UK Edition
Modern Love: How I became friends with David Bowie – through an internet fan forum
Some time in the late 90s, I started getting emails from someone who claimed to be David Bowie. This person expressed themselves in a manner suggestive of Bowie's erudition, was well researched and never posted at a time when Bowie clearly couldn't have. The emails were always signed simply "db".
In the summer of 1983, I left school in Enniscorthy and prepared to move to university in Dublin. Looking back now, it seems much more significant as the summer I became a David Bowie fan.
The first Bowie album I bought was Let's Dance (something which I rarely admit to in the presence of Bowie fans. It's much cooler to say you started with Low, the album hardcore fans regard as the masterpiece, or Ziggy Stardust.) It started an amazing summer of discovery. I remember seeing the classic 70s albums and thinking "this does not look like the same guy", then hearing Ziggy Stardust and thinking "this does not sound like the same guy". Eventually, I bought Low and thought "this doesn't even sound like music – it's just noise" (of course, it's now my favourite).
Over the next ten years, Bowie was the single biggest influence on my thinking on practically everything. I avidly devoured all his interviews, everything written on him. When the internet became a thing in the mid 90s, my first reaction was to share my passion for all things Bowie with other Bowie freaks. For roughly five years, my main pastime was my contribution to the online Bowie fan world, which revolved around a Usenet group, a few fan websites, and a couple of mailing lists.
The emails started around the same time that Bowie set up BowieNet, an ISP that offered “uncensored” archive material to fans, for a subscription fee. I was critical of the venture on other fan sites; it felt like a money grab, milking us fans for access. "db" landed in my inbox, asking me to elaborate on my objections. We talked it over at length, and eventually agreed to disagree.
These were the early days of the internet. There was no Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Most of the public were not yet online: those who were tended to be students and computer nerds in first world countries. Identities were based around what you wrote, not what you looked like or consumed. And then there were the impersonators: fans who got their jollies pretending to be celebs. Many pretended to be Bowie and some were so convincing that they fooled fans. I didn't want to fall into that trap.
My correspondence with "db" grew over time, from a few short, snappy emails a week to sometimes three or four quite long and in-depth discussions a day. This left me less inclined to believe I really was corresponding with Bowie himself: after all, he really should have better things to be doing with his time than swapping emails with a fan. That said, I decided that even if "db" wasn't Bowie, the person was funny and interesting enough in themselves to warrant replies. We spoke about the internet, technology, literature (we both shared a passion for Beckett and Joyce), music, politics, sport – but rarely about Bowie's music or career. In truth, I enjoyed the correspondence.
I kept trying to catch "db" out: either on facts, or with tricks like emailing him just as I knew Bowie was going on stage in New York or wherever. If the impersonator answered instantly, I could prove that "db" and David Bowie were separate entities. It never worked. I ran searches on the email address to see what popped up (trolls who like to impersonate celebrities are generally not smart enough to use different email addresses). Nothing. I decided to ask a friend who worked with Bowie a favour: could he confirm or deny that the email address was the same one Bowie used to correspond with him? My friend was understandably wary, given how guarded Bowie was about his privacy, so we agreed that I would tell him the first four letters of my db's address – "bxqr" – and he would tell me if his was different. It was not.
In late 2003, Bowie came to Dublin to perform two concerts. They were filmed for a concert video, which would turn out to be his last. Tickets were tough to come by but by now I was an old hand with a good network so I secured two tickets for both nights. "db" sent me a message saying: "I hear both concerts sold out instantly so I've put you plus one on the guest list".
OK, I thought, here's my chance. I withheld the information that I already had two tickets and gratefully accepted. Either I was on the list and "db" really was Bowie, or I was the victim of a ridiculously elaborate hoax and the humiliating payoff was trying to get into a concert via a guestlist that I wasn't on.
About an hour before the concert, I presented myself to the security representative, mumbling that I thought I might – might – be on some sort of list. The security man in question, a real salt of the earth, built like a brickhouse type, looked at me suspiciously.
"You might – might – be on the guestlist bud? What makes you think that?"
I mumbled that I had been told I was.
"I didn't even know there was a guestlist". He turned to the side and bellowed: "Bill! Bill! Is there a guestlist for tonight?"
I now found myself looking at an even bigger security man.
"Who wants to know, Ben?"
"This gentleman thinks there might be ... and he might – might – be on it".
Bill looked at me suspiciously.
"What's your name, pal?"
Showing admirable powers of recollection in the face of such pressure, I somehow managed to remember my own name. Ben pulled out a one-page list that looked like it had at most two lines printed on it. He looked at one of the lines, then looked at me.
"Yeah pal, your name is here."
Although I knew now that "db" was Bowie, we never met in person. I tried to be clear on that one: I was worried that it would adversely affect our correspondence, and that I would embarrass myself by deteriorating into a drooling fan in front of his hero. However, I did once get a nod of recognition from him in a crowded backstage area (I was there at the invitation of a band member). That was enough.
Around 12 months after the Dublin concert, Bowie suffered a heart attack and retreated from the public eye. He became a devoted full-time Dad to his young daughter Lexi, and while there were intermittent cameos, the flow of albums stopped. It seemed he had embraced an early retirement.
Our correspondence tapered off and I found other pastimes. As a new-found career in poker took over my life, and with Bowie in apparent retirement, my social life no longer revolved around the Bowie fan world, and my emails with the man himself withered to a few messages a year, usually around birthdays or holidays. The sad reality was that I wasn't really all that interested in the latest episode of Spongebob (a firm doting Daddy/daughter favourite, it seems) and he had no interest in hearing about the hands of poker that I had player. He also seemed increasingly disillusioned with what the internet had become in the new millenium. This was a man who had no time or truck for social media.
My emails with David remained intermittent during the last few years, as Bowie began to release albums again. In the early hours of January 10th 2016, I was winding down after a long Sunday online poker session, watching bad TV, when I chanced on a news segment waxing lyrical about Bowie's acclaimed latest album, Blackstar. I drifted off to sleep thinking about the beautiful new album and remembering that I hadn't sent my customary Happy Birthday email. It can wait 'til' morning, I thought.
I awoke to the news that it couldn't.
Dara O'Kearney blogs at dokearney.blogspot.co.uk and tweets at twitter.com/daraokearney