Better Dead Than Woke: Reflections on Sam Tyler's Suicide in 'Life on Mars'

 

The central cast of Life on Mars (BBC One, 2006-07)

 

 

I. 

 

Whether by accident or subconscious design, I have long avoided watching the British TV show Life on Mars (2006-07), starring John Simm as Detective Inspector Sam Tyler, who, following a car accident, wakes up to find himself in 1973 and obliged to adapt his politically-correct model of policing to the times, working under the command of DCI Gene Hunt (played by Philip Glenister).  

But, since it's now being broadcast nightly on That's TV3 (Freeview channel 75, 9pm, Monday to Friday) - and since I was intrigued by Mark Fisher's k-punk posts on the first and last episodes of the series, which can be found in Ghosts of My Life [1] - I figured, what the hey, I'll give it a go ...

 

 

II. 

Initially, I didn't much like Life on Mars - I found the character of Sam Tyler and all the supernatural elements irritating. Not only did I not know what the fuck was going on - what was real and what wasn't - I didn't much care. And if I simply wanted to enjoy a seventies cop show, I could catch The Sweeney on almost any day of the week over on ITV4 without all the poncy postmodern elements [2].  

 

However, I gradually learned to love it: particularly for what Fisher calls its reactionary character and, indeed, for its amusingly nihilistic message that I'm very much tempted to endorse; i.e., that it's preferable being dead in 1973 than alive in the drearily woke (and somehow far less real) present. 

 

As I wrote in an earlier post:

 

Those who now sneer with politico-moral correctness and a sense of their own cultural superiority at the music, the fashions, the TV, and pretty much every other aspect of life in the 1970s need to be told (or in some cases reminded) that it was more than alright - it was better. For despite all the boredom, blackouts and bullshit of the time, people were happier and I'm pleased to have been born (and to have remained at heart) a 20th century boy. [3]    

 

If by jumping off a roof top like DC Tyler one could guarantee arriving in seventies heaven based upon one's own experiences of the period, then, again, I'd be very much tempted to do so ...

 

It's not that I lack confidence in the future (or the possibility of such) - although I don't share the progressive optimism of those who insist that the sun will necessarily come out tomorrow - it's more a case of accepting the fact that the future belongs to those young enough to still have dreams, whereas to those of us who are now on the cusp of old age and who value the beauty of memories and madeleines belongs the lost past [4].   

 

And death. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (Zero Books, 2014). The article I refer to, pp. 76-79, is entitled 'The Past Is an Alien Planet: The First and last Episides of Life on Mars' and is based on two posts published on his k-punk blog (the first dated 10 Jan 2006 and the second 13 April 2007).

 

[2] Fisher argues that Life on Mars was basically a cop show; "because it is clear that the SF elements [...] were little more than pretexts; the show was a meta-cop show rather than meta-SF". See Ghosts of My Life ... p. 78.

 

[3] See 'Notes on a Glam-Punk Childhood' (24 July 2018): click here. 

 

[4] I'm (rather obliquely) referencing the French filmmaker and critic Chris Marker, who describes madeleines as any object or moment that serves as a trigger for the strange mechanisms that can suddenly transport you to the past. 

      Obviously, Marker adopts the idea from Marcel Proust's novel À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27). Readers who are interested to know more might wish to get hold of Marker's multimedia memoir Immemory (a CD-ROM released in 1997). 

 

 

Musical bonus: David Bowie, 'Life on Mars?', 1973 single release from the album Hunky Dory (RCA Records, 1971): click here for the 2015 remaster on YouTube. 

 

 

Brief Notes on David Bowie's 'Life on Mars'

David Bowie looking perfect in the video for 

'Life on Mars' (dir. Mick Rock, 1973)

 

 

David Bowie's arty glam rock ballad 'Life on Mars' is three minutes and forty-eight seconds of pure pop perfection [1].

 

Originally included as a track on his 1971 album Hunky Dory, it was released as a single in the summer of 1973 and although it only got to number three in the UK charts - kept off the number one spot first by Slade, then Peters and Lee, and, finally, Gary Glitter - I agree with the many fans and critics who believe it to be Bowie's finest song; one that became, rather ironically, his 'My Way' - i.e., the signature song he would frequently return to in performance throughout his career and which turns up again and again on compilation albums [2].         

 

To promote the single, photographer Mick Rock filmed a video that shows a heavily made-up Bowie looking extraordinarily beautiful in an ice-blue satin suit designed by Freddie Buretti [3] and miming the song against a stark white backdrop. 

