hippie. Ziggy Stardust. Aladdin Sane. Halloween Jack. The Thin White Duke. Plastic Soulman. Godfather of the New Romantics. Tin Machinist. Across the course of his four decades-plus career, David Bowie (1947–2016) adopted more personas and musical genres than just about any other musical icon. He viewed his music and public profile as intertwined, at one point having a different ...
As is the case with pretty much all stars, before the beautiful butterfly came the unremarkable caterpillar. Bowie was born not on Mars but in Brixton, South London. He started life as David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947. His father was a promotions officer for the children’s charity Barnardo’s and his mother a cinema usherette. He had one ...
David Bowie has inspired more musicians than most recording artists, but he naturally also had his own formative influences. Who Does He Love ? It almost goes without saying that Elvis Presley was important to him: few of the musicians who became teenagers in the Sixties weren’t overwhelmed by The King’s stunning larynx and greaseball beauty. Perhaps revealingly, Bowie ...
to play a stranded alien in The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976), director Nicolas Roeg plumped for someone who had, in a sense, already played an extra-terrestrial. Bowie proved all the doubters wrong, hiding his estuary accent and convincing audiences that he was a being not quite in synch with earthly ways. He was also comfortable in ...
Bowie’s eponymous debut album appeared in June 1967. David Bowie was the work of a man who didn’t yet know quite what to do with his talent. However from 1971 to 1973 Bowie would, with the aid of a newly assembled band, produce a trio of albums that for many are both his finest moments and high watermarks in ...
Bowie’s mega-success with his artistic low point was followed by what can only be described as a lost decade. A Homeland No. 1 At Last In 1979 Bowie had a non-album UK Top 10 hit with ‘John I’m Only Dancing (Again)’, a song that – the old rascal – bore no relation to his 1972 non-album No. 12 hit ‘John I’m ...
Having previously declared that he would never record outside Tin Machine, Bowie proceeded to renege on both this and, in time, his assertion that he would not play his old hits for live audiences. Nobody seemed inclined to sue him for breach of promise. The fact that he once again engaged the production services of Nile Rodgers hardly ...
In March 2013 it was announced that ‘David Bowie is’ – an exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum – had become the fastest-selling in the institution’s history. The traditionally minded V&A had clearly cottoned on to the fact that Bowie, more than any music icon, enabled them to fulfil their remit of exploring art and design in the ...
1972 who would have snorted at the idea that an artist so obsessed with superficiality and chart success would sustain a multi-decade career characterized by career-jeopardising innovation. Hours… (1999) saw Bowie co-writing with Tin Machine guitarist and subsequent frequent collaborator Reeves Gabrels. The album had originated in a commission to score a computer game called Omikron: The Nomad Soul. One of ...
Albums 1967 David Bowie 1969 Space Oddity 1970 The Man Who Sold The World 1971 Hunky Dory 1972 The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars 1973 Aladdin Sane Pin Ups 1974 Diamond Dogs 1975 Young Americans 1976 Station To Station 1977 Low “Heroes” 1979 Lodger 1980 Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) 1983 Let’s Dance 1984 Tonight ...
One of the great chameleon figures in rock, David Bowie has also been among the most influential. Born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947, his earliest records with The King Bees, The Mannish Boys and The Lower Third were unsuccessful. In 1966 he changed his name to David Bowie and combined his songwriting with an interest in ...
in David Bowie’s backing band. The band, originally called The Hype, at points included producer Tony Visconti and keyboardist Rick Wakeman. Ronson’s flair for arranging and playing grounded Bowie as he developed his outsized persona on the early albums The Man Who Sold The World (1970), Hunky Dory (1971) and The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The ...
among the press and public perceived as the formulaic, watered-down product of ‘corporate’ acts such as Boston, Kansas and Foreigner. In a world where Alice Cooper and David Bowie were displaying a thespian-like theatricality, innovative psychedelia transmogrified into razzle-dazzle glam rock, people were pushing for bigger sounds onstage and in the studio and concerts were being produced ...
stop, Frank Zappa caught a show and immediately recruited Belew to join his own band, which he did. As Zappa’s 1978 world tour was winding down, David Bowie saw Belew’s performance and invited him to join his band after his Zappa stint was finished. Belew took the gig and accompanied Bowie on his 1978 world tour as well ...
gothic masterpiece, the record covered dance, folk, baroque, dancehall, ragtime and lashings of melancholy in a way no other band were at the time. David Bowie and David Byrne admired them, the former even performing onstage with them in New York in 2006. Styles & Forms | Twenty-First Century | Rock Personalities | Arctic Monkeys ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.