David Bowie: Starman
By Paul Trynka
The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and the 1970s
By Peter Doggett
Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties
By Ian MacDonald
On Bowie
By Rob Sheffield
Recently, several of my friends have shared a meme on social media that asks the question, "What if David Bowie was all that was holding the universe together?" Bowie died on Jan. 10, 2016, two days after his 69th birthday and two days after releasing the album "Blackstar," which we now know was meant as his farewell. The rest of the year has been chaotic in many ways, with terrorist attacks, looming fascism and international discord in the news. Frightened, we turn to music, only to find the music world deep in grief, first over Bowie, then Prince, and on and on.
 |
| One of Prince's "Purple Rain" outfits, at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul. |
As Peter Doggett tells it in "The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and the 1970s," a pessimistic streak runs through Bowie's work of that decade, and that dark viewpoint was part of what made his work so meaningful, especially during that decade.
Doggett points out that the moon landing of 1969 was the decade's last great moment of optimism. Bowie saw it coming and responded by writing "Space Oddity," a song about an astronaut who, basically, commits suicide. He released it shortly before the moon landing that summer, but some critics (including his producer and friend Tony Visconti) thought at the time that it was too gimmicky. Bowie's American record company apparently didn't release it to radio because executives feared that if anything went wrong with the lunar mission, the song would appear to be in very bad taste.
Doggett's book is modeled on Ian MacDonald's "Revolution in the Head," a somewhat notorious book that takes a song-by-song approach to the Beatles' recorded output, tying in the musicology of the songs with the history of the band and the times they were living in -- and wrapping it all up with the sensibility of an ornery critic. (He hated "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," among other beloved Beatles classics.) Doggett attempts much the same thing, with lots of talk about chord changes and allusions in the lyrics, but less crankiness. I enjoyed both books, but I couldn't read MacDonald's all the way through. By contrast, Doggett's book is surprisingly fun, especially considering his theme of pessimism and doom. I read it cover to cover.
Manish Boy, Fan Boy
In his biography, "David Bowie: Starman," Paul Trynka avoids concentrating on the pessimism. Instead, he has two major themes as he follows Bowie's life up to about 2011. First, he sees the younger Bowie as a man-child, winning people over with his boyish charm and his youthful ability to learn from everything he reads and steal ideas from every interesting person he meets. In the second half of the book, Trynka concentrates more on another aspect of Bowie's persona: He was an unapologetic fan, a Sweet Jane whose life was saved by rock 'n' roll.
As much as he could represent detachment and cool, Bowie was a total geek for the artists he loved. Trynka, who wrote the Iggy Pop bio I wrote about in my blog posts about the song "China Girl," shows that when Bowie found artists he liked, he covered their songs, he wrote songs for them, he talked them up in interviews, he went to their shows, he produced their records, he pulled them out of insane asylums and brought them with him to Berlin. (OK, that last one only applies to Iggy.) This geekiness -- caring a little too much about some new obsession -- made Bowie fit in perfectly with the pop culture of the 21st century, even after he stopped touring, stopped sitting for interviews and took a nearly 10-year break from releasing albums. Geekiness is the hallmark of the Internet age. The Man Who Fell to Earth was just like us.
As much as he could represent detachment and cool, Bowie was a total geek for the artists he loved. Trynka, who wrote the Iggy Pop bio I wrote about in my blog posts about the song "China Girl," shows that when Bowie found artists he liked, he covered their songs, he wrote songs for them, he talked them up in interviews, he went to their shows, he produced their records, he pulled them out of insane asylums and brought them with him to Berlin. (OK, that last one only applies to Iggy.) This geekiness -- caring a little too much about some new obsession -- made Bowie fit in perfectly with the pop culture of the 21st century, even after he stopped touring, stopped sitting for interviews and took a nearly 10-year break from releasing albums. Geekiness is the hallmark of the Internet age. The Man Who Fell to Earth was just like us.
All The Young Dudes
Rob Sheffield's "On Bowie" doesn't have any grand unifying theory of Bowieness. Rather than trying to understand who David Jones/David Bowie was and what made him tick as a person, Sheffield is interested in what Bowie, the rock star, meant to us, as fans. Or more specifically: what made Bowie interesting to Sheffield, as a fan.
Fortunately, Sheffield is a wildly entertaining and insightful writer. The author of "Love is a Mixed Tape," which told a very personal story of love, grief and music, Sheffield begins with describing how he found out about Bowie's death, moves onto talking about how Bowie's death affected the fans, and then gives a historical and critical assessment of Bowie's recorded work. I happened to read this just after finishing Trynka's book, which meant the outline was familiar, but I enjoyed Sheffield's more personal take. He's particularly good when discussing how, after a long time in the doldrums, Bowie's music started improving after he had married Iman and stopped trying to reclaim his place in the zeitgeist. Sheffield could be just the writer I needed to help me process my love of Bowie and my grief over his loss.
There was another quote going around on social media after Bowie's death. This one said, "Thinking about how we mourn artists we never met. We don't cry because we knew them, we cry because they helped us know ourselves." Yes, "Five Years" opens "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and Spiders from Mars," with a story of looming apocalypse, and it ends with a song called "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide." But what's most important about those songs is that people go out on the street and cry together in the first song and in the last one, Bowie/Ziggy sings/screams, "You're not alone! Gimme your hands, 'cause you're wonderful!"
There was another quote going around on social media after Bowie's death. This one said, "Thinking about how we mourn artists we never met. We don't cry because we knew them, we cry because they helped us know ourselves." Yes, "Five Years" opens "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and Spiders from Mars," with a story of looming apocalypse, and it ends with a song called "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide." But what's most important about those songs is that people go out on the street and cry together in the first song and in the last one, Bowie/Ziggy sings/screams, "You're not alone! Gimme your hands, 'cause you're wonderful!"
No comments:
Post a Comment