Would Bowie's music have been popular without his look and persona?

I disagree with this - Bowie was a commercial hit machine in different decades with vastly different styles. I don't see the connection with Reed in that regard.

To answer the question though, fashion and marketing were every bit as important to Bowie as they are to Madonna. No question about it, and I suspect without the image he wouldn't be known by one name like an icon.

 

Gates is a businessman and he built an empire with his own ideas (with some Steve Jobs' ideas but that's another stuff).
Bowie's world was almost vaporised by Tony Defries but he learned the lesson as well as Gates.

 

Absolutely

I couldn't give a damn about his look and persona but when I hear golden years, five years, rock and roll suicide, bewlay brothers I am in heaven...

 

Who knows. To a certain extent though, I'd say no. His breakthrough came via jumping on the glam bandwagon which produced what many regard as his best albums. My guess, no Marc, no Ziggy, Aladdin etc. Still, Hunky Dory sold well in the U.K and I'd love to hear what he had come up with next in the absence of a glam scene.

 

Nice try but no cigar.
Much of my knowledge of Bowie is from the fact that I read the first biography about him and have read much other about him. One of the things I learned is that his image is largely due to his wife helping him create it early on.
And the music is not at all sophisticated. Elaborate due to much involvement of others and arrangement and production, yes. Sophisticated.... not so much. It seems as if you are making stuff up struggling to view him as being some kind of artsy fartsy messiah.
Once again, the guy is great at grasping onto fads and knowing how to market himself within them. And good for him for doing that, he made great money off the showbiz thing.
And I do like some of his songs. I can still play Spiders from Mars and Moonage daydream , it is forever embedded in my head because I had to do it in a cover band.
His music just isn't all that. And what it is is largely the result of the involvement of others.
The reality is that Bowie couldn't get arrested in this town until he started dressing in insanely bizarre costumes. The music alone couldn't do it.

 

The visual look was the icing on the cake for some people. I like the art design on most of his covers, but I wouldn't keep listening if I didn't like the music. Bowie's stuff is second hand purchases for me now. Bowie was quick to follow the Beatles' lead and focus on the visual aspect in regard to promotion, he was one of the first to follow in that regard.

 

He did some pretty cool guitar riffs now and then. Rebel Rebel is classic. But nothing very complex. I often wondered if he didn't write a lot of the stuff using a sax.

 

Possibly, but his voice is about an order of magnitude better than Lou Reed's and his songs are better.

 

I think "Fame" is the song that really broke him here in the U.S. I was pretty young then but I remember it getting a decent amount of AM radio airplay. I loved the song and had no idea what he looked like until I saw a display in a record store, and as young as I was, I just thought he was dressing that way to get attention for his music, same as Alice Cooper. Of course there was more to it than just that but the music stood on its' own.

 

When Fame came out, he was past the glam look.
He wasn't "dressing that way" anymore.

 

You don't get it. Using other talented people was one of his greatest strengths. But he wasn't alone in that - Fripp was another. All you need to know is whose name is on the album covers.

 

No, it is you who do not get it because that is exactly what I said. The guys genius was in surrounding himself with the right people and contriving the right image and marketing himself the right way ( or finding the right people to market him).
And, if all you need to know is whose name is on the album cover, then you really cannot possibly have much of an understanding of the rock era and much knowledge about the artists. Because much of the talent involved in all music don't have their names on the package. It is somewhere embedded in the liner notes.
You probably don't even recognize the name Aynsley Dunbar if all you know about Bowie is his name and the sound that comes out of your earbuds.

 

Which is untrue. The reviews of Hunky Dory was extremely positive and while it wasn't a big seller, the cat was out of the bag, so sooner or later he would have had succes, albeit maybe not so much as he actually did when he dressed up.

But you are focusing too much on his collaborators. Yes, he collaborated with a lot of people over the years, but I only need to hear Diamond Dogs, Young Americans and Station To Station to need proof that he could do it very much on his own and without someone as influential as Eno or Visconti. Also, his songwriting shines through on every album of his, so I don't buy your theory that he needed others to fullfill his potentials.

