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Huge fan laments losing one of his ‘heroes’
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Jeff Burke with Record Connection and his Bowie collector album
By GUY D’ASTOLFO
Jeff Burke got hooked on David Bowie the first time he saw him in the early 1970s.
He would go on to see the British rocker in concert about 30 times, and is surely among his biggest fans.
Bowie died Sunday at age 69, just two days after releasing his latest album, “Blackstar.”
For Burke, who has owned and operated The Record Connection store in Niles for 35 years, Monday was a sad day.
“I am out of sorts,” he said in a phone interview as he worked in his Pine Tree Plaza shop. “It’s like losing a good friend. ... He was one of my heroes.”
Burke recalled the first time he saw Bowie.
“It was in 1972 or ’73 at Music Hall [in Cleveland] for the ‘Ziggy Stardust’ tour,” he said. “I got hooked and then started buying his albums. The next show I saw was at the Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh. I had red hair at the time, and I puffed it up and combed it back just like him for that show. We had seats in the second row, dead center. I wanted him to see me, and I’m sure he did.”
Like all great musicians, Bowie was constantly changing and evolving. It was all those ch-ch-changes that kept fans hanging on for decades.
“I always thought he was on the cutting edge of a lot of new sounds,” said Burke. “He was never afraid to experiment. There is nothing in his discography that is like the prior album.”
Bowie wasn’t only known for his avant-garde approach to music; his concerts also were groundbreaking.
“They were incredible and very theatrical,” said Burke. “For the ‘Diamond Dogs’ tour, I’m not sure how many times they changed the stage. They kept wheeling in new sets. At one point, there was a massive pair of praying hands, lit up. Then they unfolded and Bowie was in there, sitting on a chair that was on a cherry-picker. It took him high above the crowd, and he sang ‘Space Oddity.’”
A shipment of Bowie’s new album, “Blackstar,” arrived at The Record Connection on Friday and was sold out by Saturday morning.
“Everyone will be in here [Monday] looking for ‘Ziggy Stardust’ on vinyl,” said Burke, adding he has a half-dozen vinyl copies of the landmark album in his personal collection.
The new record also is a good one, in Burke’s opinion.
“After the first listen I thought it was OK, but I was busy and couldn’t really focus on it,” said Burke. “But I played it three more times in the store, and by the third time, I was like, ‘This is a solid record.’”
Burke has long been something of a one-man proselytizer for Bowie. “I turned so many people on to Bowie,” he said. “Some of them have been thanking me for it today.”
Like most Bowie fans, Frank Secich, a rock guitarist from Sharon, Pa., was taken by surprise when he heard of his death. Secich played with several bands, most notably Blue Ash, whose fame spread to Europe in the 1970s. Bowie songs made their way onto his band’s set list back then.
“I was shocked and stunned when I woke up and heard the news” Monday morning, said Secich. “Blue Ash covered a few of David’s songs live back in the day. The world has lost a true musical genius.”
Lou DeFabio, an attorney from Canfield, said he grew up listening to Bowie.
“He was a major part of the soundtrack of my life,” DeFabio said. “You couldn’t listen to the radio in the ’70s without hearing Bowie. I bought all his records and then CDs. I loved his music. I loved everything about him. He was one of a kind.”
When DeFabio first heard of Bowie’s death, “I thought it was a hoax. My first reaction was, ‘No way is this true.’ I was stunned. I’m still stunned.”
DeFabio saw Bowie in concert twice – the “Serious Moonlight” tour of 1983 to back his “Let’s Dance” album and his 1990 greatest-hits “Sound+Vision” tour. The latter was at Star Lake Amphitheater, now known as First Niagara Pavilion, in Burgettstown, Pa.
“That was one of the top-five best concerts in my life,” he said. “I had seats in the fourth row.”
“I always thought I’d see him one more time, but I never did and now I can’t.”
For Amy Rigby of Youngstown, the attraction to Bowie goes deeper than music and borders on the magical. Her obsession with the rocker began when she was about 6 and saw Bowie as an actor in the 1986 film “Labyrinth.” His character – the Goblin King – burrowed deep in her imaginative young mind and remains with her to this day.
In fact, she was 11 before she even realized Bowie also was a musician, and it wasn’t until then that she began absorbing his music.
“He was my first crush,” said Rigby, who oversees the theater program for Purple Cat, an agency that serves mentally challenged adults. “My mom didn’t like the idea, but I was obsessed with the androgyny of it. I was attracted to his look, his image. ... I got into trouble over it, and when my mom sent me to my room, I was excited because I thought the Goblin King would come and get me.”
Rigby would get two tattoos based on characters from the movie. She also has a dog named Bowie.
Oddly, she never had a chance to see her hero perform.
“After the new album came out, I was expecting news of a tour,” she said. “This totally crushed my soul.”
Rigby dressed in black stars Monday – to commemorate Bowie’s new album “Blackstar” – and led her clients in a Bowie karaoke session.
Mara Simon, co-owner of Cedars West End, the rock ’n’ roll club on Youngstown’s West Side, is a lifelong Bowie fan who had a run-in with the star – literally.
“I was living in New York at the time, back in 2006, and was riding a tandem bicycle when David Bowie crossed the street right in front of me,” said Simon. “I almost ran into him. He stopped and said, ‘Nice bike.’ I was in awe. I couldn’t speak.”
Her father, Tommy Simon, founded Cedars in 1975, and she said Bowie’s music was always on in the background as she was growing up. “My father had all of his albums,” she said. “Bowie was a big influence on my taste in music.”
Staff writer David Skolnick contributed to this story