Rest In Peace

I woke to the very sad news this morning about David Bowie.  He has been a part of my life since Space Oddity in 1969, but we lost touch for a few years.

Like a lot of my friends and many other teenagers in Britain, David Bowie came back into my world in July 1972 when he appeared on Top Of The Pops as Ziggy Stardust (with his Spiders From Mars).  Starman really did seem from another world…It appears such a relatively simple song, but when Bowie looked into the camera about halfway through and pointed (“…so I picked on you”) his career really started to take off.  Hit followed hit for the rest of the decade…Life On Mars; The Jean Genie; Rebel Rebel; Young Americans; Golden Years; Sound and Vision; Heroes; Boys Keep Swinging and finally in 1980 the incredible Ashes to Ashes.

Of course his albums were stupendous…Diamond Dogs and Low being (just about!) my favourites, but from Hunky Dory to Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) his range of music and styles were amazing.  Other stand out songs for me include Panic in Detroit; Sweet Thing, Candidate, Sweet Thing (Reprise); Right; Fascination; Can You Hear Me; Station to Station; Be My Wife; Subterraneans; Blackout and The Secret Life of Arabia.

1983’s Let’s Dance LP featured some good stuff, but was nowhere near as high a standard as most of his 70s work.  Tonight the following year was the last album I bought of his for some time.  Apart from the catchy Blue Jean, the rest of the songs were pretty dire.  I did purchase the first Tin Machine LP and Prisoner of Love was a great song and the rest were certainly an improvement on his recent work.  Around this time I mostly stopped buying records (never really did like CDs) so his work since then is known to me only in certain songs I have heard.  However, the fanfare that greeted 2013's The Next Day album made me listen to it on YouTube.  Where Are We Now is a brilliant song and there are some other gems on there as well.  However, David Bowie’s 1970s singles and LPs will always represent for me some of music’s finest moments.

Thank you so much David for everything.