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David Bowie (born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947) is an English singer,
songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, arranger and audio engineer.
Active in four decades of rock music, and frequently re-inventing his music and
image, Bowie is widely regarded as an influential innovator, particularly for his
work through the 1970s. Bowie has taken cues from a wide range of fine art,
philosophy and literature.
He is also a film and stage actor, music video director and visual artist.
 1947 to 1967:
Early years
Space Oddity.David Robert Jones was born in Brixton, London, to a father from
Tadcaster in Yorkshire and a mother from an Irish family; his parents were not
married at the time of his birth. He grew up at 40 Stansfield Road. He lived in
Brixton until he was six years old, when his family moved to Bromley in Kent (now
part of Greater London). He was educated at Bromley Technical High School in
Keston, Bromley (as was Peter Frampton, and where Peter's father, Owen, was head of
the Art department) and lived with his parents until he was eighteen.
At one point, Bowie's friend George Underwood, while wearing a ring on his finger,
punched him in the left eye during a fight over a girl. He was forced to stay out
of school for eight months so that doctors could conduct operations in attempts to
repair his potentially blinded eye. Underwood and Bowie remained good friends;
Underwood went on to do artwork for Bowie's earlier albums. Doctors could not fully
repair the damage, leaving his pupil permanently dilated. As a result of the
injury, Bowie has faulty depth perception. Bowie has stated that although he can
see with his injured eye, his colour vision was mostly lost and a brownish tone is
constantly present. The colour of the irises is still the same blue, but since the
pupil of the injured eye is wide open, the colour of that eye is commonly mistaken
to be different.
At the age of seventeen, David Jones was interviewed on BBC television's Tonight
programme by Cliff Michelmore as the founder of The Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Long-haired Men.
Bowie stated that his earliest musical goal was to be a saxophone player in Little
Richard's group. Initially a saxophonist, he was discovered, quite by accident, as
a singer when he subbed in for a missing vocalist at a club in London. He played
with various blues/beat groups, such as The King Bees, The Manish Boys, The Lower
Third and The Riot Squad in the 1960s. Bowie adapted his public image to fit, and
often anticipate, the prevailing musical trends. His early work shifts through the
blues and Elvis-esque music while working with many British pop styles.
Influenced by the dramatic arts he studied at this age with Lindsay Kemp — from
avant-garde theatre and mime to Commedia dell'arte — much of Bowie's work has
involved the creation of characters or personae to present to the world. The
aspiring rock star needed to use a different stage name to avoid confusion with
Davy Jones of The Monkees, so he chose the last name Bowie after the Alamo hero Jim
Bowie and his famous Bowie knife. He pronounces Bowie to rhyme with Joey.
Bowie released his first solo album in 1967 for Deram records, simply called David
Bowie, an amalgam of psychedelia and easy listening. Also released was a single,
"The Laughing Gnome", with the cult-classic B-side "The Gospel According to Tony
Day". None of these managed to chart; the 1967 album is hard to find today,
although it exists in counterfeit copies. However, the materials of the album, the
single, and several other works were later recycled in a multitude of compilation
albums.
During 1967, Bowie also had minor success with a single he wrote for another
artist, "Oscar" (an early stage name of actor-musician Paul Nicholas). Bowie wrote
Oscar's third single, "Over The Wall We Go", which gained a degree of notoriety
because it satirised a series of highly-publicised breakouts from British
prisons.
1969 to 1973:
Psychedelic folk to glam rock
Bowie's first flirtation with fame came in 1969 with his single "Space Oddity",
written the previous year but recorded and released to coincide with the first moon
landing. This ballad told the story Major Tom, an astronaut who becomes lost in
space. It became a Top 5 UK hit record. Its corresponding album was originally
titled David Bowie, which caused some confusion as both of Bowie's first and second
albums were released with that name in the UK. In the US the second album bore the
title Man of Words, Man of Music. In 1972, the second album was re-released as
Space Oddity.
Later in 1970, Bowie released The Man Who Sold the World, rejecting the acoustic
guitar sound of the previous album and replacing it with the heavy rock backing
provided by Mick Ronson, who would be a major collaborator through to 1973. Much of
the album resembles British heavy metal of the period, but the album provided some
unusual musical detours, such as the title track's use of Latin sounds to hold the
melody. The song provided an unlikely hit for UK pop singer Lulu and would be
performed by many groups over the years, including Nirvana. The cover of the first
release of this album, on which Bowie is seen reclining in a dress, was an early
indication of his interest in exploiting his androgynous appearance.
