Guernica: I told someone that I had literally never considered the fact that he might die. It was like he had almost become a natural force.
Simon Critchley: Yeah, it won’t happen again. I can’t think of anybody remotely comparable. The music industry has changed, what it means to be famous has changed. Now you can be famous by virtue of being famous, which usually means by virtue of your family position and the entitlements you have. You can be a Kardashian or a Miley Cyrus. Bowie’s father worked for St. Barnardo’s Children’s Home, his mother was a waitress. They were just ordinary working people. Bowie knew that making it as a star meant you could be really rich and that was enormously appealing. And he made it happen. He was constantly working, constantly listening, constantly reading, constantly soaking things up. There was an absolutely stubborn single mindedness to him as an artist. He just did what he wanted and pushed it through. He was also a lot cleverer than the people around him. He kept moving. But it is the sheer intelligence of Bowie that is breathtaking. As he said, he wasn’t a rock star, he was a medium for a new range of artistic creation.
Ultimately, he represents a fifty-year slice of pop cultural history—and therefore cultural history