Over the weekend, I bought this Rolling Stone special tribute magazine about David Bowie. It’s got him on the cover and the magazine is everything about David Bowie. Includes older articles and interviews with David Bowie in them and things like that, ya know?

I was reading the magazine over the weekend and I was surprised to learn that David Bowie never liked his glitter rock years. In fact, he always hated that era. Ya know, the glitter rock years that he was most famous for “Ziggy Stardust”, “Aladdin Sane”, “Diamond Dogs” and “Hunky Dory”. He never liked those albums and David said he even hated his iconic live album “David live” released in 1974. I read all this and shaking my head like what?

I beg to differ ’cause I think all those records he didn’t like that were listed above were all fucking amazing and incredible. I loved Bowie’s rock n’ roll albums, I never understood why he hated them. He just never was a fan of rock n’ roll and I now completely understand why Bowie stayed away from rock n’ roll over the years. He did mostly pop music over the years. The thing is, Bowie never saw himself as a rock artist… he always saw himself as an actor than a musician… that’s why he created all those musical characters like Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, etc.

The thing that shocked me the most was how he never liked his “David Live” album released in 1974. That is his most popular live album, that got him most positive reviews and he hated it? I bought that “David Live” album not too long ago and listened to it a few times, that album blew my fucking mind and I think it’s one of the greatest live albums in the history of music. Bowie was his own worst critic, I guess.

No matter what genre Bowie did over the years, he was genius at everything. I even loved all of his non-rock stuff. I’m trying to collect all of his studio albums and even his Tin Machine records and I’m just about there.

Even though Bowie tried to avoid rock n’ roll the best he could over the years, a lot of his newer stuff were still “rock n’ roll in a way… especially songs like “Are you Afraid of Americans”, “Dead Man Walking”, “Something In the Air”, “Slow Burn” and “Blackstar”. Even though those songs were different genres, they still were “rock n’ roll”. That song “Are you Afraid of Americans” had some pretty heavy guitar riffing on it.

I kind of wished David did rock n’ roll more ’cause he was great at it. He hated rock n’ roll so much, he did whatever he could to get away from it. Why did he do rock n’ roll even though he hated it? Well, he thought he would give a try, like an experiment and maybe he did it for the money? So he grew quickly tired of rock n’ roll and gave us the album “Young Americans” which was a strictly pop record in 1975.

When he did his latest and final record, “Blackstar”, once again he did his best to avoid rock n’ roll on it by eliminating guitar playing completely. He just sang over horn sections and stuff on that album but a lot of that album was still “rock”. He always did “rock” even though he didn’t know it ’cause pop music and techno is rock n’ roll too if you think about it.

I rarely ever buy tribute magazines from the newsstands but I had to get this David Bowie one since I’m a huge fan. Glad I got it. Very good and interesting read.

Kev