Future Nostalgia: Performing David Bowie

231 Pages·2015·6.271 MB·English

by  Shelton Waldrep

Future Nostalgia
ii
Future Nostalgia
Performing David Bowie
Shelton Waldrep
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
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BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published 2015
© Shelton Waldrep, 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or
refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be
accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-6235-6692-0
ePUB: 978-1-6235-6993-8
ePDF: 978-1-6235-6679-1
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
For Jane, Chloe, and, Lily, again.
vi
Contents
Acknowledgments viii
List of Figures ix
1 Introduction: The Pastiche of Gender 1
2 The Persistence of the Dandy: Subcultures and Resistance 49
3 Avatars of the Future: Structuring Music 71
4 The Grain of the Voice: Autobiography and Multiplicity 101
5 The Lost Decade: Reconsidering the 1980s 121
6 Music for Cyborgs: Fictions of Disability 147
General Bibliography 193
Media Bibliography 201
Index 205
Acknowledgments
To the people who have written about David Bowie over the years—fans, critics,
scholars, reviewers—I owe a genuine debt of gratitude, and I hope that some of
my own enthusiasm for what Bowie has accomplished comes through here. I am
especially excited by the work of Ian Chapman, Alex Carpenter, and others who have
been working on Bowie in recent years and have helped to shine a new scholarly light
on him. Closer to home, I would like to thank Bob Ludwig of Gateway Mastering
for answering some of my questions about the technical aspects of Bowie’s records;
Nathan Kolosko for generously helping me to parse and understand some of Bowie’s
musical structure and evolution as a musician; and especially, John Brundridge for
taking excellent photographs of Bowie in the 1970s and allowing me to reprint them
for the first time here. I would also like to thank Ally-Jane Grossan at Bloomsbury for
her efficient and seamless editing and the whole staff at Bloomsbury for helping me to
bring this project to fruition. I was inspired by Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series and their
pop music list in general, and I am thrilled to be a part of it.
I would also like to thank students and friends who have provided insights and
enthusiasm for my work over the years, such as Benjamin Rybeck, Csaba Toth, John
Evelev, Philip Shelley, Caren Irr, and Phil Wegner. Martin Conte put together an
excellent index.
Portions of this book were presented in early form at conferences and invited
presentations, and I am thankful to the coordinators and audiences at those venues
for the opportunity to share my ideas. Shorter versions of some of the chapters were
published as “David Bowie and the Art of Performance” in Global Glam: Style and
Spectacle in Popular Music from the 1970s to the 2000s, eds. Ian Chapman and Henry
Johnson; “The ‘China Girl’ Problem: Reconsidering David Bowie in the 1980s” in
David Bowie: Critical Perspectives, eds. Eoin Devereux, Aileen Dillane, and Martin
Power; and “The Persistence of the Dandy in Contemporary Culture: On David
Bowie, Subcultures, and Resistance” in Sur le dandysme aujourd´hui: Del maniquí en el
escaparate a la estrella mediática, eds. Rocío Gracia Ipiña, Sergio Rubira, and Marta de
la Torriente. Grateful acknowledgment is given to the editors and publishers.
Support for this project came from the University of Maine System in the form of
a Trustee Professorship, for which I am profoundly grateful. The largest debt I owe is
to my family, Jane Kuenz, Chloe, and Lily, who daily perform the acts of kindness and
love that made this project possible.
List of Figures
Figure 1.1 Iggy Pop, the 1977 “The Idiot” tour, Boston 11
Figure 1.2 Cover of Aladdin Sane, 1973 15
Figure 1.3 David Bowie, Isolar tour, Boston, 1976 36
Figure 1.4 David Bowie, Isolar II tour, Boston, 1978 37
Figure 2.1 Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988 51
Figure 2.2 Yinka Shonibare, Diary of a Victorian Dandy, 1998 53
Figure 2.3 Cover photograph of “Heroes,” 1978 56
Figure 2.4 Cover of Klaus Nomi, 1981 63
Figure 3.1 Cover of Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), 1980 91
Figure 5.1 Cover of The Idiot, 1977 124
Figure 5.2 Cover of Let’s Dance, 1983 125
Figure 5.3 David Bowie, the Serious Moonlight tour, 1983 128
Figures 1.1, 1.3, 1.4, and the cover used by permission of John Brundidge.