It's 1977. You're in a large, dark concert hall. The stage is designed to mock a corridor from the Death Star, all white flourescent tubes arranged vertically and dreary black metal panels. The lights go down. A group of musicians unceremoniously walk on stage. One of them, you notice, is none other than David Bowie.
Once this piece is over, it will be followed by another trance-like instrumental. Then another. And eventually, the band will launch into crowd-pleasers like "Fame" and "Rebel Rebel." Well, maybe.
This was the 1977 David Bowie "Stage" tour. It was amazing. And I never got to see it. After all, I was only seven years old.
I was first introduced to all things Bowie by that reservoir of all things seminal in my musical education - my mother. She had played Bowie's "Aladdin Sane" and "Diamond Dogs" albums all through my youth, but I didn't pay much attention until she became obsessed with, predictably enough, "Let's Dance." Perhaps you've heard of it? I didn't share her obsession with this album when it came out, though I was amazed with Bowie's dustmop of cotton candy bleached-blonde hair, and how something so fluffy could possibly grow out of a human being's head.
It wasn't until 1987 that I began to explore Bowie's music. It started with sneaking my mother's cassette of "Let's Dance" from her car into my bedroom, and travelling beyond the obligatory Modern Loves and China Girls into territory less charted - "Putting Out Fire With Gasoline" and "Ricochet," for example. There was something more to this guy, to be sure. He seemed to be doing the same thing as my other musical obsessions of the time - Eurythmics, Boy George, Grace Jones - basically, anyone with a synthesizer who looked like a drag queen - though I was aware that Bowie had been doing this far longer. But what was it like before the daze of new wave?
I went to the local public library and checked out a ratty double-album on vinyl - "Stage," by David Bowie. It was a live l.p. of the tour described above, and to my naive ears, it was revelatory. Along with some pop songs I was vaguely familiar with - "Ziggy Stardust" and "Hang On To Yourself" among them - were songs that were not pop at all. I didn't know WHAT they were. They certainly shouldn't be on a live rock album, that much was for sure. And some of the pop songs I recognized on the album had the inclusion of a fiddle, and sounded almost like some kind of alien chamber music rather than arena rock. This experience bore closer inspection.
Spring of 1987 in Speedway, Indiana. Not much to say about that, right? I was 17 years old and living in a dreary strip-mall of a midwestern tourist trap. One month out of the year, the Indy 500 brought a tits-and-all orgy of white trash culture to my neighborhood, and the rest of the year, it was all about retirement communities and craft shops. Cultural nourishment was SO not part of the curriculum of my surroundings.
I remember my education came in the form of an all-night weekend show on cable television called "Night Flight". Anyone in their late '20s to mid '30s will remember this show, and let's face it, geezers, we owe that show a lot. It was "Night Flight" that introduced me to such future obsessions as John Waters, Laurie Anderson, Fishbone and other cult icons too numerous to remember. It was "Night Flight" that unearthed gems such as Prince's pre-fame videos and Jello Biafra's public access variety TV show. "Night Flight" was low-key cool, and quite frankly, it was my only taste of culture outside of mullet rock and mall-bang hell.
This show would provide my second coming of Bowie epiphanies, as they showed obscure videos for "Look Back in Anger" and "D.J." What the hell WAS this stuff? I remember devouring his video clips. Oh look, he's got stuff on his face - he's deformed - he's smashing his stereo - he's walking on the street and men are coming up to him and kissing him on the mouth - he's in drag - now he's wearing a gas mask and a bright pink jumpsuit - WHO IS THIS PERSON AND WHY IS HE SUCH A DELICIOUS FREAK?!?!
The summer of 1987 will always be remembered by me as the Summer of Bowie. Ironically, the man released a horrible record that year, "Never Let Me Down," and was responsible for one of the most ridiculous tour experiences since "This Is Spinal Tap" when he launched the "Glass Spider Tour," complete with dance troupe, bright red costume, and a mullet hairsprayed OUT TO THERE.
In fact, it was a horrible time to be David Bowie, not to mention one of his fans. He was experiencing mid-life crisis and fallout from a decision to "sell out" and become a mainstream pop star. "Let's Dance" made him a symbol of yuppie cool - he was a little arty, kinda had a strange past, but he got his stuff together and started wearing smart suits and singing about being part of the COFFEE GENERATION. Then, after the caffeine buzz wore off, Bowie was left with a fickle audience and the stage presence of, say, Huey Lewis. Gross.
It was, however, a great time to discover all things Bowie, because he was anything but "hot" in 1987. That means lots of old albums in cut-out bins. That means lots of used copies of Bowies ouevre to be had. That means an affordable headlong education, one that would tint my life and the way I look at persona and identity, in a way perhaps only comparable to the legacy of Andy Warhol, who of course, counted David Bowie among his many pop acolytes (I proudly consider myself a Warhol Casualty as well, but that's another rant altogether).
