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WIKIMAG n. 8 - Luglio 2013
David Bowie
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David Bowie |
Bowie during the
Heathen Tour in 2002. |
Background information |
Birth name |
David Robert Jones |
Born |
8 January 1947
(age 66)
London, England |
Genres |
Rock,
glam rock,
art rock,
pop |
Occupations |
Musician,
songwriter,
producer,
actor |
Instruments |
Vocals, guitar, keyboards, harmonica,
stylophone, saxophone, viola, cello,
koto, percussion |
Years active |
1962–present |
Labels |
Deram,
RCA,
Virgin,
EMI, ISO,
Columbia,
BMG,
Pye |
Associated acts |
The Riot Squad,
Arnold Corns,
Tin Machine,
the Hype,
Lou Reed, the Lower Third, the Konrads |
Website |
davidbowie.com |
David Robert Jones (born 8 January 1947), known by his
stage name David Bowie (//
BOH-ee),[1]
is an English musician, actor, record producer, and
arranger. Bowie has been a major figure in the world of
popular music for over four decades, and is renowned as an
innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. He is known
for his distinctive voice as well as the intellectual depth and
eclecticism of his work.
Bowie first caught the eye and ear of the public in July
1969, when his song "Space
Oddity" reached the top five of the
UK Singles Chart. After a three-year period of
experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the
glam rock era with the flamboyant,
androgynous
alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded by the hit single "Starman"
and the album
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
Bowie's impact at that time, as described by biographer David
Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its
day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture."[2]
The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona proved merely one facet
of a career marked by continual reinvention, musical innovation
and striking visual presentation.
In 1975, Bowie achieved his first major American crossover
success with the number-one single "Fame"
and the hit album
Young Americans, which the singer characterised as "plastic
soul". The sound constituted a radical shift in style that
initially alienated many of his UK devotees. He then confounded
the expectations of both his record label and his American
audiences by recording the
minimalist album
Low (1977)—the first of three collaborations with
Brian Eno over the next two years. These so-called "Berlin
Trilogy" albums all reached the UK top five and received lasting
critical praise.
After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had
UK number ones with the 1980 single "Ashes
to Ashes", its parent album
Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), and "Under
Pressure", a 1981 collaboration with
Queen. He then reached a new commercial peak in 1983 with
Let's Dance, which yielded several hit singles.
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment
with musical styles, including
blue-eyed soul,
industrial,
adult contemporary, and
jungle. He has not toured since the 2003–04
Reality Tour and has not performed live since 2006. Bowie's
latest studio album
The Next Day was released in March 2013.
Buckley says of Bowie: "His influence has been unique in
popular culture—he has permeated and altered more lives than any
comparable figure."[2]
In the BBC's 2002 poll of the
100 Greatest Britons, Bowie was placed at number 29.
Throughout his career, he has sold an estimated 140 million
albums.[3]
In the UK, he has been awarded nine Platinum album
certifications, 11 Gold and eight Silver, and in the US, five
Platinum and seven Gold certifications. In 2004,
Rolling Stone ranked him 39th on their list of the "100
Greatest Artists of All Time", and 23rd on their list of the
best singers of all time.
Biography
1947–62: Early life
David Bowie was born David Robert Jones in
Brixton, London, on 8 January 1947. His mother, Margaret
Mary "Peggy" (née Burns), from Kent,[4]
worked as a waitress,[5]
while his father, Haywood Stenton "John" Jones, from Yorkshire,[6]
was a promotions officer for
Barnardo's. The family lived at 40 Stansfield Road, located
near the border of the south London areas of Brixton and
Stockwell. Bowie attended Stockwell Infants School until he
was six years old, acquiring a reputation as a gifted and
single-minded child—and a defiant brawler.[7]
In 1953 the family moved to the suburb of
Bromley, where, two years later, Bowie progressed to Burnt
Ash Junior School. His
voice was considered "adequate" by the school choir, and his
recorder playing judged to demonstrate above-average musical
ability.[8]
At the age of nine, his dancing during the newly introduced
music and movement classes was strikingly imaginative:
teachers called his interpretations "vividly artistic" and his
poise "astonishing" for a child.[8]
The same year, his interest in music was further stimulated when
his father brought home a collection of American
45s by artists including
Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers,
The Platters,
Fats Domino,
Elvis Presley and
Little Richard.[9][10]
Upon listening to "Tutti
Frutti", Bowie would later say, "I had heard God".[11]
Presley's impact on him was likewise emphatic: "I saw a cousin
of mine dance to ... 'Hound
Dog' and I had never seen her get up and be moved so much by
anything. It really impressed me, the power of the music. I
started getting records immediately after that."[10]
By the end of the following year he had taken up the
ukulele and
tea-chest bass and begun to participate in
skiffle sessions with friends, and had started to play the
piano; meanwhile his stage presentation of numbers by both
Presley and
Chuck Berry—complete with gyrations in tribute to the
original artists—to his local
Wolf Cub group was described as "mesmerizing ... like
someone from another planet."[10]
Failing his
eleven plus exam at the conclusion of his Burnt Ash Junior
education, Bowie joined
Bromley Technical High School.[12]
It was an unusual technical school, as biographer Christopher
Sandford writes:
Despite its status it was, by the time David arrived in
1958, as rich in arcane ritual as any [English]
public school. There were
houses, named after eighteenth-century statesmen
like
Pitt and
Wilberforce. There was a uniform, and an elaborate
system of rewards and punishments. There was also an
accent on languages, science and particularly design,
where a collegiate atmosphere flourished under the
tutorship of Owen Frampton. In David's account, Frampton
led through force of personality, not intellect; his
colleagues at Bromley Tech were famous for neither, and
yielded the school's most gifted pupils to the arts, a
regime so liberal that Frampton actively encouraged his
own son,
Peter, to pursue a musical career with David, a
partnership briefly intact thirty years later. [12]
Bowie studied art, music, and design, including layout and
typesetting. After Terry Burns, his half-brother, introduced him
to modern
jazz,
his enthusiasm for players like
Charles Mingus and
John Coltrane led his mother to give him a plastic
alto saxophone in 1961; he was soon receiving lessons from a
local musician.[13]
Bowie received a serious injury at school in 1962 when his
friend George Underwood punched him in the left eye during a
fight over a girl. Doctors feared he would become blind in that
eye. After a series of operations during a four-month
hospitalisation,[14]
his doctors determined that the damage could not be fully
repaired and Bowie was left with faulty
depth perception and a
permanently dilated pupil. The latter condition has misled
some to believe that Bowie has
different coloured eyes, when in reality both
irises are the same blue colour.[15][dead
link] Despite their altercation, Underwood
and Bowie remained good friends, and Underwood went on to create
the artwork for Bowie's early albums.[16]
1962–68: The Konrads to the Riot Squad
Graduating from his plastic saxophone to a real instrument in
1962, Bowie formed his first band at the age of 15. Playing
guitar-based
rock and roll at local youth gatherings and weddings, the
Konrads had a varying line-up of between four and eight members,
Underwood among them.[17]
When Bowie left the technical school the following year, he
informed his parents of his intention to become a pop star. His
mother promptly arranged his employment as an electrician's
mate. Frustrated by his band-mates' limited aspirations, Bowie
left the Konrads and joined another band, the King Bees. He
wrote to the newly successful washing-machine entrepreneur
John Bloom inviting him to "do for us what Brian Epstein has
done for the Beatles—and make another million." Bloom did not
respond to the offer, but his referral to
Dick James's partner Leslie Conn led to Bowie's first
personal management contract.[18]
Conn quickly began to promote Bowie. The singer's debut
single, "Liza
Jane", credited to Davie Jones and the King Bees, had no
commercial success. Dissatisfied with the King Bees and their
repertoire of
Howlin' Wolf and
Willie Dixon blues numbers, Bowie quit the band less than a
month later to join the Manish Boys, another blues outfit, who
incorporated folk and soul — "I used to dream of being their
Mick Jagger", Bowie was to recall.[18]
"I
Pity the Fool" was no more successful than "Liza Jane", and
Bowie soon moved on again to join the Lower Third, a blues trio
strongly influenced by
The Who. "You've
Got a Habit of Leaving" fared no better, signalling the end
of Conn's contract. Declaring that he would exit the pop world
"to study mime at
Sadler's Wells", Bowie nevertheless remained with the Lower
Third. His new manager, Ralph Horton, later instrumental in his
