David Bowie

I started listening to Bowie in 1972, when I was a college sophomore (yeah, I’m almost as old as he was). Many of my classmates thought we were really weird to like his music – to them he was a novelty act, a joke. Funny how he became such an icon. I haven’t stopped listening to him; listening to Blackstar now in fact.

it’s hard to discern any significant backlash against him

Rock against racism?

Americans (on the whole) didn’t get Bowie at the time (too radical for them).

“The Ziggy revue landed in America in the fall of 1972. The toast of trend-setters in LA and New York City – the sorts of places where influential people actually read British press clips – the show elsewhere was greeted with scepticism and, in many parts of the country, sheer indifference. In the United States, despite massive publicity, Bowie’s recordings sold only modestly well…. Meanwhile, back in England, where misleading press releases recorded Bowie’s overseas progress, and helped reinforce the impression that he was a global superstar, popular fascination with Ziggy continued to grow …” James Miller, Almost Grown, pp. 301-2.

Don’t know why but remembering now how Lars von Trier used Bowie’s “Young Americans” in “Dogville” and “Life on Mars” in “Breaking the Waves”. And most of all I remember this lovely live performance, one of his last (I think).

It’s the rare pop star indeed who can plausibly add ‘helping to bring down the Berlin Wall,’ and generally be regarded as having made a positive contribution outside of their music, without also devolving into the sad spectacle that is U2 and Bono in later days.

@Chris – That’s a really interesting story on the nature of ‘fame’ before instant communication, and the artifice that not only surrounded Bowie’s characters but his career itself. It’s also interesting that despite all the hoopla he was apparently a thoroughly decent human being.

The music is amazing enough that not much needs to be said about it, but this is really making me want to rewatch Velvet Goldmine.

Twyla Tharp Cathrine Wheel composed and performed by. “What A Day That Was!!!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L83KTSOFNM

… his music is awfully twisted for Americans … not KennyG, not Bill Halley. These days we’re more used to noisy music but the real stuff is still a minority taste, I think.

And continuing on the reception of Bowie in England – this hilariously don’t get it piece from Martin Amis, who seems to have borrowed his daddy’s ear horn to go to one of David Bowie’s Ziggy concerts: http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/cultural-capital/2015/04/archive-martin-amis-mild-fad-david-bowie

What is amazing is that I thought Amis lost his talent in the 90s, but it appears that even back in the seventies, there was an Amis pundit aching to break through the comic genius and pronounce about everything in the plummiest way possible.

Eno is God.

Since God doesn’t exist, it seems Eno doesn’t exist.

World of pop music wankers. Bowie existed, did some good sbit with Eno, but otherwise just made $$$ for the wankers.

Wonk on.

More on Bowie’s politics:
http://flashbak.com/1976-david-bowies-nazi-salute-and-eric-claptons-wogs-created-rock-against-racism-5645/

The music is amazing enough that not much needs to be said about it, but this is really making me want to rewatch Velvet Goldmine.

Bowie didn’t much like that and refused to have his music in it.

Re: 13
The Catherine Wheel is David Byrne (Talking Heads), not Bowie.

@Corey … well, I can’t discount that James Miller (the same guy who is/was editor of Daedalus, author of books on Rousseau, Foucault and Sartre) had his own agenda here. I doubt whether you were typical of American youth of the time though.

Quite a lot of people do drugs when they are young but don’t go around around telling people that ‘Britain is ready for a fascist leader’.

Maybe they do, but nobody cares what they say.

I only realised David Bowie’s eyes were different colours last year when it came up in conversation. I really like this film clip made in Australia, it’s very Australia in the 80s and is political too

http://youtu.be/B2HWuR2mq5M

“In a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone, Bowie didn’t mince his words.

“As much as I love this country, it’s probably one of the most racially intolerant in the world, well in line with South Africa,” he said.

He was 36 and almost two decades into a prolific career that defies comparison.

“It occurred to me that one doesn’t have much time on the planet, you know? And that I could do something more useful in terms of … I know this is very cliché, but I feel that now that I’m 36 years old, and I’ve got a certain position, I want to start utilising that position to the benefit of my … brotherhood and sisterhood,” he told Rolling Stone.

“I’ve found it’s very easy to be successful in other terms, but I think you can’t keep on being an artist without actually saying anything more than, ‘Well, this is an interesting way of looking at things.’

“There is also a right way of looking at things: there’s a lot of injustice. So let’s, you know, say something about it. However naff it comes off.””

