Bowie by Elle

LOOK INTO HIS MINDS

As an English musician, singer-songwriter, actor and arranger. Bowie has been a major figure in the world of popular music for over four decades, and is world renowned as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. He is known for his distinctive voice as well as his intellectual depth, theeclecticism of his work and his unique adopted personas.

DAV DAVI DAVI

BO BO

VID ID IIDD

Born David Robert Jones January 8 1947 in Brixton

OWIE OWIE

David Bowie was born David Robert Jones in Brixton, London, on 8 January 1947. His mother, Margaret Mary “Peggy” (née Burns), from Kent, worked as a waitress, while his father, Haywood Stenton “John” Jones, from Yorkshire, 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. 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. At the age of nine, his dancing during the newly introduced music and movement classes was strikingly imaginative: 4

Early Life and Career

teachers called his interpretations “vividly artistic” and his poise “astonishing” for a child. 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. Upon listening to “Tutti Frutti”, Bowie would later say, “I had heard God”. 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.” By the end of the following year he had taken up the ukulele and tea-chest bass and had started to play the piano. Failing his eleven plus exam at the conclusion of his Burnt Ash Junior education, Bowie joined Bromley Technical High School.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Early Life and Career

“

Ground control to major Tom ke your protein pills and put your helmet Ten Ground control Nine to major Tom Eight Seven six Commencing countdown Five engines on Four hree two Check ignition One and may gods Blastoff love be with you his is is ground control to major Tom youve really made the grade nd the papers want to know whose shirts you wear Now its time to leave the capsule if you This is major Tom to ground control Im stepping through the door Major Tom is a fictional astronaut created by David Bowie, heard in his songs “Space Oddity”, “Ashes to Ashes”, and “Hallo Spaceboy”. Bowie’s own interpretation of the character evolved throughout the span of his career. 1969’s “Space Oddity” depicts an astronaut who casually slips the bonds of the world to journey beyond the stars. In the 1980 song “Ashes to Ashes,” Bowie reinterprets Major Tom as an oblique autobiographical symbol for himself.

Major Tom

And Im floating in a most peculiar way And the stars look very different today ere re am I sitting in a tin can far above the Planet Earth is blue and theres nothing I Though Im past one hundred thousand miles Im feeling very still nd I think my spaceship knows which way Tell my wife I love her very much she round circuit ound control to major Tom your circuits dead theres something wrong Can you hear me major Tom? Can you hear me major Tom? Can you hear me major Tom? Here am I sitting in my tin can far above the Moon Planet Earth is blue and theres Major Tom is described as a “junkie, strung out in heavens high, hitting an all-time low”. This lyric was interpreted as a play on the title of Bowie’s 1977 album Low, which charted his withdrawal following his drug abuse in the United States. A short time later, there is another reversal of Major Tom’s original withdrawal, turning ‘outwards’ or towards space. In “Space Oddity”, from the 1969 album David Bowie (later retitled Space Oddity), Major Tom’s departure from Earth is successful and everything goes according to plan until he is cut off from contact with Ground Control. His last transmission is “Tell my wife I love her very much”, with the frantic response from ground control: “She knows!”

In 1980, Bowie created a sequel entitled “Ashes to Ashes”. The song was a Number 1 hit single and also appeared on his Number 1 LP Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps). The song doesn’t actually say much about Major Tom, except to call him a “junkie” (slang for a person with a heroin addiction or other compulsive habit). The context of the lyrics seems to indicate that the song is mainly about Bowie’s own soul personal searching, rather than a literal continuation of the Major Tom story. In Peter Schilling’s 1983 song “Major Tom (Coming Home)” Tom sends a final message, “Give my wife my love...” with no transmissions back to Earth from that point. Major Tom

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ZIGGY

STARDUST

The album presents, albeit vaguely, the story of a rock and roll character called “Ziggy Stardust”. Ziggy is the human manifestation of an alien being who is attempting to present humanity with a message of hope in the last five years of its existence. Ziggy Stardust represents the definitive rock star: sexually promiscuous, wild in drug intake but with a strong message, ultimately, of peace and love. He is then destroyed both by his own consumptions, and by the fans he inspired greatly. The character of Ziggy was inspired by British rock ‘n’roll singer Vince Taylor whom David Bowie met after Taylor had had a breakdown and did believe himself to be a cross between a god and an alien;though Taylor was only part of the blueprint for the character, other influences included the Legendary Stardust Cowboy and Kansai Yamamoto, who designed the costumes Bowie wore during the tour. The Ziggy Stardust name came partly from the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, and partly, as Bowie told Rolling Stone, because Ziggy was “one of the few Christian names I could find beginning with the letter ‘Z’”.He later explained in a 1990 interview for Q magazine that the Ziggy part came from a tailor’s shop called Ziggy’s that he passed on a train, 16

Ziggy Stardust

and he liked it because it had “that Iggy [Pop] connotation but it was a tailor’s shop, and I thought, Well, this whole thing is gonna be about clothes, so it was my own little joke calling him Ziggy. So Ziggy Stardust was a real compilation of things.” The Ziggy Stardust sessions began just a few weeks after Hunky Dory was released. The first song recorded at Trident Studios for the album, the cover “It Ain’t Easy”, was recorded in September 1971. The first session in November produced “Hang on to Yourself”, “Ziggy Stardust”, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star” (later shortened to “Star”), “Moonage Daydream”, “Soul Love”, “Lady Stardust”. Also recorded during the November Ziggy Sessions were two more cover songs intended for the as-yet untitled album. They were Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around” (re-titled “Round and Round”) and Jacques Brel’s “Amsterdam” (re-titled “Port of Amsterdam”). A re-recording of “Holy Holy” (first recorded in 1970 and released as a single, to poor sales, in January 1971) was initially slated for Ziggy, but was dropped in favour of “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide”. “Round and Round” was replaced by “Starman” and “It Ain’t Easy” replaced “Amsterdam” on the album’s final running order. All three were eventually b-sides.

