Icon no 13: David Bowie

(Singer, songwriter, actor, 8/1/1947 – 10/1/2016)

Warning: this post contains references to trauma and neglect

David Bowie died in 2016, two days after releasing his acclaimed Blackstar album. Releasing 26 studio albums, he had achieved musical relevance across five decades¹. Space Oddity was the first hit single, before his Ziggy Stardust persona took over with songs such as Starman and Life on Mars. The 1980s saw Bowie’s suited reinvention with hits such as Let’s Dance, Modern Love and Heroes. For many Bowie is credited with spearheading the glam rock genre. But he ”crossed a variety of artistic boundaries, experimenting in music, fashion and art“¹ Bowie has been described as “probably Britain’s most influential solo pop/rock start ever”¹ He offers a chance to dig deep into what makes an icon – not only because his life story is well documented, but also because of George.

David and George

If we were to go back to 1962 and Beckenham, south London, we might find a teenage band called the Konrads performing. Front of stage, a singer and a saxophonist twist from side to side and lean into the audience or face each other. The singer and saxophonist are best friends. Both want to be famous. And they often get compared. The singer, who founded the band, has a great voice. He can sound like Elvis. Compared with his friend, he’s both a “superior musician”¹ and “a much nicer guy”² A female audience member thinks the saxophonist “doesn’t seem sexy to me… There [is] no interacting or giving anything to the audience.”² But she thinks the singer is “gorgeous”², Of these two teenagers, the singer seems “primed for pop stardom.”¹ Both these boys will have musical careers. They will stay in each other’s lives until separated by death. The question for this article is this: why did this singer, George Underwood, not become an iconic star, whilst the saxophonist, David Jones, later known as Bowie, spectacularly did?

I am writing about people who lived lives of performance and persona in the extreme – a feature of narcissism that gets neglected in the mainstream media. In these people I am looking for illustrations of what narcissism theory says – about how narcissism works, and what kind of childhood experiences bring it about. Here, I will look what it was about David that took him, and not George, to iconic fame. In part B, I will look at the childhood experiences that might have made him like this.

Drive

David Jones and George Underwood met at the age of eight at Wolf Cubs. They quickly found a common passion for music. At one point the two boys worked up a secret ‘back-slang’ language that those around them could not understand. They were close.

When David and George formed The King Bees during their mid-teens, they attracted the interest of music manager Les Conn. It was David that Conn quickly became interested in. Why? It wasn’t the songwriting or the voice: “They were a nice bunch. It wasn’t commercial music they played... But David had charisma, George too.”² George too, yes. But Conn’s The King Bees press release would not mention George². A difference between these two boys was already being noticed by those in the business less than a year after The Konrads. Conn had picked up another young performer called Mark Feld. In these two boys, but not George, Conn saw “exactly the same attitude”² A few months later David (soon to be Bowie) and Mark (soon to be Bolan of T-Rex), would meet regularly at La Gioconda coffee bar, Soho. What, with this “attitude”, did they talk about? They “practiced their far-fetched stories on each other, both becoming masters of bullshit…The pair shared a talent for rabid self-promotion and unabashed flirtatiousness.”²

This “attitude” existed before the evidence of musical ability. At times when David clearly knew the material was not good enough, such as with his first recording for Decca, he was nevertheless “certain he was going to make it.”²

George appeared on a TV talent show and shortly afterwards David ran into him in the street. David referred to his friend’s achievement with only the words: “I’m gonna kill you!”¹ George later said ”David’s selfishness was cheerful, instinctive, almost child-like in its lack of malevolence.”² It sounds like there was already a disconnection from his friend. But also, if there was guilt or shame in himself, David perhaps wasn’t connected to it.

