David Bowie RIP

[Laodicean]

[identity]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/roads/2016/01/mitki_the_soviet_era_youth_movement_that_loathed_david_bowie.single.html

We Could Be Antiheroes
How David Bowie became the loathed adversary of a Soviet-era youth movement.

david-bowie-moscow.jpg

David Bowie, who died on Jan. 10, played many roles in his long career, from Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke to cameos as far-flung as voicing a character on SpongeBob SquarePants to a fleeting appearance on David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. Bowie’s charisma and presence allowed him to shift with apparent effortlessness from character to character. One of the most outlandish roles of his career, however, was a part that he didn’t choose: Among a certain set of Soviet citizens, Bowie became notorious as the immaculately fashionable foe of the artists collective and aspiring youth-movement masterminds known as Mitki.

Bowie had visited the USSR twice during the 1970s and was photographed riding the Trans-Siberian Railway and visiting iconic landmarks, including Moscow’s Cathedral of St. Basil the Blessed. However, Bowie’s music was entirely banned in the Soviet Union. Strict media restrictions prohibited a vast swath of “foreign-influenced” popular music, from Russian-language rock groups like Kino and AuktYon to global hit-makers like AC/DC and the Talking Heads. These censorship policies kept Bowie from performing publicly during his ’70s visits and kept his recordings off the shelves. However, in cities like St. Petersburg—then Leningrad—those in the know could find cassette tapes of his albums with relative ease through the shadowy network of do-it-yourself transcribers known as samizdat.

September 1982 found Bowie at a pivotal moment in his career. A predatory contract with an unscrupulous manager was set to expire at the end of the month, freeing the singer to choose between a number of lucrative new recording offers. That same September, as Bowie anticipated a windfall on the other side of the globe, a young artist named Vladimir Shinkarev eked out a meager living as an attendant in a coal-powered boiler room in Leningrad. Toiling in the obscurity of officially sanctioned Soviet work had its advantages, however: He and others of his generation took advantage of ample time off to pursue outside interests. In Shinkarev’s case, these included painting, writing, and bonding with friends over copious bottles of cheap port wine.

On Sept. 24, Shinkarev began work on a series of tongue-in-cheek pamphlets that distilled the aesthetic of his peers into the manifesto of a youth movement. This movement was intended to parallel Western subcultures such as punk but with a proudly Russian twist. Dmitri Shagin is described in the pamphlet as not only the group’s figurehead, but also its most typical member. A painter and drinking companion of Shinkarev’s with a tendency to gently defy social convention by, say, shaking hands with women and kissing men on the cheek, Shagin embodied the absurdist quality of the movement. He professed a deep love for both the Imperial Russian and Soviet military, especially a fascination with all things naval, while simultaneously strictly rejecting violence in all forms. Thus, the Mitki were born.

Released in installments via the same samizdat system that circulated Bowie’s work, the Mitki texts found a receptive audience, first among Leningrad youth, then ballooning outward through much of the Russian-speaking world. Key features of the hypothetical ideal Mitki adherent were the blue-and-white striped tel’niashka shirts typical of Russian sailors coupled with a pacifistic desire to “not defeat anyone.” As for the name, Shinkarev explained that, very simply, it’s easy to type: The Cyrillic letters that make up the word Mitki lie immediately next to each other on the bottom row of the Russian keyboard. The group, based in St. Petersburg with a secondary branch in Moscow, functioned as a loosely knit collective of largely apolitical underground artists and their supporters, hosting unofficial exhibitions and concerts until perestroika allowed them to emerge from hiding in the late ’80s.

