“I’m Deranged”, Outside, 1995
Barry Thompson
While not technically my, or likely anyone else’s, handsdown favorite bit of Bowie (for me, that’s a tie between “Suffragette City,” and “Five Years,” and while I’m on this topic I should take the opportunity to publicly apologize to my friend Val for “borrowing” her deluxe edition Ziggy Stardust CD in 2003 and never returning it and also for destroying its casing by snorting so many pills off of it. Sorry Val!) the frenzied bleakness of “I’m Deranged” helps illustrate a point. Not unlike his kindred spirit and honorary countryman The Doctor, Bowie exploded and rematerialized inside a new vessel once every two or three seasons — but never in any contrived bid for renewed relevancy, and certainly not because the actor playing him started getting movie offers. Completely unlike many of his legendary rock ‘n roller contemporaries, David Bowie opted against letting custodianship of the “David Bowie” brand suck up all his attention. “I’m Deranged” didn’t just seem new and exciting to 13-year-old me in 1997 because it was the second David Bowie song I’d heard, it actually was new and exciting because its composer and performer was not Ziggy Stardust or the Thin White Duke or someone pretending to be either of those people. It wasn’t the person who decided Iggy Pop and Lou Reed should have solo careers, or Jareth the Goblin King, or Agent Jeffries, or the guy who gave punk rockers the idea to dye their hair bright colors, even though in previous lives, David Bowie had been each of those versions of himself. “Turn and face the strange,” he sang on many occasions, and at least we know for certain that the man took his own advice.