transition to solo artist, soon witnessed Bowie's move to yet
another group, the Buzz, yielding the singer's fifth
unsuccessful single release, "Do
Anything You Say". While with the Buzz, Bowie also joined
the
Riot Squad; their recordings, which included a Bowie number
and
Velvet Underground material, went unreleased. Ken Pitt,
introduced by Horton, took over as Bowie's manager.[19]
Dissatisfied with his stage name as Davy (and Davie) Jones,
which in the mid-1960s invited confusion with
Davy Jones of
The Monkees, Bowie renamed himself after the 19th-century
American
frontiersman
Jim Bowie and
the knife he had popularised.[20]
His April 1967 solo single, "The
Laughing Gnome", using speeded-up thus high-pitched vocals,
failed to chart. Released six weeks later, his album debut,
David Bowie, an amalgam of pop,
psychedelia, and
music hall, met the same fate. It was his last release for
two years.[21]
Bowie's fascination with the bizarre was fuelled when he met
dancer
Lindsay Kemp: "He lived on his emotions, he was a wonderful
influence. His day-to-day life was the most theatrical thing I
had ever seen, ever. It was everything I thought Bohemia
probably was. I joined the circus."[22]
Kemp, for his part, recalled, "I didn't really teach him to be a
mime artiste but to be more of himself on the outside, ... I
enabled him to free the angel and demon that he is on the
inside."[22]
Studying the dramatic arts under Kemp, from
avant-garde theatre and
mime to
commedia dell'arte, Bowie became immersed in the creation of
personae to present to the world. Satirising life in a British
prison, meanwhile, the Bowie-penned "Over the Wall We Go" became
a 1967 single for
Oscar; another Bowie composition, "Silly Boy Blue", was
released by
Billy Fury the following year.[23]
After Kemp cast Bowie with Hermione Farthingale for a poetic
minuet, the pair began dating; they soon moved into a London
flat together. Playing acoustic guitar, she formed a group with
Bowie and bassist John Hutchinson; between September 1968 and
early 1969, when Bowie and Farthingale broke up, the trio gave a
small number of concerts combining folk,
Merseybeat, poetry and mime.[24]
1969–73: Psychedelic folk to glam rock
Space Oddity to Hunky Dory
Because of his lack of commercial success, Bowie was forced
to try to earn a living in different ways. He featured in a
Lyons Maid ice cream commercial, but was rejected for
another by
Kit Kat.[25]
Love You till Tuesday, was a 30-minute film featuring
performances from his repertoire and was intended as a vehicle
to promote the singer. Although the film was not released until
1984, the filming sessions in January 1969 led to unexpected
success when Bowie told the producers, "That film of yours—I've
got a new song for it." He then demoed the song that provided
his commercial breakthrough. "Space
Oddity" was released on 11 July, five days ahead of the
Apollo 11 launch, to become a UK top five hit.[25]
Breaking up with Farthingale shortly after completion of the
film, Bowie moved in with Mary Finnigan as her lodger.[26]
Continuing the divergence from rock and roll and blues begun by
his work with Farthingale, Bowie joined forces with Finnigan,
Christina Ostrom and Barrie Jackson to run a folk club on Sunday
nights at the Three Tuns pub in
Beckenham High Street.[26]
This soon morphed into the Beckenham Arts Lab, and became
extremely popular. The Arts Lab hosted a free festival in a
local park, later immortalised by Bowie in his song "Memory
of a Free Festival".[27]
Bowie's second album,
Space Oddity, followed in November; originally issued in
the UK as David Bowie, it caused some confusion with its
predecessor of the same name, and the early US release was
instead titled Man of Words/Man of Music. Featuring
philosophical post-hippie lyrics on peace, love and morality,
its acoustic folk rock occasionally fortified by harder rock,
the album was not a commercial success at the time of its
release.[28]
Bowie met
Angela Barnett in April 1969. They married within a year.
Her impact on him was immediate, and her involvement in his
career far-reaching, leaving manager Ken Pitt with limited
influence which he found frustrating.[29]
Having established himself as a solo artist with "Space Oddity",
Bowie began to sense a lacking: "a full-time band for gigs and
recording—people he could relate to personally".[30]
The shortcoming was underlined by his artistic rivalry with
Marc Bolan, who was at the time acting as his session
guitarist.[30]
A band was duly assembled. John Cambridge, a drummer Bowie met
at the Arts Lab, was joined by
Tony Visconti on bass and
Mick Ronson on electric guitar. Known as The Hype, the band
members created characters for themselves and wore elaborate
costumes that prefigured the glam style of The Spiders From
Mars. After a disastrous opening gig at the
London Roundhouse, they reverted to a configuration
presenting Bowie as a solo artist.[30][31]
Their initial studio work was marred by a heated disagreement
between Bowie and Cambridge over the latter's drumming style;
matters came to a head when Bowie, enraged, accused, "You're
fucking up my album." Cambridge summarily quit and was replaced
by
Mick Woodmansey.[32]
Not long after, in a move that resulted in years of litigation,
at the conclusion of which Bowie was forced to pay Pitt
compensation, the singer fired his manager, replacing him with
Tony Defries.[32]
The studio sessions continued and resulted in Bowie's third
album,
The Man Who Sold the World (1970). Characterised by the
heavy rock sound of his new backing band, it was a marked
departure from the acoustic guitar and folk rock style
established by Space Oddity. To promote it in the United
States,
Mercury Records financed a coast-to-coast publicity tour in
which Bowie, between January and February 1971, was interviewed
by radio stations and the media. Exploiting his
androgynous appearance, the original cover of the UK version
unveiled two months later depicted the singer wearing a dress:
taking the garment with him, he wore it during interviews—to the
approval of critics, including Rolling Stone's
John Mendelsohn who described him as "ravishing, almost
disconcertingly reminiscent of
Lauren Bacall"—and in the street, to mixed reaction
including laughter and, in the case of one male pedestrian,
producing a gun and telling Bowie to "kiss my ass".[33][34]
During the tour Bowie's observation of two seminal American
proto-punk artists led him to develop a concept that
eventually found form in the Ziggy Stardust character: a melding
of the persona of
Iggy Pop with the music of
Lou Reed, producing "the ultimate pop idol".[33]
A girlfriend recalled his "scrawling notes on a cocktail napkin
about a crazy rock star named Iggy or Ziggy", and on his return
to England he declared his intention to create a character "who
looks like he's landed from Mars".[33]
Hunky Dory (1971) found Visconti, Bowie's producer and
bassist, supplanted in both roles, by
Ken Scott and
Trevor Bolder respectively. The album saw the partial return
of the fey pop singer of "Space Oddity", with light fare such as
"Kooks",
a song written for his son,
Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones, born on 30 May.[35]
(His parents chose "his kooky name"—he was known as Zowie for
the next 12 years—after the Greek word zoe, life.)[36]
Elsewhere, the album explored more serious themes, and found
Bowie paying unusually direct homage to his influences with "Song
for Bob Dylan", "Andy
Warhol", and "Queen
Bitch", a
Velvet Underground pastiche. It was not a significant
commercial success at the time[37]
but was ranked number 58 by voters on the
All Time Top 1000 Albums list.
Ziggy
Stardust
With his next venture, Bowie, in the words of biographer
David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of
its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular
culture".[2]
Dressed in a striking costume, his hair dyed red, Bowie launched
his Ziggy Stardust stage show with the
Spiders from Mars—Ronson, Bolder and Woodmansey—at the Toby
Jug pub in
Tolworth on 10 February 1972.[38]
The show was hugely popular, catapulting him to stardom as he
toured the UK over the course of the next six months and
creating, as described by Buckley, a "cult of Bowie" that was
"unique—its influence lasted longer and has been more creative
than perhaps almost any other force within pop fandom."[38]
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
(1972), combining the hard rock elements of The Man Who Sold
the World with the lighter experimental rock and pop of
Hunky Dory, was released in June. "Starman",
issued as an April single ahead of the album, was to cement
Bowie's UK breakthrough: both single and album charted rapidly
following his July
Top of the Pops performance of the song. The album,
which remained in the chart for two years, was soon joined there
by the six-month-old Hunky Dory. At the same time the
non-album single "John,
I'm Only Dancing", and "All
the Young Dudes", a song he wrote and produced for
Mott the Hoople, became UK hits. The
Ziggy Stardust Tour continued to the United States.[39]
Bowie contributed backing vocals to Lou Reed's 1972 solo
breakthrough
Transformer, co-producing the album with Mick Ronson.[40]
His own
Aladdin Sane (1973) topped the UK chart, his first
number one album. Described by Bowie as "Ziggy goes to America",
it contained songs he wrote while travelling to and across the
United States during the earlier part of the Ziggy tour, which
now continued to Japan to promote the new album. Aladdin Sane
spawned the UK top five singles "The
Jean Genie" and "Drive-In
Saturday".[41][42]
Bowie's love of acting led his total immersion in the
characters he created for his music. "Offstage I'm a robot.
