Bowie and the 1960s – Explaining History
The Man Who Sold The World: David Bowie as a Historical Text of the 20th Century
David Bowie was never merely a recording artist; he was a self-curated historical text, and consciously so. If we view Bowie as he intended to be himself to be viewed his art and his persona become a prism through which the destabilizing forces of his era—class, gender, and identity—were refracted.
Just as the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson embodied the collision of 1950s suburban repression with the psychic expansion of the 1960s, Bowie serves as a signifier for a colder, more cynical transition. He represents the shift from the collective, utopian sentiments of the 1960s counterculture to the fractured, individualistic, and market-driven reality of the 1970s and 80s.
In this week’s podcast, we delved into sociologist Nick Stevenson’s study, David Bowie: Fame, Sound and Vision. The central thesis is that Bowie was not just reflecting his times; he was actively constructing a new way of being within them. He was a product of the 1960s underground who ultimately came to define the commodified rebellion of the 1970s, foreshadowing the performative individualism that would come to dominate the end of the century.
The 1960s: The Failure of the Counterculture?
To understand Bowie’s significance, we must first interrogate the decade that incubated him. As Stevenson argues, the 1960s remains a battlefield of historical interpretation, split largely along partisan lines.
For the political Right, the 1960s is often reduced to the era of the “Permissive Society.” This term, often used pejoratively to describe the legislative liberalisation under Roy Jenkins (abortion, divorce, homosexuality), is viewed through a conservative lens as the seed of social atomisation and moral decay—a narrative that would eventually fuel the rise of ThatcherismMonetarism Monetarism is the economic school of thought associated with Milton Friedman, which rose to dominance as a counter to Keynesian economics. It posits that inflation is always a monetary phenomenon and that the government’s role should be limited to managing the currency rather than stimulating demand. Key Mechanisms: Inflation Targeting: Using interest rates to keep inflation low, even if high interest rates cause recession or unemployment. Fiscal Restraint: Opposing government deficit spending to boost the economy during downturns. Critical Perspective:Critics argue that monetarism breaks the post-war social contract. By prioritizing “sound money” and low inflation above all else, monetarist policies often induce deliberately high unemployment to discipline the labor force and suppress wages. It represents a technical solution to political problems, removing economic policy from democratic accountability. .
Conversely, the Left has traditionally viewed the 1960s as a moment of radical potential—the birth of identity politics and the realization that “the personal is political.” However, cultural theorists like Stuart Hall and historians like Eric Hobsbawm have noted a melancholy conclusion to the leftist reading of the decade: the ultimate defeat of the counterculture.
In this view, the radical energy of the 1960s failed to overthrow the capitalist superstructure; instead, it was absorbed by it. This is what the Situationists called recuperation—the process by which politically radical ideas are twisted, commodified, and sold back to consumers.
David Bowie emerges from this precise friction. He was a child of the 1960s London underground—dallying with the Arts Lab movement, mod culture, mime, and hippiedom. Yet, unlike the earnest folk singers of the era who prized “authenticity,” Bowie realized that in a mass-media age, authenticity was a trap. His success came when he embraced the artifice of the market. He presented himself not as a truth-teller, but as a product—a “Starman,” a plastic soul. In doing so, he signaled the end of the 60s dream of collective liberation and the beginning of a new era of performative identity.
The “Rock Star” as a Vehicle for Escape
The 1970s saw the crystallization of the “Rock Star” as a distinct socio-cultural class. As discussed in the podcast, this required the performance of an outrageous lifestyle—limousines, cocaine, tax exile—which marked a stark departure from the working-class solidarity of the British Invasion bands.
Bowie fits into a lineage of British cultural dissatisfaction that traces back to the “Angry Young Men” of 1950s literature—writers like John Osborne and Colin Wilson. These figures expressed a masculine frustration with the drudgery of post-war, suburban Britain. Crucially, however, their goal was rarely to overthrow the class system in a Marxist sense; it was to escape it. They wanted to transcend the grey conformity of the welfare state.
