Gifts from the man who fell to earth

When I was around 14 or 15, my brother Pete gave me a cassette of Scary Monsters. And you know, that changed everything. Bowie led to Lou Reed (Coney Island Baby, a gift from my brother Gil). Bowie and Lou led to Iggy, Violent Femmes, X, The Replacements, Alex Chilton, and on and on. And above all, Bowie led to more Bowie.

I can picture the used copy of Young Americans I picked up at Englishtown flea market. I remember the first time I heard rumors of "the lost acoustic record" (aka Hunky Dory) at a speech and debate tournament. And of course, there was Ziggy, boogeying on my turntable. I was listening to it more than a decade after it came out, and it still sounded like a portal to the future.

I got to see Bowie in concert twice—once from the second to last row at Giants stadium. And once in April, 2004, on what became his final tour. That show was at Berkeley High, which I still sort of can't believe happened.

For most of the night, he performed as "David Bowie, regular bloke"—great show, jokey, friendly, but not like a rockstar, more like a pal. At the encore my friend EB and I managed to convince the nicest security guard in the world to take us down to two empty seats in the first row on the right. To close out the night Bowie launched into "Ziggy played guitar...." And blew the tops of our heads off. Because of course he wasn't just a regular bloke. "I'm David Bowie, deal with it," his shimmer said. And so we did.

This is one of those long-distance losses that feels strangely personal to me, and I'm sure to millions of people. I can't say what he was like in real life, though it did my heart good to read Iggy today, saying: "David’s friendship was the light of my life." What I do know is this: he was greedy with his time, generous with his art, and he spread joy wide.

And I love thinking of him playing new music with new musicians in the last year of his life, and then leaving us with Blackstar, his final album, one more gift on his way out the door.

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