Onstage I achieve emotion. It's probably why I prefer dressing
up as Ziggy to being David." With satisfaction came severe
personal difficulties: acting the same role over an extended
period, it became impossible for him to separate Ziggy
Stardust—and, later, the Thin White Duke—from his own character
offstage. Ziggy, Bowie said, "wouldn't leave me alone for years.
That was when it all started to go sour ... My whole personality
was affected. It became very dangerous. I really did have doubts
about my sanity."[43]
His later Ziggy shows, which included songs from both Ziggy
Stardust and Aladdin Sane, were ultra-theatrical
affairs filled with shocking stage moments, such as Bowie
stripping down to a
sumo
wrestling loincloth or simulating
oral sex with Ronson's guitar.[44]
Bowie toured and gave press conferences as Ziggy before a
dramatic and abrupt on-stage "retirement" at London's
Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973. Footage from the final
show was released the same year for the film
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.[45]
After breaking up the Spiders from Mars, Bowie attempted to
move on from his Ziggy persona. His back catalogue was now
highly sought: The Man Who Sold the World had been
re-released in 1972 along with Space Oddity. "Life
on Mars?", from Hunky Dory, was released in June 1973
and made number three in the UK singles chart. Entering the same
chart in September, Bowie's novelty record from 1967, "The
Laughing Gnome", reached number six.[46]
Pin Ups, a collection of covers of his 1960s favourites,
followed in October, producing a UK number three hit in "Sorrow"
and itself peaking at number one, making David Bowie the
best-selling act of 1973 in the UK. It brought the total number
of Bowie albums currently in the UK chart to six.[47]
1974–76: Soul, funk and the Thin White Duke
Bowie filming a video for "Rebel Rebel" in 1974
Bowie moved to the United States in 1974, initially staying
in New York City before settling in Los Angeles.[48]
Diamond Dogs (1974), parts of which found him heading
towards
soul and
funk,
was the product of two distinct ideas: a musical based on a wild
future in a post-apocalyptic
city, and setting
George Orwell's
1984 to music.[49]
The album went to number one in the UK, spawning the hits "Rebel
Rebel" and "Diamond
Dogs", and number five in the US. To promote it, Bowie
launched the
Diamond Dogs Tour, visiting cities in North America between
June and December 1974. Choreographed by
Toni Basil, and lavishly produced with theatrical special
effects, the high-budget stage production was filmed by
Alan Yentob. The resulting documentary,
Cracked Actor, featured a pasty and emaciated Bowie: the
tour coincided with the singer's slide from heavy
cocaine use into addiction, producing severe physical
debilitation,
paranoia and emotional problems.[50]
He later commented that the accompanying live album,
David Live, ought to have been titled "David Bowie Is
Alive and Well and Living Only In Theory". David Live
nevertheless solidified Bowie's status as a superstar, charting
at number two in the UK and number eight in the US. It also
spawned a UK number ten hit in Bowie's cover of "Knock
on Wood". After a break in
Philadelphia, where Bowie recorded new material, the tour
resumed with a new emphasis on soul.[51]
Bowie performing with
Cher on the
Cher show, 1975
The fruit of the Philadelphia recording sessions was
Young Americans (1975). Biographer Christopher Sandford
writes, "Over the years, most British rockers had tried, one way
or another, to become black-by-extension. Few had succeeded as
Bowie did now."[52]
The album's sound, which the singer identified as "plastic
soul", constituted a radical shift in style that initially
alienated many of his UK devotees.[53]
Young Americans yielded Bowie's first US number one, "Fame",
co-written with
John Lennon, who contributed backing vocals, and
Carlos Alomar. Lennon called Bowie's work "great, but it's
just rock'n'roll with lipstick on".[54]
Earning the distinction of being one of the first white artists
to appear on the US variety show
Soul Train, Bowie mimed "Fame", as well as "Golden
Years", his November single,[55]
that was offered to
Elvis Presley to perform, but Presley declined it.[55]
Young Americans was a commercial success in both the US
and the UK, and a re-issue of the 1969 single "Space Oddity"
became Bowie's first number one hit in the UK a few months after
"Fame" achieved the same in the US.[56]
Despite his by now well established superstardom, Bowie, in the
words of biographer Christopher Sandford, "for all his record
sales (over a million copies of Ziggy Stardust alone),
existed essentially on loose change."[57]
In 1975, in a move echoing Ken Pitt's acrimonious dismissal five
years earlier, Bowie fired his manager. At the culmination of
the ensuing months-long legal dispute, he watched, as described
by Sandford, "millions of dollars of his future earnings being
surrendered" in what were "uniquely generous terms for Defries",
then "shut himself up in West 20th Street, where for a week his
howls could be heard through the locked attic door."[57]
Michael Lippman, Bowie's lawyer during the negotiations, became
his new manager; Lippman in turn was awarded substantial
compensation when Bowie fired him the following year.[58]
Bowie as The Thin White Duke at Maple Leaf Gardens,
Toronto 1976
Station to Station (1976) introduced a new Bowie
persona, the "Thin
White Duke" of its title track. Visually, the character was
an extension of Thomas Jerome Newton, the extraterrestrial being
he portrayed in the film
The Man Who Fell to Earth the same year.[59]
Developing the funk and soul of Young Americans,
Station to Station also prefigured the
Krautrock and synthesiser music of his next releases. The
extent to which drug addiction was now affecting Bowie was made
public when
Russell Harty interviewed the singer for his
London Weekend Television talk show in anticipation of the
album's supporting tour. Shortly before the satellite-linked
interview was scheduled to commence, the death of the Spanish
dictator
General Franco was announced. Bowie was asked to relinquish
the satellite booking, to allow the Spanish Government to put
out a live newsfeed. This he refused to do, and his interview
went ahead. In the ensuing conversation with Harty, as described
by biographer David Buckley, "the singer made hardly any sense
at all throughout what was quite an extensive interview. ...
Bowie looked completely disconnected and was hardly able to
utter a coherent sentence."[60]
His sanity—by his own later admission—had become twisted from
cocaine; he overdosed several times during the year, and was
withering physically to an alarming degree.[50][61]
Station to Station's
January 1976 release was followed in February by a
three-and-a-half-month concert tour of Europe and North America.
Featuring a starkly lit set, the
Isolar – 1976 Tour highlighted songs from the album,
including the dramatic and lengthy
title track, the ballads "Wild
Is the Wind" and "Word
on a Wing", and the funkier "TVC
15" and "Stay".
The core band that coalesced around this album and tour—rhythm
guitarist Alomar, bassist
George Murray, and drummer
Dennis Davis—continued as a stable unit for the remainder of
the 1970s. The tour was highly successful but mired in political
controversy. Bowie was quoted in
Stockholm as saying that "Britain could benefit from a
Fascist leader", and was detained by customs on the
Russian/Polish border for possessing Nazi paraphernalia.[62]
Matters came to a head in London in May in what became known as
the "Victoria
Station incident". Arriving in an open-top
Mercedes
convertible, the singer waved to the crowd in a gesture that
some alleged was a Nazi salute, which was captured on camera and
published in
NME.
