The Influence of Dame David

David Bowie was the bisexual alien rocker who sold gender exploration to the world. In embracing “otherness” Bowie changed music, art, media and the very nature of fame completely. Steve Paff ord, author of “BowieStyle,” explains why, even as we approach the 5th anniversary of his passing, “Dame David” remains the most relevant, reinvented and revolutionary pop artist of our times.

BY STEVE PAFFORD

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“I’m gay and I always have been. Even when I was David Jones.” Who said that? Less than fi ve years after homosexuality had been decriminalised in the UK, it was David Bowie. Dusty Springfi eld had outed herself a couple of years before, but the man born David Robert Jones in London on January 8, 1947 was the fi rst white male pop star to declare their queerness to the world, over a decade after his hero Little Richard led the way.

Yes, that’s the same Goblin King in “80s kids” classic Labyrinth, sporting tights so tight they revealed the Thin White Duke’s appendage, which was almost as impressive as his entire body of work.

Dame David, as he was aff ectionately known, was encouraged to make the declaration in 1972 by then-wife Angela, herself a voracious swinger, and the mother of David’s son, movie director Duncan Jones.

Confused? So was he. Bowie’s formative years were spent chasing trends. When the ‘Swinging Sixties’ made London the fashion capital of the world, it proved seductive to metrobolist peacocks like David, who was already on intimate terms with his bedroom mirror. He was obsessed by stardom, coolness and style, which, for him, was inextricable from art. First, though, was carving a niche for himself on the music scene, changing his name to avoid confusion with The Monkees’ Davy Jones by delving back to his Wild West fascination, and a hunting knife used by Alamo hero Jim Bowie.

Alas, there was little demand for his self-titled debut in 1967, when hippie psychedelia dominated. Wrong-footed, David returned in the summer of ’69 as a Dylan style folkie, his Bee Geesian rocket man tale Space Oddity giving him his fi rst chart success. In 1971, the Daily Mirror covered his Man Who Sold The World album. Parodying a Pre-Raphaelite painting, Bowie was on a chaise longue draped in blue velvet, wearing a “man’s dress”. Countering the paper’s prurience, he insisted he was “not queer. My sexual life is normal.”

When Ziggy Stardust made his Moonage landing in 1972, his alter-ego worshipped at “the church of Man-Love”, appearing as an alien androgyne decades before Marilyn Manson. While shows became multi-media extravaganzas incorporating mime, theatre, and fi lm. Under 40s

"David Bowie" exhibition in the Martin Gropius-Bau, Berlin-Tiergarten.

Illustration by Sooyaart

Film actress Patricia Neal and Chloe Carter in Hollywood, 1964. Patricia was fi lming at Paramount for Otto Preminger’s In Harm’s Way.

assume theatrical concerts started with MJ or Madonna; in fact, you need to wind the clock back another 15 years or so.

“The creation of Ziggy was,” wrote Angie Bowie “the fi rst emphatic act in a great liberation”. The focal point was the “cockade orange” feather-cut that adorned the iconic cover of Aladdin Sane, which she described as “the most reverberant fashion statement of the ‘70s. He looked wilder; just as fuckable, but more sluttish.”

Bowie’s self-outing was the master-stroke that secured that career. “Best thing I ever said, I suppose,” he conceded. In a world where homosexuality was barely acknowledged, he broke one of the last taboos. “As soon as your article came out,” he told the journalist, “people rang up and said, ‘You know what you’ve gone and done? You’ve just ruined yourself. You told him you were bisexual.’ I said, I know, he asked me! Nobody’s going to be off ended by that; everybody knows that most people are bisexual.”

His arrival broadened the palette for a generation of role-models, paving the way for scores of artists and models to pick up an instrument or a can of hairspray, inspiring everyone from Kate Bush to Kate Moss, Boy George to Lady Gaga, Madonna to Moschino. Marc Almond and Neil Tennant remember the liberating eff ect he had in unlocking their sexuality, while Gay News welcomed that the issue was on the agenda: “Bowie is probably the best rock musician in Britain. One day, he’ll become as popular as he deserves to be. And that’ll give gay rock a potent spokesman.”

His orientation was open to interpretation, though in 1976 he revealed he’d been swinging from an early age: “It didn’t matter who it was with, as long as it was a sexual experience. So, it was some pretty boy in class I took home and neatly fucked on my bed upstairs.”

When Bowie returned in 1983 with a lucrative new record contract, he played it straight to appeal to a wider audience. His blond hetero-conformity was a disappointment to many, but the plan worked. Let’s Dance remains his biggest selling record, while that year’s Serious Moonlight tour broke attendance records the world over.

Come the ‘90s, the now “closet heterosexual” recalled his earlier self: “I’d been bisexual for years but that statement was perceived as a gimmick. I found I wasn’t truly bisexual but in the ’60s anyone with a sense of style seemed to be gay. I wanted to identify with that.”

Bowie could still cosy up to commerciality when he wanted, too, turning to the Pet Shop Boys, for a 1996 hit. With lines like, “Do you like girls or boys?/It’s confusing these days/Bye bye love,” Hallo Spaceboy revisited themes of sexual confusion and topped the charts in Europe. 2013’s The Next Day saw Bowie back at pole position in Britain; a feat repeated in the US with 2016’s Blackstar, a stunning monument to mortality released days before his death.

George Michael told me he considered David to be “the most important rock star after Elvis”. Weighing up his infl uence on music, style, sound, vision, fashion and popular culture who are we to disagree? Madonna certainly doesn’t, acknowledging “Bowie really played with ideas, and iconography and imagery. He’s a brilliant man.”

The queen has spoken. Long live the king.

— STEVE PAFFORD is an English journalist, actor and author of the acclaimed book BowieStyle. Having trained from the fl oor up in UK music titles Q, MOJO and Record Collector, he’s had his work featured in a wide variety of British, American and Australian media including the BBC, CNN, The Independent and the New York Times. Steve divides his time between Australia and the south of France.

David Bowie at Vanity Fair Party for the 6th Annual Tribeca Film Festival, New York State Supreme Courthouse, New York, NY, April 24, 2007

Photo by Everett Collection