By the early 1970s, that desire for escape had morphed into the Glam Rock explosion. The historian Dominic Sandbrook, in State of Emergency, argues that we often misremember the 1970s solely as a time of crisis. While it was indeed the era of the Three-Day Week and stagflationStagflation Full Description:A portmanteau of “stagnation” and “inflation,” describing a period of high unemployment coupled with rising prices. This economic crisis in the industrialized West shattered faith in the post-war order and provided the “window of opportunity” for neoliberalism to ascend. Stagflation was the crisis that Keynesian economics could not explain or fix. Triggered in part by oil shocks, it created a situation where traditional state spending only fueled inflation without creating jobs. This failure paralyzed the political left and allowed the neoliberal right to step in with radical new solutions focused on breaking unions and shrinking the money supply. Critical Perspective:Naomi Klein and other critics view this moment as the first major application of the “Shock Doctrine.” The crisis was used to justify painful structural reforms—such as crushing labor power and slashing social spending—that would have been politically impossible during times of stability., it was also a time of rising working-class aspiration. Glam Rock was not a rejection of capitalism; it was a celebration of aspiration and fantasy during a time of economic darkness.
This aligns with the arguments of music critic Simon Reynolds in Shock and Awe. Reynolds suggests that Glam Rock was the true sound of the 70s because it rejected the “authentic,” denim-clad ethos of the late-60s in favor of surface, fame, and theatricality. When the real world offered power cuts and rubbish piling up on the streets, Bowie offered a technicolour exit strategy.
The “Starman” Moment and the Instability of Gender
Perhaps the single most historically significant moment in Bowie’s career occurred on July 6, 1972, during a performance of “Starman” on Top of the Pops. At a crucial moment, Bowie draped his arm around guitarist Mick Ronson and gazed into the camera.
To understand the weight of this gesture, we must contextualize it. The Sexual Offences Act of 1967 had partially decriminalized homosexuality, but it had not destigmatized it. Britain in 1972 remained a deeply conservative, homophobic society. For a man with flaming red hair and a jumpsuit to act affectionately toward another man on the BBC was a radical break with normative masculinity.
It resonated with a generation of outsiders. Figures like Holly Johnson and Neil Tennant have cited that specific moment as their awakening. However, from a critical historical perspective, we must ask: Was this true radicalism, or was it marketing?
Sociologist Simon Frith has argued that rock culture often uses subcultural signals as a commercial strategy. Bowie openly declared he was gay in Melody Maker in 1972, only to retract it years later, famously calling himself a “closet heterosexual.” This ambiguity is key to understanding Bowie as a historical text. He utilized the language of the underground—referencing Jean Genet or William Burroughs—but he packaged them for mass consumption.
He did not necessarily lead a gay rights movement; rather, he turned gender and sexuality into a performance. He suggested that gender was not a fixed biological reality but a style that could be adopted and discarded. This was liberating, but it was also a form of “tourism” that allowed him to visit the margins of society without losing his status as a mainstream star.
The Herald of the Neoliberal Self
Finally, we must consider how Bowie’s career arc mirrors the political trajectory of the West from the 1960s to the 1980s. He begins in the experimental, collective atmosphere of the 60s arts labs. By the mid-70s, he transforms into the “Thin White Duke”—a figure of icy detachment, mirroring the collapse of the post-war social democratic consensus and the rise of cynicism in the Nixon/Heath era.
By the 1980s, with the Let’s Dance era, Bowie transforms again into the ultimate global brand—slick, blond, and immensely profitable. He becomes the godfather to the New Romantics and the MTV generation, where the visual image is paramount.
In this sense, Bowie is the perfect cultural accompaniment to the rise of neoliberalismSupply Side Economics Full Description:Supply-Side Economics posits that production (supply) is the key to economic prosperity. Proponents argue that by reducing the “burden” of taxes on the wealthy and removing regulatory barriers for corporations, investment will increase, creating jobs and expanding the economy. Key Policies: Tax Cuts: Specifically for high-income earners and corporations, under the premise that this releases capital for investment. Deregulation: Removing environmental, labor, and safety protections to lower the cost of doing business. Critical Perspective:Historical analysis suggests that supply-side policies rarely lead to the promised broad-based prosperity. Instead, they often result in massive budget deficits (starving the state of revenue) and a dramatic concentration of wealth at the top. Critics argue the “trickle-down” effect is a myth used to justify the upward redistribution of wealth.. The political projects of Thatcherism and Reaganism were built on the idea of the sovereign individual—the notion that “there is no such thing as society,” only individuals and families. Bowie’s career was a testament to the idea of self-creation. He taught a generation that they were not bound by the class, gender, or community they were born into; they could reinvent themselves through consumption and style.
This is the double-edged sword of his legacy. It is a story of liberation, allowing for the smashing of repressive norms. But it is also a story of atomization, where the collective dream of a better society is replaced by the individual dream of being a star.
