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- [00:00]
Alan Cross
Hey, it's Alan and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music. Early and ad free on Amazon. Music included with prime Coca Cola for.
- [00:11]
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- [00:40]
Alan Cross
The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft. But LifeLock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our US based restoration specialists will fix it, guaranteed your money back. Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with LifeLock. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit LifeLock.com podcast terms apply. Every once in a while, we encounter a person who turns out to be very, very important to the evolution of life on earth. There are religious figures. Jesus, the Buddha, Muhammad. Scientists like Isaac Newton, Galileo, Einstein. We have inventors. Kao Lund, the inventor of paper. Johann Gutenberg, who gave us the printing press. Tim Berners Lee, who came up with the concept of the Internet. What about music? Well, there are a lot of those. Elvis, Chuck Berry, the Beatles, Dylan, Marley, Hendrix, Prince. And David Bowie. David Bowie lived a thousand lifetimes in his 69 years. He moved at an accelerated rate, especially through the 1970s. But when he shattered norms, confounded expectations, and wasn't afraid to constantly rip everything up and start again, we never knew what Bowie was going to do next. And when he did it, it was something we couldn't imagine we needed in music. And this happened again and again and again. I read someone who said that Bowie was like an old school explorer who dared sail to distant lands and then brought back treasures beyond our imaginations. He was a great autodidact. He absorbed everything. Music, art, painting, books, film, fashion, technology. And then spun it together for us. And he looked so cool doing it. And here's the wild thing. Even though he's been gone for a while, we're still learning about what he did and what he meant to music and beyond. There was, and may never be again, anyone like him. This is part three of why David Bowie still matters.
- [02:51]
This is the ongoing history of New Music podcast with Alan Cross.
- [03:05]
Breathe out in a moon age daydream.
- [03:08]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
Okay.
- [03:13]
Alan Cross
David Bowie from his groundbreaking Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars album from 1972. It seems that with each passing year, that record is held in higher and higher esteem. Damn, that's an influential record. Bowie ascended from this Earth on January 10, 2016. Since then, discussions and analysis of his career have ticked up dramatically. Documentaries, biographies, books, movies. They number the dozens I have on my shelves. No fewer than 19 books on David Bowie. There are a dozen more in my Kindle app, and that's still a tiny fraction of what has been written on the man, his music, his work and his influence. The only other artist with that kind of volume of, well, volumes is the Beatles. Clearly, David Bowie mattered while he was alive, and he still matters today. Welcome again, I'm Alan Cross and this is the third and final chapter in a series called why David Bowie still matters. The first two thirds covered Bowie's rise, his golden years of the 1970s, his mainstream superstar period of the 1980s, and his experiments of the early 1990s. This time we'll cover the important things Bowie did over the last 20 years of his life and why those things still matter. Bowie started his professional music career in 1963 and never stopped looking for what was next. In February 1997, he released Earthling, his 21st studio album, about a month after a 50th birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden, which was a big pay per view event. As always, he was attuned to what was going on around him. He'd become interested in various new genres of dance music, including industrial, techno, jungle and drum and bass. We touched on this record last time with his collaboration with Trent Reznor on the single I'm Afraid of Americans. There are two views of this record. The first is that it's old hat, recycled stuff. Drum and bass was already a thing when Bowie incorporated it on this album. So was techno and industrial and jungle. Or you can look at it as Bowie giving his official recognition to these genres, which is never a bad thing, and consider it a pretty fine representation of Bowie's work in the final part of his career. Again, as it was many times in the past. Time is key. Time allows for re evaluation. And honestly, Earthling is a good record.
- [05:40]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
Intergalactic seeming to be good.
- [05:50]
You little ones a little one for you.
- [05:54]
Alan Cross
By the time we get to 1996 and 1997, something else from the future piqued Bowie's interest. It was this new thing called the Internet. If you were around back then, the online world was still very, very new. We were using terms like electronic mail and the information superhighway it was a world of windsock dial up modems, excruciatingly slow Downloads, bulletin boards, AOL, CompuServe and all kinds of ancient stuff. It was still pretty much the domain of nerds not ready for mainstream by any stretch of the imagination. But Bowie got it right away. He realized that the Internet was going to change everything about everything, including music. This is bowie in a BBC interview in 1999. Listen carefully to what he says.
- [06:41]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
But what is it specifically about the Internet? I mean, anybody can say anything.
- [06:47]
Alan Cross
And.
