When I think of Bowie, I think of my childhood growing up in
outer suburban Melbourne. It was a
wasteland for potential and violence in equal measure. Skinheads (or sharpies depending
on your era) ruled. A unique Australian cultural and fashion trend that
appealed to the baby boomers sense of tribal wellbeing. There was safety in
numbers when you didn’t know what your future would be. There was war, there
was pollution and overpopulation being whispered into every teenager’s ear as
the media was beginning to realise the potential of the spending power and the
use of manipulation of this new generation who were clearly a world apart from
their elders.
Music was loud basic and had stagnated. Australia at the
time was Boogie, Thorpy “suck more piss” and radio bans.
Then there was Bowie.
Beautiful Bowie, the one the girls all loved and wanted to
make love to and all the boys wanted to be him because of…well… the former.
The one thing I realised many years later, these fans who
are all now nearing their sixties were being manipulated by the master. Back in
the feral mid 1970s anyone who dressed like Bowie Ziggy/Aladdin Sane era with
tight body suits, make up and effeminate poses was an obvious “poofta” Gay was
a word seldom used those days, queer maybe because it sounded harsher and there
was always the ubiquitous “faggot”. But Bowie –bless him- could do anything.
The girls loved him, the boys wanted to be him so excuses had to be made.
Choices and opinions had to be formed. If Bowie is a poof then poofta’s must be
OK.
Right?
Here was a pop star that changed music, popular culture and opinion
because he could read the kids. The fact that those kids were half a world away
in a country he had yet to visit but would go on to record , temporarily live in
and tour seven times endeared him to us.
David Bowie helped change popular conceptions and take on
sacred cows, he made the kids think.
Change was good.
Ironically fans don’t always want change and want their
heroes to create the same music that they associate a certain period of their
lives with. Thus Bowie’s wide fan base stretching over so many years and
identities, he had so many disappointed fans that hated him but forgave him,
hoping he’d turn around and come back to them musically one day.
Bowie’s appeal goes on and on; he was around when the
Beatles were still together and still made music literally till his last dying breath.
His longevity made him more relevant than the touring joke that are (and his
great friends) the Rolling Stones. He changed so that he didn’t become a parody
of himself. Making new music and trying to connect.
Bowie will always be cool, beautiful and relevant and most
importantly teaching us something about ourselves. No matter how old we are or
think we are.
One of my favourite David Bowie tracks.
