Free Press writers remember a legend

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/01/2016 (3742 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I’M not on Twitter. I’m not on Facebook. Truth be told, I don’t even own a cellphone. Never have. So you can excuse me for wondering what the hell my 18-year-old son was doing in the kitchen at 7 a.m. Monday, waking up the house with Bowie’s Heroes, a tune he fell in love with a couple of years ago after hearing it featured in the teen flick The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Then I turned on my computer (yes, I own a computer) and there was the news (oh boy). Bowie, dead at 69.

I’ve been a Bowie fan since 1976, the year I marched into my barbershop with a copy of Changesonebowie under my arm and asked Fern Legros, a fellow who’d been cutting my hair since I was 12, to “make me look like this,” showing him the cover. He gave it his best shot. I was still a fan the next year when I picked up Low, the first of the singer’s late-1970s collaborations with Brian Eno. Gotta admit, at the time, me no like. I was 15; back then, England Dan and John Ford Coley spent as much time on my turntable as the Thin White Duke and Low, which was decidedly non-commercial, failed to resonate.

I’m glad I grew to adore it. Because when my son continued calling up Bowie’s greatest hits on his phone Monday morning — Suffragette City, Fame, Under Pressure — I made a point of taking him downstairs where 33 Bowie LPs (and one by Tin Machine) are filed in alphabetical and chronological order, amid another 6,000 rock ‘n’ roll remnants of my youth. “Start here,” I told him, handing him Low, then Heroes, then Lodger. “Then work your way back,” I went on, pulling out The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust. “And these, too — these are unbelievable,” I said, reaching for Station to Station and Hunky Dory.

I saw Bowie once, in Edmonton during the Serious Moonlight tour. Canuck band Rough Trade was slated to open the Winnipeg show and my buddies and I thought it was worth three days on a bus, there and back, to see a bill featuring The Tubes and Peter Gabriel instead. It was.

I remember where I was when Keith Moon died. I remember where I was when John Lennon was killed. And I’ll remember where I was Monday morning, too — listening to my son belting out, “I will be king… and you will be queen” at the top of his lungs, while preparing an omelette.

— David Sanderson

 

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DAVID Bowie introduced me to the idea that a rock concert could be a theatrical spectacle.

The year was 1987, and Bowie brought his Glass Spider Tour to the Winnipeg Stadium. I was 14 and only knew the radio hits, but living in the West End, it was only a short bike ride to Westview Park, a.k.a. Garbage Hill, where hundreds of people had gathered to see and hear the concert four blocks away.

I remember the massive lighting rig and the “tentacles” draped over the stage. The quality of the light show and theme of the concert was something I hadn’t seen before, but because of the previews in the newspaper, I knew there was a story happening onstage, which I couldn’t see, even with binoculars.

My friends and I knew we had witnessed something special, even if we didn’t get the full effect like the people in the stadium did.

I’ve seen countless arena and stadium shows with varying degrees of theatrics and light shows, and have often thought of that Bowie show. (Oddly, the only other time I saw Bowie live was in 2004 when he toured with a stripped-down stage set).

The Glass Spider tour received mixed reviews, but these days it’s regarded as a pioneering event and an inspiration for artists such as Madonna and U2.

Bowie will be remembered as an artistic chameleon, whose music influenced many artists, and we shouldn’t forget the effect of his 1980s stadium tours — those reverberations are still felt today.

 

— Rob Williams