David Bowie, who died earlier this year, was an extraordinary talent, and I really liked many of his songs.
Strangely, though, I think I have owned only two of his albums in my life — "Diamond Dogs," of which I wrote a couple of years ago, and "Changesonebowie," a compilation of Bowie's 11 best recordings from 1969 to 1976 that was released 40 years ago today.
In case you're wondering, there was a "Changestwobowie," which hit the music stores five years later, but I never owned a copy. There just weren't enough songs on it that interested me.
But I liked "Changesonebowie." As I have mentioned here before, I always did prefer Bowie's early stuff — and "Changesonebowie" was the first time that "John, I'm Only Dancing," which was released as a single four years earlier, appeared on an LP.
That alone made "Changesonebowie" worth having, as far as I was concerned.
Two of the songs on the album — "Ziggy Stardust" and "Suffragette City" — hadn't been released as singles when "Changesonebowie" hit the stores.
Both were on the 1972 album, "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars."
Ziggy Stardust was Bowie's alter ego, a rock star/extraterrestrial messenger. Rolling Stone ranked the song #282 on its list of the top 500 recordings of all time.
The two "Changes" LPs were eventually combined to form a CD that was released in 1990. It's been in my CD collection all these years.
It's the CD I listened to the day I learned of Bowie's death. It had all the Bowie songs I wanted to hear.
Like most people (I gather), I was unaware that David Bowie was terminally ill — until I learned this morning that he had died of liver cancer two days after his 69th birthday.
I now know that he was sick for a year and a half. That, apparently, was something that was not generally known.
I have written about David Bowie three times before on this blog. The last two times were within the last year, when I observed the 40th anniversaries of the release of "Fame" and "Golden Years."
My first post was about the 40th anniversary of Bowie's "Diamond Dogs" album. In a few years, I hope to write about the 50th anniversary of "Space Oddity."
I was going to wait to mention this until I wrote about that anniversary of "Space Oddity," but now seems like a more appropriate time.
Anyway, here goes ...
I will always remember the first time I ever heard "Space Oddity." It was several years after the song was released. My family had spent the summer in Austria as part of a program in which the college where my father taught religion was a participant. It was meant primarily for students. They spent the summer at this university in Graz, Austria, took a summer course and got credit for it in college. Some members of the faculty always went along as chaperones, and there were other schools involved in the program as well.
My father took my mother, my brother and me with him to Austria one summer. It was a chartered flight, and the family stayed in the dorm at the university so it was a low–cost way to travel in Europe. My parents were only nominally enrolled in classes. It justified their presence since Dad wasn't the official chaperone. We were just kind of tag–alongs.
Anyway, it was on our flight back to the States at the end of the summer that I first heard "Space Oddity." The plane was approaching New York City, and I had my headphones set to popular music (there were several choices so there was something for every age group and taste). As I looked out the window at the New York skyline glowing in the darkness, "Space Oddity" came on. It was almost as if the music and the imagery I was seeing out my window had been painstakingly choreographed.
Ever since that night, "Space Oddity" probably has been my favorite David Bowie song.
But I am also fond of the two I wrote about last year — and I have always liked the "Diamond Dogs" album. I guess the thing I can say about Bowie is that my preference is for his earlier stuff. He seemed to be especially brilliant when he was still carving out his niche.
I've heard a lot of talk today about how Bowie's last album, "Blackstar," released just a few days ago, was his last gift to the world.
Those three things I have written about were Bowie's gifts to me. We never met, but those songs and that album have a lot of meaning for me, and they always will. And, as Forrest Gump would say, that's all I want to say about that.
I don't know yet if I will listen to Bowie's last album. Perhaps I will listen to it once in tribute to someone who was a remarkable talent — and was remarkably talented at confusing people. He seemed to take delight in doing it. That bothered some people. It never bothered me.
He never looked quite the same as he had the last time I saw him — or would the next time I saw him. He was always pushing boundaries — in his appearance, in his personal life, in his music.