For what it’s worth, I’m two years older than Corey and have the same recollection – by the mid-1970s I was routinely hearing a bunch of Bowie on the radio, and not only on KROQ. He did “Golden Years” on American Bandstand in 1975, a moment with Google tells me. And Dick Cavett in 1974! Huh. Both Dinah Shore and Soul Train in 1975 as well, and the duet with Bing Crosby in 1977.

#15 – “this hilariously don’t get it piece”
Oh, he gets it. Just because he’s homophobic as hell doesn’t mean he misunderstands what he’s seeing. His prediction that “Bowie himself is unlikely to last long as a cult” was wrong – although his implicit prediction that Bowie would die of a drug overdose came close to happening – but his follow-up that “it is hard to believe that the feelings he has aroused or aggravated will vanish along with the fashion built round him” was right on the money.

I think I liked David Bowie at about the same time Corey did, and I had a circle of friends who also thought he was pretty good. He got a lot of radio play. Nevertheless we got beaten up a lot for being fag punkers.

I think it was somewhere in the lon g 3-part interview that starts here where Bowie seemed to touch on the fascist thing, saying that he had gone through a period where he would say outrageous things that were consistent with people’s perception of him, to his regret. Something like that. And that he was “absolutely apolitical.” I recall him explaining elsewhere that the so-called Nazi salute was really just a photograph of him waving to his fans. I’m inclined to believe him, and likely the coke played a part in all this, but anyway the overwhelming impression I’ve got from interviews and comments from those who knew him from throughout his career is of a decent and level-headed person.

Here’s a tweet that came up in @Plantsmantx a little while ago:
https://twitter.com/BuzzFeed/status/686608674794635264
David Bowie once called out MTV for not playing black artists http://bzfd.it/1OL6qxm

I also recall him being among a selection of musicians of various kinds who were interviewed by Downbeat on Coltrane’s influence, and his response was that when he was a growing up he thought it would be cooler to be into someone who was a little less-known, so he picked up on Rollins and Kirk, with Kirk ultimately winning out it the end but of course Coltrane was absolutely superlative. Something like that. FWIW.

Bowie seemded to be attracted by the aesthetics of Nazism, rather than the politics. Which seems excusable. Related to some of the above, I did have a friend who used to rant favourably about Bismarck when on drugs, so Im not sure it’s very unusual.

#39- “the whole ziggy stardust thing is a send up of cults”
Irony is a dangerous game.

“A much better artist, of course, than Martin Amis.” I carry no brief for Martin Amis. Truth be told, I’ve read none of his novels. But you don’t have to be an artist to be a critic. And Amis in the 1973 article accurately identifies a number of unappetizing themes: an obsession with drugs, a celebration of glamor for its own sake, a flirtation with the aesthetics of Nazism (of course not its ideas, ideas in the world of glamor are for chumps). Amis got that right. But it’s all hopelessly contaminated by a revulsion for gay sex.

No one on this thread has mentioned Bowie’s most unusual characteristic: he was beautiful. Stunning. Mesmerizing. He used that beauty in the service of his art: whatever he decided to look like, people – men and women, gay and straight – were unable to take their eyes off him, would want to be like him. For me, a lot of what he wanted to look like was not very attractive past the surface appearance. So I have some sympathy for Amis’s reaction to him, although Amis in 1973 (like me!) was too square to see that Bowie’s sensibility was not a fad – it was the coming thing. We are all gay now.

Alan White at #36 notes that he can’t remember a thing about the music video for “Let’s Dance.” Of course he can’t. The social consciousness of the video is whitewash – the song is about clubbing, full stop. It’s about how tragically hip Bowie is.

Maybe there’s a Freudian slip in AW’s reference to Money for Nothing as a video he does remember. I like Dire Straits – Knopfler’s guitar pierces my heart like nothing Bowie ever did – but Money for Nothing is a gross little song, particularly in its homophobia. If I were asked to honor Bowie – not likely, I admit – I would say, he helped make a world that doesn’t contain any more hits like Money for Nothing.

I was a fan though never at all what you could call a devotee. But, I’ll say that “Let’s Dance” (linked above) and later “Jump, They Say” were two of my favorite music videos of all time.