Bowie said the photographer simply caught him in mid-wave.[63]
He later blamed his pro-Fascism comments and his behaviour
during the period on his addictions and the character of the
Thin White Duke.[64]
"I was out of my mind, totally crazed. The main thing I was
functioning on was mythology ... that whole thing about Hitler
and Rightism ... I'd discovered King Arthur ...".[61]
According to playwright Alan Franks, writing later in The
Times, "he was indeed 'deranged'. He had some very bad
experiences with hard drugs."[65]
1976–79: The Berlin era
Bowie performing in Oslo on 5 June 1978
Bowie moved to Switzerland in 1976, purchasing a chalet in
the hills to the north of
Lake Geneva. In the new environment, his cocaine use
increased; so too did his interest in pursuits outside his
musical career. He took up painting, and produced a number of
post-modernist pieces. When on tour, he took to sketching in a
notebook, and photographing scenes for later reference. Visiting
galleries in
Geneva and the
Brücke Museum in Berlin, Bowie became, in the words of
biographer Christopher Sandford, "a prolific producer and
collector of contemporary art. ... Not only did he become a
well-known patron of expressionist art: locked in Clos des
Mésanges he began an intensive self-improvement course in
classical music and literature, and started work on an
autobiography".[66]
Before the end of 1976, Bowie's interest in the burgeoning
German music scene, as well as his drug addiction, prompted him
to move to
West Berlin to clean up and revitalise his career. Working
with
Brian Eno while sharing an apartment in
Schöneberg with Iggy Pop, he began to focus on minimalist,
ambient music for the first of three albums, co-produced with
Tony Visconti, that became known as his Berlin Trilogy.[67]
During the same period, Iggy Pop, with Bowie as a co-writer and
musician, completed his solo album debut
The Idiot and its follow-up
Lust for Life, touring the UK, Europe, and the US in
March and April 1977.[68]
Low (1977), partly influenced by the
Krautrock sound of
Kraftwerk and
Neu!, evidenced a move away from narration in Bowie's
songwriting to a more abstract musical form in which lyrics were
sporadic and optional. It received considerable negative
criticism upon its release—a release which RCA, anxious to
maintain the established commercial momentum, did not welcome,
and which Bowie's ex-manager, Tony Defries, who still maintained
a significant financial interest in the singer's affairs, tried
to prevent. Despite these forebodings, Low yielded the UK
number three single "Sound
and Vision", and its own performance surpassed that of
Station to Station in the UK chart, where it reached number
two. Leading contemporary composer
Philip Glass described Low as "a work of genius" in
1992, when he used it as the basis for his
Symphony No. 1 "Low"; subsequently, Glass used Bowie's
next album as the basis for his 1996
Symphony No. 4 "Heroes".[69][70]
Glass has praised Bowie's gift for creating "fairly complex
pieces of music, masquerading as simple pieces".[71]
Echoing Low's
minimalist, instrumental approach, the second of the trilogy,
"Heroes" (1977), incorporated pop and rock to a greater
extent, seeing Bowie joined by guitarist
Robert Fripp. Like Low, "Heroes" evinced the
zeitgeist of the Cold War, symbolised by the divided city of
Berlin.[72]
Incorporating ambient sounds from a variety of sources including
white noise generators, synthesisers and
koto, the album was another hit, reaching number three in
the UK. Its
title track, though only reaching number 24 in the UK
singles chart, gained lasting popularity, and within months had
been released in both German and French.[73]
Towards the end of the year, Bowie performed the song for Marc
Bolan's television show Marc, and again two days later
for
Bing Crosby's televised Christmas special, when he joined
Crosby in "Peace
on Earth/Little Drummer Boy", a version of "The
Little Drummer Boy" with a new,
contrapuntal verse. Five years later, the duet proved a
worldwide seasonal hit, charting in the UK at number three on
Christmas Day, 1982.[74]
After completing Low and "Heroes", Bowie spent
much of 1978 on the
Isolar II world tour, bringing the music of the first two
Berlin Trilogy albums to almost a million people during 70
concerts in 12 countries. By now he had broken his drug
addiction; biographer David Buckley writes that Isolar II was
"Bowie's first tour for five years in which he had probably not
anaesthetised himself with copious quantities of cocaine before
taking the stage. ... Without the oblivion that drugs had
brought, he was now in a healthy enough mental condition to want
to make friends."[75]
Recordings from the tour made up the live album
Stage, released the same year.[76]
The final piece in what Bowie called his "triptych",
Lodger (1979), eschewed the minimalist, ambient nature
of the other two, making a partial return to the drum- and
guitar-based rock and pop of his pre-Berlin era. The result was
a complex mixture of
New Wave and
World Music, in places incorporating
Hejaz
non-Western scales. Some tracks were composed using Eno and
Peter Schmidt's
Oblique Strategies cards: "Boys Keep Swinging" entailed band
members swapping instruments, "Move On" used the chords from
Bowie's early composition "All the Young Dudes" played
backwards, and "Red Money" took backing tracks from "Sister
Midnight", a piece previously composed with Iggy Pop.[77]
The album was recorded in Switzerland. Ahead of its release,
RCA's Mel Ilberman stated, "It would be fair to call it Bowie's
Sergeant Pepper ... a concept album that portrays the
Lodger as a homeless wanderer, shunned and victimized by life's
pressures and technology." As described by biographer
Christopher Sandford, "The record dashed such high hopes with
dubious choices, and production that spelt the end—for fifteen
years—of Bowie's partnership with Eno." Lodger reached
number 4 in the UK and number 20 in the US, and yielded the UK
hit singles "Boys
Keep Swinging" and "DJ".[78][79]
Towards the end of the year, Bowie and Angela initiated divorce
proceedings, and after months of court battles the marriage was
ended in early 1980.[80]
1980–89: From superstar to megastar
Serious Moonlight Tour 1983
Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980) produced the
number one hit "Ashes
to Ashes", featuring the textural work of guitar-synthesist
Chuck Hammer and revisiting the character of Major Tom from
"Space Oddity". The song gave international exposure to the
underground
New Romantic movement when Bowie visited the London club
"Blitz"—the main New Romantic hangout—to recruit several of the
regulars (including
Steve Strange of the band
Visage) to act in the accompanying video, renowned as one of
the most innovative of all time.[81]
While Scary Monsters utilised principles established by
the Berlin albums, it was considered by critics to be far more
direct musically and lyrically. The album's hard rock edge
included conspicuous guitar contributions from
Robert Fripp,
Pete Townshend,
Chuck Hammer and
Tom Verlaine.[82]
As "Ashes to Ashes" hit number one on the UK charts, Bowie
opened a three-month run on Broadway on 24 September, starring
in
The Elephant Man.[83]
The same year, he made a cameo appearance in the German film
Christiane F., a real-life story of teenage drug
addiction in 1970s Berlin. The
Christiane F. soundtrack album, which featured Bowie's
music prominently, was released a few months later.
Bowie paired with
Queen in 1981 for a one-off single release, "Under
Pressure". The duet was a hit, becoming Bowie's third UK
number one single. Bowie was given the lead role in the BBC's
1981 televised adaptation of
Bertolt Brecht's play
Baal. Coinciding with its transmission, a five-track
EP of songs from the play, recorded earlier in Berlin, was
released as
David Bowie in Bertolt Brecht's Baal. In March 1982, the
month before
Paul Schrader's film
Cat People came out, Bowie's title song, "Cat
People (Putting Out Fire)", was released as a single,
becoming a minor US hit and entering the UK top 30.[84]
Bowie reached a new peak of popularity and commercial success
in 1983 with
Let's Dance. Co-produced by
Chic's
Nile Rodgers, the album went platinum in both the UK and the
US. Its three singles became top twenty hits in both countries,
where its
title track reached number one. "Modern
Love" and "China
Girl" made number two in the UK, accompanied by a pair of
acclaimed promotional videos that, as described by biographer
David Buckley, "were totally absorbing and activated key
archetypes in the pop world. 'Let's Dance', with its little
narrative surrounding the young
Aborigine couple, targeted 'youth', and 'China Girl', with
its bare-bummed (and later partially censored) beach lovemaking
scene (a homage to the film
From Here to Eternity), was sufficiently sexually
provocative to guarantee heavy rotation on MTV. By 1983, Bowie
had emerged as one of the most important video artists of the
day. Let's Dance was followed by the
Serious Moonlight Tour, during which Bowie was accompanied
by guitarist
Earl Slick and backing vocalists
Frank and George Simms. The world tour lasted six months and
was extremely popular."[85]
Stevie Ray Vaughan was guest guitarist playing solo on
"Let's Dance".
