David Bowie R.I.P

He's only got a 12-year start on Madonna, surely? 69 vs 57, 1970 vs 1983

photograph of Little Richard in a red suit getting into a bright red Cadillac

I want to see this picture.

not sure about today, but in the 80s, prince and madonna were the obvious heirs IMO.

prince more so than madonna IMO (charles shaar murray seemed to think so).

Listening to Song For Bob Dylan and getting chills all over hearing it as a narrative for Bowie's own, cosmic "retreat."

He recognizes a certain valor/heroism in that "dead" poet's self-invention and holds this quality in the highest esteem, credits it for deranging perspectives and terrifying the norms.

Obv. DB himself was already at it by then and embarking on his own, dramatized version of that trip, only more calibrated, more generous....and now nearly a half-century later, subbing in [David Jones] and [alias of choice] we're right there again.....

Oh, hear this Robert Zimmerman
I wrote a song for you
About a strange young man
called Dylan
With a voice like sand and glue
His words of truthful vengeance
They could pin us to the floor
Brought a few more people on
And put the fear in a whole lot more

Ah, Here she comes
Here she comes
Here she comes again
The same old painted lady
From the brow of a superbrain
She'll scratch this world to pieces
As she comes on like a friend
But a couple of songs
From your old scrapbook
Could send her home again

You gave your heart to every bedsit room
At least a picture on my wall
And you sat behind a million pair of eyes
And told them how they saw
Then we lost your train of thought
The paintings are all your own
While troubles are rising
We'd rather be scared
Together than alone

Ah, Here she comes...[etc.]

Now hear this Robert Zimmerman
Though I don't suppose we'll meet
Ask your good friend Dylan
If he'd gaze a while
down the old street
Tell him we've lost his poems
So they're writing on the walls
Give us back our unity
Give us back our family
You're every nation's refugee
Don't leave us with their sanity

Ah, Here she comes....[etc.]

don't feel like you need to give this attention, but this is the stupidest thing i've read yet:

http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2016/01/11/david-bowie-as-the-right-wing-artist/

"he had a flirtation with fascism but people still liked him!"

BOWIE: I really wanted Norman Rockwell to do an album cover for me. Still do. I originally wanted him for the cover of Young Americans. I got his phone number and called him up. Very quaint. His wife answered and I said, “Hello, this is David Bowie,” and so on. I asked if he could paint the cover. His wife said in this quavering, elderly voice, “I’m sorry, but Norman needs at least six months for his portraits.” So I had to pass, but I thought the experience was lovely. What a craftsman.

How familiar was "The Man Who Sold the World" when Nirvana covered it? I figured it took real crate digging for Cobain to own its host album. It wasn't even a hit in America.

I learned about it through the Sound and Vision box on release in 1989, which had the salutory effect of making a whole lot of his seventies work, famous or deep cuts, seem like they were on an equal level. So there's that. But there's another less-remarked link: Richard Barone covered the song in 1987 on his live album Cool Blue Halo, more pointedly with a prominent cello part from Jane Scarpantoni. Yesterday I dug up my copy of Barone's autobiography Frontman -- great read in general BTW -- because I remembered a particular anecdote:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYfvLxRUMAAdDdI.jpg:large

A friend added on FB: "My brother and I saw Richard Barone play "The Man Who Sold The World" at The Backstage (now an upscale homewares store) in Seattle in 1990." So he wasn't blowing smoke in his book -- it seems to have been just enough of a local hit to trickle down that way.

I don't see Bjork as heir or anything to Bowie at all.

OTM.

on the few occasions where I'd meet somebody with no opinion about Bowie, it would seem odd - really almost a religious attitude from me: how can you not care about this?

I was a teenager from Station to Station thru Scary Monsters (the latter of which is the sole Bowie LP i remember being in our house, bcz my younger sister bought it). I simply didn't get into what was on the charts, consumerwise -- I only started to burrow into the Beatles albums at 15 or 16. (The only album purchases i specifically remember from 1980 were End of the Century and Argybargy.) I was an outsider and wanted to stay so, with no desire to liberate myself with makeup. I probably preferred to keep my distance from people who hated OR loved Bowie, at least until i joined drama club as a junior. Staying in my room watching baseball or old films, or listening to comedy LPs, was a good enough day for me. Whenever Bowie surfaced on TV or radio I liked him well enough; that was all.

Should add, here is Barone's version for comparison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-m0sWVO3NM

holy shit re: richard barone & nirvana! that's like the fucking same arrangement

nice detective work Ned!

There are several great posts upthread about how strange it feels to mourn the loss of someone (some thing?) so multifarious. His art was formative for me like it was for millions, mild-altering to a little boy....but so much of the love and adoration is obv. for an abstraction of the real person/husband/father/bandmate/friend.

I feel like I should be sadder than I am. I'm sure it will hit me hard right now, but mostly I just feel confused.

