The Day David Bowie Died, a Poet Wondered Why

‘What Are People Doing Fucking Dying?’

What are people doing fucking dying?
Haven’t they got better things to do?
No sooner than you’re on someone’s wavelength
Then suddenly they’re whisked away from you.

I saw Bowie at the first Glastonbury in 1971.*
He was performing at five in the morning.
With golden locks he was dressed as a hippie wizard
As he heralded the new day that was dawning.

The sun rose behind the Tor as he was singing.
A Druid hammered in a golden stake,
Muttering spells to try and prevent it from raining
And somehow their magic seemed to work.

Then, in no time at all, Bowie’s dressed as a corpse
Singing, ‘Look up here, I’m in heaven.’
His eyes are buttons and he’s wearing a shroud …
Is it his disguise for a meeting with the divine?

Born of Anthony Newley crossed with Lindsay Kemp,
This cockney rebel could shape-shift and morph.
Bowie would neatly side-step every categorization –
An artful dodger knowing enough to cheat death.

What are people doing fucking dying?
Haven’t they got better things to do?
No sooner than you’re on someone’s wavelength
Then suddenly they’re whisked away from you…

Someone who seemed to stop it from raining
On the parades of the conflicted and insecure;
Someone who’d free their identities and give those
Who clapped eyes on him permission to flower.

He’d experiment with his fluctuating selfhood
In stadium-sized labs;
Now he has just his own immortality to savour
In an exquisite time-lapse –

As he sings his Memory of a Free Festival
Into the 2020’s and the 3020’s:
“The sun machine is coming down
“And we’re going to have a party.”

Heathcote Williams

*There was a small pop-cum-jazz event beforehand which nearly bankrupted Michael Eavis, the producer, because he had to give in to Marc Bolan’s demand of £600 up front before Bolan would get out of his Rolls Royce to play.

Postscript: Jan. 15 — The day David Bowie died, the New York Times also had an unfortunate blooper with this lede for a news item: “It’s a good time to be David Bowie.” His death took everyone by surprise, so you can’t blame the Times too much.

I don’t know whether “the paper of record” has acknowledged the blooper. I haven’t seen a clarification. But today the Times has published a follow-up about an expansion of the tribute, which, though it makes no mention of the blooper, points out that Carnegie Hall had announced the concert “shortly before [his] death.” Which explains where the news item came from as well as its unlucky timing. The follow-up goes on to say that:

Now, the event, part of the City Winery founder Michael Dorf’s annual tribute series, will be reframed as a memorial concert, and a second show has been added at Radio City Music Hall, with Michael Stipe, Laurie Anderson and Cat Power joining one or both of the lineups.

Also in today’s print edition (though it appeared online yesterday), there’s a lengthy, beautifully illustrated interview, “David Bowie on His Favorite Artists,” by Michael Kimmelman, the globe-trotting Times critic who writes about everything from art and architecture to culture and music. First published 18 years ago, it’s reprinted in full with a new introduction:

In 1998, David Bowie sat down for a couple of hours to talk about the art he made and collected. Like other British rockers of his generation, Mr. Bowie had gone to art school, back when he was still called David Jones. At the time we met, he was helping run an art-book publishing company, 21, and moonlighting as an occasional interviewer for Modern Painters, the British magazine.

He welcomed the chance to discuss art. He was also exhibiting his own work, with some trepidation, as he acknowledged in the interview. His pictures suggested a fondness for Picabia, Schiele and the German-born British painter Frank Auerbach, among others. He was candid, friendly and at ease talking about art, which came across as a pleasure and genuine passion, as if the role of artist-connoisseur were not just another identity Mr. Bowie donned and shed but something truly near to the heart of David Jones.