David Bowie

It must sometimes look like an arbitrary list of those awarded an obituary on this website but I generally know straightaway who qualifies and who doesn't. As word spread round the office early this morning that David Bowie had died, it was like those famous JFK stories about where you were when you heard, or Winston Churchill, or more latterly, John Lennon, Diana Spencer or Michael Jackson. For a moment there was the suspicion that it was one of those 'Paul McCartney is Dead' stories and I understand that news sources were checking it to make sure it wasn't but David Bowie was immediately someone I knew I had to say something about even if the internet will already be awash with so many others saying their piece.
For many of those of us who became teenagers early in the 1970's, Bowie was as significant as The Beatles. I had Beatles wallpaper in my bedroom in Nottingham until we left in 1967 but I wasn't even 4 when She Loves You was number 1 and so not in a position to quite appreciate The Beatles as they happened but from Hunky Dory, through Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs to at least Station to Station, he made a set of albums as good as anybody's comparable list and I was there by then.
Credited with a 'chameleon'-like talent to re-invent himself, he was really a borrower who took and re-used the styles of others to make his own, from Anthony Newley, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, German avant garde, soul and eventually leaving it to Brett Anderson and Suede to make more Bowie albums while Bowie made drum'n'bass records. One might have loved Marc Bolan more but you had to admire Bowie. Whether as Ziggy Stardust, The Dame, The Thin White Duke or a member of the ill-advised Tin Machine, he was always self-consciously Major Tom, Aladdin Sane, a Cracked Actor or something other. It was art and the world of Andy Warhol brought flamboyantly into the hit parade.
1975 looks in retrospect like a pop music desert after the passing of glam rock and before the Sex Pistols but while Led Zeppelin were making their ludicrous film, The Song Remains the Same (it's easy to say so now), and pop music was in such doldrums that I had absented myself to a diet of Beethoven, Shostakovich and Faust, Bowie was making Station to Station, which I will suggest is the real masterpiece above them all, that includes the original of the attached  Wild is the Wind.
Many stories will be heard over and again over the next few days, not least the memorable TOTP performance of Starman, some regrettable utterances about fascism and the 'homo superior' but I will remember Changes as Tony Blackburn's Record of the Week on the Breakfast Show which, now I check the Guinness Book of Hit Singles, I find failed to make the Top 40; I didn't understand a concert review in Sounds that said that Bowie had 'camped out on stage' (I pictured him sitting outside a tent) and, before I was corrected by some who knew better I thought Station to Station said,
It's not the side effects of her cooking,
I'm thinking that it must be love.

when, of course, now we all know it was not 'the side effects of the cocaine'.
Rebel Rebel remains an irresistible favourite alongside Drive-In Saturday, the futuristic vision of humanity having to re-learn how to 'make love' by watching old films,
His name was always Buddy
and he'd shrug and ask to stay
and she'd sigh like Twig the Wonder Kid 
and turn her face away.

I want to quote Panic in Detroit, Rock 'n' Roll Suicide, and so many others, like Heroes, Suffragette City, the Lou Reed tribute Queen Bitch, Life On Mars, because there were so many things of such cleverness, the most astute arbiter of that elusive quality that some call 'cool', whatever that was. And like any genius, I dare say he could be naff at times. But so could the Beatles.
Quite brilliantly, it didn't mean much but it meant everything. I was never enough of a devoted fan at the time but he was a part of all of it and just about the most essential figure in pop music for those of us lucky enough to be the right age to know as much. He wouldn't have got away with it now but in amongst Alice Cooper, T.Rex, Roxy Music, the New York Dolls, Kiss and all, he really didn't seem that unusual, just better than most. I'm not even sure he was a trendsetter of any kind, but he was clever enough to make it look as if he was leading the way.
In a week when we lost Lemmy, only really notable in my book for singing on Silver Machine, and Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart, a childhood stalwart from Junior Choice and Crackerjack, I'm sad that those significant names are so completely overshadowed by David Bowie who made such a vast contribution to the soundtrack of our lives. He even made it possible for Queen to make a good record.
I'm a bit more stunned now, having written this, than the disbelief I felt this morning when I thought I must have misheard what was being said.