David Bowie: The Gender-Bending Musician that Blurred the Lines of Sexuality

Rolling Stone describes David Bowie as a “consummate musical chameleon” who’s been a “folksinger, androgyne, alien, decadent, blue-eyed soul man, art-rocker and a modern pop star, with each persona spawning a new league of imitators.”¹Holter, Lauren. “11 Touching David Bowie Tributes From All Over The Globe That Beautifully Honor The Late Icon – PHOTOS.” Bustle, Bustle, 11 Jan. 2016, www.bustle.com/articles/134767-11-touching-david-bowie-tributes-from-all-over-the-globe-that-beautifully-honor-the-late-icon. Throughout his transformative lifetime, David Bowie reinvented rock and roll music, transgressed gender norms, and inspired a generation to be themselves. Gender-bending, avant-garde performance and forward-looking music surmounted David Bowie, grounding him in the history of rock and roll. I will be analyzing Bowie’s ability to change his persona and musical renditions as well as the social constructs he brought down.

(The Many Faces of David Bowie)

The inimitable British-born singer/songwriter consistently and irrevocably changed and predicted the future of popular music throughout a career that lasted just under 50 years. There is no doubt that David Bowie is a genius. This complement extends much farther than the musical realm, as Bowie mastered the art of gender-fluidity in performance. David Bowie during his lifetime sold over 100 million records, had 10 platinum albums, 11 number-one albums, was inducted into the Hall of Fame, and following his death in 2016 was announced the “Greatest Rock Star Ever” by Rolling Stone. Bowie is a highly acclaimed artist, although the path the artist took to stardom was very irregular.

David Bowie rarely fit into his environment. The artist was constantly reinventing himself, whether this was musically or physically, Bowie’s image was ever-changing. The artist first gained popularity with the release of Space Oddity in 1968. The song was ahead of its time, like most of his work, and Bowie was even credited as the first artist to use the stylophone in the track ²Ivanecky, Elizabeth. “David Bowie Redefined the Rock ‘n’ Roll Genre with His Glam Rock.” Elizabeth Lucy Ivanecky, 5 Aug. 2018, elizabethivanecky.com/david-bowie-reinvented-rock/. . The instrument gave Bowie the ability to produce a new, psychedelic sound that became popular for the new age of rock. Prior to this song, Bowie had performed music synonymous with European artists at the time, but after the success of this song, the artist gained comfortably in his identity and went down a new career path. The artist began making music that had never existed before. This new era was called Glam Rock, and from the late ’60s throughout the early ’70s, Bowie embodied the subculture. Now we see Bowie in dresses and makeup, performing theatrically, creating the image that most people associate with David Bowie today. Transgender rock was born.

Apart from the gender-bending performances and visual perception, Bowie’s music writing was radical and took rock in a new direction. The best description I read of Bowie was by Ian Penam, from The Guardian in 1996, when he said “Here’s an avowed apostle of ‘outsider’ art who is zealously anti-bootlegger. An urban aesthete who spends half his life in hygienic seclusion in culture-free Switzerland. A disciple of Expressionism who needs a computer programme (a “random generator” or some such) to do his word splices and sentence sutures for him.”³Penman, Ian. “David Bowie: The Chameleon.” Rock’s Backpages, www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/david-bowie-the-chameleon. The ‘anti-bootlegger’ comment and the computer program reference are a humorous way to look at Bowie’s work. Bowie even recognized his lyrics were trivial in comparison to the entirety of his work. Observers in the studio would be amazed how Bowie could modulate his voice degree by degree to get the required emotional effect as if he was tuning a guitar⁴Penman, Ian. “David Bowie: The Chameleon.” Rock’s Backpages, www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/Article/david-bowie-the-chameleon. . In an avid listener blog “Problems with Geniuses”, Sara Haefeli brings up the notion that we treat musical geniuses in such a high regard that we are disempowered by their greatness.⁵Haefeli, Sara. “The Problem with Geniuses.” The Avid Listener, 24 July 2020, theavidlistenerblog.com/2020/07/24/the-problem-with-geniuses/. In my opinion, I think Bowie felt this pressure of being an experimental genius to open up as many doors as possible for the rock genre that he felt the need to make these jarring leaps from one album to another to fulfill the quota of being a ‘genius’. These musical transformations are very apparent and a good example is the shift in the proto-punk album Diamond Dogs and then in the following year, the plastic soul album Young Americans was released. 

(Sweet Thing and Candidate – Diamond Dog Album 1974)

(Young American – Young American Album 1975)

The songs off the Young Americans album are joyful and funky, with saxophone accompaniment while the songs off Diamond Dogs foreshadow punk rock and contain loud and distorted riffs. These transitions come from Bowie’s great love for influences, and his desire to do on the leading edge of something new. Taking a little inspiration here and there Bowie was able to create a new persona and a new sound that was unlike anything heard before. Although intertwined with his new personas and new sounds, the topic of sexuality and gender-bending performances came about.

