The death of rock icon David Bowie, from cancer, at age 69 continues to bring an outpouring of memories and condolences from millions of fans. That includes some people who remember seeing him in Rochester.
One of those who remembers seeing Bowie both times that he played at the Community War Memorial in Rochester in the mid 1970 is Greg Cotterill. He’s the manager of WEOS radio in Geneva, which is operated in a partnership with WXXI.
Cotterill says it was a nearly packed house and in typical Bowie fashion, a very theatrical performance.
“It was rock theater, David Bowie had a lot of props, he came out over the top of the audience sitting in a chair that unfolded from a giant skyscraper, it was just an amazing show, and David changed his show from time to time so you never knew what you were going to see.”
And Cotterill remembers the news that Bowie got arrested on a marijuana possession charge after that 1976 concert.
“Actually to this day, I still to this day somewhere have the Democrat and Chronicle with David’s picture on the front page because he was busted that night after the concert, we didn’t know about it until the next day or two.”
John Covach is the Director of the Institute for Popular Music at the University of Rochester. Covach says that Bowie managed to stay on the cutting edge of popular music long after his early stardom.
"As somebody who's a figure in history he'll always associated with about the mid 1970s and what he did at that time, but like a lot of other artists he remained enormously productive and relevant for years after."
Covach says Bowie was not the only musician to adopt different personas during his career, but he was more innovative than most.
"Bowie took it farther than any musician had done up to that point and really added a new layer of theatricality to rock music performance at a time before MTV or YouTube when in order to see a group live you actually had to see and see a group live.”