Given the humble boiler room beginnings of the Mitki movement, it’s not surprising that overarching rejection of Western glamor is a central tenet of the group’s idiosyncratic philosophy. Exactly how Bowie was chosen as the principal representative of this glamor is a more complicated question. Bowie’s Thin White Duke–era flirtation with fascism—in 1975, he told an interviewer he believed “very strongly in fascism” and called Adolf Hitler “one of the first rock stars,” though he later expressed regret for the comments—may have provoked the ire of the Mitki. A group fixated on Russian military endeavors, including, of course, the costly Soviet victory in World War II, could hardly be expected to approve of a Nazi sympathizer. Perhaps the Mitki were also aware of Bowie’s exceedingly dandyish photo shoot in Moscow and disapproved of the juxtaposition of his rocker’s preening in front of Russian landmarks. Another possibility lies in the similarities between Bowie and the Russian rock musician—and Mitki compatriot—Boris Grebenshikov. As a young man, Grebenshikov resembled and sometimes dressed similarly to the tall, thin superstar; it’s possible that Shinkarev cast Bowie as villain in order to subtly poke fun at his friend. One thing is for sure: When the Mitki decided upon Bowie as antagonist, they fixated on him mercilessly.

Shinkarev describes Bowie as the absolute antithesis of the Mitki style of dress. A true Mitki man, by his description, should be so intrinsically unfashionable that “he could wear a costume in the style of David Bowie as if it were an old torn coat.” At a later point in the Mitki series, Shinkarev tells the story of an American, a Frenchman, and a Mitki Russian, all of whom try and fail to save a drowning woman who has fallen off the side of a ship. Shinkarev says that when the American and the Frenchman enter the tale, a Mitki man should shout words to the effect of “All in all, that David Bowie! What a jerk!” For the Mitki, Bowie served as whipping boy for the sins of all proud Westerners.

Alexandar Mihailovic, a professor of Slavic studies at Brown University, recounts an alternative version of the “Woman Overboard” story, with a new ending provided by Mitki spokesman Dmitri Shagin. In this variant, the antagonist—Bowie—goes forth to save the woman in a boat equipped with technological gadgets. His gear fails and he cannot save her, but the Mitki man is able to miraculously rescue both Bowie and the woman by walking on water. He comforts Bowie by referring to him by an overwrought diminutive name: Devidushka Bauyushka.

A drawing by Mitki member Aleksandr Florensky references the aforementioned treatise. Made to look like a book jacket, it features Bowie in a face-off with a typical Mitki adherent and is entitled The Fundamental Work ‘The Mitki and David Bowie,’ with the unhelpful subtitle, “The Fundamental Work ‘The Mitki and David Bowie’ Has Not Yet Been Written.” Bowie is depicted as clean-shaven and spiky haired, with a pair of headphones that betrays his reliance on technology, which the Mitki professed to scorn.

Followers of the Mitki movement were obliged to flamboyantly, demonstratively resent David Bowie. It’s not clear that this resentment was rooted in actual dislike, however. The Mitki were engaging in a brand of Russian humor known as stiob: parody so deep that it can be impossible to tell sincerity from insincerity. Bowie as antagonist became a tongue-in-cheek trope, one of many such tropes that group members were intended to repeat ad nauseam as a way of strengthening collective Mitki identity.

By the late ’80s, the Mitki name had enough traction to make the core collective fairly well-known and successful in their native region. However, high-profile rock concerts and meetings with celebrities and political figures strained the ties between the movement’s founders. Shinkarev did not appreciate the increased mainstream visibility and made his feelings clear in 2010 with a book entitled End of the Mitki. Shagin, however, continues on today under the Mitki name with a modified version of the original contingent of artists.

Boris Grebenshikov, the rocker and potential impetus for the Bowie-bashing, went on to develop a friendship with Bowie during the more permissive perestroika era. Grebenshikov is now considered an elder statesman of his generation of previously underground musicians, and his band, Akvarium, is among the pantheon of Russian rock gods. In 2006 he took to the airwaves to extoll Bowie’s virtues on Radio Rossii, Russia’s premier public radio station. Grebenshikov acknowledged Shinkarev’s superficially adversarial depiction of Bowie but went on to pronounce, “Look closely at the writer’s brilliant device. And you’ll see that in actuality David Bowie is in his own way the alter ego of the Mitki, their spiritual leader.”

And what of Shinkarev himself? “David Bowie seemed to the Mitki to be a significant phenomenon and, therefore, a competitor,” he told me. “The kind, relaxed, inconsistent and sloppy Mitki man—an earthy being—and the serpentine grace of the sparkling David Bowie. Of course these are antagonists, though I don’t know what Bowie himself thought.”

