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YMMV / David Bowie

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David Bowie's career has been so expansive and varied that debate is inevitable, and here are the subjective tropes to prove it.

  • Americans Hate Tingle: Along with many other Glam Rock acts, Bowie had a tough time cracking the American market until "Fame" in 1975, though he did attract a cult following in the Ziggy Stardust era beforehand, becoming one of the few glam artists to make commercial inroads stateside. Let's Dance made him a superstar, but a series of bad artistic decisions caused his popularity to dwindle back down to a cult following in the U.S. until Heathen, and in 2016 where he was again a posthumous superstar on both sides of The Pond. The Rykodisc reissues, as well as the Sound + Vision box set and the Changesbowie compilation that kicked off the reissue campaign, revived American interest in his 1969-1980 output, but his 1983-1999 material wouldn't be substantially reappraised until after his death.
  • Anvilicious: "I'm Afraid of Americans" was written as a sardonic callout of Americentrism and the neocolonialism of corporate globalization, while its music video features so much symbolism about the prevalence of gun violence that a drinking game based on it would be suicide. Granted, it's not as harsh towards America as "Born in the USA", but the message is still pretty powerful.
  • Archive Panic: Bad enough he recorded so many albums and guest spots, and made so many music videos and concert films...but there's a whole filmography to explore too. TV Tropes made a special Creator.David Bowie page to help you out.
  • Audience-Alienating Era: While Bowie's fandom is inevitably as variable in opinion as his output is in sound, general consensus is that 1983-1992 was not a good time for him. While Let's Dance was his biggest commercial success and boosted his fame to new heights, it was a sharply Contested Sequel compared to Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), and Bowie's attempts at appeasing the Newbie Boom it brought led to a self-admitted bout of Creator's Apathy. Several side projects only invited further press mockery, and Bowie's attempts at breaking out of it all with the hard rock group Tin Machine only split hairs further despite initial hype. Some of his work from this era got Vindicated by History with time, but the vast majority of it marked a huge critical downturn from the stuff he did before and after it all.
  • Award Snub:
    • Only one competitive Grammy Award win (1985) and a Lifetime Achievement Award (2006) that wasn't televised, since a lot of those are given out each year. The snubbing is partially due to his not actually being nominated for his music until 1984 (his first Grammy nomination was for Best Children's Album in 1979, for his Peter and the Wolf narration), and Let's Dance had the bad luck of competing against Michael Jackson's Thriller. Averted in 2017, where he posthumously clean sweeped for his last album ★, winning all 5 Grammys that he was nominated for.
    • On the other side of the coin, Jackson fans tend to be appalled to learn that Bowie was the winner of the Best Male Video Award at the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards in 1984, because "China Girl" went up against Thriller. ("Thriller" took home 3 other awards, bear in mind.) Maybe the fact that the lifetime achievement award, the Video Vanguard, has been named after Jackson since 1991 assuages their anger, given that Bowie won it long before Jackson did.
  • Author's Saving Throw: Bowie expressed regret for his comments in interviews during the Thin White Duke era, during which he occasionally expressed sympathy with fascism (due, it's generally accepted, to getting Lost in Character as the Duke, who actually was a fascist). After this point, on the rare occasions when he would express political themes in his work, they often tended to be anti-fascist, anti-racist, or otherwise anti-authoritarian. Good examples are the videos for "China Girl" and "Let's Dance", as well as much of the content of Tin Machine. He also called out MTV for not playing black artists in the early days. The line "To be insulted by these fascists is so degrading" from Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) is also generally considered to be an apology for this period. (It may be worth pointing out that some of Bowie's pre-Duke material also had anti-authoritarian themes, most notably Diamond Dogs, which started out life as a musical adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and still had several songs referencing the book even after Orwell's estate refused him the permission to use the work. It may also be worth noting that Bowie performed with a racially integrated backing band for most of The '70s).
  • Breakaway Pop Hit: "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)", partially because he included a rearranged version of the song on Let's Dance. Now it's better-known for its appearance in Inglourious Basterds rather than the film for which it was written.
