The band David Bowie regretted not seeing in their prime
David Bowie‘s success story was characterised by his ability to keep up with the latest innovations in music and, at the most culturally significant junctures, leading the charge. While the Londoner desperately and quite embarrassingly tried anything to secure global fame in the late 1960s, he eventually realised what it took to be artistically valid, and 1972’s Ziggy Stardust would be the start of a tremendously influential career.
The 1972 record was a masterpiece in glam rock. Bowie’s colourful imagination and dramatic rendering of rock ‘n’ roll was the perfect soundtrack for this dark and transgressive new epoch, typified by the androgynous eponymous character and his subversive exploits. Musically and spiritually, it was incredibly resonant for those who were keeping the countercultural flame alive, and it would become a key influence in the development of the first wave of punk later in the decade, a deeply hippie movement in all but name.
Ziggy Stardust would quickly become a mission statement for those who loved it, catapulting Bowie to fame and placing him at the forefront of culture. He was the latest in a line of transgressive musicians that had produced The Fugs, Frank Zappa, The Velvet Underground and Iggy and the Stooges, and his disdain for outdated social mores was ideal for those who were breaking down barriers, musically, sexually and gender-wise, which included future punks.
Despite being ahead of the curve for much of the 1970s, Bowie later admitted that the punk movement, which he had significantly influenced, ultimately passed him by. This seems surprising, considering his keen ability to stay abreast of new musical trends, a skill that fuelled his long and varied career. However, punk emerged during a period when Bowie had distanced himself from fame, drugs, and the pressures of the Western music industry, having relocated to West Berlin to immerse himself in art and introspection.
There, freeing himself from addiction, he started creating some of the most forward-thinking art of his career and danced with the avant-garde more closely than he had ever done at that point. Understandably, considering Bowie was deep in this flow state and battling with depression, he wasn’t paying attention to outside forces for the first time in his career. There’s no wonder this period is so artistically significant. By the time Low, the first chapter in The Berlin Trilogy, arrived in January 1977, punk was reaching fever pitch in the UK and US, but Bowie was mostly unaware of such a cultural tsunami occurring. He had an existential crisis to deal with.
Speaking to Uncut in 1999, Bowie replied to the argument that his refined Berlin era was a reaction to the fundamental rawness of punk. As he was in a very strange, burnt-out mindset at the time, he explained that by the time he became aware of the genre, it was almost over. However, he did disclose that he met Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious of the movement’s vanguard, the Sex Pistols and that he wishes he had caught them live in their pomp, as their energy would have salved his bleak psychological malaise.
Bowie recalled: “Whether it was my befuddled brain or because of the lack of impact of the English variety of punk in the US, the whole movement was virtually over by the time it lodged itself in my awareness. Completely passed me by. The few punk bands that I saw in Berlin struck me as being sort of post-1969 Iggy, and it seemed like he’d already done that. Though I do regret not being around for the whole Pistols circus as that kind of entertainment would have done more for my depressed disposition than just about anything else that I could think of.”
Despite being unplugged from punk, Bowie said he met Rotten and Vicious on tour with his best friend and proto-punk lord, Iggy Pop. While the Sex Pistols frontman was in awe at meeting one of his heroes in the Michigan legend, bassist Vicious was in a completely different condition, which he called “near-catatonic”, with it clear he needed serious help. Tragically, by the time Lodger, the final instalment in Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy, arrived in May 1979, Vicious had died after his life taking on a murderous dimension, and punk had imploded. A new era had arrived for Bowie and guitar music.
