As tributes pour in about the death of David Bowie, including Kim Ruehl’s excellent piece on this site, a recurring theme continues to resonate with me about this boundary pushing and genre-bending artist: He was always living in the moment and looking to the next.
At the same time, Bowie seemed to enjoy revisiting his past, especially over the past few years. Whether it was a calculated business move, an ongoing assessment of his place in popular culture, or a combination of both, it has been an fascinating journey.
Bowie’s back catalog has been recycled and repackaged so frequently that even his earliest box set (“Sound & Vision”) has been remastered and re-released on two different labels. Over the past two years alone, we’ve seen more best-of sets and a massive 12-disc look at his first five (very heady years) on RCA.
This repackaging is typical for someone approaching 70 who had not performed live in almost a decade. But Bowie was far from done.
Two days before his death at age 69, Bowie released his most recent CD, “Blackstar,” which long-time producer Tony Visconti called a “gift” about his approaching mortality to his fans. “Lazarus,” an Off-Broadway continuation of “The Man Who Fell To Earth” featuring old and new music from Bowie, has been one of the hottest tickets in New York since it opened in December. In terms of buzz, it is almost as hot as “Hamilton,” another genre-bending musical currently in New York.
Context Matters
One could question why, despite his far-reaching influence, I’m devoting space to Bowie here, or why I posted a tribute to Lou Reed following his death. But it’s really not as much of a leap as you would think.
Putting music, or any art for that matter, into the context of its time and place has been a lifelong fascination. I want to know about the musicians the artists are working with, who the artists are influenced by, and what makes their creative juices flow. In the end, for me at least, context matters as much as the words, rhythms and beats.
With Bowie and Reed, the leap for readers stops at the doorstep of Alejandro Escovedo, who has worked with Visconti on his last several CDs and cites both as giant influences on his career. The reason I like Escovedo, and admire the work of Reed and Bowie so much, is that they always are looking to try something new with little regard for the genre. Regardless of whether you enjoy the result, you have to appreciate their restless and boundless approach to creativity and art.
It is ironic that both Reed and Bowie likely died from liver cancer, an end result of decades of hard living that both had overcome. Escovedo has dealt with the health effects of Hepatitis C that were caused by years of heavy drinking.
Fortunately, Escovedo is mostly healthy and taking care of himself, based on all available reports. But you just never know.
Starting with a Memory
I started this tribute, as most of these things begin, with a memory. Not of seeing Bowie live, which I did in Houston on the 1988 “Glass Spider” tour, but of a museum exhibit.
Last Christmas Eve, my wife and I were fortunate to see the “David Bowie is Now” exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the only U.S. venue to host the show that has traveled the world since 2013. We were in Chicago with the rest of our family to see our son perform in a show, so getting a ticket was an unexpected treat.
If anyone deserved a museum exhibition devoted to his style alone, it was Bowie, but this was much more, proving to be a multimedia feast for the eyes and ears. It also was a fascinating history lesson, showcasing his artistry and chameleon-like nature while providing excellent, thought-provoking insight into his career. Afterward, I found myself reaching yet again for one of those retrospectives to see what I had missed.
True context.
My only wish is that I could have taken pictures, but they were strictly verboten, and security was tight. I understand why, and wondered at the time if I could have done it justice, given how difficult it is at times to get good images in museums. At the same time, I’m sure copyright and intellectual property were not the only reasons Bowie refused to allow photography. If anything, he was always the one in control of his ever-shifting image, right until the end.
Another icon gone too soon. Sigh…
