Touched by the hand of Bowie
//Framed shred of Lucian Freud wallpaper designed by David Bowie for inclusion in the 1995 War Child fashion show Pagan Funwear//
It is of course very sad to note the death of David Bowie; 69 is too young, particularly for such an important figure in the pop cultural landscape with an evident abundance of creative contributions still to make to our lives.
I am minded of something Mick Jones, The Clash/BAD guitarist, said to me on the night Malcolm McLaren died: “I’ll miss all those ideas, that great intelligence.”
Surely it is this which accounts for the outpourings of grief over Bowie’s death; we collectively recognise that we have been robbed of a singular and – to a lot of people – illuminating worldview.
Music aside, from advertising, art, club culture and individual expression to fashion, film, media, performance and sexuality, there is little in our everyday lives in the West which isn’t touched in some way by the hand of Bowie.
I encountered the man a handful of times and twice interviewed him, having been an avid fan throughout the 70s (and was particularly spellbound by the 1976 Wembley Empire Pool and 1978 Earl’s Court live stints).
In person Bowie struck me as genuinely gentlemanly (having interviewed thousands of people over 35-odd years my BS radar is highly attuned). It seems to me the courteous, quirky, witty persona Bowie adopted in public became the essence of his true character.
This was marked by a generosity not typical of the megastar. Bowie made my first wife’s year when he rang and thanked her at a printer’s while she was handling production of the poster for his Minotaur exhibition in central London in the mid-90s (he subsequently signed a copy for her, me and our dog). He also readily and helpfully contributed to Nine Lives, my book with Goldie in the 00s.
I know that my book The Look, which has a section dedicated to his working relationships with designer Kansai Yamamoto and tailor Freddie Buretti, has a place in the Bowie archive and I gathered that, behind-the-scenes, he approved of Kevin Cann’s mighty Any Day Now: David Bowie A London Life 1947-74, which I formatted and edited.
Last month Bowie sent a message to Derek Boshier congratulating him on Rethink/Re-entry, the monograph I also edited.
On Saturday, from the thousands of objects I keep in storage, I plucked a framed scrap of the so-called “Lucian Freud wallpaper” Bowie contributed to the limited edition box created for the 1995 War Child event Pagan Funwear.
Yesterday I added it to one of the walls of my office. It is behind me as I type. The fact that this shred depicting the great and serious artist Freud uses as its base a quintessentially English Laura Ashley print makes it funny, and, somehow, for me, very, very Bowie.