On Bowie Quotes

“Planet Earth is blue.
Blue blue electric blue, that's the color of my room. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues. I never did anything out of the blue. Now my Blue Jean's blue. See these eyes so green, I could stare for a thousand years. See these eyes so red. Oh you've got green eyes, oh you've got blue eyes, oh you've got gray eyes. I'll give you television, I'll give you eyes of blue. I looked in her eyes, they were blue, but nobody home. The blue light was my baby, and the red light was my mind. See these tears so blue. You wouldn't believe what I've been through. It's been so long. And I think it's gonna be a long, long time. It's all over now, Baby Blue.
And there's nothing I can do.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie: A Loving Meditation on the Icon's Creative Legacy and His Enduring Connection with Fans

“It was just the songs and the trousers,” Bowie said in 2002. “That’s what sold Ziggy. I think the audience filled in everything else.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“Even the Berlin albums are structured on the classic R&B model—fast ones on the A-side, slow ones on the flip side.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“No other rock star presented sex so playfully, as so free of macho resentment, so devoid of power tripping, so inclusive, so pervy, so funny.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“When Television were first playing at CBGB in the early 1970s, he gave them a blurb to use on gig fliers. (“The most original band I’ve seen in New York. They’ve got it.”) It wasn’t that he had unerring taste—how would that ever be the point?—but he had the appetite of a true pop fan. His last album was inspired by Kendrick Lamar, who was born during the Glass Spider tour.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“He’d make you a star, as he did with Lou Reed and Iggy Pop—the first thing he did when he blew up was produce hit records for his obscure idols, at a time when he had his hands full building his own career.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“Glam, as Bowie defined it, was a way of perceiving the world around you, as a first step toward remaking it, so it was key to wear things that had credibility as trash. Any kid could copy the look, and that was the point. Glam was a style of pop devotion, wearing your fandom on your sleeve, dressing yourself up in satin-and-tat scraps that straight types would throw away.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“In 1979, right around the time hip-hop started making noise in New York, Bowie was comparing himself to a DJ, telling his life story by digging in the crates of his record collection: “I am a DJ, I am what I play.” (“DJ,” of course, were also David Jones’s initials.) So it’s understandable that some people would dismiss him as a contrived fraud.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“As he put it at the time, “I’m using myself as a canvas and trying to paint the truth of our time on it. The white face, the baggy pants—they’re Pierrot, the eternal clown putting across the great sadness of 1976.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“The best portrait of Bowie in the 1970s remains the BBC documentary Cracked Actor, where he twitches, sniffles, sings along with Aretha Franklin in the back of his limo, and does his onstage Hamlet-in-shades routine, holding a skull in his hand and jamming his tongue down its throat. Suck, baby, suck. He hit Number 1 in the U.S. with the disco John Lennon collabo “Fame,” which got instantly plundered by James Brown for “Hot (I Need To Be Loved, Loved, Loved)”—making Bowie the rare rock star who could claim James Brown ripped him off.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“Bowie’s mission was bringing these misfits and loners and freaks together. That’s why listening to Bowie sent you back to your drab daylight world with fresh eyes, noticing all the glamour of ordinary people in ordinary places. Transition. Transmission.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“THE TOP TEN: David Bowie and Mick Rock, Moonage Daydream. Universe, 2002. David Buckley, Strange Fascination. Virgin, 1999. Kevin Cann, David Bowie: A Chronology. Simon & Schuster, 1984. Kevin Cann, Any Day Now: The London Years, 1947–1974. Adelita, 2010. Simon Goddard, Ziggyology. Ebury, 2013. Chris O’Leary, Rebel Rebel: All the Songs of David Bowie from ’64 to ’76. Zero, 2015. Nicholas Pegg, The Complete David Bowie. Titan, 2011. Thomas Jerome Seabrook, Bowie in Berlin: A New Career in a New Town. Jawbone, 2008. Mark Spitz, Bowie: A Biography. Three Rivers Press, 2009. Hugo Wilcken, Low. Continuum, 2005.