Bowie was a there-not-there chart presence in the U.S. from 1977-1980. Scary Monsters hit #12 in 1980 after Lodger peaked at #20 and "Heroes" at, jeez, #35. SM was a massive British hit taking advantage of Blitz kids + New Wave, so I wonder if his record comapany promoted the fuck out of it in both countries.

(but) right now

Checking the UK album charts, every Bowie album between 1972 and 1984 was Top 5 (not counting reissues... but including "Stage"!), "Never Let Me Down" was the first to fall outside the Top 5... it got to #6! Every single Bowie studio album from "Ziggy" onwards was Top 10.

kinda funny in the NPR interview how he says things later echoed by Stephin Merritt: 1) i'd rather someone else was singing my songs, 2) I wouldn't play live if i didn't have to.

― skateboards are the new combover (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, January 12, 2016 8:00 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i loved this part. Bowie is too real.

thanks for the Playboy interview, pretty fascinating. Bowie seems very much a link between the super famous artists of the 60s like the Beatles and Stones, and say, Michael Jackson or Madonna in the 80s. He knew what he had to do, and how to do it -- there wasn't the process of disillusion at becoming (and remaining) famous, and even when he talks about getting ripped off by his mgmt, it hardly puts a dent in his vision, almost like another small part of the process. There were other people who dealt successfully with massive fame before him, but he seems like one of the first people to actively court it, manipulate it to his end, and have his art reflect that.

Checking the UK album charts, every Bowie album between 1972 and 1984 was Top 5 (not counting reissues... but including "Stage"!), "Never Let Me Down" was the first to fall outside the Top 5... it got to #6! Every single Bowie studio album from "Ziggy" onwards was Top 10.

Yeah, but what were the raw numbers? It takes 1/5 as many copies sold to go gold in England as it does in the US (100K vs 500K) and 1/3 for platinum (300K vs 1 million).

On the condition of his estate: http://www.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ci_29371257/music-legend-david-bowies-online-record-sales-climb

also "18 months out of 40 years and I'm still the crossdresser here, fuck ok" xxxp

Trigger warning: article linked above contains Lefsetz.

Some good bits in that Playboy interview:

I’ve learned to flow with myself. I honestly don’t know where the real David Jones is. It’s like playing the shell game. Except I’ve got so many shells I’ve forgotten what the pea looks like. I wouldn’t know it if I found it.

... The minute you know you’re on safe ground, you’re dead. You’re finished. It’s over. The last thing I want is to be established. I want to go to bed every night saying, “If I never wake again, I certainly will have lived while I was alive.”

... The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from. I do think that my plagiarism is effective. Why does an artist create, anyway? The way I see it, if you’re an inventor, you invent something that you hope people can use. I want art to be just as practical. Art can be a political reference, a sexual force, any force that you want, but it should be usable. What the hell do artists want? Museum pieces? The more I get ripped off, the more flattered I get. But I’ve caused a lot of discontent, because I’ve expressed my admiration for other artists by saying, “Yes, I’ll use that,” or, “Yes, I took this from him and this from her. “Mick Jagger, for example, is scared to walk into the same room as me even thinking any new idea. He knows I’ll snatch it.

I realised that I have never really thought about going to see David Bowie live as something that would be appropriate. I'd say this is because my first (and second and on to a hundred) Bowie album was Diamond Dogs, because that's the one the local library had.

If my timeline is correct, that Playboy interview would've been conducted roughly around the time of Bowie's coke nadir.

it certainly reads like it

Bowie was a there-not-there chart presence in the U.S. from 1977-1980. Scary Monsters hit #12 in 1980 after Lodger peaked at #20 and "Heroes" at, jeez, #35. SM was a massive British hit taking advantage of Blitz kids + New Wave, so I wonder if his record comapany promoted the fuck out of it in both countries.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, January 12, 2016 10:42 AM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Evidently; he didn't tour in 1980, but promoted SM on The Tonight Show. Rockers were few and far between on Carson, but Bowie delivered some weird, wild stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E5RTO7b0Vs

(Great as that is, it would've been cool to hear Bowie do those songs with the Tonight Show band.)

Those are some great quotes there (from the playboy interview), one of the things I loved about him is that he can be great and always changing: okay, I did that, that was pretty good, where can we go from there next. Some of the 'new' is gone forever - I obviously can't imagine hearing him at the start of glam in the original context because it's been folded into history*.

Which makes Pin Ups such an odd record - been going through them chronologically (okay apart from Bowie'67) and it just sounds like a massive misstep.

*Tom Ewing, elsewhere: "Bowie wasn't the first star to make me love pop. But the first star to make me love pop was straight up ripping him off. And so was the second. And the third. And the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh. And even then when I got round to him, he still came as a surprise."

Pin Ups always sounded like his attempt to outdo Bryan Ferry. It's Greil Marcus' favorite Bowie, according to the desert island book.

