a conversation piece...'david bowie is'

In an interview with BBC Radio in 2002 David Bowie says he eventually plumped for a career in pop because he felt it would enable him to involve and indulge his disparate interests in music, literature, art, theatre and fashion.  Indeed, throughout his career these interests have often combined and informed one another when it comes to articulating who David Bowie Is.

(At least for a given moment in time).

David Bowie is responsible for perhaps the most iconic personas in entertainment history including Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, The Young American and The Thin White Duke, all of which (and many more) have explored the theatricality of pop, making use of musical motif, impressionistic narrative, striking visual imagery, elaborate stage production, and a remarkable wardrobe – it’s as if Bowie adopted the immersive Stanislavski approach to his work.

Take the 1972 album Ziggy Stardust (and the Spiders From Mars): the songs about rocket men, intergalactic daydreams, and outer space; the iconic sleeve, Bowie, dressed in his turquoise leopard suit, posing on a dimly lit, deserted side-street, as if he had just fallen to earth. 

Or the ambitious Diamond Dogs tour of 1974, with a set built to resemble Hunger City – a dystopian vision of future metropolis, where Bowie played detective – which included a movable catwalk, a glass asylum, a giant hand, and a cherry picker that would send Bowie sailing over the audience during nightly renditions of ‘Space Oddity’.

Or the Young Americans LP from 1975, and the Plastic Soul Man.  Gone the make up, the paranoia; in it’s place, a seemingly unaffected air of nonchalance, swanky R&B rhythms and Philadelphia Soul.

And yet a later Bowie appears on stage as The Thin White Duke, cabaret suited, aloof and cocaine cool, with a collection of songs about romance delivered with agonised intensity, while at the same time feeling nothing – ice masquerading as fire. 

A masquerade: perhaps the choice word to describe who David Bowie Is; throughout his career an ever-changing artistic pastiche, paradoxically very often ahead of the curve, fueled by raving intellect and unparalleled creative abandon.