You’re face to face, with the man who changed the world…
The 21st Anniversary Issue of
Each of the 21 artists selected has a piece written about them by another appreciative music world star. Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand has written a superb piece about David Bowie, from which the following two excerpts…
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“Bowie wasn’t ordinary. He wasn’t like us. He was an alien; a seductive freak with schizophrenic eyes and copper hair, sent to let us know there was more out there than our tedious lives. I’ve never wanted my pop stars to reinforce the ordinariness of life. I’d rather they were ambassadors of fantasy, inviting me to escape with them to the exotic vibrancy of our collective imaginations.”
“I was sitting around our rehearsal room with the rest of the band today when I told them I was writing this thing for Q about Why I Like David Bowie. We started the inevitable debate about what our favourite albums or periods were. Nick was talking about how he’s into the cold air and synthesis of Low and “Heroes”, all that German stuff; I was saying how I still love the unpredictable Hunky Dory eccentricity; Paul said there hasn’t been an album that tops Black Tie White Noise; Bob likes the one about the spaceman. It’s all irrelevant, though. There isn’t a perfect period for Bowie. What is perfect is how he managed to reject his past to progress: psychedelic intergalactic folk to heavy metal to concept glam to plastic soul to Krautrock to new romance. Imagine a contemporary singer trying to do that. Go on. Try.”
“I suppose he’s one of the great rock icons. I feel loath to say that, as I’m not much of a fan of icons. The Hendrixes, Morrisons and Strummers never really moved me. Maybe I don’t mind because he stepped away from the icons. A real rebel rebels against the rebels, and there’s so much postured fake rebellion in rock. Damn, he rebelled against himself. Apart from John Lennon’s Mother, I can’t think of a song where the songwriter publicly dismisses their own grandeur as Bowie does in Ashes To Ashes. Yeah, he knows it’s all a sham – a flicker of the imagination that lights us all – but not ordinary. Extraordinary.”
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That’s less than half of what Alex had to say about Bowie and it’s really worth checking out the mag to read the whole thing. Elsewhere, Kraftwerk are applauded by various members of Coldplay and Brian Eno. David Bowie also gets a mention in that article, but again, I don’t want to give everything away here.
As mentioned in the headline to this news item, “The 21 albums that changed music” are also listed in the magazine. Of course, there had to be at least one David Bowie album in there (should have been four or five) and in the event, The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars was chosen.
I’ll leave you with a couple of paragraphs from the Ziggy article, which was written by Dave Everley…
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“In a career filled with grand artistic statements, Ziggy Stardust was David Bowie’s grandest statement of all. This was more than just the album that defined the glam-rock era and transformed its creator from cult singer-songwriter into generational icon. With Bowie adopting the persona of a doomed, sexually ambiguous alien rock star, it blurred the line between artist and art, ultimately revealing the absurdity of fame. It was a cultural Trojan Horse that smuggled theatre, fashion, art and even mime into the pop arena, providing a watershed between rock’s black-and-white past and its vivid, multi-hued future. “It helped kill the ‘6os,” he told chat-show host Dinah Shore in 1977.”
“The album was released on 6 June 1972, and its impact was electrifying. In July, Bowie and guitarist Mick Ronson gave a brilliantly camp performance of Starman on Top Of The Pops. For many watching adolescents, its sheer parent-baiting affront planted a seed that would blossom into punk less than five years later. In the years that followed, artists as diverse as Pink Floyd, Marilyn Manson and even Garth Brooks have borrowed its central conceit of fictional star. That none came close to replicating its impact is testament to the genius of Bowie’s creation.”
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