David Bowie...

My first introduction to Bowie was the Aladin Sane album, or at least, my first conscious introduction. Someone has brought the album to school and was flashing it about. I'd heard the music before, I think I recall having liked Space Oddity but wasn't really aware of  'Bowie' until I saw the cover of Aladin Sane.
I recently picked up an old biography of David Bowie at the charity shop a week or so ago - by one Chris Charlesworth. Written in 1981, it was amusing to read, 30 years later, a persons account of the rise of Bowie and his, in 1981, almost retirement after his mercurial rise to fame in the early 70's.
The Seventies - perhaps its then because I transformed from a pre-teen kid to an angsty young man within that decade that I see it as an incredible period of change - and growth. It was, my time of appreciating and discovering life and, almost as a parallel, music transformed from besuited mop-tops, through rock, glam, pop and by the end of the decade, punk and post-punk. I had it all! I don't believe we've seen the like since.
David Bowie epitomises the Seventies in my mind.  The beginning of the decade saw him a whistful, naive figure who by 1974 was a rock phenominon, sparking glam, soul, punk and new romantic. What artist today has the ability to totally transform themselves, as Bowie did from the idol Ziggy Stardust to the crooning Young American and then on to the bleak dystopian vision that was 'Low ' over a period of a couple of years? But, I think, it was helped by his outlook, he eschewed fame and was not willing to compromise, not willing to create fodder for his audience. Reading the (short) biography, fame very nearly did kill him, but he was able to rise above it - or rather, skim beneath it.
So, consequently I've been listening to loads of David Bowie this week...My favourite album remains Hunky Dory, followed closely by Low, Ziggy Stardust and more recently Heathen. I wasn't keen the soul period of Young Americans, though I now thoroughly appreciate his mindset behind it  . Apart from, I think, one really miff album in the Eighties - Tonight, Bowie's albums have all been good.

Good night.