Ultimately, the Mitki fascination with Bowie has its roots in admiration. The unity of purpose of international counterculture proved strong enough to overcome differences in dress and political context. The Mitki representation of Bowie, as thoroughly fictive as it may be, is not too far from the effect the real Bowie could have on a listener: Bowie’s radical otherness could be alienating, but it could also blur boundaries.

[identity]

A Misplaced Grief: The Vatican and David Bowie
FR. GEORGE W. RUTLER

In proof of Chesterton’s dictum that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly, I pound away at the piano playing the easier Chopin Nocturnes and I grind on my violin with a confidence only an amateur can flaunt. So I am not innocent of music. I appreciate the emotive post-war French singers, and have a soft spot for the idiomatic form called “Doo-Wop” and its highly skilled harmonization and lyricism, along with some of the more whimsical Motown singers. But the world of rock and roll is to me a bewilderment, to the amazement of the same coterie who find it hard to believe that I have never had a cellular phone. It is a fact in witness to which I am willing to swear on a Douai Bible, that I have never been able to listen to an entire rock and roll song. This is not to say that I lack curiosity. In the South Pacific, I have listened to tunes on the aboriginal eucalyptus didgeridoo and the Polynesian nose flute, but what has developed as rock and roll music and metastasized into more raucous forms, remains an anthropological enigma and I leave restaurants and public gatherings where they are played.

Consequently, it was no surprise that news of the death of David Bowie was the first time I knew that he had been alive. If you find that hard to believe, you must remember that my instinctive taste for “pop music” is encoded by Gilbert and Sullivan and eclipsed by John Phillip Souza. What did surprise me was that the Vatican, just wiping up from its Climate Change light show on the façade of the Basilica of St. Peter’s, plunged into mourning for this man. At least the president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Gianfranco Cardinal Ravasi, issued a statement quoting from some lyrics of Mr. Bowie: “Ground Control to Major Tom / Commencing countdown, engines on / Check ignition and may God’s love be with you.” What I found most intimidating, and indeed frightening, was the assumption that others would recognize the reference.

Born in 1942, Cardinal Ravisi is older than I and yet surpasses my information of pop culture, unless a junior staff member penned the elegy. His Eminence is an accomplished archeologist and was prefect of the Ambrosian Library, whose patron had musical tastes antecedent to and, dare I say, superior to, those of David Bowie.

A “celebrity psychic” named Uri Geller said of Bowie: “I was profoundly impressed by his deep understanding of mysticism, the mysterious and the universe. There is no doubt in my mind that David believed in Heaven.” I am not impressed by this, especially in light of the fact that three years ago Bowie produced an adult-rated video impersonating Jesus in pornographic positions. A statement of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Righteous said: “The switch-hitting, bisexual, senior citizen from London has resurfaced, this time playing a Jesus-like character who hangs out in a nightclub dump frequented by priests, cardinals and half-naked women.” But when Bowie died, L’Osservatore Romano, aching to be the Church of What’s Happening Now, eulogized the genius of Bowie, excusing his “ambiguous image” as one of his “excesses” but then remarking his “personal sobriety, even in his dry, almost thread-like body.”

The impulsive effusions of grief from the Holy See remind one of an extravagant tribute that the editor of L’Osservatore Romano paid to the crooner Michael Jackson when he died of acute Propofol and Benzodiazepine intoxication. The headline asked as if it were Holy Saturday: “But will he actually be dead?” Ignoring the epicene Jackson’s mockery of Jesus in his video “Thriller,” the Vatican newspaper lauded the star as a “great dancer” (“grande ballerina”) and declared that he would “never die in the imagination of his fans.” According to L’Osservatore, Jackson’s transgenderizing surgeries were “a process of self definition that was beyond race.” As for Jackson’s piroquettes with young boys, the unofficial voice of the Holy See commented: “Everybody knows his problems with the law after the pedophilia accusations. But no accusation, however serious or shameful, is enough to tarnish his myth among his millions of fans throughout the entire world.”

In his Republic, Plato said that music

is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful; and also because he who has received this true education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justify blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he will recognize and salute the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar.

