By: Dan, Gareth, Si, Cameron & Martyn
It’s almost impossible to imagine than a mere seven days ago we still lived in a world with David Bowie in it. The last week has been so wrought with emotion, with such a worldwide outpouring of grief, that it already feels far longer. My struggling to get my head around the concept is probably not helped by the somewhat surreal way in which I first heard the devastating news. We were sat in a restaurant in Bangkok airport on our way back from three glorious weeks holiday in Thailand, heading back to a flooded, freezing UK; we were already at quite a low ebb. So when Hannah suddenly exclaimed, having been able to check Twitter via a sliver of free wi-fi, “Oh my god, I think David Bowie has died!” my first reaction was almost complete incomprehension. We spent the next 30 minutes frantically searching for some sort of verification, anything official to tell us the truth one way or another. Eventually we abandoned social media and then we saw it, the short, stark message on his official website. And then we knew. David Bowie was dead.
I burst in to tears immediately. Right there in that restaurant, 6,000 miles from home. Sobbing.
The next 30 hours were spent in a strange blur of planes, airports and grief as we made the long journey home and the rest of the world woke up to the sad, sad news (it was only 5am in the UK when we found out).
For the last six days I have been searching for the words to explain why I was so upset. Why this death, of all the sad deaths that happen every day, icons and ‘normal’ folk alike, had hit me so hard. And frankly, after six days, I’ve still got nothing. I just can’t put it in to words. There are no words that begin to cover the impact this glorious sprite of a man had on my world, my growing up, my development as a person. As a kid who was always a bit ‘different’ growing up in the 70s and 80s to have an artist like Bowie making it not only ok to be different but really fucking cool making this strange and amazing music meant everything. An artist that was pushing gender boundaries before most of us even knew they were there. An artist who was never content to sit still, to stop creating. An artist that at an age when most of his peers were slipping in to middle-aged obsolescence was making a fucking drum ‘n’ bass album! An artist that, staggeringly, right up to the moment of his death was writing some of the best music he had in years and planning how his final show would unfold. And that’s what it was, his death, a final curtain call for one of our finest ever performers. Everything from the release of Black Star on his birthday to the announcement of his death seems to have been meticulously planned and executed. With a final flourish, David Bowie exited the stage with characteristic aplomb.
That’s all I’ve got really. Column inches by the billion have been generated over the last week in tribute to this unique man. We debated whether we really needed to add to the noise but ultimately Bowie affected so many of us, and so much of the music we listen to, it seemed callous not to at least give a space for some of our writers to express in their own words what David Bowie meant to them. Here are a few stories:
Garath Watkin
Where does one start when trying to come up with what to say about an artist they were clearly devoted too? Monday morning I awoke to my girlfriend sitting up in bed, telling me that Bowie had passed away. I spent much of that day recalling any memory I had connected in some way or form to David Bowie. Recent New Year’s party spent getting drunk and listening to ‘Heroes’. A calming camping trip sat in a field listening to Hunky Dory whilst staring out across a beautiful landscape. The many times I spent watching my Father play ‘Space Oddity’ on guitar.
I was a little amazed at how these memories all came flooding back one by one to me, and it made me realise the profound effect Bowie’s music had on me. Much of my first musical tastes came from my Father, who grew up listening to Bowie with his brothers back in Ireland. I owe a lot to him, for his guidance in my youth led me to pursue music as much as I could. In his words ‘he goes as far back as he does forward’. I enjoyed checking out The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and so on, but there was something special about Bowie. Something about the man’s music just brought so many different people together, in so many different places and situations.
Everyone connected to whatever it was he presented, regardless of whether they grew up with Bowie or was born later like myself and had to go back to find out. There was never a difference in joy between people my age or people my parents age. Everyone connected to the very same thing in so many different songs. It’s those connections I think I’ll remember best. The sheer power Bowie’s music had to tune into so many different people from so many different backgrounds. To think of Bowie nowadays certainly makes me feel sad, but there’s also happiness in recalling the many times he’s brought me, my family, and my closest friends absolute joy.
Si Forster
“I was never a big fan, but…”
This is how I started a reply to someone that morning, after I sat down at work after a long drive when everything was normal when I set off and everything went mad when I arrived and checked my phone for messages. And it’s true. I have wonderful friends who love his every utterance, his every persona, his every record. Me, I like some of the songs.
