Up until the release of his Young Americans album in 1975, David Bowie had almost always performed behind a different persona. In his song “Fame” from this album, he sings:
Fame (fame) makes a man take things over
Fame (fame) lets him lose hard to swallow Fame (fame) puts you there where things are hollow
Fame (fame)
Fame not your brain it’s just the flame
Bowie describes the fear that he will lose his identity behind fame’s superficial flame. At this point in his career, Bowie allows himself to be vulnerable, voicing his concern that fame will lead him to a place “where things are hollow” and meaningless. With the 7th of March 2025 marking 50 years since Bowie released Young Americans, an album interested in themes such as the psychological impact of fame and feelings of disillusionment in life and love, there is no better time to take a look at the relationship between Bowie’s music and mental health.
In a diary entry written for Mirabelle magazine, David Bowie addresses his fans and talks about his plans to:
…entertain all of you from the movie screen at your local cinema and perhaps right in your homes, on your good old TVs.
Defries (who is my manager) says I have to save some things for surprises for you, so I really can’t tell you exactly what character I will play in this next episode of my play of life, but as soon as we’re sure of completion of all the little details, we’ll be sure to crow about it all – loudly – in your direction.[1]
(25th August 1973)
Bowie describes his life as a theatrical performance, suggesting that his personas move beyond the stage and into the real world. Bowie’s personas were a helpful way for me to envision the repetitive and distressing intrusive thoughts, also known as ‘obsessions’, experienced by many people with OCD as characters in the “play of life” that exist separately from our core beliefs. I have personally struggled with OCD from a very young age, experiencing persistent and distressing intrusive thoughts that were usually of a sexual nature, for example the flashing image of a parent engaging in a sex act before my eyes. At the time, I believed that these thoughts defined me- for instance that I really was sexually attracted to my family members. After years of believing I was unable to talk about these thoughts without admitting that I was a monster or a bad person, I opened up in therapy and eventually learnt that my intrusive thoughts did not reflect my personal beliefs. As I grew older, I realised that my experiences with OCD were much more common than I once thought; Bowie made me feel understood as a young person with the condition, leading me to wonder how many people he can continue to help.
Bowie’s relationships with his personas, such as the infamous Ziggy Stardust, speak to my experience with obsessions. In Bowie’s song “Five Years” (1972), from the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars, he sings:
For me, these lyrics encapsulate the intense anxiety of being stuck in a web of obsessions. By likening the brain to an overcrowded warehouse, the lyrics provoke imagery of a painful and claustrophobic mental space, with “no room to spare” for new thoughts. This description almost perfectly describes my personal experience with obsessions- intrusive thoughts that are so pervasive they leave no room for anything else. Bowie moves from his introspective description of the brain and calls out to different types of people, not only suggesting a desire for companionship, but pointing to his need for different personas, or people, to navigate complex thoughts and feelings. For someone with OCD who might overidentify with intrusive thoughts, it is important, as Fred Penzel puts it, for people with the condition to “understand that the thoughts are just thoughts and do not cause anxiety, but rather the anxiety is caused by the views sufferers [of OCD] take of the thoughts.” They need to overcome the idea that, “If I think it, it must be real.”[2] One way of managing this anxiety is through viewing intrusive thoughts as characters that pass through us, without defining our “real” beliefs and desires. That is not to say that the experience of intrusive thoughts is completely meaningless, but that the thoughts themselves should not be taken as a reflection of our personality or moral values.
In his book Upping your Ziggy, psychologist Oliver James talks about the inadequate care given to Bowie’s half-brother, Terry, who suffered from Schizophrenia. James laments that:
Terry received no talking therapy throughout the course of his illness – a situation that is all too common still today. […] Even if there are talking therapies provided, it is usually cognitive behavioural therapy, which explicitly rejects the idea that childhood trauma should be considered in understanding symptoms. The idea that what the patient is saying makes any kind of sense is actively discouraged in the training of nurses[.][3]
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy [CBT] is also used to treat OCD. In my personal experience, having gone through CBT twice, the practice was effective second time around at treating the symptoms of OCD, but not so much the cause. Throughout CBT, I was encouraged to view intrusive thoughts as random and nonsensical but recently, I have drawn links between the content of the thoughts and my childhood experiences. For example, a child that is expected to take responsibility for their parents’ emotions is being treated almost as if they were a romantic partner. Is it any wonder, therefore, that the child might go on to experience the intrusive thought that they are sexually attracted to one of their parents? Although it is important to realise that such thoughts are not true in themselves, it can be extremely invalidating to someone with OCD to deny that there is any sense to their experiences. David Bowie’s use of personas helps us to understand these distressing thoughts as characters separate from ourselves that are, nonetheless, rooted in real experiences and painful emotions.