Plato also knew the dangers of “anti-music” or Corybanticism, which perverted rhythms to stimulate the bodily humors in defiance of the good purposes of the muses. Its consequence would be a moral chain reaction, dissonant music deranging society and inverting virtue. The Corybants were priests of the Phrygian goddess Cybele, and their music was atonal, ecstatic, and dissolute. It was inimical to the ideal republic. But it incubated the ethereal realms of David Bowie and Michael Jackson and their sort.

In speaking of the rock and roll genre, I certainly do not want to be lumped with those preachers who once condemned Ragtime music, or even Chesterton who in an unmeasured moment called Jazz “the song of the treadmill.” But I am a pastor of a section of Manhattan called Hell’s Kitchen. I recently had the funeral of a young man who died of a drug overdose, and whose musical world was Corybantic. His cousin, a client of the rock and drug scene, is in prison for murder. So I speak not only as an aesthete who publicly avows that he prefers Mozart and Chopin to Jackson and Bowie, but as a priest who has to pick up the pieces of those who never knew they had a choice. And I object to comfortable prelates in a higher realm, penning panegyrics for the doyens of a culture that destroys my children.

Like a new Plato, Pope Benedict XVI said in his Spirit of the Liturgy:

On the one hand, there is pop music, which is certainly no longer supported by the people in the ancient senses (populous). It’s aimed at the phenomenon of the masses, is industrially produced, and ultimately has to be described as a cult of the banal. “Rock,” on the other hand, is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumed a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship. People are, so to speak, released from themselves by the experience of being part of a crowd and by the emotional shock of rhythm, noise, and special lighting effects. However, in the ecstasy of having all their defenses torn down, the participants sink, as it were, beneath the elemental force of the universe. The music of the Holy Spirit’s sober inebriation seems to have little chance when self has become a prison, the mind is a shackle, and breaking out from both appears as a true promise of redemption that can be tasted at least for a few moments.

Young people are embarrassed when their mothers try to be “cool.” These youths may tread wrong paths unadvisedly on occasion, for such is the indiscretion of nascent years, but they want their mothers to be mature and not adolescent. Mother Church appears ridiculous as Adolescent Church, as in the case of the Holy See lamenting David Bowie. The insatiable desire for approval by pop culture is beneath the dignity of the Church as the Mother of Nations.

One thinks of the breathless Catholic News Service commentary in 2009 on the murder of the fashion designer Gianni Versace, whose obsequies in a Miami church were attended by men dressed as women, and whose final Requiem in the Duomo of Milan featured Elton John and “Sting” sobbing on each other’s shoulders: “ Versace was noted for his sensual lines and eye-catching combinations of textural shades.” This simply is the diction of political correctness and it compromises the prophetic charism of the Church; for, as sages have observed one way or another, political correctness is the speech of those who are terrified by what might happen if they spoke the truth. Perhaps the next nervous surrender to fashion will be a declaration of Bruce/Caitlin Jenner as “Person of the Year” by the editors of the gender-neutral New American Bible. Asserting his prophetic, priestly, and regal credentials as the Rock, Saint Peter warned the Christians in Rome against the celebrities of the Forum:

For, talking empty bombast, they seduce with licentious desires of the flesh those who have barely escaped from people who live in error. They promise them freedom, though they themselves are slaves of corruption, for a man is a slave of whatever overcomes him. For if they, having escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, again become entangled and overcome by them, their last condition is worse than their first. (2 Peter 2: 18-20)

Christ was a carpenter and his apostles were mostly fishermen and none of them was what is called today a “metrosexual.” I am not sure what that term fully means, but it embraces anyone who weeps for paragons of degeneracy and paladins of vice.

[bks]

“The Rapist David Bowie”
A sonnet by Margaret Corvid

Dirty his name? The dirt was always there,
just carried under nails of struggling girls,
in rucksacks, tossed in cupboards, hidden, curled
in elbows, tucked between their hats and hair.

The dirt was always there, beneath the shine,
between the lines we thought we understood,
in laurel leaves we garland round the good,
in all his songs, in he who smashed the lines

of gender, art. He built a ship to space,

carried his love and dirt up to the moon.
I will not mourn. The tears will happen, soon,
but not for him. His magic, goblin face

is scarred with stolen hope: the fear of youth.
Gather his dirt; inter him with our truth.

http://www.redwedgemagazine.com/online- ... avid-bowie

[zangtang]

because you can't libel the dead ?

