There’s a star man waiting in the sky, and his name is David Bowie. Born in Brixton on 8 January 1947 – he would have been 72 today – this irreplaceable figure in British rock made an everlasting mark on music, fashion, culture, and beyond by swapping and shifting personas, taking us to the outer limits of our imaginations in the process. Embodying a diverse cast of characters from Ziggy Stardust to the Thin White Duke, Aladdin Sane to The Goblin King, Bowie remains an icon for all of us who have dreamed of something more than the humdrum reality of our day-to-day lives — he ponders the existence of life on Mars, encouraging us to dance, to be rebels, to be heroes. It seems only right then to chart what we can learn from this magnificent shapeshifter on what would have been his birthday. Here are ten lessons to learn from the man who fell to earth…
1. It’s ok not to have a plan
At his fiftieth birthday concert in New York’s Maddison Square Gardens, with guests including Pixies front man Frank Black, The Cure’s Robert Smith and Lou Reed, Bowie delivered one of his most insightful and memorable quotes of all time: “I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring”. It’s a statement that has since become shorthand for the values espoused by Bowie in this lifetime, reassuring anyone who hasn’t taken a clear path whatever age they may be. After all, if THE David Bowie didn’t have a life plan sorted by the time he turned fifty, how are we mere mortals meant to?
2. Don’t take yourself too seriously
Whilst Bowie could’ve let fame go to his head and make him “too cool to fool”, he instead maintained a humble sense of humour throughout his career. Just take his tongue-in-cheek cameo as the “walk-off judge” in Zoolander (2001) as a prime example, or his turn as the glam-rock leader of Atlantis in SpongeBob’s Atlantis SquarePantis in 2007. That’s definitely not the sign of an artist taking themselves too seriously.
3. When in doubt move to Berlin
We all know now that the German capital is a pretty amazing place to live, but Bowie proved that it’s also one of the best places to be in order to enhance your creative productivity. Moving to the West Berlin district of Schöneberg in 1976, and living in a Hauptstraße flat with Iggy Pop, Bowie proceeded to have a burst of artistic energy experimenting with electronic, krautrock, ambient and world music in collaboration with producer Tony Visconti and musician Brian Eno. The result was a 3-part series of albums called The Berlin Triptych — the second instalment of which is one of his most famous albums, Heroes, which even includes a track named after the now uber-trendy Berlin neighbourhood, Neuköln. Thanks to Bowie, Berlin remains an artist’s getaway today.
4. Sexuality isn’t straightforward
Coinciding with the release of his fifth studio album, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars in 1972, Bowie came out as bisexual to Melody Maker magazine. And although he flamboyantly embraced queer culture, he later told Rolling Stone that he had always been “a closet heterosexual” and that “coming out was the biggest mistake [he] made”. But we don’t think it was a mistake, as by retracting his original declaration, Bowie showed us that when it comes to your orientation it’s OK to explore your options and to change your mind as often as you like.
5. Fame isn’t everything
Whilst many of us may dream of being a rich and famous rockstar, Bowie tells us that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. The most obvious example of this is his 1975 track Fame, which directly warns us that “fame makes a man take things over… makes him loose, hard to swallow.” For Bowie, making and creating and reinventing always came ahead of the glittering successes of stardom.
6. Dancing is the answer to everything
If you’re feeling down all you’ve got to do is “put on your red shoes and dance the blues”.
7. The grownups don’t have all the answers
Just as it was in the ’70s, the world today is going through a lot of “ch-ch-ch-changes”, not least for young people and burned-out millennials. What with the social upheaval of Brexit going against many young people’s wishes, and ever rising university fees in Bowie’s native Britain, his lyric, “And these children that you spit on, as they try to change their worlds, are immune to your consultations, they’re quite aware of what they’re goin’ through” feels just as relevant today as it did when it was first heard on the radio waves in 1971. And we’re pretty sure with the erratic nature of contemporary politics, in a few years his lyric, “Where’s your, shame?/ You’ve left us up to our necks in it” will be pretty applicable too.
8. Liking and loving isn’t the same thing
You may think like and love are very similar emotions, but in his 1973 track Drive-in Saturday, Bowie informed us that this couldn’t be further from the truth. “She’s uncertain she really likes him, but she knows she really loves him,” he sang, giving support to the age-old trope that love begins with hate.
9. Don’t conform to fashion
Whilst Bowie may now be considered a fashion trailblazer, he got there by wearing whatever he wanted, through kaleidoscopic experimentation, ditching trends and most notably, transcending the boundaries of gendered clothing. Considering that non-binary fashion is a pretty hot topic right now — with brands such as Art School gaining attention for their gender nonconforming collection at this year’s London Fashion Week Men’s, it just goes to show that Bowie was pretty ahead of his time when he embraced an androgynous aesthetic.
10. Constantly evolve
If there’s an artist who’s synonymous with continuously reinventing themselves, it’s Bowie. Starting off as a lycra-clad, lightning-bolt-stamped alien creature and finishing as a doomed blind prophet, with stints as a sharp dressed Duke and a Goblin King in-between, Bowie was a master chameleon who constantly metamorphosed into different alter-egos. But as well as altering his appearance, he also experimented with a wide range of musical styles, including glam rock, blues, soul, funk, pop, psychedelia, music hall, folk, post modernism, minimalism, ambient, krautrock, jungle… we could go on. There’s no one quite like him,