The one character David Bowie never wanted to play again: “It’s extremely difficult”
David Bowie was never content staying in one place for too long.
His entire career was based on changing his musical costumes every time he went into the studio, and while there are distinct periods where things sound similar, it only takes a few more albums down the timeline to hear what sounds like a completely different artist. Nothing that he did was set in stone, but ‘The Starman’ admitted that there were a few characters that he felt comfortable retiring for good after too many years.
Then again, having characters be a big part of his music is what helped him make those creative detours. The Beatles had already begun Sgt Pepper by writing songs for a fictional band, but with people like Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane leading the charge half the time, Bowie was free to play up his theatrical angle as much as possible, whether that was stretching his voice on ‘Rock and Roll Suicide’ or bringing some of that American grit into his sound on ‘Cracked Actor’.
Not all of the characters had to necessarily have names, either. ‘The Thin White Duke’ may have been one of the last sinister roles that Bowie ever played, but whether it’s the pop star Bowie, the Berlin Bowie, or the strange drum and bass version of him in the 1990s, you could always hear a little bit of the glam rock superstar who helped get the ball rolling.
Even though Bowie seemed to arrive fully formed on albums like Hunky Dory, that only came from him woodshedding for years. There was no reason for him to be crooning the folksy ballads that he started with back in the late 1960s, and the minute that everyone heard ‘Space Oddity’, they were introduced to Major Tom as he went off the grid to voyage into unknown territory.
The tune was almost a novelty record considering how soon it was released after the moon landing, but Major Tom would always be lingering around in the background of his work. ‘Ashes to Ashes’ from Scary Monsters and Super Creeps sees Bowie checking in on Tom after he became a junkie, but by the time he reached the late 1980s, he seemed to completely wash his hands of his first creation.
Bowie was already willing to rid himself of his greatest hits on a tour, but he felt that Major Tom needed to be put to bed permanently at the time, saying, “It’s extremely difficult to even conceive of performing things like ‘Major Tom’ with any sense of integrity. It’s too worn for me, it’s not what I want to do. It’s very selfish, but it’s what I have to do to maintain momentum as an artist. I have to put myself in rather adventurous or hazardous situations, me personally.”
He was still at a point in his career where he could get outlandish like on Outside and Earthling, but it’s hard not to think of ‘Space Oddity’ as Bowie’s theme song in a way. Major Tom launched him to superstardom after losing touch with reality and voyaging into the unknown, and looking at the wealth of music he’s made over the years, Bowie seemed to do the exact same thing whenever he made a new record.
And given the skeleton in a spacesuit that turned up in the promotional material for his final album, Blackstar, Bowie seemed to at least have a little bit of affection for the persona that helped build his musical universe. Major Tom was born to take his audience through the musical cosmos, and wherever Bowie is now, he probably still has a piece of that wayward astronaut floating around inside him.
