Rue David Bowie, a space oddity in Paris for pop icon's fans
Paris has a new road: Rue David Bowie. The French capital this week became the first city in the world to name a street after the late British music icon – but why here?
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"David Bowie loved France and especially Paris. He said so often," Jérôme Coumet, mayor of the 13th arrondissement, the southeastern district where the new road lies, told RFI as the street sign was unveiled on Monday.
"He even asked his wife [Iman] to marry him in Paris, like the true romantic he was."
Coumet has been making the case for a Rue David Bowie since 2020, when he first pitched the idea to the Paris city council.
For the authorities, it was an easy sell. The road, a 50-metre path between glass office blocks created as part of a recent redevelopment of the area, was previously known only as "Route DZ/13".
It runs parallel to equally young streets named after American photographers Dorothea Lange, Vivian Maier and Berenice Abbott.
"In this neighbourhood there are boats that play music on the River Seine, there's a photo gallery, there's the Agnès B art foundation, a big fashion and design school, a newspaper group, the National Library of France ... So it's a very cultural area and I think David Bowie clearly fits right in," Coumet said.
'Made-up connection'
Bowie performed many times in Paris, and covered classic French-language songs as well as releasing versions of his own work in French.
Critics have traced a French influence on Bowie's music and performances, highlighting the overlap with mime and chanson française.
"I think he was more continental than merely British," music journalist Michka Assayas told RFI after Bowie's death in 2016.
In the singer's theatrical style, which saw him inhabit various characters – usually underdogs, often melancholic, always eccentric – he sees the traces of francophone singers such as Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel.
For others, the link between Bowie and Paris is more tenuous.
Speaking to RFI at a concert in the district hall to mark the inauguration, die-hard fan Thomas called it "a made-up connection".
"David Bowie is more English. And he had a big connection with Berlin, with Germany. He was here in France, but I don't see a big connection," he said, his face painted with a replica of the famous lightning bolt from the cover of "Aladdin Sane".
"But I think there are lots of big fans in France," Thomas conceded. "The French public loves David Bowie, that's maybe the connection."
Dancing in the street
Around a hundred members of Bowie's devoted French fan club turned out for the unveiling of the new street sign, which took place on what would have been Bowie's 77th birthday.
Fan group Bowie France gets together every year for the occasion, member Liza told RFI, fresh from an impromptu rendition of "Life on Mars".
"It gives us a chance to get together, celebrate his birthday, blow out the candles and wait for him to come back," she said.
Rue David Bowie is expected to become an obvious place for fans to gather from now on.
"Whether it'll become a place of pilgrimage I'm not sure – I'm not sure that Bowie would be keen on putting it that way," said mayor Coumet, himself an avowed fan. "But yes, I hope tourists will come to see Rue David Bowie."
Even if Thomas has his doubts about the city's ties to Bowie, he's grateful to have somewhere to commemorate his hero – the universal alien, boundlessly creative, who belonged nowhere and everywhere all at once.
"The thing about David Bowie is that we don't know where his grave is. So there are no places for fans to pay homage to him," Thomas said.
"I think it's kind of cool to have a place, even in Paris, to be there, to think about him, to listen to music. Even there, I think I will go."
Natalia Olivares and Alison Hird contributed reporting to this story.
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