  • Broken Base: Collecting Bowie's 1969-1980 discography on CD is a contentious affair thanks to the fact that CD releases of the man's catalog are notoriously spotty in quality for different reasons. Some fans, especially audiophiles, favor the original RCA Records CDs for sounding the closest to the original LPs, while others balk at their technical errors, which differ per album, region, and manufacturer. Some fans favor the Rykodisc CDs for their bonus tracks, consistent mastering, and greater detail, while others take issue with the equalization, which greatly favors treble at the cost of minimal bass. Some prefer the Parlophone Records remasters thanks to their ready availability, while others dislike them for their lack of consistency. The one thing everyone agrees on, however, is to avoid the 1999 remasters, which draw ire thanks to their heavy noise reduction.
  • Complete Monster: The Man Who Sold the World's "Running Gun Blues": The unnamed narrator is an American soldier waiting to go home after the US pulls out of The Vietnam War. Frustrated with this, the soldier sneaks out at night to kill random people, soldier and civilian alike. He uses such varied methods as shooting, stabbing, bombing, and bashing. Through this, the soldier seeks to "promote oblivion", out of nothing but sadistic racism.
  • Covered Up:
    • Bowie co-wrote "China Girl" with Iggy Pop for the latter's 1977 album The Idiot, but it's Bowie's cover of the song on 1983's Let's Dance that is better known. On the other side of the coin, he had to put up with unaware listeners of The '90s who thought he was covering a Nirvana song with "The Man Who Sold the World" (which must have been particularly confounding since Kurt even says "That was a David Bowie song" at the end of Nirvana's version) and the same treatment from fans of The Wallflowers regarding "'Heroes'".
    • With Nine Inch Nails' "A Warm Place", even Trent Reznor admits it's a Suspiciously Similar Song to Bowie's "Crystal Japan".
  • Creator Worship: Frequently considered one of the greatest musical artists of all time due to the diversity, scope, and creativity of his work. Even before his death, implying that you weren't a fan of Bowie or his work (especially the 70s stuff) would've caused people to gather their pitchforks and torches.
  • Death of the Author: Bowie has been quoted as saying that art is for the use of the public and the interpretation of the listener is more important than the intention of the artist.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: From his various backing bands you have guitarist Mick Ronson for the "Ziggy" era, guitarist Carlos Alomar for the post "Ziggy" albums, and bassist Gail Ann Dorsey for Bowie's latter day work. Gail in particular took over Freddie Mercury's parts when Bowie would play "Under Pressure" live, and she was able to perfectly nail Freddie's high notes during the bridge.
    • His Tin Machine collaborator Reeves Gabrel (now of The Cure) also deserves credit not only for working with Bowie all throughout the '90s, but helping him rediscover his inspiration after Bowie's over extended courting of the mainstream pop audience, and after the exhausting Glass Spider tour.
    • Tony Visconti, the producer for several of Bowie's most iconic and acclaimed albums including The Man Who Sold the World, the Berlin Trilogy, Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) , and ★. As such, he is considered one of David's most important collaborators and a major contributor to some of David's best work.
  • Epic Riff: Many. "Rebel Rebel" (even better is that Bowie himself plays this one), "Suffragette City", and "Panic in Detroit" are standout examples. "The Man Who Sold the World" also deserves a mention.
  • Fandom Rivalry:
    • While it eventually dissipated with time, in the late '70s and early '80s, there was a prominent clash between Bowie fans and fans of Japan, with Bowie fans accusing Japan of aping Bowie's sound and style. This even extended to David Sylvian's solo career for much of the '80s thanks to Sylvian's first two albums sharing noticeable similarities with the Berlin Trilogy (especially Gone to Earth, which featured a lyrical half and an instrumental half in the vein of Low and "Heroes").
    • Some with Elton John fans. It's suspected that John took inspiration from "Space Oddity" for his song "Rocketman". The artists are seen as two of the most defining of The '70s, with flamboyant Glam Rock influenced personas for a part of their careers, leading to comparisons between the two artists.