Alan White,

I hope you change your mind and watch the Lets Dance film clip, its really good. Its the sort of film clip that makes me like the song more. I actually never thought about it before today, but I guess it must have been made in response to the “fascist chic” David Bowie thing which I never heard of until I read the article linked to above. David Bowie is dressed finely with the blonde hair from the “fascist chic” period, then there are Indigenous Australians and white Australians in an outback pub and the desert who are dressed in a kind of “naff” way, but it works well in a juxtaposition of types of 80s fashion sort of way, and juxtaposition of city and country, white and black. And the dancing and happy faces in parts of the clip can’t fail to bring a smile to anyone’s face and a tap to the foot as well, I think.

Thank you ZM–you convinced me. Just one more glass of wine beforehand.

I’m a fan of just about everything Bowie, but found his Tin Machine phase utterly forgettable. Lined-up, listened, and left early. Henry has it right to say that comment is almost impertinent, but Bowie would be the first to agree that almost leaves a lot of room. Managing his fan base, not to mention his money, was just one of his many talents. There are lots of good bios available on You tube, none perfect, but taken together encapsulate the chap nicely. The music and stagecraft survive. He’ll be missed.

By “both” I of course meant “all of them.”

I have often thought that the only thing that saved me from utter ruin while growing up was the fact that I lived in a college town. A case in point was one weekend Spring day in 1973. My friend and I somehow ended up spending the day riding around Starkville, Mississippi, with some undergraduates in their Cutlass Supreme. I don’t remember who they were or even which friend I was with.

What I do remember is that we listened to Ziggy Stardust the entire day on the 8-track. Over and over and over. The power chords in “Ziggy.” The rock of “Suffragette City.” The coolness of “Moonage Daydream.” Over and over and over. I couldn’t wait to get my own copy.

When I got back to high school the next week, everyone was a bit taken aback by my infatuation with Ziggy, and several of my male friends warned me to “be careful” about expressing too much enthusiasm for such things. But I didn’t care. And I never cared.

I wonder how many people have a similar tale to tell.

Chris – ha! – interesting – but strictly speaking I think it’s less a ‘defence of Bowie’ than a plea not to dismiss his music on account of his politics. (I agree with the principle but not the evaluation of the music.) Also of interest perhaps, Cornelius Cardew’s case for prosecution at the Musician’s Union:

“This branch deplores the publicity recently given to the activities and Nazi style gimmickry of a certain artiste and his idea that this country needs a right wing dictatorship. Such ideas prepare the way for political situations in which the Trade Union movement can be destroyed, as it was in Nazi germany. The spreading of such ideas must be considered as detrimental to the interests of the Union and any necessary steps should be taken to prevent such ideas from gaining credence in the community. We propose, therefore, that any member who openly promotes fascism or fascist ideas in his/ her act or recorded performance should be expelled from the Union.”

“When a pop star declare that he is ‘very interested in fascism’ and that ‘britain could benefit from a fascist leader’ he is influencing public opinion through the massive audiences of young people that such pop stars have access to. Such behaviour is detrimental to the interests of the Union,since it prepares the ground for a political system in which the Trade Union movement can be smashed, as it was in Nazi Germany. This Central London Branch therefore proposes that any member who uses his professional standing or stage act or records to promote fascism should be expelled from the Union.”

Bowie’s eyes weren’t of different colors. One pupil was permanently dilated, the result of a adolescent fistfight. http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/remarkable-story-behind-david-bowie-s-most-iconic-feature

Nobody is airbrushing anything, everybody who knows anything about Bowie is aware of this period in his career and Bowie himself acknowledged and explained it, as far as that was possible. You’re just trolling.

Great artists are sometimes politically idiosyncratic and often they become rich because people like their art, duh.

And yes, at least I am mourning because Bowie has been a significant cultural figure in my life since I was young.

Here’s a list of Bowie’s favourite books:

http://www.nypl.org/blog/2016/01/11/david-bowies-top-100-books

Old enough to recall Lulu singing “The Man Who Sold The World” I’m surprised to not see “The Carefully-Considered Rape of the World” by Shepherd Mead on the book list. It’s the basis for “Oh You Pretty Things”.

https://newsthump.com/2016/01/12/man-declares-everyone-stupid-for-mourning-david-bowie-awaits-medal/

It seems to me that his success was based on eyecatching changes in style and image, coupled with rather inoffensive music.

The music and the image were very hard to separate. He was singing about transgressive things in transgressive ways.

And just to tie this back to the the thread on rentiers–it seems that in the end Bowie did not create an asset for them. From Bloombergview:

‘In 1997, when securitization was limited to relatively standard assets such as mortgages and car loans, “rock ’n’ roll banker” David Pullman persuaded the singer [Bowie] to securitize future revenue from his catalog.

