CENTERSTAGE
“The past is another country,” J.B. Priestly once wrote. In the world of pop music, it’s a statement as true about the immediate past as it is about the far past. And it’s the kiss of death for a stylist like David Bowie, a man who has spent his career cheating passion in the name of style to achieve nothing more than celebrityhood.
CENTERSTAGE
“I DON’T LIRE SPIDERS & SNAKES...”
DAVID BOWIE/SQUEEZE Giants Stadium, E. Rutherford, NJ August 2, 1987
Iman Lababedi
by
“The past is another country,” J.B. Priestly once wrote. In the world of pop music, it’s a statement as true about the immediate past as it is about the far past. And it’s the kiss of death for a stylist like David Bowie, a man who has spent his career cheating passion in the name of style to achieve nothing more than celebrityhood.
The romance between Bowie and I broke up in 1983, with the release of his most commercially successful LP to date, the dire Let’s Dance—an album about pretending to be an AOR/CHR performer. By now, with his latest LP, Never Let Me Down, Bowie’s got the same pretense going, only he isn’t making money with it this time. Maybe he isn’t even pretending anymore. This great style synthesist—who was once as important to the evolution of pop as the Sex Pistols were in their own way—is currently out of style, out of fashion—out of order.