Like most, we miss David Bowie.
The man cut through the status quo. His art changed lives. He’s a British institution who will forever remain one of the world’s most iconic musicians.
It’s two years to the day that we lost David Bowie. Leaving this crazy world for a more peaceful place, somewhere where his genre-defining creativity can live with no limits, no disturbances, no outside influences, and no cancerous cells vying to bring an end to his greatness.
His many faces will occupy many spaces in this landscape we call life. Whether it’s David of The Konrads, Ziggy Stardust David, Labyrinth David, Diamond Dogs David, David of Tin Machine, or Blackstar David, his legacy is rock solid. The love for him and his music transcends the space and time he explored on “Space Oddity”.
An inspiration to so many of his peers, one in particular, Machine Gun Kelly, even went as far as to proclaim himself the “David Bowie of my generation” on a song called “Golden God”, taken from his 2017 gold-selling album Bloom.
“His last album, just listen to how much it was hinting towards his death,” Machine Gun Kelly urges referring to 2016’s Blackstar while talking to us backstage at a recent show. “I was actually over here [when it was released], the promotion was everywhere so I went and listened to it straight away. But when I went back and listened to it after he was dead I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ It just hit me in a much different way.
“And then when I was on the plane watching the Nile Rodgers documentary, listening to him talk about the way him and Bowie would do their songs together blew my mind, it was so sick. And I think at the time people probably thought the moves Bowie was making were the wrong ones, but they turned out to be the perfect ones in the long run for his story.”
Comparing the uncertainty of Bowie’s early decisions to his own life and his own self-doubt, whenever MGK isn’t sure about something he remembers the “Let’s Dance” singer’s legacy and what it took to get there.
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“That’s how I feel a lot of the time with my own decisions,” he explains. “Sometimes I question them in the moment but a lot of what my gut says is ‘look at the Bowie story’. You know what I mean? Then it all becomes a part of a giant montage of great work.
“I just had the results of a photoshoot that I did come back to me and I wasn’t that fond of it. But I know in 20 years looking back it’s going to be like, ‘Oh, fuck. That was bold and full of cool aspects that doesn’t look the same,’ you know what I mean?”
Closing out the conversation, MGK names his favourite David Bowie song: “It’s gotta be “Space Oddity” because it started a whole new era with him, plus it was just a really weird concept and a really weird move to make. I loved it.”
Machine Gun Kelly’s Bloom is out now on Bad Boy/Interscope Records.
