Author Topic: R. I. P. David Bowie  (Read 16072 times)

TimC

  • Old blerk sometimes onabike.
Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #25 on: 11 January, 2016, 10:41:21 am »
S'funny, but I never bought a Bowie track, let alone an album, but I know almost everything he's done. He always seemed kind of impossibly out of reach to me, as if I wasn't worthy enough to be a proper fan. I was never cool enough, or other-worldly enough, to qualify as someone who could be in the Bowie camp.

I loved the fact that he could be incredibly deep and incredibly trivial at the same time; he laughed at the world and its preoccupations while openly succumbing to the vices he sometimes ridiculed. He took irony to a sublime level, perhaps. The world fell out of love with him in the naughties, but he reminded us he was still here and still relevant with The Next Day.

I'm not a fan, but I'm a huge admirer. He will be missed.

ETA Beckham need no longer worry about being in the same room and being taken as Bowie's little bro!

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #26 on: 11 January, 2016, 11:00:33 am »
Everything I love about Bowie perfectly encapsulated in not much over three minutes - cracking tune, smart lyrics, slinky dancing, dressing up and a good dose of offbeat humour...

https://youtu.be/UMhFyWEMlD4
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Eccentrica Gallumbits

  • Rock 'n' roll and brew, rock 'n' roll and brew...
Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #27 on: 11 January, 2016, 11:02:10 am »
The only time I saw him live was at the net aid concert at Wembley in 1999. He got a rapturous reception from the crowd and looked genuinely moved by it. He was bloody good.
My feminist marxist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard.


LEE

  • "Shut Up Jens" - Legs.
Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #28 on: 11 January, 2016, 11:11:02 am »
He always seemed kind of impossibly out of reach to me, as if I wasn't worthy enough to be a proper fan. I was never cool enough, or other-worldly enough, to qualify as someone who could be in the Bowie camp.

I was just too young, when he was at his greatest and most innovative, to appreciate him.  I was always forced to appreciate him several years in retrospect.
How is a 12 year old supposed to appreciate Diamond Dogs? I was still waiting for Slade's new single.

That's what I find so amazing about Bowie, he was a musical being from another planet at the same time Elvis and Clive Dunn were still in the charts.

I don't want to wish my life away but I would like to have been 17 when Suffragette city was released, rather than 10.  I imagine it would have been life-changing.
Some people say I'm self-obsessed but that's enough about them.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #29 on: 11 January, 2016, 11:21:41 am »
^^It's in a way incredible that when I was a teenager, in the eighties, Bowie was the one thing all the cool kids could agree on. More than ten years after he started all that cool stuff.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #30 on: 11 January, 2016, 11:23:13 am »
Sad, I was reading an interview on the BBC just the other day with a famous (ex)-junkie from germany where she described meeting Bowie once (he was in a film about her life) and she described being disappointed as he seemed so small and frail.


They kind of hint at these things in the preceding days don't they, it's as if they already knew  ::-)


RIP - not really a massive fan myself but clearly he was definitely a major force in music over the decades.  A sad loss.
That'd be Niko?

Everything I love about Bowie perfectly encapsulated in not much over three minutes - cracking tune, smart lyrics, slinky dancing, dressing up and a good dose of offbeat humour...

https://youtu.be/UMhFyWEMlD4

Would be even better if he had John Travolta legs (and hips)!
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #31 on: 11 January, 2016, 11:26:02 am »
He was a very effective collaborator, who was able to popularise Avant-Garde themes. Nile Rogers talking about 'Let's Dance' to an audience of record producers is instructive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaIx_FBk4-Q
Essentially Bowie had an outline idea and session musicians fleshed it out. He always seemed to have the right musicians, Rick Wakeman for instance, here speaking about Life on Mars, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKSlJO51V7o

Don't forget Mick Ronson
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Chris S

Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #32 on: 11 January, 2016, 11:31:29 am »
Even I was a bit too young really. I was a delicate flower, and Bowie was just too far up the weird scale for me (although, apparently early Peter Gabriel wasn't - go figure, as those yanks like to say).

However, plenty of his choons became anthems in the Smith family that punctuated the years and accompanied various significant moments in our lives.

Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #33 on: 11 January, 2016, 11:36:03 am »
For me, he'll always be associated with hooning down from Market Rasen to Kirton on LEL with a tail of followers. I was mashing away giving my all to a Bowie Greatest Hits Compilation. I suspect Mr Smith prefers the originals to the sound of me singing along with headphones in.

I had a mate at school who was 110% total Bowie Fan. Like LEE, we're a bit too young, but she had (much) older sisters who had introduced her, and her bedroom was bedecked with paraphernalia.

Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #34 on: 11 January, 2016, 11:50:02 am »
He was a very effective collaborator, who was able to popularise Avant-Garde themes. Nile Rogers talking about 'Let's Dance' to an audience of record producers is instructive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaIx_FBk4-Q
Essentially Bowie had an outline idea and session musicians fleshed it out. He always seemed to have the right musicians, Rick Wakeman for instance, here speaking about Life on Mars, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKSlJO51V7o

Don't forget Mick Ronson

He died in 1993, Liver Cancer. He was a Mormon apparently.