Bowie needed the deal to buy back rights to his songs from a former manager who had taken advantage of him while the rock star was more interested in cocaine than finance. The securitized royalties came to be known as Bowie bonds (Pullman even registered that as a trademark, hoping to build a line of business in such instruments). In effect, Bowie sold his future revenue from 287 songs to Prudential Insurance, offering 7.9 percent interest (1.53 percentage points higher than 10-year U.S. Treasuries paid at the time) on the $55 million he received.

Although other artists including James Brown and the Isley Brothers also sold music-backed bonds, Pullman’s “Bowie bond” business never took off because the music business tanked. Future royalties are being sold even now, but none of the offerings are as expensive as Bowie’s catalog was. So Bowie’s deal with Pullman presaged both the disintegration of the traditional music industry (“take advantage of these last few years”) and the exotic securitization boom that helped bring about the global financial crisis (1997 was the year the first synthetic collateralized debt obligation was issued).

The “Bowie bonds” were downgraded by Moody’s to one notch above junk as industry revenue plummeted, but Prudential held on to them to redemption, and Bowie didn’t lose the rights to any of his songs, so the insurance company was likely paid in full from the revenue of the special purpose company that held the rights to the catalog for 10 years. Both Bowie and his investor did well out of the deal.’

Those who love the music might appreciate this blog, which looks at Bowie’s songs, song by song.
https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/

The blogger’s take on Heroes, which is by far my favorite Bowie number, is excellent. Though, as the post notes, you want the original, longer version, not the shortened version: the edited single reduces the lyrical complexity, which may partly explain how it eventually became a routine, uplifting anthem.
https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/heroes/

I am particularly fond of the description of Fripp getting the sound he wants:

“While most guitarists that took on “Heroes” had to use an Ebow to get Fripp’s sound, playing a sustained run of A notes, Fripp had worked out the feedback patterns on foot, literally. Standing in Hansa’s Studio 2, his guitar routed through Eno’s EMS synthesizer, Fripp marked with tape the places on the studio floor where he could get a feedback loop on any given note. So four feet away from his amp was an A, three feet away was a G, and so on. Fripp stepped and swayed through the song, his sound owed to a simple cartography.”

It seems to me that his success was based on eyecatching changes in style and image, coupled with rather inoffensive music.

Indeed. And this was a general problem: the drab commercialism of Stockhausen, Ornette Coleman, and Metal Machine Music filled the airwaves. Where was the really *interesting* music?

If David Bowie had had the contrarian instinct of engels he might have been a Nazi in a sea of hippies.

Good people have made good art. Good people have made bad art and bad people have made bad art – and that’s before we even get close to defining ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in artistic and moral terms. However, I don’t think that the attitudes should be forgotten or overlooked. With Bowie, everyone from the Prime Minister to the Archbishop of Canterbury (perhaps Eton had a copy in the prefects’ Beatings Chamber) was quoted without reference to Bowie’s mid-seventies stance…

I don’t think that Bowie’s attitude towards fascism in the ’70s can be defended but equally it can’t be said that it was a position he held throughout his life and it wasn’t a particularly consequential stance. No-one has ever said “I used to believe in racial equality, representative democracy and the rule of law until David Bowie turned up at a railway station and gave a fascist salute, at which point the scales fell from my eyes. Heil Hitler!”

To paraphrase dsquared on Foucault (IIRC), the definitive biography of Bowie is not: Born, Flirted With Fascism In The Seventies, Died.

Remembering Bowie: The Man, The Legend, The Sexual Abuser

Perhaps someone should show up to the Yale Halloween party next year dressed in black, riding in a rented black vintage Mercedes drop head and ‘waving’ with a stiff-arm?

I just got around to checking out Tin Machine for the 1st time and I thought the 1st album totally kicked ass, and Bowie was in his best voice. Not the most memorable songs he ever wrote, but totally kicking ass is nothing to sniff at! Very reminiscent of his work with Iggy, and his voice even sounds Iggyish at points.

The 2nd one wasn’t so hot. The songs were more interesting, if not great, but it seems that they’d lost all that energy by the time they recorded it; however they sound very strong on the live album (as I know because the concert is available as a video on youtube).

Anyway, I remember all the negative press at the time, but to my ears that 1st album and the live one have aged better than most of his later work.

