David Bowie's albums are non events, though given the aura he insists on, they're halfheartedly presented as such: time and again, ideas are run up the flagpole, but try and find the flagpole. What's Bowie's point of reference. Is it just that he succeeded in replacing Marvin Gaye as rock's Peter O'Toole?. Is he man of mystery, or mystery-man manque?
he boarded the rocket ship to glory, was followed by the more glamorous but much narrower
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. On
Hunky Dory, Bowie presented himself as a pure aesthete: smart, witty, sexually ambiguous, narcissistic and (with the chilling "Bewlay Brothers") ultimately resigned to the acute oblivion of the demimonde. On
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Bowie turned savior. He wrapped himself in the mantle of a Seventies Elvis, spun fantasies of doom and redemption, and set forth on his first American tour to reach out to the huddled pop masses. I'll never forget a night at Winterland, a San Francisco hall that holds a good 5000, when a lonely 400 of the faithful and the curious huddled in front of the stage — for warmth — as Bowie Ziggy struggled through his act, gamely crying: "You're not alone! Give me your hands! Give me your hands!"
Bowie promised far more than he delivered, but in those thin days, the promises themselves were exciting, and the music was strong enough to make the tension between Bowie's hype and his substance vital. Still, it wasn't long before Bowie's much-vaunted androgyny seemed more than anything an aspect of his compulsion to be all things to all pop people—in sequence, never simultaneously. He became "new" so regularly that his personality virtually ceased to exist. He made fine, nervous hard rock (Aladdin Sane): "retired" like some prematurely world-weary rock Sinatra; cut dark, rather bizarre disco (Young Americans); and appeared with black musicians as a sort of effete Tarzan. You always heard the persona before the music, which may be why Pin Ups, Bowie's terrific celebration of the British Invasion, is at once his most self-effacing and satisfying album. Never dull, but mythic only in his aspirations, Bowie became a bankable star.
At the same time, though—as if in retreat from a pale version of the triumph he'd sought, or perhaps frustrated at having been understood too easily and too well — Bowie was moving toward the pop avant-garde. On the one hand, he used his flair, brains and power to salvage the careers of fading prophets-without-honor: Mott the Hoople ("All the Young Dudes"), Lou Reed ("Walk on the Wild Side") and Iggy Pop (Raw Power, The Idiot, Lust for Life). On the other, he began to take his music away from the crowd, first with the experiments of Station to Station, then with the more
