Five Misconceptions About David Bowie
The impetus for this post is really a desire to address the first three of these misconceptions, some version of which I (frustratingly) come across now and again in the course of writing this blog. The reality is that there are many more than five somewhat common misconceptions floating around out there, but five is a good number for a post. Since the basic idea behind these misconceptions take different forms, I’m trying to characterize them in a representative way that get to the heart of the wrong idea. That said…
—-
1. Bowie was a 70s musician. Bowie’s career stretched from the 1960s through around the time of his death in 2016. True enough, many of Bowie’s greatest hits came from the 1970s, but some of his best-known songs came later (for instance, “Ashes to Ashes” from 1980, or “Let’s Dance” from 1983). “Space Oddity” was first released in 1969. That said, usually when I encounter some version of this idea, by “the 70s,” whoever is making the point means a period that begins with 1969 and ends some time in the mid-80s. But that, too, is just not accurate. Including Tin Machine II and Toy, Bowie released 11 studio albums after 1990, many of which were successful or groundbreaking in some way. That doesn’t include live albums, soundtrack contributions, or singles. Albums such as Black Tie White Noise, Heathen, The Next Day, and Blackstar were commercially and critically successful upon release, with initial sales and critical attention far surpassing those received by some of Bowie’s best-known 1970s albums, including Hunky Dory and The Man Who Sold the World, whose reputations and commercial success grew substantially over time. You might personally like one period over others, but the idea that Bowie belonged to the 1970s is just not true.
2. Bowie wrote a lot of songs about space aliens. Bowie mentions Venusians in “Memory of a Free Festival” (1969), and, of course, “Starman” is about a Starman, whatever that means. The narrator of “Moonage Daydream” also calls himself a “space invader.” Beyond those examples, however, very few Bowie songs actually mention space aliens. Wherever you think Ziggy Stardust came from, no Bowie song clearly identifies him as an extraterrestrial. I’ve never encountered anyone who claims that the Spiders from Mars were actually either spiders or from Mars. “Loving the Alien” (1984) is not about space aliens, and “Life on Mars?” (1971) is not about life on Mars. There’s a song of his called “Born in a UFO” (2013), but even that doesn’t establish that the person born in the UFO was not human. Similarly, “Hallo Spaceboy” (1995) is not necessarily about an alien. If you stretch the definition, the obscure “Planet of Dreams,” if taken literally, can be interpreted as being about another planet. Maybe the Tin Machine song “Baby Universal” (1991) is about some kind of cosmic entity. But that’s about it. Bowie has more songs that mention space in some way than songs that mention aliens, but even those represent a small portion of his total body of work.
3. Bowie was a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer. OK, this one has been getting a lot of attention this year because 50 years ago Bowie made some comments that were sympathetic to fascism and compared Hitler to a rock star. On top of that, he had adopted his “Aryan-type” Thin White Duke persona, seemed to give a Nazi salute to fans, and designed his concerts to have elements reminiscent of Nuremberg rallies. Sounds pretty damning, right? Well, Bowie was insensitive and shortsighted for sure, but even those who, today, would draw attention to his irresponsible use of such imagery do not claim he ever showed alignment with Nazi ideology, racism or antisemitism. After ‘76, Bowie shut the door on the Duke and began making excuses for what he had been doing. He seemed embarrassed, and many later songs were either critical of fascists or presented views that fascists would despise.
4. Brian Eno produced the Berlin trilogy albums. Bowie and Tony Visconti produced Low, “Heroes”, and Lodger. Eno was involved, but he does not get a producer credit. He does, though, for 1. Outside, but that was released years later. No less than The New York Times made this mistake in a relatively recent feature on Eno. A related misconception is that Trent Reznor produced “I’m Afraid of Americans,” which is not true, at least for the version that appears on Earthling (1997). (By the way, “I’m Afraid of Americans” is another example of a post-70s and post-80s Bowie “greatest hit.”)
5. Bowie had two different colored eyes. Bowie had a permanently injured eye due to a childhood fistfight, so his eyes looked different (and otherworldly). But they weren’t actually two different colors. The idea that they were is so persistent that the animated character he voiced in an episode of SpongeBob was given different colored eyes, and a Bowie doll recently held up in a picture of Iman and Lexi Jones had different colored eyes. Many other examples, but it isn’t true.