“Happy birthday” turns to “goodbye.” Again. Twice now, in as many weeks.
I had seen Motörhead back in October, and it was clear then that something was amiss. So I knew Lemmy would leave us before too long, although it was still heartbreaking to lose him. But this one… This one came out of nowhere.
But then again, David Bowie always came out of nowhere, didn’t he?
First he was David Jones, fronting the Manish Boys, trying to be Jagger. Then he was David Bowie, the folksy acoustic balladeer reaching out to Major Tom. Then he was Ziggy Stardust, the glammed-out androgynous starman rock ‘n’ roller. Then there was the Thin White Duke, and the Berlin era, and the sophisticated 80s pop star. And there was the Goblin King, then the frontman of the underrated Tin Machine, or the art-detective Nathan Adler on the equally underrated Outside. Through it all, he remained the grand king of rock as an art form.
It was all different, but it was all Bowie, and Bowie was all of it.
Last Rites is a metal site, and Bowie was never heavy metal – it’s one of the few things he wasn’t. But without him, metal wouldn’t be the same. He existed on the fringes, but on the fringes of everything, of rock, of pop, of whatever muse he chased in whichever moment you caught him. He was the consummate artiste, and his influence has rightly spread into virtually every strain of music that’s come after him. There will never be another like him – there cannot be, because what was he, really? He was everything.
You never knew where he was going, but it was never boring, not once in nearly fifty years.
