Tony Blackburn introduced me to David Bowie. It was early one January morning in 1972, and I was in the bathroom getting ready for school. Changes had been chosen as Record of the Week on his Radio 1 breakfast show.
Forty-four years later, on another January morning, as I got ready for work, it was Radio 4’s Today programme that delivered the news. It was time to say goodbye. David Bowie had died just two days after his 69th birthday. I, too, turn 69 this year, and it feels like the right moment to marshal my thoughts about him.
Between those two mornings lay a fantastic voyage—one where we explored identities, discovered possibilities, and opened strange doors that would never close again. He was a sage, a mentor to an entire generation—specifically my generation.
David Bowie presented life as a work of art, something to be constantly reworked, reinvented, and reimagined. In the end, he even approached his own death as a performance piece, a final gift to those of us who had shared in his dazzling, illuminating journey.
Back in 1972, if you were a freak, a geek, a misfit—if they called you a wanker, a bender, or a poofta at school, or they were not sure if you’re a boy or a girl—there was only one person who spoke for and to you. That person was David Bowie.
So there I was in the bathroom as Tony Blackburn played me Changes. It was the first song that spoke to me: And these children that you spit on, as they try to change their worlds… It was a song about transformation, individuality, and the shifting sands of identity and style—a call to apply a spirit of experimentation to our own lives. We loved Dylan, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, The Who—but they weren’t one of us. Their versions of masculinity and femininity felt curiously conventional. Theirs was the voice of another, a previous generation.
Bowie was different. Through those strange doors that he opened came a whole new tribe: Roxy Music; Iggy; Patti Smith; Siouxsie Sioux; Joy Division; Talking Heads; Boy George; The Smiths. They turned being a social misfit—and playing with gender ambiguity—into an art form.
Still don’t know what I was waiting for as a fifteen-year-old in suburbia. Who was I? How was I to find out? And to be honest, did it really matter? And who was in my tribe? How would I find them? Bowie handed me a new set of possibilities, expressed through, but never limited to, music.
The Saturday after I first heard him, I went into town and bought Hunky Dory. My friend Martin and I spent the afternoon playing it on repeat, learning every word. I couldn’t have imagined that decades later, as a man in his sixties, I’d still be enthralled by Bowie’s work, that I’d still be making new discoveries in and through his music.
Back then, we were told that we’d grow out of pop music. What no one realised was that this music would grow up with us. Well, some of it at least. We also didn’t know at the time that we were becoming active participants in the creation of a new culture. We were the culture as much as those who made the art and wrote the songs. We completed the process.
Music was to make and mark our memories, but more importantly it pointed to new futures. At its best, pop music fuses hedonism with idealism. Bowie mastered this fusion. Through his art, he helped my generation make sense of the 1970s, and explore its possibilities. It was a unique decade: post-pill and pre-AIDS, a time when pop could pull society forward.
In 1972, Bowie underwent the first of his many metamorphoses. People stared at the makeup on his face; he became the special man and his band became Ziggy’s band. I remember reading his Melody Maker interview where he openly discussed his bisexuality, and watching him on Top of the Pops with his arm draped around Mick Ronson. That summer, for the first time, I saw two men holding hands. That July, London held its first Pride parade.
A few years later, I shared a house with Bill, one of the first openly gay men I ever knew. One day in January 1977, he brought home Low—Bowie’s latest album, which had been released that very morning. Like every Bowie record, it sounded like nothing that had come before it. Bill and I played it all afternoon, marvelling at its strange, fractured brilliance.
Bill was older than I was, and I respected his thoughts on music and culture. I asked him why he loved Bowie so much. He said, “Because he was the first person to give me permission to be who I am.” Bill was a lovely man. But he didn’t live to share the final decades of Bowie’s voyage.
1977 was a year like no other. In just ten months, Bowie released Low and Heroes, while co-writing and producing Iggy Pop’s The Idiot and Lust for Life. Four wonderful albums, in less than a year. It’s hard to think of another time when music was so vital, so revolutionary. That same year, The Clash, The Jam, Chic, Blondie, Talking Heads, and Television released records that defined their age. Tom Robinson sang Glad to Be Gay (every Thursday night down our local pub to begin with), Patti Smith gave us her second album. And yet, even in such an extraordinary year, Bowie towered above it all.
