Bowie was great from start to finish, it is the generations whom he sang the song of their lives. God died on Sunday.
In the Gospel According to St. John, Lazarus has been dead for four days when Jesus enters your tomb and resurrected. The biblical character names the presentation single Blackstar , the album David Bowie released on Friday, the day of his 69 birthday. But the singer has never choir boy, made much more sense it change the turns the story. Two days after editing the 25th disc, the family announced that he had lost the fight for a cancer that the world was unaware, after eighteen months of battle. “Look up here,” prophesied in the first line of the song, “I” m in heaven. “I was there long before succumbing.
They do not make legends like David Bowie, able to cross generations and survive the wear on the dance floor. “There is no other like him,” wrote ten years ago Lou Reed in Rolling Stone. “He added tear and sophistication to rock ‘n’ roll, was always changing anything and was impossible to get enough of him. “Bowie, truth be told, did Style diversity at your school. It was Major Tom in the late sixties, with the man on the Moon and he’s already on its way to Mars. In 1972 converted in Ziggy Stardust, an androgynous messenger from another planet. Four years later he was a cocaine addict and destructive aristocrat, The Thin White Duke. It was the superhero of insanity in the 1970s, Aladdin Sane, and Goblin King children eighties in movie Labyrinth. One for all and all for Bowie. If it was weird and dubious, could only be him.
It was these characters, hard to love, which made him a god. David was indeed such a specific type that was necessary to create a whole movement to explain where they fit. Then the singer became a father, son and divine soul of glamrock. The trend survived, expanded. Was the rock open with high heels and lipstick on her lips. Outrageous clothes, neither fish nor fowl. The characters behind the songs were ambiguous, bisexual – even at a time when hardly tolerate such a violation of the establishment. David Bowie operated his private revolution in pop. Without it, they would have hardly appeared bands like The Cure, Suede or placebo. Or even Lady Gaga.
Once upon a time an alien
Before the explosion, Bowie was David Jones, Christian name, and fought it He had enough to get anywhere. In 1963, after saxophone lessons and finish the course of Eletrotecnia in Brixton, South London, he told the parents: “I want to be a pop star.” He was 16. Then formed the first band – the The Konrads – to play at weddings, but got tired in no time the lack of ambition of the companions. Went through a handful of bands and even wrote the first English version of a Claude François song called Comme d “Habitude . Bowie turned it into Even the Foul Learns to Love in 1968, but no publisher wanted her to launch Years later, Frank Sinatra would make it eternal, giving it a new letter and a renewed title:.. My Way
The mother got him a job as an electrician’s apprentice, David could not keep more post than a few months. It was mime shows and cabaret, counting spare change for a living. Then, in 1969, launched Space Oddity . It was July 23, three days after Neil Armstrong take the first steps on the moon. He reached the top 5 in England and became the first hit iconic Bowie. In 2013, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield made a cover of the song on board the International Space Station. David recorded through an intermediary the first video clip made in Earth orbit, evidence lacked that man was not from this planet.
Then came a cascade of hymns, more political than others, dispersed over 25 albums and nearly 50-year career. These are songs that meet specific missions. Let ‘s dance (1983) serves to summon the party and Modern Love (1983) to open the dancefloor. There is Jean geanie (1972) and Rebel Rebel (1973), who is full of energy, Suffragette City (1972) and The Man Who Sold The World (1970) for anyone who is angry with him. There is Heroes (1977) and Absolute Begginners (1984) to sigh us truths in his ear, China Girl (1983), Oh You Pretty Things (1971) and Moonage Daydream (1972) to give rhythm to the seduction, Changes (1971) to demand change, which itself embraces without reservation : after all, in 1975 wrote Young Americans and 1997 I “m Afraid of Americans . Now Lazarus , as the rest of the album Blackstar (2016): melancholic, nostalgic, longing for an entire ad. The farewell, come on.
Bowie was a solo singer and was not. Songs like Starman (1972) added voice to the genius of the powerful guitar of Mick Ronson, and Trevor Visconti, who accompanied him on bass from beginning to end of his career, has never lacked leadership. Apart from that he worked with a handful of other artists – their immortality can not miss Under Pressure, recorded in 1981 with the Queen and then in 1992 with Annie Lennox, the tribute concert to Freddie Mercury. But Bowie also performed with Lou Reed, Mick Jagger, Lenny Kravitz, Arcade Fire, Iggy Pop and, astonishingly, Tina Turner. “Apart from a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians who played did their best work with me,” reads the biography Strange Fascination, written by David Buckley for 15 years.
And the pride of some statements was, says the same book, more facade than sincerity. “Almost an extension of personae that the singer gave body,” says Buckley. And a few episodes to prove otherwise. The first time I went to the United States, for example, the singer read the Velvet Underground were playing a New York club called the Electric Circus. “I was convinced it was the biggest one fan in the UK,” said Bowie once to Esquire magazine, “then put – me on the front line and I made sure that Lou Reed saw me singing all the songs color them. ” At the end of the show, he knocked on the dressing room door and asked to speak with the lead singer of the band. They spent ten minutes talking about composition. “The next day I told someone who had achieved an adolescence of ambition, but then told me that Lou had left the band and I had was talking to the Dog Yule, who had replaced. So much ingenuity.”
Everything but dangerous things
This arrival in New York was, however, the period to which the singer calls his own darkness. Lots of hard drugs, too much alcohol and random sex. A little as the film Velvet Goldmine , directed by Todd Haynes in 1998 and inspired his life. Cured in Berlin, where he worked in underground clubs and released a trilogy of legendary albums produced by Brian Eno: Low (1977), Heroes (1977) and Lodger (1979). Some of these songs, such as Heroes , becoming would hymns twenty years later, when the Berlin Wall was finally overthrown.
Besides being a musician, Bowie was a painter, collector Art and actor. Extraterrestrial in The Man Who Fell to Earth in 1976, and the Elephant Man on Broadway, in 1980. He was a prisoner of war of the Japanese in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence and Vampire The Hunger , both from 1983. Five years later, gave body to Pontius Pilate n “ Last Temptation of Christ and in 2006 entered a film by Christopher Nolan, The Prestige. Always roles to suit you. “I explored everything we wanted to explore less dangerous things, like being explorer”, he told the audience at a Madison Square Garden concert, the day they did 50 years ago. “I never knew very well where he was going, but I always knew it was going to be a boring trip.”
* “Look up here, I ‘m in heaven” are the first lines of Lazarus, the debut single from the last album of Bowie, Blackstar, which was released in his 69 birthday on 8 January. He died two days later, on Sunday night.
No comments:
Post a Comment