News of the demise of David Bowie started this week off with a big dollop of shite. People questioned the news by going back to bed and trying to wake up properly to the usual news of Trump saying something stupid and death in the Middle East. Sure enough the Saudi-led coalition hit a hospital in Yemen during an airstrike killing 4 but none of that mattered on Monday.
Bowie was a tall skinny English bi-sexual chain smoking alien but he made great music that has touched several generations, somehow he could sing a duet with Bing Crosby or Mick Jagger and still be cool.
His early work was his best, then he made a come back in the 80's and after that well it was decent music though no longer ground breaking or iconic but had a consistency that it didn't suck. He died after the release of his last album Blackstar which will be a massive hit just because he's dead. It's already being touted as a poignant final message and a parting gift to the fans. Would the track Lazarus get any attention had he not died? Probably not, I don't know what his album before that or the one before that was.
Nirvana covered his Man that sold the world song so that right there should tell you how cool he was considered to be, he did have genius and talent.
The Rolling stones and The Who had their moments but lacked Bowie's cool and didn't age well for teenage rebels. Mick Jagger in neon spandex prancing around and Roger Daltrey with his boring trout fishing.
The Beatles sound dated and middle of the road compared to Bowie, it's difficult to pin down what it was that he had.
Well hung, snow white tan.
His best songs were catchy and intelligent, even if you didn't know all of the werds you could still sing something, "don't let me hear you say life's taking you no where ... angel" Always singing the angel part in a high pitched voice of course.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes .... We could be heroes, just for one day .... Ha ha ha, hee hee hee, I'm a laughing Gnome and you can't catch me.
Like most singers, he certainly won't be remembered for his acting abilities though labyrinth remains the favourite of many. It was camp and not serious at all and even though it made underage teenage sex/rape kinda appealing it wasn't in a creepy Roman Polanski or Woody Allen way .... yeah, um one for all the family.
Movie stars, singers, writers .... people who have always been in your life drop like flies as you get older, it's like a part of your own life going when they lose their lives. Do they know the impact they have on people?
Are they all "whatever, I got well paid for dying as Han Solo, it's just a character in a movie people" or do they actually care that the space smuggler who shot first was yer childhood hero? ... Ach Star Trek was still better.
Maybe they were a part of your childhood or early adolescence and now they are gone. Like those friends and relatives you hardly ever visit, you like them and are comforted by the fact they are alive and in the world but life always gets in the way of saying hello, then you read the news or get an e-mail and it's too late.
I'm afraid of Americans, I'm afraid of the werld.
Bowie always looked like a skinny dying fucker, who could have guessed that he really was dying? 69 years old young he lasted longer than some. Cancer is a predator, it even got pot head Bob Marley, so much for natural cures, no one is safe from it. When chain smokers like Bowie, Nimoy or Lemmy get it you may go "meh" and shrug though Nimoy had quite decades ago.
Bowie aged well and always had style, you wouldn't catch him in a pair of sweats, short shorts maybe but not sweats.
He was never like anyone else and there will probably never be anyone else like him ever again.
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