Tom Dunne: A history of David Bowie in six albums
David Bowie performs on stage on his Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane tour in London, 1973. (Picture: Michael Putland/Getty Images)
The much loved Dublin Bowie festival returns to live action, at last, in mid-April. As part of it I will be talking to Dana Gillespie at the NCH on April 24th. She was Bowie’s first girlfriend, he wrote Andy Warhol for her and she sang on Ziggy Stardust, the album that turns 50 in June.
I didn’t actually see her boyfriend’s earth-shattering Starman appearance on Top of The Pops in July, 1972. Our family, unlike that of Boy George, Adam Ant, Mick Jones, Gary Kemp, Morrissey, Johnny Marr, Bono, and Siouxsie Sioux – whose lives were changed by seeing it - didn’t have, “the channels.” Instead it took a copy of Ziggy, slipped to me by a friend, to make me see the light. I listened compulsively before announcing, with utter confidence, to my older siblings that whatever they were listening to, was the ‘wrong’ music.
Since then Bowie became part of the fabric of my life. So much so that when he unexpectedly returned with The Next Day in 2013 my first thought was, that with the vinyl revival, I could buy it in town and journey home excitedly with it on public transport, just as I had, time and time again, as a teenager.
But is it possible to pick just six albums from his life’s work? It is a tall order and obviously a very personal choice. I remember where I was when each of these came into my life. But for me they are the ones you must know and hold to your breast before any others can even be discussed.
Yes this couldn’t have happened without Hunky Dory, but that shot of Bowie, under the K.West sign in full Ziggy regalia, is like the moment the alien first came to earth. That world view; the dying planet, the beautiful creatures, the passion, the frenzy, wow!
It was only three years, but in that time Bowie moved through Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups, Diamond Dogs and David Live to a new persona, The Thin White Duke, and a completely different music genre. We had travelled from Glam Rock era Brixton to Nixon’s America, Young Americans and Fame (possibly Lennon’s finest post Beatle moment).
Mind-blowing. The train coming onto the station at the beginning! Just before punk would make the idea of 10 minute long songs seem laughable this was, once again, mesmerising Bowie. It came on pirate radio as we were playing tennis in the street one day and we had to stop the game.
My personal favourite. Punk had theoretically placed artists of Bowie’s vintage on a bus travelling to a place called Pflugerville. But Bowie wasn’t getting on any bus. Low seemed to capture the essence of Punk to produce something sparse, lean and futuristic. It was a sudden, dramatic, wonderful reset.
Released in the same year as Low, Heroes seemed very much like a part two of that album, but the songs -Heroes, Joe the Lion and Secret Life of Arabia – were if anything even better. It was probably the impact of the two albums, in such quick succession, that made them resonate so powerfully.
This is the point at which many of you will want to select your own favourites and make cases for albums such as Lodger, Scary Monsters and the commercial high point, Let’s Dance. However, I will forever argue that, it is that run of form from 1972 to 1977 on which the bulk of Bowie’s reputation rests. Until that is:
I still find this hard to listen to. When I first heard it I immediately suspected that Bowie was very, very unwell. I told my wife this and remember looking at her thinking, perhaps bizarrely, that my love of Bowie predated our love by two entire decades.
That was Saturday, January 9th 2016. As luck would have it, it was the weekend of the Dublin Bowie Festival and his Irish guitarist Gerry Leonard was in town so I invited him in to the radio show and that Sunday, January 10th, oblivious to events in NYC, we did a two hour Bowie special.
The next morning, news of his passing broke. Blackstar is a stunning album, and those last two tracks, Dollar Days and I Can’t Give Everything Away, with its echoes of New Career in a New Town from Low, are imperious. True, true genius.
