David Bowie did the same thing many times in his life to be alone and not bothered, like when he traveled to Berlin for the first time in 1976 after his Ziggy Stardust days to get clean from heroin addiction and live in a small apartment. No one recognized him in the streets because his music wasn't popular there at the time, and he loved the anonymity.
Check out Brett Morgen's documentary about Bowie and you'll learn a great deal about the man, just be prepared for the thousands of quick edits in it. It's like watching a feature length MTV music video on steroids. Back when they played videos nearly around the clock, anyway.
That's after EMF released Unbelievable in 1991 to wide acclaim and infinite post-natal copying, of course. Basically a one-hit wonder that changed our world forever. A friend I once had even predicted that phenomenon after seeing the video, telling his friends that was the coming trend, but no one understood why at the time and discounted his opinion. Film students do that a lot to each other, oddly enough.
There was a great movie about the music industry written by and starring Tom Hanks, about the one-hit wonders of the world and how they contribute to it. It's called That Thing You Do, from 1996. Hanks played a character named Mr. White. Also not well-reviewed or received by jaded critics of the time, who've often seen and opined about more films than should be legal in a lifetime. But everyone's a critic now since Twitter, Facebook, and other social media still exist, eh?
In the U.S. we still live in a mostly free country though and I'm not a fan of 'nanny state' politics. But that's just me.
So which do you choose here, the hard or soft option? :-) |