- [06:47]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
It all adds up to what I mean. It seems to me there's nothing cohesive.
- [06:52]
Alan Cross
About it in the way that there.
- [06:53]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
Was something cohesive about the youth revolution in music. Oh, but absolutely. And because I think that we at the time, up until at least the mid-70s, really felt that we were still living under the.
- [07:08]
In the guise of a single and absolute created society where there were known truths and known lies and there was no kind of duplicity or pluralism about the things that we believed in. That started to break down rapidly in the 70s and the idea of a duality in the way that we live. There are always two, three, four, five sides to every question. That the singularity disappeared. And that I believe, has produced such a medium as the Internet, which absolutely establishes and shows us that we are living in total fragmentation. I don't think we've even seen the tip of the iceberg. I think the potential of what the Internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable. I think we're actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying. It's just a tool though, isn't it? No, it's not. No. Now it's an alien life form. What do you think?
- [08:16]
Alan Cross
I mean, when you think then about.
- [08:19]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
Is there life on Mars? Yes, it's just landed here, but that's.
- [08:23]
Alan Cross
It's simply a different delivery system there.
- [08:26]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
You're arguing about something more profound.
- [08:27]
Alan Cross
Oh yeah.
- [08:28]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
I'm talking about the actual context and the state of content is going to be so different to anything that we can really envisage at the moment where the interplay between the user and the provider will be so in sympatico, it's going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about.
- [08:49]
Alan Cross
Again, That's Bowie in 1999. He knew what he was talking about because he'd been going online since the late 1980s. That's when he first started using email. And that's before the public Internet opened up in 1996. He made a song available for download with the support of his label, Virgin Records, who also saw where things were going. Bowie, they thought, was the perfect testbed for this. He wasn't the first to offer a song through a download, as some people will point out, Aerosmith released a song called headfirst in June 1994, making them the first major label artist to offer a song this way. But that was just an experiment. When Bowie did it, he saw it as the first step towards the future. The song is Telling Lies. It was revealed during an online chat. Still a mind blowing thing back then, because you could interact with an artist as big as Bowie in real time on your computer from your house. And this was in September 1996. It was all text, of course, but in the context of the day, it was total magic. Bowie even engaged in some deep fake fun back then. If you logged on to the chat, you were confronted with three people pretending to be Bowie. At the end of it, fans were asked to vote on which of the three Bowie's was the real one. And one account has it that the real Bowie finished third. On September 11, three versions of the song were available at around seven megabytes. It must have taken forever to download. If you had a fast dial up, you could expect to have this song on your computer in about 50 minutes. One song, 50 minutes. However, more than 300,000 people did it. No one expected that kind of uptake. Was Bowie right? Spoiler yes.
- [10:51]
Ten days after Telling Lies was released online, the entire Earthling album was made available that way. And this was the first time any major artist offered a full album for download. The hook was that fans could get the album four months early this way. The success of the Telling Lies and Earthling downloads got Bowie thinking. For the next couple of years, he and a team of a couple of guys worked to create bowienet. And it wasn't just a webpage. It was an honest to God Internet provider. Users got an avidbowie.com email address along with all kinds of access to all kinds of material that only existed online. Songs, music videos, chat rooms, images of his paintings, writings from his journals, and so on. Access wasn't free. You could subscribe to Bowienet for 20 bucks a month, which meant you used it to access the Internet that was your Internet provider through Bowie. If you already had an Internet provider, you could pay 6 bucks a month and gain access to davidbowie.com Bowie was known to lurk anonymously, so fans probably interacted with him without knowing. In 1999, Bowienet held a song contest. 80,000 people submitted lyrics hoping that they would get an official co write on a Bowie song. And the winner was Alex Grant, a 20 year old American. This was the winner, which appeared on Bowie's 1999 album Hours.
- [12:32]
Bowienet was incredibly ahead of its time. There was a section called liveandwell.com which gave members access to live tracks. Then there was Bowie World, a 3D virtual environment. This is 1997 and 1998. In this 3D environment, you assumed the identity of an avatar and you walked through a city that was decorated with images of Bowie. You could communicate with other Bowie fans in the environment and just basically immerse yourself in all things Bowie. I can't emphasize this enough. 1999, at its peak, Bowie had 100,000 customers and it had a good run. BowieNet stopped operating in 2006, eclipsed by all the big companies who figured out what Bowie was doing and copied him. Meanwhile, though, Bowie only got deeper into the Internet as technology improved. BowieNet rip it up and start again. Bowie also saw the writing on the wall in another way. He took on Wall street and won. That story is next.
