It’s easy to remember the moment that changed me. It was listening to Hunky Dory for the first time, shortly after 6pm on Wednesday 27 March 1996. Until then, my life had been somewhat disparate and rootless. I didn’t know who on earth I was, and it wasn’t good. After listening to Bowie, my life was still somewhat disparate and rootless and I still didn’t know who on earth I was, and it was great.
I immediately became a pretty scarily obsessive Bowie fan and, 20 years later, I still am. But that’s not the most interesting change for me. The real change was the realisation that it’s OK to be something of a mess. My life hadn’t been especially difficult, but its elements had been wildly diverse. My family life was undoubtedly privileged, and we’d go on lovely holidays, and my Highgate-dwelling grandpa would take me for tea at the Athenaeum and to West End shows; but I spent my formative years living on a deprived council estate in Swindon, where vandalism and violence were never far away, where glue-sniffers stalked the streets, where my primary school classmates indulged in solvent abuse and sex. I wasn’t really “from” anywhere, either – I was born in Peterborough but left when I was two. Moving to an impoverished former mining area in north Derbyshire when I was 11 magnified my sense of isolation and alienation.
I wasn’t especially unhappy as adolescents go, but I had no idea what or who I was. I wasn’t one of those self-assured “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” types who seem so prevalent growing up, so I thought there must be something wrong with me. But I’d been aware for years of the power of music, which had sustained me through many difficult nights and weeks, and had often raided a collection of tapes belonging to my brother, eight years my senior. I was also dimly aware of David Bowie: as a child growing up in the 1980s, I had obviously seen Labyrinth. So I randomly grabbed a Bowie album called Hunky Dory, put it in my tape player, donned my headphones and changed my life.
Here was music that celebrated uncertainty, rootlessness, inner chaos, difference, otherness, doubt, impermanence. And it did so with beauty, style and charisma. I was hooked by the first line: “Still don’t know what I was waiting for”. By the time I got to “Don’t believe in yourself, don’t deceive with belief”, I was essentially a different person. I just got what the whole thing was about: you’re a hundred things at once? That’s great! Life needn’t be either/or - it can be both/and. In the space of a few minutes, I learned that being mercurial and fluid and unexpected didn’t mean you were gauche or vague or pallid – they meant you were like David Bowie, which I immediately understood was the best thing you could possibly be. It’s OK, he seemed to say. It’s OK. You’re fine.
David Bowie has a new album out on Friday. He’s still doing what he does, 20 years after I discovered him and 50 years after he started doing it. While I feel no pressing need to be an evangelist for my actual religion, I could well imagine myself standing on street corners and proclaiming the good news of David Bowie. As society fragments, as jobs-for-life disappear, as our communities become more diverse, as more of the world is available to us instantly, his is surely the way we should follow. Yes, we’ll get things terribly wrong, but that won’t be the end of us. Mistakes? Make ’em (providing the only person you hurt is you). Life is bigger than most of us will ever know; David Bowie is all those words made flesh.
I’d love to say that my life since 27 March 1996 has been a series of creative, artistic and physical risks. It really hasn’t. Indeed, there are some things I haven’t done as a result of that fateful listen that I otherwise might have: I might have striven for a particular identity with which to label myself, I might have tried to hide some parts of who I am or exaggerate others. I might still be espousing the bizarrely reactionary beliefs I had previously held (which wouldn’t be pretty). But there are many things that I have done that I otherwise might not have: met a whole load of great people (including my first girlfriend); left a steady job to pursue what I believed was a sort of spiritual vocation; formed, left and reformed an electro-punk-cabaret band (EP out this year, folks); met David Bowie (which was brief and terrifying – I called him Dave, for crying out loud – but also quite lovely). None of this makes me better than anyone else, but it does makes me better than I once was. So thank you, David Bowie, for the moment that ch-ch-ch-chhanged me.