His next record, Hunky Dory in 1971, saw the partial return of the fey pop singer
of "Space Oddity", with light fare such as the droll "Kooks" (dedicated to his
young son, known to the world as Zowie Bowie). Elsewhere, the album explored more
serious themes on tracks such as "Oh! You Pretty Things" (a song taken to UK #12 by
Herman's Hermits' Peter Noone in 1971), the semi-autobiographical "The Bewlay
Brothers" and the Buddhist-influenced "Quicksand". Lyrically, the young songwriter
also paid unusually direct homage to his influences with "Song for Bob Dylan",
"Andy Warhol", and "Queen Bitch", which Bowie's somewhat cryptic liner notes
indicate as a Velvet Underground pastiche. As with the single "Changes", Hunky Dory
was not a big hit but it laid the groundwork for the move that would shortly lift
Bowie into the first rank of stars, giving him four top 10 albums and eight top ten
singles in the UK in 18 months between 1972 and 1973.
David Bowie as "Halloween Jack" - a character from the Diamond Dogs album.Bowie's
androgynous image was taken a step further in June 1972 with the seminal concept
album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, presenting a
world destined to end in five years and telling the story of the ultimate rock
star, Ziggy Stardust. The album's sound combined hard rock elements of The Man Who
Sold the World with the lighter pop of Hunky Dory and the fast-paced glam rock
pioneered by Marc Bolan's T.Rex. Many of the album's songs became rock classics,
including "Ziggy Stardust", "Moonage Daydream", "Hang on to Yourself", and
"Suffragette City".
The Ziggy Stardust character became the basis for Bowie's first large-scale tour
beginning in 1972, where he donned his famous flaming red hair and wild outfits.
The tour featured a three-piece band representing the 'Spiders from Mars': Ronson
on guitar, Trevor Bolder on bass, and Mick Woodmansey on drums. The album made #5
in the UK on the strength of the #10 placing of the single "Starman". Their success
made Bowie a star, and soon the six-month-old Hunky Dory eclipsed Ziggy Stardust,
when it peaked at #3 on the UK chart. At the same time the non-album single "John,
I’m Only Dancing" peaked at UK #12, and "All the Young Dudes", a song he had given
to, and produced for, Mott the Hoople, made UK #3.
Around the same time Bowie began promoting and producing his rock and roll heroes.
Former Velvet Underground singer Lou Reed's solo breakthrough Transformer was
produced by Bowie and Mick Ronson. Iggy Pop and his band The Stooges signed with
Bowie's management, MainMan Productions, and recorded their third album, Raw Power,
in London. Though he was not present for the tracking of the album, Bowie later
performed its much-debated mix.
The Spiders From Mars came together again on Aladdin Sane, released in April 1973
and his first #1 album in the UK. Described by Bowie as "Ziggy goes to America",
all the new songs were written on ship, bus or trains during the first leg of his
US Ziggy Stardust tour. The album's cover, featuring Bowie shirtless with Ziggy
hair and a red, black, and blue lightning bolt across his face, has been labelled
"as startling as rock covers ever got. Aladdin Sane included the UK #2 hit "The
Jean Genie", the UK #3 hit "Drive-In Saturday", and a rendition of The Rolling
Stones' "Let's Spend the Night Together". Mike Garson joined Bowie to play piano on
this album, and his solo on the title track is often cited as one of the album's
highlights.
Bowie's later Ziggy shows, which included songs from both the Ziggy Stardust and
Aladdin Sane records, as well as a few earlier tracks like "Changes" and "The Width
of a Circle", 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. 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. His announcement – "Of all the shows on this tour, this particular show will
remain with us the longest, because not only is it the last show of the tour, but
it's the last show that we'll ever do. Thank you." – was preserved as part of a
live recording of the show, belatedly released as a double album under the title
Ziggy Stardust - The Motion Picture in 1983 after many years circulating as a
bootleg.
Pin Ups, a collection of covers of this 1960s favourites, was released in October
1973, spawning a UK #3 hit in "Sorrow" and itself peaking at #1, making David Bowie
the best-selling act of 1973 in the UK. By that time, Bowie had broken up the
Spiders from Mars and was attempting to move on from his Ziggy persona. Bowie's own
back catalogue was now highly sought. The Man Who Sold the World had been
re-released in 1972 along with the second David Bowie album (Space Oddity), whilst
Hunky Dory's "Life on Mars?" was released as a single in 1973 and made #3 in the
UK, the same year Bowie's novelty record from 1967, "The Laughing Gnome", hit
#6.
1974 to 1976: Soul,
R&B, and The Thin White Duke
1974 saw the release of another
ambitious album, Diamond Dogs, with a spoken word introduction and a multipart
song suite ("Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (reprise)"). Diamond Dogs 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 ("1984", "Big
Brother", "We Are the Dead").
Bowie also made plans to develop a Diamond Dogs movie, but didn't get very far. He
mentioned later that there was some footage completed with scenes of havoc with
people on roller skates, but it has remained unseen. Bowie had planned on actually
writing a musical to 1984, but his interest waned after encountering difficulties
in licensing the novel, and he used some of the songs he had written for Diamond
Dogs.
