That David Bowie went through so many changes meant that you could have “your” David Bowie even if you didn’t keep up with all the ins and outs of his long career.

The David Bowie who hooked me was the Bowie of Lodger, looking back to Low and forward to Let’s Dance. This was the male, sober, sensible-artist Bowie, a trim man in a good suit or jeans and a bomber jacket; the Bowie who skipped London for Berlin and New York; the Bowie who brought Lou Reed into the mainstream  and then coaxed John Lennon back into the public eye through “Fame” and “Heroes” and through his model of rock-star-as-adult (that bomber jacket); the Bowie who, a little later, rolled through the nightclubs of lower Manhattan with David Byrne and Brian Eno; the Bowie who, earlier and better than anybody else, made the vital connection between art music and dance music, between the gallery and the the disco – and yet who was rock-and-roll enough to hire Stevie Ray Vaughan as his guitarist for Let’s Dance.

David Bowie was the first rock star who belonged to the Seventies and not the Sixties – and so who belonged to people our age, not the people older than us who made the Sixties seem the be-all and end-all.

Just last week, he still did belong to us.   When Lenora and I were married in 2000, we reached out to some music people, asking them to recommend a pianist whom we could ask to play at our wedding reception – a real musician who would play real music, stuff he liked, and not wedding-reception stuff.    

Jason Lindner played piano in Tribeca that hundred-degree day.   Years and years passed, as he furthered his career as a pianist and bandleader around New York – in such a way that when David Bowie walked into the 55 Bar on Houston Street one night last year, Jason and his bandmates were playing.    One thing led to another, and they wound up playing on Blackstar, Bowie’s new and last record.  

“Ashes to ashes / funk to funky”: there’s the career in a few words.   A verse from the same song is a text-message before the fact:

They got a message from the Action Man

“I’m happy. Hope you’re happy, too.

I’ve loved. All I’ve needed: love.

Sordid details following.

Bowie was the first rock star who didn’t grow up in public: through all his changes, he was an adult all along.  

He wasn’t one of us, that man from Mars; but he belonged to us – still does.

The photograph shows Bowie with Brian Eno and Robert Fripp during the recording of “Heroes” in 1977.