21 hours ago
11
There’s a theory that the world spun off its axis with the passing of David Bowie, 10 days into January 2016. It was also two days after his final, death-infused album Blackstar appeared from nowhere. As an artistic statement it was prophetic and impeccably theatrical. A feature-length documentary now shines a black light on that album’s recording, which some call Bowie’s creative resurrection. What does it reveal? And do we want to revisit that place, emotionally?
Thankfully, Bowie: The Final Act (Saturday 3 January, 10pm, Channel 4) does not live solely in the catacombs. It begins at the zenith of Bowie’s pop fame: the 1983 Serious Moonlight tour, where the Thin White Duke turned American soul hero. This MTV-approved, Pepsi advert-inducing stardom was the onset of a career-stalling ennui, Bowie’s artistic voice drying out under the bright lights he sought. It then ricochets back to the start of his musical journey, pinballing us through its highlights. With a mythology this seismic it would be a crime not to. David Bowie invented serving looks, you know. They just happened to come from another planet.
The contributors are decent. They include members of Bowie’s bands, friends, producers Tony Visconti and Goldie, and novelist Hanif Kureishi. The latter remembers – without rancour – the way Bowie would form intense friendships with interesting people such as him, soaking up all he needed, before dropping them and moving on. It’s an important reminder that creative geniuses tend to leave plenty of personal debris in their wake. Moby also makes an appearance, with a neck tattoo that reads Vegan for Life. That’s not relevant, but it is distracting.
The film’s unusual theme is the minor notes of a stellar career. The poorly received albums, crises of confidence. In one difficult scene, Melody Maker writer Jon Wilde reads out a scabrous review he wrote of Tin Machine II, which ends with the words: “Sit down man: you’re a fucking disgrace.” Bowie reportedly cried when he read it. As someone who made their start in snarky music criticism, I felt ants under my skin while watching.
Bowie’s less successful ventures have been mostly reassessed. Tin Machine, his attempt to be a side player in a conventional rock outfit, still gets a kicking. “A really bad band, with a really bad name,” is editor Dylan Jones’s assessment. “Vulcan pimp suits” is how band leader Reeves Gabrels describes their actual outfits – collarless, colour-block two pieces. There’s fascination here, too: why would an otherworldly rock god, an androgyne who could no more blend into a crowd than a flamingo in a fur coat, desire to merely be “some bloke in a band?” Genius is lonely is the implication.
Flashes of supernovae, black holes and black stars recur throughout the film, a leitmotif of mortality. It’s hard to watch footage of Bowie walking off stage in Prague in pain, as his illness asserted itself. He left the limelight for 10 years, enjoying family life while he could. After going through chemotherapy, he recorded his loneliest, most vulnerable album in full knowledge of what was coming. There’s dignity and courage to songwriters who can do this. I think of Warren Zevon, Leonard Cohen. It is their final gift, whether or not we’re ready to receive it.
Director Jonathan Stiasny’s film is no hagiography, yet it’s apparent he loves the Bowie myth as much as anyone. Thank God. There’s rapture in those images of Ziggy Stardust, that immortal face under all the reinventions, the hair that stayed perfect. There’s nostalgic bliss in the stories of Bowie’s playgrounds – 60s London, 70s New York. There’s black-and-white footage of an acid-drenched Glastonbury, when the festival’s audience was naked hippies who wandered in. Bowie walked to his first performance there, and ended up playing at 5am.
There’s also the incredible clip of Bowie’s 1999 Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman, where he predicted the internet-mediated, chaotic world we live in today. I find myself wondering what he would have made of AI. I find myself missing him, and what he stood for. A beacon for misfits, a champion of creativity without horizons or fear. He was iconic and otherworldly. But in the end the art, and the man, were heartbreakingly human.
