THERE’S A NEW BLACK STAR IN HEAVEN

[ IWayne Hussey / Translation: Marcelo Simonetti - Photography: Nazarena Talice ]

"When I woke up that morning, sleepless as usual, I took a look to my cell phone, and the first news I read, was Wayne telling it to me through The Mission Facebook profile. When I asked him to write a few li-nes about Bowie's death and I found he made such a tribute, I felt the same as the day he told me the news for the first time.

Obviously, I'm almost twenty years youn-ger than Hussey, and I didn't knew Bowie at the moment Wayne did. In reverse, I first knew about Bowie's musical sons and daughters than Bowie himself. I knew about David with the years, because I retraced the musical stairway from children to the father. And when I discovered David I learnt he was the father of all. And I understand and felt the same as what Wayne wrote as a farewell note, and with the historical trip he proposes us with parallel data of both of their lives.

Absolute love, without contradictions, ex-pressed in here”.

Marcelo Simonetti

As a 13 year old in early 1972 I was witness to the rise of David Bowie. Marc Bolan & T.Rex came a li-ttle earlier, maybe a year, and were my first love and still to this day I adore their early singles and Electric Warrior and Slider albums but T.Rex suffered the fate of all first loves. We all move onto to other newer, bigger, and longer lasting loves.

I’d read that Bowie was a friend with Bolan and so when I saw that Bowie was going to appear on the late night Old Grey Whistle Test (a long running British TV music show) my interest was piqued and I managed to persuade my parents to let me stay up a little later than I was normally allowed. Bowie per-formed Queen Bitch and Oh, You Pretty Things (if memory serves) and, of course, like the rest of the youth of the nation I was intrigued and confused in equal measure. I’d never seen anything so overtly an-drogynous before, nothing as alien or flamboyant, and nor had most of Britain and Bowie became the talk of the school playground over the next few days. And shortly thereafter came the infamous interview in Melody Maker when he came out and claimed pu-blicly to be homosexual. Again, not something that was commonly done in early 1970’s Britain with ho-mosexuality being outlawed until as late as 1967 des-pite the onset of teenage rebellion and the era of free love. Abounding with contradictions was the 60’s & 70’s. But despite the ever-growing legion of fans and the forward momentum Bowie remained a cult figu-re at this time rather than a bona fide pop star.

And then in May or June of 1972, just a few wee-ks after T.Rex had hit no. 1 with the career pea-king Metal Guru, Bowie released Starman as a sin-gle from his new upcoming LP, The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust.

And performed the song on Top Of The Pops.

5The world shifted on its axis that night never to be the same again. Introduced into millions of British homes at peak viewing time on a Thursday evening Bowie polarized the nation. We, the youth, had ano-ther hero to line up alongside Bolan in the trenches of the generation war. Every generation has to have it’s own heroes, forsaking and deriding all that has come before, particularly the music that our parents liked.

I saw the rise of David Bowie and then the almi-ghty and wondrous run of albums, everyone a clas-sic, that he recorded throughout the 70’s right up to Scary Monsters. Every album was different, as a fan we never quite knew what to expect with each relea-se. Just as it should be.

Like most Bowie fans I was disappointed with his output in the 80’s but always remained interested. He was on the guest list to see The Mission at the LA Palace in 1987 (Iggy had become a friend of mine by this time) but we had to cancel the show because Craig Adams suffered the first of his on-tour-break-downs and we had to send him home. To this day I still blame Craig for never having met Bowie. Tim Palmer, who had produced God’s Own Medicine for us, produced the Tin Machine project. Whilst we were recording the Carved In Sand album with Tim in London Tin Machine came to town to play a show. As a friend of Tim’s I got to go to the show and loved it. The only other time I’d seen Bowie perform before was at the Bristol Colston Hall when he played key-boards on tour with Iggy Pop. Reeves Gabrels, who played guitar with Tin Machine, came to the studio whilst we were recording and lent his very able gui-tar skills to two or three of our tracks. Despite never having met the great man I do take great consolation in the fact that David Bowie really did know my name as I claimed in lyric on the 2013 Mission album, The Brightest Light.

I think Bowie’s work with Tin Machine, althou-gh mostly dismissed by the media as a vanity pro-ject, served as a bit of a renaissance for the man and put him back on track to making creative genre line blurring and innovative music again throughout the 90’s and 00’s. Not everything he attempted was suc-cessful but at least he was again defying our expec-tations of him.

Bowie has been omnipresent in my life since those early teenage years. He has always been there. And now no more. It’s still unfathomable to me that he has gone. Lazarus won’t be rising from the dead this time………

I was, coincidentally, with Craig Adams when I found out about Bowie’s death. We had both arri-ved at Chicago O’Hare Airport earlier that night on Sunday 10th January via separate flights, me from Sao Paulo and he from Baltimore. We took a taxi to our hotel in Highland Park. We checked in, dumped our bags in the room we were sharing, something that we hadn’t done in many years, and decided to have a quiet drink in the hotel bar before we attemp-ted to sleep. At about 1:30am, Monday 11th, we made our way back to the room, and snuggling down into my warm bed with snow and ice on the ground out-side I turned on my iPad, as is my habit, to check the BBC news before sleeping.

Breaking news: Rock icon David Bowie dead at 69.

Just as his life was a work of art so his death has become. If it had all been planned then it could not have been executed with any greater precision for any greater impact. And he left us with perhaps his best album in decades – Black Star.

It’s difficult to listen to the album without any bias as each and every song and lyric is examined for clues, and there are many now with the benefit of hindsight, but I would say it is a fitting way to end the legacy that Bowie has left for us mere mortals. And of course, we will always have that – the music, the art, the fashion, the legacy. But there will never again be anything new from Bowie. That, to me, is the greatest tragedy of his death. Genius is too sma-ll a word for the man. The inspiration and influence he has provided to pretty much every musician and beyond that has come since is there for us all to wit-ness everywhere, in every walk of life.

There will be eulogies for days, months, years, and quite rightly so, and all I can really add to all of that is that I loved, no, sorry, love David Bowie and I always will.

here’s a new black star in heaven………

UNA REVISTA IMAGINARIA

The13th

Wayne Hussey - There’s a new black star in heaven

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