The audience David Bowie never cared for: “I was something I never wanted to be”
No popular artist has been able to master a variety of music genres, yet remain somewhat genreless, quite like David Bowie. Initially rising to fame in the early 1970s with his iconic Ziggy Stardust era, Bowie changed both his sound and image over the years, experimenting with glam rock in his Aladdin Sane era, soul music in Young Americans, and pop in his 1980s releases.
The ’80s were an interesting time for Bowie, as he no longer donned a character within his artistry. Following his Berlin Trilogy of albums in the late ’70s, Bowie entered the following decade sober, with a refreshed outlook on his art. He released Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) in 1980, but it wasn’t until his 1983 release Let’s Dance that Bowie encountered a newfound level of mainstream success. Featuring a number of hit singles, including ‘China Girl’ written with Iggy Pop and ‘Modern Love’, Let’s Dance kept the number one spot on the UK Album Chart for three consecutive weeks, rose to the top of the Billboard 200 and Billboard Hot 100 charts, and is still Bowie’s best-selling album.
Following the release of the album, Bowie embarked on his highly successful Serious Moonlight Tour. His first concert tour in nearly five years, the tour gave Bowie both incredible commercial success and a new wave of fans.
However, following the extensive tour, Bowie found himself with a troublesome period of writer’s block for the remainder of the decade. He released two more albums, Tonight (1984) and Never Let Me Down (1987), and while both were still successful, they never rose to the same level of praise as Let’s Dance. Following the Serious Moonlight Tour, Bowie admitted that following Let’s Dance, he began writing for his new fans, not for himself.
According to the book Bowie On Bowie: Interviews and Encounters With David Bowie, edited by Sean Egan, Bowie said in a 1997 interview that he was not pleased with Tonight or Never Let Me Down. “I was something I never wanted to be,” Bowie said. “I was a well-accepted artist. I had started appealing to people who bought Phil Collins albums.”
These were not jabs at Collins specifically, as Bowie added, “I like Phil Collins as a bloke, believe me, but he’s not on my turntable 24 hours a day…I suddenly didn’t know my audience and, worse, I didn’t care about them.”
In a 1996 interview with Alan Yentob, Bowie spoke on the impact of Let’s Dance and how, although launched into superstardom, Bowie had also entered unfamiliar territory with his newly acquired fan base.
“I was suddenly working with an audience that consisted not only of my older fans, but people who I kind of quickly realised over those couple of years…probably had more Phil Collins albums in their collection than, say, Velvet Underground,” Bowie said.
“The way that you make money is give people what they want, so I started giving people what they wanted,” the ‘Changes’ singer added. “And the downside of that is that I think it just dried me up as an artist completely. Because I wasn’t used to doing that. What I’m used to doing is being very stubborn, obscure, and confrontational in my own indulgent way and enjoying every second of it. And all that had suddenly disappeared.”
Many fans — and Bowie himself — have referred to the ’80s as his worst artistic era. However, the following decade found Bowie perhaps more true to himself than ever. In the 1990s, Bowie released a number of albums, such as Black Tie White Noise (1993) and Outside (1995), that were experimental yet authentic. During these years, Bowie also dropped many of his famous Ziggy Stardust-era songs from his concert setlists, mostly playing songs from his current albums as that was what Bowie wanted to perform.