Redlight

  • Enjoying life in the slow lane
Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #35 on: 11 January, 2016, 11:53:27 am »
Back in 83 my then flatmate met him at Dingwalls in Camden, where the Paul Butterfield Blues Band were playing.  It was quite crowded and there were two spare seats at the table where my friend was sitting and Bowie and his mate simply wandered up and asked if he would mind if they sat there.  If he would mind!!

I didn't believe this at first until a couple of days later when he produced the photographic evidence.
Why should anybody steal a watch when they can steal a bicycle?

Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #36 on: 11 January, 2016, 11:55:19 am »
He was a very effective collaborator, who was able to popularise Avant-Garde themes. Nile Rogers talking about 'Let's Dance' to an audience of record producers is instructive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaIx_FBk4-Q
Essentially Bowie had an outline idea and session musicians fleshed it out. He always seemed to have the right musicians, Rick Wakeman for instance, here speaking about Life on Mars, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKSlJO51V7o

Don't forget Mick Ronson

He died in 1993

I know, I meant from a collaboration point of view. Ronsons, guitar, arrangement and production was a massive part of the Bowie sound at that point.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #37 on: 11 January, 2016, 12:48:23 pm »
He was a very effective collaborator, who was able to popularise Avant-Garde themes. Nile Rogers talking about 'Let's Dance' to an audience of record producers is instructive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaIx_FBk4-Q
Essentially Bowie had an outline idea and session musicians fleshed it out. He always seemed to have the right musicians, Rick Wakeman for instance, here speaking about Life on Mars, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKSlJO51V7o

Don't forget Mick Ronson

He died in 1993

I know, I meant from a collaboration point of view. Ronsons, guitar, arrangement and production was a massive part of the Bowie sound at that point.

There's an interesting interview with Ronson and Ian Hunter on Youtube, that covers some of the Bowie stuff, from 3.00 mins. he didn't make much money out of the Bowie years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8raYr-48h0

caerau

  • SR x 3 - PBP fail but 1090 km - hey - not too bad
Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #38 on: 11 January, 2016, 12:49:08 pm »

I'm looking forward to the tribute concert, Nile Rogers and Rick Wakeman suggest themselves immediately, Elton John as well I suppose, Brian May?
I wasn't a fan as a teen, he had mainly female fans at our school, a sort of thinking girl's Marc Bolan, the musical components of Prog Rock were present, so we liked the music, but not the commercial aspect.


Perhaps it's just me but tribute concerts, although a nice thought, are not something I particularly enjoy.  Now Queen, that's my passion, and the Freddie Mercury tribute concert for me, aside from the beginning of watching the bands play their own stuff (fine!), was largely an abomination of listening to people murder their songs.   :hand:
(albeit I guess the rest of the band were fine with this - but then given that May and Taylor seem to have recently sold off their back catalogue to the advertising world and did WWRY with F!ve or whatever they were called, I'm not sure their judgement alone is to be trusted ;))


Quite happy to go off and listen to Under Pressure today :)
It's a reverse Elvis thing.

Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #39 on: 11 January, 2016, 12:52:18 pm »
Lots of people didn't make much money out of their involvement with Bowie. Wakeman got paid £9 for coming up with the piano part of 'Life on Mars', so I'd be happy to see some of his less known collaborators getting a payday.

caerau

  • SR x 3 - PBP fail but 1090 km - hey - not too bad
Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #40 on: 11 January, 2016, 12:56:53 pm »
Didn't know that but I think Wakeman managed his own source of income.  Good point though.
It's a reverse Elvis thing.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #41 on: 11 January, 2016, 01:04:35 pm »
It's weird.  I was born too late to get much of his music by osmosis (Peak Bowie occurring in 1973), and until I discovered the good stuff in my late teens, his primary role was as the guy with the funky hair and the enormous testicles from Labyrinth.  I think when you're late to the party on an artist's work, it's always more about the work than the person, and his music is as alive for me as it ever was.

But he made 'bisexual' a household world (even in my household) and for that I'm eternally thankful.  My twitter timeline is full of tributes from queers of several generations for whom he was a positive role model - a sparkle of hope in the darkness - as well as from those who were at one time or another touched by his music.

Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #42 on: 11 January, 2016, 01:19:39 pm »
Perhaps it's just me but tribute concerts, although a nice thought, are not something I particularly enjoy.  Now Queen, that's my passion, and the Freddie Mercury tribute concert for me, aside from the beginning of watching the bands play their own stuff (fine!), was largely an abomination of listening to people murder their songs.   :hand:
(albeit I guess the rest of the band were fine with this - but then given that May and Taylor seem to have recently sold off their back catalogue to the advertising world and did WWRY with F!ve or whatever they were called, I'm not sure their judgement alone is to be trusted ;))

I think it depends on the artist and the type of songs they wrote. Freddie Mercury's was so much him and Queen that anyone trying to cover it just doesn't work really. There have been some good tribute concerts George Harrison's springs to mind.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #43 on: 11 January, 2016, 01:34:12 pm »
Lots of people didn't make much money out of their involvement with Bowie. Wakeman got paid £9 for coming up with the piano part of 'Life on Mars', so I'd be happy to see some of his less known collaborators getting a payday.

