Banging on about Bowie. Hello Steve Adams Ian Killen Gav Wood Fran Rileyand many more..Me and my great friends Jon and Nivek Snave had a brief but valuable online natter about Bowie in the period between the release of bits of Blackstar and the album proper. Kev was generous as always, while Jon liked it and had been surprised by its impact on him. I was less generous, it sounded (still sounds) like a botch to me after which the warmth and clarity of much of the album was a real relief. There are beautiful songs on Blackstar that will stand and which, hard though it is, you can still hear as a celebration of life and the survival of intelligence rather than a harbinger of the end.
We are fans, Jon, Kev and me ,and since the news came through this morning we’ll have made our lists and recalled a lot of private and public moments when the world would have had a colder and sheerer surface without this music.
Having emerged within a popular artform at a time when self- expression and authenticity were often seen as the sole indicator of value , Bowie built a career around the negation of his own self. It was common in the years of invention, re-invention and character / personae for journalists to ask “Will The Real David Bowie Please Stand up?” Maybe here he is, on Blackstar and the likes of Where are we Now.
That even this much of his last music should be this good is almost recompense for the fact that there won’t be any more. The impact of his career will be measured in the gratitude of the people he pointed towards their own selves.
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