.........is a feminist, socialist, sex worker rights activist and dominatrix.

- Next !

[bks]

because you can't libel the dead ?

.........is a feminist, socialist, sex worker rights activist and dominatrix.

- Next !

It was presented without comment, zangtang. There's enough smoke around Bowie to wonder how much fire there was, too.

ON EDIT: Just want to say, I agree with the American take on libel as compared to the British. If you're a public figure/pop star/person who makes their living trying to siphon off the public's attention, then anyone is pretty much entitled to say anything they fucking want about you.

Now it'd be nice if the people who claimed Bowie sexually abused them aren't lying about it (I doubt it). But ultimately I don't give a fuck, because I'm against the conflation of great art with great character - I'm all for the celebration of their work, when it's really good - and I couldn't care less about Bowie's reputation or any other celebrity's reputation, nor any damage done to it, least of all by a person writing a poem about him/them.

It's nice that his music helped thousands or hundreds of thousands of young people accept themselves for themselves. It is. But really, so fucking what? That's not why he did it, of course. Certainly not primarily why. He was an artist, not an activist. Perhaps the greatest media artist of the rock n' roll era.

But I don't know him. You don't know him. Almost no one who is celebrating him knew him, so how fucking childish is it to celebrate the man? It's as idiotic as celebrating the soldier returned from combat BECAUSE he's a soldier. He may have smashed a baby's head on the ground in front of the baby's mother, but since he's got a uniform on and is in attendance at a football game, I'm supposed to cheer?

It's the terror of knowing what this world is about. Yeah, exactly. And did he contribute to its continuation? Yeah, very willingly, because it paid off.

Basically, if you don't want bad shit said about you, don't make a career out of trying to get noticed. Circulate your art, seek excellence, and don't play the celebrity game. Because if you play it, and you use it to gain "advantages" (like money and power, and luring underage girls to your lair so you can fuck them), then you certainly should have to accept the drawbacks.

[IanEye]

*

Sue, you said you wanted writ
“Sue the virgin” on your stone
For your grave

Why too dark to speak the words?
For I know that you have a son
Oh, folly, Sue



Ride the train I’m far from home
In a season of crime none need atone
I kissed your face



Sue, I pushed you down beneath the weeds
Endless faith in hopeless deeds
I kissed your face
I touched your face
Sue, Good-bye

*

[guruilla]

[Elvis]

Bono pays tribute to Bowie by quitting immediately
21-01-16



U2 FRONTMAN Bono has paid tribute to David Bowie by promising to stop singing.

The idea came to Bono after listening to the succession of increasingly brilliant albums Bowie made in the 1970s.

Bono said: “Bowie’s passing brought home what a leather-bound cockmonger I am. I am not cool or likeable and if you take away the stupid glasses I look like a postman.

“For me to carry on now would be an insult. Our plodding bilge is the absolute antithesis of everything Bowie stood for.

“I told the band they can either get a new frontman or just retire to their vast houses and do bad watercolour paintings of fruit, which is what I’m going to do.”

Bono has donated his leather trousers to charity, and now wears the River Island chinos that he has craved for years.

He said: “These chinos are so much more breathable, with plenty of give around the waistline. I feel like I’ve come home.

“Thank you David.”


http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/cele ... 0121105525

[Cordelia]

Speaking of (another) Bono.....

Hamming it up in 1973; Marianne as Sonny and David as Cher



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au8e-0V_rFw

[KUAN]

bump

[brekin]

Just caught this, Lady Gaga's tribute to David Bowie/commercial for Intel at the Grammies (I don't know if the intel bits were shown at the grammies, I hope not).
Pretty interesting that there were wasn't more use of his actual image used throughout the sequence instead of his iconography superimposed on Lady Gaga. Also, while she is honoring him by covering his songs, it seems with so much astounding visual material of him over the years even a simple slideshow in the background would have gone off more dynamically and more tribute worthy to his career. (Maybe a rights issue?)

