“That pissed me off”: The artist David Bowie thought stole his thunder
Everything David Bowie did always meant being one step ahead of everyone else in the music industry. He started his career very much behind the times trying to be a vaudeville rocker, but as soon as the true version of Bowie fell to Earth on ‘Space Oddity’, everyone realised that they were looking at a strange new talent that was offering something different. No one quite knew how different he could get, but as soon as ‘The Starman’ reached the big time, he had a string of imitators in his wake already.
Granted, the idea of putting on makeup and hamming it up for the crowd was far from Bowie’s invention. Little Richard had been toying with what androgyny could look like on a rock and roll stage, and Screaming Jay Hawkins had made people see the macabre side of what blues could sound like, but Bowie’s approach to everything was slightly more surreal than most of the British exports at the time.
No matter how much people idolised The Beatles at the time, no one was going to hear something as strange as ‘The Width of A Circle’ on a John Lennon track or hear Paul McCartney make a song as twisted as ‘Life on Mars?’. That’s because Bowie was on the verge of an entirely new art form that no one had considered yet: glam rock.
Although the titans of the genre would eventually come out to play when Elton John started making the rounds, Bowie could rightfully be considered the godfather of everything. He was among the first to have the massive teased hair in the ‘Space Oddity’ video, and while Hunky Dory marks the pre-Ziggy Stardust days, it’s easy to see those ideas starting to get fleshed out, like ‘Queen Bitch’ being the strange love child of Little Richard’s flamboyance and Lou Reed’s seediness.
Right before Bowie could reach his pinnacle, though, another kid with a guitar was already gaining on him. Despite starting in the world of folk and blues, Marc Bolan had begun taking that glittery schtick and putting some rock and roll swagger behind it, practically living up to the idea of a rockstar from space around the same time that Bowie was creating people like Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane.
Bowie certainly had his friends amongst the glam rock scene, but even he admitted to feeling a touch bitter when hearing T Rex’s makeover, saying, “It was like treading water all through the ’60s, and when 1970 kicked in, I thought, ‘We’re here. Right. God, this is exciting. I’m going to go for it now.’ I really felt it was my time. Then Marc Bolan did it first. [laughs] That really pissed me off.”
But there was definitely room for more than one king of glam rock around 1972. Bolan was always coming at his music from the angle of an androgynous rockstar, but Bowie preferred his identity to be a bit more elastic. The entire reason why he put characters into his work was to make that side of his life separate from himself in a way, almost approaching his albums the same way an actor might approach inhabiting a different role.
So while Bolan will forever be known for his iconic stance on the front of the album Electric Warrior, Bowie knew he could go in different directions. His thunder may have been stolen a little bit, but if anyone managed to get to a sound before him, that was usually his cue to start from scratch and go in the exact opposite direction.
