Bowie and fame

The short answer is “we don’t know.”

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His most explicit pean to fame, the eponymous song, is pretty unattractive lyrically, but driven by an hypnotic Alomar backbeat.  Created at a time when he was drenched in drink and drugs, the plight of millionaire rock stars in their limousines, plush hotels, with  fast women and men,  didn’t bother me. David always had his luxury home in Switzerland when it all became too much and the cocoon of  a first class cunard suite to travel there.

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Bowie successfully, and ruthlessly pursued fame leaving those that aided and abetted his journey by the wayside. Unquestionably  Tony DeFries was architect in chief, his Mainman offices in London, New York and Tokyo providing the launch pads to success, Angie, Ronno and Alomar being  jettisoned  like expended booster rockets when required.

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David understood contemporary celebrity  as well as anyone. What is astonishing is his celebrity in so many different fields. David the songwriter ( Space oddity, Life on Mars, The Man  Who sold the World, Dudes), David the Popstar (  Ziggy), David the Media darling ( the Panorama interview), David the lady Diana look alike ( live Aid/ Serious Moonlight era) , David the  Film Star ( The Man Who fell to earth et al), David the Childrens’ hero ( Laughing Gnome, Peter and the Wolf, Labyrinth), David the Theatre stage star ( Elephant Man), David the Messiah to the masses  ( Live Aid, Serious Moonlight Tour, Glastonbury2) David alternative Music hero ( Low and Heroes), David Saviour of failing careers ( Mott the Hoople, Lulu, Iggy Pop). It is an astonishing list, I could go on…

Intellectually David was a grasshopper moving from place to place, a cultural magpie, picking up ideas, using them, then trying something else. His flirtation with fascism was disastrous, he almost starred in an aborted  Camerson Crowe film about the Spanish Civil war as an anti fascist, but the Low heroes earthquake very effectively erased memories of the past.

Almost as remarkable as David’s success with fame was his ability  to dodge it. He spent 18 months with Cameron Crowe in LA, providing him with a biographical manuscript and no-one knew. His three years in  Berlin are  largely a mystery with three women who featured in it, RSC actor Clare Shenstone, transsexual performer and legendary nightclub owner Romy Haag and former journalist Sarah-Rena Hine – all of whom knew Bowie intimately, remarkably coy. Did David save Iggy? Did Iggy save David? Or did a Berlin awash with heroin consume them? No videos, a handful of photos.

Fame? What’s your name?

Heroes?

The vocals songs on the Heroes album are more conventional than on Low, and album which was groundbreaking

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The song Heroes did not leap out as a standard at the time,  as an album track, it is a straight forwards romantic love song underpinned by Fripp’ s guitar. The single edit is awful.

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However live it took on a life of its own, becoming a song of hope and loss, the phrasing on Stage is quite different to the studio take. Great songs transcend their original birth and are capable of becoming something much greater ( “Somewhere over the rainbow”).

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Bowie had a knack for being able to do this- think of “Space oddity”, “The Man wgho sold the world” “Rebel rebel”, Fashion”, “Fame “ and  “Lets dance”. All transcend their  original incarnations to become non time specific.

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Post 9/11, it morphed again when Bowie played it at the dong for New York Concert to become a song for all heroes. Its bombastic tenor thereafter was not to my taste  altering as Springsteen’s “Born in th USA” did in similar circumstances over time.

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It is noteworthy that his German language single vocal in “Helden”, recorded during the period in which he lived in Berlin is very good. I suspect that the fact that CoCo was both a fluent German and French speaker helped his multilingual versions.

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So it is arguable that there are four “versions” of Heroes on the table