The artist David Bowie considered a rock and roll god: “He’s a needed deity”
Most rock musicians aren’t looking to be idolised when they get the ball rolling. Getting respect from peers and having fans must be nice, but the idea of having stadiums full of people chanting your name wasn’t something in the cards when the golden age of rock started in the 1960s. David Bowie may have come to know what the rockstar lifestyle was like, but he considered Lou Reed to be one of the biggest rock gods that he had ever worked with.
But when Bowie was first cutting his teeth as a songwriter, there was hardly a chance he would be the next biggest name in music. He could certainly write a catchy tune, but the vaudeville style that he incorporated into his first album was the equivalent of John Lennon deciding that he would get into the sounds of Mitch Miller rather than Chuck Berry when he was growing up.
Bowie knew he needed a change if he wanted to get anywhere, and England was already starting to swing around him. The Summer of Love was officially underway thanks to acts like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and the psychedelic movement half a world away was bringing new sounds to the table with acts like The Doors. Then again, Reed could never be bothered with the hippy movement.
From the minute that The Velvet Underground started, Reed admitted that they had no ambition to be on the same pedestal as The Beatles. That was for the pop market, and The Velvets were about trying to make the most raucous art projects the New York underground scene had ever heard, including making strange drone pieces like ‘Heroin’ alongside gorgeous pop songs like ‘Sunday Morning’.
Even though the production of their first album became the laughing stock of the critical sphere, Bowie was absolutely transfixed. If Reed had helped open his mind to what rockstars could sing about, Bowie would have revolutionised what they looked like, eventually adopting his alien persona, Ziggy Stardust.
While Bowie did eventually return the favour by helping producer Reed’s solo blockbuster album Transformer, he knew that he was working with a true original when he walked into the studio, telling PBS, “I think he was the first man that you believe there are so many doors that are closed on his life that you would quite like to unlock, but maybe you wouldn’t really. There’s a kind of there’s a a melodious kind of enigmatic thing about him, which is, in the hierarchy of rock gods, that pantheon of mythology that we’ve developed. I think he’s a needed deity.”
That kind of enigmatic character was a core part of what made Bowie so interesting. Since he changed characters multiple times throughout his career, it was impossible for anyone to find out who the real Bowie was underneath everything, especially when he started playing with audience expectations on albums like Station to Station or even genre switches like Earthling years later.
Despite Reed’s passing in 2013, Bowie maintained that mentality until the release of his final album, Blackstar, on tracks like ‘I Can’t Give Everything Away’. He knew that parts of his personal life would always remain private, but making his fans fill in the gaps is part of what made his musical so interesting.