It is, in its own way, just as perfect as the song and Rock achieves what he set out to do; namely, create a musical painting that captures perfectly what Malcolm McLaren would term the look of music and the sound of fashion.

 

In 2016, the video was remastered and re-edited by Rock and uses a remixed version of the song by the original producer Ken Scott, which strips the track back to strings, piano and vocals: click here - and enjoy!

Notes

 

[1] What makes 'Life on Mars' so perfect, apart from Bowie's own vocal performance and talent as a songwriter, is the string arrangement composed by guitarist Mick Ronson and Rick Wakeman's excellent playing of the same studio piano that was used by the Beatles when recording 'Hey Jude' in 1968 (and, later, in 1975, by Queen for their own moment of pop perfection 'Bohemian Rhapsody').  

 

[2] This is ironic because Bowie wrote 'Life on Mars' as an intentional parody of 'My Way' - the original French version of which, by Claude François and Jacques Revaux (entitled Comme d'habitude), he had once supplied English lyrics for (rejected by the song's French publishers). 

      Shortly afterwards, much to Bowie's annoyance, Paul Anka purchased the rights to the song and rewrote it as 'My Way', which was then recorded and made famous by Sinatra in 1969. In order to show that he was just as capable of creating an equally epic song, Bowie effortlessly tossed off 'Life on Mars'.      

 

[3] For more on Freddie Buretti, see the post entitled 'On the Designers Who Dressed David Bowie' (19 Dec 2017): click here.

Is There Life on Mars?

Is There Life on Mars? (SA/2023)

 

 

The question of whether there is - or at some point has been - life on Mars is one that continues to excite the popular imagination, as well as arouse the professional interest of astrobiologists.

 

Indeed, the seach for microbial Martian life or, at the very least, traces of such life - so called biosignatures - is one of the main reasons NASA keep sending missions to the Red Planet.    

 

However, whilst evidence has been found that Mars could have once supported life in the past - for it wasn't always the dry and arid planet that we know today - there's nothing to indicate that life is still present now.      

 

But the thing is, I don't really understand why it matters or why anyone should care: for whilst there may or may not have been life on Mars billions of years ago, there's presently an abundant and mind-boggling variety of living organisms here on Earth - it's the freakiest show, as Bowie might say.

 

Indeed, as the above photograph illustrates, there's probably more life to be found on a single red tile of my front door step than on the entire surface of the Red Planet and surely we should cherish and preserve this life, rather than spend billions of dollars looking for alien beings.        

 

For me, a tiny baby garden snail inspires far more wonder than E.T. (Oh man, look at those molluscs go!)

Get It On and Punk It Up With Marc Bolan

Marc Bolan with Dave Vanian of the Damned 

and Siouxsie Sioux in 1977

 

According to Sebastian Horsley, Marc Bolan was super-plastic profound:

 

"A curious hybrid of dandy and poseur, street urchin and visionary. The mass of contradictions could be held together only by the unifying power of art. The only real philosophy he had was that a human being was an art form in itself. He was entirely his own creation: A creature lovingly constructed from the materials of his imagination. He was important for being trivial yet deep, poppy yet interesting - all the things I came to love in one person." [1]

However, whilst this loving description is undoutedly true, I have to admit that back in the day - i.e., the 1970s - I was never a great Bolan fan and when I stomped around the bedroom wearing my sister's platform boots, I was pretending to be a member of Sweet or Slade, not T. Rex. 

 

As was also the case with David Bowie, I was just a little too young - and perhaps a little too straight - to fully appreciate the queer sophisticated pop genius of Bolan and his "gorgeously nonsensical and deliciouly fey lyrics" [2]. 

 

And so, although I remember listening to his songs on the radio and used to love watching him on TV, it was Gary Glitter's poster which hung on my wall and Gary Glitter's singles I used to buy with my pocket money at the local record store. 

Only retrospectively, can I now see that I should've given my heart to this East London boy who, unlike many of his peers, embraced punk rock and was - again unlike many of his peers - embraced by the younger punk generation, as the photos above illustrate [3]. 

 

Whether Bolan genuinely loved the so-called New Wave, or simply wanted to ride along on it as he had once ridden a white swan in order to sustain his own career, I don't know. But I like to think this one-time hippie folk musician who became a glam superstar was more of a punk at heart than many might imagine [4].

