Loving the Alien: Remembering David Bowie (1947 - 2016)

David Bowie from one of the promotional stills shot for 1977's 'Heroes' album. There was always something extraterrestrial and freaky about The Man Who Fell to Earth. And it wasn't just his unequally-sized pupils.

"The song itself… is made up of juxtapositions and fragments of information. [It] doesn’t have a straightforward coherent message to it. None of the album has any message; it’s really a compression of information, it’s just information: make of it what you will... The filthy lesson in question is the fact that life is finite. That realization, when it comes, usually later in life, can either be a really daunting prospect or it makes things a lot clearer."

-David Bowie on the track The Heart's Filthy Lesson from a promotional film for Outside, 1995

Loving the Alien: Remembering David Bowie (1947 - 2016)

There was always something freaky about David Bowie, wasn't there? And I don't just mean his unequally sized pupils that were the result of a childhood fight. Looking at photographs of him from the 1970s you're struck by just how... unusual this man looks. Thin face, craggy British teeth, thinner lips, and then your attention returns to those eyes again.

David Bowie, musician, actor, painter, and well-rounded extraterrestrial being died just days after his 69th birthday and the release of his final album, Blackstar. In a career that spanned several decades and enough different artistic influences and costume changes to make your head spin, Bowie took music lovers and his fellow Outsiders on a wild ride.

His music often addressed hard subjects that many people shy from in polite conversation. Alienation, isolation, spiritual pain, and struggling with inner demons — what the late William S. Burroughs once referred to as, "the Ugly Spirit."

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars from 1972 was the album that really jump started the man's career. Before Ziggy, with his vivid red hair and unforgettable costumes, Bowie had been a long-haired folk and rock n' roll singer not widely known.

Post-Ziggy almost any serious music lover in North America and Europe could name at least one song from the albums that followed. Heroes, the title track from the album of the same name, was recorded at Das Hansa Tonstudio in Berlin during Bowie's time in the city. The studio's location was right next to the Berlin Wall, which divided the city from 1961 to 1989. Bowie watched his longtime producer Tony Visconti and a backing vocalist making out beside the wall as Bowie looked out from one of the studio's windows; this served as the song's inspiration.

The half German version of the song Heroes / Helden has always been one of my favourite Bowie tracks. I discovered it as a teenager living in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Heroes' theme of lovers facing impossible odds has a power that's undeniable. It will remain one of Bowie's signature achievements.

In 2013 I had a chance to visit the David Bowie Is exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario. One of the pieces from the exhibit is Bowie's handwritten lyrics for Heroes. It was very moving to see the genuine article close enough to touch — separated from my hand by only the thinnest piece of Plexiglass.

Fast forward several years in the man's career to 1995's Outside concept album where Bowie played Nathan Adler, a detective out to solve a grisly art crime. My personal favourite song from that album is The Heart's Filthy Lesson. In the music video Bowie played up the idea of tribalism, body art, and a future where everyone belongs to his or her 'tribe.'

The 'Filthy Lesson' from the song, according to Bowie, is that our lives our finite: "I'm already 5 years older, I'm already in my grave, I'm already..."

David Bowie's career had too many highlights and songs that I love to mention in this short space. What impressed me most about the man is his continuing need to experiment and push the envelope artistically. He may have been singing to us as Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke, or another character. Repeated listens reveal the truth was in the lie. He used pain we all feel, no matter what walk of life you're from, and turned it into timeless art.

Lazarus, the music video for the single from Bowie's final album Blackstar was released on January 7 — just days before his death from Cancer. In the video we see Bowie sing, "Look up here, I'm in Heaven." People who know this kind of trivia will remember Lazarus as someone rising from the dead.

Bowie is lying on a bed with white bandages wrapped around his head - jacket buttons for eyes. Near the end he bolts upright and sings, "Oh, I'll be free. Ain't that just like me?" Before falling back onto the pillow. He is smiling throughout this moment.

Lazarus was his goodbye note to us.