5 David Bowie The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars Jul 1972
1 David Bowie Aladdin Sane May 1973
1 David Bowie Pin-Ups Nov 1973
1 David Bowie Diamond Dogs Jun 1974
2 David Bowie Young Americans Apr 1975

Not so much as a mis-step, but an album issued 6 months after the previous and 7 months before the next. The other albums had less than a year between each, so consider it a bonus and a way of getting two months longer to do Diamond Dogs..

Released 2 weeks after Ferry's covers album:

Pin Ups entered the UK chart on 3 November 1973 (coincidentally the same day as Bryan Ferry's covers album These Foolish Things)

Harry Nilsson beat both of them to it.

Also from Playboy:

I’ve now decided that my death should be very precious. I really want to use it. I’d like my death to be as interesting as my life has been and will be.

I felt that Pin Ups was Bowie getting meta: presenting those songs less as covers and more as if they made up the tracklist of The Spiders' Greatest Hits LP in their universe.

I remember my brother went to see Bowie at the New Bingley Hall in Stafford in '78 and I thought, years later, that that really reflected a Sinatra-mid-'50s (if not quite Walker Bros late-'70s) commercial dip for DB at the time - back to being a niche critical fave rather than an arena-filling star, slogging around the provinces. But, actually, it was one of three nights in Stafford, that's a pretty big venue, and it seems he deliberately just did a run of shows at four large UK venues (London, Stafford, Newcastle, Glasgow). This was hardly transit van on the M6 stuff.

I saw him at Maine Road, Manchester in 1990. It was pretty great but the SMDH moment was giving up four and a half minutes of a 90min greatest hits set to... Belew's Pretty Pink Rose! FFS.

xp interesting. I have kind of comforted myself over the past 24 hours thinking Bowie surely planned his funeral to be a spectacle (in the spectacular, not pejorative sense).

holy shit re: richard barone & nirvana! that's like the fucking same arrangement

― Amira, Queen of Creativity (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

nice detective work Ned!

― sleeve, Tuesday, January 12, 2016 7:41 AM

Ha, no credit claimed; I had Barone's album for the longest time -- forgot I even had it -- but I only picked up his book on a whim at Powell's last April, and was as surprised as anyone when I read that part and the descriptions beforehand about choosing it for the set and the participation of Scarpantoni -- that was her first rock gig as such and is what caused her to become the cellist of choice for any number of performers since. But damned if he's not right, and it does pretty much solve the minor mystery of not only how Cobain learned about the song but why it sounds the way it does.

I <3 Jane Scarpantoni's playing btw, I met her back when she played with Tiny Lights

okay apparently the meeting of the ziggy/lemmy minds is just another one of those darn internet trick photos. i knew it was too good to be true...

https://scontent-iad3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xat1/v/t1.0-9/12438959_10154459175127137_3479899428669309160_n.jpg?oh=91ef53cffdcb1a755e72df7ca83737ee&oe=573BE2DF

Yeah, the combined does odd things with space if you look closely.

Well a guy from Hawkwind ended up playing with Bowie, so it wasn't so unlikely.

... admittedly not Lemmy though.

They would I'm sure have had a lot to talk about. Not just Nazis, like.

yeah, i would think they would have gotten along okay. they both liked that old time rock & roll. and drugs.

If my timeline is correct, that Playboy interview would've been conducted roughly around the time of Bowie's coke nadir.

― Reckless Recluse (Old Lunch), Tuesday, January 12, 2016 4:01 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

PLAYBOY: How about drugs?

BOWIE: What year is it now?

Another thing the "Bowie Is ..." exhibit (and by the way, supposedly Bowie was not a fan) made me consider was how different my perspective on Bowie was as an American. I often wonder what people would have thought of Bowie, or what his American legacy might have been, were it not for "Let's Dance"/MTV, which of course largely landed well after Bowie's immediate Influence ended. Would he have been just another weirdo to discover?

bcz Alfred demanded it.

"Can you do Bowie for my 5th period class?"

Paris Goodrum, my high school drama teacher, loved my David Bowie. It emerged from a class assignment in lip syncing. Paris stressed that he wanted something more than just mouthing lyrics. He wanted performance, and this I took seriously.

This was 1975, Lawrence, Indiana... I prepped in the men's room. Applied rouge, lipstick, and eye shadow. Covered my face in glitter. Wore a frilly blue shirt with bright red suspenders and denim shorts. Yellow knee socks and platform shoes. Feather necklace and hoop bracelets. Naturally, there were stares on my walk back to class. But I felt empowered.

http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2016/01/oh-you-pretty-thing.html

Paris Goodrum! bit Nabokovian

>>>Pin Ups always sounded like his attempt to outdo Bryan Ferry.

I believe those records were released if not on the same day then more or less in tandem. (I know they entered the UK charts the same week.)

Adrian Belew on how he went from working with Zappa to Bowie in 1978, oh man.

https://www.facebook.com/AdrianBelew/posts/10150588871654995