Pause for thought
Marcus Berkmann With ever longer gaps between albums, it's becoming difficult to identify which rock stars are just having a quick lie-down, and which are actually missing in action. Retirement: now that is a bold career move. There must be a few old rockers currently eyeing the example of Joni Mitchell, who retired very noisily some years ago, saying she'd had it up to here with the music business, and is now back with a new album, a ballet, a new range of Joni action figures and maybe a fragrance or two to follow. It's probably more sensible just to ease quietly out of the picture, which at least gives you the option of easing quietly back in again a few years later.
In which case, what is going on with David Bowie? It's four years now since his last studio album, Reality, the second of two recorded in quick succession with Tony Visconti, who produced many of his best 1970s records. In Mojo earlier this year, Visconti said that he and Bowie hadn't worked together since, 'though we're email buddies and I hear from him every week'. In 2003, while touring Reality, Bowie had a minor heart attack and emergency angioplasty. Since then he has turned up here and there, recording the odd song for film soundtracks and popping up on stage with David Gilmour and, as it happens, the Arcade Fire. According to the film director Darren Aronofsky, Bowie is working on a rock-opera adaptation of the comic book Watchmen. Which may just be a joke. (When rock stars make it known that they are working on rock-opera adaptations of comic books, I suspect that what they are really saying is: 'I'm just off for a swim, and afterwards I'll have a cup of tea.') But sometime in the past couple of weeks — and I wish I could remember where — I have read that Bowie doesn't really feel like making music at the moment. Instead he is doing a little painting. Canvases, bathrooms, that sort of thing. And why not? He has no need to work. No one is nagging him for a new album. There's no rush. He's only 60. Years and years left.
I went back to the albums, as you do in these circumstances. According to Wikipedia, David Bowie has sold 136 million albums, a fair number of them to me. There's nothing very new to be said about most of them, especially the great albums of the 1970s. I still return again and again to Heroes, the second of the Berlin trilogy and, to my ears, a perfect record. And this time I have been listening a lot to 1980's Scaly Monsters, which is patchier but has such wondrous variety, and is utterly of itself, like all the best Bowie albums. Somehow, many of the 1980s and 1990s records seem to have disappeared from my collection, although I hadn't noticed it until now. The crucial listen, though, was to Heathen, from 2002, the first of the Visconti reunions. It's all right. The tunes aren't bad. But unlike even the worst 1990s recordings, Heathen sounds like David Bowie trying to record a David Bowie album. It's a little like Hunky Doty, a little like Ziggy Stardust. It sold quite well. Does anyone play it now, when Hunky Doty or Ziggy Stardust are also on the shelf? Does even David Bowie play it now?
It may be, of course, that Bowie is preparing something big and exciting and groundbreaking and he just hasn't told anyone about it yet. But suppose not. Suppose it dawned on him, after that heart attack, that the game was up. He had always done exactly what he had wanted, and people gradually stopped listening. Now he did what the people wanted, but they didn't want it after all. There's only so far you can go, even with the most extraordinary talent. So is Bowie taking time off or has he stopped for good? And will we ever know for sure?
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