My local record store had a vinyl copy of "Low" for $5.99, back when vinyl was issuing its last, loud death rattle of a sigh and compact discs were still exotic and sci-fi, but less and less so (I'm aging myself here, but so what). The purchase of "Low" would be the next episode of my education - the introduction of what I'll always say is the best Bowie album ever, if not the best "new wave" recording ever created.
Listening to "Low" over and over brought my feelings of teenage alienation to delicious closure. "Low" was unlike any album before it, and anything created afterward. Half the album was neo-classical instrumentals, and the other half was jerky electro-pop songs, most of which timed in at under two minutes. This was not what music was "supposed" to be for me. But I loved it. So I didn't care. And I realized, life could be that way. Who says how a person is "supposed" to behave. Become a work of art and entertain yourself, and the end of the day, all the oppressive losers will go cruise their precious K-Mart parking lots and the fabulous, interesting people would come to you. VOILA.
Weeks after the "Low" experience, David Bowie would appear on the cover of "Rolling Stone" magazine, sporting a rockin' neo-James-Dean 'do with the word "STYLE" emblazoned across his black-clad collarbone as his mis-matched eyes bore holes into the reader's soul. Days after purchasing that magazine, I marched my midwestern teenybopper ass right down to the local "hair styling school/salon," approached an Alison Moyet looking ghoul of a hairstylist in training, pointed at the cover picture of Bowie, and said "I WANT THAT."
My years of flat feathered hair parted down the middle would die a much-needed death on that day, incidentally. As such, I suppose every good hair day I've had since should be reflections of gratitude and praise for St. Bowie, Patron Saint of the Rockin' Hairstyle.
On the other hand, I must admit that because of Mr. Bowie, I proudly sported a mullet with tidal wave bangs and Sun-Inned blonde streaks. So, you know, I suppose it's all a matter of interpretation.
I remember an MTV special on Bowie, to promote his wrecky "Glass Spider Tour," which showcased the man, shellacked uber-mullet and all, talking about his inspirations - William Burroughs (hmmm, heard of him, better check his writing out), Iggy Pop (oh, him - he's kinda cool, sure) and the like. Through this one identity-challenged, career-besieged, seemingly washed-up soul, I would learn so much more than my public school education could ever hope to offer with its tepid but necessary offerings of Robert Frost anthologies and Thornton Wilder read-alongs. (Interestingly enough, however, a popular book among the catfighting hair-metal girls in my school was "And I Don't Want to Live this Life" by Deborah Spungen, mother of Nancy, of Sid and Nancy fame. Hearing book report after book report on the virtues of this book would eventually introduce me to the pleasures of the Sex Pistols, certainly much to Deborah Spungen's chagrin!)
The story of my Bowie-fied youth would not be complete, however, without mention of one of the major anomalies of my life thus far - my one and only hetero relationship with the fantabulous Amanda, the Angie Bowie to my Ziggy Stardust (or, more appropriately, the Yoko to my John). She started out as a dangerous fascination during art class - the quiet, brooding artistic genius who would use her study hall period to sit in the back of the art classroom and touch up her complex masterpieces. She was amazing - part Martin Gore of Depeche Mode with her explosion of bi-level peroxided shock curls, and part Andy Warhol, with her quiet, zombiefied, too-kool-for-skool demeanor. Yeah, she was the deal.
Amanda and I soon came together, at a stoner friend's party. We bonded over our interest in Salvador Dali, and it took off from there. We would start dressing like twins, in matching braces and white shirts and baggy vintage trousers, topped off with granny specs and matching bowlers. One one of our many music-gathering sprees, we entered a record store as some old hag was exiting, who exclaimed "it's the Boy George twins! Which one is the boy and which one is the girl?!" We were tickled pink. Or, uh, tickled PUNK (sorry).
Since Amanda was a year older than me, she graduated before I did and went on to the local Indianapolis art school. It was then that the social life of a high school senior became all but irrelevant to me. School was like a job. It was a place I HAD to be for a few hours, but not a place that defined me culturally or socially. No, that place would be Herron Art School, among the artfags and clove-smoking goth kids, comfortably nestled in the middle of the art school library, filling my brain with necessary information on folks like Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat, Anne Magnuson, and anyone else even REMOTELY involved in the east village art scene of the mid-1980s. This was my world, these were my friends, this was my life. High School was just a place to endure until they gave me an allegedly all-important piece of paper espousing my adequacy. Amanda and I would make a mockery of my prom, showing up in Aadam's Family drag and singing loudly and obnoxiously off-key to insipid prom-rock ballads.
