Yesterday, it rained all day. I went to work in the rain. Came home in the rain. Took a nap in the rain and woke up listening to the rain on my roof.
I didn't realize the skies were crying.
Suddenly, my son came in, knowing it was perfectly okay to wake me up for a rainbow. And what a brilliant one it was. Little did I know, it was the most elegant chameleon saying good-bye.
The first song I ever heard by David Bowie was when someone performed "Changes" in a talent show during my Freshman year of High School. I thought 2 things. She's great... how come we didn't know this girl could sing all through middle school? And WHERE DID THIS SONG COME FROM??? Back then you didn't look it up on iTunes, or Google it. I asked her afterwards, and she told me it was David Bowie. I went and got the 45 immediately.
I first heard David Bowie live in concert in 1975. He was touring to promote the "Young Americans" album, which I didn't even own yet. But the songs were getting a lot of airplay, and when a group of kids at school asked if I wanted to go to Madison Square Garden, I had only been there once before, and it was all very exciting. My crush on the way in to NYC became my boyfriend on the way home. I realized there was more to life than "Just and Old Fashioned Love Song*." My parents had let me go into New York City with my friends, I made it home alive, and I grew up a little that night.
My musical horizons were opening. Billy Joel and Beach Boys were giving way to the The Who, Paul McCartney's solo stuff, and I was even re-discovering the Beatles, as people tend to do when they get a really good pair of headphones for the first time.
But then, in 1976, along came David Bowie's Station to Station Album.
When he came back to play at MSG, I was the one who said to my friends that we should buy tickets. My boyfriend was already moving on to the next big thing, which I believe was Peter Frampton at our high school. But we went to the concert. And I was transfixed. Transformed. If you don't know this album, play it (like an album, please, in order).
I understood "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," and "God Only Knows What I'd be Without You." Yes, of course. These made sense to a fifteen year old. But "Wild is the Wind?" WHOA. Love isn't simple. Love is messy. Love is complicated. David Bowie was talking about something I was just on the verge of understanding. (I was, after all, now a sixteen-year-old.)
On the bus ride home, my boyfriend said, "You know, he likes girls AND boys." I did know that, and said something like, "So?" I remember my boyfriend looking at me with a mixture of disgust and incredulity.
Not long after that we were in his car and I found the hand cream of another girl. Even at the tender age of 16 love was messy and complicated.
I went home and played Station to Station with my headphones on. In fact, as the melodramatic teen-aged girl that I was, I repeated this ritual every single day. I still can't hear TVC15 without thinking of Jim** and my newly broken heart.
David Bowie didn't come out in platform shoes during those shows. He didn't wear make-up or an extreme haircut. He had on a stylish suit and sang songs that touched my soul. I remember saying even then to probably no one that he was ahead of his time.
His music has had the power to make me feel: happy, sad, energized, strengthened. With words I understood, but concepts I sometimes had to struggle with. Different genres on a single album. Superior musicianship, and outstanding partnerships. And of course, excellent showmanship. Just three days ago, on his birthday, I watched a special called Storytellers, where David Bowie told the tales behind some of his most popular songs, and some obscure ones as well. It was a delight. As I watched, I wondered, not for the first time in the last year, why he's been so quiet.
The outpouring of love for him on social media is heartwarming. I know I for one will miss him always. And will always consider him my first grown-up love.
Good-bye Starman.
*A classic by 3 Dog Night, and not a bad song. Just wildly over-played at the time. Click here to hear it. Or don't.
**Jim was not his real name.
Click here to get to the New York Times article and obituary.
**Jim was not his real name.
Click here to get to the New York Times article and obituary.
Thank you to Adam Barr, my brother-in-law, for posting this and giving me a real laugh...David Bowie shows his humorous side...
Click here to end with a laugh.