Tonight (1984), another dance-oriented album, found
Bowie collaborating with
Tina Turner and, once again, Iggy Pop. It included a number
of cover songs, among them the 1966
Beach Boys hit "God
Only Knows". The album bore the transatlantic top ten hit "Blue
Jean", itself the inspiration for a short film that won
Bowie a
Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video, "Jazzin'
for Blue Jean". Bowie performed at
Wembley in 1985 for
Live Aid, a multi-venue benefit concert for Ethiopian famine
relief. During the event, the video for a fundraising single was
premièred, Bowie's duet with Mick Jagger. "Dancing
in the Street" quickly went to number one on release. The
same year, Bowie worked with the
Pat Metheny Group to record "This
Is Not America" for the soundtrack of
The Falcon and the Snowman. Released as a single, the
song became a top 40 hit in the UK and US.[86]
Bowie was given a role in the 1986 film
Absolute Beginners. It was poorly received by critics,
but Bowie's theme song rose to number two in the UK charts. He
also appeared as
Jareth, the Goblin King, in the 1986
Jim Henson film
Labyrinth, for which he wrote five songs. His final solo
album of the decade was 1987's
Never Let Me Down, where he ditched the light sound of
his previous two albums, instead offering harder rock with an
industrial/techno
dance edge. Peaking at number six in the UK, the album yielded
the hits "Day-In,
Day-Out" (his 60th single), "Time
Will Crawl", and "Never
Let Me Down". Bowie later described it as his "nadir",
calling it "an awful album".[87]
Supporting Never Let Me Down, and preceded by nine
promotional press shows, the 86-concert
Glass Spider Tour commenced on 30 May. Bowie's backing band
included
Peter Frampton on lead guitar. Critics maligned the tour as
overproduced, saying it pandered to the current
stadium rock trends in its special effects and dancing.[88]
1989–91: Tin Machine
Bowie shelved his solo career in 1989, retreating to the
relative anonymity of band membership for the first time since
the early 1970s. A hard-rocking quartet,
Tin Machine came into being after Bowie began to work
experimentally with guitarist
Reeves Gabrels. The line-up was completed by
Tony and
Hunt Sales, whom Bowie had known since the late 1970s for
their contribution, on drums and bass respectively, to Iggy
Pop's 1977 album Lust For Life.[89]
Though he intended Tin Machine to operate as a democracy,
Bowie dominated, both in songwriting and in decision-making.[90]
The band's album debut,
Tin Machine (1989), was initially popular, though its
politicised lyrics did not find universal approval: Bowie
described one song as "a simplistic, naive, radical,
laying-it-down about the emergence of neo-Nazis"; in the view of
biographer Christopher Sandford, "It took nerve to denounce
drugs, fascism and TV ... in terms that reached the literary
level of a comic book."[91]
EMI complained of "lyrics that preach" as well as "repetitive
tunes" and "minimalist or no production".[92]
The album nevertheless reached number three in the UK.[91]
Tin Machine's first world tour was a commercial success, but
there was growing reluctance—among fans and critics alike—to
accept Bowie's presentation as merely a band member.[93]
A series of Tin Machine singles failed to chart, and Bowie,
after a disagreement with EMI, left the label.[94]
Like his audience and his critics, Bowie himself became
increasingly disaffected with his role as just one member of a
band.[95]
Tin Machine began work on a second album, but Bowie put the
venture on hold and made a return to solo work. Performing his
early hits during the seven-month
Sound+Vision Tour, he found commercial success and acclaim
once again.[96]
In October 1990, a decade after his divorce from Angela,
Bowie and
Somali-born supermodel
Iman were introduced by a mutual friend. Bowie recalled, "I
was naming the children the night we met ... it was absolutely
immediate." They married in 1992.[97]
Tin Machine resumed work the same month, but their audience and
critics, ultimately left disappointed by the first album, showed
little interest in a second.
Tin Machine II's
arrival was marked by a widely publicised and ill-timed conflict
over the cover art: after production had begun, the new record
label, Victory, deemed the depiction of four ancient nude
Kouroi statues, judged by Bowie to be "in exquisite taste",
"a show of wrong, obscene images", requiring air-brushing and
patching to render the figures sexless.[98]
Tin Machine toured again, but after the live album
Tin Machine Live: Oy Vey, Baby failed commercially, the
band drifted apart, and Bowie, though he continued to
collaborate with Gabrels, resumed his solo career.[99]
1992–99: Electronic experimentation
Bowie performing in Finland in 1997
In April 1992 Bowie appeared at the
Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, following the Queen
frontman's death the previous year. As well as performing
"Heroes" and "All the Young Dudes", he was joined on "Under
Pressure" by
Annie Lennox, who took Mercury's vocal part.[100]
Four days later, Bowie and Iman were married in Switzerland.
Intending to move to Los Angeles, they flew in to search for a
suitable property, but found themselves confined to their hotel,
under curfew: the
1992 Los Angeles riots began the day they arrived. They
settled in New York instead.[101]
1993 saw the release of Bowie's first solo offering since his
Tin Machine departure, the soul, jazz and
hip-hop influenced
Black Tie White Noise. Making prominent use of
electronic instruments, the album, which reunited Bowie with
Let's Dance producer
Nile Rodgers, confirmed Bowie's return to popularity,
hitting the number one spot on the UK charts and spawning three
top 40 hits, including the top 10 song "Jump
They Say".[102]
Bowie explored new directions on
The Buddha of Suburbia (1993), a soundtrack album of
incidental music composed for the TV series adaptation of
Hanif Kureishi's novel. It contained some of the new
elements introduced in Black Tie White Noise, and also
signalled a move towards
alternative rock. The album was a critical success but
received a low-key release and only made number 87 in the UK
charts.[103]
Reuniting Bowie with Eno, the quasi-industrial
Outside (1995) was originally conceived as the first
volume in a non-linear narrative of art and murder. Featuring
characters from a short story written by Bowie, the album
achieved US and UK chart success, and yielded three top 40 UK
singles.[104]
In a move that provoked mixed reaction from both fans and
critics, Bowie chose
Nine Inch Nails as his tour partner for the
Outside Tour. Visiting cities in Europe and North America
between September 1995 and February the following year, the tour
saw the return of Gabrels as Bowie's guitarist.[105]
Bowie was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 17 January 1996.[106]
Incorporating experiments in British jungle and
drum 'n' bass,
Earthling (1997) was a critical and commercial success
in the UK and the US, and two singles from the album became UK
top 40 hits. Bowie's song "I'm
Afraid of Americans" from the Paul Verhoeven film
Showgirls was re-recorded for the album, and remixed by
Trent Reznor for a single release. The heavy rotation of the
accompanying video, also featuring Reznor, contributed to the
song's 16-week stay in the US
Billboard Hot 100. The
Earthling Tour took in Europe and North America between June
and November 1997.[107]
Bowie reunited with Visconti in 1998 to record "(Safe in This)
Sky Life" for
The Rugrats Movie. Although the track was edited out of
the final cut, it was later re-recorded and released as "Safe"
on the B-side of Bowie's 2002 single "Everyone
Says 'Hi'".[108]
The reunion led to other collaborations including a
limited-edition single release version of
Placebo's track "Without
You I'm Nothing", co-produced by Visconti, with Bowie's
harmonised vocal added to the original recording.[109]
1999–2013: Neoclassicist Bowie
Bowie created the soundtrack for
Omikron, a 1999 computer game in which he and Iman also
appeared as characters. Released the same year and containing
re-recorded tracks from Omikron, his album
'Hours...' featured a song with lyrics by the winner of
his "Cyber Song Contest" Internet competition, Alex Grant.[110]
Making extensive use of live instruments, the album was Bowie's
exit from heavy electronica.[111]
Sessions for the planned album
Toy, intended to feature new versions of some of Bowie's
earliest pieces as well as three new songs, commenced in 2000,
but the album was never released. Bowie and Visconti continued
their collaboration, producing a new album of completely
original songs instead: the result of the sessions was the 2002
album
Heathen.[112]
Alexandria Zahra Jones, Bowie and Iman's daughter, was born on
15 August.[113]
In October 2001, Bowie opened
The Concert for New York City, a charity event to benefit
the victims of the
September 11 attacks, with a minimalist performance of
Simon & Garfunkel's "America",
followed by a full band performance of "Heroes".[114]
2002 saw the release of Heathen, and, during the second
half of the year, the
Heathen Tour. Taking in Europe and North America, the tour
opened at London's annual
Meltdown festival, for which Bowie was that year
appointed artistic director. Among the acts he selected for the
festival were
Philip Glass,
Television and
The Dandy Warhols. As well as songs from the new album, the
tour featured material from Bowie's
Low era.[115]
Reality (2003) followed, and its accompanying world
tour, the
A Reality Tour, with an estimated attendance of 722,000,
grossed more than any other in 2004. Onstage in Oslo, Norway, on
18 June, Bowie was hit in the eye with a lollipop thrown by a
fan; a week later he suffered chest pain while performing at the
Hurricane Festival in
Scheeßel, Germany. Originally thought to be a pinched nerve
in his shoulder, the pain was later diagnosed as an acutely
blocked
coronary artery, requiring an emergency
angioplasty in Hamburg. The remaining 14 dates of the tour
were cancelled.[116]
Bowie in 2009 with his son
Duncan Jones at the premiere of Jones'
directorial debut
Moon
Following recuperation from the
heart attack, Bowie has reduced his musical output, making
only one-off appearances on stage and in the studio. He sang in
a duet of his 1972 song "Changes"
with
Butterfly Boucher for the 2004 animated film
Shrek 2.[117]
During a relatively quiet 2005, he recorded the vocals for the
song "(She Can) Do That", co-written with Brian Transeau, for
the film
Stealth.[118]
He returned to the stage on 8 September 2005, appearing with
Arcade Fire for the US nationally televised event Fashion
Rocks, and performed with the Canadian band for the second time
a week later during the CMJ Music Marathon.[119]
He contributed back-up vocals on
TV on the Radio's song "Province" for their album Return
to Cookie Mountain,[120]
made a commercial with
Snoop Dogg for
XM Satellite Radio,[121]
and joined with Lou Reed on Danish alt-rockers
Kashmir's 2005 album
No Balance Palace.[122]
Bowie was awarded the
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award on 8 February 2006.[123]
In April, he announced, "I'm taking a year off—no touring, no
albums."[124]
He made a surprise guest appearance at
David Gilmour's 29 May concert at the
Royal Albert Hall in London. The event was recorded, and a
selection of songs on which he had contributed joint vocals were
subsequently released.[125]
He performed again in November, alongside
Alicia Keys, at the Black Ball, a New York benefit event for
Keep a Child Alive,[126]
a performance that marks the last time Bowie performed his music
on stage.[127]
Bowie was chosen to curate the 2007 High Line Festival,
selecting musicians and artists for the
Manhattan event,[128]
and performed on
Scarlett Johansson's 2008 album of
Tom Waits covers,
Anywhere I Lay My Head.[129]
On the 40th anniversary of the July 1969 moon landing—and
Bowie's accompanying commercial breakthrough with "Space
Oddity"—EMI released the individual tracks from the original
eight-track studio recording of the song, in a 2009 contest
inviting members of the public to create a remix.[130]
A Reality Tour, a double album of live material from the
2003 concert tour, was released in January 2010.[131]
In late March 2011,
Toy, Bowie's previously unreleased album from 2001, was
leaked onto the internet, containing material used for
Heathen and most of its single B-sides, as well as unheard
new versions of his early back catalogue.[132][133]
2013–present: The Next Day
On 8 January 2013 (his 66th birthday), his website announced
a new album, to be titled
The Next Day and scheduled for release 8 March for
Australia, 12 March for the
United States and 11 March for the rest of the world.[134]
Bowie's first studio album in a decade, The Next Day
contains 14 songs plus 3 bonus tracks.[135][136]
His website acknowledged the length of his hiatus, saying "In
recent years radio silence has been broken only by endless
speculation, rumour and wishful thinking ... a new record ...
