io Hickman > Recent Status Updates

I told him Emma and I had been painting. He said he’d been wondering if God existed. p392

…sometimes when he thought it had gotten too highbrow he would say with a smile, ‘It’s only rock and roll.’ p.412

Even as a young man I was always aware that death was the one absolute certainty about life. It didn’t reduce my feeling of buoyancy, it pushed me into a kind of colossal, obsessive activity. p.417

“Iman was really good for David, as she made him happy. You could it in their eyes.” (p.361)

“Bowie was someone who had really been able to hold on to who he was, but at the same time sit with what he had become.” (p.383)

“David was definitely someone who every day woke up and wanted to learn things.” (p.385)

“I think perhaps he looked for brother-type figures throughout his life.” (p.335)

“His big thing was challenging people to explore to the full what they might be…There may have been many people who have liberated us politically, but David liberated us emotionally, sexually. Ultimately, he wanted to set people free.” (p.337)

“I thanked him numerous times and I thanked him right until he died.” (p.345)

“Yes, I’m just a cunt in a clown suit.” (p.287)

“That was David through and through, being an enigma that everyone thought they knew.” (p.327)

“Just before David went on, Freddie [Mercury] winked at [David Bowie] and said, ‘If I didn’t know you better, dear, I’d have to eat you.’ No wonder David went out onstage with such a big smile on his face.” (p.327)

“He was the bridge between the old and the new.” (p.247)

“Like the Beatles in the 60s, he signaled cultural shifts. He’s the 70s Beatles, in that respect.” (p.252)

“They use ‘Heroes’ for every heroic event, although it’s a song about alcoholics.” (p.263)

“David had a lovely saying, ‘Let go, or be dragged.’…David would introduce something and leave it.” (p.281)

“He had to have cartilage removed from one part of his body and put in his nose because the coke had eaten his nose cartilage away.” (p.196)

“Jimmy Page was there was because David was obsessed with Aleister Crowley, and so was he.” (p.213)

“In his music I liked the fact that he seemed happy with a state of unease.” (p.226)

“He was almost like a vampire looking for not blood but sex.” (p.240))

“Because of course the very consequences often of keeping changing is that you ruin your popularity because those that love you want you to be the same. So he managed to be absolutely the same all the time, always David Bowie, by constantly changing.” (p.169)

“But yes, David was bisexual, I was bisexual. I wouldn’t have had any use for David if he hadn’t been bisexual.” (p.86)

“He made every outsider feel like they were an insider, feel like they’re doing the right thing.” (p.126)

“I mean he was the ultimate rock and roll lover.” (p.141)

“So suddenly it was like this gay Communist is coming to the South to perform to their children!” (p.151)

“When he stopped playing we stopped going.” (p.51)

“But he couldn’t get the music out of his head, and realized that he had to pursue that because it was integral to his being.” (p.54)

“We thought Marc Bolan was gay, we thought David Bowie was gay…we thought all the cool people were gay” (p.23)
“…it’s absolutely staggering that long before he was famous, people would get the impression of meeting someone very, very special, someone with a very special connection.” (p.27)

“If, when alive, Bowie was everything and anything to us all - the grand conjurer of sonic wisdom, the wizard of sophisticated boom-boom, a tousled-haired over-cranked Mockney with a Marlboro Lite cackle and a delivery boy wink - in death he was immediately reduced to a felt-tip zig-zag”

“When they do talk about him, it’s not ‘David Bowie was…’ - it’s ’David Bowie is…’

“The government wants to manipulate you, that’s the only reason it exists.” (p.95)

5/5 stars for naming the wild puppies after the Rolling Stones and then describing them playing together :-) this book ain’t too bad!

I’ve heard people abandon this book a lot because of how disturbing and nauseating it is. Those people were not primed by reading Geek Love first.

So clearly written by a man. I think o hate this already but I’m too intrigued by my disgust to put it down (yet)

Convinced Robert Fripp was a genius