Nicolas Ungemuth's Bowie (Librio Musique, 1999) clarified many points that I wasn't very sure about in the history of rock. Bowie's "vampirism," for one. He quotes Bowie's own words:
"Dès que je trouvais certaines qualités chez des gens que j'aimais, je me les appropriais. Je fais toujours ça aujourd'hui; tout le temps. C'est comme pour une voiture, on remplace les pièces petit à petit."
And people have accused Bowie of his vampirism. But then Ungemuth goes on to say:
Dans les deux cas, Lou Reed/Iggy, les soi-disant victims du vampire, se sont largement repus du talent de leur prétendu bourreau. Bowie, en fin de compte, a plus joué aux infirmiers qu'aux succubes.
An interesting way to put it!
This books describes well the centrality of Bowie in rock music for more than three decades. I loved Bowie as a highschool student in the 1970s; then lost interest in him in the 80s (definitely by the time of "Let's Dance") and moved on to so-called world music. Which was just and unjust at the same time. But rock by that time was mostly DEAD until a serious ressurrection is brought about by Nirvana in the early 1990s, for example.
I'll go back to Space Oddity and begin listening to the various aspects of Bowie's own histoire vécue!
