David Bowie
David Bowie
David Robert Jones, better known by his stage name David Bowie, was an English singer, songwriter and actor. He was a figure in popular music for over five decades, regarded by critics and musicians as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, his music and stagecraft significantly influencing popular music. During his lifetime, his record sales, estimated at 140 million worldwide, made him one of the world's best-selling music...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth8 January 1947
CityLondon, England
Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.
You get to a certain age, and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines; you're not going to get played on radio, and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.
I don't have a problem with ageing - in fact, I embrace that aspect of it. And am able to and obviously am going to be able to quite easily... it doesn't faze me at all.
I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don't see why I would stop.
For me, often, there's such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I'm going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don't know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.
Age doesn't bother me. So many of my heroes were older guys. It's the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am.
I guess, people like myself and Roxy Music that had a different agenda about taking up music.
I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.
Some of us, I think, us small, pompous arty ones probably read too much George Steiner and kind of got the idea that we were entering to this kind of post-culture age and that we'd better do something postmodernist - quickly, before somebody else did.
Since early middle ages when people generally taking away the barbarity of their like, were pretty content. Although it was all an illicit contentment, what with the slave systems all over the world, in England especially, the peasants and the master, etc. People were incredibly content.
I've learned to relax and be my present age and my present position. I feel comfortable on my mid-thirties. It doesn't seem such an alien place to be.
What is very enlightening for me right now is that I sense that I'm arriving at a place of peace with my writing that I've never experienced before.
I've started doing book reviews for Barnes & Noble! They saw that I did a lot of book reviews on the site, and they figured that it might not be a bad thing if they got me to do some for them as well. I gave them five categories I'd be interested in reviewing, from art to fiction to music.
...And these children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds, they are immune to your consultations, they're quite aware of what they're going through...