Image copyright Jimmy King Just a few days before the death of David Bowie’s band released its 28th studio album. During his career, the legendary musician has worked and to make friends with a surprisingly large number of the brightest talents, emphasizes the music critic Chicago Tribune in an article published on January 8, shortly before the death of Bowie.
He has many faces: there was a man selling peace, and a man falling to Earth. Emaciated White Duke, Ziggy Stardust and crazy guy (he is – Aladdin reasonable). And for the album Scary Monsters, he has become a white-faced Pierrot.
Fictional their characters are always in good working order to attract attention, but each of its stage incarnation of different musical depth and created under the influence of creativity many different artists.
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On the last album Blackstar he worked with jazz quartet led by saxophonist Donny McCaslin – over the past few years he became noticeable star of the club scene in New York, where he lived Bowie.
McCaslin Quartet on the album creates a dark musical atmosphere with open interpretations, sometimes forcing completely forget about the roots rocker Bowie.
For the 69- year-old musician, it was a bold step, but such steps he made in his life a lot.
He often borrowed from a relatively little-known musicians made their advertising, and build bridges between distant from each other genres.
Who are these unusual or undervalued masterminds and how David Bowie promoted their music?
begins the story of this need with the legendary Cowboy Stardust (Legendary Stardust Cowboy), Texas pioneer-style psychobilly, whose single-1960s Paralyzed Bowie repeatedly mentioned in the interviews.
It is quite accurately characterized the track as “terrifying cacophony”, but admired the amazing dedication of execution.
Later, he borrowed part of the nickname Cowboy when he created his Ziggy Stardust.
Talented newcomers
During the 1970s, Bowie has used his popularity to inform the world about those who he liked.
He loved the little-known at the time the group Velvet Underground – and recorded a cover of their song I’m Waiting for the Man, and also produced a solo album of Lou Reed’s Transformer, brought to glory.
Then he became friends with the leader of another talented but hapless group – with Iggy Pop of the Stooges, was a producer of his two iconic disc, The Idiot and Lust for Life, and even played keyboards during his tour.
Bowie liked and another young writer of that time – the guy from New Jersey named Bruce Springsteen.
The debut album of Springsteen’s Greetings from Asbury Park turned out to be a commercial failure, but Bowie loved it shaped street songs. In two of them – Growin ‘Up and It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City – he recorded the covers, and even (in the latter case) invited to write very Spiringstina.
However, the general public has heard these tracks only after a few years.
At a time when Bowie was playing he created the style of “plastic soul”, he drew attention to the young singer and author Luther Vandross, with which wrote the album Young Americans.
Vandross was given a prominent role in the vocal arrangements, Bowie, and he received from the master of a lot of valuable lessons.
Once Vandross told me: “During the tour Bowie every night sent me to sing with his group of five of my songs to warm up. Every evening for 45 minutes I listened to the cries of the audience, “Bowie!” I told him: “Listen, man, you’d better just give me poison, if you want my death, but do not send me back again”.
And he said, “I give you a chance to sort out who you are. What are they shouting – does not matter. What matters is what you do “.
A few years later Vandross became a star.
Under the sign of Bowie
In the late 1970s, when Bowie recorded his famous trilogy Berlin albums Low, Heroes and Lodger, he again worked at the intersection of multiple, seemingly unrelated, musical styles – in tandem with his new friend Brian Eno, previously played with the band Roxy Music.
Together with producer Tony Visconti, they merged the style hits Eurodisk (such as I Feel Love Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder), warm German art-rock Kraftwerk and Harmonia and the aggression of punk.
In 1979, Bowie invited avant-garde singer and masters of the performance of Klaus Nomi and Joey Arias to participate in his speech on the air of an American TV show Saturday Night Live, where among the scenery was and toy pink poodle with a TV in the mouth.
Thanks in part to ties with Bowie, Nomi began to be recorded, but this phase of his career did not last long: in 1983 he died.
In the next decade, Bowie recorded with such giants as Mick Jagger, Queen, Nile Rodgers and Bing Crosby.
But background mainstream commercial projects, he continued his creative pursuits. He worked with Moby at a time when to have not yet come to a great success, and introduced the world to the Turkish multi-instrumentalist Erdal Kyzylcha, jazz trumpeter Lester Bowie, heavyweight drum and bass Goldie, guitarist Adrian Belew and Reeves Gabrels.
David Bowie could lead a quiet comfortable life, traveling on a world tour with his big hits times 1970, but his career has always guided primarily musical curiosity. So do not be surprised the next experiment on his latest album Blackstar.
In the early 1990s, during his first and last tour with a collection of greatest hits, Bowie said: “I am confident expose themselves to change. Moving forward where more fun than watching the back – so I love to make a feint ears “.
Read the original of this article is available in English on the website BBC Culture .
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