And perhaps there wasn't enough time, but my feelings are something that sounds pretty great, Lady Gaga doing a medley of Bowie with high end immersive effects, comes across as a little slap dash, exploitive and rambling. All respect to her vocal/stage performance which I thought was pretty boss.

I guess Bowies son thought it all overwrought, and Lady Gaga unfortunately, remdinded me more of Liberace than Bowie at most times, but the weirdest and more than slightly insensitive thing is Intel's branding of the event. Intel didn't really deliver anything effects blowing and so wtf are they doing putting their name on a tribute? Why not just have Pepsi, Cadillac or Mountain Dew as well? I'm not a purist, but Christ, why not just put a "Intel inside" sticker on his casket?

[Nordic]

Just caught this, Lady Gaga's tribute to David Bowie/commercial for Intel at the Grammies (I don't know if the intel bits were shown at the grammies, I hope not).
Pretty interesting that there were wasn't more use of his actual image used throughout the sequence instead of his iconography superimposed on Lady Gaga. Also, while she is honoring him by covering his songs, it seems with so much astounding visual material of him over the years even a simple slideshow in the background would have gone off more dynamically and more tribute worthy to his career. (Maybe a rights issue?)

And perhaps there wasn't enough time, but my feelings are something that sounds pretty great, Lady Gaga doing a medley of Bowie with high end immersive effects, comes across as a little slap dash, exploitive and rambling. All respect to her vocal/stage performance which I thought was pretty boss.

I guess Bowies son thought it all overwrought, and Lady Gaga unfortunately, remdinded me more of Liberace than Bowie at most times, but the weirdest and more than slightly insensitive thing is Intel's branding of the event. Intel didn't really deliver anything effects blowing and so wtf are they doing putting their name on a tribute? Why not just have Pepsi, Cadillac or Mountain Dew as well? I'm not a purist, but Christ, why not just put a "Intel inside" sticker on his casket?

Yeah. Well. It was the Grammys after all. I feel pretty much the same way you did. The whole thing has corporate oversight, so it was "safe". Way too safe. Stil I like Lady Gaga and when she got to "we can be heroes" I got goosebumps.

[tron]

bowie was intel? well how about that then.........good cover.....

[brekin]

Love this. I think they have dramatized number 1, a wee bit, which is a pity, because I can't stand Dave Grohl. Number 4, pretty ballsy! Number 6 would have been cool though.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicb ... urned-down

Just say no: 10 things David Bowie turned down

1. Dave Grohl
News broke this week that David Bowie refused the offer to work with Dave Grohl, making him one of the few musicians ever not to have collaborated with the Foo Fighters’ leader. To be fair, nothing has emerged featuring Grohl performing with Father Abraham and the Smurfs, either, though we’ve heard rumours there’s a bootleg on the internet of the Foos performing The Smurf Song with Father Abraham at the Amsterdam Paradiso, but without any actual smurfs on stage. Grohl approached Bowie two years ago, asking him to sing on a piece of music for a film. Bowie’s response: “David, I watched the movie and I got to be honest, it’s not my thing … I’m not made for these times. So thanks, but I think I’m gonna sit this one out.” Grohl replied, and received a response from Bowie: “Alright, well that’s settled, then. Now fuck off.” Perhaps Bowie was worried that him plus a hard rock guitarist might have resulted in Tin Machine 3.

2. Coldplay

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You want your hero to appear on one of your songs. The natural thing to do is to send them a recording and then wait. Your preferred response would be an email a couple of hours later with a vocal already recorded and attached. Failing that, you’d settle for a note saying: “Schedule’s busy, but let’s try to find some studio time.” You could probably understand silence – after all, heroes are busy people. What you might want least of all would be for said hero to respond: “It’s not a very good song, is it?” Which of those do you think happened when Coldplay approached Bowie?

3. Scottish independence
The Brit awards are famed as a platform for hard-hitting political campaigns. Remember that time in 2004 when Liberty X used winning best British single to call for a thorough investigation of HMRC’s complicity in allowing major corporations to minimise their tax burden? But Bowie’s words at the 2014 ceremony still came as a shock. First, there was the fact that he wasn’t speaking them, delegating that task to Kate Moss – you don’t think Bowie would have contemplated turning up to anything so vulgar as the Brits, do you? Then there was the content of them. Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, consider yourself rejected. “Scotland, stay with us,” intoned Moss. And, lo, Scotland did indeed vote to stay part of the UK.

