On January 8, 2016, the most famous British musician celebrated his 69th birthday. The date is not round, but, agree, for many of us, the numbers 6 and 9 standing together have a special meaning. The most tragic thing is that two days later, on January 10, David Bowie died.
To honor his memory, we decided to go over the major milestones of Bowie’s biography, focusing on his influence on rock and metal.
Yes, yes, you heard right. People who only know David Bowie from the occasional music channel clip may think that he never did anything but pop glam and electronica – but in fact, his work is far more multifaceted than that. And if you take a look at the work of his followers… oh, you’ll be very surprised to find out which people count themselves as such.
Bowie and his followers
The born David Robert Jones (yes, David Bowie’s real last name is “just” Jones) first attracted the attention of the general public in 1969, when his song “Space Oddity” reached the top 5 of the UK singles charts.
Since then, the attention has never left him. Well, not much has been heard of David in the last fifteen years – but that was his conscious decision, when, some time after the release of the single “Reality”, Bowie announced that he would reduce his creative activity to a minimum in the future.
No one was expecting any more new albums or videos from him. Therefore, the 2013 record The Next Day was an unexpected surprise for many. The same goes for David Bowie’s latest (25th!) full-length album called Blackstar, released in 2016.
Some music critic once said:
Virtually everything that has emerged in rock music in the last 25 years is leftovers from the table at which Bowie’s feast is taking place.
So what is the secret to the magical halo that has surrounded this English musician, actor and singer for virtually his entire career?
First of all, of course, the fact that David Bowie belongs to the group of “founding fathers” – that is, musicians who have made such a significant contribution to the arts that they are practically deified by society (the most striking example is The Beatles). I can’t claim that Bowie invented glam-rock as a genre, but the fact that he became the main popularizer of the style (and his name is the first one that comes to mind when you hear the word “glam”) is an indisputable fact.
Secondly, the incredible charisma of this man played a significant role in the formation of the Bowie cult. From the very first years of his career, David diligently maintained the image of an otherworldly being who had come to Earth either from another planet or from a parallel reality. And it worked so well that even today, when he has not been doing it for a long time, it is difficult to perceive him as an ordinary person.
However, there really is something extraordinary about David’s appearance – even without any makeup he would stand out in any company. And, last but not least, Bowie has always been a master of delivering hit songs to our ears. Without that, all his tricks of makeup, costumes, and theatrical gestures would not have brought the artist the grandiose success he enjoyed for more than half a century.
For example, did you know that the famous song “The Man Who Sold the World” that Kurt Cobain sang on MTV Unplugged in the nineties was actually a cover version of one of David Bowie’s songs recorded in the early seventies? I’m sure not everyone has heard of it…
Another of the most important features of Bowie’s creativity is the fact that he did not just perform music, but music that could really touch your heart. While many artists of all kinds are on stage just because it’s trendy, prestigious or profitable, David Bowie’s songs are something to think about and to learn from. He has consistently made the charts of the most influential musicians in the world (in 2000, for example, he was voted the most influential artist of the 20th century in a poll conducted by New Musical Express magazine).
With a list of followers like his, it’s really something to be proud of. You have Marc Bolan and T. Rex, Mott the Hoople, and the New York Dolls, as well as Morrissey, Bauhaus (an iconic proto-goth band), Gary Newman, Joy Division (an equally iconic goth band), The Psychedelic Furs, Madonna, Suede, Pulp, Placebo (who, in fact, owe their career success to David Bowie), Blur, and many, many others.
And if you consider all the people who have recorded covers of his songs, the list would make your eyes pop out.
A funny fact: many of the artists who once influenced Bowie himself (Lou Reed, The Rolling Stones, Marc Bolan, Brian Eno) later used elements taken from his work. Conversely, some of the artists who were originally inspired by David’s talent and charisma (The Pixies, Morrissey, Nine Inch Nails) can boast of having their ideas reflected in his work.
Always reinventing his creative style (from rhythm-blues/soul to avant-garde and even metal and industrial), David Bowie never claimed to be an artist belonging to any particular genre. Even Bowie renounced glam, of which his old stage persona Ziggy Stardust is still considered the messiah to this day, a long time ago. For this eclecticism he was nicknamed David the Chameleon.
Among the statements about the importance of his legacy to contemporary music, one can sometimes find some rather unexpected ones.
In 1998, the music magazine Kerrang wrote this about Marilyn Manson’s “Mechanical Animals” album:
He (Marilyn) is certainly not making this up when he says his new music was inspired by David Bowie’s classic concept album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which really set the template for seventies glam rock.
Similarly, Manson’s image of the alien androgynous is largely drawn from Bowie. Check the cover of the early 1973 album “Aladdin Sane,” and you’ll get irrefutable proof.
Bowie has indeed always been one of the ideals and reference points for Brian Warner aka Marilyn Manson.
When asked about glam rock, Marilyn Manson lists Bowie as number one in his personal Top 5. And, of course, Manson’s repertoire includes covers of David Bowie songs (Golden Years, Cat People).