Further Reading:
The Great Moving Right Show by Stuart Hall
David Bowie: Fame, Sound and Vision by Nick Stevenson
Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy by Simon Reynolds
State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain 1970-1974 by Dominic Sandbrook
Further Reading & Critical Sources:
- Nick Stevenson, David Bowie: Fame, Sound and Vision (Polity, 2006) – The core text discussed in this episode, offering a sociological reading of Bowie’s celebrity.
- Simon Reynolds, Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy (Faber & Faber, 2016) – An essential cultural history of the Glam era, positioning Bowie against the grey backdrop of the 1970s.
- Dominic Sandbrook, State of Emergency: The Way We Were: Britain 1970-1974 (Allen Lane, 2010) – Provides the socio-political context of the Britain that Ziggy Stardust conquered.
- Jon Savage, 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded (Faber & Faber, 2015) – Excellent for understanding the pop-cultural “Big Bang” of the mid-60s that produced Bowie.
- Stuart Hall, The Great Moving Right Show (Marxism Today, 1979) – For a deeper understanding of the shift from the 1960s consensus to Thatcherism.
Transcript
Nick: Welcome again to the Explaining History podcast. I’ve been trying to marry things up a little bit recently. When I was speaking last week to Toby Manning about Brian Wilson, I hit upon a question: What is it that famous recording artists mean in terms of how they symbolically represent changing ideas? For example, how do they represent social class, anxieties of the moment, or questions around gender and sexuality?
That is what, to me, is historically important about David Bowie, whom I’m going to talk about today, but also about key iconic musical and cinematic figures generally. I know a few weeks ago we were talking about the Black Oscar winners, people like Sidney Poitier. When we watch artists on the screen or the stage, part of the relationship we’re having with them is all about the ways in which we make sense of things—the ways in which we make meaning. If you want to talk about what culture is, broadly, it is the creation of a shared, combined, collective sense of meaning in cultures and subcultures.
There are a million more nuanced things to say about that, and I don’t want to go back into my old days of lecturing on popular culture, but I do want to dive into an amazing book that I haven’t picked up in years: David Bowie: Fame, Sound and Vision by Nick Stevenson.
I think the key thing I’m interested in is this: just as we talked about Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys being produced by the 50s and colliding with the 60s, Bowie is a product of the 60s who meets his moment in the 70s. All the things that had been cooking under the surface in the 60s during the brief flowering of the British counterculture suddenly find their first expression in the 70s, and perhaps to some extent in the 1980s, though skewed in different ways.
I’m reading from the section of the book called “Bowie in the 60s: The Making of a Star.” Nick Stevenson writes:
“The 1960s remain a period of intense ideological contestation. Viewed from the political right, the emergence of the permissive society and anti-social individualism has led to increasing levels of drug abuse, crime, anti-social behaviour, family breakdown and social atomisation. The lifestyle revolts of the 60s, in this view, fostered a host of liberal freedoms from which modern society is still learning to recover.”
The causes of social breakdown are variously blamed upon the rise of youth cultures, consumerism, and the radical ambitions of the counterculture. Many on the Right argued at the time that Margaret Thatcher was the antidote to all of this. This was long before Thatcher was openly articulating a free-market revolution—which, ironically, actually takes many of these trends from the 60s and supercharges them. Individualism, consumerism, family breakdown, and social atomisation were all key features of the 1980s. She was talking about a return to a more Victorian or Edwardian morality, but Thatcherism was all about a different individualism. It wasn’t about pleasure-seeking hedonism, but the individualism of, “I’m not contributing to the rest of society, I don’t see why I should.”
Back to the book:
“The enhancement of freedom as opposed to conformity required by a well-ordered and well-regulated society is bemoaned by moralisers and populist right-wing commentators. Left-wing inspired accounts of the 60s, on the other hand, view the decade more progressively, if no less ambivalently. The 60s witnessed the rise of new experiments in identity politics based on questions of respect and recognition. The birth of the idea that the personal is political, and that contemporary culture could offer arresting images and ideas, all come from this decade.
Yet, most left-inspired readings of the 60s usually end with the triumph of commodification rather than liberation. The defeat of the counterculture and the triumph of the ephemeral cultures of fashion and mass consumption led directly to the selfish neoliberalism of modern times. The notion that popular music and culture seemed to offer possibilities of personal and collective transformation was soon displaced once these sentiments became incorporated into the system through commodification.”
This process ultimately ends with the stars of the 60s enjoying glamorous lifestyles and global forms of visibility while trading upon more authentic sentiments of rebellion available within their earlier work. This is absolutely true of Bowie.