His was a self-absorbed brilliance that took youth culture by the scruff of its neck and sought to give it a new voice based on new inspirations. I stuck with Bowie, simply because as I grew up, so did he and his music. It never failed to surprise and illuminate. And never failed to introduce me to new music.
The cover of Hunky Dory pointed me to Velvet Underground, Young Americans to Philadelphia Soul, Low and Heroes to Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. On the very cusp of his breakthrough as a global superstar in the 1980s, what does he do? He performs Baal for the BBC, a play written by Bertolt Brecht when he was a student. Marxist theatre from the Weimar was just what was needed in the early years of Thatcherism. Remembering Marie A is a beautiful song from the play, perhaps Bowie's finest cover. I remember watching it on TV with my Dad who was never close to being a Bowie fan but who said at the end “actually he’s not bad really, is he?” Even with my Dad he had the power to charm.
He not only turned his fans onto the music of his own musical heroes, but in producing a few of them, brought their careers back to life. He gave Mott the Hoople what was certainly the best song he’d written which, for me, captured the identity of my generation more than any other - All The Young Dudes. Charles Shaar Murray described the song as "one of that rare breed: rock songs which hymn the solidarity of the disaffected without distress or sentimentality".
I also remember watching Alan Yentob’s ground-breaking BBC film about Bowie in the early 1970s, Cracked Actor, that captured Bowie at a pivotal moment in his transformation. His relationships to culture, creativity and coke were framed by Yentob's candid storytelling. The irony here of course is that I spent many of my teenage years wanting to look like David Bowie only to end up looking like the old chap who made a film about him.
But he did show me how to dress. Yes, for a time I did wear platform boots and a glam style jacket with dramatically wide lapels, but I was never going to carry off a Michael Fish men’s dress or a Kansai Yamamoto kimono. It was sitting in the Muswell Hill Odeon watching him playing Thomas Jerome Newton when I learned how to wear a suit properly. David Bowie redefined the black suit, transforming it from a symbol of convention into a statement of sublime rebellion. He gave it an edge, using it as a stage for performing subversion. I used to wear a black suit to work. Of course I did.
And it wasn’t just the suits.
As the seventies came to a close, his Lodger album came out at a perfect time for me, as I began an admittedly short-lived career which was linked to activism both in the workplace and in the community. It’s an album that is as political as Bowie gets. This is an album about cultural politics with lyrics and sounds that highlight themes of displacement, cultural tension, and colonialism. Elsewhere the DJ sings of the emptiness of identities formed by consumerism. The privileges afforded to men through patriarchy are explored, domestic violence and the constant threat of nuclear annihilation highlighted. I can’t say Lodger was the reason why I set up Enfield CND, but it provided an appropriate cultural context. Bowie’s songs never provided answers, but they invariably posed some critical questions.
It was always the ideas.
“I think the potential of what the internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable. I think we’re actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying… it’s an alien life form!”
As a prediction, Bowie was right on the money. His ideas about the relationship between music, art, technology, and the dynamics of consumption were insightful and unique—there was no one else in popular culture truly exploring technology and its possible futures. His view on technology, and the internet in particular, appeared to coincide with my own - this is where everything is headed so you may as well get there as quick as you can and figure out how to use it creatively.
Suits, ideas… and personal challenge.
“Always remember that the reason that you initially started working is that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest in some way, you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society.”
His advice to artists is highly relevant. Bowie reminds us that making art is a deeply personal journey of self-expression and growth. By reconnecting with the purpose that inspired us to begin, we can find meaning in our contributions and understand our place within the wider world, fostering both personal fulfillment and social connection. And he goes further:
“If you feel safe in the area that you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth, and when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”
He encourages artists to embrace discomfort and go beyond their assumed limits, which is where growth, creativity, and truly innovative work often occur. Staying within safe, familiar boundaries can lead to stagnation, while stepping into the unknown fosters excitement, discovery, and breakthroughs in their craft. He possibly learned that after a couple of dodgy albums in the 1980s.
