Recently, I wrote an essay on David Bowie for April 2016 issue of a Japanese journal Eureka. At the end of the essay, I reached interesting hypotheses about★(Blackstar) (or the first song “★” in it) and the origin of the name David Bowie, which no one else seemed to have demonstrated yet. So, I would like to share my idea with English readers in the hope to gain comments and criticisms from Bowie fans/scholars. Please help circulating this post widely enough to reach people who know something about Bowie. Thank you!
1) As Simon Critchley and others have already pointed out (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/arts/music/popcast-love-death-and-david-bowie.html?_r=0), the title of the song and the album “★(Blackstar)” comes from Elvis Presley’s song, “Black Star” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0Jkv1cs6PE), which was originally written for a 1960 film of the same working title directed by Don Siegel. Siegel, however, changed the title of the film to Flaming Star, and accordingly, Presley changed the title of his song into the same name. The original song “Blackstar” had not been released to the public until the 1990s. There is no difference between the two songs except that the words that are repeated in the refrain part changed from “black star” into “flaming star.”
2) The Presley song “Blackstar” treats the theme of fatality overshadowing one’s life. Here are the first 8 lines:
Every man has a black star
A black star over his shoulder
And when a man sees his black star
He knows his time, his time has come
Black star don’t shine on me, black star
Black star keep behind me, black star
There’s a lot of livin’ I gotta do
Give me time to make a few dreams come true, black star
(from http://www.metrolyrics.com/black-star-lyrics-elvis-presley.html)
Bowie released his last album just two days before his death, which was surely done on purpose. One can easily imagine that he wrote “★(Blackstar)” while feeling what Elvis called the “black star” (Death) over his shoulder. The theme of death is thus embedded in the Bowie song, which resounds with Bowie’s own death.
3) Now, what is the relationship between Bowie and Presley?
a) Like many other boys who grew up in the 1950s and 60s in Britain, Elvis Presley was the star and young David Jones (the real name of David Bowie) aspired to become like Elvis; as British novelist Hanif Kureishi recollects, in an interview with him held in 1993, Bowie said, “I knew at thirteen […] that I wanted to be English Elvis.”[1]
b) Bowie and Presley have the same birthday, January 8th. Bowie’s final album ★(Blackstar) was released on his 69th birthday. This is another reason why the album is a form of tribute to Presley. Bowie mentioned the happy coincidence at many places including the interview by David Cavanagh for magazine Q in 1997.
Did you know, growing up, that you shared a birthday with Elvis Presley?
“I was absolutely mesmerized by it,” he grins. “I couldn’t believe it. He was a major hero of mine. And I was probably stupid enough to believe that having the same birthday as him actually meant something.”[2]
Bowie thus declared his “stupid” belief that their share of a birthday meant his fatal connection with Presley.
c) About half a year before his death in 1977, Presley “asked Bowie to be his producer.” This was not carried out before Elvis died. See the article:
The article also lets us know that “Bowie was a dedicated Elvis fan, reputed to have an encyclopedic knowledge of Presley’s career …” This is another important point.
4) As we have seen above, Bowie said that “I knew at thirteen […] that I wanted to be English Elvis.” Since he was born in 1947, he turned 13 in the year of 1960. Well, this is the year when Flaming Star was released. Is it “stupid enough to believe that” there is something in this coincidence?
5) By the way, the stage name David Bowie, which he created in 1965, comes from the Bowie knife, the knife that a legendary Texan hero James (Jim) Bowie used in battles of the Texas Revolution. It is a symbolic image, a part of Western/Cowboy myths.
6) With all the facts above in mind, I watched Flaming Star carefully. This is a Western movie, featuring its hero Pacer acted by Elvis Presley, who has the mixed blood of an Indian mother and a white father. He is put into a difficult situation when the conflicts between Indians and whites intensify, because he cannot completely ally with either part of them. He eventually fights against both sides, being completely alienated in the community (Remember that “alienation” was a major theme of David Bowie’s). And one of the important weapons he uses in his fights is the Bowie knife!
Now there are two questions that came up to my mind:
Is it possible to think that the name David Bowie comes from that particular Bowie knife Presley used in the film?
Is it possible to think that the end of his career, ★(Blackstar), refers not only to the death of his star, (i.e. Presley), but also to the birth of his own persona (i.e. Bowie)? Does the end encapsulate the beginning?
I was really mesmerized when I reached such questions. Is it possible for a single human being to shroud himself with such a well-molded set of myth? Can a life of a performer be performative even to the level where the distinction between life and death totally disappear? I don’t know whether my hypothesis about the Bowie knife is true or not, but I believe anyway it is mythologically true to think that the implicit idea of the shining knife that Presley manifested in the film Flaming Star deeply affected the young boy named David Jones, who would later call himself a “starman.”
Mineo Takamura
Associate Professor
English Department
Kobe College
[1] Hanif Kureishi, Collected Essays, London: Faber and Faber, 2011, p.232.
[2] David Cavanagh, “ChangesFiftyBowie,” Q, February 1997. Sean Egan ed. Bowie on Bowie: Interviews and Encounters, Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2015. p.323.