Loving the alien: David Bowie's impact on life and music

IT DIDN’T take much – just three little words from my 24-year-old son as he surfed Facebook.

IT DIDN'T take much - just three little words from my 24-year-old son as he surfed Facebook.

"David Bowie died."

Almost instantly, I was whisked back in time to childhood friend Karen McClintock's house in Aspley, listening to her brother's copy of 1976s ChangesOneBowie on the stereo.

This is a Dec. 1, 1972 file photo of David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust period pictured in Philadelphia. Bowie, the other-worldly musician who broke pop and rock boundaries with his creative musicianship, nonconformity, striking visuals and a genre-bending persona he christened Ziggy Stardust, died of cancer Sunday Jan. 10, 2016. He was 69 and had just released a new album. Picture: Brian Horton

The compilation album with our favourites Space Oddity, Changes, Rebel Rebel, Young Americans, Fame and Golden Years was always on high rotation in the loungeroom.

We had all the best Seventies dance moves as we shot the occasional glance at the album cover and that beautifully pensive, flawless face and soft, perfectly coiffed hair.
 

His outrageously memorable lyrics ensured the usual "turn that rubbish down" from our parents.

To this day, I can't hear Suffragette City anywhere without screaming "wham, bam thankyou, 'Mam'" at the top of my lungs on cue.

Actor-singer David Bowie is shown during a news conference after rehearsal at the Booth Theater in New York City on Sept. 17, 1980. Bowie is appearing in the Broadway production of "The Elephant Man." (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler). Picture: MARTY LEDERHANDLER

So risqué! We'd never seen anything like David Bowie. And it's doubtful we'll ever see anything like him again.

Throughout his life and career, he kept reinventing himself to remain relevant and unique - whether that be musically, in fashion or creatively in his films.

Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke, Aladdin Sane, Major Tom ... He was daring, bent, androgenous, bisexual, odd and wild, but always interesting.

Yet of all that has been written on Bowie since his passing, friend and former Countdown host Molly Meldrum's tribute sticks out for me. Meldrum said Bowie was simply "an utter gentleman". Wherever he went on the world stage, he seemed to conduct himself with a polite grace and style that was so out of step with the rest of rock'n'roll.

Bowie always did live his life to the beat of his own drum.

Maybe he was alien after all.