 

Sadly, we never really got to find out, because Bolan was killed in a car crash on 16 September, 1977, aged 29.   

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Sebastian Horsley, Dandy in the Underworld, (Sceptre, 2008), pp. 29-30. 

      Horsley borrows the title for his autobiography from the T. Rex single released 30 May 1977 (from the album of the same name released 11 March 1977 on EMI). Click here to enjoy a performance of this song on the children's TV show Get It Together, presented by Roy North (sans Basil Brush).

 

[2] Sebastian Horsley, Dandy in the Underworld, p. 27. 

 

[3] There are also photos of Bolan with the Ramones and Billy Idol - and, speaking of the latter, Generation X performed their debut single, 'Your Generation', on the final episode of Bolan's own TV show Marc (broadcast 28 September 1977): click here.  

[4] This is further evidenced by the fact that he chose the Damned to support him on a short tour in March 1977, which began at City Hall, Newcastle (10/03) and ended at the Locarno, Portsmouth (20/03), where the Damned joined Bolan and T. Rex on stage to perform 'Get It On' as an encore.    

Muses with Dirty Faces: In Praise of the Groupie

 

Four of the GTOs looking fabulous and freaky in 1969
Photo by Ed Caraeff / Morgan Media / Getty Images

 

 

I. 

 

Are groupies still a thing in the era of #MeToo, or are they now an extinct species of young female fan who voluntarily performed sexual services in order to demonstrate their devotion to the rock gods they worshipped and followed on tour ...? [1]  

 

 

II.

 

Although the term originated in the music scene of the 1960s, the phenomenon itself was much older and wider. Indeed, some argue that Mary Magdalene was the mother of all groupies, travelling with Jesus and his gang of disciples known as the Apostles, happy to show her support in whatever way was asked of her [2]. 

 

But it's the groupies of the 1960s and '70s who are best remembered and who, in their day, were almost as famous as the musicians they fucked [3]. 

 

Girls such as Pamela Des Barres [4], 'Sweet' Connie Hamzy [5], Cynthia 'Plaster Caster' Albritton [6], and Barbara 'The Butter Queen' Cope [7], were certainly not regular girlfriends - although they were sometimes regarded as surrogates - but they were much more than ordinary fans; if they weren't expecting engagement rings, neither were they interested in simply collecting autographs or having a one night stand. 

 

The groupies wanted to be an integral part of the scene; as vital in their own way as roadies, able to access all areas and legitimately declare: I'm with the band and I kind of admire them for that - as well as their declaration of agency: these girls did not regard themselves as victims or as being exploited; they knew what they wanted, what they were doing, what the rewards and dangers of a rock 'n' roll lifestyle were. 

 

Having said that, there was a very obvious power imbalance (or inequality) built into the rock star-groupie relationship and so questions of agency and consent do arise and remain complex and problematic. 

 

And this is particularly so when it comes to the so-called baby groupies - i.e., underage girls such as Sable Starr [8] and Lori Mattix [9]. The latter was only fourteen when she (allegedly) lost her virginity to David Bowie and not much older when she began her illicit affair with Led Zepplin's Jimmy Page, the couple seen here at Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco in LA, in 1972:    

 

 

      

Notes

 

[1] I'm certainly not the first to ask this question; see, for example, Thea De Gallier's article 'I wouldn't want this for anybody's daughter': will #MeToo mean the end of the rock 'n' roll groupie?' in The Guardian (15 Mar 2018): click here. 

      It's hard to imagine in an age when allegations of inappropriate behaviour and sexual misconduct are made at the drop of a hat and issues around consent and male entitlement are widely discussed, that the wild Bacchanalian excesses of the 1960s and '70s would be tolerated now. 

 

[2] In the Gnostic texts, Mary Magdalene's uniquely close relationship with Jesus is often emphasised. In the Gospel of Philip, for example, she is described as a companion to the latter, whom he would openly kiss on the mouth. This has led some scholars to conclude that there was a sexual component to their relationship. 

      The portrayal of Mary as a promiscuous woman or prostitute began in 591 when Pope Gregory I conflated her with Mary of Bethany (Luke 10:39) and the unnamed sinful woman who anointed Jesus's feet in Luke 7:36-50. This view of her has persisted in popular culture, giving rise to the idea of Mary as the original groupie. 

      See: Pamela Des Barres, Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon (1996), who develops the idea that a groupie is to a rock band as Mary Magdalene was to Jesus.

