David Bowie is 60 tomorrow, and despite his newfound business acumen, the music still comes first for one of rock's great innovators, writes Tony Clayton-Lea
What must it be like being a rock star at the age of 60? And not just any old rock star, but David Bowie - the former bisexual Martian rock icon Ziggy Stardust, the one-time death-warmed-up Thin White Duke, the erstwhile Man Who Fell to Earth, the guy who changed the face of modern rock and pop by changing his own character more times than he probably cares to recall. The man who, in the context of contemporary rock music, invented reinvention.
The sense that Bowie was being anyone except himself was obvious during his recognised golden period of the 1970s. Throughout that decade, his output and his drug intake was prodigious. The "white diet" period in the mid-1970s, when Bowie was skeletally thin and broadly paranoic, partly due to his ingestion of dairy products and cocaine, may have brought him perilously close to physical and mental breakdown, but it also produced some of the finest albums in rock history: Hunky Dory(1971), The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars(1972), Aladdin Sane(1973), Diamond Dogs(1974), Young Americans(1975) Station to Station(1976), Low(1977), Heroes(1977), Scary Monsters and Super Creeps(1980).
Such a wealth of quality material, however, saw Bowie hung by his own petard, particularly in the 1980s, the decade that saw him cross over into the mainstream with Let's Dance(1983) and stay there courtesy of two of the worst and most ordinary albums of his career, Tonight(1984) and Never Let Me Down(1987).
He entered the 1990s a different man, tired of second-guessing his audience and concerned that his global success on the back of Let's Dancewould turn him into the type of much-loved rock star who would appeal to people who had never heard of Iggy Pop or Cluster.
Bowie was also approaching his mid-40s, unsure of himself as a creative person, unsure of whether the very idea of rock music made by and for middle-aged people was a good idea.
The 1990s was a crucial decade for him in a personal sense, also: he got married again - to supermodel Iman, with whom he now has two children - and in doing so, found something to hang his id on.
His saving grace in a creative sense was doing something that very few of his middle-aged peers admitted to: he continued to listen to new music and to borrow here and there (as he had always done) while adding his own rather unique twists and turns.
Some of the results (such as his early 1990s Tin Machine band and albums, and 1993's Black Tie White Noise, his first solo album in six years) were as much anti-climactic as a conscious attempt to drag a sense of identity back into his life.
He fared much better with 1994's The Buddha of Suburbia, when a brief to write incidental music for the BBC's dramatisation of Hanif Kureishi's novel produced a bona-fide very good album that inexplicably sank without trace, and 1995's 1. Outside, a concept album that divided critics and fans alike yet realigned him with left-field pop-star territory. That album and the follow-up, 1997's Earthling, positioned him, at the age of 50, yet again as a rock star not just willing but wholly eager to use creative instincts instead of commercial nous.
AROUND THIS TIME, Bowie, years ahead of the posse, developed a passion for the use of the internet as a means of directly linking the artist and the audience. Through the then novel ideas of a pay-per-view website (Bowienet), an online bank (BowieBanc), an online showcase for his and other people's art (Bowieart), and the initiation in 1997 of the Bowie Bond (a scheme whereby, with the entrepreneurial assistance of Wall Street financier David Pullman, he raised $55 million against future royalties), he showed foresight and innovation, salvaging his reputation as a cutting-edge (and commercially minded) artist embracing change.
Yet despite his advancing years and his belated pension-plan business acumen, it is still about the music. Bowie's last three albums (1999's hours . . ., 2002's Heathenand 2003's Reality, the latter two on his own ISO label, licensed through Sony) have showcased a gentler, more personal and warmer musical/lyrical approach, allied to some terrific songs that would, with ease, grace any updated Greatest Hits package.
Now fully recuperated from a heart scare that interrupted his 2004 world tour, this year sees Bowie release a new album. It will, inevitably, take him out of his adopted home town of New York, where he lives quietly with his family, content to walk around with neither bodyguards nor entourage as a protective buffering between rock god and fans.
His work will be honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the forthcoming Grammys, but whether this will cut any real ice with the birthday boy is debatable.
Bowie remains an iconic rock star, a figure whose previous guises effectively invented their own musical genres. Whether he appeals to the younger record-buying/downloading market is a moot point, but there has been such a swing towards the old-bloke brigade (Dylan, Reed, Cohen, Young, Cash) over the past five years that you'd be a foolish person to bet against it.
