at a glance...

Hometown: Brixton, England
First Recordings: 1966

Personnel:
David Bowie -vocals, guitar, saxophone, piano
Mick Ronson -guitar
Rick Wakeman -piano
Trevor Bolder -bass
Mick Woodmansey -drums

Related artists:
Tin Machine, Iggy Pop, Brian Eno, Mott the Hoople, Queen, Nine Inch Nails

Notes:
Born January 8, 1947, Brixton, England as David Robert Jones, he changed his name to Bowie to avoid confusion with David Jones of The Monkees. David Bowie began performing music at the age of 13, when he learned saxophone, which he played in a number of unremarkable bands until 1966, when he began to release solo singles on Pye Records. All of these were ignored, as was his full-length debut for Deram Records, David Bowie. In order to fund an experimental art group, he signed with Mercury Records in 1969 to record Man Of Words, Man Of Music that same year. The album included the song "Space Oddity," which became a big hit in Britain and the title of the same record when it was released to signifigantly less success in America. Bowie hit his stride in the early '70's, continuing throughout that decade to experiment with a variety of styles and personas to serve his changing musical moods. Let's Dance, released in 1983, was a mammoth hit that he has yet to duplicate; he has spent the ensuing years alternately destroying and rebuilding his reputation and credibility as a recording artist. His influence, however, has never wavered -- it is impossible to imagine what popular music today would sound like without the contributions of David Bowie.

Links:
Our David Bowie Mothership
We Love David Bowie

Nebulocity: a growing number of features on mostly cool artists

For any youngsters or neophytes out there who define David Bowie by his recent regurgitation of currently hip musical styles, a visit to his back catalogue is in order. Recorded during his most fertile and productive period, Hunky Dory is a powerhouse of a record that reminds us that Bowie was once a leader so far ahead of the game that he seemed to be writing the rules as he went along.

Hunky Dory is Bowie's most varied recording to date, wandering fluidly on a musical terrain that shifts unexpectedly between melodramatic show tunes, flawlessly constructed pop, trippy art-rock, and earthy folk. Somehow, Bowie pulls off all of these styles with equal aplomb, lending his remarkable songwriting ability to each number and never allowing the style to outweigh the substance.

The album's most enduring and ironically prophetic moments come near its ending, with two paeans to the cult of celebrity and the price of fame. "Andy Warhol" is a piercing ode to one of Bowie's friends and biggest influences, an unblinking look at the emptiness of image: "Andy Warhol looks a scream / hang him on my wall / Andy Warhol, silver screen / can't tell them apart at all." "Song For Bob Dylan" is a brilliant examination of the use of an alter-ego to step out of one's self and create powerful art: "Now hear this Robert Zimmerman / Though I don't suppose we'll meet / Ask your good friend Dylan / If he'd gaze a while down the old street / Tell him they've lost his poems / So they're writing on the wall."

Within a year of this recording, David Bowie would come to personify both of these ideas, creating the androgynous, glam-rocking alter-ego of Ziggy Stardust, soon after shedding the image that had grown as static as a painting on a wall and creating a new persona to push himself forward.

If you like David Bowie, check out:
David Bowie Low
David Bowie ...Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars
David Bowie "Heroes"
T. Rex Electric Warrior
Love Forever Changes
Robert Pollard Kid Marine
Lou Reed Transformer
Nick Drake Pink Moon
Syd Barrett The Madcap Laughs