David Bowie is one of the few celebrities whom have cried over uncontrollably upon learning of his death 10 years ago today, on January 10 2016. David Bowie had kept his 18 month fight with liver cancer hidden from the public eye, so his passing came as a total surprise to the general public. Faced with the death of a legend whose music I had loved since I was a child, I did what many did and dissolved in tears.
Indeed, David Bowie has been a part of my life for so long that I cannot remember when or where I first heard of him. I could have possibly heard one of his songs on one of the rock stations out of Columbia, St. Louis, or Kansas City. I know I didn't first encounter him on television. By the time I saw him on Cher in 1975, I was already familiar with David Bowie and his songs. Indeed, I knew of him by the time of his release of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars in mid-1972. Of course, I would see him again on television from time to time. I saw what might be his most famous television appearance when it aired, the Christmas special Bing Crosby's Merrie Olde Christmas, complete with his famous duet with Bing Crosby and the video for "Heroes." He appeared on both Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show. I remember seeing him perform "Space Oddity" on Dick Clark's special Salute to the Seventies in 1979.
As I mentioned earlier, I did hear David Bowie on the radio. It might seem odd to many today, but David Bowie did not burn up the Billboard Hot 100 in the Seventies. "Changes," one of his most famous songs, only reached no. 41 on the chart. "The Jean Genie" and "Rebel Rebel" didn't even do that well. It would only be in the middle of the decade that Mr. Bowie would do well on the Hot 100. "Fame" actually made it to no. 1 on the chart, while "Golden Years" reached no. 10. Of course, as a kid I was barely aware of the Billboard Hot 100 and I wouldn't care how well David Bowie did on the chart if I had been. I simply loved his songs.
Regardless of how I learned of David Bowie, I remained a fan of David Bowie all through my teens and into my twenties. As his acting career bloomed, I saw him in such movies as The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), The Hunger (1983), and Labyrinth (1986). I listened to such albums as Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), Let's Dance, and Tonight. I was a huge fan of his supergroup Tin Machine, which only released two albums.
As to why David Bowie appealed to me as a kid, I have to think it was because he was different from any music artist before or since, particularly during his Ziggy Stardust era. As a kid, I loved science fiction, fantasy, old pulp novels, classic movies, and comic books. The word "neurodivergent" would not be coined for another two decades, but if I had heard it described to me as a lad, I would have known it applied to people like me. It was quite natural then that this music artist who dressed like no one else and performed songs like one else would appeal to me. The plain truth is I had more in common with David Bowie than I would, say, the members of Foreigner or Lynyrd Skynyrd. David Bowie didn't sing about love, sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll like a lot of artists in the Seventies. He sang about a lost astronaut ("Space Oddity"), reinventing oneself ('Changes"), dystopias ("1984"), and so on.
In some ways, it still doesn't seme possible that David Bowie is gone. And I believe I can speak for many when I say that I still miss him. While he left behind a legacy of music that remains unmatched, it hurts that we will never have any new David Bowie songs. I don't think I am alone in saying he was one of the greatest music artists of all time.
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