"THE essence of pop stardom is immaturity a wretched little pseudo musical gift, a development of the capacity to shock, a short lived notoriety, extreme depression, and a yielding to the suicidal impulse." So wrote Anthony Burgess in 1986. He was actually writing about Boy George, but could easily have been commenting on any number of possible candidates who fitted the psychological profile.
In David Bowie's case, one can only assume that as he approaches his 50th birthday (on Wednesday; the following day he gives a birthday concert in Madison Square Gardens with Lou Reed and the Foo Fighters), he has managed to live through the above tell tale titbits of the psyche in a manner that befits one of the most crucial rock entertainers of the past 25 years. "I shall welcome it, Lord yes," said Bowie in 1979 when asked how he would view his lined face at 50. "Pop stars are capable of growing old. An ageing rock star doesn't opt out of life. When I'm 50, I'll prove it."
David Robert Jones was born illegitimately in Brixton, London, his parents marrying eight months after his birth. Bowie's father, Heywood Jones, was a promotions officer at Dr Barnardo's, his mother Peggy Burns, an unpredictable, obsessive person whose troubled family background contributed heavily to her son's sense of alienation and eccentricity. Three of Bowie's aunts had been clinically diagnosed as mentally ill, while his step brother Terry - a major influence on Bowie's early artistic and creative life - was diagnosed as a manic depressive and schizophrenic and committed suicide in 1984. It comes as no surprise to discover that themes of mental disturbance and insanity filter through some of Bowie's best known work.
"I found it fascinating that my, family had more than a streak of insanity, Bowie told Tony Parsons in 1993. "I often wondered how near the line I was going and how far I should push myself. I thought that I would be serving my mental health better if I was always aware that insanity was a real possibility in my life."
At school, the teenage Bowie was deemed to be aloof but fastidious in his approach to work. Signs of his distinctive individuality "however, began to worry his parents and relatives: he slept for no more than four hours a night, he engaged in imaginary conversations with foreign diplomats, and he wrote as many as five letters a week to General Eisenhower. A mixture of fantasy and nervous energy directed Bowie to take up an interest in the avant garde and acting, but not before he became fully aware of the burgeoning London R&B scene, and in particular he developed a love for both the Yardbirds and the Rolling Stones.
Throughout the early to mid 1960s, Bowie passed through a succession of groups - Kon-Rads, King Bees, Manish Boys, Lower Third - until, in late 1966, he met an experienced, avuncular rock manager, Kenneth Pitt, who nurtured the career of his new charge (now officially named Bowie due to the emergence of Davy Jones of the Monkees) for the remainder of the decade. Bowie soon after signed to Derajn, a subsidiary of Decca, but misfired in his successive attempts to blitz the pop charts. Towards the end of the 1960s, it seemed as if Bowie was known more for his failures than anything else. In the autumn of 1969, Bowie released another single, Space Oddity, specifically to tie in with the American moon launch. After a false start, the single entered the Top Five, and Bowie's career appeared to have been launched. The follow up, The Prettiest Star, flopped, and he reluctantly approached the beginning of the 1970s as a one hit wonder.
If any era has defined the rock artist as the originator of the Xerox culture it was the 1970s. In Bowie's case, several personal and professional changes at the start of the decade catalysed his world view, causing him to metamorphose into a bona fide multi media, hugely influential rock star. His half brother had been committed to a mental institution, his father died, he married art student Angela Barnett, and he replaced his loyal manager with the more clamorous Tony De Fries.
Bowie now began to create in earnest. He very soon connected with the self obsessive and the self conscious, two conceits that pitted themselves against the diminishing notions of hippydom. For Bowie, the decade began with the first of 10 records that reflected varying pop styles so quickly as to define them.
1971's The Man Who Sold The World started the ball rolling. For the next 13 years, Bowie advanced the notion of art based theatrical strategy in rock to the point where he appropriated the visual codes of both Japanese drama and German expressionist theatre for his live shows. He combined these styles with a series of startling rock, soul, funk and electronic albums, each one marking him out as one of rock's most inquisitive practitioners. His 1970s back catalogue, it has been argued, is akin to that of the Beatles in the 1960s: innovative, ground breaking, iconic. His greatest achievement, some might say, however, was the creation of a series of on and off stage personae that eerily, revealed his states of mind. None of these was more culturally resonant than Ziggy Stardust.
THERE is a theory that one deliberately creates a doppelglinger, imbuing it with all one's fears, faults, and foibles only to destroy it, and therefore one's problems.
The unusual aspect of Bowie's creations is that there were so many of them, even if they were perceived to be no more than stylistically clever attempts to make him look as good as the music sounded. "Ziggy served my purpose because I found it easier to function through him," claimed Bowie. "I probably put myself on a path of pure psychological damage by doing what I did, though I really couldn't perceive the difference between the stage persona and myself."
Blurring the lines between sanity and dementia became a recurrent theme for Bowie in the 1970s. While his alter egos and music influenced a generation of future rock and pop stars (an early incarnation of the Spiders From Mars group was called Hype, also a nascent U2 band name; the televisual motif of U2's Zoo TV tour was cadged from The Man Who Fell To Earth; while in 1976, 16 year old Gavin Friday hopped on the B&I ferry to London to see Bowie's Station To Station tour. Friday recalls: "Punks were the bastard children of Ziggy Stardust, as were the Virgin Prunes. Without the Sex Pistols and Bowie I wouldn't be in music. The Prunes connected with punk's DIY ethic, but performance wise, Bowie was always there. Bowie was too busy going through a series of spiritually draining cocaine psychoses to notice.
"I had never been so near an abyss of total abandonment," he recalled in a 1993 interview, alluding to many things, not least his flirtation with fascism in the mid1970s. "When they say that one felt like an empty shell, I can really understand that. I felt totally, absolutely alone. And I probably was alone because I pretty much had abandoned God."
1983's Let's Dance took Bowie out of the stadiums and into the arenas, and is generally recognised as the album that burdened him with more mainstream attention than he could cope with.
The latter part of the 1980s witnessed Bowie's influence and stature waning. It seemed that the older he became the more straightforward and less interesting his music. 1984's Tonight and 1987's Never Let Me Down preceded Bowie's failed utilitarian rock outfit, Tin Machine, a blot on his CV that most die hard fans chose to ignore. "I've lost my ego," he informed an acquaintance on the ill suited democracy of the band. "It's a young guy's thing being a rock star - you get less cocky as you get older."
And, it seems, less apprehensive about young guy's things like not expressing emotions or applying moral rules. On April 24th, 1992 (after having agreed, as an ultimate engagement present, to an AIDS test and swearing off all drugs, including that of "celebrity"), Bowie married a 34 year old Somalian actress and model, Iman Abdul Majid. They exchanged platinum rings, but not before spending £2 million on a 640 acre estate in Co Wicklow which, inevitably, they have yet to utilise to its full extent. They are still, by all accounts, blissfully married, a testament to Bowie's complete denial of his erstwhile legendary aloofness.
Apparently obsessed with the end of the millennium, Bowie had grand designs on releasing an album a year after 1995's Outside. Terming this a "Swiftian idea, using the music as a signpost to what is happening now", he missed the boat in 1996. A new self produced album, Earthling, will be released this March, schedule clashing with U2's Pop. According to Q magazine, it mixes "cockney geezerism with drum'n'bass". This sounds quite close in concept to what U2's finished record is like.
"Art on leg's," is a fellow musician's description of David Bowie. Good or bad, just watch him run into the year 2000 and beyond. In the meantime - Happy Birthday, Mr Jones.