The album — and an NBC television special, The 1980 Floor Show, broadcast at around
the same time — demonstrated Bowie headed toward the genre of soul/disco music, the
track "1984" being a prime example. The album spawned the hits "Rebel Rebel" (UK
#5) and "Diamond Dogs" (UK #21), and itself went to #1 in the UK, making him the
best-selling act of that country for the second year in a row. In the US, Bowie
achieved his first major commercial success when the album went to #5.
To follow on the release of the album, Bowie launched a massive Diamond Dogs tour
of North America, lasting from June to December 1974. Choreographed by Toni Basil,
and lavishly produced with theatrical special effects, the high-budget stage
production broke with contemporary standard practice for rock concerts by featuring
no encores. It was filmed by Alan Yentob for the documentary Cracked Actor. The
documentary seemed to confirm the rumours of his cocaine abuse, featuring a pasty
and emaciated Bowie nervously sniffing in the backseat of a car and claiming that
there was a fly in his milk.
Bowie commented that the resulting live album David Live ought really to be called
"David Bowie Is Alive and Well and Living Only In Theory", presumably referring to
his addled psychological state during this frenetic period. Nevertheless the album
solidified his status as a superstar, going #2 in the UK and #8 in the US. It also
spawned a UK #10 hit in a cover of "Knock on Wood".
After the opening leg of the tour, Bowie mostly jettisoned the elaborate sets.
Then, when the tour resumed after a summer break in Philadelphia for recording new
material, the Diamond Dogs sound no longer seemed apt. Bowie cancelled seven dates
and made changes to the band, which returned to the road in October as the Philly
Dogs tour.
For Ziggy Stardust fans who had not discerned the soul and funk strains already
apparent in Bowie's recent work, the "new" sound was considered a sudden and
jolting step. 1975's Young Americans was Bowie's definitive exploration of Philly
soul — though he himself referred to the sound ironically as 'plastic soul'. It
contained his first #1 hit in the US, "Fame", co-written with John Lennon (who also
contributed backing vocals) and one of Bowie's new band members, guitarist Carlos
Alomar. It was based on a riff Alomar developed when covering The Flares's 1961
doo-wop classic "Footstompin'", which Bowie's band had taken to playing live during
the Philly Dogs period. One of the backing vocalists on the album is a young Luther
Vandross, who also co-wrote some of the material for Young Americans. The song Win
featured a hypnotic guitar riff later cribbed by Beck for the track/live staple
"Debra" off his Midnight Vultures album. Despite Bowie's unashamed recognition of
the shallowness of his 'plastic soul,' he did earn the bona fide distinction of
being one of the few white artists to be invited to appear on the popular Soul
Train. Another, violently paranoid appearance on "The Dick Cavett Show" seemed to
confirm rumours of Bowie's heavy cocaine use at this time.
Young Americans was the album which cemented Bowie's stardom in the US; though only
peaking there at #9, as opposed to the #5 placing of Diamond Dogs, the album stayed
in the charts for almost twice as long. At the same time the album went #1 in the
UK, and a re-issue of his old single "Space Oddity" became his first #1 hit in the
UK, only a few months after "Fame" had done the same in the US.
1976's Station to Station featured a darker version of this soul persona, called
The Thin White Duke. Visually the figure was an extension of Thomas Jerome Newton,
the character Bowie portrayed in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Station to Station was
a transitional album, prefiguring the Krautrock and synthesiser music of his next
releases, while developing the funk and soul music of Young Americans. By this time
Bowie was heavily dependent on drugs, especially cocaine, and many critics have
attributed the chopped rhythms and emotional detachment of the record to the
influence of the drug, which Bowie claimed to have been introduced to in America.
His emotional disturbance and megalomania at this time reached such a fever pitch
that David Bowie refused to relinquish control of a satellite, booked for a
world-wide broadcast of a live appearance preceding the release of Station to
Station, at the request of the Spanish Government, who wished to put out a live
feed regarding the death of Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco. Additionally, Bowie
was physically withering, weighing a meager 80 pounds at this time.
Nonetheless, there was another large tour in 1976, The 1976 World Tour, which
featured a starkly lit set and highlighted new songs such as the dramatic, lengthy
title track, the ballads "Wild is the Wind" and "Word on a Wing", and the funky
"TVC 15" and "Stay". The core band that coalesced around this album and tour —
rhythm guitarist Alomar, bassist George Murray, and drummer Dennis Davis — would
remain a stable unit through 1980.
With the album at #3 in the US, his greatest success there ever, and the single
"Golden Years" becoming a transatlantic Top Ten hit, Bowie was at a commercial
peak, yet his sanity — by his own admission later — was twisted by cocaine and he
overdosed several times during the year.
