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Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

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    #26
    Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

    He did a helluva lot more for Iggy than produce Raw Power. He rescued him from an asylum (having sneaked him in coke for a while first), took him to Berlin, wrote and produced his best solo material by a light year, and even toured as his keyboardist. Five minutes later, Pop had already fallen back into being like this and soon pissed it all up the wall again. So in 1983 Bowie did 'China Girl' at his commercial peak, to get Iggy some much-needed royalties, then 'Tonight' and 'Neighbourhood Threat' the next year to sort him out for life. That is a guardian angel, and it's not as if the support or even influence was two-way: Bowie was just a fan.

    There are some great clips of Bowie on the Dinah Shore daytime TV show from the mid-70s doing the rounds. He'd charmed the audience with his 'plastic soul' stuff (his term, not derogatory), joining in karate skits and admiring the work of Fonzie. And he actually used this credit to get Iggy on and do all this.

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      #27
      Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

      I know someone who used to do for Bowie. She hinted that he was involved in an awful lot of knobbing and that she also felt very sorry for Angie.

      I also saw Jim Rosenthal at a train station once.

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        #28
        Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

        I used to hate Bowie. My dad used to work in Rotterdam and the telly in his flat used to get MTV and "Absolute Beginners" was on so much it almost drove me mental. I always associated him with "Let's Dance" & "Dancing In the Streets" and loads of other stuff I thought was naff - this was the 80s.

        Then I heard more of his older stuff, borrowed a couple of LPs and I can see why people would love him, but it's hard to really get into someone if when you first become aware of them they're shit.

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          #29
          Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

          Plus he was such a rock royalty type that the younger, differently stupid me thought that he just had to be no good.

          I don't agree with that me now, to be clear.

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            #30
            Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

            sw2boro wrote:
            I always associated him with "Let's Dance" ... and loads of other stuff I thought was naff...
            Jesus Christ.

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              #31
              Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

              Read the rest.

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                #32
                Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                I stand by it. He was showbiz bollocks.

                Turns out he used to be really good.

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                  #33
                  Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                  Why at Last! wrote:
                  sw2boro wrote:
                  I always associated him with "Let's Dance" ... and loads of other stuff I thought was naff...
                  Jesus Christ.
                  Much as I adore 1970s Bowie, if you grew up with 80s Bowie, I can understand the sentiment.

                  He had his odd moment post 1980, but they were a bit few and far between. I like Heathen. The first Tin Machine album isn't bad.

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                    #34
                    Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                    Lucia, I am not minimising what Bowie did for Pop, it is just that 'Raw Power' is one of my favourite albums ever and I am not a big fan of his (or Bowie's) Berlin stuff. I am actually a big fan of 'TV Eye' the live album with Bowie on keyboards as well.

                    As far that video, that was in the time when Melvyn Hayes was body doubling for Pop in a similar fashion to when there was those two Nikki Sixxes

                    I can beat you on that, sw2boro. I have stayed in Bowie's old house in Mustique a couple of times and the staff there told me that Iman is completely bald. Don't rough it with the big boys if you wanna get beat

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                      #35
                      Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                      sw2boro wrote:
                      I know someone who used to do for Bowie. She hinted that he was involved in an awful lot of knobbing and that she also felt very sorry for Angie.
                      Angie is on record boasting about their open marriage, how they were both fucking the same person when they met, and that they were "like a pair of bisexual alleycats", so that makes it hard for me to feel sorry for her on grounds of his infidelity, although I know being a consort has its strains (as well as its compensations). That, and the fact that she claims to be sick of being forever associated with that man who so ruined her life and stifled her career, but calls herself "Angie Bowie" and is always talking about him - she had a right old rant about him on Facebook on the occasion of their son's 40th birthday.

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                        #36
                        Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                        Bowie and that other git's version of Dancing In The Streets is fucking appalling, it must be said.
                        Their twatty 80's long shiny jackets with the sleeves rolled up, so beloved of keyboard players at the time and the gimpy way they pull faces at each other makes me want to puke.
                        Family Guy ripped the pish out of it a while back and deservedly so.

                        Somebody Up There Likes Me and Young Americans in it's entirety cancel out the badness though.

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                          #37
                          Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                          LL is spot on about Iggy, and however good the Stooges were, they only reached a mass audience through Bowie, and the same is true of the Velvet Underground - how many people first learnt of the VU through the "White Light/White Heat" reference on the cover of Hunky Dory?

                          He was also generous in giving due limelight to the wonderful Mick Ronson.

                          This afternoon my friends and I were discussing the many things Bowie had first turned us onto (in the sense of piqueing our interest) and it's an impressive list including William Burroughs, Dali, Bunuel, Brel, Stanley Kubrick, Crowley, Dada-ism, Futurism, Mod/60s garage (through Pin-Ups).