who would have ever thought it, who'd have ever dreamed it!
After all David is the kind of artist who writes and performs
what he wants when he wants ... when he has something to say as
opposed to something to sell. Today he definitely has something
to say."[137]
Producer
Tony Visconti said 29 tracks were recorded for the album,
some of which could appear on Bowie's next record, which he
might start work on later in 2013. The announcement was
accompanied by the immediate release of a single, "Where
Are We Now?", written and recorded by Bowie in New York and
produced by longtime collaborator
Tony Visconti.[137]
A music video for the single was released onto
Vimeo
the same day, directed by New York artist
Tony Oursler.[137]
The single topped the UK
iTunes Chart within hours of its release,[138]
and debuted in the
UK Singles Chart at No. 6,[139]
his first single to enter the top 10 for two decades, (since "Jump
They Say" in 1993). A second video, "The Stars (Are Out
Tonight)", was released 25 February. Directed by
Floria Sigismondi, it stars Bowie and
Tilda Swinton as a married couple.[140]
On 1 March, the album was made available to stream for free
through
iTunes.[141]
The Next Day debuted at No. 1 on the
UK Albums Chart, his first since Black Tie White Noise
(1993), and is currently the fastest-selling album of 2013.[142]
The music video for the song "The
Next Day" has created some controversy, initially being
removed from
YouTube for
terms-of-service violation, then restored with a warning
recommending viewing only by those 18 or over.[143]
According to
The Times, Bowie has ruled out ever giving an interview
again, with producer Visconti agreeing with the interviewer's
suggestion that he is now Bowie's "voice on earth". Visconti
also revealed to The Times that Bowie has no intention of
going on tour, noting that all "he wants to do is make records."[144]
From March 2013 the
Victoria and Albert Museum is running a David Bowie
exhibition titled "David Bowie Is".[145]
The exhibition features vast amounts of artefacts from Bowie's
career, from outfits to original lyric notes. The Exhibition
sold out its 5 month span in weeks and has been widely praised.
Acting career
Biographer David Buckley writes, "The essence of Bowie's
contribution to popular music can be found in his outstanding
ability to analyse and select ideas from outside the
mainstream—from art, literature, theatre and film—and to bring
them inside, so that the currency of pop is constantly being
changed."[146]
Buckley says, "Just one person took glam rock to new rarefied
heights and invented character-playing in pop, marrying theatre
and popular music in one seamless, powerful whole."[147]
Bowie's career has also been punctuated by various roles in film
and theatre productions, earning him some acclaim as an actor in
his own right.
The beginnings of his acting career predate his commercial
breakthrough as a musician. Studying
avant-garde theatre and
mime under
Lindsay Kemp, he was given the role of Cloud in Kemp's 1967
theatrical production Pierrot in Turquoise (later made
into the 1970 television film The Looking Glass Murders).[148]
In the black-and-white
short
The Image (1969), he played a ghostly boy who emerges
from a troubled artist's painting to haunt him.[149]
The same year, the film of
Leslie Thomas's 1966 comic novel
The Virgin Soldiers saw Bowie make a brief appearance as
an extra.[149]
In 1976 he earned acclaim for his first major film role,
portraying Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien from a dying planet,
in
The Man Who Fell to Earth, directed by
Nic Roeg.
Just a Gigolo (1979), an Anglo-German co-production
directed by
David Hemmings, saw Bowie in the lead role as Prussian
officer Paul von Przygodski, who, returning from World War I, is
discovered by a Baroness (Marlene
Dietrich) and put into her Gigolo Stable.
Bowie took the title role in the Broadway theatre production
The Elephant Man, which he undertook wearing no stage
make-up, and which earned high praise for his expressive
performance. He played the part 157 times between 1980 and 1981.[83]
Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, a 1981
biographical film focusing on a young girl's drug addiction in
West Berlin, featured Bowie in a cameo appearance as himself
at a concert in Germany. Its soundtrack album,
Christiane F. (1981), featured much material from his
Berlin Trilogy albums.[150]
Bowie starred in
The Hunger (1983), a revisionist
vampire film, with
Catherine Deneuve and
Susan Sarandon. In
Nagisa Oshima's film the same year,
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, based on
Laurens van der Post's novel The Seed and the Sower,
Bowie played Major Jack Celliers, a prisoner of war in a
Japanese internment camp. Bowie had a cameo in
Yellowbeard, a 1983 pirate comedy created by
Monty Python members, and a small part as Colin, the
hitman in the 1985 film
Into the Night. He declined to play the villain
Max Zorin in the
James Bond film
A View to a Kill (1985).[151]
Absolute Beginners (1986), a rock musical based on
Colin MacInnes's 1959 novel about London life, featured
Bowie's music and presented him with a minor acting role. The
same year,
Jim Henson's dark fantasy
Labyrinth found him with the part of Jareth, the king of
the
goblins.[152]
Two years later he played
Pontius Pilate in
Martin Scorsese's 1988 film
The Last Temptation of Christ. Bowie portrayed a
disgruntled restaurant employee opposite
Rosanna Arquette in
The Linguini Incident (1991), and the mysterious
FBI agent
Phillip Jeffries in David Lynch's
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992). He took a small
but pivotal role as
Andy Warhol in
Basquiat, artist/director
Julian Schnabel's 1996 biopic of
Jean-Michel Basquiat, and co-starred in
Giovanni Veronesi's
Spaghetti Western Il Mio West (1998, released as
Gunslinger's Revenge in the US in 2005) as the most
feared gunfighter in the region.[153]
He played the ageing gangster Bernie in Andrew Goth's
Everybody Loves Sunshine (1999), and appeared in the TV
horror serial of
The Hunger. In Mr. Rice's Secret (2000), he
played the title role as the neighbour of a terminally ill
twelve-year-old, and the following year appeared as himself in
Zoolander.