    • With Queen fans, though there is also Friendly Fandoms as seen in the corresponding entry. They are both seen as some of the UK's most defining artists, with particularly comparison emerging between frontman Freddie Mercury and Bowie. This naturally leads to some competitiveness among fans. Fans of Queen point out the legacy of iconic songs such as "Bohemian Rhapsody" and Freddie as one of the greatest singer/frontmen/live performers, and Queen's enduring legacy as one of the most popular bands from their generation. Meanwhile, fans of Bowie point to how David is one of the most widely influential and respected artists of all time (influencing Queen as well) with many iconic albums and a diverse scope of work, plus delving into other mediums such as film, theatre, mime, and visual art.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • His crotch has been deified and named The Area by fans. It has its own website and religion.
    • Bowie himself is called "The Dame" in the British music press. This dates back to The '80s and the height of his mainstream success, and was initially used as a putdown (according to journalist Charles Sharr Murray). Likely inspired by the "Dame" character in British Pantomime, who is a comic old woman played by a beloved, famous Large Ham male performer in drag. The name of Pushing Ahead of the Dame, the blog run by music critic Chris O'Leary that features in-depth essays on every song Bowie ever recorded, is a pun on both this nickname and a line from "Queen Bitch".
    • "The Starman" is also a common nickname for Bowie, after one of his signature songs and his general penchant for cosmic imagery.
  • First Installment Wins: Bowie's career as a whole falls under Sequel Displacement and Growing the Beard as he didn't achieve critical acclaim until either The Man Who Sold the World or Hunky Dory. However, specific phases of his career tended to be marked by great first albums that would overshadow the rest of the phase.
    • Hunky Dory or The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars are both contenders for Bowie's greatest albums and are also the first albums in his Glam Rock phase. In terms of critical acclaim and cultural impact, they've generally overshadowed the rest of this phase including Aladdin Sane, Pin Ups and Diamond Dogs.
    • Low, the first title in his Berlin Trilogy, is frequently considered to be the best and another contender for Bowie's best album overall. "Heroes" is also acclaimed, especially for its title song which has become one of Bowie's signatures, while Lodger is generally regarded as the weakest of the three (albeit good in its own right). Overall, however, Low has received the most acclaim of the trilogy thanks to its greater experimentalism and influence on other artists.
  • Friendly Fandoms: Due to his wide-ranging influence and collaboration with other artists, Bowie often has this with many different fandoms.
    • With Queen fans, due to their famous collaboration on "Under Pressure", which is frequently considered one of the greatest musical collaborations of all time.
    • Due to his friendship and general production work with them, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed fandoms tend to overlap with Bowie fandoms, to the point where the trio is often referred to by fans as the "Berlin Three."
    • As major figures of the Glam Rock movement and friends, Bowie fans also overlap with Marc Bolan fans.
    • Bowie's collaborations with members of Yes, King Crimson, and Pink Floyd (plus his cover of "See Emily Play" in the case of the latter) helped endear his fans to those bands and vice-versa. Likewise, Bowie's collaborations with Brian Eno ensured a sizable overlap between his fans and those of Eno's former band, fellow Glam Rock stars Roxy Music.
    • While they were initially the subject of a Fandom Rivalry, in the decades since, Bowie fans tend to overlap with fans of Japan and frontman David Sylvian, due to Bowie being a major influence on Japan and due to both him and Sylvian sharing connections with Robert Fripp and Ryuichi Sakamoto.
    • For later generations, Nine Inch Nails is another fandom that overlaps due to their collaboration and touring together in the 90s. The fact that Bowie and Trent Reznor were fans of each other's work even before they met further bolsters this.
    • Many Bowie fans also tend to be fans of Prince, and vice-versa, thanks to the two both being known for the large variety of styles they explored and their challenging of social norms, especially in regards to sex and sexuality. It helps that Bowie himself saw Prince as doing for the 80s what he did for the 70s.
    • In general, Bowie fandom tends to have strong fandom overlap with many of the artists he influenced. But especially artists in Post-Punk, New Wave Music, and Alternative Rock which were all genres where he was a major, even primary influence.
  • Growing the Beard: Hunky Dory, his fourth album, is often regarded as his first great one, with critics frequently describing it as the album where Bowie finally established who he was as an artist. If not that, it's usually considered to be The Man Who Sold the World, which is retrospectively viewed as Bowie's actual Franchise Codifier by analysts and producer Tony Visconti.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: "Valentine's Day" is more or less David Bowie describing his speculations on the psychology of a mass shooter. Come Valentine's Day 2018, 17 people would be killed and 17 more would be injured in the highest-profile school shooting since Sandy Hook.
