Morning Mugs
What a start to the year for those of us of a certain 'vintage' shall we say?
First of all Lemmy died aged 70. Most who liked his music were sad but very few of us were shocked and indeed if we were shocked it was because we were all scratching our heads as to how he'd made 70 years of age before the ravages of a nomadic but fast, furious, drug and drink laced life finally dealt a final blow.
But his death now seems to have been a portent for a death that with all due respect dwarfs that of lemmy in terms of global and personal shock. I refer of course to the death of Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke, The Lodger...Aladdin Sane.....the great, iconic, legendary David Bowie.
Very few celebrity deaths affect me, but over the years the slight sting of each one from my childhood or of my generation gets a little sharper. A reminder of ones own mortality no doubt and the inevitable fate that awaits us all, but no doubt for some us sooner than others. David Bowie was different though because he 'made' me. Almost literally he made me. It's as if he formed me from some dormant materials and set me free to go and become who I am today. No one special of course, not hugely intelligent or gifted and not especially driven. When I first discovered David Bowie I wasn't a troubled child, not lonely, not insular, not a bully, not poor and not stupid or overtly clever. I was average, a young lad into pop music and football. A young lad who hadn't realised anything close to his potential at school. Average. Dull and average and unnoticeable. That was me. David Bowie changed that.
When I was age 13 I
was heavily into two things. Football and glam rock. Things were very
different then. Black and White TVs were the norm, second sets were rare and
those with colour TVs had usually rented them (yes folks renting TVs was quite
popular in the 60s and 70s.). Computers existed only in films, most households
only had one phone and some relied on corner phone boxes with stacks
of 2p coins. There was no internet, no commercial radio, and only 3 TV
channels. Children's TV didn't start until 4:30 or thereabouts and in
fact normal TV didn't run at all during the day and was often over by 11:30pm.
We had no distractions then and because of this music played a much bigger role
in our lives than perhaps it does for youngsters today. It's a fact that before
printing presses and the ability to read was wide-scale across the UK
the art exhibitions and plays were vital in not only entertaining
the masses but in informing them, of educating them and of communicating
with them, sometimes subversively. This is the role that music took in the
young life of Grocerjack. Up until Bowie I had gone from the first single
bought for me, Silence is Golden by The Tremeloes to my second record, Back
Home by the 1970 England World Cup team. Three years between them and
then suddenly I got glam rock. It started with a thumping tune called Little
Willy by The Sweet. It was played over and again at the leaving party for the
departing pupils of Charville Junior school, and we banged
the parquet flooring to its beat with our tassled loafers in our
two-tone tonics and Ben Sherman shirts on that last non-uniform day. I was caught,
hooked into Glam Rock, transistor radio by ear tuned to 208m Medium Wave
straining to hear Radio Luxembourg at night or huddled around a radio in
smokers’ alley next to the secondary school waiting for Johnnie Walker to count
the chart down on 247m Medium Wave Radio One. I loved them all, The Sweet,
Slade, Rubettes, T Rex, Gary Glitter and Alvin Stardust amongst others.
And then one night
Starman by a relative unknown (to me) called David Bowie came on Top of the
Pops. He pointed his finger through the screen singing 'I had to phone someone
so I picked on You-ooh-ooh' and suddenly another act was added to the pantheon
of glam rock stars bringing colour and joy into my life.
A friend of mine
lent me Hunky Dory because I said I quite liked Starman (yes I know its a Ziggy
tune) but when i mentioned this he said 'well you might like this stuff then'.
I took it home, an
album! I'd never had an album before let alone listened to one (aide
from some rather rubbish LPs called Top of the Pops sold in Woolworths
which disappointingly were all cover versions of my top songs by session
musicians).
From the first listen
I was bowled over. These songs weren’t all ‘singalong’ and these lyrics weren't
trivial teenage love type stuff. These lyrics meant something and in some cases
they were indecipherable! Which of course to a normal impressionable young lad
meant I had to try and decipher them. On every listen my mind opened a little
more, the questions increased…what could he mean by ‘Mickey Mouse has grown up
a cow’ or by ‘I’m not a prophet or a tone age man, just a mortal with potential
of a superman’ and even more obscurely ‘he’s Chameleon, comedian Corinthian and
caricature’! I had to look some of these words up in a dictionary!
From then on I was a
Bowie freak doing whatever it took to collect his albums released to date. I
remember being stunned by Space Oddity….both the song and the album. My
Catholicism was already waning (what sort of God DEMANDS worship and on a
Sunday too?) and David Bowie became a replacement for God and consequently
became the source of my musical, literature and artistic cognitive deflowering.
He was the key that unlocked my young mind and led me into my love of music and
literature and then later on an interest in art and philosophy. Without him I
wouldn't have got my degree in my late 40s in 2009 (in Art History &
Philosophy), without him I wouldn't have read 1984, Animal Farm, Catch 22,
Brave New World and countless other contemporary classics. Without him I would
never have discovered Queen, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep
Purple, Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, Kraftwerk and so much more fantastic epic
music. Without him I wouldn't have understood punk and the need for it, or the
New Romantic movement and so much more.
Not only did he
soundtrack my life, he kick-started it by being the catalyst that moved me away
from the ephemeral commercial pop music of the time (which I do like and has
its place) into discovering new levels of enjoyment and mystery in music and
mys surroundings and in turn discovering myself and my own capabilities. He's
like the orb in 2001: A Space Odyssey that triggered the starving vegetarian
apes into becoming something that evolves into us humans. He invoked an
awareness in me that there was more so much more to life and that it wasn't
wrong to use my capabilities to better myself and expand my mind. I feel like
I’ve lost a favourite uncle, the one who would shove a pound note in your hand
and say 'don't tell your Dad'. The one who would always throw some words of
wisdom your way as you grew into the world. I'll always smile when I think of
him and how, back in the heady, dizzy early 70s one young lad discovered his
second lifelong hero (the first was Peter Osgood!) . RIP David, your influence and inspiration on my life was truly colossal.
The Sun Machine is
coming down and we’re gonna have a party yeah yeah!
