Farewell, My Duke

Cause love's such an old fashioned word

and love dares you to care

for the people on the edge of night.

And love dares you to change your way

of caring about ourselves.

This is our last dance.

This is ourselves.

Under Pressure.

-David Bowie and Queen, Under Pressure

David Robert Jones once upon a time changed his name to avoid being confused with another certain Davy Jones (of the Monkees, one can see how that confusion would not be desired by a musician/artist).  He adopted the surname Bowie from the legend of the American frontier and big knife dude Jim Bowie.  Bowie kept that name for the rest of his life, but pretty much everything else about him was open to interpretation.  Bowie, in the course of his career, was a many faced man.  He was Ziggy Stardust, the ultra-glam rock star; he was the Thin White Duke, he was the Goblin King, and Pontius Pilate, he was an alien, and a Space Oddity.

David Bowie has written and performed songs you love, and probably a few that you hate.  He participated in one of the best collaborations between rock legends: Under Pressure, with Queen.  And he has participated in one of the worst: Dancin' In the Streets, with Mick Jagger.  One of his most famous songs is called Changes, and the collection of most of his greatest hits and the album that most casual Bowie fans own is Changesbowie.

I have heard him called a chameleon, a changeling, a shapeshifter, and I suppose he is, but if you think he changed in order to be in tune with the times, you are mostly wrong.  The fact of the matter is that David Bowie was almost always a little bit ahead of the times.  He was willing to experiment with the new thing coming before the masses were ready for it, and so he sometimes alienated the masses.  The Art Rock, Velvet Underground crowd, who were all into "Ground control to Major Tom," were a little taken aback by the spiked hair and spandex (so much spandex) of Ziggy Stardust.  If you got used to Ziggy playing guitar, don't get too comfy, because the Thin White Duke, eyepatch and all is going to drop some funk on you.  By the time the 1980s hit no one knew what to expect out of Bowie and then they were all like, "hey wait, isn't that Bowie playing the Goblin king in a movie with muppets? (and what is up with those pants?)"

There were always two kinds of Bowie fans: the ones who like a few songs and the ones who actually get the big picture of what he was up to.

When I was in college Bowie went on tour with Nine Inch Nails, in support of a new album, which again was testing the limits of what people expected from a now nearly 50 year old Bowie.  The album du jour was called Outside and was a work done with Brian Eno formerly of Roxy Music, and a collaborator from Bowie's Berlin phase (during which Bowie shared an apartment with Iggy Pop, if you ever live with Iggy Pop, or even have Iggy Pop stay at your house, you are a special kind of cool).

Some friends and I went to see that tour at the Starlake Ampitheater outside of Pittsburgh.  We were some of the few people at that show who fully expected David Bowie to be the showstopper that he was.  Most of the crowd were not aware of Bowie's talent as a trendsetter.  He was not there as the elder statesman of electronica riding the coattails of Trent Reznor (The Downward Spiral was one of the biggest selling albums of the early nineties).  As it turns out, Bowie does dark and angsty as well as anyone, and he seemed like he had more right to it that twentysomething Trent.  Reznor himself was such a total Bowie fanboy that he unintentionally plagiarized the melody of a Bowie song.  Listen to Bowie's Crystal Japan and NIN's A Warm Place, sometime back to back (Reznor totally admits the infraction, and says it was an unconscious mistake, Bowie is cool with it, Bowie is always cool.)

Bowie blew us out of the water, and I forever gained a new appreciation of the man as a once in a generation artist (not just musician).  This morning, since I learned of Bowie's passing, I have been thinking a lot about what exactly it is that makes me feel like there is a break in the mortal coil.  What is it about this otherworldly artist and human being that we have so desperately needed since the late 1960s?  It think it is his ability to play and represent the outsider, the strange person on the edge of the night.  Bowie was indeed an actor, he could take on a role or an identity and show it to the world in such a way that we saw something crucial about our humanity, he gave those with ears to hear a perspective on being that outsider.  He was able to lampoon the fame and tragedy of the rock star in Ziggy Stardust, he was eminently believable as the Goblin King Jareth.  He helps us, he helped me at least, love what is strange and outside.

For someone who took his name from such a macho character, Bowie was not afraid to play around with gender roles, or wear make-up and high heels.  Even someone as envelope pushing as Prince, has to bow and admit that Bowie did the high heeled boot thing first.  Bowie could show a strange and awkward adolescent, in no uncertain terms, you're not the strangest duck on the pond.  I'm stranger than you and I'm a rock star, and an actor, and I married a supermodel, but most importantly I have a voice and something to show the world.  You do too, you little moppet.

Bowie is like a hero whose superpower is the ability to be weird, and cool, and amazing all at the same time.  The world is now less for his absence.

And these children that you spit on,

As they try to change their world,

Are immune to your consultation,

They're quite aware of what they're going through.

-Bowie, Changes