David and George, still friends later in life

Persona

Was it only ambition? No. There was something else. By the time David was interviewed for Melody Maker for the first time, charisma and the beginnings of a Bowie persona were visible. The journalist was left thinking, “There was an aura about him, something other-worldly, that was hard to put your finger on.”¹

What did David’s best friend since the age of eight think? George observed that David could “change whenever he wants to…I’d be with him sometimes, going into a club or something, and he’s slip on a mask…He would become very aloof, and that really wasn’t him…I couldn’t have stood [fame] myself.”¹

This ‘acting’ talent appeared in Bowie before singing, and before songwriting. On stage with the Manish Boys in 1964, David should have been overshadowed by the superior singing ability and experience of the founding vocalist. But the band gradually noticed that on stage, David provoked a completely different kind of reaction: one by one, the audience stopped and watched.² But in creating a charismatic persona, David was hardly getting started. By the time David’s 4^th album, Hunky Dory, was released he was David Bowie. George was still George Underwood. He wasn’t going to be a pop star, but his mark was on the album. He created the artwork.

By now, George could see in his school friend a different kind of person to himself. And the difference, at least in part, was this ability to create a mask. Perhaps it was more than an ability, but a need. Napier-Bell said David “had this total, absolute, obsessional need for an audience. Every single one of them [pop stars] is like it…I never recognised him when he came on stage, he was such a great actor…He walked differently, he’d hold his head differently, he spoke differently…that’s a real actor.”¹ David acted as if he specifically had too much self-esteem. But in narcissism, persona acts as a confident mask to hide a lack of a connection to the real emotional ‘self’.³

David had become Davie Jones, David Jay and then David Bowie. And now David Bowie played Ziggy Stardust with his Spider from Mars. As David himself said, “even the act was an act.”¹ Bowie later complained of getting lost in the persona, because “everyone was convincing me I was the messiah.”¹ But this worshipped alien was a product of planning and determination. A year before the album release, a young band had been dressed up by David’s wife Angie and released two of the songs, fronted by a Freddie Burretti, (a young man who was sleeping with the couple).¹

The drive for (external) success and emotional (internal) self-neglect, in narcissism, work together. In the term self-neglect there is an implication that we are divided. Part of us neglects another part of us. On the map of narcissism (below), some roles serve to create distance from emotional vulnerability or shame. These include performance and putting others down but also the dismissing of our own feelings and needs. Distancing from our own vulnerability can help us perform. But the result is that our emotions are neglected. We can hear echoes of this in the words of keyboard player Rick Wakeman. He was struck by how creativity was “engulfing [David] and driving him, so that he’d be writing and recording as if against his own will…it was mesmerising.”¹ At times when he was “clearly depressed, he was as driven as ever.”¹ But there came a point when David’s personal assistant Coco Schwab would approach his sleeping body with the mirror he had used to cut the cocaine. The mirror had multiple uses, and one was to check if the Starman was still breathing, or if he was dead.¹

The map of narcissism with its six roles⁴*

Loving the alien

By 1976, George was established as an artist. He had joined David on the Ziggy Stardust tour for a while – as a source of sanity. At some point he gave his apologies, having left a new wife at home. After a period of no contact, George phoned David one day. Put through to voicemail, he left a message: “I’m happy, I hope you’re happy too…Give me a ring when you get a chance.”¹ David called George back eventually. He also made a note of the voicemail message, and later used it in Ashes to Ashes. But David and George’s lifestyles had become quite different. In particular, David’s sex life was becoming legendary.

David with Angie his first wife

Mainstream media, faced with a Bowie, or a Mercury or a Brando often look at the gay/straight question. One effect of this is to separate these icons from the likes of Elvis or Tupac who only slept with women. But as a psychologist there is something that stands out to me more than preference. Bowie was a compulsive sex addict. The main feature of his sex life was not a certain type of person. It was that he was sleeping with a variety of people – often all at one time. These people were often led to believe there was some exclusivity, and some were deeply hurt. If this is the feature we focus on, then Elvis and Tupac were very similar to Bowie and Mercury.

When I speak about the sexual behaviour of celebrities and connect this with narcissism, there is one response I get quite a lot: don’t they just do it because the opportunities are there? Money, fame and glamour can all attract opportunities for lots of sex. That’s true. So, if it were something to do with narcissism and not the trappings of success, how could we tell? What if the same patterns of behaving were there before success?