1976 to 1980: The
Berlin era
Bowie's interest in the growing German music scene, as
well as his drug addiction, prompted him to move to (West)Berlin to dry out
and rejuvenate his career. Sharing an apartment in Schöneberg with his friend
Iggy Pop, he co-produced three more of his own classic albums with Tony
Visconti, as well as aiding Pop in his career. With Bowie as a co-writer and
musician, Pop completed his first two solo albums, The Idiot and Lust for
Life.
More unusually, Bowie joined Pop's touring band in the spring, simply playing
keyboard and singing backing vocals. The group performed in the UK, Europe, and the
US from March to April.
David Bowie, Best of 1974/1979The brittle sound of Station to Station proved a
precursor to that found on Low, the first of three recorded where Brian Eno was
integral to the making of the albums, but despite wide-spread belief, he was not
the producer. Journalists who do not read the album covers often credit Eno with
production of the trilogy but in fact Bowie and Tony Visconti co-produced, with Eno
co-writing some of the music, playing keyboards and developing strategies. Bowie
stressed in 2000: "Over the years not enough credit has gone to Tony Visconti on
those particular albums. The actual sound and texture, the feel of everything from
the drums to the way that my voice is recorded is Tony Visconti."
Visconti said at the time that "Bowie wanted to make an album of music that was
uncompromising and reflected the way he felt. He said he did not care whether or
not he had another hit record, and that the recording would be so out of the
ordinary that it might never get released".
Partly influenced by the Krautrock sound of Kraftwerk and Neu and the minimalist
work of Steve Reich, Bowie journeyed to Neunkirchen near Cologne to meet the famed
German producer Conny Plank. Conrad Plank was considered the revolutionary producer
of that era for German rock, but had no interest in working with Bowie, refusing
him entry into the studio. Bowie and his team persevered, however, and recorded on
their own new songs that were relatively simple, repetitive and stripped, a clear
and perverse reaction to punk rock, with the second side almost wholly
instrumental. (By way of tribute, proto-punk Nick Lowe recorded an EP entitled
"Bowi".) The album provided him with a surprise #3 hit in the UK when the BBC
picked up the first single, "Sound and Vision", as its 'coming attractions' theme
music. Low was renowned for having been far ahead of its time. Bowie himself has
said "cut me and I bleed Low". It was produced in 1976 and released in early
1977.
The Low sessions also formalised Bowie's three phase approach to making albums that
he still favours today. Much of the band were present for the first five days only,
after which Eno, Alomar and Gardiner remained to play overdubs. By the time Bowie
wrote and recorded the lyrics everybody but Visconti and studio engineers had
departed.
The next record, "Heroes", was similar in sound to Low, though slightly more
accessible. The mood of these records fit the zeitgeist of the Cold War, symbolised
by the divided city that provided its inspiration. The title track remains one of
Bowie's best known, a classic story about two lovers who met at the Berlin
Wall.
Also in 1977, Bowie appeared on the Granada music show Marc, hosted by his friend
and fellow glam pioneer Marc Bolan of T. Rex, with whom he had regularly socialised
and jammed since before either became famous. He turned out to be the show's final
guest, as Bolan was killed in a car crash shortly afterwards. Bowie was one of many
superstars who attended the funeral.
For Christmas 1977, Bowie joined Bing Crosby, of whom he was an ardent admirer, in
a recording studio to do a version of Little Drummer Boy, with new lyrics added.
The two had originally met on Crosby's Christmas television special two years
earlier (on the recommendation of his children — Crosby had not heard of Bowie) and
performed the song. One month after the record was completed, Crosby died. Five
years later, the song would prove a worldwide festive hit, charting in the U.K at
#3 on Christmas Day 1982. Bowie later remarked jokingly that he was afraid of being
a guest artist, because "everyone I met dropped dead a month later", referring to
Bolan and Crosby.
There was an extensive world tour in 1978 which featured the music of both Low and
"Heroes". A live album of this tour was released, known as Stage. Songs from both
Low and "Heroes" were later converted to symphonies by minimalist composer Phillip
Glass. 1978 was also the year that featured Bowie narrating Sergei Prokofiev's
Peter and the Wolf, which to this day is regarded as one of the best recordings of
the work.
Lodger (1979) was the final album in Bowie's so-called "Berlin Trilogy" or
'triptych' as Tony Visconti says Bowie called it. It featured the singles "Boys
Keep Swinging", "DJ" and "Look Back in Anger" and, unlike the two previous
long-players, did not contain any instrumentals. However, the album is renowned for
being quite a contorted mix of New Wave and world music, and pieces such as
"African Night Flight" and "Yassassin" were surprising detours even by Bowie's
standards. However, it contained tracks that were composed using the
non-traditional Bowie/Eno composition techniques. "Boys Keep Swinging" was
developed with the band members swapping their instruments with each other and
"Move On" contains the chords for an early Bowie composition "All The Young Dudes",
however they are played backwards. This was Bowie's last album with Eno until
1995's Outside.