Among the heavy hitter rock critics of the 70s – Greil Marcus, Christgau, and especially Lester Bangs – Bowie was either despised or treated with enormous condescension. Bangs in particular called him an asshole, a pretentious poseur, a twerp, etc. etc. They were all into the idea of rock and roll as a progressive, humanistic force, and much preferred people like Springsteen, or Black singers who could be “authentically” disco. But of course rock and roll was never a progressive, humanistic force. I think Bloix;s posts are continuing in that vein, but his own preference for Springsteen shows the problem with thinking in this way. While no neo-Nazi group I have ever heard of or can conceive of has used Rebel Rebel or Jean Genie as a theme, in 1984, Reaganites hijacked Born in the USA very neatly. Springsteen was outraged, but it is easy to see why the Reaganites could credibly do itt. Springsteen’s performance persona is very much a right wing populist kind of thing, the tyro with the electric guitar, who really works up a lather up there. The actual lyric content of Born in the USA was less important than its performative effect, the uplifiting intro. Bowie’s performance, which is inseparable from his work, was always alienating, always undercut any fascisst anthemic strain. He was much more in the cabaret tradition than the woody guthrie tradition. Boix points out that nobody has mentioned his fascist incarnation. Nor has their been a lot of talk about his Brecht incarnation. Bowie was the perfect Baal. In fact, Bowie always”incarnated” – he always presented a persona. The decadence cycle, which was strongly influenced by the films of the period – Visconti’s the Damned, Joel Grey in Cabaret, etc. – was about a mythologized Weimar, one in which the SA recruited handsome blonde gay men who made fetishistic love to each other in the barracks. That was always nonsense. I think Bowie is not ever going to be an important figure for those looking for the humanistic, progressive line in music – he’s always going to be a stormtrooper or something. However, that was simply one persona. With someone like Brian Ferry, a similar singer, it is different. He ended up supporting the fascist UKIP because that is exactly where he was tending all along, using a romantic ideology that was close to Bowie’s, but lacked Bowie’s aesthetic cruelty – his ability to simply cancel a persona and move on. In this, Bowie does resemble Brecht.

Bowie’s performance, which is inseparable from his work, was always alienating, always undercut any fascisst anthemic strain

If by “performance” you mean “delivery” I don’t understand this; if you’re referring to his stage shows, surely it was “separable” – and separated by the millions of people who’ve heard the anthems in question without seeing the shows

But shall duck out and ‘let the children boogie’ – apologies for raining on people’s (Nuremberg) parade at such length…

One of the things that’s interesting to me is how non-visual my appreciation of Bowie was at first. In the summer of 1972 I had the album covers, pictures in the rock ‘n’ roll press and a snippet of film here and there. What I remember seeing when I first heard Ziggy and Hunky Dory, were the huge speakers my best friend had.

However, and this is important, you could hear the eclecticism, the fascination with style and the craft in the music from the get go. I don’t know about Bowie, who strikes me as too all-encompassing an artist to have neglected any avenue to an audience available to him, but I do think that in 1972, the balance between visual presentation, absent the internet, cable television and concert dvds, and the sound on the records was different.

In fact, a lot of the commentary in the rock press was precisely about how Bowie (and the Stones–Jagger, mostly–and a few others) were foregrounding image and stage presence in ways that the authenticity police found disturbing. I do believe Brecht got name-checked here and there, and rightly so, but the link to Nazi aesthetics (let’s not forget how close those were to other modernisms and modernists) was there and commented on as well.

Sometimes I used to think that Bowie was who this guy wanted to be, but Morrison either wasn’t quite smart enough, or the substances got him before he could get there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX42_3ZKv8c&list=RDDX42_3ZKv8c&index=1

What’s most striking about Bowie is his insatiable intellectual and cultural curiosity – in this, the intellectual detachment that Roger mentioned and the resulting diversity of his output he was quite similar to Kubrick. And for this they were both hated with a passion by smaller minds and critics who demanded “authenticity”.

I have just listened to Blackstar. I’m still recovering. What a hell of a way to go.

@js. — ok. Will try to do so sometime; I did hear refs to it in the obits but I’ve never seen it.

@js #96: I was wondering when someone would mention The Man Who Fell to Earth. For whatever reason I never paid that much attention to Bowie’s music. Oh, was certainly aware of him as a shape-shifting performer, but just didn’t listen to the music. But I saw that film when it came out, and was stunned. Have watched it once or twice since, and it still haunts.

And then there was his small role in Absolute Beginners, which is the only film I’ve seen that had some Mingus tunes on the sound track.

