David Bowie – Ashes to Ashes, a career of surprising twists
If you are a fan of David Bowie, as I am, you are probably familiar with many of the characters – and art – that he created over his long career.
There was ‘Major Tom’, the astronaut. There was ‘Ziggy Stardust’. ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’ then begat the ‘thin white duke’ of the mid-70s Berlin and LA period. Bowie reinvented himself as often as he changed physical locales.
In the late 70's Bowie – as peripatetic as any rock star in history – moved to New York where he lived on my uncle’s block in Chelsea, then a rough part of town (alas there is now huge Whole Foods on the next block). I never saw him on 26th street, but in 1980 I did see him on Broadway, as ‘The Elephant Man’. That was a first and of course he was there.
The early 1980s were very kind to the chameleonic crooner. His 1980 album ‘Scary Monsters’ reached #1 on the UK charts and the hit ‘Ashes to Ashes’ produced a reprise to his ‘Space Oddity’ hit, as well as some ground-breaking videos that still stand out today. In 1983 he harnessed the power of Stevie Ray Vaughn and released ‘Let’s Dance’, a multi-platinum release that topped the charts in many countries.
The ‘Let’s Dance’ persona was something different. More than any other character, the performer that Bowie became with this album was more VEGAS, more flashy than anything before, even if it traded its face paint for threads straight out of the international male catalog. This Bowie filled stadiums.
After that album and tour, you don’t hear much about Bowie the ground-breaking artist. He continued to churn out albums but none of them met the commercial or artistic standards set by ‘Scary Monsters’ or ‘Let’s Dance’. He didn’t stop trying and released his last album in Jan 2016 on his birthday, right before his death from cancer.
Despite the lack of new hits or musical innovation, Bowie continued to be a mainstay in the radio and among musicians looking for an influence.
With a strong back catalog that he owned – unlike many artists – David Bowie launched his last major reinvention in 1997 – he became a ‘financial engineer’.
David Bowie was the first artist to ‘securitise’ his back catalog, basically creating a bond, selling them against a 7.5% interest payment based on royalties. Using this mechanism he raised almost $60 million in 1997. Other artists followed his lead. Again he was an innovator.
But of course innovators sometimes get disrupted. As the CD-era waned and the MP3 era emerged, people stopped buying CDs and other forms of recorded music. Royalties for most recording artists’ back catalogs took a hit.
Still, you can imagine that with the new streaming services Bowie is still paying bond holders and that as more people seek great music, they won’t ‘look back in anger’ when they consider what David Bowie contributed to music, art and to, surprisingly, finance.
