David Bowie and why we love working-class pop stars |
The only time I ever saw David Bowie live was at a ropey festival in an old airfield near Stratford-upon-Avon in the latter half of the 1990s. Frankly, I thought he was pretty awful.
It was the peak of Britpop, electronica and trip hop were in the ascendency and the campsite and smaller stages that weekend were fervent with fast beats, French crops and chemical ingestion. Bowie, to my late-teenage eyes and ears, seemed like an embarrassing dad, attempting to remain ‘with it’ via his recent drum and bass-infused song ‘Little Wonder’. I sloped off before the end to go and watch Goldie instead.
I’ve listened to much more Bowie since then, and although I maintain that at least 50 per cent of his vast output is distinctly average, the best bits are transcendent. Quite how something as avant-garde and glacial as ‘Low’ ever became a chart smash continues to astonish me. Clearly, people took more risks with their musical purchases in 1977 than now.
Then I moved on to the street Bowie was born on. For the first and only time, my position in life was above David’s: I lived at no. 1 Stansfield Road in Brixton. David Jones (you can see why the name change was needed) was born at no. 40 and he lived there for the first six years of........