But what does fascinate me is that he came from Brixton – but what I always remember about Bowie is that he sounded posh

Not really. Iirc he grew up in Bromley (born in Brixton) and didn’t sound posh, but lower-middle-class

I’d be uncomfortable calling his background poor or working class (in the British sense) but he definitely wasn’t privileged. He was a suburban kid from modest background who went to art school – so perhaps an example of the kind of social mobility which existed still in 70s but, after three decades of narcissistic self-absorption, political quietism and financial wizardry, has now been abolished.

Criticize the state? Against the laws.

I guess Bowie would have been alright then

<I the fundamental differences between states that safeguard liberties

Agree but unsure of relevance to singer/finance-capitalist who early in career enthusiastically advocated for a right-wing regime that destroys such liberties before settling in to a total withdrawal from politics which would have improved the stress levels of any dictator

107 Good point. I’m not sure it applies to Bowie, but I’m almost equally unsure it doesn’t. I’m in the midst of reading a first-class dramatization of the Dreyfus affair. Hard to ignore the enthusiastic embrace of anti-democratic ‘patriotism’ and hatred of the unter-mensch.

I grew up around a large community of the ‘Wogs start at Calais’ Brits. Not all bad, of course, but once Europeans start blathering about the beastly, bloody Belgians it’s time to reach for the Monty Python, or head for the exits.

BB @99 — I’ve only seen it once (maybe about a decade ago, give or take), and thought it was utterly amazing—but I am not sure I am entirely ready see it again (yet).* Haunting is right, I think.

*Admittedly, more than one Nicholas Roeg film falls into this category for me.

Blockquote fail is mine of course. All that follows the link is from it.

https://www.facebook.com/michael.dignum.1/posts/10153309716274071?fref=nf&pnref=story

Re 112 Coco was a real person? I’ll be darned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMcuRl_shGE

Plus:

I just happened to read an article that nicely summarizes his main appeal to me.

Bowie was successful, and valuable as an artist, not because he was a ‘chameleon’ who changed characters and reinvented himself — as we have been lectured endlessly. Plenty of bands and artists have done that change-of-image business and failed lamentably. He was important because he had a quite remarkable melodic imagination, one which was not tied to the stultify-ing confines of rock music. The chord changes of his verses were often unorthodox and the melody line skittered around them with enormous range — miles away from the root chord, which elsewhere in this staid and conservative medium defines the tune. Then a swirling and unexpected chorus would sweep you off your feet — often a very non-rock-song chorus. ‘Starman’, ‘Oh You Pretty Things’, ‘Changes’, ‘Drive In Saturday’, ‘The Prettiest Star’ and more, even than these, the song he gave away to the band Mott The Hoople, ‘All The Young Dudes’. Hell, this last may be his best-ever song. How did he come up with such a chorus? A chorus that defies prediction.

The simple truth, I reckon, is that Bowie, for six years at least, wrote very good songs, songs that were not drawn from the medium with which he came to be associated. And that is why they still have resonance now.

The title of the article happens to be “David Bowie once praised Hitler… but he was always changing his tune.” As I say, I’m confident that that stuff was just trolling, but you can take it as you like. It’s a free country.

It feels odd to me to read discussion of Bowie as removed from humanism or progressive thought. That’s partly because my context for thinking about Bowie is a heavily queer one, and among queer sf/f/horror fans my age (50) and to maybe 30 or so, Bowie looms large as a life-saving presence. He gave a lot of marginalized folks reason to think of themselves as valuable, no matter how unusual they might be, and also to believe that reinvention was both possible and a genuinely good idea sometimes. And there’s a really strong correlation between folks of this sort deeply into Bowie and folks out doing practical things to build a better world, from running for office and staffing campaigns to shelter and rescue work to field research of the sort that’ll be shaping policy down the road.

It’s not like they’re all that purely because of Bowie. But many of them would not have found their paths without his presence in their lives at moments of great need.

This is extraordinarily off-topic, but seems like an OK place to note that not long back, I read William Gibson’s Neuromancer, on IIRC a recommendation from Bruce B. (but perhaps some other CT commenter). And I thought it was great. So, thank you! Unfortunately, it’s probably not going to turn me into an actual SF fan, but still, I did really enjoy it. I then also happened upon Lethem’s Gun, With Occasional Music, which I really loved, but I’m guessing that actual SF fans don’t even consider that SF.

I guess I should have added “more accurate,” in addition to “similar.” I’ll just leave it at that.