Reading Bowie’s NYTimes obit this morning, I felt such a pang of nostalgia, of recognition when I got to these words: “Mr. Bowie wrote songs, above all, about being an outsider, an alien, a misfit….”
Somehow I managed to score (“borrow”) my brother’s copy of Changes Two when he left home for college in 1982. It’s possible it was my dad’s LP, but probably J’s. Bowie’s version of “Wild is the Wind” provided a solid musical meeting ground in the late 70’s/early 80’s for the three of us (when my Rodney on the Roq, Jason’s Jagger and Dad’s Nancy Wilson didn’t always make the best mix tape). We all knew and loved Nina’s version too, but frankly I think Pop’s favorite was still the original Mathis. Changes Two starts with “Aladdin Sane” which was the first song I longed for when I heard of Bowie’s death this morning. There is some old, blood memory of a kind of grounding quiet that that song held for me in my pre-teen Orange County colored girl angst. And that crazy piano solo again offered some kind of warm bridge to my father’s increasingly compelling jazz collection.
“Whoooo will love Aladdin Sane?”
Who will love the crazy child? Who will love the politically radical, big, brown girl in Irvine, California in the 1970s? Bowie was such a surprising balm. By college, out of the suburbs and into the city, the eccentric black, brown and beige lads insane did at last start to find and love each other, still it gave me this private, affirming giggle when the thin white duke married the one-name Somali diva. Bless your funk to funky soul, dear Bowie.
I’m happy, hope you’re happy too…
Come Sunday: Jazz, Trouble, Hallelujah 