He seems to want to quote not the risen Lazarus, but that of a lesser known parable, whose narrative is as innovative as this song, unfolding almost entirely in the afterlife. It almost seems that in Lazarus, Bowie’s unearthly talent wanted, once again, to represent himself bivalently: both a scary monster covered with scars, and a greedy millionaire with the world at his feet.

The meeting with Reeves Gabrels made me realise that I could not continue like this.” Scary monster: Lazarus, the monster and its scarsĮl’azar, the one who is assisted by God. I thought I had nothing more to say and thought only to earn as much as possible I was afraid of being near the end. “I didn’t know what I was doing anymore intoxicated with success, I had lost my natural enthusiasm for things. Personally I don’t think it’s proper to criticise that dance-pop period – certain things really were remarkable – but in a 1995 interview Bowie himself was very strict about his 80s: Devotion from which not even our hero escaped: “I was looking for your ass” confessed Bowie in 2016 but in those days everything really was Fashion. Once defined his “perfect balance”, it was a musical work of high synthesis between art rock and pop which offered a decisive contribution to the best sound aesthetic of the following decade, a decade devoted to the cult of image and possession, in which everything was joyfully trade and business. In facts, if at the beginning of the 70s he was The man who sold the world, only ten years later he could very easily have bought that world back, and without anyone being able to object: just arrived in New York in 1980, David Bowie was the King: “By the time I got to New York, I was living like a King, then I used up all my money…”.Ī kingdom claimed in Heroes ( “I, I will be king”) and constantly rising from Hunky Dory to the Berlin trilogy: years that culminated in Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) in 1980, a bridge between two irreconcilable eras. Disrespectful re-readings that in one fell swoop erase decades of artistic and personal maturation, written as if the artist in 2016 was still at the beginning of his career – mid-70s LA, to be clear – among esoteric quotes and (attributed) myths of Übermensch. Some attempts have been genuinely interesting, others are weird, blatant clickbait. Lazarus, the symbolic song of Bowie’s musical testament ( Blackstar, Columbia Records, 2016), doesn’t seem to be left alone: ravaged, as it has been, by a thousand interpretations and plagued by inexhaustible attempts at decodification.

Lazarus bowie