Little Richard
Photo: Unknown photographer / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0 (editorial use)
Little Richard was an American rock ’n’ roll pioneer whose music, image and uninhibited performance style had a profound influence on David Bowie. Bowie frequently cited Little Richard as one of the earliest and most formative figures in his artistic development.
Long before Bowie’s own experiments with identity and theatricality, Little Richard demonstrated that popular music could be flamboyant, confrontational and joyfully subversive.
- Born: 1932, United States
- Died: 2020
- Role: Rock ’n’ roll pioneer
- Bowie connection: Foundational musical and visual influence
The birth of rock ’n’ roll
Little Richard emerged in the 1950s as one of the architects of rock ’n’ roll, combining rhythm and blues with gospel intensity and unrestrained performance.
His music broke with convention through its speed, volume and emotional excess, establishing a new template for popular music.
Performance and identity
Beyond the music, Little Richard’s visual presentation challenged social and cultural norms. His flamboyant clothing, makeup and stage persona blurred boundaries of gender and respectability.
This fearless approach to self-expression would later resonate deeply with Bowie’s own exploration of identity.
Influence on David Bowie
David Bowie frequently spoke of Little Richard as a catalyst for his desire to perform. Seeing Little Richard on television was, by Bowie’s own account, a moment of revelation.
Bowie absorbed not only the sound but also the understanding that performance itself could be an act of transformation.
Theatrical lineage
The lineage from Little Richard to Bowie is visible in the embrace of spectacle, emotional intensity and deliberate exaggeration.
Both artists treated the stage as a space where identity could be reinvented in front of an audience.
Place within Bowie’s universe
Within David Bowie’s extended creative universe, Little Richard represents the original spark — the moment when music, performance and identity fused into something revolutionary.
His influence can be traced through Bowie’s entire career, from early theatrical instincts to later explorations of persona and spectacle.