I don't know what you are describing as 'sophisticated' music, but if a Bowie record like Station To Station is not sophisticated, I don't know what is...

I don't know why, but Bowie's music has always seemed to appeal more to European audiences, which seem to 'understand' him and his art better. American's wants Springsteen-rock, true-to-heart music and honesty. Bowie does not do that kind of music, which I suspect is why he only apealled to the USA when he made commecial music like Let's Dance, which could fill the roller-skater disco's.

 

LOTS of people bought his records from hearing them on the radio - before the computer/cable tv age unless one read rock magazines the visual aspect wasn't as apparent to casual music fans. I'm sure many were shocked when they finally saw Bowie in some outrageous garb or another. I knew a few people back in the day that weren't too happy when they discovered this new singer they really liked seemed to gay or bi after they saw certain pics of him!

 

You don't find some of the songs on Low to be pretty complex ?

 

I think Fame was his first top 3 Billboard song, but the record Diamond Dogs was near the top of the Circus polls for months.

 

Anyone who thinks Bowie is just a series of conjured up images clearly hasn't listened deep enough into his catalog.

Some of the most visionary and sophisticated music in the pop medium

 

Bowie is a lot like Gabriel era Genesis

The rock rags at the time gave them an attention frenzy
The viability of the music is what carried it further

 

No, the difference is the negative connotation you paint everthing with. I see Bowie using people the way others would use an instrument as a wholly positive and praiseworthy thing. Without Bowie those albums wouldn't exist and Ronson and Garson would be known to very, very few. If it wasn't Visconti, Ronson, Garson, Eno etc on those albums it would have been other people, with as good or maybe better results. Or do you think it was crucial for him he ran into those particular individuals? No - certainly not creatively. Bowies mind was the crucial factor and he deserves the lions share of the credit. Of course few can do anything purely by their own effort. But if we followed your logic, ultimatley most of the credit would go to the makers of the equipment and people like Edison.

 

British audiences seem to have been a bit divided between the kickass rock bands who were very serious musicians that studied american music and expanded on it and the pop theatrics, which seems to have always gone over much better there than in the states.
Which is likely why Bowie goes over well there. He fits right in with the custom fit carefully developed pop star element.
And , I am certain that Europeans appreciate his "art" if you are going to use that word to describe his rather abstract persona and creative ways of developing images that keep him in the limelight.
He always made commercial music. It just didn't always sell. The guy is a walking commercial for himself. And again, quite artistic about it.

 

Yeah I think so.

Too much high school symbolism. We get it David. You're layered and deep.

 

Nothing about what I have said is negative. Recognizing that a pop star being able to self promote quite creatively and invent images and a persona that would sell his music is hardly negative. Hats off to the guy for being able to do that.
And, Mick Ronson was a massive talent, had it not been Bowie he would have ended up in the music industry somewhere. I think it likely that in some way working with Bowie might have tainted his career by getting him labeled as a pop star glam guitarist and kept him from being involved with rock bands where he could have used his diverse talents far more creatively. And Tony Visconti has had a very varied and successful career, Bowie was just a small part of it. Had he never worked with Bowie he would still have had a great career in music.
Bowies mind is indeed the force that drove his fame. The guy is a marketing genius. And apparently an organizational genius. Which, as I have been saying all along, bravo to him for that. He built and marketed a better mousetrap. And it appears he did it mostly on his own while swimming uphill against the music industries current.

 

Skinny sniffly guy in a suit by that point.

D.D.

 

Perhaps too European for the Americans. Even now it's difficult for British and European bands to break big in the US.

D.D.

 

I always thought his big breakthrough in the states was when Diamond Dogs was released. That album was very heavily promoted, and the whole dog balls controversy was one of the greatest marketing coups ever contrived. That album was a huge hit among young teens and preteens. I think Fame likely upped the age range of his fans a bit.
But I remember when Diamond Dogs was released ( I bought a copy). Record stores were plastering that poster all over the place. If I remember right there was also a full page ad in Rolling Stone or one of the other music mags promoting it. I don't know how well it sold but that kind and level of advertising and promotion could have sold snowcone machines to Eskimos.
I remember it as being quite well known and popular.