Caitlin Moran on TV: Whenever pop is ambitious, its thanks to Bowie

Flying high: Bowie on The Dick Cavett Show in 1974

Caitlin Moran, The Times David Bowie: Five Years (BBC Two) Imagine if you didnt like David Bowie. Wouldnt that be weird? Not to love David Bowie. Not to love David Bowie one eye blasted, hair dyed ginger in the sink, gaying it up with Mick Ronson on Top of the Pops for Starman. Not to love David Bowie pale like bone; voice like ice breaking singing Heroes in Berlin: the sound of mankind giving itself a standing ovation.

Not to love Bowie stalking towards the microphone during the intro of Lets Dance looking as sharp as any humans ever looked; an albino leopard whispering, You know what? In three years, Im going to play Jareth the Gnome King in Labyrinth, in an outfit so tight that my knackers look like two badgers having a fight down my trousers and Im going to be f***ing badass in that, too. People who dont love David Bowie? I dont even know what such a person would look like. Perhaps the person in Munchs Scream. On Saturday night, then, every person of reasonable mind in Britain watched BBC Twos Five Years, a documentary on David Bowie, made up of unseen outtakes and unused footage, telling the story of five key years in Bowies life 1971-72, 1974-75, 1976-77, 1979-80 and 1982-83. Chronological and prompt, we started in 71, where Bowie had spent nearly a decade studying mime, acting, writing songs, walking around London in a dress, being a thing trying to work out which one of these things will make David Bowie big. 1971 is the year he realises he never had to choose: the point of David Bowie is that he will do all of these things and that is the big thing. What will free him up is realising that, for him, its actually easier to create something dazzlingly, blastingly new, to take pop to the kabuki theatres of Japan, the German avant-garde, into space, than it is to try and just be some kind of redux Anthony Newley. Hes not going to fit in anywhere hes going to terraform a whole new world, and take pop with him. One of the first people he tries to explain this to is Andy Warhol and Warhols having none of it. In black-and-white footage you cant quite believe youre seeing, in 71, in New York, Bowie and Warhol have a stand-off, on camera. Warhol is trying to direct Bowie in a film hes making. Bowie tries to direct him back. In the end, because its his film, Warhol shuts Bowie down. Bowie retaliates by filing a take where he mimes how he feels about this: ripping open his guts, spilling his entrails on the floor, pulling out his still-beating heart, and throwing it up into the sky. Man, these are the pop-cultural moments I live for David Bowie bitching off Andy Warhol with an angry mime. When the gays take over the world, all wars will be conducted like this. But f*** Warhol its 1971-72. Bowies not messing around. Hes got other fish to fry. Hes back to the UK for Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust, Moonage Daydream. Rick Wakeman rubicund, crumpled; a keyboard Falstaff appears, telling us about playing piano on Life on Mars? How absolutely illogical and astonishing the chord sequence is on both But the film is a saddening bore and Sailors! Fighting in the dancehall, the song goes somewhere no one else on earth would take it: a violent, swooningly vertical take-off into genius.

It really is a piano-players dream, Wakeman says, newly agape at how confounding it is. He stares down at his hands. I must go home and learn it. More unseen footage Bowie in lapis lazuli trousers with his tits out, singing Queen Bitch Oh, God! I could do better than that!? Lots of shots of him putting make-up on, going crackers on the Rimmel as you murmur Rewind on the blusher, love. He kills Ziggy at the end of 73. His scale is vast, fast how is he doing this while being so utterly off his tits? He even ate breakfast like a superstar, Woody Woodmansey, the Spiders from Mars drummer, recalled, which is quite a commitment if Bowie was eating, say, Shredded Wheat, or kippers. 1974-75: David Bowie was never meant to be. Hes like a Lego kit. There is no definitive David Bowie. This new Bowie, six months later, is pale, cadaver-like, so thin his teeth look fat. He doesnt look like hes eating breakfast like a superstar any more. He doesnt look like hes eating breakfast. Youve never seen anyone look more ill on cocaine. It practically crystallises on his skin, like salt on saltfish. He was the whitest man Id ever seen, his new guitarist, Carlos Alomar, says. Im not talking pink-white. Im talking translucent. I said, You look like shit. You need food. You need to come to my house. But Bowies driven I was tumbling over myself with ideas. These are his soul years: the heart is warm, even though his face is frozen. Young Americans, Fame, Golden Years. He appears on The Dick Cavett Show, coked to the gills sniffing constantly. At one point, you can see a sniff dislodges an old nugget from his nose. It hits the back of his throat and you can see him register the acrid blast, before chewing on it. He has a cane, with which he traces patterns on the ground. What are you drawing? Cavett asks, clearly scared of Bowie. Bowie is so blasted he cant even look him in the eye. Dont look at the carpet. I drew something awful on it. Cracked Actor, The Man who Fell to Earth: I knew Bowie had serious problems at the time I just told him to put his clothes on and walk right through it, the director Nicolas Roeg says. Have I said before how amazing all the footage is? Bowie being interviewed by Russell Harty, and Harty getting the song titles wrong: Your new song, Golden Tears. Golden Years, Bowie corrects a face on a TV screen on a table on Hartys show, with a poor transatlantic link. Bowie ends up introducing the song himself, in his cut-glass voice. Los Angeles is not good for him. People took so much coke they couldnt talk. Theyd just ... whistle.

1976-77. LA exited. Berlin. Bowie stripped down in jeans, riding around on a bicycle. The cold, clean air of Brian Enos production new instruments and Robert Fripps high, spiralling, exposed-wires guitar on Heroes. Co-producer Tony Visconti calls Bowie and Eno he has a new toy for the studio, called a harmoniser. What does it do? Bowie asks. It f***s with the fabric of time, Visconti replies. They fly him in and make Low, a new reset button for pop. Half instrumental, pistons hissing on Sound and Vision. Always crashing in the same car. 1979-80 Bowie on the Kenny Everett Video Show in extreme close-up, still with his Steve Buscemi teeth, looking astonishingly beautiful, playing Space Oddity and pretending to be scared. Or perhaps he is? You still cant tell when Bowies being Bowie or Bowie. Its endlessly beguiling. If you were never in love with him before you see this clip, you will be afterwards. Still only 33, and hes regenerated ten times, all alone: no George, John or Ringo to hang out with. His only bandmates are his massive genitals, which in these trousers seem even bigger than before: as if a Shetland pony were living in his knickers. Maybe one was. Hot tramp! I love you so. It ends with 1982-83 Bowie on the Serious Moonlight tour, where he comes on stage and attacks Lets Dance like a matador putting a sword right through a bulls heart. How did Warhol not think this would work? Couldnt he see all of this even then, in Bowies blasted pupil? 1971-72, 1974-75, 1976-77, 1979-80 and 1982-83. The date-stamp for the invention of much of modern pop-culture. Duran Duran, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Beyonc, Daft Punk whenever pop is ambitious, whenever pop is odd, whenever pop dresses up, whenever pop looks like nothing youve seen before, it is using tools and a framework largely built by one man from Bromley with tombstone teeth, and his name borrowed from a fixedblade fighting knife. Did I say I love David Bowie? I love David Bowie. I loved this hour and a half with David Bowie.