Performance, Androgyny, Orgasm, Death

David Bowie is perhaps most well known for his ability to genre-hop, but to me what is actually most interesting about him is his discernible, but not entirely explicable, continuity. Like Dylan, people constantly try to peg him as this, that, or neither, but in reality, he's an entertainer, and any other insights into who lurks behind the curtain are doomed to fabrication (as is your own life). This does not, however, nullify or erase the fact that these men are devastatingly insightful, both possessing a terrific grasp of irony as well as a grand capacity for manipulation (albeit benign enough).

The following clip is from the 1973 D.A. Pennebaker documentary Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars. Essentially a very straightforward concert video (as straightforward as the final show on one of the most legendary tours ever can be), Ziggy is a nice counterpoint to Dont Look Back, which shows a rambunctious Dylan alternately reveling in and tiring of being under the lens constantly. Bowie, on the other hand, very calmly sits smoking backstage as his make-up artist meticulously puts on his face. Just about the only quip we get from a placid and focused Bowie is a sharp "You're just a girl, what do you know about make-up," directed at someone named Angie who very briefly appears backstage. Indeed, there is a chanteuse-like calm and gravity to Bowie (the '70s?) in this film that contrasts well with the wit, anxiety, and "boyish impetuosity" (what movie!?) we see Dylan (the '60s?) constantly exuding in Dont Look Back mostly off- and backstage.

Other expository points:

• Both men look great with a cigarette.
• Bowie wrote a song about Dylan in 1971. Dylan never reciprocated (unless "Ballad Of A Thin Man" somehow proves that Dylan is as sagacious [and bitter] as he sometimes seems).
• Dylan's given name was Robert Allen Zimmerman. Bowie's given name was David Robert Jones. Both men (obviously) changed their last names, however Bowie didn't change his until 1966, one year before his first record was to be released on Decca, the reason being he did not want to be mixed up with the Monkee.
  

SO, this clip is of Bowie performing an English version of Jacques Brel's "La Mort," or as Bowie re-named it, "My Death." Bowie was fond of covering the songs of his peers (1973's raucous Pin-Ups is all covers), but the only one that charted was his jaunty version of the Jagger/Richards song, "Let's Spend The Night Together," which appears on Aladdin Sane (released the same fucking year). THIS cover, however, I think is his most captivating, not simply as a song or cover, but as a performance. And considering the fact that he subsequently announces that night, to the surprise of his band, that it would be the last show they would ever play, it takes on new meaning.



Final point: Performers always like to leave certain lyrics to the audience. Not only does it bring performer and audience together, but it strokes the performer's ego like a lubricated fist or finger. That being said, I think both realities are intensified here at the close of the song, when the audience claims to be that bitch in front of the door behind which lies his death. Just saying.