- [13:35]
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- [14:36]
Alan Cross
This is the third and final chapter in a series called why David Bowie Still Matters. We're going through all the ways he changed things, how he set the tone and how he foresaw the future. Today, the biggest deals in the music business involve well capitalized companies who are buying up the catalogs and publishing rights of major artists. Imagine dragons made $100 million this way. Bob Dylan made 300 million. Springsteen sold his catalog for over 500 million, Queen got over a billion. The thinking is that a great song will always be a great song. Handled properly, it will generate income for decades. The companies buy the rights to an artist's songs, giving them the money that they would have earned 25, 50, 100 years into the future. It's then up to the company to make back that purchase price and then turn a profit for its shareholders. It's a really long play. But Bowie saw this coming in 1997, and the financial world now calls what he did Bowie bonds. And let me explain. A Bowie bond is a security, a financial instrument. Bowie put his music royalties, his intellectual property, up, up as collateral that backed the creation and sale of bonds. He then used the proceeds from the sale of those bonds to people who thought they could make money off this to buy the rights to his music that he had lost in previous bad management deals. This was the first time in financial history that a performer had used their cash flow potential to make money. Bowie was helped by a banker named David Pullman to pull this off. Bowie bonds were issued in 1997, a few years before the music industry would be ravaged by music piracy and declining physical sales. Bowie saw that coming, so he wanted to squeeze money out of his music before that happened. Selling these bonds did it. He netted $55 million by forfeiting any rights to royalties from his songs for 10 years. And that money went straight into his bank account. At first, these bonds were highly rated and considered to be a very good investment. I mean, this was Bowie, right? 25 albums, 287 songs, all recorded before 1990. In other words, all his best and most famous stuff. At that time, Bowie's albums were collectively selling a million copies a year, mostly as high margin CDs. The Prudential Insurance Company was all over this and bought them all the bonds, paid an interest rate of 7.9% and had a lifetime of, like I said, 10 years. At the time, that was a better deal than buying a U.S. treasury note. Interest was paid by the cash flow of royalties generated by the sale of these Bowie songs. Again, Bowie took his $55 million and bought songs that were owned by his old manager, Tony De Vries, which erased that bad deal that he had signed in the 70s. And frankly, back then he was pretty coked out. He didn't know what he was doing. But within 18 months or so of the issuance of the Bowie bond, the music industry tanked. Napster, piracy, MP3s, the collapse of physical music sales, even a flood of Compilations, box sets and reissues didn't help. The ratings of the bonds went from an A3, which is the seventh highest, to Baa3, which is a hair above junk status. Why lower than expected revenue for music sales in 2007, per the agreement, the bonds were liquidated and all the rights to all that music reverted back back to Bowie. And by the time he died in 2016, he owned pretty much everything he ever produced. Other artists tried the same thing. James Brown, the songwriting team of Holland Dozier, Holland, the Isley Brothers, Ashford and Simpson, even the guy who wrote songs like I Love Rock and Roll for Joan Jett, and another songwriter who wrote songs for Rod Stewart and Tupac. The practice of Bowie bonds is no longer used because they're too risky. Now companies like Roundhill, Primary Wave and Concord permanently buy up catalogs, which gives them a very long Runway to make their money back through various means. But let's not forget the first guy to see this coming, and the first guy to act on it was David Bowie. And here is one of the songs he was able to buy back with this shrewd bit of financial chicanery.
- [19:05]
As the 20th century drew to a close, Bowie's output slowed. The Hours album was released in 1999, and it wasn't until June 2002 that he released Heathen. It marked the first time since 1980 that he worked with producer Tony Visconti, the guy behind so many of those great albums of the 70s. They hadn't spoken in 20 years for some reason, but managed to reconcile. No wonder, then, that the album felt somewhat like a 70s record. Very art rock, very art pop, along with some of the dystopianism and dread heard on records like Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs and Station to Station. It was affected by the 911 attacks. Remember, Bowie was living in New York at the time, and by the birth of his daughter Alexandria, plus the death of his beloved mother, it wasn't a rehash of old stuff. A better description would be an update of what he'd done earlier in his career. Critics called it the best thing he'd done since scary monsters 22 years earlier. And the record did very well. It hit number 14 in the US, the best since the Tonight album in 1984. It reached number nine in Canada and number five in the UK. There are some great performances on the album. Pete Townsend of the who is on a song called Slow Burn, which was the first single, and Dave Grohl plays guitar on this Canada only single entitled I've Been Waiting for your, which reached number 11 on the singles charts. The whole thing was a welcome return to form. Almost 50 years after his first record, Bowie proved he was still relevant.
