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David Bowie
She
had a horror of rooms she was tired you can't hide beat
And when I looked in her eyes they were
blue but nobody home
She cold've been a killer if she didn't
walk the way she do
She'd opened strange doors that we'd
never closed again
She began to wail
jealousies screams
Waiting at the lights
know what I mean
Scary monsters supercreeps keep me running scared
Scary monsters supercreeps keep me running
scared
(From: Scary Monsters)
David Bowie is a prodigious master of the re-invention. He has had a
more varied and influential career than any other single rockstar. He was a young
balladeer performing as Davy Jones in the late '60s and Ziggy Stardust in the glam rock era of the '70s. His sound evolved
from Space Oddity's saga of Major Tom, through rockers like "Jean Genie"
and "Rebel Rebel", to the upbeat of "China Girl" and "Modern
Love" from his mid-'80s period.
He switched gears again with Young Americans, and then reached multiplatinum
success with Let's Dance in the '80s.
This website ist a hommage to Britain's most famous Stylophonist - also known as "The
White Duke".
DAVID BOWIE is always ahead of the cultural curve. The oft-mimicked, style-setting musician is renowned more for his ground-breaking influence on subsequent generations of performers — from metal heads to glam rockers to punks to new-wavers to disco devotees to lounge lizards to electro-philes — than for achieving consistent commercial success in any particular genre. While evolving from folksy singer to senior statesman of rock, Bowie has maintained a three-decade-long career that has continually broken musical boundaries and defined and redefined the term "rock star".
Born in a low-rent section of London, David Jones endured a hard scrabble childhood.
His publicist father and movie-theater usher mother didn't marry until after he was born
— a highly scandalous break from convention in 1947; his brother was hospitalized for
psychiatric problems; and a street fight as a teen rendered the pupil of his left eye
permanently dilated. Music, on the other hand, proved a positive force, and the Jones
family encouraged young David's interest in such American rock pioneers as Chuck Berry,
Fats Domino, and Elvis Presley. He learned to play guitar, and later saxophone, while a
student at Bromley Technical High School, and was composing songs by the time he dropped
out in 1964 to accept a short-lived position as a commercial artist.
Soon thereafter, Jones joined his first band, an R&B ensemble called Davie Jones and
the King Bees. The group and its two more modish successors, the Manish Boys and the Lower
Third, each recorded and achieved a modicum of regional popularity, but never hit the big
time like many of their contemporaries. Frustrated with the groups' relative lack of
success, Davie Jones renamed himself David Bowie — he wanted to avoid being confused
with the lead singer of the Monkees — and recorded his first solo album, The World of
David Bowie (1967). His cockney-tinged offering drew some comparisons to English
composer-entertainer Anthony ("What Kind of Fool Am I?") Newley, but generally
the record escaped notice of any kind, and Bowie dropped out of the music scene
altogether. He pondered Buddhism, acted in community theatre, and spent more than two
years as a member of the Lindsay Kemp Mime Troupe.
David Bowie - David Bowie
Bowie's second album, the one in which he finally ditched all intentions of becoming a
second Anthony Newley. A gatefold sleeve affair, it displayed a split personality
design-wide. The front featured a Victor Vasarely design decorated with a superimposed
picture of Britain's most famous Stylophonist; the rear, drawn by George Underwood from an
idea scrawled by Bowie, ecompassed spaceman, Buddha, a fish, holocaust bodies, the head of
dancer-girlfriend Hermione Farthingale, plus various other puzzling items. "My heart
sank when I saw the sleeve", said Ken Pitt, Bowie's then manager.
During this period, Bowie made the acquaintance of Angela Barnet, whom he would marry in
1970. Barnet convinced a friend at Mercury Records to give her beau's music a listen, and
Bowie resurfaced in 1969 with the single "Space Oddity", which was followed
shortly by an album of the same title (released Stateside as Man of Words/Man of Music).
The title track nonetheless became the singer's first hit single — the BBC even
played it during coverage of the moon landing — and its success proved motivating.