 

[3] This is evidenced by the fact that the February 1969 edition of Rolling Stone was devoted to the topic of groupies and that Time magazine also published an article on the girls of rock, discussing their manners and morals. The documentary film, Groupies (dir. Ron Dorfman and Peter Nevard) was released the following year. 

 

[4] Pamela Des Barres (b. 1948) is an American groupie, writer, musician, and actress. She is best known for her 1987 memoir, I'm with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie, which details her experiences in the Los Angeles rock music scene of the 1960s and 1970s. She was also a member of the experimental all-girl group - composed of groupies - the GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously). 

 

[5] 'Sweet' Connie Hamzy, aka Connie Flowers (1955-2021), was an American groupie who claimed to have had sex with numerous rock musicians and that she was propositioned by Bill Clinton in 1984, when he was the governor of Arkansas. 

 

[6] Cynthia Plaster Caster, born Cynthia Albritton (1947-2022), was an American groupie and visual artist notorious for creating plaster casts of the erect penises belonging to her famous lovers. She began this unusual practice with the assistance of rock stars in 1968, but later included the cocks of filmmakers and other artists, producing 50 phallic works in all. 

 

[7] Barbara Cope (1950-2018) was an American groupie, known in the late 1960s and early 1970s as The Butter Queen, due to her penchant for using butter as lubricant during her sexual encounters with rock stars. Cope claimed to have visited 52 major cities in the United States while following bands, and travelled to 11 different countries with them. She retired from groupie life in 1972, having had sex (again according to her own account) with around 2,000 musicians. 

 

[8] Sable Starr (1957-2009), often described as the queen of the groupie scene in LA during the early 1970s, was also (due to her age) one of the so-called baby groupies; she lost her virginity to a guitarist when she was twelve. In an interview in 1973, she claimed to be acquainted with many famous rock stars, including Rod Stewart, Alice Cooper, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, and Marc Bolan. At 16 she met Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls and went to live with him in NYC. This did not turn out well. Later, she had a affair with Richard Hell, befriended Nancy Spungen, and participated in the local punk rock scene, but by the early 1980s her groupie days were over.    

 

[9] Lori Mattix (b. 1958), sometimes known as Lori Maddox, or Lori Lightning, is a former American child model and baby groupie of the 1970s. In an interview in 2015, she claimed to have been fucked by Bowie, Jagger, and Jimmy Page whilst she was underage. True or not, she had begun frequenting clubs on Sunset Strip with her friend Sable Starr whe she was 13 and her story has been widely discussed by commentators keen to highlight the sexual exploitation of minors within the music industry.   

 

Further reading (for those who are interested): 

Kathryn Bromwich, 'Groupies revisited: the women with triple-A access to the 60s', The Observer (15 Nov 2015): click here. 

 

Craig McLean, 'Good time girl: memories of super groupie Pamela Des Barres', The Observer (6 May 2018): click here. 

 

 

And for a follow up post to this one, on Nancy Spungen - last of the great American groupies - click here.

Sweet Sixteen (In Memory of Sid Vicious and My Own Punk Youth)

John Beverley, aged 16, in his pre-punk days 

prior to becoming Sid Vicious, Sex Pistol.

Me, aged 16, in my post-punk days, but still sporting 

a Sid Vicious badge on the left lapel of my jacket.

 

 

I recently came across a rather touching photo of a young John Beverley on his way to a David Bowie concert at Earl's Court, in 1973 ... 

 

This was the infamous opening show of Bowie's Aladdin Sane UK tour on May 12th, two days after Beverley turned sixteen. Whether the latter took part in - or, indeed, incited - the violence that ensued amongst the 18,000 strong audience, I don't know. But it's possible this is where he first developed a taste for rock 'n' roll mayhem. 

 

Around this same time, Beverley was kicked out of his home by his heroin-addicted mother, so quit school and began squatting along with his friend John Lydon, the soon-to-be Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten, who gave him the punk-sounding nickname of Sid Vicious by which he is best remembered today.

 

The two friends - like many other youngsters at the time interested in music and fashion - started to cruise up and down the Kings Road and eventually found themselves hanging out at the small and unusual boutique owned and managed by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, called SEX. 

 

When, in late-summer 1975, Rotten joined the Sex Pistols, Sid became their No. 1 fan and acted as an agent provocateur ensuring that every gig ended in an unpredictable bloody mess. He can be seen in photos taken at the Nashville Rooms in April 1976 on the night that the band physically attacked their audience.

