The news that Kanye ‘Ye’ West has been barred from appearing at London’s Wireless music festival by dint of having his temporary visa withdrawn, thereby essentially banning him from Britain altogether, has generally been met with approval, save by those disappointed fans of his music whose pre-ordered tickets will now be refunded. None other than the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, weighed in on X, sternly saying that “Kanye West should never have been invited to headline Wireless. This government stands firmly with the Jewish community, and we will not stop in our fight to confront and defeat the poison of antisemitism. We will always take the action necessary to protect the public and uphold our values.”
Fair enough, many might say. And to be fair, Ye has pushed the envelope about as far and hard as it could go, not least in releasing a single literally entitled ‘Heil Hitler’ and announcing on social media that he was, himself, a Nazi. Although he has now made a series of groveling and apparently contrite public apologies, it has been noted that these apologies – made via a full-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal and in various statements expressing his desires to “reach out” to the Jewish community – read an awful lot like previous apologies that he made, most recently in 2023, and that there might be an absence of genuine sincerity from them.
Still, if Ye is taking advice from anyone, then it is a dead white man from South London, whose ability to reinvent himself – both in terms of his music and his public image – blazed a trail that many others, including the artist formerly known as Kanye, have followed. David Bowie, whose public reputation stands as high as it ever has a decade after his death from liver cancer, has, like Ye, won his millions of followers by a refusal to give into public pressure to ‘give the fans what they want’, but instead by finding a position outside the mainstream that could be frustrating, confusing and intoxicating – often all at the same time – and allowing the fanbase to come to him, in time, rather than vice versa.
It was fifty years ago that Bowie also faced his own Nazi-related controversy, which would undoubtedly have been the end of his career if he had made similar remarks today. He said in a Rolling Stone interview to promote his Station to Station album that “I believe very strongly in fascism” and “Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars …[he was] as good as Jagger at working an audience”. This may not have been quite as incendiary, or blunt, as Ye’s remarks but it followed on from a press conference that Bowie gave in Stockholm in early 1976 when he declared “As I see it, I am the only alternative for the premier in England. I believe Britain could benefit from a fascist leader. After all, fascism is really nationalism.”
What would have really done for Bowie’s public standing was when he arrived back at Victoria station in London in May 1976, and directed what might – or might not – have been a Nazi salute to his waiting fans from a waiting Mercedes (of all inappropriate vehicles). Unfortunately for him, some eagerly waiting photographers, who duly published the damning and potentially career-threatening image. At a time before both crisis PR and social media, Bowie’s sensible solution was simply to keep quiet, before giving another interview a few years later where he said he had been “out of my mind totally, completely crazed” on drugs and saying that, while he understand the accusations of racism “quite inevitably and rightly” levelled at him, they were unjust. In other words, nothing to see here, let’s move along. And such was Bowie’s standing with the music press that they were quite willing to take him at his word.
It is unlikely that Bowie was a paid-up fascist, just as it seems similarly tenuous that Ye really would like to be keeping company with those who would happily see him lynched for the color of his skin. Instead, as the result of too much cocaine, self-aggrandizement and perhaps a desire to push boundaries, he said some remarkably provocative things that had the desired effect in terms of creating a ‘Bowie myth’. So it has been with Kanye, who is regarded, in some circles, as every bit as significant a figure in hip-hop and rap music as Bowie was in art-rock.
He has always been a polarizing artist, even before the recent eruption in controversy, and even those (like this writer) who have next to no interest in his work can acknowledge his significance in the art form he has worked in. The creation of this audience-baiting Ye character – surely as much a persona as Bowie’s icily fascist Thin White Duke – might have worked a little too well, given that there now seems to be little if anything to choose between him and his creator. But to call Kanye West ‘the David Bowie of his age’ is not a lazy comparison, but a real understanding of two men who sought to challenge and provoke, and, when they got it wrong, got it spectacularly wrong. Bowie ended his life beloved, a secular saint of sorts, with his previous wrongdoing all but forgiven. Whether the same fate awaits Ye remains to be seen.
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