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Music

David Bowie, R.I.P. (1947-2016)

We reel at the news of David Bowie’s passing because, like everything else he set his wondrous mind and prescient instincts to, he left us in such a composed, impactful flash, as though he saw something coming that the rest of us didn’t.

“David’s death came as a complete surprise, as did nearly everything else about him. I feel a huge gap now,” Brian Eno, a friend and one of Bowie’s most notable music collaborators wrote today.

“I received an email from him seven days ago. It was as funny as always, and as surreal, looping through word games and allusions and all the usual stuff we did. It ended with this sentence: ‘Thank you for our good times, Brian. they will never rot’. And it was signed ‘Dawn’.

“I realize now he was saying goodbye.”

After an 18-month battle with cancer very few people were aware of, Bowie died following the release of his acclaimed (and quite frankly, devastatingly superb) new album, Blackstar. It’s a week old and came out on his 69th birthday. You might be momentarily forgiven for glossing over today’s news of his loss, as if it were some strange part of the record’s promotion cycle. But as Eno suggests, it may well have been on Bowie’s list of parting gifts for the world.

Bowie’s musical legacy is impossible to articulate succinctly, as he and his work literally shifted the form of every genre signifier and movement he came into contact with. Releasing his first music in the mid-to-late 1960s, he quickly distinguished himself by marrying pop sensibilities and musical proficiency with art, as an open-ended, mind-freeing concept. And he was a leading musical force for more than five decades. 

He dug into folk and rock music by applying conceptual, avant-garde theatricality to its macho framework. His choices didn’t seem motivated by any kind of careerism but he was a bona fide, hit-making rock star nonetheless. (See enduring singles like Space Oddity, Changes, Starman, The Jean Genie, Rebel Rebel, Young Americans, Fame, Golden Years, Suffragette City, Heroes, Under Pressure, Let’s Dance, Modern Love, Blue Jean, I’m Afraid Of Americans and, most recently, Lazarus). It all made him a mentor and icon to alienated musicians who occupied the margins of garage, glam, punk, metal, disco, new wave, goth, soul, funk, electronic, industrial and darker-hued pop. Virtually every figurehead of such sounds was inspired by Bowie’s uncompromising vision and conviction in himself.

Without succumbing to novelty (but able to take and make a joke), Bowie broke through by being strange. His talent could not be pigeonholed, and fans anticipated each of his albums without having any sense of what the newest one might consist of but knowing that it would be cool/haunting/stirring/life-affirming/surprising.

And he did it all with an ear for sounds and technology that was, to put it mildly, extremely uncommon. When he endorsed or collaborated with the likes of Mott the Hoople, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, John Lennon, Queen, Nine Inch Nails, TV on the Radio or Arcade Fire, it never felt like some parasitic, trend-trapping move by a desperately irrelevant star. Bowie seemed quietly engaged with the music world and its oscillations, and recognized his kinship with other musicians.    

Rather than distancing him from fans and followers, his shapeshifting and multi-toned persona resonated with people more than he likely expected it to. He recognized that the world was constantly changing and had an uncanny energy that enabled him to stay ahead of it.   

There is a romanticized compulsion to assume that every artifact produced by creative people is some extension of their very being. Cynicism for such a notion aside, look at Bowie’s death and its connection to his one last feat of strength in Blackstar, and then try arguing that its release isn’t some bittersweet poetry that exhibits the artful grace of the man himself. It’s impossible.

Like no one else, David Bowie lived and died by his work, which, utterly and truly, changed the ever-changing world.

Read NOW’s Norm Wilner on Bowie’s influence in the film world here.

music@nowtoronto.com | @vishkhanna

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