The one band David Bowie thought nobody could equal: “The best band around”
On several occasions throughout his career, David Bowie was written off and treated like he was yesterday’s news. Due to the mighty fashion in which Bowie ended his career with The Next Day and Blackstar, he cemented his status as an all-time great. Nevertheless, there were times when it felt the zeitgeist had run away from him, and he’d never capture it again.
Rather than accept his fate as a nostalgia act, Bowie kept on innovating until the very end. Experimentalism ran through his veins, which was the vital attribute that helped Bowie reach greatness. His ingenuity allowed him to dream up elaborate guises that proved to be the perfect foil for his endless creativity, such as ‘The Thin White Duke’ and Ziggy Stardust.
Nevertheless, not everything that Bowie touched turned to gold. Rather than setting trends, he succumbed to chasing them for a period in the 1990s when he embarked upon an industrial rock era. Overall, it was a challenging decade for Bowie as he was deemed out of favour in an ever-changing music landscape. However, his mercurial abilities would boomerang Bowie back into the limelight and be revered as an icon.
Even though he was viewed as a musical giant, Bowie didn’t rest on his laurels or settle into his comfort zone. He kept his ear close to the ground and retained the same lust for newfound musical discoveries as he held as a teenager when beginning his artistic journey. Naturally, Bowie was intrigued by others who also took risks and challenged themselves artistically.
After Bowie retired from touring in 2004, his public appearances became far less frequent, and he rarely aired his opinions on any subject matter. However, before going off-grid, Bowie gave an illuminating interview to Rolling Stone in 2003, which included him praising a selection of his favourite contemporary musicians: “Beck is tremendous, the chances he takes. And I feel that when [Trent] Reznor produces his next piece, it will be really magnificent. The Dandy Warhols — they’ve got to be the funniest band around. Courtney [Taylor] has me in a fit from the moment he opens his mouth. When he walks into the room, I just want to put my beads on, you know?”
Another group that Bowie held on a pedestal was Radiohead. Similarly to him, they achieved commercial success strictly on their own terms and refused to bow down to the machine’s demands or make music to appease the masses. They subverted expectations at every opportunity, making records such as Kid A and In Rainbows, signifying different stages of their evolution.
As much as Bowie enjoyed their records, it wasn’t until Bowie watched them perform live in New York that he truly grasped the full scope of their genius. He reflected: “This year, I saw Radiohead at the Beacon Theatre [in New York]. I had a shrewd suspicion that they were the best band around, and that convinced me.”
While their sounds differed, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke was moulded artistically by his love of Bowie. At the 2009 Grammy Awards, he explained the vast life-changing impact of stumbling across Bowie’s ‘Ashes To Ashes’, recalling, “I remember sitting on a climbing frame on a local play park after I’d just seen the video for ‘Ashes To Ashes’ by David Bowie, and it was the craziest thing that I’d ever seen. All the other kids were saying it was too weird, and I just thought, ‘I want to do that for a living’.”
Discovering Bowie’s work was a lightbulb moment in Yorke’s head at a formative age, setting him on the path to musical greatness. Admiring Bowie’s unique road to glory on his own terms showed Yorke there was no right or wrong way of going about his business and made him firmly believe that originality mattered most above all else.