So with that in mind, I didn’t think I’d be that upset. I was, and remain, so wrong. The best I’ve managed to do this week by way of remembrance is to watch Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence because I’ve found that even thinking about putting Hunky Dory or Low or anything else on hurt. Even Ryuichi Sakamoto’s theme hit home and hit hard. This is probably why many people chose to watch Labyrinth instead.
Blackstar is here and unlistened to. I wasn’t much in the mood to listen to it last week, and I really don’t want to listen to it just now. The reason is a little strange, I will admit – the last time I saw my Dad, everything was as normal and convivial as it had been for a while, and only a hug before I left seemed slightly out of place. When he passed away that night, I became irrationally angry at the fact that he knew he was going to die and didn’t tell me, and there’s a faint echo of that here, trite as that seems to me to type. He knew he was going, he didn’t want anything made of it other than what he made himself and that was the end of it; this sentence applies to both my Dad and Bowie in my head, and it will be a comfort eventually. Just not yet.
All that aside, the “but…” at the top of this piece is so important. My sister prayed at the altar of other Davids (the Cassidy/Soul/Essex triptych) when I was a toddler, but she played ‘Changes’ for me a lot. ‘Space Oddity’ got played a lot during School Assemblies for reasons I can’t immediately fathom. I remember seeing Ashes to Ashes for the first time on The Tube (? possibly) and knowing that it was special. I can place so many David Bowie songs across my childhood and my growing-up and I don’t think I can do that for anyone else. And it’s probably this that has upset me so – here was someone who was always there in whatever background capacity he was, and now he isn’t any more.
So, thanks David, from someone who was never a big fan, but who is going to miss you.
Cameron Piko
For me, there is no single moment of when I first got into David Bowie. He was so entrenched in pop culture he couldn’t be avoided. There are just a series of memories scattered over the years: the infinite of classic singles played on the radio, my older sister listening to “John, I’m Only Dancing” on repeat, buying my first Bowie album (Hunky Dory), laughing at the Bowie episode of Flight of the Conchords.
This is all really happening for me during Bowie’s ten year hiatus, and when the very first news that a new album may be coming out (what would turn out to be 2013’s The Next Day), me and a workmate become incredibly excited. What would the man, famous for being there on the forefront, come up with next? In the back office of work, Bowie would be on repeat. It was then that I decided to dive deeper into Bowie’s back catalogue, starting with the inception of the ‘Berlin’ trilogy: 1977’s Low.
Low is my favourite Bowie album, the one I return to the most. It’s cold in sound and production, yet incredibly touching and personal. Over the first side of the album, Bowie tackles with his ongoing battle with drugs, failing relationships and overall feelings of isolation and alienation. Whilst there are plenty of great moments in the first half of the album (“Breaking Glass” being a particular favourite), it’s the second, mainly instrumental, side of Low that really stands out. There is hope, yearning, despair and ruin to be found all at once amongst these pieces, something I seemed to understand innately when these instrumentals served as my soundtrack whilst reading Dostoyevsky.
“Warszawa” is an absolute masterpiece. Eno sets up an utterly alien landscape for Bowie to croon indecipherably over. It feels both empty and comforting at the same time. Alien, yet utterly human. Reading about how the track was made, I’m simply astonished by the ingenuity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warszawa_(song)). It’s both uncompromising musically, and jaw-droppingly beautiful.
“Subterraneans” is right up there with “Warszawa” as one of my favourite Bowie tracks, and is the only piece from Side B to actually feature English lyrics. Not that I’ve ever been able to make sense of them. A low-key introspective piece, this song has always struck me as Bowie crying out into the void. From the tentative sax (also played by Bowie) to the reversed bass-line to those shimmering keys…there are few songs that give me goosebumps every single time I listen to them, but “Subterraneans” is one of them. Magnificence.
And then The Next Day came out, and I was happy. It was on constantly in the back office of work. And then we got Blackstar, and I was even happier. In some ways it carried that cold yet human quality of Low. And then we lost David, and I don’t know what to say. I don’t think I can ever fully articulate the power of his music, but at least we can listen to it together.
