Was David Bowie, dead at 69, gay? The glam rocker had a complicated relationship with queerness.

Throughout his life, David Bowie—who died on Sunday at the age of 69—played hard to get with sexuality. In 1972, just before the release of Ziggy Stardust and while married to first wife Angela, Bowie was gay: “I’m gay, and always have been, even when I was David Jones,” he assured Melody Maker, which described him as a “swishy queen … as camp as a row of tents.” Then, in 1976, he was definitely bisexual: “It’s true–I am a bisexual,” he told a skeptical Playboy. Fun, too.” Fun or no, 1983 came and Rolling Stone bore the headline “David Bowie Straight”: “The biggest mistake I ever made,” Bowie told journalist Kurt Loder over some beers in Australia, “was telling that Melody Maker writer that I was bisexual. He may have bucked or played coy with identity labels—presaging our modern situation quite well—but, especially at the beginning of his career, he was recognizably “gay.” Culturally speaking, I think it’s a label he deserves. And his typical swagger sometimes produced a strange blend of homophobia and misogyny when applied to real “queens”—particularly in that Playboy interview, in which he jokes about knowing “how to keep happy” in prison, treating his boys “like real ladies,” and having a predilection for young Japanese men who “are all queens until they reach 25.” However much of this you are willing to forgive as working-class-rock-star-before-PC bluster is a personal call; it complicates my feelings to a degree.