The singer John Lennon hailed as “a vast repertoire” of talent
The invisible string theory is the idea that, in some way, somehow, we are already tethered to all the people who will be important to us in our lives.
It’s the idea that an invisible thread already links us to people we haven’t met yet. These are people who, in a year or two, will come to shape our lives in some meaningful way. They might live in different cities or be living entirely separate lives right now. Still, if your paths are meant to cross, they will. I’m not saying David Bowie and John Lennon were soulmates, but there was definitely a connection.
In a way, Bowie and Lennon feel like two artists who exist in whole separate universes, because the London of The Beatles, of the rooftop concert and the angry police and the scandalised Savile Row workers, feels like a different world to the London of David Bowie, where he and Marc Bolan were lounging outside pubs in their glam rock garb.
Sometimes the line between the 1960s and the ’70s can feel a million miles wide when considering different scenes and musical moments, but as one passed the baton to the other, they weren’t really all that different at all.
The one thing that was different was that The Beatles were done. By the start of the new decade, the Fab Four were signing divorce papers and parting ways. In particular, John Lennon was out of there and by 1971, he’d fully migrated to the United States, making a new home in New York City. Amid VISA battles and political action, he stayed there, barely returning to the UK for a few years as he and Yoko Ono set up a life there.
So back home, Lennon was missing the changing of the guards, and the swinging sixties became the ‘70s with all its sequins, heavier guitars, theatrical frontmen, punk rockers, new romantics and beyond. Amongst them, Lennon was missing the crowding of a new leader: David Bowie.
However, as the theory would go, the two men were destined to meet, so meet they did. Despite Bowie being busy launching his career properly as Lennon was reimagining his, the world moved them together in the wildest of ways – at Elizabeth Taylor’s party.
It was 1974 by then, and Bowie had already risen and killed Ziggy Stardust, morphed into Aladdin Sane, barked like a Diamond Dog and was now turning into his American crooner persona. Yet when he heard that John Lennon wanted to meet him, he dissolved into little more than a fan boy.
“He was terrified of meeting John Lennon,” Tony Visconti recalled.
But Lennon knew who he was. Whispers of Bowie had long since crossed the Atlantic, and Lennon admitted to being impressed, stating years down the line, “I was never around when the Ziggy Stardust thing came, because I’d already left England while all that was going on, so I never really knew what he was… I think he’s great.”
After meeting and forming a friendship, though, with that destiny being fulfilled by the writing of ‘Fame’ together, Lennon was a true fan and admirer. Bowie became someone he was blown away by, saying of the singer, “I must say, I admire him for the vast repertoire of talent the guy has, you know.”