Dana Gillespie was 15 when she took David home one night. She became his girlfriend. “I knew from the outset that David was obsessed when it came to his career. He would do literally anything to get what he wanted. I’d have to say he was ruthless in that respect. He was very attractive to women and men and he knew it.”¹ His sexual affair with talent scout Calvin Lee was, thought Lee, “driven by ambition…he has to be in that situation otherwise you don’t get ahead. You could call it manipulation but what the hell”² Through Lee, David got a deal for his break-through single, Space Oddity. He also came away from the same fling with his first wife, Angie Barnett, who had also been sleeping with Lee when he met David.²

David’s dramatic love life was not all about building his career. At school, his behaviour generally with girls was described as “terrible”^2. If we were to go back to February 1961, and the 15^th birthday of George Underwood, we would find David and George admiring the same girl, Carol. A few days later, George will get a date arranged with Carol. Envious, David will call his best friend to tell him convincingly that she doesn’t want to go through with it. On the night, Carol will stand alone, stood up by George. George will later say “You don’t do that to your best friend”¹ David will boast the following week that he is now going out with Carol. Livid, George will punch David in the face, hitting his left eye. David and George will not speak for a month, and after multiple hospital treatments, David will be left with a physical anomaly (mydriasis). This disfigurement will eventually feed visually into the famous David Bowie persona. He will appear to have different coloured eyes. But again, the root cause of something audiences will find intriguing, is something he will not want to talk too much about.

David once said, “off stage, I’m a robot. On stage, I achieve emotion. It’s probably why I prefer dressing up as Ziggy to being David”¹ Publicist Chris Poole remembered that “he was an absolute control freak…He could be enormously charming…but he was distant.” Dana Gillespie said that David “Hadn’t received love or compassion as a child. As a result, he never knew how to give it.”¹ If compulsive sex (and compulsive performing) are a way to deal with a kind of emotional disconnectedness, then this may have knock on effects.

In narcissism, both work and sex can serve to maintain distance from emotional vulnerability and connection. They can be used interchangeably like a cocktail of drugs. When one stops working or becomes too much, the other is depended upon. Sleeping with more than one person in a non-negotiated way can serve specifically to maintain power and distance from feelings of dependency. But as a strategy it has low sustainability. And “workaholic David had become impatient, compulsive, demanding, selfish and driven.”¹ He was “rarely alone, but he was niggled by loneliness.”¹

Publicist Chris Poole asked, “did anyone really know him?... I don’t think anyone came close to knowing him. That would have been exactly what he wanted too”¹. Divorced from Angie, David spent some time with his old school friend, George Underwood; “observing him playing ‘happy families’… he longed for a proper home life, a woman to wake up to and a future.”¹

Later in life, David appeared to achieve something different, with his second wife Iman. She became Mrs David Jones and declared she had “fallen in love with a person, not a persona…the man behind the mask.”¹

Waiting in the Sky

One face of narcissism is the use of persona and performance to find distance from vulnerability and shame. In narcissism, there is a combination of the taking a position of being ideal, whilst actually full of insecurity. There is a position of being sexually connected, but emotionally distant.

We tend to accept the idea that success in music is first about musicality. But in David, this energy, this ambition, this charisma and even the hunger for intimacy, were there when David was a teenager. When he could not sing or write good songs, these qualities were the keys to fame. It was these qualities that David had and that his friend George didn’t. Which of the two would you wish to be? Perhaps it’s easy to answer. Perhaps not.

In 2016, David and George were still in touch, but David hadn’t told him about the cancer. On January 10^th, George received a text saying that David had died. It was over 60 years since the two boys had met. After all this time, this school friend had learned how to confirm whether this terrible news about David was true. He just had to turn on the radio.

Centre left David, with his school friend George, centre right

Disclaimer: All views expressed are my own unless otherwise stated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any institution I have been employed by. The content here is for information and should not be interpreted as advice.

*Ryle did not apply this approach only to narcissism. If this mapping approach has been used in your own therapy, this does not mean that you have narcissistic difficulties.

Notes

1. Jones, L-A. (2017). Hero: David Bowie. Hodder

2. Trynka, P. (2011). Starman: David Bowie. Sphere.

3. Lowen, A. (1997). Narcissism. Denial of the True Self. Touchstone.

4. Ryle, A. & Kerr, I.B. (2002). Introducing Cognitive Analytic Therapy. Wiley.