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                            #38
                            Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                            Well I think that's mainly dependent on your age. I, and I think most of my friends, had heard of all those people before we were aware of Bowie's interest in them. But he's only a year and a half older than me, and if you went to a UK art college or hung out in its environs, in the mid-60s they were just part of the cultural baggage you acquired.

                            I'd agree that he was/is one of those chimerical characters that seemed to be everywhere, and in everyone's story, even if only in the background as was the case pre-Space Oddity. I only recently discovered, for instance, that backstage in a small Birmingham club in late 1965 Ace Kefford and Trevor Burton were encouraged by eighteen-year-old David Jones to form their own band called The Move.

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                              #39
                              Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                              My point was he brought those things, those artists, to the attention of young teenage kids who'd never been near an art college, and mostly never would. He was our primer. We read certain books and looked at art, thought about art, because he would make references in his interviews.

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                                #40
                                Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                                To be fair to Bowie, has there ever been a musician who didn't have a crap phase?
                                A musical wobble if you will?

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                                  #41
                                  Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                                  The 'zapping teenagers with the culture gun' thing MsD raises has been a crucial part of British pop culture, and Bowie was indisputably its king. There's just nothing like having your favourite pop star handing you the keys to the culture cabinet and saying, 'this is yours, and it's exciting' when you're 14; that stays with you for the rest of your life, whether you go to uni/art college or not.

                                  The vitality of pop in the late 70s and early 80s was in a large part down to that outlook, and there've been cult band examples since, from The Smiths to the Manic Street Preachers. The latter had me reading the complete works of Camus at the age of 15 (I'd only read comics and magazines outside school til then).

                                  I read an interview with Peter Saville recently, in which he said "Roxy Music were my art school". He did end up in art school (in a large part cause he wanted to be Bryan Ferry) but - much to the consternation of anyone who's commissioned work from him since and had something they didn't know they wanted delivered months late - the Roxy experience still shapes everything he does. It can give people the edge over contemporaries who've had the formal education first.

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                                    #42
                                    Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                                    Lucia Lanigan wrote:
                                    The [Manic Street Preachers] had me reading the complete works of Camus at the age of 15
                                    Funnily enough, it was The Fall that did it for me. (Although I was older than 15...)

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                                      #43
                                      Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                                      TBH, Bowie's later stuff has rarely been outright crap, just underwhelming. Songs like 'Hallo Spaceboy' were commendably bonkers and not bad. He's still palpably different from the other guys who married models and reissued their back catalogue 12 times.

                                      And really, would you expect 60s and 70s heroes to carry on being brilliant for the rest of their lives? You're supposed to get in, make your contribution, and leave; everyone knows to ignore them in their dotage, apart from the people who keep mumbling on about Bob Dylan being a poet and that.

                                      (I wasn't on about Iggy in the spirit of argument or correction back there, BoE, I just think it's a fascinating story with good footage.)

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                                        #44
                                        Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                                        Gordon Bennet, LL, you don't have to explain yourself, that was virtually pillow talk for me. No, I was only pointing out that The Stooges would have had a legacy without Bowie and, no doubt, they and Iggy would still be gigging in recent times without Bowie's patronage. Indeed, they would probably be the same as the MC5.

                                        I agree that, without Bowie, Raw Power wouldn't have sounded as good if it had been produced at all. I also think that, for the many people that were introduced to Iggy through the Berlin stuff like Lust For Life and The Idiot, such as my wife, they possibly wouldn't have got into Iggy.

                                        There is no doubt that Ziggy/Alladin Sane era Bowie was influenced by Pop to an extent and, I am not sure but maybe, they influenced each other in their Berlin era albums. I think that Bowie was cleverly doing that thing that many artists do of taking what they want from the underground and bringing it into the mainstream. It is to Bowie's credit that he acknowledged and repaid his influences. Unfortunately, one of these was Lou Reed but you can't have everything.

                                        Another couple of things for Bowie is that he does, at least, keep track of new music even if he does somewhat jump on bandwagons a tad too obviously at times. 'Let's Dance' was brilliantly done but 'Tin Machine' was, well, 'Tin Machine'. Also, he refused a gong. I still think, if he had been clever he would have done an arty version of "The Laughing Gnome" on the Greatest Hits tour

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                                          #45
                                          Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                                          Tactictoe wrote:
                                          To be fair to Bowie, has there ever been a musician who didn't have a crap phase?
                                          A musical wobble if you will?
                                          His crap phase (bit unfair - relatively crap phase) - 1980 until now - doesn't obscure the genius of his 1970's work. A true star.

                                          Comment


                                            #46
                                            Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                                            The 'zapping teenagers with the culture gun' thing MsD raises has been a crucial part of British pop culture, and Bowie was indisputably its king.

                                            Before the 70s? I can't think of any examples off the top of my head. Prior to that cultural references in music tended to be imported ones, Dylan mainly, SF psychedelia a bit, the Velvets. I don't remember anyone in British pop doing anything similar in the 60s. They would have been ridiculed as pretentious I think.

