Benedict into Bowie?
The Thin White Duke, or David Bowie to the masses, was revealed this week to be the character Benedict would most like to play.
It was a surprising, and exciting, piece of news nestled into an excellent interview for British Airways’ High Life magazine, and many of the Cumbercollective squealed with excitement at the very prospect of Benedict portraying the British rock icon.
Whether there ever will be a Bowie biopic, remains to be seen. But should it ever go to film, Benedict would probably be first in the casting queue, and first choice in the mind of producers.
Bowie and Benedict, aside from both having heterochromia (affecting the colouration of the eyes), are huge fans of one another.
Bowie’s Sorrow, is Benedict’s karaoke song, and he’s said in a previous interview that Young Americans is on his all-time playlist.
“Sorrow is my karaoke failsafe but the groove of this one (Young Americans) and the dystopian patchwork of fractured images in the lyrics the sax solo, the drums. It’s just brilliant,” he said.
Bowie, meanwhile, is said to be one of the millions of Sherlockians out there patiently waiting for the next series to arrive.
What excites me about the prospect, is how Benedict would immerse himself in Bowie’s life and character, which, especially in the 1970s was – just like his music – ahead of his time.
Bowie has an incredibly rich and varied life history, running concurrently with a 50-year career which sky-rocketed in 1969 with the release of the still beautiful Space Oddity. From there he adopted personas, from Ziggy Stardust to Aladdin Sane, with songs like Life on Mars, Starman and Fame massive hits in the charts (my recommendation for his best album is Hunky Dory, featuring the aforementioned Life on Mars together with Changes, the simply brilliant Quicksand, Kooks and Andy Warhol).
Through the 1980s he released classics like Ashes to Ashes, Let’s Dance, and China Girl and continued to push boundaries through the 1990s with his jungle-influenced Earthling album, which featured Little Wonder.
And he is still leading the way today. His 2013 album, The Next Day, was a Mercury Music Prize and Grammy nominee, and through it, he won the Best British Male at the BRIT Awards.
[…] songs on Benedict’s Top Tunes list from 2012 on Two Paddocks, from The Rolling Stones and David Bowie to Elbow and Claude Debussy (as performed by his friend, pianist James Rhodes). Today, […]