David Bowie left his capsule last night, at the age of 69, and is now floating in a most peculiar way. âPlanet Earth is blue,â he told us in â69, on âSpace Oddity,â his first of many indelible songs, âand thereâs nothing I can do.â
Born and raised in Brixton, South London, Bowieâs voracious musical appetite made him a citizen of the world. âWhen I was a child, the first records that influenced me were Ray Charles, Little Richard, Stravinsky,â the Artist Formerly Known As Ziggy Stardust told his wife Iman in a dialog published in the November 1995 issue of VIBE magazine. âI guess that set the pattern.â
That pattern would endure throughout a lifetime of creative experimentationâmoving freely and masterfully amongst styles as diverse as glam rock, R&B, new wave, reggae, electronica, dance pop, and jazz fusion, effortlessly breaking boundaries of race and gender along the way. An accomplished actor, painter, and sculptor, Bowie released his 25th and final album, the project Blackstar (not to be confused with Mos Def and Talib Kweliâs project of the same name), 48 hours or so before his death. Producer Tony Visconti said that Bowieâs final album was inspired by Kendrick Lamarâs To Pimp a Butterfly. âWe loved the fact Kendrick was so open-minded and he didnât do a straight-up hip-hop record,â Visconti told Rolling Stone. âHe threw everything on there, and thatâs exactly what we wanted to do.â
This morning Kanye West tweeted that Bowie was âone of my most important inspirations, so fearless, so creative, he gave us magic for a lifetime.â His impact on hip-hop went far beyond being sampled for Vanilla Iceâs âIce Ice Babyââa record whose profits helped make Death Row Records possibleâand Diddy and Maseâs âBeen Around the World,â which sampled Bowieâs Nile Rogers-produced master blaster âLetâs Dance.â
Like Sinatra before him, Bowie was a pioneer in breaking down musical apartheid, touring with a multiracial band and allowing black musicians to get their shine. âWhen I first toured the states, I made a pilgrimage to the Apollo,â he recalled back in 1995. âI must have looked like some kind of alien with those brilliant patterned suits with space shoulders, fire red hair, no eyebrows, stacked boots, and makeup for days. This was around â73, and I became a sort of regular there.âÂ
Bowie was a huge fan of what he called âsoul music,â and he recorded his first U.S. hits, the No. 1 single âFameâ and the incomparable âYoung Americansâ with a band that included David Sanborn on sax, Dennis Davisâwho would go on to play with Stevie Wonderâon drums, and Robin Clark, Ava Cherry, and Luther Vandross on vocals. âSeriously, Luther doing backup,â Bowie said. âI think it might have been his first real time out in big 10,000-seater eventsâŚ. Luther was already writing some wonderful songs, and we could give him a 30-minute spot of his own before our show so he could work them up a bit. I knew he was gonna break through.â In 1983 Bowie held MTV's feet to the fire for its blackout on black artists.
Back in â95 Bowie spoke excitedly about âa real breakdown of absolutesâ and âthe right to move between one medium and another.â This was a right he exercised in abundance, literally until his death. More than any one song that very creative freedom may be his greatest legacy. âAs fast as weâre moving away from a Eurocentric world view, so weâre withdrawing from the craft-pivotal ideas of the traditional,â he told Iman in that VIBE story. âWhatever it takes to say it, do it. Weâll see a lot more artists moving from one sphere to another and back to explore the nature of expression.â
Bowieâs penultimate music video, the utterly haunting title track from âBlackstar,â opens with a motionless astronaut, slumped on the ground as if heâd fallen all the way to Earth. Despite the smiley face pinned to his spacesuit, the image is a foreboding oneâthe spacemanâs face obscured by his helmet, as a young girl approaches tentatively, as if to ask, âCan you hear me, Major Tom?â The playfully ghoulish imagery that followsâcrucifixions, cryptic rituals, bejeweled skullsâwill take time to unpack. The song itself is much more straightforward, addressing Bowieâs impending death from liver cancer without flinching.
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As I pen this obituary, the song âLazarus" plays in my headphones. For those who missed their Sunday lessons, Lazarus of Bethany was a friend and follower of Jesus whom Christ brought back to life in the 11th chapter of the Gospel According to John. Four days after the manâs death Jesus ordered his tomb opened and said, âLazarus, come out,â whereupon Lazarus emerged, his hands, feet, and face still wrapped in cloth. This miracle marked the beginning of the end for Jesus, whose enemies were so upset that they begin plotting to kill him.
In the video for âLazarusâ Bowie appears emaciated, clutching the blanket on a hospital bed, ace bandages covering his eyes with metallic black grommets where his pupils should be. Still he sees everything with brutal clarity.Â
âLook up here, Iâm in heaven,â he sings. âIâve got scars that canât be seenâŚ. Iâve got nothing left to lose.â What better coda to this remarkable life than a musical resurrection? One imagines him planning the rollout for this final release, transubstantiating the last shreds of his life into art. The song ends defiantly, as befits a man who always understood Hippocratesâ aphorism: Ars longa, vita brevis.
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