 

Vicious is also credited with inventing the pogo, an aggressive form of anti-dance. In February '77, he replaced bass guitarist Glen Matlock in the Sex Pistols, even though he had no experience of playing the instrument. He would later (rather cruelly) be stylised by McLaren in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle as 'The Gimmick'. 

 

Tragically, post-Pistols, things did not turn out well for Sid - or his American girlfriend, Nancy Spungen; he died, from a drug overdose, on 2 February, 1979, aged 21, whilst on bail and awaiting trial for the murder of the latter, who died from a single stab wound to her abdomen, aged 20, on October 12th of the previous year.  

 

II.  

 

I vividly recall the time when Sid died. For one thing, it was less than a fortnight away from my own sixteenth birthday, on February 13th ...

 

I remember, for example, going out on a cold, foggy night and stealing that day's headline poster for the Evening Standard outside my local newsagent's which read: Sid Vicious Dead (I still have it today somewhere). 

I remember also the next morning, at school, being met with snide remarks from those who knew I was a fan of the Sex Pistols: Your hero's dead - that kind of thing, nothing very imaginative. 

 

Actually, Sid was never really my hero: I was more devoted to Rotten, as the Public Image Ltd. t-shirt worn in the above photo taken in 1979 indicates. However, I do retain a certain affection for him which, sadly, is no longer the case when it comes to the latter, who recently turned sixty-six, but died many, many years ago ...     

Great Moments in Rock 'n' Roll History as Seen on TV: Bowie Performs 'Starman' on Top of the Pops (6 July 1972)

David Bowie performing 'Starman' on Top of the Pops 

(6 July 1972): click here to watch on YouTube

There's a starman waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us 

But he thinks he'd blow our minds

 

 

Blow our minds: isn't that precisely what Bowie did with his seductively camp performance of 'Starman' on Top of the Pops on July 6th, 1972? 

 

But not only did he blow our minds, he also blew away the past and announced the coming of an alien future in which binary oppositions would become increasingly difficult to enforce and seem not just ever more untenable but artificial and restrictive [1].    

 

And it's for this reason that Bowie's performance has to be included in any short series of posts on great moments in rock 'n' roll history that, crucially, also happened to be televised and thereby becoming fixed in the cultural imagination. 

 

For whilst the song, 'Starman', would still be an excellent track with a catchy chorus even if you only ever heard it on the radio [2], it was seeing Bowie on TV looking like the most beautiful man on the planet in his brightly-coloured jumpsuit, spiky red-hair, and painted fingernails, that's key. 

 

Bowie perfectly captures the look of music and the sound of fashion, as Malcolm McLaren would say, and his appearance on Top of the Pops is - just like Elvis's second appearance on The Milton Berle Show in June 1956 - a genuine event (i.e. something that comes unexpectedly from the outside and changes everything). 

 

But whereas Elvis, however, marks the point at which white popular culture becomes black, Bowie signifies the queering of popular culture. 

 

Appearing confident and playful, Bowie drapes his arm around the shoulder of guitarist Mick Ronson and, famously, points directly into the camera lens at one point, not merely engaging with his television audience directly, but seeming to address each one of them individually. 

 

Although Bowie had been on the music scene for a number of years, experimenting with different sounds and different looks, it was this performance that made him a star and a seminal figure for many of those watching him that evening who would later go on to have careers in pop music themselves [3]. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Bowie doesn't just challenge sexual and gender binaries; he also, for example, curdles the division between American and British English by using slang terms from the former sung with a London accent. And he makes us think about questions of authenticity and artifice; is he a genuine rock star, or an actor merely playing the role?  

 

[2] 'Starman' was released as a single in April 1972, taken from the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (RCA Records, 1972). The song, which delivers a message of alien salvation to the world's youth, was partly inspired by 'Over the Rainbow' as sung by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (1939).

      Upon release 'Starman' sold reasonably well and earned some positive reviews, though many thought it simply a space-age novelty record. It was only after Bowie performed it on Top of the Pops that it became a top ten hit and helped propel the album up the charts also. Today, of course, the song is regarded by critics as one of Bowie's greatest.

 

[3] Amongst the many viewers sat at home watching Bowie on Top of the Pops that evening were Adam Ant, Boy George, Gary Numan, Pete Murphy, Ian McCulloch, Morrissey, Robert Smith, and Siouxsie Sioux. They were all immediately placed under his spell and would often recall in later years how this performance was a major turning point in their lives. 