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“Hours, packaged as “Bowie’s R&B album,” went equally deep. “Seven,” “Survive,” and “Thursday’s Child” felt like Babyface and Toni Braxton doing Young Americans. The major flaw of these records, one that many listeners understandably found (and still find) impossible to get past, was the butt-ugly guitar sound of Tin Machine leftover Reeves Gabrels, which was even more irritating than the techno effects. It would have been great to hear Bowie redo these songs with a better band and better production. I played them a lot anyway.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“Earthling and the next record Hours were so damn good, it was startling to hear them, but it was tough to convince my friends they were worth getting excited about.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“What was going on with this guy? It was hard to tell, all through his forties. He was more beloved than ever, though his new music had no impact at all. He looked divine posing for photos with Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker, who presented him with one of his many Lifetime Achievement Awards. He was excited about his Web site. He had shiny new teeth. He’d become one of those Thanks for the Memories guys, which wasn’t really the kind of artist he’d ever wanted to be. His pop albums were Bowie trying to guess what might be popular; his art albums were Bowie trying to guess what might be cool. But these albums were neither popular nor cool. It turned out nobody wanted to hear Bowie sound unsure of himself. Nobody held it against him. He’d given the world enough.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“wearing straight clothes but still in costume—as Rodgers summed it up, “His seemingly casual appearance was actually the flowering of his next drag: He was delving into the eighties metrosexual world of high fashion, a precursor to what’s called ‘Executive Realness’ in vogueing competions.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“Was this a total joke, or only a half joke? Was he suggesting that being a boy and being in drag were the same thing? Was he making fun of boys or coaxing me to see humor in the fact that I had to be one? Was “other boys check you out” gay? Was “you’ll get your share when you’re a boy” his feminist critique? Did the hook “when you’re a boy” mean being a boy was something temporary, a switch you could turn on and off, a mood you could be in when you didn’t feel like being a girl? Where was he in this? And where was I? He sang it wearing a skirt on Saturday Night Live. The whole performance seemed to say, this is what it’s like when you’re a boy. Good luck, kid.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“The only heroic act one can fucking well pull out of the bag in a situation like that is to get on with life and derive some joy from the very simple pleasure of remaining alive, despite every attempt being made to kill you.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“As Iggy later recalled, in a typical week they’d spend two days drunk, two days nursing their hangovers, and three days straight—“which is a pretty good balance for musicians.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“They asked me what sonically I could bring to the table, and I told them about this new gadget I had just bought, the Eventide Harmonizer. They asked what it did, and I said, it fucks with the fabric of time.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“LOW PRESENTS BOWIE AT THIRTY, IN ALL HIS CONTRADICTIONS: artist, hedonist, introvert, astral traveler, sexual tourist, depressive, con man, charmer, liar. Low, released in January 1977, was a new beginning for Bowie, kicking off what is forever revered as his “Berlin trilogy,” despite the fact that Low was mostly recorded in France. Side 1 consists of seven fragments, some manic synth pop songs, some just chilly atmospherics. Side 2 has four brooding electronic instrumentals. Both sides glisten with ideas: listening to Low, you hear Kraftwerk and Neu, maybe some Ramones, loads of Abba and disco. But Low flows together as an intensely emotional whole, as he moves through some serious psychic wreckage. For the first time since he became a star,”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“Gaye released “Got to Give It Up” a year after Bowie released “Station to Station”—two long grooves stretching into double-digit minutes, blatantly unconventional, with quizzical vocals and rubberband-man bass and hypnotically repetitive rhythm, going for synthetic effects while rejecting any kind of laid-back comforts. These records were a fuck-you to all the musicians their age who were content to play it safe and pander to the audience. But they were also a challenge to young listeners to catch up with the sound of the future, contemplating personal disasters with a hilariously spaced just-visiting-this-planet vibe.