And that's what I realized in the last couple days, since he shockingly died. He brought more sheer excitement than any other source in my life. Whenever a sentence started with "David Bowie" it always ended with my heart beating faster with anticipation. Always and every time for as long as I can remember. So when my wife grabbed my arm in the middle of the night as I went to get our crying newborn and said "David Bowie..." well, you know the rest.
What kind of fan am I? The kind that bought his album the second the store got it in on his birthday, 2 days before...
On Paul Simon's most recent album he sings "there could never be a father who loved his daughter as much as I love you". That's how I feel about David Bowie. I know, now more than ever, how many people out there deeply loved this man, but I don't feel their love-I only feel mine and no one could ever have loved him more than me. Seeing all of the Ziggy Stardust images as a remembrance only supports this. Ziggy Stardust was a character he played for a year. Ziggy Stardust died a long time ago. David Jones aka David Bowie is who died. And I have been at a loss for words, until now.
LOW had just come out when I drew this at 12.
I'm surprised to see I wrote "but you can't change time"
instead of "but i can't trace time", the correct lyric.
He's A Faggot, You're Probably a Faggot Too
I don't remember I time I didn't know the name David Bowe - it seems like it was before I knew my own name. I was well aware there was David Bowie and then there was everyone else. In elementary school I was picked on for liking "that fag" and told "you're probably a faggot too". I looked at their ugly local faces and heard their stupidity and knew I was on the cool side of the line. "Young Americans" had just come out and I knew every word. I looked at the cover for days, months. I already knew Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust. Again, I was still in ele-fucking-mentary school. "Look how nervous he is" my older brother said to me while we watched him on the Dick Cavette Show. "He keeps playing with his cane". Of course he wasn't nervous. He was speeding his ass off on cocaine. I was sooo tired. My eyes barely could stay open. I was 11 and in my pajamas. I just watched the coolest dude in the world.
"Isn't That Me?"-1974 "Ain't That Just Like Me?"-2016
"I'm glad that you're older than me, makes me feel important and free". I'd sing this to myself as I walked down the street as a young teen. I always dug people older than me. So did he. He got me and I got him. And we didn't even know each other. How could that be? "David Live" was the result of fun meeting funky. Rock meeting soul. Holy shit, how is it possible that it was recorded live a couple miles away from my turntable? The pics of him inside the double live album from The Tower Theater showed someone different from anyone else in an otherwise average environment. It wasn't glam, no gloss or anything. More like white, soulful and sweaty. This time he seemed to be portraying an exhausted human being. Best live album I ever heard. That and Wing's "Rock Show". Check out "When You Rock and Roll With Me". Jesus.
I was 11 when I drew this rendition of
the David Live album cover.
I Want To Live
Yes, my brother turned me onto the cream of the crop: Hunky, Ziggy, Aladdin, Diamond Dogs. But when he moved on, musically and physically (college and Fleetwood Mac") I got swallowed up in a strange world of bisexual-tinged insanity. The Man Who Sold The World, Images 67-70 and the darkest and deepest of them all perhaps Space Oddity. Oddity to me is the acoustic Man Who Sold The World. The most human of all his albums in my opinion. In it, I felt his skin, smelled his hair. I was in his room and he told me a lot of fucked up things. I was scared but wanted to hear more and more. On the cover and back cover it looks like he has freckles or something. Like he's a real human being. That always stood out to me. This is no Ziggy. This is a real alien-dude we're hanging with.
"I want to live". Check out the way those words are written on the liner notes. The sentences get smaller and smaller until they just say "live". Again, not light toe tapping music. I believe the years I spent with this album (as well as Man Who Sold The World) made me feel like I had a friend noon else knew.
Staying Alive In Berlin
In 1977 it seems everyone either sang very high, Bee Gee's, or very "Low". While I tried to get my brother into the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack ("I don't like how high their voices are") I found myself very disappointed in my very own purchase of Bowie's latest. For a 12 year-old suburban kid such as me, it wasn't immediately obvious what this drugged out artist was sending me from Berlin, Germany. The first song had no vocals. The 2nd one was almost catchy then over before it began. WTF. I was getting really bummed when "Sound and Vision" came on. Instantly lovable. I didn't know who the chick was but man, she sounded great. Then Bowie comes in with yet another very low octave and barely audible vocal. Within a month I loved the whole album. Eventually it would become one of my favorite albums ever. As usual Bowie was teaching me to expand my mind and ears. He was on a path and I was along for the ride. That only happens when someone's in it for the art not the money. Of course, he was making more money than most musicians already. But cashing in would come a few years later.