  • He Really Can Act: While most rock stars who became actors tend to not be very good, Bowie was frequently praised by serious critics for being a very effective actor. He worked with auteur film-makers like Roeg, Oshima and Martin Scorsese, sometimes getting roles based on how effective a previous one turned out to be. Some of his newer fans treasure him for his appearance in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige where he plays Nikola Tesla. It doesn't hurt that he studied acting and mime in the formative years of his music career.
  • Ho Yay:
    • The "Dancing in the Street" video he and Mick Jagger did for Live Aid in 1985 is the most notorious example of this in the careers of both men, and has been the subject of much mockery as a result. Said mockery reached an apex in 2011 when Family Guy showed the entire video as an Overly Long Cutaway Gag in "Foreign Affairs", prefaced as "the gayest video of all time".
    • He also played up his bisexual image onstage during the Ziggy Stardust years. He and guitarist Mick Ronson used to be the page image for Faux Yay, after all.
  • LGBT Fanbase: His gender-bending Ziggy Stardust persona and homoerotic lyrical subtext in his songs throughout his career gave him a huge LGBT following.
  • Mainstream Obscurity:
    • Low eternally dukes it out with his Glam Rock hits Hunky Dory and The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars for the title of his best album...but how many have actually listened to it and know that (among other things) four tracks are straight instrumentals?
    • Bowie's career in of itself has run into this. Although he's considered one of the most acclaimed and influential music artists of all time, many of the artists he influenced and inspired became far more famous and commercially successful than him including Queen and Madonna. He became aware of this leading up to The '80s, which lead to him pursuing a more mainstream sound. As a specific example, his collaboration with Queen on the song "Under Pressure" is more viewed and streamed than most of his own songs. For those of a certain generation, he might even be more known for his appearances in movies than his music (particularly Labyrinth, which became a fixture of '80s nostalgia in the 2000s and 2010s).
  • Memetic Badass:
    • The Venture Bros. portrays him as the shapeshifting overlord of the Guild of Calamitous Intent. ("The guy from Labyrinth turned into a bird!") In season 5 it's mentioned that he isn't the real David Bowie, just a guy who likes to pretend to be him.
    • On Naruto: The Abridged Comedy Fandub Spoof Series Show, he's an indestructible ninja with a habit of breaking into song and insisting that he's not David Bowie.
    • In Flight of the Conchords he is a sort of Gandalf-figure (portrayed, sadly, not by the man himself) who appears to Bret in three dreams, each time in the guise of a different character: Ziggy Stardust, the Pierrot of "Ashes to Ashes", and Jareth.
    • One member of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog's Evil League Of Evil is called Dead Bowie, but it's not clear whether he's meant to be the man himself or just a themed villain.
    • The Sifl and Olly Show claims the Great Pyramids of Egypt were built in anticipation of his arrival.
    • Eric Idle's 1999 novel The Road to Mars takes place in a future where a Ridiculously Human Robot of choice is the BowieBot android. Carlton, one of the 4.5 models — looking like Bowie in his Let's Dance days — serves as a secretary to the heroes (a comedy team) and has the book's primary subplot, in which it explores the concept/history of humor and whether an artificial intelligence can ever acquire a sense of it. (This book started as an unproduced screenplay; Idle is a friend of Bowie's and wrote the concept/part for him to play.)
    • After 2016 ended up stuffed full of huge political crises and beloved celebrity deaths to a quite insane degree, some fans started citing Bowie's death early in the year as proof that his very existence had been holding the entire world together.
  • Misaimed Fandom: "All the Young Dudes", written for Mott the Hoople, was seen as a celebratory anthem for the glam rock movement. In fact David Bowie has confirmed that it is precisely the opposite and the news carried by the young dudes is actually one of the future apocalypse described in "Five Years".
    • Julian Priest, the character portrayed by Bowie in the television series The Hunger, has gained a large amount of...affection from fans over the years.
  • Misattributed Song: An unusual case. "All the Young Dudes" was first performed by Mott the Hoople, but the cumulative effect of Bowie writing, producing, and performing backing vocals and saxophone on it (he also recorded his own version and made it a concert setlist staple) means they aren't properly associated with it.