Martyn Coppack
Legend, icon, innovator, rock star, artist. Think about those words. They’re words you hear everyday bandied about and dispersed to who-ever is in distance and seemingly deserving of some credit to set them apart from the general crowd. They’ve almost become meaningless as yet another “Legends of the 80’s” tour rumbles through town bringing barely remembered one hit wonders with it, much like the flash in the pan singer gets called a “real” artist because he or she does something that causes a slight stir amongst the intelligentsia, that bunch of people who like to think they are a step above everyone else. What they fail to recognise is that legend, icon, innovator, rock star, artist are not words you dish out as medals of honour (or dishonour). Instead they are words that should only be used for a select few. They should never be used all at the same time either….that is unless we are talking about David Bowie.
There was a common perception in the 70’s (at least according to my mother), that if you liked David Bowie you was considered as being weird. Think about that for a second. Being weird? Now equate that to the millions of people who have been touched by the music of David Bowie. That’s a whole lot of weird people in the world. And if you ask each and every one of them if they think it is OK to be considered “weird”, their answer will quite likely be…”yes, David Bowie allowed me to be”. That is the crux you see, Bowie, the boy from Brixton, turned on a whole bunch of people to a different culture, a different way of being. It’s no great shake to say that he did as much for post-war minds and souls as that truck driver from Memphis did in 1958. Bowie made it OK to be yourself.
I missed the 70’s musically due to being born at the wrong time so when it came to finally hearing David Bowie properly it would have been around 1986. I can’t even remember the circumstances around this either, he just seemed to appear. He was the guy singing with Mick Jagger, he was the guy singing with Freddie Mercury, he also seemed to be the guy who I had always known. It was when I heard Ziggy Stardust for the very first time that I finally knew why I thought I knew him. He was me, in some strange indescribable way, this was a guy who seemed to mirror my own thoughts. From the opening bars of ‘Five Years’ to the final anguished screams of ‘Rock And Roll Suicide’ (“no! You’re not alone!), the forty minutes or so of music on this album completely flipped my mind on not only what music could be, but what sort of person you could be. Weird, according to my mother. So be it.
Fast forward another 14 years and I’m stood in the middle of a field in Pilton with several thousand other people waiting for a moment I had waited for since that first listen of Ziggy Stardust. David Bowie was due on stage at Glastonbury Festival and I would be there to watch him. What would he do? What would he play? The previous years had seen excursions into drum and bass and jungle, you just didn’t know. From the opening track, ‘Wild Is The Wind’ it was obvious that this was going to be a special gig. As the chiming bars of ‘China Girl’ kicked off, it was a realisation that tonight Bowie was going to deliver a set of classics. Like the building blocks of my musical life song after song followed…’Changes’, ‘Life On Mars’, ‘Absolute Beginners’, ‘Rebel Rebel’, ‘Starman’ and of course ‘Heroes’. Not only this, there were album cuts like ‘Station To Station’ and also songs from outside his own catalogue such as ‘All The Young Dudes’ and ‘Under Pressure’. It was a setlist you could only dream off and it was happening right in front of my eyes. Bowie had promised something special and he duly delivered.
It would be difficult for me to pinpoint a specific period in his career as for me, it all depends on my mood. Some days only Ziggy will do, other days I’ll head to Berlin. Even the 80’s (my least favourite era) throws up some absolute classics and recently it has been the remarkable comeback of The Next Day followed by Blackstar, a song which I believe to be one of his greatest, and now the album. It will take some time for me to digest Blackstar as an album now knowing what we know, it will be difficult. It may also be cathartic. At the moment I just want the memories.
It’s a struggle at the moment to truly put into words how I feel about David Bowie. He is an artist who I have loved, admired, been baffled by, got frustrated with and even hated. He has stirred up so many emotions through his songs that they have left an indelible part on my life. From that simple opening of ‘Five Years’ all those years ago to the heart-wrenching ‘Lazarus’, it has been a journey which has shaped my life. He has simply always been there, in music, in conversation, in thought. Always hovering like some disdainful uncle who knows you are only trying your best to understand this thing called art and if you would only listen to Tin Machine one more time you might actually get it. I think I “got him”. He certainly “got me”. At the end of these are only words, the true impact that this wonderful, creative human being had on me will only ever be in my heart. Goodbye Starman, Kook, Ziggy, Duke. Goodbye legend, icon, innovator, rock star, artist. The world will never be quite the same. Major Tom has left the building.