 

 

For another great moment in rock 'n' roll history as seen on TV - Elvis's performance of 'Hound Dog' on The Milton Berle Show (5 June 1956) - click here.    

 

 

Turn and Face the Strange (On Coronavirus and the State of Funk)

It's interesting (to me at least) how extraordinarily relevant some of D. H. Lawrence's essays and articles still seem, even though he was writing for a very different readership, in a very different time.

Take, for example, 'The State of Funk', written in 1929. What Lawrence says here about the fear of change on the one hand and the need for courage on the other is surely worth (re-)considering in this Age of Coronavirus; a period characterised by governmental overreaction and media hysteria in the face of a global health crisis and ensuing socio-economic upheaval:

"There is, of course, a certain excuse for fear. The time of change is upon us. The need for change has taken hold of us. We are changing, we have got to change, and we can no more help it than leaves can help going yellow and coming loose in autumn, or than bulbs can help shoving their little green spikes out of the ground in spring. We are changing, we are in the throes of change, and the change will be a great one. Instinctively we feel it. Intuitively, we know it. And we are frightened. Because change hurts. And also, in the periods of serious transition, everything is uncertain, and living things are most vulnerable." [219]

This, I think, was true and important to say then and is true and important to say now: for it seems increasingly certain that the present pandemic will trigger not just a temporary suspension of civil liberties and a Great Confinement, but radical, long-lasting change; not just political and institutional change, but cultural and individual change in terms of everyday behaviour and values.

And the prospect of that understandably causes a certain anxiety amongst a good number of people: But what of it?, asks Lawrence. We might feel uncomfortable and there may be wretched times ahead, but that's no reason for panic or cowardice: "Granted all the pains and dangers and uncertainties, there is no excuse for falling into a state of funk." [219] What is needed, rather, in a time of great change is:

"Patience, alertness, intelligence, and a human goodwill and fearlessness [...] Courage is the great word. Funk spells sheer disaster." [220]

If we are quick-witted and undaunted, then there's the hope that things will be much better than they are presently; "more generous, more spontaneous, more vital, less basely materialistic" [220]. But, on the other hand, if we "fall into a state of funk, impotence and persecution, then things may be very much worse than they are now" [220].  

It's up to us: and we mustn't just leave it to the authorities; to politicians and policemen and those who look to shape public opinion via the media.

Lawrence concludes:

"Change in the whole social system is inevitable not merely because conditions change - though partly for that reason - but because people themselves change [particularly following a serious illness]. We change. You and I, we change and change vitally, as the years go on. New feelings arise in us, old values depreciate, new values arise. Things we thought we wanted most intensely we realise we don't care about. The things we built our lives on crumble and disappear, and the process is painful. But it is not tragic. A tadpole that has so gaily waved its tail in the water must feel very sick when the tail begins to drop off and little legs begin to sprout. The tail was its dearest, gayest, most active member, all its little life was in its tail. And now the tail must go. It seems rough on the tadpole: but the little green frog in the grass is a new gem, after all." [221]

So, as Bowie would say: Turn and face the strange ... and dare to become that little green frog!

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The State of Funk', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 219-224. 

Play: David Bowie, 'Changes', single release from the album Hunky Dory (RCA, 1971): click here for the 2015 remastered version.

On the Designers Who Dressed Ziggy Stardust

Photo of David Bowie by Masayoshi Sukita 

wearing a striped bodysuit by Kansai Yamamoto 
designed for the Aladdin Sane Tour (1973)

Bowie always had a thing for Japan. And it's difficult to think of his alien pop persona Ziggy Stardust without also thinking of the traditional form of Japanese musical theatre known as kabuki and the celebrated Japanese fashion designer Kansai Yamamoto who created many of the iconic outfits worn during this period of Bowie's career (and, apparently, inspired the flaming-red hair style).

But, if I'm honest, Yamamoto's designs are just a little too theatrical for my tastes. I don't mind elaborate outfits and outlandish makeup, but don't like fancy dress or things that are made to be worn on stage by performers only. And that's why I much prefer the fabulous ice-blue Life on Mars satin suit designed by Freddie Burretti (1973):

For me, Bowie looks perfect wearing this suit in the video directed by Mick Rock [click here]. A little less alien and androgynous than when dressed by Yamamoto, but far more heroic and dandyish.