- [20:33]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
I've been waiting for you.
- [20:37]
And you've been coming to me for such a long time now.
- [20:47]
Alan Cross
There was a tour for his next album, Reality, which appeared in 2003, but it would be his last large scale road trip. If he had any underlying health problems, they started to make themselves known. In June 2004, he was on stage at the Hurricane Festival in Germany when he felt a pain in his shoulder. Ah, nothing but a pinched nerve, he told himself. He was able to finish the show, but the pain kept getting worse. It was so bad that he ended up in the hospital. It was a heart attack right there on stage, caused by a minor coronary artery occlusion, a blocked artery. He had an emergency angioplasty, which cleared things up for the moment. And for the very first time in his entire career, he canceled a major tour because of his health. Bowie recovered but withdrew. We wouldn't see him in public for quite some time. And then.
- [21:41]
Well, things got worse.
- [21:47]
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- [22:46]
Alan Cross
After his 2004 heart attack, Bowie became something of a ghost. He continued to live in New York City, and plenty of people knew where he lived. It was a penthouse at 285 Lafayette street in the SoHo Nolita area. As you might expect, it was a lovely place, filled with fine, expensive art, tastefully decorated and with an interior crafted by architects and designers from Europe. Direct elevator access, 11 foot ceilings, a big library four bedrooms, four bathrooms, three terraces. The whole thing ran over 5,100 square feet. The primary bedroom alone was 1,000 square feet. The great room was 56 by 22ft. And this would be Bowie's home until he died. When he went out, people tended to leave him alone. One trick was to wear sunglasses and a hat and carry a Greek language newspaper in full view under his arm. If anyone thought they saw Bowie, the paper immediately threw them off. Why would David Bowie be reading a Greek newspaper? Must be someone who just looked like Bowie. But go up he did, sometimes alone, sometimes with his wife and mom and his daughter. He loved hanging out in Washington Park Square, which was nearby. Bowie did perform a handful of times, but the very last time was on May 19, 2007, when his friend Ricky Gervais played a show at Madison Square Garden. If you remember the series Extras, Ricky's character is humiliated by a real life Bowie improvising a song based on him called Little Fat Man. And for this Madison Square Gardens appearance, he just walked out on stage unannounced and started singing. Before introducing Ricky Gervais.
- [24:34]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
So depressed at being useless, Fatty blows his face off.
- [24:44]
Blows his bloating face face on. But the title probably misses.
- [25:31]
Alan Cross
Again. May 19, 2007 and that would be the last time David Bowie ever appeared singing on stage. He was still making music though. However, it was on his schedule and on his terms. He switched from being a musician who recorded albums and toured behind them to someone who just worked in a studio. No one knew what he was up to, if anything. Had he retired, what was his health like? Would we ever hear from Bowie again? As it turned out, Bowie was preparing for a comeback and he did it all in secret. How did Bowie, one of the most famous musicians the world had ever seen, manage that? He was working with Tony Visconti again. Tony can keep a secret. So could Bowie's trusted coterie of musicians, all of whom signed non disclosure agreements. His family kept schtum. So could all the people working at the studio where Bowie went almost every day. When he was around, there was just a skeleton staff, no hangers on, no unnecessary people in the building. At the magic shop name of the studio, which was literally steps from his apartment, Bowie had no employees. His office had a headcount of just one, the fiercely loyal Coco Schwab, who had been working for him as a personal assistant since the mid-1970s. He had no manager outside of Bill Zeisblatt, his business person. They'd worked with each other for decades. There was no record Company pressure. He was signed to Sony, but they knew better than to push him. Bowie understood the Internet. All he'd have to do is drop one hint online and the entire world would know he was back. No need to bother with any massive record label marketing campaign that would have required dozens of people to be in on the secret. And then there was plain misdirection. Bowie hadn't released an album since 2003, and frankly, nothing was expected of him. But between 2011 and 2012, he recorded 29 brand new songs. I remember the day when the news came out. It was January 8, 2013, the day Bowie turned 66. A song called Where Are They Now? Casually appeared online and the whole world screamed at once, what? Bowie is back? Yes. Yes, he was. And he was in fine, fine form.
