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The Literary Influences of Superstar Musician David Bowie
BY JOHN O'CONNELL ON 10/31/19 AT 5:00 AM EDT
David Bowie was a pop star for most of his career from the
1960s until his death in 2016. He was known for his
flamboyant style, songwriting and the ability to artistically
turn on a dime. But Bowie, who died of cancer at 69, was
more than a multi-platinum rock and roller. He was also
one of the more literate composers in the business.
So much so, in fact, that in conjunction with a career
retrospective in 2013 at the Victoria & Albert Museum in
London, Bowie issued a list of the one hundred books he
considered the most important and influential. British
music columnist John O'Connell linked this list to Bowie's
prolific music. The result? A book called Bowie's Bookshelf
out this month from Gallery Books.
William S. Burroughs first made the link between Bowie's
lyrics and T. S. Eliot's poetry. In a Rolling Stone interview,
Burroughs asked if Hunky Dory's "Eight Line Poem" had
been influenced by Eliot's "The Hollow Men." Bowie's
reply: "Never read him." But Bowie was definitely exposed
to Eliot's influence. "Goodnight Ladies" on Transformer,
the album Bowie produced for Lou Reed in 1972, is a riff
on the end of the second section, "A Game of Chess," from
Eliot's poem "The Waste Land." Eliot, for his part, is
deliberately quoting Ophelia's "Good night, sweet ladies"
speech from Hamlet. Eliot's method established a new
protocol for artistic theft—the modern poet in dialogue
with his or her predecessors. Bowie, too, was candid about
how much he took from other artists. "You can't steal from
a thief," he said when LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy
admitted to stealing from Bowie's songs.
Avaiable in : https://www.newsweek.com/2019/11/15, accessed on
February 20th, 2020. Adapted.