BOWIE

Watch That Man

“Moonage Daydream” is strictly speaking, not a documentary. There are no talking heads telling you about the man. You get that directly from the man himself. 

There is, however, a lot of music and eye-popping visuals that pass through the retinas in fractions of nanoseconds. It should be a sensory overload, but somehow it’s not.

If you’re familiar with Bowie’s life and work, you’ll decry that the film moves along in relatively chronological order. You’ll also notice that all of the clips from other movies, newsreels, and photos are a catalog of the influences on Bowie. 

If you’re a casual listener but aren’t sure why Bowie’s kind of a big deal, you may find this a descent into the maelstrom and it is a delight as an audiovisual plunge.

Sound + Vision

Not just in terms of David Bowie’s work (and this might be one of the few realizations of much of what his work), but in and of itself, Brett Morgen’s work is a fine standalone example of what a document a documentary can be. 

There are abstract visuals punctuating the spiral into a life and life’s work unlike any others. 

I was Thursday’s Child

Watching this last night, the first day of autumn, I was surprised (happily) at what a celebration this was and how seamless Morgen wove images from the works of Pennebaker, Roeg, Ozu, and others (“Just a Gigolo”, anyone? No takers? Didn’t think so) and how Bowie in conversation and concert came across very much as Bowie the image in film. 

I saw him in concert in 1978 on the “Stages” tour, supporting “Low” and “Heroes”, when he was - for all intents and purposes - appearing on stage as himself, shorn of alias or alter ego. It was almost as if he just wanted to share everything he discovered with Eno, Visconti, Fripp, et al. It was glorious. I arrived at the Summit and bought my ticket for $7.50. I was surrounded by kids a little younger than I and many done up like Ziggy or Aladdin Sane. No Thin White Dukes that I recall, but there was a lot of love there.

Watching the crowd footage in the excerpts from Pennebaker’s “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” documentary and others from the same period (and even a little later), I was struck by the similarity of ardor and adulation these kids brought that wasn’t so different from the furor of Beatlemania almost a decade before Ziggy played guitar. There was one striking difference, though.

The Beatles were and still are, Everybody’s Band. It’s difficult to imagine not liking the lads from Liverpool but Bowie spoke to the kids on the margins, to the art kids, the “play fags”, the marginalized, thoughtful outcasts from the suburban hellscape of middle and high school. He provided a safe haven for kids who would be beat up for humming for “Changes” or worse, not looking like everyone else, or worse, identifying as gay, lesbian, bi, or queer. I don’t think it’s overselling his contribution to the culture for promoting greater acceptance of queer culture by the heteronormative society at large. Pity that he walked his declaration of bisexuality back in the 80s, but the record stands that he made the world a little more tolerant.

Strangers When We Meet

The 80s were a weird time for Bowie and Morgen shows, doesn’t tell, how Bowie went from enjoying his status as “an entertainer” drawing huge stadium sized sellout crowds to his disaffection with having been accepted by “the middle”. I remember at the time when he referred to his Berlin Trilogy, in particular, as “cold” and how he wanted to write warmer stuff, I really felt like he was protesting way too much. 

Sure, maybe “Station to Station” and “Low” owe a debt to Kraftwerk and Can, but to say that he was “cold” or dispassionate? C’mon, David, that’s bullshit. The cries of desperation and hope echo throughout your work. Sure, “Let’s Dance” ushered in Happy David, but as he says in the film, it is his simplest writing. Thankfully, he came around in the next decade, married and still happy but with a greater reason to live each day to its fullest, something he says repeatedly in the last third of the movie. And his life.

Pundits often point out that his work in the 90s suffers from not being innovative enough or that the times had finally caught up with him. I find the former churlish and wrong and the latter not quite right.

Musically, if Bowie was now playing with the younger kids like Trent Reznor, he was still pushing himself to experiment with song craft and if what we have from the decade is variable, much if not all of it is challenging. Perhaps not in ways the Berlin years were (what could be?), but also, to give the benefit of a doubt - perhaps we need to listen with different ears. I had just typed “perhaps we need to listen with different years”; where Bowie is concerned, that seems more accurate.

However, Bowie was also doing plenty of other stuff, you know. Painting, sculpting, still dipping into the occasional film role. 

Almost every release in the 90s (and latterly, in the 00s) was greeted with “a return to form” and then usually a demurring that “it isn’t quite that.” I’d like to remind people that “Low” and “Heroes” were not met with universal acclaim (and that Bowie took a chance on alienating - and did - many of the fans of his more straightforward work)(1). 

