“I’ve done and do everything I wanted to do. It’s incredible. I’d do it again.” = David Bowie
Keep your ‘lectric eye on me, babePut your ray gun to my headPress your space face close to mine, loveFreak out in a moonage daydream, oh yeah!
Wikipedia: “Moonage Daydream is a 2022 documentary film about English singer-songwriter David Bowie. Written, directed, produced, and edited by Brett Morgen, the film uses previously unreleased footage from Bowie’s personal archives, including live concert footage. It is the first film to be officially authorized by Bowie’s estate and takes its title from the 1972 Bowie song of the same name.
Moonage Daydream had its world premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, where it received positive reviews. It was shortlisted for Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards, and won Best Music Film at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards.”
When Bowie died on January 10, 2016, my friend Steve texted me and said, “He was an artist.” That was my first thought as well. There are a lot of rockers for whom you’d wonder what else they could possibly do if they weren’t rockers. The AC/DC guys? Bruce Springsteen? Seger? Dig all those guys but what else would they do?
Bowie? He was not only a great rocker (and soul man) but, like Peter Gabriel, theater was an important part of his presentation. He spent time studying movement, mime (everybody’s favorite), and dance. So, he understood how to move on stage, I think, better than most performers. (Going by the videos I’ve seen. Never saw him live. Madonna famously snuck out of the house to see him and it changed her life).
As you might expect in a Bowie documentary, there is a lot of spacy (and space) imagery, odd music, great music. The concert footage from the early 70s is revelatory. The young fans (how old are they today, 70?) crying because they can’t wait to see him or missed him or whatever. If you didn’t know you were seeing Bowie fans it might just as easily be Swifties.
I’d seen some of this concert footage from Hammersmith Odeon before. But I’d never seen the clip of Bowie playing “Love Me Do” (!) and “Jean Genie” with Jeff Beck. And Bowie on harmonica. Why wasn’t I informed??? The pairing of these two was overshadowed by the fact that this is the night that Bowie effectively killed off his Ziggy Stardust character.
The documentary is a fascinating look at what made Bowie tick and the forces that contributed to making him the varied artist he was. What I hadn’t thought about much but what comes out strongly here is how much of a changeling he was like, say, Miles Davis. As soon as he arrived someplace he was off somewhere else.
The documentary uses a lot of interview footage of him and man, he did a LOT of interviews. It’s interesting how seriously interviewers took him even when he showed up in persona. I think they could tell he was a pretty intelligent guy and not just some young dude. (If you will.) He has a discussion with a British interviewer about bisexuality which today wouldn’t be given a second thought. But back then? England was NOT LGBTQ-friendly. To say the least.*
It takes quite a while for the movie to get to Bowie’s early life and even then it isn’t dealt with in any great length. (Fun fact: Peter Frampton’s father was Bowie’s art teacher). From the sound of it, he had the typical “repress-your-emotions-quiet-desperation-is-the-English-way” upbringing seemingly common to post-WWII Brits. There is some discussion of his brother Terry from whom he learned about the arts and who later – diagnosed with schizophrenia – eventually spent his lift in mental hospitals.
The movie does not directly address his cocaine addiction prior to his escape to Berlin. However it’s evidenced here where he sniffs his way through an interview with American talk show host Dick Cavett:
The movie goes right up to but does not directly address his death, ending with songs from his final album, Blackstar. Strangely, for a star of his stature, there seems to be only one posthumous album, a 2021 disc called Toy which featured re-recordings of songs Bowie recorded between 1964 and 1971, along with a couple of new tracks.
Anyway, if you’re even halfway a Bowie fan, see this movie. (I watched it on Max). And for God’s sakes, listen to this Spotify list. And crank the fucking thing up. Bowie is listening.
*Although section 61 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 removed the death penalty for homosexuality, male homosexual acts remained illegal and were punishable by imprisonment. In the early 1950s, the police actively enforced laws prohibiting sexual behaviour between men.
By the end of 1954, there were 1,069 homosexual men in prison in England and Wales, with an average age of 37. There were a number of high-profile arrests and trials, including that of scientist, mathematician, and war-time code-breaker Alan Turing, convicted in 1952 of “gross indecency”. He accepted treatment with female hormones (chemical castration) as an alternative to prison. Turing committed suicide in 1954.
In 2009, then Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in response to a petition, issued an apology on behalf of the British Government for “the appalling way he was treated.’