Bowie's almost bewildering urge to keep metamorphosising has resulted, in fact, in each attempt at recording being quite astonishingly different as well as seeming to propel him further and further away from the accepted concept of what a rock and roller should be. Apparently unhappy with the image of a rock and roller, he seems to have always sought the more sophisticated embrace of the theatre proper as a means of consummating instincts that have more to do with acting than rock and rolling.

Thus he has a greater affinity with [Anthony] Newley, indeed, whom he imitates so well (and who also saw pop as a vehicle for wider talents), rather than [John] Lennon or [Pete] Townshend, who are rooted in their allegiance to Chuck Berry. This is what makes critics so suspicious of him: that his commitment doesn't seem as serious as theirs….

The nature of ["Hunky Dory"] was such that it was accessible even to the teeny-boppers, while the Nietzchean allusions to "homo superior" stimulated the interest of the critics, who became totally obsessed with him—for and against—when it was found that the cat himself was highly literate.

Critics in England, especially, have lauded him, one seeing him—ridiculously, in my opinion—as a musical equivalent of Jean-Paul Sartre, imbued with all sorts of philosophical flights of fancy….

"Ziggy Stardust" was the album that broke Bowie as a phenomenon.

Some took it on a very high plane as an exploration, before their very eyes, of the whole star ethos; namely that Bowie's own rise to some projected pinnacle of superstardom was being examined here, in a somewhat oblique parody of himself.

Dave consciously engineered the situation to the point where he and his back-up band … became synonymous with Ziggy and the Spiders….

The album was much bolder than "Hunky Dory," and rocked a great deal harder and more slickly. "Suffragette City" was a classic rock song exhibiting the heaviness of "The Man Sold The World" album, while his more theatrical side was given unrestrained play with the final cut, "Rock And Roll Suicide," a kind of Edith Piaf torch song set to rock.

It was a great album musically, even though it was being obscured by his tacit acceptance of critical posturings….

["Aladdin Sane"] was something of a disappointment after "Ziggy."

It was a compilation of musical jottings made on his spring American tour, (one track was "Panic In Detroit"), but what was effective in its lyrics was undermined by a mechanical feel; conscious or not, it had no heart, and there was a sense of alienation between the audience and the record's author….

I still don't see [Bowie] as much of an intellectual—not what I'd call one, anyway. Bowie is about intuition; he has an actor's perception of things around him and a desire that's strongly theatrical to buttonhole the attention in whatever way he can. He'll be a great movie star.

He's not that much of a poet, either. The whole sum of his works doesn't even amount to one Jacques Brel song, like "My Death," which he has had the great good taste to feature many times.

Bowie does, in fact, have a lot of taste and style.

His style is his content. That's the way he's played it. And he's been acute enough to move with the speed of pop, and even faster, so his audience has always been hot on his heels.