Brand vs Medium: David Bowie
From the man who penned “we can be heroes,” prophecy more profound than an Amazing Kreskin clairvoyance comes this staggering insight:
“After a couple of false starts, he launched his first brand called…David Bowie.
Some time later, in a BBC interview, he rationalised what had been instinctive: “I thought, well here I am. I’m a bit sort of mixed up creatively.
“I’ve got all sorts of things going on, that I’m doing on stage or whatever. I’m not quite sure if I’m a mime or a songwriter or a singer – or do I want to go back to painting again. Why am I doing these things anyway? And I realised it was because I wanted to be well known, basically.
“And that I wanted to be thought of as someone who was very much a trendy person, rather than a trend. I didn’t want to be a trend, I wanted to be the instigator of new ideas. I wanted to turn people on to new ideas and new perspectives. And so I had to govern everything around that.
“So I pulled myself in, and decided to use the easiest medium to start off with – which was rock and roll – and to add bits and pieces to it over the years, so that by the end of it, I was my own medium. That’s why I do it, to become a medium.”
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