Bowie never did things the way he was expected to do them. I guess his death — at the most unexpected time, except for those who knew he was sick, and many of them have said that they weren't prepared for it when it came — was the ultimate example.
Incidentally, I can understand why many of those who were close to Bowie had that reaction. I've had several friends who died of cancer. Without fail, in each case, I believed my friends would recover right up until the minute they died. And those deaths always hit me like a ton of bricks. I suppose Bowie's friends and family harbored a similar hope, that somehow he would recover. When that person dies, a piece of a survivor dies, too, because — in my experience, anyway — those survivors always hope that the afflicted individual will beat the cancer that is taking his life.
And they're always disappointed when he doesn't.
Likewise, I have known people who died completely unexpectedly, and I have wondered whether it is better to lose someone you care about suddenly or to have time to prepare yourself for the loss. And I have decided that, for those who are left behind, there really is no advantage to either. At least, it is that way with me. Even when I have known that someone I cared about was going to die, I haven't been able to adequately prepare myself for it.
There just is no good time to lose someone. I'm sure that is how Bowie's friends and family — and the millions of his fans the world over — are feeling tonight.
"I'll stick with you, baby, for a thousand years
Nothing's gonna touch you in these golden years."
The older I get, the more aware I become of the uselessness of many skills I had when I was younger.
Some of those skills were skills I learned in school — like how to process film (in my college photography class). In the digital age, dark rooms simply do not exist. As a result, that knowledge has no value anymore.
Other skills were useless even at the time. For example, I mastered the timing of the snapping of fingers and the clapping of hands at the beginning of David Bowie's "Golden Years," which made its debut on this day in 1975. I was proud of that at the time, but it has had zero value in my job searches over the years.
Employers simply aren't interested in whether someone can snap fingers and clap hands in time with the background singers on "Golden Years," and it is a skill that is incredibly difficult to work into one's resume.
It is even more difficult to work into a conversation.
But, anyway.
"Golden Years" never really seemed like it belonged on Bowie's "Station to Station" album, which came out in January 1976. Musically, I suppose it had more in common with the "Young Americans" album that was released earlier in 1975. It had kind of a funky, soul–like quality to it. It even had a touch of disco in it — but not much, really.
It was just out of place on "Station to Station." To me, "Station to Station" always seemed to have more of an edge.
Want another kick in the head? Bowie has said he offered the song to Elvis Presley, but Elvis turned him down. Can you imagine "Golden Years" sung by Elvis?
"Station to Station" was an extension of Bowie's journey into funk and soul, I guess, but "Station to Station" had more of a synthesizer sound than the "Young Americans" album — or "Golden Years," for that matter.
Bowie was in a transitional phase when "Golden Years" was released. As I understand it, his cocaine addiction was at its worst at that time, too, and he has said that he remembers little of the "Station to Station" recording sessions.
I knew nothing about his cocaine dependency when "Golden Years" was being played frequently on the radio. In my rather sheltered hometown talk of things like cocaine really didn't exist in 1975. Conversations about marijuana were about as hardcore as it got.
I don't really think about it when I hear that song now, either. But I do think of what my life was like in 1975 and the line in Bowie's song that goes, "Nothing's gonna touch you in these golden years."
And I think of all the people I knew, all the people I went to school with, my parents and their friends, my grandmothers (both of whom were still living at that time). The image is frozen in my memory as if we were all posing for a group photo. Many of those people I knew are gone now. Something obviously did touch them in the intervening golden years.
But I've been lucky, I suppose. I've had my share of setbacks, and I haven't had perfect health, but nothing has touched me that dramatically or directly. I have been touched indirectly, I guess — when I have lost people I cared about.
I recall once many years ago when I lost a friend to cancer. At the time, I was working as a teaching assistant at the school where I was completing my work on my master's degree. When I came home after the funeral, one of my students came up to me and asked me how I was doing.