In 1980, Bowie did an about-face, integrating the lessons learnt on Low, Heroes,
and Lodger while expanding upon them with chart success. Scary Monsters (and Super
Creeps) included the #1 hit "Ashes to Ashes", featuring the textural work of
guitar-synthesist Chuck Hammer, and revisiting the character of Major Tom from
"Space Oddity". The imagery Bowie used in the song's music video gave international
exposure to the underground New Romantic movement and, with many of the followers
of this phase being devotees, 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 video, renowned as being one of the most innovative
of all time.
While Scary Monsters utilised principles that Bowie had learned in the Berlin era,
it was considered by critics to be far more direct musically and lyrically,
possibly reflecting the brutal transformation Bowie had gone through during the
experience. Bowie had divorced his wife Angie, undergone withdrawal from the drugs
of the "Thin White Duke" era, and his conception of how music should be written had
totally changed. The album had a hard rock edge with many innovations, including
conspicuous guitar contributions from King Crimson's Robert Fripp and The Who's
Pete Townshend. Perhaps in an appropriate creative high point, as "Ashes to Ashes"
hit #1 on the UK charts, Bowie opened a 3-month run on Broadway starring as The
Elephant Man on 23 September 1980.
1980 to 1989: Bowie
the superstar
In 1981, Queen released "Under Pressure", co-written by and performed with Bowie.
The song was a hit and became Bowie's 3rd and Queen's 2nd #1 single. In the same
year Bowie made a cameo appearance in the German movie Christiane F. Wir Kinder vom
Bahnhof Zoo, the real-life story of a 13 year-old girl in Berlin who becomes
addicted to heroin and ends up prostituting herself. Bowie is credited with
"special cooperation" in the credits and his music features prominently in the
movie. The soundtrack was released in 1982 and contained a version of "Heroes" sung
partially in German.
Bowie then scored his first truly commercial blockbuster with Let's Dance in 1983,
a slick dance album co-produced by Chic's Nile Rodgers. It was a departure from
Scary Monsters for which Bowie received a bit of inside criticism; rather than
revolting against 1980s dance music, he had in fact joined the scene. The title
track went to #1 in the United States and United Kingdom and many now consider it a
standard.
The album also featured the singles "Cat People", "Modern Love" and "China Girl" ,
the latter causing something of a stir due to its suggestive promotional video.
"China Girl" was a remake of a song which Bowie co-wrote several years earlier with
Iggy Pop, who recorded it for The Idiot. In an interview by Kurt Loder, Bowie
revealed that the motivation for recording China Girl was to help out his friend
Iggy Pop financially, contributing to Bowie's history of support for musicians he
admired. Let's Dance was also notable as a stepping stone for the career of the
late Texan guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who played on the album and was to have
supported Bowie on the consequent Serious Moonlight Tour. Vaughan, however, never
joined the tour after a pay dispute between Bowie and Vaughan's manager at the
time. Vaughan was replaced by Earl Slick. Frank and George Simms from The Simms
Brothers Band toured and performed with Bowie at this time. The tour was a huge
success, and a single performance at the US Festival actually scored Bowie a
million dollars on its own.
The 1984 follow-up album Tonight was also dance-oriented, featuring collaborations
with Tina Turner and a cover of The Beach Boys' "God Only Knows". Critics labeled
it a lazy effort, dashed off by Bowie simply to recapture Let's Dance's chart
success. Yet the album bore the transatlantic Top Ten hit "Blue Jean" whose
complete video, a 22-minute short film directed by Julien Temple, reflected Bowie's
long-standing interest in combining music with drama. This video would win Bowie
his only Grammy to date, for Best Short-Form Music Video. It also featured the
minor hit "Loving the Alien". The album also has a pair of dance version rewrites
of "Neighborhood Threat" and "Tonight", old songs Bowie wrote with Iggy Pop which
had originally appeared on Lust for Life.
In 1985, Bowie performed several of his greatest hits at Wembley for Live Aid. At
the end of his set, which comprised "Rebel Rebel", "TVC 15", "Modern Love" and
"'Heroes'", he introduced a film of the Ethiopian famine, for which the event was
raising funds, which was set to the song "Drive" by the Cars. At the event, the
video to a fundraising single was premièred – Bowie performing a duet with Mick
Jagger on a version of "Dancing in the Street", which quickly went to #1 on
release.
David Bowie as the Goblin King JarethAlso, Bowie worked with the Pat Metheny Group
on the song "This Is Not America", which was featured in the film The Falcon and
the Snowman. This song was the centrepiece of the album, a collaboration intended
to underline the espionage thriller's central themes of alienation and
disaffection.