It's a shame that Burretti doesn't get more recognition for helping shape Ziggy's sartorial aesthetic - for not only did he make this outfit, he also designed the colourful quilted jumpsuit Bowie wore for his seminal appearance on Top of the Pops in July 1972, singing Starman [click here].*             

To be fair, when news broke of Burretti's death in 2001, Bowie generously paid tribute to the young Londoner whom he'd first met at a gay club (El Sombrero) in the late 1960s, saying that Freddie was not only one of the nicest, but also one of the most talented spirits that he'd worked with.     

Notes 

*Although the broadcast date for this performance on TOTP is sometimes mistakenly given as April 14th 1972, it was actually shown on July 6th, having been recorded the day before. 

Readers interested in knowing more about Freddie Burretti might like to watch the documentary by Lee Scriven: Starman: Freddie Burretti - The Man Who Sewed the World (2015). 

Notes on the Case of Andrew Dobson and the Chinese Sex Doll

The doll in the Andrew Dobson case: 

thoughtfully pixelated by the British Press 

so as not to cause offence or arouse illicit desire    

Following the prosecution and jailing last month of 49-year-old Andrew Dobson for attempting to import a supposedly childlike mannequin - deemed to be an indecent object - into the UK from Hong Kong, moral and legal experts have been debating the ethics of non-consensual relations with increasingly sophisticated and apparently soon-to-be sentient sex dolls - particularly when designed to appear underage.

Seeing as this is a subject on which I have previously written at some length, I feel entitled to offer my own thoughts here ...

Firstly, I'd like to point out that - contrary to what's been claimed in some quarters - this is not the first time that an item of this nature have been stopped from entering the country. In fact, sex dolls were banned from doing so back in 1876 on the grounds that as objects used primarily to facilitate human sexual pleasure they were inherently obscene.

However, this ban was lifted in 1987 under European free trade agreements, so I'm not sure on what grounds border force officials at East Midlands Airport were entitled to intercept the doll addressed to Dobson and alert the police who subsequently arrested him at his home.   

Secondly, as Dobson's defence counsel Simon Parry pointed out during his trial at Chester Crown Court, although the prosecution insisted on describing the doll as childlike it was more accurate to describe it as child sized. Even the forensic physician and paediatric consultant who examined the doll on behalf of the prosecution, only agreed its size would be consistent with that of a girl aged between four and six were it a child - but, of course, it's not a child; it's a doll that hasn't been manufactured to a realistic adult scale.

Parry also mentioned the mitigating fact that there was nothing in the online promotional material or sales description, indicating that it should be thought of as a child sex doll.

Now - just to be clear - I'm not saying that Dobson isn't the twisted pervert that some in the media have made him out to be; he was discovered to have pornographic images of children on his computer and pleaded guilty to both making and possessing such images. However, I do not think buying a silicone doll on ebay for sexual gratification - be it in the form of a child, an animal, or an alien entity - should be a criminal offence.

Members of the Cheshire constabulary and tabloid journalists may find it sickening that some individuals choose to indulge dark masturbatory fantasies involving perverse acts and illicit paraphilias, but it's surely important to realise that real acts with objects simply aren't the same as actual acts with bodies.

Ultimately, I suspect that in addition to the legitimate concerns surrounding paedophilia there are other forms of puritanism and prejudice at play here. Thus it is, for example, that in closing Judge Nathanial Berkson said he was disgusted to think that such dolls even existed: "The user would be, in effect, able to simulate sex with a child" - and heaven forbid that should be allowed, for, as Baudrillard provocatively suggested, simulation is the gravest sin of all in the eyes of those defenders of the Real.

The authorities, in other words, find a self-consciously simulated act or virtual crime far more disconcerting and dangerous than a real one. If you rape a child, you clearly transgress the law and thus paradoxically reaffirm the criminal justice system. But if you simulate the rape of a child, it throws a spanner in the works and you expose the essential immorality - and absurdity - of a system that rests on a set of values that are ultimately null and void.

Of course, this doesn't mean the authorities won't respond exactly as if you committed a real crime - indeed, as Dobson has now discovered, they may very well come down even harder upon you.

And all the while I can hear David Bowie singing ... 

On the Art of Death and Disappearance in the Case of David Bowie

Bowie makes good his disappearance in the video 

for Lazarus (dir. Johan Renck, 2016)

The poet and critic Simon Solomon is right to refer the case of David Bowie back to Sylvia Plath's notorious claim that dying is an art, like everything else. For there was something very beautiful and stylized about his passing (as indeed there was about Plath's own exit from this world).

