Red Shoes Review: RIP, David Bowie

In the early '80s, we junior and senior English majors at the University of Illinois at Chicago who were chosen to launch a literary journal thought it would be cool (unironically cool) to name the publication Red Shoes Review. It was a throwaway line taken from David Bowie's "Let's Dance," which was big at the time. Call it a youthful indiscretion or the perils of groupthink, but that album was a cultural powerhouse back then.

I had about a 10-year run with Bowie, who died yesterday at age 69, in what seems like his final artistic flourish, having released his morbid final record two days earlier on his birthday and having kept his cancer from the public. I started paying attention to him as a budding adolescent in the mid-'70s, and his gender gymnastics left this nascent heterosexual more than a little defensive.

The first album I bought was "Young Americans," because I loved the title song so much, but I was embarrassed by the cover. It took some courage to buy it. It wasn't so much the androgynous look, the luxurious nails or the sultry come-hither pose that challenged my still-developing teenage brain; it was more the shiny bracelets on his wrist that put me off. I associated such jewelry with my cousin Allison's baby photo. It was so ... Rocky Horror. It haunts a tiny section of my still-male, still-heterosexual brain to this day.

I spun through his "Changes" best-of package on a drive from Santa Fe today and was surprised at how muscular his hits were. It's odd, but I rarely think of him as British; his musical sensibilities -- rock, soul, disco -- and his booming voice (really, who else would dare duet with Freddie Mercury?) were as American as Springsteen to my ears. His most familiar and overplayed song, the prom-worthy "Changes," hit my ears from a more senior perspective, and, feeling protective of the era's new culture mavens, I gleaned a fresh take from the youthful admonition:

And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their world
Are immune to your consultations;
They're quite aware of what they're going through.

The muscular yet playful "Suffragette City" and "Diamond Dogs" are quintessential rock 'n' roll workouts, with fat riffs and arena-rock production. The latter flexes horns reminiscent of Elephant's Memory on "Some Time in New York City," and then there's the reminder of his collaboration with John Lennon on "Fame," his first of two U.S. No. 1 singles. ("Let's Dance" was the other; he had five chart-toppers in the U.K.) You'll hear more Lennonesque arrangements on "Young Americans" (and the shout-out "I heard the news today, oh, boy"), as well as other echoes -- "No religion!" he proclaims on "Modern Love," with more R&B saxes wailing away (featuring SNL's Lenny Pickett).

As an artist, he rarely had an embarrassing phase. Yeah, Tin Machine showed he could have a tin ear, and we never again need to see him and Mick Jagger prancing in the streets smack dab in the middle of the '80s. (That's when I pretty much bailed.) He reinvented himself numerous times, but usually with substance. He aged with grace, and not just physically. He was a serious artist, cultivating his image and his legacy to the very end.

And he was a notable romantic. There are few songs that capture the essence of a romantic relationship better than "Heroes." And then there's the heady fantasy of a woman in your arms, trembling like a flower, under the moonlight, this serious moonlight.

I was there, at the height of his popularity (at the Rosemont Horizon in August 1983), for that trashy tour, Bowie barely breaking a sweat in his suave suit. But I was a fairly casual fan. Three vinyl, one disc. I've never moped to his Berlin trilogy. I eventually grew comfortable in my pedestrian sexuality.

I did always want to host a radio segment devoted to songs that play over the closing credits of films. Like "Where Is My Mind" at the end of "Fight Club." One of the sweetest is our swan song here, from "Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou." There is a lip-sync version, with the TV announcer's intro that calls him a "bizarre, self-constructed freak." But we need the studio version for the whispery scatting that opens the "Hunky Dory" track "Queen Bitch":