In 1986 Bowie contributed the theme song to the film Absolute Beginners. The movie
was not well reviewed but Bowie maintained for many years that the song, a UK #2
hit, was one of the best and most professional he'd ever written. He also took a
role in the 1986 Jim Henson film Labyrinth as Jareth, the Goblin King, who steals
the baby brother of a girl named Sarah (played by Jennifer Connelly), in order to
turn him into a goblin. Bowie wrote songs for the film, some of which became
singles.
Bowie's final dance album was Never Let Me Down (1987), where he ditched the light
dance of his two earlier albums, instead producing harder rock with a dance edge.
The album, which 'only' scraped to a UK #6 peak, drew some of the harshest
criticism of Bowie's career, condemned by critics as a faceless piece of product
and ignored by the public — Bowie himself openly apologised in an interview for the
album's quality; defenders of the album maintain that many of its songs are
underrated and that Bowie at this time was simply facing the inevitable backlash of
an overexposed superstar.
Opening on 30 May 1987, the Glass Spider Tour sought to market the album; visiting
fifteen countries and produced eighty-six performances, as well as nine promotional
press shows. Musicians included: Carlos Alomar (guitar), Peter Frampton (lead
guitar), Carmine Rojas (bass), Alan Childs (drums), Erdal Kizilcay (keyboards,
trumpet, congas, violin) and Richard Cottle (keyboards, saxophone). Dancers
included: Melissa Hurley, Viktor Manoel, Constance Marie, Craig Allen Rothwell (aka
Spazz Attack) and Stephen Nichols.
Some critics called it overproduced and claimed that it was pandering to
then-current stadium rock trends in its special effects and dancers. However, fans
that saw the shows from the Glass Spider Tour were treated to many of Bowie's
classics. In August of 1988, Bowie portrayed Pontius Pilate in the Martin Scorsese
film The Last Temptation of Christ.
1989 to 1991: Tin
Machine
In 1989, for the first time since the early 1970s, Bowie formed a regular band, Tin
Machine, a hard-rocking quartet, along with Reeves Gabrels, Tony Sales, and Hunt
Sales. Tin Machine released two studio albums and a live record. The band received
mixed reviews and a somewhat lukewarm reception from the public, but Tin Machine
heralded the beginning of an ongoing collaboration between Bowie and Gabrels.
The original album, Tin Machine (1989), was a success, holding the number three
spot on the charts of the UK. Tin Machine launched its first world tour, featuring
a now unshaven David Bowie, that year. Despite the success of the Tin Machine
venture, Bowie was mildly frustrated that many of his ideas were either rejected or
changed by the band.
Bowie began the 1990s with a stadium tour, in which he played mostly his biggest
hits. The "Sound + Vision Tour" (named after the Low single) was conceived and
directed by choreographer Edouard Lock of the Québécois contemporary dance troupe
La La La Human Steps, who Bowie collaborated and performed with on stage and in his
videos. The tour drew large crowds, perhaps in part because he had declared that
this would be the last time he would play the hits.
Though he surprised no one when he later reneged on that promise and also on the
promise that his set in each country would be focused on the favourite hits voted
by phone poll in that country... an idea quickly jettisoned when a puckish campaign
by the British magazine NME resulted in a landslide in favour of The Laughing
Gnome!, it is true that his later tours generally featured few of those hits, and
when they appeared, they were often radically reworked in their arrangement and
delivery.
Bowie's negative press-image continued when the cover of Tin Machine's second album
became unusually controversial, due to the presence of naked statues as its cover
art. The coverage only seemed to invite unrelated negative commentary about Bowie
to further permeate the public discourse.
After the less successful second album Tin Machine II and the complete failure of
live album Tin Machine Live: Oy Vey, Baby, Bowie tired of having to work in a group
setting where his creativity was limited, and finally disbanded Tin Machine to work
on his own. But the Tin Machine venture did show that Bowie had learned some harsh
lessons from the previous decade, and was determined to get serious about
concentrating on music more than commercial success.
1992 to 1999: Electronica
In 1992 he performed his hit "Heroes" and "Under Pressure" (with Annie Lennox) at
the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert. 1993 saw the release of the soul, jazz and
hip-hop influenced Black Tie White Noise, which reunited Bowie with Let's Dance
producer Nile Rodgers. Though considered by some critics to be musically far
superior to Let's Dance, the public was still unsure whether or not it was ready to
be receptive of Bowie again. The album, however, met the number one spot on the UK
charts with singles such as "Jump They Say" and "Miracle Goodnight". However, until
re-released later in the 1990s, the album was extraordinarily rare after the
fledgling Savage Records on which it had been released went belly-up. The album is
often considered Bowie's oddest departure.
Undaunted, Bowie explored new directions on albums such as 1993's The Buddha of
Suburbia (built on incidental music composed for a TV series). The album still
contained some of the new elements introduced in Black Tie White Noise, except with
more of a twist in the direction of alternative rock. The album's odd success later
led to a 1994 re-release in the United States, and Bowie hails it as being an album
of entirely his own, original, and newly created work.
