BEFORE: My Summer Rock Music Concert series moves on, with this concert from the early days of Bowie, and then tomorrow I'll examine Bowie's later years, for a nice contrast. This is the last major rock star in my countdown who's passed away, I'll try to end with (mostly) living people in the final stretch, though I know there will be at least two exceptions.
Ringo Starr carries over again from "Concert for George", apparently he visits David Bowie backstage during the concert.
AFTER: Oh, I have so many questions about David Bowie. So much has been written and said about him over the years, it's hard to know what was real and what was just a stage gimmick. He was probably the first rock star I ever saw in concert - my uncle took me to a Bowie concert when I was in high school, and I repaid the favor when I was in college by inviting him to a Letterman Anniversary special, where he finally got to see Bob Dylan perform. But I saw Bowie in the post-"Labyrinth" years, which must have been the Glass Spider tour in 1987. Obviously there were a lot of "Changes" between 1973 and 1987 - for starters, by the time I saw him, he was wearing men's clothing.
That's obviously where a lot of my questions come in to play - was this all just a gimmick, being a transvestite just because it got him some attention? Or was this the real Bowie? Was there ever a real Bowie in the first place? Well, no, because his name was really David Jones, and he had to change it to avoid confusion with Davy Jones from the Monkees. So was there ever really any THERE there? Fans in 1973 obviously thought he was gay, because many people back then didn't make a distinction between dressing like a lady and sleeping with men, it might have been assumed that the two went hand-in-hand (so to speak...). But Bowie had a wife, and he mentioned his son in that Christmas special where he sang with Bing Crosby, so that probably blew people's minds a little more.
Bowie later claimed that he was gay only for a short time, or perhaps he was a closeted heterosexual who got caught up in the customs of the day. Well, the 1970's were pretty wild, so I can kind of see that. But then we have Angie's Bowie's assertion that she found Bowie and Mick Jagger in bed together, and when Bowie covers the Stones song "Let's Spend the Night Together" in this concert, and dedicates it to Mick, well, that takes on a whole new meaning, right? He wants to spend the night together with Jagger. Then years later they made that music video for "Dancing in the Streets" and you had to wonder if they were also dancing in the sheets. Not that there's anything wrong with that...
Bowie does the first act of the "Ziggy Stardust" concert in a very short silver satin kimono, with thigh-high boots and hose, and I don't know whether to applaud him for using androgyny to get attention, or chastise him for appropriating the attire of real transvestites, especially if this was just a gimmick, and not really his thing. There's a guitar solo that goes on way too long, but this was obviously included so that Bowie could change outfits - the first time he does this, the film cuts to the dressing room, but after that, it focuses on the guitar solos while he changes into what can only be called a multi-colored "onesie". (Unitard?)
Bowie declared at the end that this would be his "last performance", but now we all know that it wasn't, it was just his last performance as "Ziggy Stardust", and later he became Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke or the New Romantic Bowie. Was he a product of his times, or did the times change to allow him to be something else as needed? Discuss.
I've really got two problems with this concert film, the first is that the camera work is just terrible, most of the time the camera's either too closely centered on Bowie, like a face close-up, or else it's zoomed too far out, to include the whole stage. There's just no in-between, like how about a two-shot of Bowie and his guitarist? Or maybe a semi-close-up, where you can see maybe Bowie's head and half of his body? You can see this all the time these days on "America's Got Talent", their camera-work is similarly horrible, they're always either zoomed in too far, or zoomed out so you can't see what's taking place on stage. Find the middle ground, guys! The stage lighting isn't much better here, there just wasn't enough light in this concert to make a decent image on the film.
My other problem is that looking back on this concert now, there just aren't enough hits, or even songs that I'm familiar with. "The Width of a Circle"? What is this, geometry class? "My Death"? Sounds pretty gruesome - I read that the record company wanted to censor all of Bowie's songs during this concert that mentioned death or suicide, because come on, it was a bit much. People go to a rock concert because they want to have a good time! "Moonage Daydream"? What the hell does that even mean? Same goes for "Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud"...
I mean, of course I know "Space Oddity", "Changes", "Ziggy Stardust", "Suffragette City" and "All the Young Dudes". Those songs are on the greatest hits CD, and you hear them all the time on classic rock stations. Maybe it's my fault, because I don't know all the Bowie deep cuts from his first and second album. True Bowie fans probably all know "Cracked Actor" and "Oh! You Pretty Things" so maybe I'm just revealing here that I'm not as big a fan as you might think. Well, at least I've got two more films about Bowie to watch, so I can at least try to make up for lost time.
Also starring David Bowie, Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder, Mick Woodmansey, Ken Fordham, Geoffrey MacCormack, John Hutchinson, Mike Garson, with cameos from Angie Bowie, Maureen Starkey.
RATING: 4 out of 10 feather boas
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