20 Feet From Stardust
"Playbill" hahahaha" my Junior High friend blurted and laughed when he saw my "The Elephant Man" playbill after school in my bedroom. He thought it was a riff off of "Playboy". This is how different I was from my age group. The fact that I grew up tagging along with my parents and seeing films for older people, going to shows in NY, sitting in fancy restaurants made me one of those "14 going on 40" kinda kids. Playbill as you probably know is a theatre leaflet. This one was signed by Mr. Bowie personally. My parents took me to see him perform live as the Elephant Man and afterward my copy of the Playbill was brought back to his dressing room, signed and returned to me. I never took it too seriously, suspecting it was someone else who signed it. But I'm sure it was him in retrospect. Sitting literally 15 feet, center in front of him in nothing but a loincloth saying "sometimes I think my head is so big is because it is so full of dreams" was fucking intense.I told everyone in school. I don't think they cared as much as I did. After school I continued to work on perfecting my stage performances in front of an audience of one when I was probably supposed to be doing some kind of sports thing.
The Super Man Who Fell To Mortal Philadelphia
Back when it was the Ritz 3 movie theater and years before I should've seen a movie with an R rating, my parents would take me with them to see all kinds of art-films, indie-films, foreign films. I wish they hadn't because it gave me information I was nowhere near ready for. The Tin Drum? Really? There is one exception though and that was the friggin' miracle that David Bowie was starring in a movie. I first read about it (*see next section) when I opened the paper to see a huge full page ad with his face and planet earth in the distance. before and after that page were normal-people movies, dull who-cares movies. I'm sure many people out there didn't really care that he was in a film, but the fans were mesmerized. My dad took me to see it at the Ritz. Before the movie started they were playing his music. I'll never forget the sound. So good, so warm and dry. I had listened to the Ziggy album night and day for a couple years by that point but I never flipped the record. I was so in love with side 1, I guess it never occurred to me. Maybe I was scared it wouldn't be as good. It was, of course. Maybe even better. So when "Starman" came tumbling out of the theater speakers with those juicy, punchy, dry snare and tom-toms (that fill is sooo British isn't it?) I was all "ooooh, yes, yes, yes". Lights went down after a song or two and my heart started beating faster. But where was he? And where was I and...and...kaboom. Orange, blond-haired Bowie straight off the LOW album cover on the usually stuffy, boring screen. Some drunk fat dude is garbling something. And then we see a really, really old lady. So human. Both of them, but not you-know-who. I started understanding juxtaposition that day. Over the next few weeks reviews were written (favorable mostly), the ads started getting a little smaller. Then really small. But they always caught my eye like a laser-beam. Eventually it played at the Plymouth Meeting Mall, seconds from my house. My dad and I saw it again. The sex scenes were weird but by now I was used to watching weird and inappropriate things with my parents.
From my scrapbook. I'd cut out anything with his name, for years.
*Daily, obsessively, I would speed-scan newspapers, magazines and books for the letters D or B. At some point I also started looking for the key letters the other way around: B and D. One was David's initials of course, the other Bob Dylan's. But never at the same time was I obsessed with the both of my idols. It was like a Superman/Clark Kent thing. One or the other. My brain couldn't have both simultaneously. Dylan was soil, earth, the Village. Bowie, another world. Anywhere but here. So it'd be Bowie from September to January, Dylan from February to Spring and back and forth. It's still the same.
Peace On Earth, Can It Be?
What's better than the old folks finally seeing that us kids know talent when we see it? Bowie certainly held his own (um, if not more?) next to Bing Crosby. Our beautiful alien wasn't all that different than the regular old-time crooner was he? I'd like to say I enjoyed every second of Crosby's Christmas special but the house phone rang every 5 seconds from friends to tell me he was on. It was like the Bowie-hotline that night.
I Could Make It All Worthwhile
When the radio station announced they'd be playing a brand new single from his new album at 1pm the next day, I didn't forget it. When the next day (pun?) came I was in Science Class. When the clock was at 12:58 I raised my hand to go to the bathroom. With my walkman well hidden I ran to the boys room, found an empty stall pressed the earphones to my ears as hard as I could. I didn't want any to seep out. "I catch a paper boy, but things don't really change". This was his reward to all of us who learned a new way to listen to music through his Berlin/Eno trilogy: the easy to digest and instantly lovable "Let's Dance" album. We graduated together.
I started my own bands, wrote my own songs and eventually signed to the same label he made all his classic albums for, RCA.
What makes me the saddest is knowing I'll never hear the words "David Bowie" again and wonder what he has up his sleeve this time. Maybe more than anything, I'll say this to him: thanks for making being a guy as cool and sexy and liberating as being a girl.
Scot Sax
January 21 2016
brilliant scot...you know of course i identify with the obsession, just a few years behind you xoxo
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