The THin White Duke
At the age of 52, David Bowie is considered "the senior statesman of rock" but, in his youth,
he was a wild thing. Although he has developed and adapted a number of musical styles, he is best remembered for Ziggy Stardust, the bizarre transexual persona that he created in the early 197Os. Bowie was the first male rock star to wear make-up and women's clothes on stage.
Fans at the time absolutely loved it, but the older generation was shocked.
Rumours abounded about his sex-ual orientation, but it seems that homosexuality, like many of Bowie's musical experiments, was just a passing phase.
BROMLEY BOY
In addition to his musical and stylistic creations, Bowie also invented his name. His real one was David Jones and he grew up in the decidedly unglam-orous London suburb of Bromley.
His chiidhood was a bit of a mess, with his brother being hospitalised for psychiatric problems: indeed it is said that David developed a life-long phobia of mental illness. During his teens, he was invoived in a street fight, which led to the pupil of his left eye being per-manently dilated. Yet he also found the time to learn to play the guitar and the saxophone. Dropping out of Bromiey Technical School in 1964, his first forays into music were unsuccessful. He formed three bands, "David Jones and King Bees," " David Jones and the Mannish Boys" and "David Jones and the Lower Third."
In 1967, he decided to change his name, largely so as not to be confused with Davie Jones, the cute British singer with the American group, The Monkees. That year he made his debut solo album, THE WORLD OF DAVID BOWIE: this was followed by a period of artistic experimentation which he describes in the accompany-ing interview.
A key event in his development was meeting Angela, or "Angie" Barnet, whom he married in 1970.
She had contacts in the music industry and
it was through these that he was able to record the single, SPACE ODDITY.
This was fol-lowed by an album of the same name, as well as a number of others,
such as THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD, HUNKY DORY (1 97 1 ), THE RISE AND FALL
OF ZIG-GY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS (1 972) and ALADDIN SANE. By
now, Bowie and his wife Angie (who was the subject of a Rolling Stones song),
were the coolest people on the pian-et, not least because they named their
son, "Zowie Bowie."
In 1974 Bowie abruptly shedl his bisexual skin and went for a more masculine look in DIAMOND DOGS. In 1975 he switched to soul music, with the album, YOUNG AMERI-CANS. By now Bowie was discovering new forms of stardom and this coincided with his film debut, in Nicholas Roeg's bizarre THE MAN WHO FELL To EARTH.
DICTATOR
The constant search for a new image was to have its negative consequences.
lf he had previously of-fended some people with his cross-dress-ing, he was
o have the same effect in the late 1970s when red that fascist dictator-ships
could be a good thing.
His artistic career also showed signs of decline: acclaimed albums, such as HEROES (1 977) and LET'S DANCE (1983), were few and far between. He seemed to reach his nadir with "Tin Machine," a band which THE ROUGH GUIDE mischievously described as "Su-perstar Pub Rock." Since the demise of Tin Machine, Bowie has gone back to being cool. He married the Somali super-mod-el, lman, in 1992 (he and Angie divorced in 1980) and recently played Andy Warhol in the film, BASQUIAT.
The
Good Old Days
AIthough he is no longer the star he once was, Davíd Bowie has plaved a major role in fhe evolution of rock. Here he describes the London musíc scene in the late '60s.
David Bowie: I was very much a London person, so what 1 was doing a lot of was what was calied "mixed media" in the late 60's, which really sort of involved doing stage shows and throwing as manv gimmicks and ideas in" as you could, really, using film and poetry and dance. And a lot of interestinq things came out of it, I suppose: bands like Tyrannosaurus Rex were involved, who later became T-Rex, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, of course, was a very big, important band on that circuit at the time. I think everybody got up verv late, about 11o'clock at night. Nobody slept very much .
I remember my room looked like somethinq
from a Caligari set, everything was sort of drawn expressionist style.
Everybody wanted to be like Picasso and Dali and put belladonna in their eyes
and make them go red and go out with blalk capes on. We were very influenced
by Sid Barrett, I think; he was big influence at that articular time, iust
at the break-over because already, that was al falling apart with Pink Floyd,
but Barrett was still remembered as being the... really the one that was in
touch, I mean, he was the one that really had black nail polish and wore these
black capes, and was sort of the phantom of the night kind of figure, kind
of like the Morrison thing over here. I think, from that sort of... trigger
point... that's, as the English always do, we got very theatrical about it
and evolved this other thing which, eventually in the early'70s, became glam
rock, I suppose. Out of that Flower Power thing came the mixed media events
which, in turn, got very art-schooly and turned out this sort of combining
theatre and rock.
Well the people that I was knocking around with, the were mainly painters and musicians, anyway . So we sort of thought, "Well, where can we go from Flower Power" because it really didn't mean as much in England as it did in America, obviously, because the whole different social thing was happening in America.
Well, basically, the war (in Vietnam - ed) was the impetus in America, which, of course, England was not all that involved in.
David Bowie: Well, we are a removed race, anyway, a bit indifferent, but that indifference did produce a sort of a really great energy in London at the time. lt was a very exciting period.