Lady Gaga, Madonna and John Cameron
Mitchell were among the artists speaking about how David Bowie
affected their lives following his death from cancer on Sunday.
Madonna wrote in a Facebook post that
she was “devastated” by the loss.
“David Bowie changed the course of my
life forever,” she said.
“I never felt like I fit in growing
up in Michigan. Like an oddball or a freak. I went to see him in
concert at Cobo Arena in Detroit,” Madonna wrote. “I already had
many of his records and was so inspired by the way he played with
gender confusion. Was both masculine and feminine. Funny and
serious. Clever and wise. His lyrics were witty ironic and
mysterious.”
“I saw how he created a persona and
used different art forms within the arena of rock and roll to create
entertainment. I found him so inspiring and innovative. Unique and
provocative. A real genius.”
“Thank you David Bowie. I owe you a
lot. The world will miss you,” she
concluded.
In an interview with The
Hollywood Reporter conducted shortly before Bowie's death,
Lady Gaga said that Bowie used his glamour “to express a message to
people that was very healing for their souls.”
“He is a true, true artist and I
don't know if I ever went, 'Oh, I'm going to be that way like this,'
or if I arrived upon it slowly, realizing it was my calling and
that's what drew me to him,” she said.
James Cameron Mitchell, who directed
and starred in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, remembered Bowie in
an Out op-ed.
“I went to see him during the Glass
Spiders tour, which was cool, but it was so huge that I didn’t
really experience the full-on live-ness,” he
wrote. “Some people you go to see fall apart – Judy Garland
or Iggy Pop, say – and other people you want to see because they
rule you. That was David Bowie, that’s Aretha Franklin, that’s
Grace Jones, that’s Justin Bond. You want to be their bottom; you
must submit, in a somewhat masochistic way, and it feels great.”
(Related: Adam
Lambert, Boy George, Linda Perry mourn David Bowie loss.)