When “Outside” came out, I was blown away by a number of songs on it, found the narrative a little underbaked and unsupported, but in general had to give props to Bowie and Eno for doing something different. You hear jungle, drums and bass, and even grunge in a lot of the songs and the interludes even call to mind some of the stuff Tricky was doing around the same time. On reflection, “Outside” is stronger than I found at the time; I wish he and Eno had finished the project. I really wish it had been mounted as a film or theater piece.

I think the last album to be slagged off was “Hours…” and even though I can agree with some aspects of criticism (the lyrics don’t seem fully realized or some songs are almost too sentimental, Reeves Gabrels’ guitar is too manic and runs roughshod over almost every song), there are gems there, too. And I like the so-called sentimental work.

I Can’t Give Everything Away

We hear David talking about how we are dying each day and his further reflections on change and impermanence and we are growing closer to The Close. But it’s not sad. This is not a eulogy; it’s an elegy. 

In some ways, the film is the audiovisual equivalent to “David Bowie Is…”, the exhibition that premiered at the Chicago Art Museum in 2014 and then to the Albert and Victoria Museum. It was a wonderful installation/experience that really brought home Bowie’s protean gifts. I stayed for hours and still feel as though I barely scratched the surface.

Time Takes a Cigarette

I was checking email on January 10, 2016, first thing in the morning. This was unusual for me since I am typically loath to log on more than I need to. The news that Bowie had died two days after “Black Star” dropped signaled that the year was not going to be a bright one. It was a year of loss for me personally, but it was rife with departures from Alan Rickman to Prince and Leonard Cohen. And I don’t need to mention the election that seems to have begun to put nails in the coffin of democracy in the U.S.

While I have lived long enough to recognize that death takes even the greatest, you feel it more when it’s someone whose work you treasure and from whom you have derived a great deal of inspiration. This isn’t the first artist’s death I found devastating. John Lennon’s murder and Miles Davis passing are two that come to mind. 

But this felt different. Bowie is a nearer contemporary and unlike Prince, who is my age, Bowie felt like the older sibling who went out there and came back with new toys to share and cool ideas to consider. Don’t get me wrong; Prince towers over the musical landscape, as well, and his loss is in many ways equally devastating, but I had grown up with Bowie. 

A number of Bowie’s peers are still with us; Eno, of course, but also Bryan Ferry - sometimes considered Bowie’s rival, though I continue to think that’s facile and not wholly accurate, Robert Fripp is still doing vital work. Johnny Foxx, too.

Then there are the kids my age - Johnny Lydon/Rotten, Kate Bush, Mick Jones of the Clash and B.A.D. Hell, Madonna. We all owe a debt to Bowie and his cohort; but maybe to Bowie more than anyone else for showing how you take all these influences and digest them and spit them out into something else. Maybe it won’t be groundbreaking or innovative; but it will be unique to you. Maybe it won’t change the world, but it might show you a more genuine way to be in the world. Not everyone is going to be a Bowie, but he’s a fine example of taking the journey to find out who and what you are.

In large measure, Morgen succeeds in getting this across without the slightest hint of mawkishness. His editing, choice of archival material, and cross-cutting between the different eras both jumbles the sense of memory and relation to time passed and passing and creates something astonishingly fresh. Very Bowiesque.

If you can, do yourself a favor and see this on the big screen. The sound will be larger, if not louder, the images more immersive, and although I saw it in standard projection, I’d recommend experiencing the IMAX treatment. My plan is to see it again in that format. 

Look up here, I'm in heaven

I've got scars that can't be seen

I've got drama, can't be stolen

Everybody knows me now

Look up here, man, I'm in danger

I've got nothing left to lose

I'm so high it makes my brain whirl

Dropped my cell phone down below

Ain't that just like me?

By the time I got to New York

I was living like a king

There I'd used up all my money

I was looking for your ass

This way or no way

You know, I'll be free

Just like that bluebird

Now, ain't that just like me?

Oh, I'll be free

Just like that bluebird

Oh, I'll be free

Ain't that just like me? (2)

Notes

1. In the film, an interviewer wonders if he risked losing money doing the more experimental work to which Bowie replied: “No shit, Sherlock.”

2. “Lazarus” from “Black Star”; lyrics by David Bowie, © Warner Chappell Music, Inc