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                                              #47
                                              Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                                              Calvert W. McCutcheon wrote:
                                              Bowie and that other git's version of Dancing In The Streets is fucking appalling, it must be said.
                                              Their twatty 80's long shiny jackets with the sleeves rolled up, so beloved of keyboard players at the time and the gimpy way they pull faces at each other makes me want to puke.
                                              Family Guy ripped the pish out of it a while back and deservedly so.
                                              "Dancing In The Street" is interesting, in that it's a rare example of two artists hitting their all-time career low point at exactly the same moment.

                                              Comment


                                                #48
                                                Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                                                Has anyone ever possessed such talent and charisma, yet such little identity?

                                                I find him really interesting, Bowie, but perhaps not for quite the same reasons as many of his fans. He was a brilliant songwriter, a fantastic singer, a startling performer and a fine judge of who to hire at any given time (incredibly important, that, for a solo artist who's not a particularly great musician - the sound you think of when considering each era of Bowie is often primarily the work of a collaborator: Ronson, Eno, Fripp).

                                                It just amazes me what a weak personality the guy's always had. Usually these Rock Giants are so sure of their identities, they're practically caricatures. Everyone knows what sort of person John Lennon was, or Dylan, or even the much-less-talented Mick Jagger or Morrissey. In Bowie's case, no one's really sure "who" he is, either as a human being or as an artist, and I'm not sure this has much to do with him being enigmatic, or "the chameleon of pop" or whatever - I think it's because, fundamentally, he's a bit of a nobody. A bit of a nobody who happened to become one of the most glamorous and exciting pop stars ever (and I genuinely think that) just by wearing silly clothes and taking so many drugs that his incoherent babble sounded "intriguing" to a certain kind of adolescent.

                                                Sounds like I'm putting him down, but I'm not really. His musical talent, like I say, is extraordinary - I don't know if he was the best songwriter of the 70s, and he certainly wasn't the most original, but he sustained an incredibly high level of creativity for an unusually long time, and very little of that stuff sounds at all dated (if any of the Berlin albums hadn't existed, and were released tomorrow by a new band, people would be going out of their minds - despite the fact that this music has been ripped off so many times in so many ways, it still sounds unique and fresh).

                                                Maybe it's just that basically, he was (and probably is) a nice guy. Nice guys often make bad rock stars - Bowie was enough of an idiot to be what we'd think of as a great rock star, but not necessarily enough of a self-centred git, which is saying something, considering how egocentric he could be. The dressing-up and all that, really it was just to hide the fact that he had almost nothing to say, and very little of himself to project. It's to his credit that he managed to pull it off, to make that essential emptiness seem exotic and thrilling, even when you leave aside the brilliance of his actual records. No surprise, though, that most of the people who've been influenced most directly by Bowie have made such rotten (or at best, flashy-but-trashy) music.

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                                                  #49
                                                  Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                                                  I find your take on Bowie really interesting, Taylor, but perhaps not for quite the same reasons as you would like.

                                                  I've heard this from you in various forms, for many years, and at times I've felt that it's some sort of compulsion to assert your intellectual superiority over Bowie by pegging him to the 'good but not great' level and refusing to give him the benefit of the doubt which, for some reason, you're happy to extend to the often equally questionable and ludicrious likes of Barrett, Dylan, Lennon and Walker.

                                                  Meaning is in the ear of the beholder, and sure, I'm a big Bowie fan... but I find it weird to hear someone argue that Bowie had "almost nothing to say". To me, his records almost have too much to say, bursting with messages and ideas, and thought-seeds, dealing with existential questions of identity for the individual and humanity as a whole. Just because he didn't go Route One with "All we are saying is give peace a chance" does not mean he had nothing to say. (Sure, he said it in an often-stagey, theatrical, look-at-me sort of way which isn't to everyone's taste, but that's quite another matter.)

                                                  And I'm absolutely staggered by your sign-off: "No surprise, though, that most of the people who've been influenced most directly by Bowie have made such rotten (or at best, flashy-but-trashy) music." For me, certainly in terms of white music (and more black music than you'd expect), there's almost nothing of any worth in the last 30 years which doesn't owe a debt to Bowie.

                                                  No Bowie, and you can wipe out the entire new wave/post-punk era of 1979-85, for starters. (Which, you know, for me at least, is the good shit.)

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                                                    #50
                                                    Happy birthday, Mr Bowie

                                                    Amor de Cosmos wrote:
                                                    The 'zapping teenagers with the culture gun' thing MsD raises has been a crucial part of British pop culture, and Bowie was indisputably its king.

                                                    Before the 70s? I can't think of any examples off the top of my head. Prior to that cultural references in music tended to be imported ones, Dylan mainly, SF psychedelia a bit, the Velvets. I don't remember anyone in British pop doing anything similar in the 60s. They would have been ridiculed as pretentious I think.
                                                    That's what I'm getting at, albeit without saying anything that makes this remotely clear. I'd credit Bowie with starting that shit.

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