The youth of the Messiah
The future king of glam was born on January 8, 1947 in Brixton, London. Six years later, his family moved to the suburb of Bromley. There David went to Burnt Ash School. It was there that he received his first lessons in music and choreography, during which he demonstrated outstanding creative abilities. His teachers found them amazing for a child his age.
At the same time, his interest in music received an additional stimulus – it happened when David’s father brought home a collection of American records, including works by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, The Platters, Elvis Presley, Fats Dominoes and Little Richard. According to Bowie, when he heard the song “Tutti Frutti” performed by the latter, he “heard God.” Elvis Presley’s influence was just as strong.
I saw my cousin dancing to (Presley’s) song “Hound Dog” – and I had never seen her like that before, nothing seemed to be able to move her. It really made an impression on me, I felt the power of the music. Right after that, I started collecting records.
By the end of the next year, he got a Hawaiian guitar and a tee-heavy bass to play “skiffle” music with his friends. David also began playing the piano. His stage numbers with songs by Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley made a mesmerizing impression on the audience. Even then witnesses described the spectacle as “something alien.”
Young David Bowie
David Bowie was seriously injured in 1962 as a high school student when he was punched in the eye by George Underwood during a fight over a girl. Doctors feared he might go blind in one eye. After a series of surgeries over four months of hospitalization, medics recognized that the vision in his left eye could not be fully restored, and Bowie’s color vision has been impaired ever since.
As a teenager, David decided that he would tie his fate to music. He put together his first rock band when he was fifteen years old. But the Bowie we know today didn’t appear right away.
Before he began his solo career, he played and sang in several rock and pop bands, each of which is known by today only for the fact that David Bowie was once a member. In the early ’60s, he performed under the name Davy Jones, which created confusion with another Davy Jones, from The Monkees. To end it, he took the nickname of an American knife, which, in turn, was named after the hero of the American Revolution, James Bowie.
The album released in 1967, which, on the one hand, had a simple, but, on the other hand, rather pretentious title for a debut album, “David Bowie”, did not make him a superstar. It was another two years before Bowie returned to studio work.
David’s fascination with all sorts of quirky stuff intensified when he met dancer Lindsay Kemp.
He lived on emotion he was an amazing man,” Kemp later recalled. – His daily life was the most theatrical thing I have ever encountered. It was as if I had become a member of the circus troupe when I started interacting with him. I basically taught him not even the art of pantomime, but how to be himself, how to go beyond the ordinary! I unleashed the angel and the demon that made up his essence.
It took Bowie several years to create a unique, eye-catching stage image. In 1969, everything worked out for him in the best possible way. The song “Space Oddity” rocketed to the top of the charts, and everyone and everything knew about David.
The song was followed by the album of the same name – originally titled “David Bowie”, though, which caused some confusion, since the singer’s debut record was already being sold in Great Britain under the same title. In the United States, to eliminate this confusion, the album was originally released as Man of Words, Man of Music. In 1972 it was re-released on the RCA Records label as Space Oddity – and so it remained in history.
The studio sessions continued, and soon resulted in Bowie’s third album, The Man Who Sold the World (1970). It was composed and rehearsed in Bowie’s home, an Edwardian mansion turned into an apartment building (one of the apartments is where Bowie lived). One of the guests once said that the atmosphere there was “like a Dracula’s living room.
Since Bowie himself was at the time almost completely consumed with his relationship with his new wife Angie, the musical arrangements for the album were mostly done by guitarist Mick Ronson and bassist Tony Visconti. Visconti later rated this album as one of his best collaborations with Bowie (he ranked the 1980 album Scary Monsters first).
Most of the album has a pronounced heavy metal undertone, which makes The Man different from most of Bowie’s other releases and gives us an opportunity to compare it with the works of such bands as Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. The album’s heavy sound has been expertly packaged with appropriate lyrics: the themes of the songs are insanity (“All the Madmen”), heavily armed killers and commentaries on the Vietnam War (“Running Guns Blues”), the omniscient computer (“Saviour Machine”) and the Ancient Gods from the works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft (“The Supermen”). The album is also imbued with the influence of such philosophers and writers as Aleister Crowley, Franz Kafka and Friedrich Nietzsche.
Perhaps it was then that the foundations of what we know today as “Gothic” were laid. Another element that probably allows Thilo Wolff and others to speak of Bowie as “the first Goth” is his androgyny, and on the cover of The Man Who Sold the World, David is shown wearing a dress (he would go on to do even more extravagant things).
The Man Who Sold the World
According to one version, the cover of “The Man Who Sold the World” is just a tribute to writer Howard Lovecraft, one of Bowie’s idols, who is also depicted in a dress in a photo from his early childhood.
Howard Lovecraft.
“The Man” was influential in the development of gothic rock and darkwave. Such performers as Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, Gary Newman, John Fox and Nine Inch Nails later “emerged” from it. Kurt Cobain, in his diary, called Bowie’s work one of his favorite musical albums. In 1993, Nirvana recorded a cover version of his title song, which was included in their “Unplugged in New York” concert album.
It is considered that glam-rock appeared when Bowie released The Man Who Sold the World (though there is an alternative version, according to which the inventor of the style was Mark Bolan of T. Rex).
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