Why The Thin White Duke was David Bowie’s most important alter ego
The legend went by many names, with a striking assortment of outfits and hairstyles to match. David Bowie was born David Jones but proved himself worthy of a range of more exotic handles over his five decades of service to global entertainment. Inspired by his half-brother Terry’s schizophrenia diagnosis and encouraged by a long-lived battle with stage fright, Bowie found artistic salvation in alternate personalities.
Ziggy Stardust is often regarded as Bowie’s first fully-fledged alter ego. The omnisexual rock star from the skies debuted as a stage persona in 1972 in conjunction with Bowie’s glam-era masterpiece, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The stellar concept album spins the dramatic tale of the saintly character, with the final song, ‘Rock and Roll Suicide’, presaging Stardust’s ephemeral existence.
The character had been under construction since the mid-1960s, inspired by the British rock ‘n’ roll singer Vince Taylor. During his slow rise to fame, Bowie met Taylor, who had suffered a mental breakdown of late and was convinced he had arrived from the heavens, a cross between a god and an alien.
Ziggy Stardust had barely lasted a year when Bowie retired the alter ego on July 3rd, 1973, during a performance at the Hammersmith Odeon in London. “Of all the shows on the tour, this particular show will remain with us the longest because not only is it the last show of the tour, it’s the last show we’ll ever do,” he famously announced.
In truth, Ziggy Stardust had already been cast into the shadows on April 19th with the arrival of Aladdin Sane. The album introduced the titular character, a more unhinged and solemn character, allegedly an alter ego belonging to Ziggy Stardust himself.
Bowie’s fascination with insanity proved artistically profitable throughout his career, arguably reaching a head in the mid-1970s when a spiralling cocaine addiction presented a case study markedly close to home. This period was highlighted by Bowie’s 1976 album Station to Station and his shady, controversial alter ego, The Thin White Duke.
In the epic title track, ‘Station to Station’, Bowie refers to the character musically for the first time: “The return of the Thin White Duke, throwing darts in lovers’ eyes.” It doesn’t take a literature professor to divine that this character was Bowie’s most rebellious and unprincipled.
As Bowie’s cocaine habit marched forth, his diet collapsed to a paltry platter of red peppers and milk. His figure, which had never been regarded as rotund, became increasingly emaciated and menacing, encased in monochrome pleated suits and topped with a suave slick of bleached hair.
Around this time, Bowie was noted to have made several pro-fascist statements to the press, catalysing controversy surrounding his character clad in Third Reich-chic. This visage was intensified in May 1976 when Bowie was photographed making what appeared to be the Nazi salute while greeting fans from a convertible at London’s Victoria Station.
Bowie duly countered press-driven aspersions, explaining that he had simply intended to wave at his fans at Victoria Station and addressed his pro-fascist statements as part of an act. “I’m Pierrot. I’m Everyman. What I’m doing is theatre and only theatre,” Bowie told the Daily Express in a 1976 interview. “What you see on stage isn’t sinister. It’s pure clown. I’m using myself as a canvas and trying to paint the truth of our time on it. The white face, the baggy pants – they’re Pierrot, the eternal clown putting over the great sadness.”
With our modern obsession with true crime documentaries and war dramas, you may have noticed that humans are hardwired to find entertainment value in the most harrowing of subjects. Consequentially, art and artists that revel in atrocity and controversy often enjoy a mammoth share of public attention and reverence. This was undoubtedly true of Bowie’s run as The Thin White Duke.
Although Bowie formally retired the character in 1976, his aesthetic remained similar over the late ’70s after his move to Europe with Iggy Pop. Here, Bowie would enter his most artistically fertile chapter, known as the Berlin Trilogy. The three albums teemed with German influences, from krautrock-inspired instrumentals to the Berlin Wall love story, ‘Heroes’.
Bowie’s escape from the US to mainland Europe proved a vital decision, allowing him to kick his cocaine habit and restore sanity. “I was out of my mind, totally crazed,” he told Uncut in 1999. “It was a dangerous period for me. I was at the end of my tether physically and emotionally and had serious doubts about my sanity.”
The fascist tongue slips and dubious greetings came to an abrupt halt, but some propound that The Thin White Duke lurked in the background until Lodger, Bowie’s final album of the decade and the concluding entry of the Berlin Trilogy – the shockwaves of this devious and deranged character ostensibly taking a few years to abate.
Bowie’s artistic fascination with Germany, both as the cradle of his most celebrated music and as the historic focal point of the Thin White Duke, may have ruffled a few feathers but ultimately marked the most influential period of his career. During this period, Bowie helped popularise krautrock in the West and, alongside Kraftwerk, gave rise to a generation of musicians dressed in sharp, pleated suits, conveying the steely resilience of German engineering.
Synth-pop acts of the late-’70s and ’80s, including Gary Numan, Eurythmics, Visage, OMD, and The Human League, echoed this aesthetic alongside more direct endorsements of Bowie as a central source of inspiration. On the other hand, the darker side of this chapter in Bowie’s career, namely The Thin White Duke’s ominous presence, inspired an even more durable trend.
Joy Division, who named themselves after the prostitution wings of Nazi concentration camps, and Bauhaus, who named themselves after the historic German art school, are just two of many bands deeply inspired by Bowie’s pro-fascist character. Like Bowie, Ian Curtis was deeply fascinated by the atrocities of the Nazi regime and profusely reflected the horror and depravity in his art.
These two bands were crucial progenitors of the gothic and post-punk eras to come and were by no means alone in their adoration of Bowie’s attachment to the dark and deranged. The impact of such ancestral bands prevails today, with modern alt-rock and punk-derived bands frequently citing The Thin White Duke and his disciples as principal luminaries.
In 1980, Bowie released Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), his final farewell to alter egos. One could argue that The Thin White Duke reared his head one final time in ‘Fashion’, an infectious pop classic that blurred the distinction between oppressive fascism and the unyielding force of fashion.
Elsewhere in the album, ‘Ashes to Ashes’ reprised Major Tom, an early character of Bowie’s, first mentioned in 1969’s ‘Space Oddity’. Although his presence as a fully-fledged alter ego is debated, Major Tom played an essential role in Bowie’s career reflection.
In ‘Ashes to Ashes’, Bowie appraises the seismic developments of the previous decade. Disregarding commercial and critical prosperity, he laments that all these heroes he had created were masking a weary “junkie, strung out on heaven’s high, feeling an all-time low.”
Although Ziggy Stardust remains Bowie’s most iconic persona, credited with some of the Starman’s most adored music, The Thin White Duke presided over a more intriguing and influential period. The glam era’s androgyny may have prevailed through the ages but the brute force of the punk wave soon blew away the glitter. On the other hand, Bowie’s flirtation with darkness and controversy in the late-’70s cultivated his most artistically progressive and inspiring material, a firm shoulder to the first domino of the post-punk and synth eras to come.