My graduation, however, would be the grand finale of my days as a teenaged non-entity. It was my fuck you and my thank you to 13 years of Indiana's public school system, all rolled into one new wavin', glam rockin' package. I showed up in full Bowie drag, or at least the best I could come up with given the low stream of resources available in Indiana at the time. It was all about big, shellacked, streaked-out, spikey hair, a bright yellow shirt, and a queeny-as-hell vintage smoking jacket - knee-length and electric blue - which would represent the last memory my classmates would ever have of me. Amanda showed up with magenta hair and a big brass "E" pendant around her neck. When people would approach her and ask about the significance of the pendant, she'd grab it and scream "EEEEEEEEEE!!!!" through clenched teeth, much to the questioner's unpleasant surprise.
By the time I graduated, I had acquired everything released by Bowie up until that time. I had introduced myself to "Lodger" and "Heroes," but still was unaware that these albums joined "Low" in what has become known as the Bowie/Eno Berlin Trilogy. I was warming up to "Young Americans," and completely smitten with the melodrama of the "Station to Station" album. Bowie introduced me to Bauhaus and Catherine Deneuve, via his appearance in "The Hunger," and those associations would introduce me to even more obscure fascinations.
Certainly my obsession with all things Bowie has ebbed and waned in the years since i first explored his music, but he's always been around. During college, I acted in and directed several plays, while at the same time singing for a local band, which lasted about a year. Our first gig was scheduled on the same night I was to perform a microscopic role in a campus production of "The Cherry Orchard." Thus, ever so much in the Bowie spirit, I rushed out of the theatre directly after curtain call, still in costume and full make-up, and recycled my appearance as a character in a play into a rock 'n' roll stage persona, however small-change it may have been at the time. Additionally, nbeknownst to many of my friends, I had shaved my head only days previous to these performances. As a result, the added shock of whipping off a hat, in full stage make-up, to expose a freshly shorn scalp added all the more extra credit to my aspiring Ziggydom.
I've whipped off quite a few hats since then. I've taken off the hat of singer and rock-band-guy, even though I still really miss the spastic fun of performing music. I've taken off the hat of actor and director, even though I keep the hat nearby and try it on every now and again when I get a good idea. I think I threw the hat of heterosexuality out the damn window, cuz lord knows those days are all but mythology, mary! The one hat that seems to fit my head perfectly is that of a writer, which was a decision made as much to inspire a sense of focus as much as it was a settling of my nature as a creative something.
As Bowie's music sinked deeper and deeper into substandard confusion in the late '80s and early '90s ("Tin Machine," anyone? I didn't think so.), I stripped off the training wheels of my creative persona and started to figure out what MY voice was, what was distinct to MY creativity, my message, my contributions, if indeed there would ever be any, to culture and to the world around me. That ball's still rolling, of course, but haaay: ain't no moss on da shit.
Several years ago, I enjoyed a welcome reunion with the zeus from whose head I sprung forth, when David Bowie released his first substantial album in years: "The Buddha of Suburbia." This was followed by "1. Outside," another fantastic album. THAT was followed by "Earthling," which was yet another fresh batch of fun. Preppy Bowie went bye-bye, as my Freakazoid Frankenstein returned in full nut-job regalia. Ripped Union Jack overcoats, frilly shirts and eyepatches, screaming orange hair - and the most amazing part of it all was that this man is older than my mother.
This renaissance in Bowiedom occurred at around the same time I made a move from Indianapolis to New York City, with no specific purpose or goal in mind other than to put to use the passions and love of culture I had studied so much during my Summer of Bowie. It was almost like my guiding light of creativity had returned to me in this new environment, to remind me the nature of my spirit and energy. Sorry to get all Artist's-Way on yer asses, but that's just how it goes.
If my knowledge and appreciation of all things pop culture, if indeed all things ART, were to be drawn as a tree, the roots might be Andy Warhol, but the trunk - the most significant part from which all other parts extend - would without argument be David Bowie.
Recently, I read a fairly exhaustive biography on Bowie, which ended with testimonials by his hardcore fans. One said that every move she makes, every piece of clothing she wears, every bite of food she eats, is a meticulously planned reference to David Bowie. She proudly stated that her entire being was devoted to impersonating her idol.
That's just nifty, but it misses the point of what Bowie's about, really, doesn't it? If I learned anything from studying his dozens of albums and his visual work and his art of personae and artful artifice in the media, it's that to appreciate Bowie is to utilize him as a starting point for one's OWN universe of expression, and to create one's OWN Ziggy Stardust or Thin White Duke or Mr. Serious Moonlight or....Anxiety.
"So I turned myself to face me
But I've never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I'm much too fast to take that test"
- David Bowie, "Changes"
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