Bowie Style

Soundchecking at the Freddie Mercury Concert For Aids
Awareness, Wembley Stadium, April 1992.
In some ways, the cynicism with which Tin Machine
was received set the tone for the decade. Bowie’s
stylistic changes back in the Seventies may not
always have pleased the cognoscenti all the time,
but that work was usually received in a context of
inquisitive artfulness. Critics found it difficult to be
quite so generous to his Eighties work, claiming it
rang of cash-registers and creative emptiness.
Bowie’s activities have been plagued by suspicion
ever since. What might once have been acclaimed
as a strategic masterstroke is as likely now to be