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“Bowie’s five best albums came all in a five-year rush: Station to Station (1976), Low (1977), “Heroes” (1977), Lodger (1979), Scary Monsters (1980). What do these albums have in common? The rhythm section: Dennis Davis on drums, George Murray on bass, and Carlos Alomar on guitar.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“The real high point of his film career is The Hunger,”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“Ziggy was a requiem: Bowie came to bury the sixties, not praise them. He hit the road and toured like a madman, spreading the glitter gospel in a rock scene full of interchangeable flannel-and-denim sincerity pimps.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“by refusing to repeat it, much to the despair of their record companies. Both wrote gorgeous sci-fi ballads blatantly inspired by 2001—“Space Oddity” and “After the Gold Rush.” Both did classic songs about imperialism that name-checked Marlon Brando—“China Girl” and “Pocahontas.” Both were prodigiously prolific even when they were trying to eat Peru through their nostrils. They were mutual fans, though they floundered when they tried to copy each other (Trans and Tin Machine). Both sang their fears of losing their youth when they were still basically kids; both aged mysteriously well. Neither ever did anything remotely sane. But there’s a key difference: Bowie liked working with smart people, whereas Young always liked working with . . . well, let’s go ahead and call them “not quite as smart as Neil Young” people. Young made his most famous music with two backing groups—the awesomely inept Crazy Horse and the expensively addled CSN—whose collective IQ barely leaves room temperature. He knows they’re not going to challenge him with ideas of their own, so he knows how to use them—brilliantly in the first case, lucratively in the second. But Bowie never made any of his memorable music that way—he always preferred collaborating with (and stealing from) artists who knew tricks he didn’t know, well educated in musical worlds where he was just a visitor. Just look at the guitarists he worked with: Carlos Alomar from James Brown’s band vs. Robert Fripp from King Crimson. Stevie Ray Vaughan from Texas vs. Mick Ronson from Hull. Adrian Belew from Kentucky vs. Earl Slick from Brooklyn. Nile Rodgers. Peter Frampton. Ricky Gardiner, who played all that fantastic fuzz guitar on Low (and who made the mistake of demanding a raise, which is why he dropped out of the story so fast). Together, Young and Bowie laid claim to a jilted generation left high and dry by the dashed hippie dreams. “The”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“Bowie arrived late for the sixties party, so he missed the idealistic hippie days and had to settle for being the quintessential seventies rock star along with Neil Young. It’s funny how much those two have in common, despite their opposite fashion sense. Both arrived as solo artists just as the sixties were imploding, a little too late to be Bob Dylan, and they never got over it. Both built their massive seventies mystique around abrupt stylistic shifts. Both fluked into a Number 1 hit (“Fame” and “Heart of Gold”), but both responded to this success”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“But the best cover has to be D’Angelo, on his long-awaited 2012 comeback tour—within minutes of the first gig in Paris, the whole world was YouTubing his “Space Oddity” with our jaws hanging open. After all those years away, lost in his own personal tin can, D’Angelo came back to strum his acoustic guitar and work the hell out of “tell my wife I love her very much” line.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie

“Yet Bowie was just hitting his golden years, rushing out his five best albums from 1976 to 1980, the best five-album run of anyone in the seventies (or since): Station to Station, Low, “Heroes,” Lodger, and Scary Monsters. In this time span, he also made the two albums that brought back Iggy Pop from the dead—The Idiot, prized by Bowie freaks as a rare showcase for his eccentric lead guitar, and Lust for Life—and his finest live album, Stage, from the 1978 tour, absurdly turning the ambient instrumentals from Low and “Heroes” into arena rock. As he put it at the time, “I’m using myself as a canvas and trying to paint the truth of our time on it. The white face, the baggy pants—they’re Pierrot, the eternal clown putting across the great sadness of 1976.”
― Rob Sheffield, On Bowie