The Fall and Rise of Bowie

It’s easy to start a fight between David Bowie fans: Simply ask them to name his best album. Thanks to Bowie’s rare combination of talent and industriousness, a case could easily be made for at least half a dozen of his 26 studio records, each boasting a unique sound. How can anyone compare The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars to Scary Monsters?

Yet astute observers will notice that despite continuing a prolific career, almost none of those were released after the mid-’80s—Black Tie White Noise certainly doesn’t hold a candle to Hunky Dory. The exception is his masterpiece Blackstar, his genre-bending final album and the only one to reach the top of the U.S. charts.

In Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie, Alexander Larman proposes that’s because the Thin White Duke had metaphorically died by the time he formed the hard rock group Tin Machine in 1988, having lost his "ability to create musical alchemy with near-genius consistency." But like the biblical Lazarus, Bowie rose from the dead when he released Blackstar just days before his actual, unexpected death.

Larman’s comparison is slightly ham-fisted—Bowie remained beloved and his music received mixed and varying responses over the 28 years the book covers—but readers will still be thankful if that premise puts Lazarus into their hands. Bowie-curious fans and any who were too young to follow his career in real-time, like those of us conceived around the same time as Tin Machine, will see the layers peeled back on one of music’s most interesting figures. Seasoned enthusiasts may not learn as much, but exclusive interviews with Bowie’s inner circle will provide them with a raw take on an often overlooked portion of his life.

While Lazarus provides only a cursory look at the actual production behind the albums from that era, those compelling reflections include inside views of the musician and the atmosphere during recordings. Earthling may not rank among his top albums, but Gail Ann Dorsey, Bowie’s longtime bassist, provided an account from its sessions that perhaps best embodies the former Ziggy Stardust’s approach. Bowie, she said, "always came in knowing exactly what outcome he wanted," but treated the studio "like a playground" and encouraged his team, musicians and producers alike, to "explore."

In other words, Bowie wanted experimentation. He rejected rigidity and the formulaic approach to popular music that can lead to commercial success at the cost of originality. That helps explain how Bowie’s albums were consistently distinct—and why even his best albums often included skippable tracks.

But if the studio was a playground, there were bound to be schoolyard fights. During an hours… recording session, Bowie shouted at his longtime guitarist Reeves Gabrels amid a yelling match over a bassline, "You’re a white guy from the suburbs! You’re not funky!" Gabrels, in response, said he’d be sure to "ask a 52-year-old white Englishman from Brixton" when he wants to know what funky is.

That argument eventually led to the end of their partnership, and as Larman consistently points out, for Bowie, that means a hard cut off. Gabrels only later realized they were more than collaborators—they were friends, a heavy reflection in the context of Bowie’s death. "I regret I can’t thank him for that, and everything now," Gabrels said.

Larman’s thesis that Bowie was metaphorically dead in the decades leading up to Blackstar, however, is an overstatement at best. After all, it would make for a boring read if his subject weren’t up to anything interesting during that time, and no fan would want to see their favorite musician flatly failing for a quarter century.

Bowie didn’t suddenly rise from the dead. His trajectory was in no way linear, with his sales, reviews, and chart placement during the period Lazarus covers resembling a seismograph. Larman, a mega fan who named his daughter after Bowie, seems to recognize this given that he repeatedly includes claims that the musician "recaptured much of the critical acclaim and respect that he believed that he had lost for good" and was at the "peak of his considerable powers" well before releasing Blackstar.

Lazarus also doesn’t give Bowie enough credit for his later music. It’s thanks to those albums, subpar they may be, and the experimentation they involved that Blackstar was possible. Bowie’s constant churn—atypical of aging artists—allowed fans to effectively hear his sound evolve in real time while still being able to identify elements from his previous releases, creating a clear through line from Tin Machine to Blackstar. "’Tis A Pity She Was A Whore" off the latter, for instance, includes percussion that’s deeply reminiscent of that heard on "I’m Deranged" off Outside, albeit the Blackstar version is more refined and mature. Portions of "Sue (Or In A Season Of A Crime)" can trace to the widely panned drum and bass sounds Bowie explored on Earthling.

Bowie’s exploits between his forced retirement after suffering an onstage heart attack in 2004 and Blackstar managed to hold attention as well. He played Nikola Tesla in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige and provided guest vocals on several records, including Scarlett Johansson’s cover album of Tom Waits songs (which apparently exists and is worth a listen simply for the experience). And of course, his surprise 2013 album The Next Day, recorded in secrecy complete with nondisclosure agreements, hit number two in the U.S. charts, his best showing up to that point.

Regardless, the detailed portrait Larman paints of Bowie throughout Lazarus overcomes those flaws and allows the finale to make for a heartbreaking read. He brings the musician alive, making him appear larger than life, even among music legends. And well before Bowie was diagnosed with the liver cancer that killed him, he was admitting his fears that he’d die and abandon his wife Iman and his then-newborn Lexi.

As a result, the last chapter, which details Bowie’s final months and an impressive rush to complete his projects despite his severe illness, gives readers the feeling they’re saying goodbye to an old friend. It hits even harder when paired with Blackstar playing on the Hi-Fi, particularly if his parting words to his longtime collaborators are timed with the "Dollar Days" outro. "I’m dying to[o]," Bowie sings.

When Bowie died—suddenly, in the eyes of the public—on January 10, 2016, just two days after his 69th birthday and Blackstar’s release, it became evident that the album’s death motifs and accompanying music videos, which included a dead astronaut in the title track, weren’t merely musings from an aging man contemplating his mortality.

Combine those raw reflections with the album’s masterful arrangements, experimental but consumable instrumentals, and Bowie’s unmatched performance, and it’s no wonder the album topped the charts.

So while Bowie fans bicker over whether Station to Station or Let’s Dance is better, the first to quietly utter "Blackstar" will certainly be met with silent nods.

Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie
by Alexander Larman
Pegasus Books, 384 pp., $29.95

Ethan Barton is an editor at the Washington Free Beacon.

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