David Bowie attacks rock ’n’ roll as if it were performance art. A musical chameleon, Bowie is a glam-rock god. From his alter-ego Ziggy Stardust to his new-wave years in the ‘80s, he’s changed his identity every so often, always a step ahead of the times.
From “Space Oddity” to “Life on Mars?” to “Rebel Rebel” to “Let’s Dance” to “Fame” to “Changes” to “’Heroes’” to “Under Pressure” just to name a few — David Bowie’s discography is packed with hits. And that’s just a drop in the ocean.
Are you noticing a trend on this blog? As I’ve written about before, all the best artists are alcoholics and addicts. Kurt Cobain. Jimi Hendrix. Robert Downey, Jr. Eminem. Brian Wilson. Lou Reed. Stephen King. Ernest Hemingway. And now it’s time to write about David Bowie.
Before there was MTV, there was David Bowie. The mere quantity of Bowie video footage from all eras of his career is astounding. I had the pleasure of seeing an exhibit last year devoted entirely to Bowie at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. It was the only U.S. stop on the exhibit’s world tour. And I was blown away. The final room of the exhibit was 360 degrees of giant screens projecting David Bowie performances throughout the years. I sat in that room captivated for an hour and I didn’t even see all the clips. I wanted to go back before it closed, but I didn’t get around to it.
Bowie is in control of every aspect of his career, from his musical style to the costumes to the stage design. A true genius. But he was out of control with drugs, at one point stooping to injecting cocaine.
Cocaine was his best friend in the ‘70s. He used it to amp himself up for the stage.
“The lowest point in my life was in 1975, when I was 28, living in Los Angeles,” Bowie told The Sun. “I really did think that my thoughts about not making 30 would come true.”
During the making of his 1973 album Pin Ups, Bowie’s cocaine addiction was in full swing.
“In order for him to stay up all night and finish the tasks at hand, [cocaine] was a huge factor,” Carlos Alomar, who played guitar on 12 of Bowie’s albums, told the New York Post. “Its function was to keep you alert, and that’s what he was doing. It did not stop his creativity at all.”
According to the Post, Bowie was very professional and therefore never missed a gig or appeared high onstage, but he did forget lyrics.
Nile Rodgers produced Pin Ups as well as more recently had a return to the forefront playing guitar on Daft Punk’s 2013 hit “Get Lucky.”
“He told me there are years of his life that he doesn’t remember,” Rodgers told the Post. “He said, ‘I know that’s me singing, I know that’s my record and my picture, but I don’t remember writing the songs, I don’t remember going into the studio.’ ”
“Like most people who get deeply involved in drugs, I felt it probably helped me break out of my inhibitions,” Bowie told an Australian TV reporter in 2004. But, of course, it doesn’t. It just throws you into a real quagmire of psychic and emotional hell, really. It just brings out, or creates, awful traumas for you. But I had no idea of that, obviously.”
“It was an awful, dreadful period for me. The only escape for me in the end was just to get up and clean myself out, you know, and just finish my association with cocaine, which had become such a problem that I couldn’t function in any other way from day to day,” he continued. “I wasn’t eating. I couldn’t eat anything. I mean, you’ve seen photographs of me in that period. I weighed 95 pounds or something. I am absolutely amazed that I actually survived that period. ”
Desperate to get sober, Bowie moved to Berlin.
“Drugs had taken my life away from me,” Bowie told The Sun. “I felt as though I would probably die and it was going to be all over. My assistant, Coco, got me out of it. Thanks to her, I got myself out of America to Berlin.”
In Berlin, he lived with New York proto-punk singer Iggy Pop, who was also struggling with addiction — to heroin. The idea was to get sober together.
“Life in LA had left me with an overwhelming sense of foreboding,” Bowie told Uncut. “I had approached the brink of drug-induced calamity one too many times, and it was essential to take some kind of positive action. For many years, Berlin had appealed to me as a sort of sanctuary-like situation.
“It was one of the few cities where I could move around in virtual anonymity. I was going broke; it was cheap to live. For some reason, Berliners just didn’t care. Well, not about an English rock singer, anyway.”
Bowie says he finally got sober for good in the late ‘70s, when he was given custody of his son.
He has the Serenity Prayer tattooed in Japanese on his leg.
God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference
The prayer is a staple in Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous circles.
Bowie also has a sizeable acting career, appearing in the 1976 sci-fi movie The Man Who Fell to Earth, the 1983 vampire flick The Hunger, as the goblin king in the 1986 dark fantasy film Labyrinth, as Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorcese’s 1988 controversial movie The Last Temptation of Christ, and as Andy Warhol in the 1996 film Basquiat. He also appeared as himself in the 2001 comedy Zoolander.
With a healthy career, a strong marriage to model Iman, a 15-year-old daughter, and a 44-year-old film director son, Bowie is thriving in spite of his tumultuous past.
“I hope I am somebody that other artists could look to as maybe someone who has learnt how to ride the full curve of having some kind of longevity in their chosen profession, you know,” he told that Australian TV reporter. ”I’m still writing and producing the music that I’ve always wanted to. And I still have a very loyal audience. I don’t think live life could be better for me. I think I am a good example.”
Bowie is such a colorful character that his oeuvre was selected as fodder for a touring, retrospective museum exposition – “David Bowie Is…”
It’s easy to fill in the blank of who David Bowie is… One of a kind. Authentic. Imaginative. Transformative. Spontaneous. Passionate. Debonair. Beyond fabulous. Heroic. And above all, a true artist.