4. A knighthood
Bowie had already turned down a CBE in 2000 – “I seriously don’t know what it’s for,” he said – but Buckingham Palace doesn’t give up easily, what with the Queen being a huge fan of Bowie’s early-70s albums (she went off him a bit with Station to Station, but loves Low and “Heroes”). And so, in 2003, Bowie was offered a knighthood for having made “a major contribution to British life”. Again, he said no: “I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. It’s not what I spent my life working for.” Imagine how Chris Martin would have felt if that was how Bowie had rejected the Coldplay song.

5. A Danny Boyle musical
Like all good and sensible musicians, Bowie was prone to saying no to requests to use his music. You have to, if you don’t want to see Life on Mars being used on confectionary ads, or The Jean Genie advertising Gap, or Always Crashing in the Same Car soundtracking Top Gear. But what if someone who is respected in their own field comes to you, saying they want to make a movie about you? Maybe a hugely well-regarded film-maker like Danny Boyle, who has a script by the equally well-regarded Frank Cottrell Boyce. You still say no. Boyle said Bowie’s rejection left him “in grief”.

6. Doctor Who
Peter Capaldi said last autumn that he wanted David Bowie to be a guest star in Doctor Who. He had no chance. Doctor Who composer Murray Gold told Den of Geek in 2013 of his encounter with Bowie at an ice cream stall: “I said, ‘I write music for Doctor Who,’ and he said, ‘I’m not doing it.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘They want me to do it.’ I don’t know what it means, to this day, but that’s what he said. I don’t know in what capacity, as an actor or as a musician.”

7. Flight of the Conchords
The New Zealand comedy-music duo were longtime Bowie fans, having written the song Bowie in Space years ago, and when they began their own series for US TV, they wrote an episode in which they were to be visited in a dream by Bowie. And who better to play Bowie than Bowie? Through intermediaries, they approached him. As the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement wrote in the Spinoff: “The someone we knew talked to the someone they knew’s friend of someone who represented him and possibly approached him about it. And he (or quite possibly merely a representative) said that he’d just done Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s Extras and didn’t want to do another thing acting as a version of him. He’d rather just continue being the actual him. Fair enough, so would we. We wouldn’t be meeting our hero. Through the disappointment I was extremely relieved. As exciting as it is to meet your hero, the relief of not having to meet them is another, quite different and pleasant feeling.”

8. Red Hot Chili Peppers
The world’s premiere funk-metal band with socks on their penises revealed earlier this year that they had repeatedly asked David Bowie to produce them. “In the beginning we would call him, and he would say no, respectfully,” singer Anthony Kiedis said. “Then, later, we would write long emails explaining everything, and why it was time for us to really get our ships on and he always respectfully declined.” He said no “two or three times” Kiedis said, though Brian Eno has turned down the group eight times. Fellas, take a hint.

9. A Bond film
Bowie was a man with a firm appreciation of his own talents, and while he doubtless would have been able to bring suitable villainy to the role of Max Zorin in A View to a Kill – a role eventually taken by Christopher Walken – it was the downsides that turned him off. Not the prospect of acting opposite Roger Moore, who was 57 and distinctly unactionlike by the time the film was released, but the idea of whether it was the best use of his time. “I didn’t want to spend five months watching my stunt double fall off cliffs,” he said.

10. Puss in Boots
Bowie, famously, learned a great deal from Lindsay Kemp – the dancer, mime artist and choreographer. He studied with Kemp in the 1960s “I taught him to express and communicate through his body,” says Kemp. “I taught him to dance. I taught him the importance of the look – makeup, costume, general stagecraft, performance technique. I gave him books to read and pictures to look at. We talked about kabuki, avant gardists, the world of the music hall, which we were both attracted to.” They worked together on many projects, but some didn’t come together. As Kemp told the Guardian earlier this year: “One Christmas, I asked him to play Puss in Boots in Musselburgh. His agent came back and said that £10 a week wasn’t really enough – could I get it up to £15? Management said no, we couldn’t. What Musselburgh missed!”