Bowie portrayed physicist
Nikola Tesla in the
Christopher Nolan film,
The Prestige (2006), which was about the bitter rivalry
between two magicians in the late 19th century. He voice-acted
in the animated film
Arthur and the Invisibles as the powerful villain
Maltazard, and lent his voice to the character Lord Royal
Highness in the
SpongeBob's Atlantis SquarePantis television film. In
the 2008 film
August, directed by
Austin Chick, he played a supporting role as Ogilvie,
alongside
Josh Hartnett and
Rip Torn, with whom he had worked in 1976 for The Man Who
Fell to Earth.[154][155]
Sexual
orientation
Buckley writes, "If Ziggy confused both his creator and his
audience, a big part of that confusion centred on the topic of
sexuality."[156]
Bowie declared himself gay in an interview with Michael Watts in
the 22 January 1972 issue of
Melody Maker,[157]
a move which coincided with the first shots in his campaign for
stardom as Ziggy Stardust.[44]
In a September 1976 interview with
Playboy, Bowie said: "It's true—I am a bisexual. But I
can't deny that I've used that fact very well. I suppose it's
the best thing that ever happened to me."[158]
In a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone, Bowie said his
public declaration of bisexuality was "the biggest mistake I
ever made" and "I was always a closet heterosexual".[159]
On other occasions, he said his interest in homosexual and
bisexual culture had been more a product of the times and the
situation in which he found himself than his own feelings; as
described by Buckley, he said he had been driven more by "a
compulsion to flout moral codes than a real biological and
psychological state of being".[160][161]
Asked in 2002 by
Blender whether he still believed his public declaration
was the biggest mistake he ever made, he replied:
Interesting. [Long pause] I don't think it was a mistake
in Europe, but it was a lot tougher in America. I had no
problem with people knowing I was bisexual. But I had no
inclination to hold any banners nor be a representative
of any group of people. I knew what I wanted to be,
which was a songwriter and a performer, and I felt that
bisexuality became my headline over here for so long.
America is a very puritanical place, and I think it
stood in the way of so much I wanted to do. [162]
Buckley's view of the period is that Bowie, "a taboo-breaker
and a dabbler ... mined sexual intrigue for its ability to
shock",[163]
and that "it is probably true that Bowie was never gay, nor even
consistently actively bisexual ... he did, from time to time,
experiment, even if only out of a sense of curiosity and a
genuine allegiance with the 'transgressional'."[164]
Biographer Christopher Sandford says that according to Mary
Finnigan, with whom Bowie had an affair in 1969, the singer and
his first wife Angie "lived in a fantasy world ... and they
created their bisexual fantasy."[165]
Sandford tells how, during the marriage, Bowie "made a positive
fetish of repeating the quip that he and his wife had met while
'fucking the same bloke' ... Gay sex was always an anecdotal and
laughing matter. That Bowie's actual tastes swung the other way
is clear from even a partial tally of his affairs with women."[165]
Musicianship
Bowie's guitar located in Hard Rock Café Warsaw
From the time of his earliest recordings in the 1960s, Bowie
has employed a wide variety of musical styles. His early
compositions and performances were strongly influenced by not
only rock and rollers like
Little Richard and
Elvis Presley but also the wider world of show business. He
particularly strove to emulate the British musical theatre
singer-songwriter and actor
Anthony Newley, whose vocal style he frequently adopted, and
made prominent use of for his 1967 debut release,
David Bowie (to the disgust of Newley himself, who
destroyed the copy he received from Bowie's publisher).[21][166]
Bowie's
music hall fascination continued to surface sporadically
alongside such diverse styles as hard rock and heavy metal,
soul, psychedelic folk and pop.[167]
Musicologist James Perone observes Bowie's use of octave
switches for different repetitions of the same melody,
exemplified in his commercial breakthrough single, "Space
Oddity", and later in the song "Heroes",
to dramatic effect; Perone notes that "in the lowest part of his
vocal register ... his voice has an almost crooner-like
richness."[168]
Voice instructor Jo Thompson describes Bowie's vocal vibrato
technique as "particularly deliberate and distinctive".[169]
Schinder and Schwartz call him "a vocalist of extraordinary
technical ability, able to pitch his singing to particular
effect."[170]
Here, too, as in his stagecraft and songwriting, the singer's
chamaeleon-like nature is evident: historiographer Michael
Campbell says that Bowie's lyrics "arrest our ear, without
question. But Bowie continually shifts from person to person as
he delivers them ... His voice changes dramatically from section
to section."[171]
Bowie plays many instruments, among them electric, acoustic,
and
twelve-string guitar; alto, tenor and baritone saxophone;
keyboards including piano, synthesisers and
Mellotron; harmonica,
Stylophone,
xylophone,
vibraphone,
koto, drums and percussion, and string instruments including
viola
and cello.[172][173][174][175]
Legacy
Bowie's innovative songs and stagecraft brought a new
dimension to popular music in the early 1970s, strongly
influencing both its immediate forms and its subsequent
development. A pioneer of glam rock, Bowie, according to music
historians Schinder and Schwartz, has joint responsibility with
Marc Bolan for creating the genre.[176]
At the same time, he inspired the innovators of the punk rock
music movement—historian Michael Campbell calls him "one of
punk's seminal influences". While punk musicians trashed the
conventions of pop stardom, Bowie moved on again—into a more
abstract style of music making that in turn became a
transforming influence. Biographer David Buckley writes, "At a
time when punk rock was noisily reclaiming the three-minute pop
song in a show of public defiance, Bowie almost completely
abandoned traditional rock instrumentation."[177][178]
Bowie's record company sought to convey his unique status in
popular music with the slogan, "There is old wave, there is new
wave, and there is Bowie ..."[179]
Musicologist James Perone credits him with having "brought
sophistication to rock music", and critical reviews frequently
acknowledge the intellectual depth of his work and influence.[176][180][181]
Buckley writes that, in an early 1970s pop world that was
"Bloated, self-important, leather-clad, self-satisfied, ...
Bowie challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day."
As described by
John Peel, "The one distinguishing feature about early-70s
progressive rock was that it didn't progress. Before Bowie came
along, people didn't want too much change." Buckley says that
Bowie "subverted the whole notion of what it was to be a rock
star", with the result that "After Bowie there has been no other
pop icon of his stature, because the pop world that produces
these rock gods doesn't exist any more. ... The fierce
partisanship of the cult of Bowie was also unique—its influence
lasted longer and has been more creative than perhaps almost any
other force within pop fandom." Buckley concludes that "Bowie is
both star and icon. The vast body of work he has produced ...
has created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture. ... His
influence has been unique in popular culture—he has permeated
and altered more lives than any comparable figure."[2]
Bowie was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.[106]
Through perpetual reinvention, he has seen his influence
continue to broaden and extend: music reviewer Brad Filicky
writes that over the decades, "Bowie has become known as a
musical chameleon, changing and dictating trends as much as he
has altered his style to fit, influencing fashion and pop
culture."[182]
Biographer Thomas Forget adds, "Because he has succeeded in so
many different styles of music, it is almost impossible to find
a popular artist today that has not been influenced by David
Bowie."[183]
Personal life
Bowie married Mary Angela Barnett (also known as
Angie Bowie) on 19 March 1970 at Bromley Register Office on
Beckenham Lane,
Bromley, London. They had a son together, Zowie Bowie (now
known as
Duncan Jones, film director), and divorced on 8 February
1980 in Switzerland.[184]
In 1992, Bowie married Somali-American model
Iman. They have one daughter, Alexandria "Lexi" Zahra Jones,
born in August 2000.[185]
The couple reside primarily in New York City's
Manhattan and London.[186]
Regarding his religion, in 2005 he said "Questioning my
spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing.
Always.", because he is "not quite an atheist and it bothers
me."[187]
In the
Esquire interview "What I've Learned", he stated "I'm in
awe of the universe, but I don't necessarily believe there's an
intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the
visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be
completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is
powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic."[188]
Bowie has shown an interest in
Buddhism since 1967. He frequently studied in London under
the
Tibetan
Lama
Chime Rinpoche before becoming a solo artist. During a 2001
interview, Bowie claimed that "after a few months of study, he
told me, 'You don't want to be Buddhist ... You should follow
music."[189]
Bowie later wrote the song 'Silly Boy Blue' and repeatedly
sang Chime's name at the end of the track on his 1967 album
David Bowie. Bowie also became a student of the
Crazy wisdom
Tulku
Chögyam Trungpa.[190]
Awards
and recognition
Bowie's 1969 commercial breakthrough, the song "Space
Oddity", won him an
Ivor Novello Special Award For Originality.[191]
For his performance in the 1976 science fiction film
The Man Who Fell to Earth, he won a
Saturn Award for Best Actor.[192]
In the ensuing decades he has been honoured with numerous awards
for his music and its accompanying videos, receiving, among
others, two
Grammy Awards[193][194]
and two
BRIT Awards.[195]
In 1999, Bowie was made a Commander of the
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.[196]
He received an honorary doctorate from
Berklee College of Music the same year.[197]
He declined the royal honour of
Commander of the British Empire in 2000, and turned down a
knighthood in 2003,[198]
stating: "I would never have any intention of accepting anything
like that. I seriously don't know what it's for. It's not what I
spent my life working for."[199]
Throughout his career he has sold an estimated 140 million
albums.[200]
In the United Kingdom, he has been awarded 9 Platinum, 11 Gold
and 8 Silver albums, and in the United States, 5 Platinum and 7
Gold.[201][202]
In the BBC's 2002 poll of the
100 Greatest Britons, he was ranked 29.[200]
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 39th on their
list of the 100 Greatest Rock Artists of All Time[203]
and the 23rd best singer of all time.[204]
Bowie was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 17 January 1996.[106]
Discography
Filmography
As actor
As musician
As producer
- Büvös vadász (1994) (... aka Magic Hunter)
- Passaggio per il paradiso (1998) (... aka Gentle
Into the Night, ... aka Passage to Paradise)
-
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man (2006)
Documentaries
See also
Notes
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^
"How to say: Bowie". BBC. 8 January 2008.