Swapping his iconic red boots for a black waistcoat, in 1975 Bowie introduced the world to The Thin White Duke, referred to as his “nasty” alter ego”[4] by Rolling Stone magazine. This persona came at a point in Bowie’s life where he was infamously living off a diet of peppers, milk and cocaine. During this period, Bowie rejected the media’s attempts to moralise his persona, saying in an interview:
I’m Pierrot. I’m Everyman. What I’m doing is theatre, and only theatre … What you see on stage isn’t sinister. It’s pure clown. I’m using myself as a canvas and trying to paint the truth of our time on it.[5]
Bowie builds upon his description of his “play of life” by rejecting the urge to pass judgement. He challenges the critics that labelled his persona as “sinister” in favour of representing real world experiences without moralising his art. For someone with OCD, obsessions can feel like a reflection of our morals, but if we look at persistent intrusive thoughts as a Thin White Duke figure, we can begin to separate our idealistic moral expectations of ourselves from the “play of life” in which we are a canvas, accepting thoughts that are out of our control without the need to identify with them. It could be said, however, that Bowie’s use of personas is “only theatre” in the sense that it is all a façade, entirely separate from the real world. Whereas for me, Bowie’s personas are a way to explore our innermost selves from a comfortable distance, his theatre making me feel heard as a person with OCD without the pressure to directly identify with his otherworldly characters.
Despite his concern in “Fame”, David Bowie did not sacrifice his identity for stardom. Although he worried that “Fame [is] not your brain it’s just the flame”, he ultimately managed to challenge the hollow and superficial nature of celebrity by using his personas to explore his own psychological complexity, without compromising his sense of identity. By viewing distressing thoughts as characters separate from us, we too can use personas to understand our psychology, challenging the urge to over-identify with obsessions and, in turn, taking some of the power away from OCD. It is currently estimated that 1 in every 50 people experience OCD at some point in their lives[6], 50 years on from the release of Young Americans, we need David Bowie more than ever.
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Sources
[1] David Bowie, “MY WORLD” (25th August, 1973), in Mirabelle Magazine <http://www.bowiewonderworld.com/diaries/diary1273.htm> [accessed 12 January 2025]
[2] Fred Penzel, “How I Treat OCD Killer Thoughts: Treating Violent Obsessions” (2004), International OCD Foundation<https://iocdf.org/expert-opinions/expert-opinion-violent-obsessions/> [accessed 17 January 2025]
[3] Oliver James, Upping Your Ziggy (London: Karnac Books, 2016), p.45.
[4] Alan Light, “How David Bowie Brought Thin White Duke to Life on ‘Station To Station’” (2017), Rolling Stone <https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/how-david-bowie-brought-thin-white-duke-to-life-on-station-to-station-125797/> [accessed 22 January 2025]
[5] Mark Espiner, “David Bowie: Stage Oddity” (2014), in The Guardian, <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/jun/26/david-bowie-stage-oddity-berlin-v-and-a-exhibition-theatre> [accessed 2 February 2025]
[6] <https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/mental-illnesses-and-mental-health-problems/obsessive-compulsive-disorder> [accessed 23 February 2025]
“David Bowie in ‘Mime’ at the Middle Earth Club, London in May 1968” (2020), <https://www.vintag.es/2020/07/mime-bowie.html>
James, Oliver, Upping Your Ziggy (London: Karnac Books, 2016)
James, Oliver, “Embrace your inner Ziggy Stardust – the power of personas in therapy” (2016), in The Guardian
<https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jun/21/ziggy-stardust-persona-therapy-david-bowie-oliver-james-mental-health>
