David Bowie

Bowie escaped America and transferred his home base to Switzerland in 1976, while in London Johnny Rotten, his hair a ratty imitation of Ziggy Stardust's, followed the Ziggy blueprint for self-willed stardom. Over the next three years, collaborating with Roxy Music's former in-house deconstructionist, Brian Eno, Bowie made three consecutive albums, in Berlin and elsewhere in Europe, that avoided the problem of how to follow up a hit by largely disdaining mass sensibilities altogether. "Low" and "'Heroes'" (both 1977) had emotionally deranged singles; challenging cut-up lyrics (directions: Cut any writing into strips, rearrange and see what happens) and music (directions: Write out a song's chords on a chalkboard, point at them randomly until band goes mad); and long, experimental instrumentals that put off casual record buyers. The Wallflowers' clueless 1998 cover of "'Heroes'" only reinforces the original's claim to be one of the killer rock singles of all time. "Lodger," in 1979, eschewed the instrumentals, but the singles "Boys Keep Swinging" and "DJ" were as spiky as that old haircut. In short, Eno shook Bowie out of a solipsism that looked to be driving him around the bend. The trilogy's use of electronic textures in a pop context (influenced by the German group Kraftwerk) itself directly inspired the great new wave of British electro-pop, just as the doomy atmospherics sketched out a path for Joy Division, the Cure and thousands of black-draped followers.

In 1980, Bowie capped off the part of his career that matters by starring in the Broadway production of "The Elephant Man" and releasing his last landmark album, "Scary Monsters," on which he belts out the strongest, most actorly vocals of his career, ranging from the howling fury of the opening rant, "It's No Game," to the song's exhausted reprise at the end, sandwiching in between every stance from tortured madness ("Scream Like a Baby") to haughty ennui ("Fashion") to the stunning minidrama of "Ashes to Ashes," which revisits space boy Major Tom, still floating around the ether 11 years after "Space Oddity."

Bowie's '80s were a startling retrenchment, during which he introduced his next persona: Normal David. After finally escaping the financial depredations of a Draconian old management contract, he decided in 1983 to earn himself a nest egg. Bowie gave interviews declaring his history of role-playing and sexual adventuring long past, essentially making sure no quirks remained to put off the buying public. Even his son Zowie was now called Joey. I remember the excitement when "Let's Dance" came out, the first Bowie album in three years, and how hard it was to get used to the idea that it was really Bowie -- that jolly, anti-intellectual party funk blasting from the frat houses. "Let's Dance" served its commercial purpose, but it was a far cry from past glories.

At this juncture, it's only polite to jump forward a dozen years, during which Bowie released a succession of dull albums that dared little, with the exception of his bar-band experiment, Tin Machine, which dared to be excruciating and got him dropped from his label. He appeared in several movies, including a swell turn as Pontius Pilate in "The Last Temptation of Christ," but his other films were cult favorites at best ("The Hunger," "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me," "Labyrinth," etc.). In 1992, he married Iman, which seemed to drop him with a clatter into the Mick Jagger/Rod Stewart bin of old rockers who replace their absconded muses with supermodels.

Even Bowie must have understood how dire things had gotten, for in 1995 he reconnected with Eno, who, since their '70s work together, had gone on to co-produce some of the most popular and critically lauded records of the '80s and '90s, all by U2. The resulting album, "Outside," was bold and knotty, but also tuneless and thuggishly pretentious. (It's subtitled "The Nathan Adler Diaries" and further billed as "a non-linear gothic drama hyper-cycle." If you're still curious, God bless you.) Bowie told an interviewer that he was delighted with the album's "big hairy massive balls"; he subsequently toured with one of his musical offspring, Nine Inch Nails, but was regularly crucified by the competition.

He generated far more attention in 1997 by hosting his own enormous 50th birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden and by an unprecedented business gambit: He issued "Bowie Bonds" worth $55 million, using future royalties on his back catalog to back them. The bonds were all snapped up immediately by the Prudential Insurance Co., and Bowie's pockets were suddenly overflowing. It was a conceptual stunt worthy of the old Bowie, just in a new field. (James Brown issued his own bonds last summer, and other celebrities are rumored to be mulling it over.)

Amazingly, after nearly two decades in the aesthetic wilderness, his last two albums, 1997's "Earthling" and "'Hours ... '" from 1999, have been -- to me, anyway -- his most enticing since "Scary Monsters," and his portrayal of Andy Warhol was easily the most entertaining element of the 1996 film "Basquiat." "'Hours ... '" has no evident commercial or aesthetic axes to grind, a first for Bowie, and it features lovely, rueful songs of experience sung in a cracking, (apparently) nakedly emotional voice, suggesting that his role-playing days may at last be behind him. It was one of the best albums of 1999.

And Bowie's current numerous cyber-adventures prove he's still prodding at the future -- still "wiped out with things as they are." As the overseer of an Internet service provider, BowieNet, he hosts chats for members, alerts them to worldwide cultural happenings and keeps up a sprightly journal that indicates he's a scarily happy man (a recent sample: "What great fans I've got! I had such a lovely time on the mini-tour and it was so good to see you."); the lyrics for one of the songs on "'Hours ... '" were solicited in an online contest. If you want a credit card with his picture on it, he's also the nominal patron of the online BowieBanc. He's been seriously painting for many years -- his style owes a large debt to Francis Bacon -- and uploads his work and others' to an online gallery. And a few months ago he contributed new music and his likeness (as well as Iman's) to a video game, Omikron, put out by the company that created Tomb Raider.

In September, Virgin Records rereleased Bowie's back catalog in revelatory remastered editions that sound more electrifying than ever. At age 53, he's alone among his contemporaries in retaining a high cool quotient among kids whose parents are old enough to have been teenage fans of Ziggy Stardust: When he appears at a Placebo concert or on the MTV Music Awards, he can still elicit genuine teenybopper swoons. Bowie may never change rock music again, but since he, more than anyone, honed rock's current cutting edge, few observers would not forgive him, in the end, any of his latter-day trespasses.

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