Retrieved 16 September 2010.
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^
a
b
c
d
Buckley (2005): pp. 516–17,
524, 529
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^
"David Bowie performs on stage". ABC News. 8 January
2013. Retrieved 6 May
2013.
-
^ Gillman
(1987) p.17 "[Peggy] was born in the hospital at
Shorncliffe Camp [near Folkestone, Kent] on October 2nd,
1913." p.15 "[Her father] Jimmy Burns's parents were
poor Irish immigrants who had settled in Manchester"
p.16 "[Jimmy] had known [her mother] in Manchester. Her
name was Margaret Heaton"
-
^ Gillman
(1987) p.44 "At the end of the war, Peggy Burns was
working as a waitress at the Ritz cinema in Tunbridge
Wells"
-
^ Gillman
(1987) p.44 "John Jones was born in the grimy Yorkshire
town of Doncaster in 1912."
-
^ Sandford
(1997): pp. 9–16
-
^
a
b
Sandford (1997): pp. 18–19
-
^ Buckley
(2000): p. 21.
-
^
a
b
c
Sandford (1997): pp. 19–20
-
^
Doggett, Peter (January
2007). "Teenage Wildlife". Mojo Classic (60 Years
of Bowie): 8–9.
-
^
a
b
Sandford (1997): pp. 21–22
-
^ Sandford
(1997): p. 25
-
^
Evans, Mike (2006). Rock
'n' Roll's Strangest Moments: Extraordinary Tales from
Over Fifty Years. Anova Books. p. 57.
ISBN 978-1-86105-923-9.
-
^
"Heterochromia Central – What Is Central Heterochromia?".
Heterochromiacentral.com.
Retrieved 2013-05-26.
-
^ Buckley
(2005): p.19
-
^ Sandford
(1997): p. 28
-
^
a
b
Sandford (1997): pp. 29–30
-
^ Sandford
(1997): pp. 35–39
-
^ Buckley
(2000): p. 33
-
^
a
b
Sandford (1997): pp. 41–42
-
^
a
b
Buckley (2005): pp. 41–42
-
^ Buckley
(2005): p. 46
-
^ Buckley
(2005): pp. 49–52
-
^
a
b
Sandford (1997): pp. 49–50
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^
a
b
Sandford (1997): p. 53
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^
McKay, George (1996).
Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance.
Verso. p. 188.
ISBN 978-1-85984-908-8.
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^ Sandford
(1997): p. 60
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^ Sandford
(1997): pp. 54–60
-
^
a
b
c
Sandford (1997): pp. 62–63
-
^ Buckley
(2000): pp. 89–90
-
^
a
b
Sandford (1997): p. 67
-
^
a
b
c
Sandford (1997): pp. 73–74
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^ Pegg
(2000): pp. 260–65
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^ Buckley
(2005): pp. 95–99
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^ Sandford
(1997): p. 80
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^ Sandford
(1997): pp. 85–86
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^
a
b
Buckley (2005): pp. 135–36
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^ Sandford
(1997): pp. 93–95
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^ Buckley
(2000): p. 156
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^ Pegg
(2004): pp. 281–83
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^ Sandford
(1997): p. 108
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^ Sandford
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^
a
b
Carr & Murray (1981): p. 7
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^ Carr &
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^ Buckley
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^ Sandford
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^ Buckley
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^ Buckley
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^
a
b
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^ Sandford
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^ Sandford
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^ Carr &
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Buckley, Peter, ed. (2003).
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Roberts, David (ed.) (2001).
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^ Sandford
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^ Buckley
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^ Buckley
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^ Buckley
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Paytress, Mark (January
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^ Buckley
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^ Sandford
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Needs, Kris (January
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^ Perone
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Bronson, Fred (1990). The
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^ Buckley
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^ Sandford
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^ Sandford
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^ Pegg
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^ Carr &
Murray (1981): pp. 108–14
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^
a
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^ Sandford
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^ Buckley
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^ Buckley
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McNair, James (January
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Fyfe, Andy (January
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^
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^ Sandford
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^ Buckley
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^ Sandford
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^ Sandford
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^ Sandford
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^ Sandford
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^ Sandford
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^ Sandford
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^ Sandford
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^ Buckley
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^ Sandford
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^ Buckley
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^ Thompson
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^ Buckley
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^ Perone
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^ Buckley
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^ Buckley
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^ Buckley
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^ Buckley
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^ Buckley
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^ Buckley
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^ Perone
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^ Thompson
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"Space Is the Place:
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Stardust Memories / Without Tibet House, David Bowie
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returns the favor by performing at the annual benefit
concert.
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^ :
Shambhala SunSpace » Bringing Chogyam Trungpa's "Crazy
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Johanna Demetrakas
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References
- Buckley, David (2000)
[First published 1999]. Strange Fascination — David
Bowie: The Definitive Story. London: Virgin.
ISBN 0-7535-0457-X.
- Buckley, David (2004).
David Bowie: The Complete Guide To His Music.
Omnibus Press.
ISBN 978-1-84449-423-1.
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[First published 1999]. Strange Fascination — David
Bowie: The Definitive Story. London: Virgin.
ISBN 978-0-7535-1002-5.
- Campbell, Michael
(2008). Popular Music in America: And The Beat Goes
On. Schirmer.
ISBN 978-0-495-50530-3.
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Carr, Roy;
Murray, Charles Shaar (1981). Bowie: An
Illustrated Record. New York: Avon.
ISBN 0-380-77966-8.
- Cole, Shaun (2000).
'Don we now our gay apparel': gay men's dress in the
twentieth century. London: Berg.
ISBN 1-85973-415-4.
- Ditmore, Melissa Hope
(2006). Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work,
Volume 2. Greenwood Publishing Group.
ISBN 0-313-32970-2.
- Doggett, Peter (2011).
The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and the 1970s.
The Bodley Head.
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Gillman, Peter; Gillman, Leni (1987) [1986].
Alias David Bowie. New English Library.
ISBN 0-450-41346-2.
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Pegg, Nicholas (2004) [First published 2000]. The
Complete David Bowie. London: Reynolds & Hearn.
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- Perone, James E. (2007).
The Words and Music of David Bowie. Praeger.
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- Sandford, Christopher
(1997) [First published 1996]. Bowie: Loving the
Alien. Time Warner.
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Schwartz, Andy (2007). Icons of Rock: An Encyclopedia
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Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
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ISBN 0-283-06262-2.
- Thompson, Dave (2006).
Hallo Spaceboy: The Rebirth of David Bowie. Ecw
Press.
ISBN 978-1-55022-733-8.
Further
reading
- Cann, David, Any Day Now: David Bowie the London
Years 1947–1974, Kenneth Pitt in Books, 2011
- Hendrikse, Wim, Never Get Old. Man of
Ch-Ch-Changes Part 1 and Part 2, Gopher Publishers,
2004.
- Hendrikse, Wim, David Bowie: The Man Who Changed
the World, Authors Online, 2013.
- Jacke, Andreas, David Bowie – Station To Station,
Psychosozial- Verlag, 2011
- Seabrook, Thomas Jerome, Bowie in Berlin: A New
Career in a New Town, Jawbone Press, 2008.
-
Spitz, Marc,
Bowie: A Biography,
Crown Publishers, 2009.
- Tremlett, George, David Bowie: Living on the
Brink, Carroll and Graf, 1997.
- Trynka, Paul, Starman: David Bowie – The
Definitive Biography, Little, Brown Book Group
Limited, 2011
- Waldrep, Shelton, "Phenomenology of Performance",
The Aesthetics of Self-Invention: Oscar Wilde to David
Bowie, University of Minnesota Press, 2004.'
-
Welch, Chris, David Bowie: We Could Be Heroes:
The Stories Behind Every David Bowie Song, Da Capo
Press, 1999.
- Wilcken, Hugo, 33⅓: David Bowie's Low,
Continuum, 2005.
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