I have great respect for him, but fans floor me. Last night I saw a report from London with girls crying and saying "the light has gone out of the world." Some folks need to get a grip on reality.
I tentatively agree. I think such a public outpouring has only been a think since the death of Diana. It almost seems more important to be seen to be mourning Bowie than to actually be mourning him. The news footage I saw showed a fair number of people hanging around looking like they didn't quite know what to be doing or why they were there. I imagine Facebook feeds in trendy parts of London were aglow with invites to (free!) public mourning events.
I find this all odd, simply, because Bowie was the master of obfuscation, theatrics and somehow drawing attention simultaneously towards and away from himself. He made some crazily good music, but it was usually whilst channeling somebody or something else; be it gonzo rock, industrial music, plastic soul or obscure Japanese theatre. Whilst I love his music, and I greatly admire his ability to perpetually reinvent himself, I'm not sure I ever detect a lot of core personality in his music. I've listened to a lot of his music but I'm really not sure I know the guy, from his music, very well at all. I think for me to have felt any closer to him I would have had to have done a
lot of work to cover that ground. Case in point; his hierarchical pay grading of the Spiders from Mars band totally demonstrates that he wasn't Davey Jones, one of the lads in the band, but David Bowie, the theatrical creation who let his pit orchestra come up onstage.
Being something of a Pink Floyd fan, I see a similar level of fandom around Syd Barrett. The guy recorded 1 and 1/2 Pink Floyd albums, a couple of solo efforts and was a virtual recluse from the early '70s on. Yet there are those (especially women) fans that insist they had a special bond with the guy,
got him on a deeper level than most and see some sort of hidden message/depth/quality in the music that the rest of us simpletons simply miss.
I fear I'm sounding overly negative here, so I will add that Live Santa Monica '72 is one of my personal favorite live albums. In fact I probably favour it over Live at Leeds. Sorry guys!
RIP David Bowie. But also, RIP Mick Ronson and Trevor Bolder.