Bowie changed himself, the world of music and my life!

When I heard that David Bowie was dead, the air involuntarily rushed from my lungs. I was so shocked, I temporarily lost the use of my legs.

David Bowie was ever-present throughout my youth, not only responsible for completely changing the way I looked at music, but life itself.

My brother is four years older than me so it was thanks to him that I was aware of Major Tom’s first incarnation in 1969’s Space Oddity. We wondered if and why the astronaut had killed himself and lingered on that line:

‘Tell my wife I love her very much

She knoooows….’

As I write this I’m more than ever aware of the power of the man’s music. It’s impossible to mention any of his songs without hearing the tune in my head, his imperious impeccable voice soaring, stretching, subtly English.

The next year we enjoyed The Man Who Sold The World, and throughout 1971, we sang hit after hit from Hunky Dory.

“Oh you pretty things, don’t you know you’re driving your mummas and puppas insane…” rang out in the Adley household, great teenage anthems of rebellion, but our efforts to shock our parents failed, as my mum ended up singing along with Life on Mars: ‘Saaaai-lors fighting in the dancehall, oh man, look at those cavemen go-o-oh….”

My fondest memories of Bowie’s 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars were formed later in my teenage years, so I’ll come back to that, because in 1973 I fell hopelessly in love with Bowie’s masterpiece, Aladdin Sane.

The critics hated it but I remember right now the afternoon I put that album on my turntable, eased the needle onto the groove and heard for the first time music that energised me, inspired me and left me simply elated.

Even better, that young teenager now loved music that his parents would hate, that nobody else in the house understood, that had me bouncing off the bed, dancing and strumming, twirling and yelling. Mick Ronson’s guitar and piano riffs grabbed hold of the boiling bag of hormones that I was and gave me direction, thrills and a reason to wake up before two in the afternoon.

If all that sounds rather melodramatic, remember being 13. If you’ve teenage children, you’ll understand.

To read Charlie’s column in full, see this week’s Galway City Tribune.