“Awful”: the award David Bowie wanted nothing to do with
Even though he spent large portions of his career firmly within the spotlight, unable to make a single move without it being followed by the press or by his most dedicated devotees, David Bowie‘s relationship with fame and celebrity was certainly more complicated than it might seem.
Of course, Bowie certainly relished being a performer and wouldn’t have been the sort of artist he was without choosing to lean into this facet of his work. Creating numerous personas that have their own unique characteristics and identities isn’t necessarily something that someone can do and not attract attention for it, and given that Bowie was something of a shapeshifting king, it’s clear he was often doing this to entice people into paying attention to him.
However, there’s a flipside to this, which also highlights a complete distaste for the idea of celebrity. His first major persona, Ziggy Stardust, was deliberately killed off so that he wouldn’t have to be stuck performing as him for the rest of his life, but it also served as a comment on the fickleness of celebrity status, and how it simply can’t last forever if there are no changes factored into the art. At the same time, his personas often allowed him to hide his true self, suggesting that he wasn’t ever entirely comfortable with being celebrated as who he was.
The thing is, people love to worship celebrities, creative minds and public figures of all kinds, and will often show this admiration through trying to immortalise them with awards. If, for example, you were to win a Grammy, that’s something that not only places you with an elite group of people who are deemed special enough to receive this recognition, but it’s stuck with you forever, and places a huge amount of pressure on you to live up to expectations.
Understandably, Bowie has never really been a massive fan of displays such as this, and during a 1990 feature with Interview Magazine, he expressed that he was far from enthralled by the idea of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame having come into existence only four years prior.
“I think that’s awful,” Bowie fumed, evidently aggrieved at the idea that people should be immortalised in such a way. “I guess what you have to do is just go against the flow and not be demoralised by it. One has to keep buoyant.”
He continued, expressing a feeling of exasperation at the state of the contemporary pop culture sphere. “I don’t listen to the radio anymore, and I never watch the TV things, the MTV stuff,” he added. “When I do, it draws me into that dangerous position of wondering why I’m still doing what I’m doing; I think, ‘God, am I part of all this?’”
Bowie did, however, have some sage advice for those who were becoming increasingly disenchanted by the direction things were moving in. “The best way is to just completely eradicate it from your mind and draw back into yourself and say, ‘Well, what I want to do is have fun.’”
Despite his distaste for the Rock Hall and seemingly platitudinous nature of its existence, he did accept his induction in 1996 after having missed out on one previous nomination. Regardless of the fact and his eventual softening of his position, even without the Hall of Fame, I’m sure everyone would still be remembering his contributions to music for longer than the Hall remains relevant.