"I'm all right," I told her. "If you live long enough, these things are bound to happen. You will lose people you care about."
I don't know. At the time, I guess I thought I was sharing some special wisdom with her, but it really isn't wisdom. It's something anyone can figure out — provided one lives long enough.
I've had far too many opportunities to reflect on that conversation in the years since. Many of the people I cared about are gone now. When I heard David Bowie singing "Golden Years," it never occurred to me which of my friends and family members I would lose in my lifetime. It just wasn't something I thought about. Of course, I don't remember giving much thought to the lyrics, either.
Yep, I've been lucky. I've lived all these years, these golden years, and nothing has touched me. One day, it will. It happens to everyone. It has already happened to many.
So Bowie wasn't entirely correct, was he? Something will touch us. Sometime.
I remember the first time I heard David Bowie's "Fame." It was this day in 1975, the day the song hit the music stores and the air waves.
I remember it for the oddest of reasons. I was at my home in Arkansas packing for a family trip to Dallas to visit my grandmothers. It was the kind of trip my family had been making at least two or three times a year every year for as long as I could remember. It was a bit more meaningful for me this time, though. I would be attending a week–long workshop for high school journalism students at Southern Methodist University the next week, and, even before it started, I knew one of the participants — the son of some family friends. We had known each other all our lives.
Anyway, I had my radio on in my bedroom as I packed for the trip to Texas, and the D.J. announced the latest song from David Bowie. It had just been released that morning, he said, and he proceeded to play the song for his listeners. I stopped packing and sat down to listen to it. Forty years later, I still listen to it. For the last 25 years, I have tended to listen to the remix that was recorded in 1990 for the "Changesbowie" CD ...
... but hearing the original recording brings back sweet memories of those days. John Lennon, my favorite Beatle, was credited as a co–writer of the song, but Bowie did most of the heavy lifting — lyrically speaking. In late 1974, Lennon and Bowie met and started jamming together. In January 1975, they had a recording session that produced a cover of the Beatles' "Across the Universe" and a recording of the new song, "Fame."
Bowie said it was "nasty, angry," and acknowledged that it had been written with a malicious edge thanks to the nature of Bowie's relationship with the management group with whom he had been working.
Maybe Lennon's role in the creation of the song is why I was so drawn to it, but the truth is that I wasn't aware of his connection to the song when it was prominent on the radio. I just knew that I liked it.
I guess the style was funk — although I'm not really sure that's an accurate description. It was at a time when Bowie seemed to be obsessing over soul music. At any rate, anything that was co–written by Bowie and Lennon was bound to be unique.
Apparently, a lot of people were drawn to it. It became Bowie's biggest hit in the United States to that point. The song hit #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 and went to #1 in Canada as well. It was in the Top 10 in Norway and the Netherlands.
"Fame" was running through my head when I went to the SMU campus the following Monday to begin the journalism workshop. It was playing on my radio later in the day when I was back at my grandmother's house, and I could smell the evening meal cooking in the kitchen. If I close my eyes and listen to the original recording of "Fame," I probably can tell you what was on the menu.
For awhile there in the summer of '75, "Fame" was everywhere.
I like the remix. As I said, I've been listening to that version for many years. It doesn't revive memories from 40 years ago. But the original one sure does.
And, frankly, I have been surprised that more attention hasn't been paid to this milestone anniversary, especially when you consider how influential the song was in the summer of '75. Maybe people are too busy paying attention to the 40th anniversary of "Jaws."
But not Ryan Book. Last month, Book observed, in an article for Music Times, about Bowie's epic duets, that "perhaps the most legendary performer that Bowie ever formed a duet with was also the least present for the recording.