Sitting here, looking out my window at the snow drifts outside, I'll tell you this:

I will always Love the Alien. Thank you, David.

Rest in Peace.

David Bowie is Staring at You… So What are You Going to Do? The Sound, Vision, and Artistic Magic of the Thin White Duke

 

David Bowie, Promotional Shot from Reality album, 2003

David Bowie is Here. So states one of the many advertising taglines being used for the David Bowie Is exhibit, currently showing at Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario. It’s a bit misleading actually – the man himself has been nowhere to be seen since his stellar new album The Next Day was released in March. Not a single media interview, no appearance at the Victoria & Albert museum’s launch of the David Bowie Is exhibit, and certainly no appearance at the exhibit’s Toronto stop (unless he did so in disguise, something Mr. Bowie is no stranger to)

No matter. The exhibit, which runs September 25 – November 27 is both a marketer’s dream and a wonderous thing to experience, which is how I’m sure Bowie himself would want it. Not only is the show being advertised on billboards in Toronto and Montreal, I’ve seen a full-page ad in Rolling Stone magazine. It’s also safe to say that newspapers in Toronto are being blanketed with ads. Not to mention all the press David Bowie Is has received through media reviews.

For those reading this who are unfamiliar with David Bowie, his life’s work is a marriage of form and substance. The form takes shape in his stellar, boots to the floor rock n’ roll oeuvre that spans Ziggy Stardust & his Spiders from Mars to The Thin White Duke to Major Tom to Nathan Adler and beyond. All of those previously mentioned are characters created by Bowie as vehicles through which to deliver his music.

Each of these personalities had their own show stopping costumes that added even more power to Bowie’s already muscular music and presentation. Also, thanks to Bowie’s creativity and artistic care, each character he created spoke to the decade said character belonged to. Ziggy Stardust was the alien strumming about the Five Years us small Earthlings had left until the planet’s destruction. The Thin White Duke was Bowie and his environs of Los Angeles in the thrall of Cocaine, with broad strokes of Occult magic and Fascism thrown in.

Major Tom, particularly his 1980s reincarnation in the song Ashes to Ashes, was closing the book on the 1970s, drugs, addictions, and Bowie’s personal mental anguish during that decade. On the other side of the Bowie knife, the 1970s were also one of his most creatively fruitful periods, seeing the birth of his famous Berlin Trilogy. Years later, Nathan Adler would be the Detective out to solve an Art Crime in 1995’s challenging Outside album.

Bowie’s best-known and most emotionally resonant song was sung by the man himself, instead of an invented character. Heroes, from 1977’s album of the same name. Recorded at Das Hansa Tonstudio, it tells the tale of two lovers, presumably separated by the Berlin Wall, but also by their own human failings (“and I, I’ll drink all the time”). As a strange little child growing up in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, this song was my anthem. The David Bowie Is exhibit features the original handwritten lyrics to said song. I’ll admit, I got a tad misty eyed reading them. 

Heroes is also featured in all its audio glory as re-mastered by Sennheiser Audio, one of the exhibition’s presenters. But then, so are all of Bowie’s songs. While the costumes, which most reviewers have focused on, are beautiful, even more spectacular is the music. Alienation, isolation, floating in space cut off from everything and everyone – these are themes Major Tom keeps returning to and nailing with uncanny precision. Yes, it can be gloomy, but it’s a delicious gloom. This dedication to his chosen ideas continues today – just take a listen to Valentine’s Day. As he narrates the motives of a school shooter it’s clear Mr. Bowie will have it his way; sweet and scary simultaneously. 

David Bowie is rightly adored by all Freaks, Outsiders, and strange children who dare to own their destinies.

To state what’s probably beyond obvious now, this is one exhibit to see and see again if you’re visiting Hogtown before November’s end. For those of you on a tight travel budget, you should know Toronto is the exhibit’s only North American stop. With his beautifully constructed costumes and dark, threatening, yet seductive songwriting that moved our world into the 21^st century, you don’t want to miss David Bowie Is.