  • Newbie Boom:
  • Once Original, Now Common: It's hard to overstate just how influential Bowie has been on music and popular culture. He has influenced a wide variety of artists in different genres ranging from Glam Rock, Glam Metal, Punk Rock, Post-Punk, New Wave Music, Alternative Rock, Electronic Music, Hip-Hop, even Classical Music, and more. He has also influenced the visuals and live performance of popular music, anticipating the creation of MTV. Even the overall approach to change and artistic evolution has been attributed to David. While Bowie's work is still very acclaimed, many of the artists that David influenced went on to become more commercially successful, more culturally prominent, and/or icons in their own right. Therefore, it can be easy to miss just how wide the scope of his influence has been.
  • One-Scene Wonder: To Memetic Mutation. The Onion A.V. Club has an article on the subject.
  • Posthumous Popularity Potential: Bowie always generated respect from press and music fans throughout his life, but a Audience-Alienating Era in the 80s brought him out of the mainstream zeitgeist and a heart attack-induced hiatus in the 2000s kept him from fully reclaiming that spot despite renewed critical and commercial success in the 90s. However, his death at the start of 2016— with no prior public indication that he was ill— prompted a massive reevaluation of his career and discography, turning him into one of the biggest posthumous superstar singers since Michael Jackson.
  • Refrain from Assuming: The title of a song on his 1969 album is called "Space Oddity", not "Major Tom". Although there is a song called "Major Tom (Coming Home)" by Peter Schilling that is about the same character.
  • Rule of Sean Connery: Whether you use him a little or a lot, your project will be cooler for his presence.
  • Second Verse Curse: An unusual inversion of this trope with "'Heroes'". The more-commonly heard single edit starts out with the third verse ("I, I wish you could swim..."), so many people aren't aware of the first two verses, or that the "I won't be king" section is a Dark Reprise of the first verse.
  • Sequel Displacement: Hunky Dory and especially The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars tend to mark the beginning of the period that people are most familiar with. It is this period that marked Bowie as one of the defining artists of The '70s with broader influence from then onwards. Bowie's pre-Hunky Dory output, meanwhile, is more known among dyed in the wool fans than casual listeners or laypeople apart from the Title Tracks of Space Oddity and The Man Who Sold the World.
  • Signature Song: As his first hit, "Space Oddity" is usually regarded as this, since the range of his career and resultant arguments over his best era make it hard to settle the question otherwise. However, songs such as "Life on Mars?", "Rebel Rebel", "Starman" and especially "'Heroes'" became competitors for the title in the 21st century, especially after his death in 2016. While relatively early in his canon, "Changes" kinda pokes fun at this, and (ironically) became another one of his signature tunes.
  • So Bad, It's Good: Some of his pre-1969 songs, especially the novelty tune "The Laughing Gnome", and his "Dancing in the Street" duet with Mick Jagger in 1985, mostly because of the goofy, Ho Yay-fueled video (another reason the mid-'80s are often called Bowie's big Audience-Alienating Era).
  • Tear Jerker: See the tearjerker page for this artist. Beyond songs, The Man Who Fell to Earth can also qualify as this; while Thomas Jerome Newton is a Tragic Hero with the flaw of naivete rather than The Woobie, by movie's end he definitely could use a hug...
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
    • Due to his frequent reinventions, Bowie has faced this constantly — "I preferred him as singer-songwriter, space alien, blue-eyed soul singer, Kraftwerk-esque Krautrocker, etc." But it was especially bad after Let's Dance, partially because it overlapped with It's Popular, Now It Sucks!.
    • The 1999 reissues by EMI and Virgin Records were widely disliked by fans thanks to them removing the bonus tracks from the Rykodisc reissues and using heavy noise reduction in the remastering process, which led to complaints about the music sounding thin and brittle. According to former Rykodisc engineer Jeff Rougvie, the sentiment extended to Bowie himself, who gifted people the Rykodisc CDs instead. Parlophone Records briefly reissued the 1999 remasters in 2014 when they inherited the rights to the Bowie catalog after EMI's dissolution, but they would quickly replace them with new, in-house remasters over the next few years.
