The world of music and entertainment mourns the loss of musician and actor David Bowie, who died late yesterday at the age of 69.
His music and films will be rightly be celebrated.
But for me, Bowie's artistic legacy almost boils down to this one 1983 clip, in which he criticizes MTV for not playing enough black artists while being interviewed on MTV by Mark Goodman, one of the channel's star VJs.
Consider that in 1983, Bowie was in the midst of a humongous comeback after shedding his Ziggy Stardust persona and attempting a poppier sound with the Tonight album. It was one of two albums that were all over the airwaves that summer, the other naturally being Michael Jackson's Thriller. MTV had been forced to almost begrudgingly place the Billie Jean video in high rotation to acknowledge Jackson's dominance, but were doing other black artists no favors by shuttling them to the 2 to 6 am graveyard shift. Bowie very calmly but firmly points this out to Goodman, who responds with total going-through-the-back-door-around-the-issue generalities that the star lets the big hairy guy get away with. The label PR person we don't see but probably hear near the end was probably alternately turning apoplectic shades of red, white, and blue at that point, but Bowie does not seem to give a shit. Nor does he seem content to be letting Goodman off the hook with "I understand your point of view".
But at least David Bowie did not kiss PR ass. He said what needed to be said.
And that's what matters.
MTMG
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