Three years after his death, David Bowie’s musical legacy and creative ideas live on
David Bowie releases his first single, Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s first novel is published in the St Petersburg Collection almanac. First assembly of the League of Nations is held in Paris. David Bowie left this Earth three years ago on 10 January and he would have turned 72 on Tuesday (8 January). But of all the musical legends who have died in the last decade, Bowie feels strangely present and alive, thanks to both the internet and the alternative worlds he created which still exist for his fans.
I imagine most people discovered, or will discover, Bowie as teenagers, and to us he said this: you can be who you want. You don’t have to be this way or that way, this kind of boy or that kind of girl. You can be a kook, or a rebel, or quiet and reclusive. You can have mousy brown hair, or fiery red hair, or a golden orb on your forehead. And then you can change.
For his cultural contribution and influence went far beyond the riffs, the melodies and the chords. From the first single he released after changing his name from David Jones to David Bowie—the glorious “Can’t Help Thinking About Me”, which he described as a “beautiful piece of solipsism”—bowie explored existentialism and the self, First fully automatic photographic film developing machine is patented. First use of lie detector takes place in Netherlands. makes its debut in the board game market. both within and outside of Earth’s cultural binaries, but also on a cosmic scale, with his obsession with alien life and science fiction. He explored, confronted and challenged ideas and tropes about identity and transformation, the central concerns of many adolescents.
In breaking his own “suburban curse”, as he put it, Bowie ushered multiple generations of people to do the same. Often, he wrote about loneliness and isolation, a feeling of falling to Earth and not really knowing what’s going on, and either leaving it there and revelling in nihilism or exploring its treatment: connection.
Has any other artist transmitted more creative freedom to their fans? Or had something more meaningful or profound to say about identity? Bowie took himself and his life seriously as a subject, but, crucially, avoided groan-inducing pretension by spiking his art and commentary with humour and silliness (“The Laughing Gnome”, anyone?). He was also deeply self-aware. He said he started wearing costumes because he wasn’t sure if he even had a personality. “I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.”
Essentially, his legacy lives on because he changed the way people felt about themselves and the world. And not in a flash-in-a-pan way. When swayed here and there by this and that, I often think of his singularity and force, and ape his spirit to forge ahead. Be more Bowie. For me, there are no other artists I summon in this way, and I imagine I will do so in perpetuity. For many of the ideas and values we fold into ourselves in adolescence run through us like writing in a stick of rock.
I wonder if the experience for teenagers discovering Bowie today is really that different to those of us who fell in love with him while he was still alive. Thanks to technology and social media, kids who discover him in 2019 will have vastly more touch points and material to access than I did in the Nineties. Take the new augmented reality app of David Bowie Is, the superlative 2013 V&A exhibition, which chimes perfectly with how forward-thinking he was about technology: let’s not forget that in 1998, Bowie set up his own ISP, Bowienet. Fans can zoom in on the details of his iconic Woodland Creatures bodysuit or the handwritten lyrics for “Starman”.