What a terrible start to the week, turning on the computer to find a heartfelt Facebook eulogy from one of our friends to his hero David Bowie. We can’t give a better description about why Bowie was so important, something you probably already know anyway. So we’re putting on the B-side of ‘Low’ and saying what he meant to us.
We were already fans when we found every single one of his classic run of albums at a car boot sale in the 90s. From Space Odyssey to Scary Monsters, with not a scratch on the vinyl. Where to start? We bounced round each of them until we settled on ‘Hunky Dory’, arguably his most easy going album. It remains our favourite – side one is completely flawless. Then the abstract doom-ambient of ‘Low’ caught our ears. It joins first half of the front-loaded ‘Let’s Dance’’s pure pop as our most worn Bowie vinyl.
We did get to see him, once, but it was a close run thing. After days at Glastonbury we were a bit worse for wear. A little sleep before Bowie would do the world of good. We woke to the distant sound of ‘China Girl’. Rushing toward the stage we missed more of our favourites – Life On Mars, Changes – but once we were in the delighted crowd there were so many killer songs left that we soon forgot. After almost 40 years he was an amazing performer and this was the final moment that reminded the world of his legend status, something that was amazingly forgotten by many for a decade or so.
Every album from ‘Hours…’ onwards was considered a return to form, not least ‘The Next Day’, his surprise from a couple of years ago that led to James Murphy’s ‘Love Is Lost’ remix – our favourite Bowie track since the early eighties. But it’s fitting that he ended his career not with another incremental “return to form” but with probably his most challenging of his half-century, ‘Blackstar’. To think of him rushing to finish it knowing the end was close says so much about where he was as an artist. We’d love to have been able to hear where he would have gone from here.
There will never be another Bowie. The distractions in the modern world mean that music can never take a hold on so many lives in the way that Bowie did, and if that were to happen could any new pop artist have the balls to fight the commercial nature of modern pop to constantly reinvent themselves so dramatically?
He, he will be king.