebrations and Heroes.
Christmas has long since started in August – that was always when annuals were published – but Remembrance Day? They’re still beating the drums at the Edinburgh Tattoo for goodness’s sake.
The one name suffices. In modern times you could not be referring to anyone else.
There was (sadly that tense is now appropriate) only one Bowie: David.
For many the iconic moment of their lives was Bowie placing a carefree, languid, unthinking arm round Mick Ronson’s neck on that Top of the Pops appearance while promoting Starman and thereby validating sexualities beyond that of the straight and cis.
Bowie’s first brush with the charts came with Space Oddity in 1969, regarded at the time as a bit of a novelty record, though it wasn’t his last song to tangle with SF imagery.
He hit his stride with the Hunky Dory album in 1971 – on which nearly every track is a belter – though no hits were to come from that source till Life on Mars? was released as a single in 1973. This was of course after the breakthrough, the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars in 1972 and that hit with Starman. I would argue that Hunky Dory is the greater achievement. From Ziggy onwards Bowie seemed to be commercialising his talent. The string of hits that followed on from the Ziggy album, through his Aladdin Sane persona, up to Diamond Dogs perhaps bore that out.
He lost me with Young Americans, though. I’ve never been into that sort of music. There were stonkers still to come of course, when he’d changed his style a few more times, Heroes, Ashes to Ashes, Let’s Dance, China Girl, but it is the early stuff I’ll remember him for.
This is The Bewlay Brothers, from Hunky Dory of course.
David Bowie: The Bewlay Brothers
“Man is an obstacle, sad as the clown. (Oh, by jingo.)
So hold on to nothing and he won’t let you down.”
David Bowie: After All (from The Man Who Sold the World)
“I borrowed your time and I’m sorry I called.”
David, we’re not sorry you called.
David Robert Jones (“David Bowie”) 8/1/1947 – 10/1/2016. So it goes.
