Artwork by Sophie Kipner
I was scheduled to meet Bowie at a hotel in Hollywood and, as I was about to drive over for the interview, I received a call informing me that Bowie and Peter Frampton had had a quarrel. Bowie had stormed out and the interview was canceled but would soon be rescheduled. Sadly, it never was. I never did get another opportunity and that’s always been a regret. He’s now gone.
Bowie was and remains the most fascinating figure in rock. In the 70’s he surfaced as the face and champion of the weird, the strange, and the disenfranchised. Those who felt alone and disconnected now had a voice. In his song “Rock and Roll Suicide” he not only made being an outsider okay, he presented himself as a type of deliverer and protector. As the lyrics say: “Let’s turn on and be not alone. Gimme your hands cause you’re wonderful.”
Bowie not only gave fans permission to be different, but also to change. No entertainer transformed and reinvented himself like Bowie. He went from the leader of Davey Jones and the Lower Third, to Ziggy Stardust, Major Tom, the Thin White Duke, and the unsettling Lazarus, with various other incarnations along the way. Each of Bowie’s characters embodied a different persona and each had its own music.
Meeting Warhol, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed and Marc Bolan all greatly influenced him. Working early on with Mick Ronson and producer Tony Visconti helped him develop an assured direction. But it was Bowie himself which was the spark, the drive and the creator.
Perhaps no other performer understood how to transform PR and marketing into art forms. As Warhol had done in the world of fine art, Bowie seamlessly melded his art and marketing until the two were all but undistinguishable. But it was never done at the expense of his art.
Bowie gave artists permission to not only be themselves but to transform themselves. That is a gift indeed.
Copyright © PR FOR ARTISTS / Anthony Mora 2016