  • Tough Act to Follow: Cracked's "5 Works of Art So Good, They Ruined Their Whole Genre" calls The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars a tough act to follow in glam rock.
    • In general, Bowie's run of albums from Hunky Dory to Scary Monsters is often the yardstick used to judge the rest of his work. While he continued experimenting and delivering great work, certain albums tended to receive more mixed reception than others or struggle in the shadow of his acclaimed period. ★ averted this, being directly compared to the Seventies and early Eighties albums in quality, being one of the defining albums of The New '10s and being a great Swan Song.
  • Vindicated by History:
    • Hunky Dory didn't get much attention until after the success of Ziggy Stardust, but once it did... well, the fact that it spawned two Signature Song candidates ("Changes" and "Life on Mars?") should say something.
    • This also applies to the Berlin Trilogy, which underperformed on the charts compared to his previous albums (especially outside of the U.K.) — in fact, "'Heroes'", now another Signature Song candidate, did not make waves as a single when it was new.
    • The critically-lambasted Glass Spider tour is now seen as an influence on the complex stage shows that rock and pop acts routinely take on the road nowadays.
    • While Bowie's work as part of Tin Machine was met with middling to outright hostile reviews in its time, in the years since the band has gone on to receive considerable acclaim from retrospective reviewers and has been recognized as being a significant influence on 1990s Alternative Rock and especially grunge. Nowadays, the Tin Machine era is regarded as one of Bowie's most underrated, rivaled only by the Berlin Trilogy. It helps that Bowie himself regarded the band as being crucial to his renaissance as a solo artist in the years after they disbanded.
    • Finally, some of Bowie's post-Tin Machine work is also undergoing this in the wake of the success and popularity of his post-retirement albums The Next Day & ★. 1. Outside in particular is now considered a classic amongst die-hard Bowie fans. For example, a popular Bowie blog ran a poll in 2015-2016 for his best albums, where it came in at ninth.
  • The Woobie:
    • As Bowie has a good deal of sympathy/empathy for the plight of the "freaky" folk of the world, tales of misunderstood, suffering souls turn up occasionally in his work.
    • The old veteran in "Little Bombardier" (from his debut album). After years of loneliness and depression, things seem to turn around for him when he strikes up an Intergenerational Friendship with some schoolchildren — and then the police, who suspect he means ill, nip that in the bud.
    • The "missionary mystic of peace/love" known as the "Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud" (Space Oddity). Sentenced to hang by frightened villagers, willing to accept his fate, and only lives because of an avalanche from the titular mountain that destroys the village — despite his pleas for it to stop, leaving him brokenhearted.
    • The title character in the play The Elephant Man is an unabashed, Real Life-inspired woobie, and Bowie essayed the role on Broadway to much acclaim in 1980. (As per the play's instructions, he used body movement and voice inflection to suggest his deformity.)
    • The protagonist of "Jump They Say" (Black Tie White Noise) is a little...different from others mentally, and is Driven to Suicide by — depending on interpretation — voices in his head or society as a result. It's even worse in the video, where Bowie plays the poor soul as a businessman taken captive by his heartless peers and subjected to electroshock therapy, paving the way for his fateful jump. (To twist the knife in further, it's after his jump that the viewer sees a wedding band on his finger...) Also has a sad Reality Subtext, in that the song's inspired by the demise of Bowie's schizophrenic half-brother Terry Burns.
    • Bowie himself during the recording process of Low, and by extension, the entirety of the Berlin Trilogy. During the previous album, Bowie's cocaine addiction kicked his paranoia into overdrive, which caused him to Become the Mask and believe that he was actually the pro-fascist Thin White Duke. He was essentially suffering from dissociative identity disorder at that time, not helped by the fact that Bowie remembers almost nothing about the recording process of Station to Station, and once he experienced the worst drug crash of his life, he came to his senses and discovered what sorts of damage the Thin White Duke had caused, making him practically go, "My God, What Have I Done?" Low recaps his horrific experiences following him snapping out of his personality change and undergoing rehabilitation, while the rest of the Berlin Trilogy was his Quest for Identity after leaving the Thin White Duke behind.

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