Rick Wakeman only got paid a couple of pints or a tenner or something for the keyboard parts on Sabbath's Sabbra Cadabra too; he was either a spectacularly poor businessman or, more likely, off his tits for most of the Seventies.

I've recently rewatched Ashes To Ashes, at the end of which "Heroes" gets played over a defiant Gene Hunt standing outside the pub at the end of the final episode.  The only Bowie in music library until yesterday was his keyboards on assorted Iggy albums, when I paid the Mega-Global Big River Corporation of Seattle, USAnia a few pennies for "Heroes". :'(
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #44 on: 11 January, 2016, 02:05:35 pm »
Like a few others on here, I was probably a bit young to fully embrace the work of Bowie when he started to break the ground in the seventies.
What has become apparent (if not immediately obvs) from listening to the radio (6 music) today, is that he never really stopped breaking the ground, and has gone out whilst still very much on top.

RIP.

Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #45 on: 11 January, 2016, 02:05:42 pm »
He was a very effective collaborator, who was able to popularise Avant-Garde themes. Nile Rogers talking about 'Let's Dance' to an audience of record producers is instructive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaIx_FBk4-Q
Essentially Bowie had an outline idea and session musicians fleshed it out. He always seemed to have the right musicians, Rick Wakeman for instance, here speaking about Life on Mars, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKSlJO51V7o

Don't forget Mick Ronson
Speaking of died too young, of cancer. I recall seeing the Hunter Ronson band in 1975 (see link below), as well as him playing with Bowie.

I wasn't in town for Bowie's first performance in my home town (I was also too young to be a member of the club, but that didn't stop me or many others), but I got to see one of the later appearances. I recall the promoter telling me* of Bowie's enthusiastic response to his invitation to return after the first gig, & Bowie ringing him when he was a little tardy in calling Bowie because he feared Bowie had got too expensive for him - & Bowie saying not to worry, charge the usual ticket price & he'd be happy with whatever fee could be afforded from that.

RIP Ziggy Stardust
http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/davidbowie71.html

*Small town - I was at school with younger siblings of friends of his, & my grandparents lived two doors away from him.
"A woman on a bicycle has all the world before her where to choose; she can go where she will, no man hindering." The Type-Writer Girl, 1897

Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #46 on: 11 January, 2016, 02:11:27 pm »


Rick Wakeman only got paid a couple of pints or a tenner or something for the keyboard parts on Sabbath's Sabbra Cadabra too; he was either a spectacularly poor businessman or, more likely, off his tits for most of the Seventies.



Neither really, he was just paid the rate for the session, and he never did drugs, as explained from 1.50 here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKSlJO51V7o

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #47 on: 11 January, 2016, 02:21:22 pm »
Though Wakeman did have well-known issues with alcohol in the seventies.

I see Bowie's even made it to Sniff Petrol, though I had to examine the file name to work out that the bloke wearing a beret and dark glasses, and smoking a fag, at the wheel of an LHD Merc was actually David Bowie and not my former flatmate Tony.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

hellymedic

  • Just do it!
Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #48 on: 11 January, 2016, 02:39:27 pm »
Sad, I was reading an interview on the BBC just the other day with a famous (ex)-junkie from germany where she described meeting Bowie once (he was in a film about her life) and she described being disappointed as he seemed so small and frail.
They kind of hint at these things in the preceding days don't they, it's as if they already knew  ::-)

He'd been a birthday boy this week.
There might have been cancer rumours.

RIP.

Re: R. I. P. David Bowie
« Reply #49 on: 11 January, 2016, 02:44:08 pm »

I've recently rewatched Ashes To Ashes, at the end of which "Heroes" gets played over a defiant Gene Hunt standing outside the pub at the end of the final episode.  The only Bowie in music library until yesterday was his keyboards on assorted Iggy albums, when I paid the Mega-Global Big River Corporation of Seattle, USAnia a few pennies for "Heroes". :'(

Funnily enough, I feel the same way about the Oasis track played at the end of "Our Friends in the North". That juxtaposition of well known music and great TV sometimes just gets right to you.

But back on topic-Bowie was one of those paradoxes of pop, metrosexual before it was even thought of , wierd yet likeable, space oddity yet totally human when interviewed. The Zowie Bowie clan at school had spiked hair, the flash slash on their school bags and book covers , yet no-one came near to the real thing.
Bowie was part of my life from the early 70's listening to Fluff Freeman do the top 20 countdown on Sunday evening as I crammed my homework into what was left of the weekend, through the late 70's and early 80's , sitting in tractor cabs with the radio at full blast with, Suffragette City,Ashes to Ashes, Boys (keep swinging)  as the summers lasted forever and then into the 90's as his tone mellowed and he became almost  a "National Treasure ".
His duet with Jagger for Live Aid is now legendary.
When I heard the first Bowie track on the car radio this morning , I realised just how short life is.