For David Bowie, John Lennon was the ultimate rock star: “The very best”
No matter how hard modern artists try, there is no one that can stand anywhere close to David Bowie.
‘The Starman’ was a one-off in the world of rock and roll, and many of his greatest moments came from when he was using his gift for melody to bring underground genres to the masses even if they weren’t ready for them. Not all of his experiments were exactly successful by any stretch, but he always abided by the same unconventional structures that all of his heroes used to do.
I mean, think about it for a second. This was the same rockstar that worshipped at the altar of people like Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, and did they ever once compromise their vision for the record company? No. They were going to do whatever music they felt best suited their artistic vision, and if that meant turning the stage into a warzone or making a double record of nothing but guitar feedback, that was what they were going to do.
But when Bowie had started, he never forgot to look out for what the melody was doing in his songs. Compared to other songsmiths of his time, his way with harmony was always about finding that one note no one else would have gone to and somehow make it work, and whether that was making ‘All the Young Dudes’ for Mott the Hoople or reinventing himself on records like Scary Monsters and Super Creeps, he was more than willing to take that kind of chance.
When rock had first begun, taking those chances were unheard of by most mainstream artists. Once Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley made it big, it wasn’t that hard to find a handful of tunes that sounded just like their hits throughout the rest of their catalogue. So when The Beatles came out of the woodwork with every single one of their songs sounding different, Bowie was transfixed by what John Lennon was doing.
Although every member was a bit avant-garde in their own way, Lennon’s image as the consummate artist was what always made him so interesting. He didn’t have the most advanced musical vocabulary in the world, but that always came second to his artistic muse when he was making his hits. That might not have made for the greatest track record on the charts, but all Bowie cared about was seeing him take chances.
He got to witness it firsthand when working on ‘Fame’, but Bowie was far more interested in Lennon as a musical person rather than a hired gun, saying, “I just thought that he was the very best of what could be done with rock and roll. I felt such akin to him inasmuch as he was rightfully avant-garde and would look for ideas that were so outside and on the periphery of the mainstream.”
And Lennon wasn’t exactly subtle about his interest in the avant-garde. Any musician would have been scared to go too far outside of their comfort zone for fear of losing their fans, but judging by the fact that Lennon appeared with quite literally everything hanging out on the cover of Two Virgins, he was always looking for an excuse to mess with people a little bit.
Both of them may have been kindred spirits in a certain sense, but don’t expect any of Bowie’s records to have a bit of Lennon’s melodicism in it, either. The number-one rule you could take from Lennon’s work was the importance of being yourself, and if you look at Bowie’s entire career, he took that message to heart by finding a way to never fully repeat himself whenever he made a new record.