   Since Elvis shook his pelvis on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1956, rock and roll has been inextricably linked with sex. The male sexual prowess complimented most rock figures and helped grow their stature. The electric guitar became a personification of the female body, and many aspects of the genre began to embody sex. Soon men began to wear long hair, like Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin and Roger Daltry from The Who, to signify they were in touch with their feminine side, but the perception of these acts were never associated with the idea of gender fluidity.⁶Flatley, Kate. “How Music Fueled The Sexual Revolution.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 6 Aug. 2001, www.wsj.com/articles/SB997048656767145595. Gender-bending was not something that was linked to this sexualized period of rock and roll. Little Richard in 1956 was the first rock and roll artist to exhibit signs of homosexuality and had a large influence on Bowie. Even though the openness of sexuality in rock and rock was becoming more popular; Boy George, George Michael, Freddy Mercury, Rob Halford, and Elton John all stayed closeted for many years for fear of what it would do to their careers. Apparently, it was okay to play at being gay but not to be gay.⁷Flatley, Kate. “How Music Fueled The Sexual Revolution.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 6 Aug. 2001, www.wsj.com/articles/SB997048656767145595.

 In 1972 Bowie really shocked the world with his experimental style with the creation of a character named Ziggy stardust. In that year David Bowie also came out as gay, which is only five years after homosexuality was decriminalized in the UK, and is also around the time he was becoming very popular around the world. The character, Ziggy Stardust, was an alter ego Bowie created who was an omnisexual alien rock star from Mars that was sent to Earth. In an interview, Bowie says, he didn’t really have the nerve to sing his songs on stage and nobody else would do them so he decided to do them in disguise so that he didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going on stage and being himself.” ⁸Crockett, Emily. “David Bowie’s Gender-Fluid Performance Art Inspired Generations to Be Themselves.” Vox, Vox, 11 Jan. 2016, www.vox.com/2016/1/11/10750698/david-bowie-gender-fluid-performance. David Bowie had many influences although one that really made an initial and lasting impact on the artist was a British dancer named Lindsay Kemp. From Kemp, he learned ancient dramatic arts like mime and kabuki. These arts used masks, face paint, stylized movement, and character archetypes to portray bigger-than-life artistic truths. Inspired by these methods of performing, you can see David Bowie disguising himself in new characters all the time.  

As you can see in this performance by Ziggy, Bowie really clung to these traditional art forms which lead to the dramatic performances and appearances. Bowie would wear clothing that exposed his neck and limbs to provoke a feminine, dress in drag, and essentially gave a general-fluid performance. Bowie’s period in glam music is often regarded as a cornerstone in the change in attitude towards masculinity and male sexuality in rock music. Ultimately the music came first in his musical process, but Bowie’s fashion, appearance, and presentation helped transgress many gender norms and shed a light on alternative sexualities. Hiding behind a persona Bowie was able to express himself, and because of this freedom, he embraced who he really was: David Bowie. Bowie never intended to be labeled as gay or bisexual but simply wanted to share his music. He never intended to draw attention to his sexuality, and reporters would often harass him trying to figure out what sexual orientation Bowie fell under. 

Bowie’s ambiguous sexuality became a focal point, and the artist was bothered by this fixation. An interviewer said to Bowie, “You were really the point man for challenging a lot of social attitudes and sexual attitudes in the 70s” to which Bowie interjects “Oh, that’s rubbish”, signifying Bowie wants no credit or attribution for the transgressions his work did⁹Bodacea1. “David Bowie Gets Annoyed.” YouTube, YouTube, 10 Dec. 2009, www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPi0mkWkTco&t=107s. .  The adulation, and the blurring of the lines between Bowie and Ziggy, began taking a toll on the singer. At first, he just assumed that character onstage, but then everybody started to treat him as they treated Ziggy, and along with it the gender-fluid, sexually ambiguous characteristic¹⁰Light, Alan. “’Ziggy Stardust’: How Bowie Created Alter Ego, Changed Rock.” Rolling Stone, Rolling Stone, 25 June 2018, www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/ziggy-stardust-how-bowie-created-the-alter-ego-that-changed-rock-55254/. . Ironically, American composer Aaron Copland so “brilliantly succeeded in composing a musical portrait of the American landscape and people, one that the nation wholeheartedly embraced, that his life and music have been appropriated with uncommon eagerness to the whitewashed, heterosexualized mainstream”. ¹¹Nadine Hubbs, Introduction to The Queer Composition of America’s Sound: Gay Modernists, American Identity, and National Identity, pp. 1–17.Copland’s music represents American nationalism and therefore his homosexuality was censored, but the radical rock and roll artist David Bowie’s sexuality was amplified by the media much to his discomfort. Do you think if Paul McCartney, an artist the United Kingdom has adored and adopted as a British legend, would have come out as homosexual the British media would censor the discussion of it? Regardless,  Ziggy Stardust did accomplish everything Bowie set out to do. He altered music forever by introducing the notion of the rock star as a fearless being who could recast image and persona when necessary, whether the audience was ready or not. 

 

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