"'Fame' doesn't attempt to hide the fact that the former Beatle is included on the single," Book wrote, "yet it was hardly advertised as a duet. Bowie just happened to meet Lennon in New York while recording for Young Americans, and the pair shacked up for a few days and jammed. One of the results was a cover of 'Across The Universe,' but more unique inspiration was found when Lennon chanted the signature 'Fame!' line while guitarist Carlos Alomar improvised a riff. Bowie seized the initiative and quickly scribed the invective–laden lyrics, and keeping Lennon on as a rhythm guitarist, tasked vocally only with chanting the single word repeatedly. The song was tossed onto Young Americans at the last moment, and Bowie gave Lennon a disproportionate amount of songwriting credit, considering that he only contributed one word. Ah, but what an important word it was."
It's hard to say when I learned that critics were not infallible and that just because a critic didn't like something did not mean that I could not like it, either.
Seems like something everyone should know in a country that has always prided itself on freedom of speech, doesn't it? But even after a couple of centuries, the concept still is lost on some folks.
I guess there are those who apply the principle only to political discussion, but it applies to anything that can provoke more than one point of view.
In "Diamond Dogs," the album released by David Bowie 40 years ago today, Bowie fused the glam rock he helped to pioneer with apocalyptic visions from George Orwell's "1984."
It was a unique album with a unique album cover that, with Bowie portrayed as a man–dog creature, earned a spot on Billboard's list of 20 banned album covers. (The original cover showed the Bowie creature's genitalia; the revised cover had that part removed.)
Ken Emerson of Rolling Stone couldn't decide if the music was "masturbatory fantasies, guilt–ridden projections [or] terrified premonitions." He only seemed to know he didn't like it. It was, he wrote, "perhaps Bowie's worst album in six years."
In Bowie's earlier works, Emerson wrote that Bowie "challenged us and our music, both mired in a deathly complacency, to change."
"His best songs were deft, vivid constructions," Emerson wrote, "utilizing all the tricks of the Sixties trade and recharging them with the force of his personality and imagination, pushing them into the Seventies."
But Bowie's album sales in the U.S. had never been as strong as they were in the U.K. Consequently, Emerson wondered if "this may have prompted Bowie to hope that if America didn't eat him up when he was good, it might when he was bad."
I wasn't old enough at the time to grasp the issues surrounding the album. I just knew that I liked much of the music, particularly "Rebel, Rebel." Earlier, I liked "Space Oddity" and "Changes." Later on, I liked "Young Americans," "Fame" and "Golden Years."
I can't claim that I liked every song on "Diamond Dogs," but I liked many.
"No sooner had he proclaimed a new age than he turned his back on it and retreated to nostalgia," Emerson wrote, dismissing "Rebel, Rebel" as "an attempt at a 1964 smash."
Diamond Dogs seems to have had a number of meanings over the years. It's been the name of wiki applications, a movie, even a dog kennel. These days, Mississippi State's baseball team is known as the Diamond 'Dogs, but it was exclusively (as nearly as I can tell) the name of Bowie's album 40 years ago.
I get the feeling, from Stephen Thomas Erlewine's review for Allmusic.com, that wasn't necessarily a good thing.
"Diamond Dogs isn't a total waste," Erlewine wrote, "but it is the first record since Space Oddity where Bowie's reach exceeds his grasp."
It was a good idea, using Orwell's book as the main theme, but, in Erlewine's words, it "evolved into another one of Bowie's paranoid future nightmares." Maybe he was right about that. I read Orwell's book some years later, expecting to see clear connections between the book and the songs on Bowie's album. Some did have such a connection, others obviously did not.
And what of the song "1984," which was so clearly inspired by Orwell's book (even if that was not so clearly the case with the other songs on the album)?
When it made its debut on TV's The Midnight Special, it was "a powerful song," Emerson wrote.
But on the album, he said, it was "sickly, and a fluttery string arrangement cannot beef it up."
Be that as it may, I liked it. Maybe I was too young to know what good music was, but I knew what I liked.
After 40 years, I suppose it is anyone's guess whether the future that Bowie sang about has come to pass — or is still yet to come.
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