1995's ambitious, quasi-industrial Outside, supposed to be the first volume in a
subsequently abandoned non-linear narrative of art and murder, reunited him with
Brian Eno. The album introduced the characters of one of Bowie's short stories, and
was quite an interesting success. The album put Bowie back into the mainstream
scene of rock music with its singles such as "Hallo Spaceboy" and "The Hearts
Filthy Lesson", the latter featured in the closing credits of the movie Se7en. "I'm
Deranged" featured on the soundtrack of David Lynch's Lost Highway (Bowie had acted
in Lynch's "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me).
In September of 1995 Bowie began the Outside Tour with Gabrels again joining Bowie
as his live band's guitarist. In a move that was equally lauded and ridiculed by
Bowie fans and critics, Bowie chose Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails as the tour
partner. NIN and Bowie toured as a co-headlining act. Although initially
successful, the tour was cancelled early due to poor sales. However, Reznor has
gone on record numerous times as being heavily influenced by Bowie, and further
collaborated with him by remixing "The Heart's Filthy Lesson".
On 17 January 1996 David Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at
the eleventh annual induction ceremony.
Receiving some of the strongest critical response since Let's Dance was 1997's
Earthling, which incorporated experiments in British jungle and drum and bass and
included a single released over the Internet, called "Telling Lies". There was
ultra-sustained energy in this album, along with lesser experiments in techno drum
rhythms, while still holding to Bowie's own musical concepts.
Singles such as "Little Wonder" were the forefront of the album. There was a
corresponding world tour, which was fairly successful. Bowie's track in the Paul
Verhoeven film Showgirls, "I'm Afraid of Americans" was remixed by Trent Reznor for
a single release. The video's heavy rotation (also featuring Reznor) contributed to
Bowie's newfound relevancy in the late 1990s and his overall image restoration.
On 9 January 1997, Bowie played a concert at Madison Square Garden to celebrate his
50th birthday (although his birthday was the previous day). Guest performers
included Billy Corgan, Frank Black, Sonic Youth, Robert Smith of The Cure, Placebo
and Lou Reed whose 1972 album Transformer Bowie co-produced and Mick Ronson.
The 1998 Todd Haynes film Velvet Goldmine drew its title from a Ziggy-era Bowie
song and contained many events paralleling Bowie's life on and off stage; the
relationship between the two main characters, Curt Wild (played by Ewan McGregor)
and Brian Slade (played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) was loosely based on that of Iggy
Pop and David Bowie during the 1970s. The tagline "The rise of a star ... the fall
of a legend" obviously recalls the name "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust", and
the film contains numerous references to Bowie's career.
In an interview with the band Placebo, Bowie noted that he liked the story, but the
movie felt more like the early 1980s than the early 1970s. He did not permit his
own songs to be used in the film when requested, and soon he combated it in a
lengthy court case, where Bowie sued to try to stop the film's release due to his
offence at the depiction of the Slade character as being vile and
opportunistic.
1999 to present:
Neoclassicist Bowie
In 1998, David Bowie had reunited with Tony
Visconti to record a song for The Rugrats Movie called "(Safe In This) Sky
Life". Although the track was edited out of the final cut, and did not feature
on the film's soundtrack album, the reunion led to the pair pursuing a new
collaborative effort. (Safe In This) Sky Life was later re-recorded and
released as a single b-side in 2002 where it was retitled "Safe".
1999 found Bowie composing the soundtrack for a computer game called "Omikron: The
Nomad Soul". David Bowie and his wife, Iman, made appearances as characters in the
game. That same year, re-recorded tracks from the game and new music was released
in the album 'hours...' featured "What's Really Happening", the lyrics for which
were written by Alex Grant, the winner of Bowie's "Cyber Song Contest" Internet
competition. This album presented Bowie's exit from heavy electronica, with an
emphasis on more live instruments, and, through songs like "Thursday's Child" and
"Survive", a thematic move into Bowie's sense of his own aging and sentimentalism.
After this album, Bowie's guitarist, Reeves Gabrels, quit working with Bowie,
feeling that the music was becoming "too soft".
Plans surfaced after the release of 'hours...' for an album titled Toy, which would
feature new versions of some of Bowie's earliest pieces as well as three new songs.
Sessions for the album commenced in 2000, but the album was never released, leaving
a number of tracks, some as-of-yet unheard, on the editing floor.
In October 2001 Bowie opened The Concert for New York City with a cover of Paul
Simon's "America" playing simple scales on a synthesizer and then launched into a
rocking version of "Heroes" dedicated to his local ladder. Also in 2001 he made two
guest appearances on the Rustic Overtones album Viva Nueva!.
