WITH David Bowie’s final curtain-call, followed on Monday by the death of Glenn Frey, we are witnessing the end of an era, writes Neil McCormick.
As the original stars of the explosive rock culture that convulsed the world in the second half of the 20th century are slowly extinguished. We are entering the Twilight of the Rock Gods.
And for a while, at least. I don’t want to tempt fate – indeed, I try not to even think about it – but when Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards eventually shuffle off this mortal coil, we may have to mark the entire rock and roll era as over.
Who knows what forces of collective shock and sadness that will unleash.
Rock’s hedonistic exuberance claimed many sacrificial victims in its earliest days. Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison – founder members of the “27 Club”, a supergroup of influential musicians who died at the same young age and who were most recently joined by Amy Winehouse – were victims of a modern Icarus myth with a moral that’s plain to see.
Elvis Presley died of hubristic excess, the same fate that would later befall the self-styled king of pop, Michael Jackson. Two of the Beatles, John and George, were taken before their time.
But with Bowie dead at 69, and Frey at 67, from here on it is old age that will be doing the reaping. The pages of music magazines are increasingly taken up with obituaries, and rock journalists make gallows humour about being on death watch.
Record companies have departments dedicated to posthumous releases, with regular meetings to assess the health of ageing icons and plan strategies for maximising the commercial impact of whoever might be next to go. When I was invited to hear Bowie’s latest album, Blackstar, in December, I was surprised by how confident his record company were that they had a massive million-seller on their hands.
It struck me as far too complex and abstruse for mainstream commercial appeal, especially in an era of fading record sales. But perhaps they knew something I didn’t.
To some, I suppose, it is all just pop music. Yet a cultural movement that shook the world to its core surely represents something of much greater significance than mere entertainment.
It required a kind of collective hysteria, or perhaps collective fantasy, to raise Elvis up like a king and elevate the Beatles to some kind of four-headed god, fulfilling and expressing unarticulated needs in a post-war era of massive social and psychological upheaval.
It was apparent to me, even as a teenager, that, in our secular age, the colourful pantheon of pop stars that provided so much focus and fascination for idolatry represented something almost supernatural, occupying the same kind of archetypal roles once held by demigods and saints. If so, it is intriguing to speculate what St Bowie might represent.
I could certainly tell you what he means to me, but that might not be the same thing he means to you. Of all the pop stars, he was the most multifarious, an ambiguous shapeshifter wide open to subjective interpretation.
Observing the outpouring of grief and commemoration at his death, it was notable how many people spoke of the way Bowie in his glorious, unabashed strangeness made them feel there was a place for them in the world, no matter what their particular quirks. He had become a secular patron saint of outsiders.
Death must come to all of us, and our response to the deaths of public figures mirrors our own deepest feelings, hopes and fears about mortality.
The impression left by Bowie was of death approached fearlessly, a life fulfilled, Ego and Self utterly reconciled. His beautiful final music suddenly revealed itself as a balm for people’s grief.
The real significance of the Twilight of the Rock Gods is how our symbolic representatives light the way in encroaching darkness. All generations must bury their heroes.
The strangeness of this particular generation’s crossing to the undiscovered country is amplified by rock’s deep correlation with the vitality of perpetual youth. The images and music we still see and hear everywhere rarely represent the giants of rock culture as they are but as they once were, in their glorious prime, with a force so potent they have retained their power for successive generations. Boys who can never grow up make for an unusual vanguard in the hinterland of old age.
In this, as in all things, Bowie has proved an exception and inspiration. His final gift to us – perhaps his most extraordinary contribution to popular culture – was the gift of a good death. — The Sunday Telegraph
Final curtain for giants of rock
As the original stars of the explosive rock culture that convulsed the world in the second half of the 20th century are slowly extinguished. We are entering the Twilight of the Rock Gods.
And for a while, at least. I don’t want to tempt fate – indeed, I try not to even think about it – but when Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards eventually shuffle off this mortal coil, we may have to mark the entire rock and roll era as over.
Who knows what forces of collective shock and sadness that will unleash.
Rock’s hedonistic exuberance claimed many sacrificial victims in its earliest days. Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison – founder members of the “27 Club”, a supergroup of influential musicians who died at the same young age and who were most recently joined by Amy Winehouse – were victims of a modern Icarus myth with a moral that’s plain to see.
Elvis Presley died of hubristic excess, the same fate that would later befall the self-styled king of pop, Michael Jackson. Two of the Beatles, John and George, were taken before their time.
But with Bowie dead at 69, and Frey at 67, from here on it is old age that will be doing the reaping. The pages of music magazines are increasingly taken up with obituaries, and rock journalists make gallows humour about being on death watch.
Record companies have departments dedicated to posthumous releases, with regular meetings to assess the health of ageing icons and plan strategies for maximising the commercial impact of whoever might be next to go. When I was invited to hear Bowie’s latest album, Blackstar, in December, I was surprised by how confident his record company were that they had a massive million-seller on their hands.
It struck me as far too complex and abstruse for mainstream commercial appeal, especially in an era of fading record sales. But perhaps they knew something I didn’t.
To some, I suppose, it is all just pop music. Yet a cultural movement that shook the world to its core surely represents something of much greater significance than mere entertainment.
It required a kind of collective hysteria, or perhaps collective fantasy, to raise Elvis up like a king and elevate the Beatles to some kind of four-headed god, fulfilling and expressing unarticulated needs in a post-war era of massive social and psychological upheaval.
It was apparent to me, even as a teenager, that, in our secular age, the colourful pantheon of pop stars that provided so much focus and fascination for idolatry represented something almost supernatural, occupying the same kind of archetypal roles once held by demigods and saints. If so, it is intriguing to speculate what St Bowie might represent.
I could certainly tell you what he means to me, but that might not be the same thing he means to you. Of all the pop stars, he was the most multifarious, an ambiguous shapeshifter wide open to subjective interpretation.
Observing the outpouring of grief and commemoration at his death, it was notable how many people spoke of the way Bowie in his glorious, unabashed strangeness made them feel there was a place for them in the world, no matter what their particular quirks. He had become a secular patron saint of outsiders.
Death must come to all of us, and our response to the deaths of public figures mirrors our own deepest feelings, hopes and fears about mortality.
The impression left by Bowie was of death approached fearlessly, a life fulfilled, Ego and Self utterly reconciled. His beautiful final music suddenly revealed itself as a balm for people’s grief.
The real significance of the Twilight of the Rock Gods is how our symbolic representatives light the way in encroaching darkness. All generations must bury their heroes.
The strangeness of this particular generation’s crossing to the undiscovered country is amplified by rock’s deep correlation with the vitality of perpetual youth. The images and music we still see and hear everywhere rarely represent the giants of rock culture as they are but as they once were, in their glorious prime, with a force so potent they have retained their power for successive generations. Boys who can never grow up make for an unusual vanguard in the hinterland of old age.
In this, as in all things, Bowie has proved an exception and inspiration. His final gift to us – perhaps his most extraordinary contribution to popular culture – was the gift of a good death. — The Sunday Telegraph
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