According to an economic analysis I read a few years ago, the UK has never had such a marked fall in living standards since the ten year period bookended by Bowie's Aladdin Sane and Let's Dance albums. Which - along with the experience of the last few years - only goes to prove that Bowie gets you through times with a catastrophic collapse of living standards better than a catastrophic collapse of living standards gets you through times with no David Bowie.
Then the fantastic voyage appeared to stop. For a decade.
Early in January 2013 we returned from a week away with friends. The day after our return I woke up, and checked The Guardian on my iPad for the news. Bowie has a new single. We watched the video of this amazing new song. I tweeted: “David Bowie has a new single out today about Berlin. Worth every minute.” And so we enjoyed a single and then a new album and a slew of great videos.
With me, the latest Bowie album was always the best Bowie album, and so it was right up to then end. As my friend Steve Platt wrote: “I can think of very few artists who took their own impending death, looked it full on in the face and used it for one final sparkling flourish of creativity in the way that Bowie did with Black Star.” I bought it on the Friday when it came out at HMV, and played it all weekend except of course I never actually heard him when he sang “I know something is very wrong”. First thing on the Monday I learned how wrong it was.
But it’s just music, isn’t it? Well, yes it is. But music matters: it wakes us up, soothes our soul, makes us think, finds our tribe, makes us dance, defines our selves, eases our pain, gives us joy. As we grow older, it shifts from finding a tribe and defining our selves to focusing more on soothing the soul, inspiring thought, and giving joy. The dancing bit is a more or less constant.
While some music and some music makers offer nostalgic appeal, others - a small number - stay the course with us. And of that small number perhaps one or two create, along with the music, a conversation through their art about living, thinking and behaving in the world. It’s a conversation about values, integrity and ideas. It’s a conversation about how we move on in the world, how we work with others, and how we live with those we love. About what’s important. And what isn’t. From him (along with a few others) I learned the value of sobriety. And I learned about how to die.
Like many others, I miss his presence in my life. But I am lucky beyond measure to have been a passenger on his fantastic voyage.
We're learning to live with somebody's depression
And I don't want to live with somebody's depression
We'll get by I suppose
But any sudden movement I've got to write it down
They wipe out an entire race and I've got to write it down
But I'm still getting educated but I've got to write it down
And it won't be forgotten
'Cause I'll never say anything nice again, how can I?
Fantastic Voyage, David Bowie
Notes
This was posted on 8 January 2024, which would have been David Bowie’s 78th birthday. While this particular post is personal in tone, others focus on less personal stories. These include the fascinating story behind the cover of his Ziggy Stardust album, his complex relationship with Lindsay Kemp, and the pivotal role of Trident Studios, where many of his early 1970s albums were recorded. Additionally, two excellent posts on The Marginalian detail Bowie’s advice for artists and his curated reading list of 75 books, offering a richer perspective on his creative influences.
There is a fair bit of earlier drafts that was edited out. I had to keep reminding myself that this was designed as a five to ten minute read and not an all-nighter. One paragraph that didn’t make the cut was about Marc Bolan. My first published writing ever was about him (letters page, Melody Maker, February 1972). He played a key role in creating the culture that Ziggy could thrive in, and I’ve written about him here.
Fantastic post, and really good to hear your perspective.
I wrote a tribute in Nov 23 and my subtitle was "the infinite David Bowie" because that was how I saw him. He was never going to stop evolving and bringing us new discoveries. I am sure you will have seen the interview Yentob did when Bowie turned 50. I thought Yentob looked at him as if he was a little bit in love with him. Probably just a fan like most of us! As you say, he even incorporated his own death into his art. Unfortunately I can't listen to that final album because it's too much to bear, knowing what we know now. In our house we call him "God". Tells you all you need to know really! 😆Dear me. 78. Where has the time gone?
Mike elevates a consideration of Pop music into a fine peice of literature that explores, informs and entertains.
I am from the generation immediately before Mike so although Bowie figures, I am still with Pink Floyd as my music of choice.
Maybe I should try to catch up ??
Ray.