Next up was a hard-edged rock album, The Man Who Sold the World (1970). From the cover,
which shows a longhaired Bowie in a full-length dress, reclining on a chaise longue, it is
clear that this is no ordinary record (Nirvana later admitted they were strongly inspired b it). The album's cold, Orwellian look at the future
attracted a small, esoteric audience. Mick Ronson's dazzling guitar work, combined with
the eerie sound of a moog synthesiser, and Bowie's pronounced Cockney accent creates an
atmosphere that is distinctly, and suitably macabre. (Some critics have since pointed to
the record — and to Mick Ronson's guitar work, in particular — as the genesis of
heavy metal.) "The Supermen" reasons with Fredrich Nietzches' theory about the
perfect men, who can "put mind over matter and matter over mind", but eventually destroy
themselves in their perfect empire.
Bowie embarked on his first trip to the United States
to promote the record.
Commercial acceptance also evaded his 1971 album, Hunky Dory, which marked a partial
return to Bowie's earthier past with its tribute tunes to Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol. (That
same year, Angela gave birth to their son, Zowie Duncan Heywood Bowie.)
Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust
After the heavy metal of The Man Who Sold The World Bowie put on his more commercial 'bipperty-bopperty' hat for Hunky Dory. This is an immediately accessible record and contains some of the most inspiring and engaging songs ever recorded by any artist. The forst four tracks are incredible beatiful: "Changes", "Oh! You Pretty Things", "Eight Line Poem", "Life On Mars?" and "Song For Bob Dylan". In "Quicksand" Bowie references Nietzche - "I'm not a prophet or a stone age man / Just a mortal with potential of a superman".
In the album's dark and unsettling closer, "The Bewlay Brothers", Bowie sings "He's Camelian, comedian, Corinthian and Caricature", a line that would be a fitting epitaph for the man himself.
Quick on the heels of Hunky Dory came the album that made Bowie a legend: The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (1972).
Ziggy Stardust tells the ultimate rock-and-roll saga, mixing Mick Ronson's savvy guitar strut with melodic sublimity into an enthralling epic melodrama. Bowie plays with ambiguous sexuality in the slow, erratic "John, I'm Only Dancing", and glances at the madness to come in the degenerate cool of the trash rocker, "Suffragette City". As Ziggy Stardust, he was hurled on a precarious roller-coaster ride that even he might not have anticipated, but my, how he rolled with it!
David Bowie through the eyes of Ziggy Stardust. Or is it vice versa? This was Bowie's
first concept album, which helped tell of the trials & tribulations that an
extraterrestrial rock star has to go through. Bowie, being the prime example himself, did
it perfectly with creativity and precision. The beautiful angst of "Five Years"
starts it all off, where Ziggy's world slowly fades away into nothing. Next, we see him
telling what he thinks love really is, hiding behind the pop music of "Soul
Love". "Moonage Daydream" is the first alien rock song, mingling with a
violent space-faced alien. "Starman" wonderfully expresses how humans wouldn't
be able to accept something different, say a spiritual alien, into their society. "It
Ain't Easy" and the mellow piano tune of "Lady Stardust" are further
dwelling into not being accepted. "Star" and "Hang On To Yourself"
showcase the gradual rise Ziggy's glam carreer, but then we see what happens when he
starts to fall with "Ziggy Stardust". It's hard to tell what "Suffragette
City" is about, but it is an awesome song. The final farewell of Ziggy concludes in
the aptly titled "Rock N'Roll Suicide". Through it all, we hear raging electric
guitar, acoustics, strings, and piano.
The high-concept record — about an androgynous space-rock messiah destroyed by the fanaticism he incites — and its associated tour earned the entertainer legions of his own followers. With Ziggy Stardust Bowie turned the amps up to 11.
During this flush of fame, Bowie discussed his fluid sexuality with the press, and the
controversial disclosure both fueled and occasionally eclipsed his burgeoning musical
celebrity.
Aladdin Sane (1973)
Changesbowie (1990)
franc'O'brain
& Transputer Qasar. 2003-06.Email: lizard@albarid.net.
