It’s almost David Bowie’s birthday, it’s also almost the anniversary of his death. It’s also almost six years ago that Bowie released the wonderful Blackstar, a record that saw him reinvent his sound and artistic persona once again. This time he teamed up with jazz artists like Jason Lindner and Mark Giuliana. He also took inspiration from the likes of Kendrick Lamar and Death Grips. This record would not have sounded as it did without these contributors and inspirations. It’s also typical of how Bowie remade himself and his music time and again: by finding new collaborators. It might be the most personal lesson one can take from Bowie, that the people you commune with define not just what you make but also who you are. Bowie found communion through his artistry, his disruptions of masculinity and stardom, and his desire to try on new technologies. I’ll take you through these three communions and show you what we can learn from Bowie as move through ever faster phases of change.
Disruptor Bowie
Let’s start with how Bowie dealt with his mental wellbeing. Each iteration of the artist David Bowie allowed him to create a narrative that not only helped him sell his music, it also helped him shield his non-artist persona. And Bowie was fiercely protective of this person. In today’s creator economy it seems impossible to be so protective of your personal self. The continuous strain on creating output that others can engage with is immense. The singer-songwriter Chelsea Cutler just made this point as she tried to explain that she’s not a “content creator” but a “musician and performer.” Moreover, she says she doesn’t “know how to keep up with how insatiable our content culture has become.” In feeding the machine, creators don’t build fanbases, but simply vie for attention. I’ve written about a need to flip the funnel and build fanbases from the ground up. Tatiana Cirisano calls for tools that will help creators build fanbases that can become self-perpetuating:
“Creators need specialised tools to help them build fans – not followings – who will stick around in between content releases, as well as ways for fans to engage with the content (and each other) absent the creator.”
And Bowie himself has some fantastic advice on this. In a documentary called Inspirations from 1997 he spoke of the need to:
“never play to the gallery … Always remember that the reason you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that felt that if you could manifest it in some way you would understand more about yourself and how you co-exist in society.”
Throughout Bowie’s artistic reincarnations, he also used his carnal body to disrupt how everyone else not only looked at him, but also how they regulated themselves and society more broadly. Beyond the obvious and direct references to androgyny, Bowie also put forward something else in the way he built his characters. Especially the early ones like Ziggy Stardust, where he definitely challenged standard ideas of sexuality, also included important markers for how music defines space. Again, this can be taken literally: “Major Tom to ground control” or, more completely, the version of Commander Chris Hadfield aboard the International Space Station.
But music also marks territories and provides clues that help give people an understanding of the spaces they occupy. As such, music can empower people to engage with and create spaces. These efforts are never done alone, but always together, with others.
Artist Bowie
When people want to showcase how great the variety of musical collaborators Bowie worked with was they often create a spectrum from Bing Crosby to Freddy Mercury. It is, however, more interesting to see what happened to the artist David Bowie each time he worked with a different artist or set of artists. It’s also important to note that Bowie was more than a singer. He was a producer, a songwriter, a multi-instrumentalist, a painter, an actor, and he arranged music as well as write it. Time and again, Bowie sought fresh incentives to help spur him on to try new things.
So when Bowie worked with Lou Reed or Iggy Pop he not only helped them create astonishingly good music. He also almost absorbed them into his own styles. He seems to have fed off them as much as they did off him. A similar cross-pollination can be found in Berlin when Bowie worked with Brian Eno. Likewise, when Bowie became a stage actor in The Elephant Man, he took all of the tricks he learned from performing characters through his music and implemented them in the theater setting.
Subsequently, he took what he learned from stage acting into the angular 1980s hits like Let’s Dance.
When we hit upon Blackstar, the importance of the other musicians involved cannot be overstated. However, that’s not to say that those musicians did not feel an outsize influence from working with Bowie. I already mentioned Lindner and Guiliana, but together with Donny McCaslin and Tim Lefebvre, they actually already formed a jazz quartet. The strength of bringing in a group of musicians who knew each other inside out helped in the recording sessions and gave Bowie a strong foundation to build on. The chemistry helped form a record that’s as much rock as it is jazz. The songs received a structure befitting Bowie’s pop/rock sensibilities, but showcase a curiosity for particularities that’s inherent in jazz. Bowie learned by creating these types of synergy between himself and his collaborators.
Creative technologist Bowie
One of the big questions swirling around the NFT hype train is whether these token should be classified as securities. Whenever these NFTs involve some kind of ongoing entitlement to royalties or ownership of copyright securities bells start ringing. And yet Bowie was way ahead of the game here. In 1997 he released ‘Bowie Bonds’, which were an asset-backed security. It was also one of the first examples of using intellectual property as such an underlying asset to a bond. Not only were the bonds popular – Bowie sold $55m worth of them – but it also led Bowie’s partner in this venture, David Pullman, to do similar asset-backed securities with James Brown and The Isley Brothers.
Crucially to the current discussions around the vagueness of NFT royalties and contracts, the Bowie Bonds were very specifically defined. They had a limited time of activity – 10 years – and they only related to royalties from wholesale physical releases in the US. There’s value in such specificity, but no guarantees. The bonds Pullman worked out with The Isley Brothers ended in disputes with EMI Records, Michael Bolton because they had wanted to buy the catalogue outright. Another important point was that the intellectual property itself stayed with the creator. Only if the bond would default, would the investor end up with the copyright. Bowie himself thought copyright would be gone by now, which is why he wanted to keep control of how he made money from his IP while he still could.
Besides the financial innovation of securitizing his intellectual property, Bowie also was an early innovator in other spaces. In 1998, for example, he set up Bowienet, an internet service provider that gave users access to unreleased tracks, but also a bit of space (5mb) to create their own websites.
“I wanted to create an environment where not just my fans, but all music fans could be part of a single community where vast archives of music and information could be accessed, views stated and ideas exchanged.”
David Bowie
Every musician or band with a subscription service, such as a Patreon, is basically indebted to Bowienet. The message Bowie posted on the frontpage of Bowienet at launch already showcased the previously mentioned need to create spaces where fans can interact with content and with each other:
“The purpose of BowieNet is interactivity and community – plain and clear – everybody has a voice. We have terrific partners so the services and hopefully your experiences at BowieNet will reflect everyone’s commitment to excellence. So – let’s go – mouse rules, okay!”
Bowie legacy
Overall, David Bowie’s legacy is alive and kicking. More than musically, this legacy also allows artists today to look at how Bowie shaped himself and his environment. He was out there, but never gave himself away. He was open to new technologies and innovation, but only if they worked to his own advantage. Most importantly, however, he only ever move forward by being open to others, by understanding that he co-exists in society, and by finding ways to let inspiration be a two-way street.