Head Space Daily Words...

It is almost two weeks since the passing of David Bowie and on my journeys to and from work I have been pouring Bowie’s music into my ears and absorbing it like never before. The albums I own are Hunky Dory, The Rise And Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, Diamond Dogs and Young Americans as well as a Singles Collection. During the week of his death, 6Music became a Bowie shrine – and rightly so. When a person so musically and culturally significant is gone, they have to be celebrated and remembered.

When Space Oddity was released in 1969, I was not on this planet. Hunky Dory was two years old and Ziggy Stardust had been released then superseded by Aladdin Sane in 1973, the year I was born. I can’t claim to have been there at the time, moved by what I heard or awestruck by the persona presented. Instead, Bowie has been a presence that I have always been aware of from a young age. He must have seemed quite a strange, and almost dangerous character when I was too young to appreciate who he was.  Familiar with images of Bowie and his bright orange hair, tight fitting patterned outfits and lightning bolt makeup, being referred to as Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke, it must have all been very confusing.

In 1983, one of my clearest memories was when he was momentarily 'Motown cover Bowie', dancing in a long raincoat with Mick Jagger in the Dancing In The Street video. The only Bowie record I bought as a kid was the 7” of Lets Dance, which was released in 1983 and ten years later, when I was exclusively into dance music I bought the 12” of Jump They Say, for the Leftfield remix.

Bowie was a presence. You knew his music and could sing along to the choruses of all the hits. It permeated your psyche without you even knowing it. The albums I mentioned at the start of these words are fantastic pieces of work and along with the Berlin three of Low, Heroes and Lodger, were all released in the 1970s. They were all there to be discovered and devoured. In the 1980s and 1990s, I was following my own musical trajectory and discovering my own sound, largely dance and soul based music, which is why the first Bowie album to catch my interest was Young Americans when he was in his coked out soul boy phase. Ziggy Stardust and Hunky Dory soon followed and both are stone cold classics. The albums all stand alone but are united by containing incredibly memorable songs which are simultaneously musically brilliant and sing along pop/rock anthems. Bowie’s image changed more than the music across these albums, although there was obvious musical development and progression. The point of Bowie was always to change and morph and re-present himself as something else.

I saw the David Bowie…Is exhibition at the V&A a couple of years ago and it was a vast collection of who he had been and what he had become. The items were more than mere memorabilia but were artefacts presenting a life developed through music, art and culture.

Without an artist like Bowie putting our feelings into words, telling his stories and developing his artistic personality in front of our very eyes, modern music art and culture cannot move forward, or does so at a far slower and less flamboyant pace. A force like his is needed to give people the confidence and belief to positively express themselves, whoever they are, wherever they may be and whatever their background. Which begs the question, where is the next Bowie? Such artists will be harder to come by on the commercial conveyor belt as not much is allowed to be spontaneous anymore. Talent is bred in the petri dish of the Brit School, stage school and TV talent shows. Nothing grows naturally.

When someone passes, you feel a sense of guilt and my only wish is that I had listened to David Bowie’s music more often and had a wider knowledge of his work. Judging by the fact that he is number one in the current album chart, with nine of his other albums in the Top 40, many other people have had the same thought. Once the vinyl copies of Black Star have been replenished in London’s record shops, I shall become a proud owner. 2016 will be the year of David Bowie...