I was always a little behind the curve when it came to David Bowie. As a child his androgynous, angular face, with its dilated eye, appearing on Top of the Pops, seemed a door into a dangerous and uncomfortable world- even the Laughing Gnome, presumably more my style at the time, was somehow... creepy. At school there were those who fell very much under his spell, but Christiane F helped to lead some of my fellow pupils down a very dangerous road of hard drug use. The contrast between small town tedium and the dark glamour of West-Berlin was too attractive to some- and Bowie was the Lord of Misrule that opened the door. Yet still to me he remained a distant, almost frightening, figure. His later incarnations- the Pierrot, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, began to provide a consistent and influential background noise to the music I was more interested in- Eurythmics, Alternative 80s music, American singer song writers and much else besides. In the end, almost reluctantly...
Musings on World events from the perspective of a Social and an Economic Liberal.