There is a concept of the “rise and fall of the rock star,” and the rock star seems to have certain key characteristics one has to manifest. You have to live this outrageous fantasy lifestyle of stretched limousines, country houses, cocaine, champagne, Rolls Royces, wild outfits, and performative sexuality. Bowie certainly fits this. Whilst articulating countercultural ideas in the 60s, and then blending science fiction and gender-bending in the 70s, by the 1980s he becomes the very definition of the MTV rock star.
Stevenson continues:
“These images of the 60s remain powerful within contemporary culture, whereas the 70s are often seen as a period of lost innocence before the onset of the cynical, market-driven 80s… Rather than reading the development of the counterculture and rock music as either revolutionary or reactionary, this book argues that popular culture needs to be understood more precisely within its political and cultural context.”
Bowie is an immensely contested figure, not least among his fans. It is useful, if you look at Bowie, The Stones, Led Zeppelin, or The Who, to look at them not simply as disposable popular culture, or as lone revolutionaries against the system. They are neither. Instead, they are the products of the mass consumption of the 1960s. They articulate the politics emerging in the 1960s around the individual, which were only possible at scale because of mass culture. People had the income to buy different looks and decide whether they were going to be Rockers, Mods, or Hippies. Affluence brings choice.
You find ideas in Bowie’s music referencing people like Jean Genet—”The Jean Genie” is about the revolutionary French thinker and artist who was friends with the Black Panthers. These radical undercurrents are played with by artists like Bowie. Sometimes there is a nod-and-wink irony to their usage, and sometimes there is a deep sincerity.
Ideally, the 60s is better understood as a symbol of the desire for change—obviously, as the song goes, “Changes.” The decade opened the possibility that ordinary consumer goods, like the record player and the television set, could threaten the established rules of authority and morality. The aesthetic changes pioneered by stars like Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix ultimately defeat the idea that the market automatically produces “dumbed down” products for duped consumers. It was the coming together of radical politics, star images, and the consumption of popular music that won out over the simplistic ideologies of both the Right and the Left.
There is a story about that tribune of the Left, Tony Benn, wanting to shut down Pirate Radio in the 1960s. Firstly, it was a challenge to the BBC, the voice of the establishment. Secondly, Benn, whilst a figure of the Left, was not necessarily a figure of the counterculture. He had his own conservatisms. This shows the misconception about the British Left in the 60s being a homogeneous block.
There is a counterculture, but it isn’t necessarily uniformly Left. You have key figures of the counterculture, such as the publishing multi-millionaire Felix Dennis, who go on to be exceedingly wealthy. While never a Tory, he wasn’t proposing an anti-capitalist revolution. The lines are very blurred. Somewhere in that, you have stars that appropriate the language of radicalism, but are commercial entities in their own right. David Bowie doesn’t work without large quantities of money.
This is a period where The Rolling Stones, in 1970, had to go abroad to record Exile on Main St. to avoid the Heath government’s taxes.
Bowie is as much a product of the 50s as the 60s. Like the Beat poets, Bowie grew up in a generation that sought to question the rigidities of “decent,” straight masculinity. While much rock music of this period can be understood as a masculine rejection of domesticity (think of the “Angry Young Men” of 1950s literature), Bowie’s story is different. He perverted the predictable tale of the self-indulgent rock lifestyle. If Bowie was a playboy, he was of a very different kind.
In the 60s, Bowie tries numerous things—sometimes he’s a Mod, sometimes a Hippie—but none of it is particularly successful. It is only in the 70s that he discovers his brand. He talks openly about being bisexual. His performance as Ziggy Stardust is effeminate and camp.
When “Starman” breaks on Top of the Pops in 1972, and he is there with his arm around Mick Ronson, we might find it innocuous now, but at that moment, it seemed really quite shocking. It was a lightning rod for a generation of young people. Stars like Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys, and many others, saw Bowie in that performance and said, “Wow, there is somebody like me.”
There were also heterosexual men who watched the performance and recognized that there was just a different kind of masculinity available. By the 1980s, if you look at the New Romantic and Synth-pop performers, Bowie’s androgyny had become hegemonic. Everyone from Steve Strange to Duran Duran wanted to emulate him.
I’ll do more on Bowie another time, but the takeaway here is this: Bowie signifies, by the 70s, the changes that took place in the 60s. He represents the contested nature of radicalism, fame, and gender. He is the product of these social conflicts that find expression in music and film.
Thanks so much. I’ll catch you on the next Explaining History podcast. All the best. Bye.
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