- [27:44]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
Where are we now? Where are we now?
- [28:02]
Alan Cross
Two months after that single came out, an album entitled the Next Day appeared. It was March 8, 2013. The artwork was a cheeky takeoff of his Heroes album from 1977. It debuted at number one in the UK, number two in the US and number two in Canada. Critics put it up there with his best work, certainly the best thing he did since, I don't know, scary monsters in 1980, it was even nominated for a couple of Grammys. I read this somewhere. The greatest trick Bowie ever pulled was convincing the world he'd retired. And the release of the Next Day was another first. It was the first of a series of surprise albums recorded and released by superstar acts in the 2010s. Think Beyonce, who became known for doing this sort of thing. Did she do it before Bowie? Nope. So Bowie was back, right? We could expect things to get back to normal? Well, no. Sometime in 2014, Bowie was diagnosed with liver cancer, probably stemming from all the abuse it took when he was in his alcoholic phase back in the 1970s. No one knew except those closest to him. Bowie must have known that time was running out, because he threw himself into his work. There were songs for a Broadway musical based on SpongeBob SquarePants, which somehow seems like a very Bowie thing to do. He did some soundtrack work for television. There was a musical called Lazarus and one more studio album. Okay, wait, back up. Bowie's health declined steadily after his 2014 diagnosis, and we can extrapolate that from the tone and feel of his last album, Blackstar. It was heavy on themes of mortality and death. Looking back, we can tell that he knew it would be his farewell, a parting gift. And it was like he tried to jam everything he loved about music into one record. It has elements of art, rock, jazz and a variety of experimental approaches. And the way of timing its release was pure Bowie. The album again, Black Star, was announced in November 2015 and set the release for January 8, 2016, which would be Bowie's 69th birthday. In between was the Broadway premiere for the Lazarus musical, which he attended on December 7. And this would be the last time he would be seen in public. Three months before Blackstar came out, he learned that his cancer had spread and it was terminal. Treatment was stopped. But as weak as he was, Bowie kept pushing ahead. He was already making plans for a sequel to the Lazarus musical. Blackstar came out on schedule that night. January 8, 2016. Tony Visconti and Spiders From Mars drummer Woody Woodmanzie performed the man who Sold the World at a club in New York under the name Holy Holy. This was the first show of a multi city tour. Word is that Bowie was going to make an appearance, but at the last minute decided not to, probably because his health wouldn't allow it. Instead, he took a phone call from the stage and the entire crowd sang Happy Birthday to him. I can't say for sure, but one story I heard was that Bowie apologized to Tony and Woody, saying that he would make it up to them by appearing at the next show, which was in Toronto the following Tuesday. That would never happen. On Sunday, January 10, 2016, Bowie, exhausted from the cancer, lay down for an afternoon nap and died again, very Bowie. He hung on until this last album was released and his birthday. And then after that his job was done. This was the BBC. Some breaking news to us just now. This morning.
- [31:41]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
It's been confirmed that David Burry, singer.
- [31:45]
Alan Cross
And musician, has died at the age.
- [31:47]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
Of 69 this morning.
- [31:49]
Alan Cross
Yes, that news just in the last couple of moments or so. A report saying that he had been suffering from cancer. A career, of course, so many of you will know David Bowie, spanning several decades had a profound influence, didn't he, on music and fashion and also as well a really successful acting career as well. But that sad news this morning just reported, it's been confirmed that the British pop star David Bowie has died at.
- [32:15]
Commercial Announcer
The age of 69.
- [32:17]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
Yes, it's been confirmed by his publicist this morning and online by his son Duncan Jones.
- [32:23]
Alan Cross
And this was from ITV in Britain.
- [32:26]
Commercial Announcer
Well, it's just after 7 o' clock.
- [32:28]
Alan Cross
And our main news this morning are the reports that David Bowie has died.
- [32:32]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
Peacefully in his sleep at his home in New York.
- [32:36]
Alan Cross
He was 69 years old and died.
- [32:38]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
Apparently after an 18 month battle with cancer.
- [32:40]
Alan Cross
According to A statement on his official Facebook page.
- [32:43]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
In the last few moments, we saw.
- [32:45]
Alan Cross
Coverage like that around the world. Within an hour of his death, he was the subject of 20,000 tweets a minute. And to no one's surprise, Blackstar sold like crazy. And get this, Blackstar became his only album to ever reach number one on the Billboard 200.