In point of fact, you'd be a silly person to bet on anything Bowie may or may not do. He might be 60, but he's still unpredictable.
• David Bowie's albums Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, T he Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Aladdin Saneand Pin Upsare now on release in a 'mini vinyl' CD format through EMI. Diamond Dogs, Young Americans, Station to Station, Low, Heroes and Lodgerwill be released in the same format on Feb 2
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes The phases of Bowie
1) Frock tactics (1971):
Bowie declares he is bisexual, and wears a dress and stockings on the cover of The Man Who Sold The World.
2) Loving the alien (1972):
Bowie retrospectively invents the sexually ambiguous rock star, Ziggy Stardust.
3) A lad insane (1973):
Bowie travels to New York on the QE2 with an entourage of 42: insatiable sexual appetite, bodyguards as groupie-gatherers, paranoia a go-go.
4) Thin White Duke (1975-76):
White funk, white heat and Bowie's now infamous Los Angeles/Berlin "white diet" (milk, cheese and cocaine).
5) Mainstream man (1995 onwards):
Internet innovator, happily married man, new fatherhood, entrepreneur, artistic rehabilitation.
Top 10 Bowie songs . . . and five albums
SONGS
1) The Jean Genie (from Aladdin Sane, 1973):A punning tribute to gay bohemian writer Jean Genet as well as a nod to Bowie's friend, Iggy Pop, and primary musical influence Muddy Waters. And ain't that guitar riff just fab?
2) Kooks (Hunky Dory, 1971):One of Bowie's rarely obvious personal songs, with a lyric to his son to stick around with his weird parents - "Soon you'll grow, so take a chance with a couple of kooks hung up on romancing."
3) Lady Grinning Soul (Aladdin Sane, 1973):Allegedly written for American soul singer Claudia Lennear (also the subject of the Rolling Stones' Brown Sugar); features sublime piano runs from Mike Garson and some of Bowie's most spectral lyrics.
4) Word on a Wing (Station to Station, 1976):Bowie at his most sepulchral and downright beautiful, as much a love song as an affirmation of his belief in God following a cocaine binge.
5) Rebel Rebel (Diamond Dogs, 1974):A riff to equal any from the Rolling Stones canon and lyrics that sent out a message to worried parents everywhere: "You've torn your dress, your face is a mess. How could they know? Hot tramp, I love you so."
6) Ziggy Stardust (The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, 1972):The arrival of the self-styled "leper messiah" and quite likely the best rock music alter-ego ever invented. Inspired by, among others, Jimi Hendrix, Iggy Pop and Marc Bolan.
7) Warszawa (Low, 1977):A brooding instrumental that mixed German proto-electronica, Bulgarian diaphonic chant and Bowie's very own lucid sense of experimentation.
8) Ashes to Ashes (Scary Monsters and Super Creeps, 1980):An updating of his own Space Oddity, a killer video and a revelatory item of re-evaluation. Result? Bowie wrests back the crown of left-field pop from too many pretenders to mention.
9) Heroes (Heroes, 1977):An impassioned, dramatic and drone-like Bowie landmark inspired by Velvet Underground's Waiting for the Man.
10) Rock'n'Roll Suicide (The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, 1972):Or say goodbye to Ziggy. Bowie lays on the drama in one of his most perfectly realised songs as he consigns his invention to the glam dustbin.
ALBUMS
1) Hunky Dory:Lyrically ambiguous for the most part, yet an album recognised as being Bowie's first genuine masterpiece. Esoteric, tormented, gentle and candid.
2 ) The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars:A concept album after the fact, but nevertheless one that quickly mutated into the most coherent of the era.
3) Diamond Dogs:Influenced mostly by William Burroughs's novel, The Wild Boys (and to a lesser extent George Orwell's 1984), this was, again, an incredibly influential record for the punk/post-punk generation.
4) Station to Station:The outcome of an extremely unhappy period, this album blends paranoia with calm, charisma and sweet funk. Bowie has said that he hardly remembers recording it.
5) Low:Influenced by Brian Eno, Can, Faust, Kraftwerk and Neu, this sonically radical and structurally unique take on German electronic music and ambient pop is the Bowie album to say you like the best if you want to come across as an aficionado.