But what most philosophically fascinates about his death, apart from its obvious vitality and aesthetic appeal, is the manner in which he effected a disappearance and grasped the opportunity to die liberated from every identity and free of all stereotypes, in this way accomplishing what we might term (for want of another, slightly less Heideggerian term) an authentic death.

That is to say, one that had been imagined and carefully coordinated in every detail; one in which the mortal subject claimed his death for himself and affirmed his own dark singularity, becoming, as Bowie says, a blackstar, exerting an invisible and irresistible attraction and influence.

Bowie, in other words, accepted the challenge of death. He knew what it involved and made a choice. And, to his credit, he died at the most difficult time of all - which is to say at the right time, before his ideas ran dry and he had nothing left to say. How many of his contemporaries and fellow performers shamefully linger on - already dead-in-life, like zombies, unhappily full of self-assertion.

These people will, of course, eventually die, but they'll die too late and with biological banality. Unlike Bowie, their spirit and their virtue will not shine darkly after death. And because they do not know how to die and remain unwilling to disappear, they will never rise like Lazarus out of the ash with red hair.    


Read: Sylvia Plath, 'Lady Lazarus', in Collected Poems, (HarperCollins, 1992): click here.

Play: David Bowie, 'Lazarus', from the album Blackstar (ISO Records, 2016): click here.

On the Question of Scottish Independence

David Bowie's unexpected and rather pitiful plea that Scotland stay with us - made at the Brit Awards and voiced via Kate Moss - brought a predictably abusive online reaction from nationalists north of the border, informing him, in short, to fuck off back to Mars and keep his nose out of their affairs.

One might of course simply smile at this and say fair enough. But, as a matter of fact, Bowie is entitled to his view and entitled to express his view, as a Brit and as an Englishman (albeit an Englishman in New York and no longer a UK resident). 

Similarly, I feel entitled to both hold and express a view on the issue of Scottish independence, which is to go to a referendum in September, as a Brit and as an Englishman who also happens (not uncommonly) to have had a Scottish grandmother, even if I'm not entitled to a vote in said referendum.

But what is my view? 

Well, until recently, I would have been fully supportive of any movement that sought independence and wished to proliferate cultural difference, thereby countering the political will to oneness. I shared Lawrence's dream of a future democracy of touch that would dissolve all ideal attempts at universalism and put an end to centralized government. 

Like Lawrence, I thought that a vivid recoil into separateness would see the joyful rebirth of many small states in an infinite variety of forms and that this had to be positive and progressive; that war, for example, was born not of difference, but of the denial of otherness and an obsession with making all people think and act and speak the same beneath a single flag.          

But now I'm having to rethink and revise this view in light of recent world events. Suddenly, the idea of encouraging solidarity and defending political union no longer seems so monstrous or mistaken in the face of grotesque and sinister micro-fascist attempts to rekindle old hatreds and divisions based on racial identity, religious sectarianism, and tribal nationalism.   

  

And suddenly the vitriolic remarks aimed at Bowie no longer seem so innocent or amusing ...

Nor, for the record, do I much care for the fact that my Spanish ex-wife, who has lived and worked in Barcelona for almost twenty years, still has to accept being called a guiri on a daily basis by her Catalan friends - as if she were not only a foreigner, but also a Francoist.    

David Bowie

One of the people I've always quite liked but have never quite allowed myself to quite like, is David Bowie. I was perhaps just a little too young to fully appreciate the artful androgyny of Ziggy Stardust and had no concept of a concept album as a nine-year-old.

But there was also something else. No matter how alien and avant-garde he attempted to make himself, he never quite convinced and his stage show was too theatrical for my tastes. The make-up, the costumes, the choreography, were simply too much; by which I don't mean too outrageous or excessive, but full of drama school pretension. 

Even as a child, I never liked what I perceived to be pretension - particularly in pop stars - and so I  was attracted more to the glam-rock silliness of Marc Bolan rather than Bowie and cared more for Sweet than the Spiders from Mars. 

However, it's all a long time ago and I have since revised my views somewhat. Thus I'm now happy to admit that, for a while, in the early-mid seventies, Bowie was the most beautiful man on the planet who managed to achieve a  rare moment of perfection - but I still prefer Gary Glitter.