Bowie and Visconti continued collaboration with the production of a new album of
completely original songs instead. The result of the sessions was the 2002 album
Heathen, notable for its dark and atmospheric sound, and Bowie's largest chart
success in recent years. It also included a cover of the Pixies song "Cactus",
which was another offshoot of Bowie's consistent interest in the band. Singles for
"Slow Burn", "I've Been Waiting for You", and "Everyone Says 'Hi'" were released
along with numerous B-sides featuring pieces from the Toy sessions and "Safe", a
reworking of "Sky Life". The songs "Afraid" and "Uncle Floyd" (retitled "Slip
Away") from Toy were also released as album tracks as songs reminiscent of an
earlier style.
In 2003, a report in the Sunday Express named Bowie as the second-richest
entertainer in the UK (behind Sir Paul McCartney), with an estimated fortune of
£510 million. However, the 2005 Sunday Times Rich List credited him with a little
over £100 million.
In September 2003, Bowie released a new album, Reality, and announced a world tour.
'A Reality Tour' was the best-selling tour of the following year. However, it was
cut short after Bowie suffered chest pain while performing on stage in the
northwestern German town of Scheeßel on 25 June 2004. Originally thought to be a
pinched nerve in his shoulder, the pain was later diagnosed as an acutely blocked
artery; an emergency angioplasty was performed at St. Georg Hospital in Hamburg by
Dr. Karl Heinz Kuck.
He was released in early July and continued to spend time recovering. Bowie later
admitted he had suffered a minor heart attack, resulting from years of heavy
smoking and touring. The tour was cancelled for the time being, with hopes that he
would go back on tour by August, though this did not materialise. He recuperated
back in New York City. Bowie released a live DVD of the tour, entitled A Reality
Tour in October 2004, which included songs spanning the full length of Bowie's
career, although mostly focusing on his more recent albums.
During the tour, Bowie had been hit in the eye with a lollipop stick while
performing in Oslo, Norway. Bowie was reported to have stopped the concert and to
have yelled "You fucking wanker! You little fucker!" at the lollipop thrower. He
later resumed the concert and apologised to the crowd for his response.
Still recuperating from his operation, Bowie worked off-stage and relaxed from
studio work for the first time in several years. In 2004, a duet of his classic
song "Changes" with Butterfly Boucher appeared in Shrek 2. The soundtrack for the
film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou featured David Bowie songs performed in
Portuguese by cast member Seu Jorge (who adapted the lyrics to make them relevant
to the film's story). Most of the David Bowie songs featured in the film were
originally from David Bowie (Deram), Space Oddity, Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Diamond Dogs. Bowie commented, "Had
Seu Jorge not recorded my songs acoustically in Portuguese I would never have heard
this new level of beauty which he has imbued them with".
Despite hopes for a comeback, in 2005 David Bowie announced that he had made no
plans for any performances during the year. After a relatively quiet year, Bowie
recorded the vocals for the song "(She Can) Do That", co-written by Brian Transeau,
for the movie Stealth. Rumours flew about the possibility of a new album, but no
announcements were made. In April 2005, film writer and director Darren Aronofsky
revealed Bowie was working on a rock opera adaptation of the comic book
Watchmen.
David Bowie finally returned to the stage on 8 September 2005, alongside Arcade
Fire, for the nationally televised event Fashion Rocks, his first gig since the
heart attack. Bowie has shown interest in the Montreal band since he was seen at
one of their shows in New York City nearly a year earlier. Bowie had requested the
band to perform at the show, and together they performed the Arcade Fire's song
"Wake Up" from their album Funeral, as well as Bowie's own "Five Years". He joined
them again on 15 September 2005, singing "Queen Bitch" and "Wake Up" from Central
Park's Summerstage as part of the CMJ Music Marathon.
Bowie contributed back-up vocals for TV on the Radio's song "Province" from their
album Return to Cookie Mountain. He made other occasional appearances, as in his
commercial with Snoop Dogg for XM Satellite Radio. He appeared on Danish
alt-rockers Kashmir's 2005 release, No Balance Palace, which was produced by Tony
Visconti. The album also featured a spoken word performance by Lou Reed, making it
the second project involving both Bowie and Reed in two years, since Reed's 2003
The Raven.
On 8 February 2006, David Bowie was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
In November, Bowie performed at the Black Ball in New York for the Keep a Child
Alive Foundation alongside his wife, Iman, and Alicia Keys. He duetted with Keys on
"Changes", and also performed "Wild is the Wind" and "Fantastic Voyage".
For 2006, Bowie once again announced a break from performance, but he made a
surprise guest appearance at David Gilmour's 29 May 2006 concert at the Royal
Albert Hall in London. He sang "Arnold Layne" and "Comfortably Numb", closing the
concert. The former performance was released, on 26 December, as a single.
It was announced that in May 2007 Bowie would curate the High Line Festival in the
abandoned railway park in New York called the High Line where he would select
various musicians and artists to perform.
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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David
Bowie - Manifesting Generator - Biography
