Rob Sheffield Quote
Yet Bowie was just hitting his golden years, rushing out his five best albums from 1976 to 1980, the best five-album run of anyone in the seventies (or since): Station to Station, Low, Heroes, Lodger, and Scary Monsters. In this time span, he also made the two albums that brought back Iggy Pop from the dead—The Idiot, prized by Bowie freaks as a rare showcase for his eccentric lead guitar, and Lust for Life—and his finest live album, Stage, from the 1978 tour, absurdly turning the ambient instrumentals from Low and Heroes into arena rock. As he put it at the time, I’m using myself as a canvas and trying to paint the truth of our time on it. The white face, the baggy pants—they’re Pierrot, the eternal clown putting across the great sadness of 1976.
Yet Bowie was just hitting his golden years, rushing out his five best albums from 1976 to 1980, the best five-album run of anyone in the seventies (or since): Station to Station, Low, Heroes, Lodger, and Scary Monsters. In this time span, he also made the two albums that brought back Iggy Pop from the dead—The Idiot, prized by Bowie freaks as a rare showcase for his eccentric lead guitar, and Lust for Life—and his finest live album, Stage, from the 1978 tour, absurdly turning the ambient instrumentals from Low and Heroes into arena rock. As he put it at the time, I’m using myself as a canvas and trying to paint the truth of our time on it. The white face, the baggy pants—they’re Pierrot, the eternal clown putting across the great sadness of 1976.
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About Rob Sheffield
He is a long time contributing editor at Rolling Stone, writing about music, TV, and pop culture. Previously, he was a contributing editor at Blender, Spin and Details magazines. A native of Milton, Massachusetts, Sheffield has a bachelor's degree from Yale University and master's degree (1991) from the University of Virginia.
Sheffield lives in Brooklyn, New York.