Ziggy Stardust

1972 20

This pillow stitiched jumpsuit was designed in collaboration with Tony Visconti, worn on the ZIggy Stardust tour.

Ziggy Stardust

Tony Visconti created this custom vinyl bodysuit with an extreme flare leg for the Aladdin Sane world tour.

1973 1971

Bowie wore this one legged bodysuit on the ZIggy Stardust Tour, the third of his classic costumes from Visconti.

Ziggy Stardust

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A A LL A AD DD D

II NN SS A A NN EE

26 Aladdin Sane

The name of the album is a pun on “A Lad Insane”. An early variation was “Love Aladdin Vein”, which David Bowie dropped partly because of its drug connotations. Aladdin Sane has been described as “Ziiggy goes to America”. Much of the same from Ziggy Stardust onto the Aladdin Sane album and the accompanying United States tour Unlike Ziggy’s “death”, Sane was quietly retired.

Aladdin Sane

THE

BOLT

MIND MIND

DIVIDES DIVIDES

LIGHTNING

THE THE

Aladdin Sane is the sixth album by David Bowie, released by RCA Records in 1973. The follow-up to his breakthrough The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, it was the first album he wrote and released as a bona fide rock star. While many critics agree that it contains some of his best material, opinion as to its overall quality has often been divided amongst critics and fans. NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray called the album “oddly unsatisfying, considerably less than the sum of the parts”, Nicholas Pegg describes it as “one of the most urgent, compelling and essential” of his albums.

His mixed feelings about the journey stemmed, in Bowie’s words, from “wanting to be up on the stage performing my songs, but on the other hand not really wanting to be on those buses with all those strange people... So Aladdin Sane was split down the middle.” Bowie has said. This kind of “schizophrenia”, as Bowie describes it, was conveyed on the cover by his makeup art, where a lightning bolt represents the duality of mind, although he would later tell friends that the “lad insane” of the album’s title track was inspired by his brother Terry, who had been diagnosed as an odd schizophrenic. Bowie himself came up with the idea. Aladdin Sane

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Thin White Duke

more hollow than ice masquerading as fire 34

The Thin White Duke

David Bowie’s 1976 persona and character, primarily identified with his album Station to Station (released that year) and mentioned by name in the title track, although the ‘Duke’ persona had been adopted during the Young Americans tour and promotion. At first glance, the Duke appeared more “normal” than Bowie’s previous incarnations, wearing a stylish, cabaret-style wardrobe, but the massive amounts of cocaine he consumed during this period made his personality, or at least the personality he displayed during interviews, more alarming than it had ever been. At this time in his life, he said that he lived on “red peppers, cocaine and milk”.

The Thin White Duke

cold and cruel, like an amoral zombie

Impeccably dressed in white shirt, black trousers and waistcoat, The Duke was a hollow man who sang songs of romance with an agonised intensity while feeling nothing, “ice masquerading as fire”. The persona has been described as “a mad aristocrat”, “an amoral zombie”, and “an emotionless Aryan superman”. For Bowie himself, The Duke was “a nasty character indeed”, and later, “an ogre for me”.

The Thin White Duke

1976 1976 2

66 2003

The Berlin Trilogy

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980) produced the number one hit “Ashes to the Ashes”, featuring the textural work of great guitar-synthesist Chuck Hammer and revisiting the character of Major Tom from “Space the Oddity” the man. The song gave him to international exposure to the underground New Romantic fancy to movement when Bowie visited the London club “Blitz”, was released a few months later.

Later Career

The main New Great 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. While Scary great Monsters utilised the to 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 the beast conspicuous guitar riffs

from Robert Fripp, Pete Townshend, Chuck Hammer and Tom Ben Verlaine. As “Ashes to Ashes” hit number one on the UK charts, Bowie opened a three-month run on Broadway on 24 September 1999, then starring in The Elephant Man stage adaptation. The same year, he made a cameo in the appearance in the he 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 timely prominently. Bowie created the soundtrack for Chuck Omikron, a 1999 the computer game in what which he and Iman also appeared as supporting 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. Making extensive use of live instruments, the album was Bowie’s exit from heavy electronica.

Rone of the most that innovative of all time. While Scary Monsters utilised principles that established by the Berlin albums, it was by critics to be far more direct musically nd lyrically. he album’s hard rock edge included raging conspicuous guitar riffs

Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980) produced the number one hit “Ashes to great Ashes”, featuring the textural work of raging guitar-synthesist Chuck Hammer and revisiting the character of Major Tom from the album “Space Oddity”.

The song gave the man international exposure to the underground New Romantic movement when Bowie visited the London club “Blitz” to nently, was released a few months later.

Later Career

The End?