- [33:06]
Interviewer / David Bowie (archival audio)
Look up here I'm in heaven.
- [33:13]
I've got scars that can't be seen.
- [33:18]
Alan Cross
Fans spent much time going through the Black Star record to see what Bowie left behind. And there were plenty of Easter eggs. The COVID features a big black star on a white background. Below it, a star is cut into five pieces, and if you look carefully, you'll see that those pieces spell out Bowie. If you expose the vinyl itself to a beam of light, it gives off a reflection that looks like a star. Some people see a bird, which also kind of works in light of the circumstances. If you expose the COVID to sunlight, the star fades and it becomes filled with a starry sky. You put it under black light and it shines like a star at night. Some fans noted that the CD smells like black licorice when you first open it. One of the fonts used on the back of the sleeve is known as and I'm not making this up as Terminal. Draw whatever conclusions you want from that. Oh, and the font belongs to a design suite named Lazarus. Open up the gatefold liner, and Bowie's image on the right is reflected in an eerie way onto the star field on the left. Speaking of which, if you connect the biggest stars in that star field, you'll end up with a stick figure. So Starman? Sure, why not? There are other things lurking just waiting to be found. So, like Bowie. Don't explain. Just allow the wonder of discovery. When Bowie died, there were tributes around the world. The building on Lafayette street where he lived became a shrine. There's a mural of him in Brixton, where he was born, and that became another shrine. Other tributes popped up in Berlin, Los Angeles and other cities. There was no funeral, as per Bowie's instructions. According to the death certificate, he was cremated and his ashes were taken to Bali, where some Buddhist rituals were performed. It's not known exactly where his ashes were spread, but a couple of guesses are Almapura, on the eastern coast of the island, and the Sideman Fields, which are a little further inland. Bowie had been to both places and loved them. He was a very, very big fan of Balinese design. His estate at the time of his death was worth about $100 million. Most went to his wife and two kids. Two million went to his faithful employee Coco Schwab. Another million was gifted to his friend Marion Skene, who was his son Duncan's nanny. We have spent three episodes talking about all the things Bowie did, and we could do another three about his painting, his love of art collecting, his movie career, his philanthropy, his views on spirituality and religion, his politics, fashion, and his writing. One of the saddest things is that Bowie never got around to writing his autobiography. He promised he'd do it one day, but he just ran out of time. Who knows? Maybe there's something lurking somewhere. David Bowie was and remains one of the most influential musicians ever. You can even argue that because of his ability to constantly reinvent himself, he may have influenced more musical genres than anyone, even the Beatles. His DNA can be found in glam punk, art rock, folk, hard rock, grunge, industrial music, electronic music of all flavors, indie rock and even hip hop. And I love this. When he died, the German Federal Foreign Office thanked Bowie for his role in the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall. Bowie also brought a level of sophistication to rock that we hadn't seen before and really haven't seen since. This is still being studied with documentaries and biopics and music exhibits. He's still finding new fans among younger generations, and they are being influenced by not just his work, but his life. He's in the Rock and Roll hall of Fame. He's in the Songwriters hall of Fame. He's in the Science Fiction and Fantasy hall of Fame. The BBC once named him the best dressed Briton in history. There's a species of spider after him. Of course there is. The Asteroid Belt has a chunk of rock called 342843. David Bowie. He's been on British postal stamps. There's a statue of him in the British town of Aylesbury, the place where he first introduced Ziggy Stardust. And there's a street in Paris named after him. I think I could go on, but I probably have made my point. I want to end this program with a thought. In the age of artificial intelligence, machines and computer programs cannot pump out legends like Bowie. And if AI Continues to get smarter, will we ever have another Bowie from anywhere? I don't know. I will say this, though. If Bowie were still alive, I guarantee you he would be using AI as some sort of tool. Just imagine what he might have done with it. So, yes, David Bowie still matters. And he will continue to matter for a long, long time to come. If you missed the first two chapters of this look at Bowie. You can get them as podcasts wherever downloads are available. Just pick one. And there are hundreds, yes, hundreds of ongoing history of new music programs available as podcasts. They're all free. And while you're there, grab a few episodes of Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. That's my Music meets True Crime podcast. Let me know what you think of that. We can connect on most of the social media networks, I'm always updating my website with music news and information. That's a journal of musicalthings.com and it comes with a free newsletter. And of course you can always email me about anything. I'm available through AlanLancross CA Technical Productions by Rob Johnston I'm Alan Cross.
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