Bowie, 60 today, has prospered as a chameleon. But he’s at his best being himself, says tim willis |
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It only charted for one week - at No 19 - but David Bowie must have gained comfort from having a hit in the final days of his 50s. There was something tidy about it, too. Seeing Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd inspired the R&B singer Davie Jones to embrace the world of art and artifice. Forty years later, his vocal on Barrett's Arnold Layne (as performed by David Gilmour) brought him full circle.
He might never have made it. Bowie's first recordings - epitomised by the Laughing Gnome - were so awful, he was lucky to get another chance. But in the late Sixties he underwent an alchemical change. Absorbing a host of influences - Lindsay Kemp's mime, William Burroughs' 'cut-up' writing, the Warhol scene - he began to invent and inhabit characters best described as iconic outsiders.
The comical elf became Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke and the |
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| To Bowie we owe the survival of the Queen's English in British rock – and, in part, the punk phenomenon |
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Lodger. The much-vaunted chameleon changed both image and style with the times, and he hired the best help to achieve it - for without Nile Rodgers, Brian Eno and above all Mick Ronson, Bowie would never have had such an impact.
To him, we owe the survival of Queen's English in British rock - and in part, the punk phenomenon. So it's worth noting that Bowie actually went off the boil 20 years ago. His endless re-inventions were becoming tiresome, his music turgid. In various ill-advised collaborations, he seemed to be chasing the zeitgeist, rather than defining it.
But in the mid-Nineties, Bowie found his new role - as grand old man. He started a dotcom bank and sold shares in future royalties. His thawing cool was rescued through an association with Britart. His waning celebrity was reversed by marrying a model, and playing along in Extras. Musically, he's over. But as Bowie turns 60, he appears dignified and content - and all through being himself. 
FIRST POSTED JANUARY 8, 2007
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