David Bowie: His Life on TV

Ken Tucker
·Critic-at-Large, Yahoo Entertainment
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David Bowie’s death at age 69 due to cancer brings to an end an inspirationally restless, questing performer who was forever trying to change his music and the way he presented himself to his audience. In this, he was an ideal rock star of the TV age, as mindful of visuals as he was of music.

Bowie used television for his own purposes. His music videos — Bowie came up during the parallel rise of MTV — were often imaginative but, perhaps surprisingly, few could be considered classic or landmark videos. No, it was in performance that Bowie could vibrate most vigorously. Look at him in 1976, doing what one did on Soul Train: Lip-synching to a hit. In this case, it was “Golden Years,” a great single from his great album of that year, Station to Station, the collection that most thoroughly explored his fondness for R&B and disco.

Bowie was a reflective artist, but he was also, like so many first-rate rock stars, someone who liked to obfuscate his motives and his influences, to latch onto art movements and proclaim that he’d transmuted them even if what he was doing was good old fashioned, time-honored thieving. Here’s a fascinating 1974 appearance he made on The Dick Cavett Show, singing “1984” and “Young Americans” and talking haughty jive with the host.

It is possible to say that mass America became most familiar with Bowie when he sang this duet with one of our country’s greatest vocalists, Bing Crosby, in 1977. Bowie’s thin voice cannot match even an elderly Crosby’s, but Bowie dropped his usual mask of irony to sing with touching sincerity:

Finally, a clip from a British talk show, in which Bowie sat down with Michael Parkinson — England’s posh version of Johnny Carson — and spoke about growing old. Specifically, he speculates on what it will be like to turn 70, a now-poignant notion, since he died one year short of that.

David Bowie had just released a new album, Blackstar, last week. He’s made a couple of visually intriguing videos for that, too. You should check them out if you’re in the mood to mourn Bowie.