Who says David Bowie is dead?
It certainly doesn’t feel like he is. Spend any time talking to one of the musician’s many devoted fans and it’s almost like the man has simply taken a long overdue vacation. He’s distant, rather than gone, and there’s the palpable sense that he might still be able to surprise us – as though a new album might drop any day.
Indeed, only recently it was discovered that the vinyl version of his final record Blackstar holds a secret of its own: when exposed to sunlight, the album artwork transforms into a series of golden constellations. Light coming out of the dark? That sounds like Bowie.
The man meant – or rather, means – so much that his legacy is yet to be fully appreciated. We’re still discovering him, attempting to quantify what he accomplished through shows like David Bowie: Nothing Has Changed, a tribute that will feature such talents as The Church’s Steve Kilbey, Jack Ladder and Adalita all working in collusion with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra to eulogise a cultural titan.
For Ladder, a committed Bowiephile, joining the project felt like the most natural thing in the world. He has been mourning Bowie both privately and publicly ever since the man’s tragic passing in January. “[I was] very distraught when Bowie died,” he says. “I got asked to do a few tribute things. I did something at the Golden Age Cinema. They showed a couple of David Bowie films and I sang a couple of songs in between.
“It’s a nice thing to do,” he goes on. “It’s part of the grieving process. Then someone sent through an email asking whether I wanted to be involved with [Nothing Has Changed] and it’s pretty hard to say no to singing with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Opera House. It just seemed exciting.”
It’s safe to say Ladder has done his time as a Bowie fan – he first swore his allegiance to the Thin White Duke many years ago. “When I was younger I was really into Marc Bolan and T-Rex, but then my brother gave me Bowie At The Beeb, which is a collection of all [Bowie’s] live recordings from the John Peel show, and I just played the hell out of that,” he says. “A lot of that is all his earlier work. So I guess that’s where it started.”
Kilbey’s love of Bowie has surprisingly similar origins. “I was 18,” he begins. “I [was] living in Canberra and I had a friend and we were both really into Marc Bolan. We talked about Marc Bolan all the time. Then one day [my friend] said, ‘You’ve gotta get into David Bowie,’ and I was [unsure]. I sort of felt bad about abandoning Marc Bolan, as if he would have known. But my friend gave me [The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars]and a bootleg that later came out and became a legitimate album, Live In Santa Monica ’72. I just went home and listened, and over about the next month my allegiances transferred from Bolan to Bowie.”
For Kilbey, Bowie’s appeal can’t be attributed to a single quality. “He had the best songs, the best lyrics, the best voice,” he says. “He was the best-looking guy, he had the best take on everything. When he came along, it seemed like he really was Ziggy Stardust. I guess I thought he really was. And I guess Bowie thought he was too. When you listen to that bootleg, he’s sort of living it up to the hilt. He’s introducing the [songs] like, ‘Here’s a song written by Ziggy.’
“He was my main man for all time,” Kilbey adds. “Me and ten zillion other teenagers were just totally sucked in. I like all of his ’70s albums. I went back and got Hunky Dory and The Man Who Sold The World … Even when Low and Heroes came along I was right into it from the word go. It’s funny – now, you know, everyone thinks [Low] is great but at the time it got really bad reviews and sold a miniscule amount. But I loved it.”
It’s not just Bowie himself whom Kilbey and Ladder adored, it’s the effect he had on pop music as a whole. He never worked in a vacuum – he was constantly both inspired and inspiring, over the years reaching out to acts as disparate as Sonic Youth, the Pixies and Lorde.
“[Bowie] was always pretty into Scott Walker,” Ladder explains, excited to talk about two of his favourite musicians in the same breath. “I think that’s how he heard Jacques Brel … There was a version of ‘Amsterdam’ by Bowie that I was really into. And there’s a beautiful recording of Scott Walker calling David Bowie up for his 50th on the phone and wishing him a happy birthday. It’s something the internet is useful for.”
Bowie also had singularly impressive staying power. Blackstar was a late career record that redefined what late career records are meant to be, and Kilbey argues that Bowie never stopped turning out hits. “‘Under Pressure’ – what an incredible song that is,” he sighs. “He still had it. He’s untouchable. To me in rock’n’roll there’s The Beatles … and there’s David Bowie. There’s no way to top what they all did. And [Bowie] was just the best.”
It’s true that even Bowie’s more maligned albums hold a distinct appeal. For Ladder, strange experiments like the anti-fascist art rock record Tin Machine make Bowie appear more relatable. “It’s fun having relationships with artists that I feel do anger you,” he says. “Like when they release something and you go through their catalogue and say, ‘Why did they do that?’ It’s like when something is happening in your family and you’re asking them, ‘What’s happening?’ I like that. It feels more human.”
Bowie, The Beatles – these people aren’t just musicians. They’re not idle parts of our lives. They help us. They change things. Ladder’s voice goes thick when he tries to sum up his hero’s impact on not only music but the world.
“He meant so much to so many people. So many different things to so many different people. And he spanned so many generations and so many subcultures. He was just a giant. And he broke down so many barriers of what was deemed acceptable or what people were allowed to wear and do and say and how people were allowed to act. He fought against the media and was very helpful in bridging gaps in racism in music.”
Ladder pauses, considering. “It does feel stupid, especially when all these giants keep dying – Prince and Lou Reed and David Bowie – it feels silly to not know those people and feel so sad about it. I felt really cut up … It’s grieving on a mass scale.
“[But] these people ingrain themselves in your life so much. Particularly [because they are] musicians – they’re people who live past their life in this alternate reality. You can just stare at their record covers and listen to their music. They do feel like your family.”
[Main image:David Bowie © Duffy Archive]
David Bowie: Nothing Has Changed feat.Jack Ladder, Steve Kilbey, Deborah Conway, iOTA, Tim Rogers and Adalita runsThursday May 19 – Saturday May 21 at Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House.
