Davy Jones is dead. No, not that one, not the diminutive member of The Monkees. He died in 2012. I mean the singer who changed his name so he wouldn’t be confused with the singer from the pre-fab four.

David Bowie, dead of cancer at 69, only a couple of days after the release of his latest album. Blackstar.

I never saw either of the Davys in concert, though I had several opportunities. Maybe I just didn’t like either of their music enough to shell out the cash, or take the effort to get media passes. Or maybe it was bad reviews: critics usually dismissed The Monkees as pure bubblegum; a Bowie concert in Ottawa (1974 I think) saw him perform for only half an hour if I remember the review correctly, causing a mini riot. So I never bothered to check out his show on subsequent visits. Whatever the reason, I won’t have the chance to see either one perform again. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

For the most part I liked David Bowie’s music, though I think the last album I bought was Heroes, and that was in 1977, 39 years ago. In the early 1980s, when I was working in rock radio, I doubt a day went by when I didn’t play at least one of his songs in my daily shift. He was always interesting, yet to me he always seemed somewhat lost.

His songs were about alienation, and not in a science fiction “alien” sense though he used some of that imagery. From “Space Oddity” to “Ziggy Stardust” to “Heroes,” he sang about the things that separate us, about the gaps between people. Looking online at the lyrics to his new record I don’t see that much changed over the years. When I think of David Bowie I don’t think of tender love songs.

I hadn’t been following his career much the past few years. I would be aware when a new album came out, but don’t remember actually listening to any of them. To me he’d become an elder statesman of rock and roll. It was good to know he was still around, but he was somewhat irrelevant. So I didn’t know he was ill, didn’t know he had been diagnosed with cancer. His death came as a surprise.

I hope it wasn’t a surprise to him. I hope he took the opportunity to take stock of his life. From what I read of him in the seventies and eighties, so much of what he did was empty and meaningless. I hope, confronted with his own mortality, he was able to tackle the subject of the alienation in his own life, to look at what it means to be estranged from God and to accept God’s offer to break down those barriers, to turn alienation into reconciliation.

I can only hope.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D67kmFzSh_o

For another perspective, check out y friend Scott’s blog.