David Bowie as Nikola Tesla is a crafty piece of casting. He barely appears in Christopher Nolan's The Prestige, but his elusive character sheds a vast, unifying, enigmatic glow across the film's tortuous narrative.
Tesla was a unique and divisive figure in the early 1900s. All who embraced modernity would listen to his radio in the light of his AC current, though he was variously considered genius, quack, charlatan and showman. A century later, well, let's just say that David Bowie has certainly illuminated a few more corners.
Nearing 60 and playing himself, he looks very much the aged oracle in Wim Wenders' short film, The World's Greatest Record Stores. His once peerless cheekbones are dimpled anchor points for sagging jowls. His hair is a mousy brown coif where crazy styles and colours have come and gone. A black skivvy abdicates his longstanding fashion-icon credentials.
Bowie's voice is weathered too, as he makes comments between a series of interviews with owners of specialist record stores from Sao Paulo to Tokyo, Chicago to Brisbane. "Hearing these people talk about their jobs working in record stores is really exhilarating," he croaks wistfully, like a man watching his youth flash before him in the half-light.
"They're all talking with the same energy about the same subject: just being knocked out by music that you've never heard before. Listening for new things is a real driving force for me, and I know I couldn't have lived my life without that ... Happy listening," he smiles, like a fading, affectionate uncle.
Bowie's strange new gig is in the employ of Nokia, whose portable digital media devices are flourishing like weeds where record shops like these are closing daily. Wenders' film, screened to an invited audience in Melbourne in December, is hence a profoundly ironic advertisement for Nokia's new online initiative, musicrecommenders.com. But from Ziggy Stardust to Nikola Tesla, David Bowie has always been a profoundly ironic kind of guy.
He's the appointed "godfather" of Music Recommenders, a site dedicated to expert, independent advice on new music, continually updated by 40 hip music stores around the world - and Bowie. The role fits him like a black skivvy: he's been a visionary conduit between old and new; obscure and mainstream; difficult and cool sounds and technologies for 51 years.
Well, that long in his dreams. David Robert Jones was nine when his father brought home his first stack of 45s by the Moonglows, Fats Domino, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, the Platters, Fats Domino and Little Richard. He told biographer David Buckley he had to play them on a 78 rpm gramophone, spinning them with his finger until they sounded "wonky and wobbly", but about right to his ear. It was a poetic precedent for his future as a cunning manipulator of found sounds.
His penchant for filtering and processing disparate elements from the fringes of popular culture would define Bowie's very particular gift to rock'n'roll come the 1970s. Though often derided by genre purists for his opportunistic dilettantism (Mick Jagger once sniffed "he'd steal your shoes if he thought he could use them in his next show"), he dragged into the mainstream a range of influences that commercial forces might never have entertained.
Most commonly cited are Lou Reed's Velvet Underground and Iggy Pop's Stooges who, without Bowie's recommendations, might never have reached the ears of Sonic Youth, the Pixies, REM, Nirvana and countless other architects of '80s and '90s youth culture. Less often credited is Bowie's brazen appropriation of black soul music with Young Americans circa '75, a chart-topping entree for the Bee Gees' earth-shattering disco crossover.
By that time, he was hearing new music again. The relatively few believers who followed the newly christened Thin White Duke to Berlin were among the first kids to hear NEU!, Kraftwerk and other robotic drones, textures and techniques that would infuse the new romantic, hip-hop and dance music waves of the future.
What was perennially attractive about Bowie was his refusal to make his bed with any of the musical movements he had heard coming. He was the seer, the recommender, the restless agent provocateur, and nobody's dancing monkey.
Under that kind of pressure, it's easy to see why he killed himself off with his ingeniously self-referential Scary Monsters album at the end of the '70s, and why, exhausted and underpaid for his efforts, he opted to pander to the lucrative mainstream with Let's Dance onwards.
Ten years ago, Bowie shrewdly threw his own 50th birthday party at Madison Square Garden. Any interim suggestion that he'd misplaced his currency was roundly refuted by his backing band: Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Billy Corgan, Frank Black, Robert Smith ... even estranged '70s comrade Lou Reed turned up to plug in and tug a forelock.
There are no such celebrations planned this weekend. Bowie has kept a low profile since he was hospitalised in Germany in June 2004. We were told it was only a pinched nerve, but a week later he had emergency heart surgery and called an abrupt end to his Reality world tour.
He has posted just seven brief blogs since, and apparently stays close to home on Manhattan's lower east side, where he's rarely photographed at the opening of a play or opera with his wife, Iman, or glimpsed at a gig by Arcade Fire, Deerhoof or TV on the Radio. "I've never seen (13-piece avant-garde ensemble) Icebreaker," he volunteered to Q magazine in November, "but would drive a mile or more to do that thing."
With convincing portrayals of the elephant man, Pontius Pilate, Andy Warhol and Nikola Tesla behind him, he's about to appear as two cartoon characters, first in Luc Besson's Arthur et les Minimoys, then alongside Spongebob Squarepants.
In May he'll curate New York's inaugural High Line Festival, for which he'll play his first full concert in three years - though there's no sign of a new album since he pronounced himself "fed up with the industry" at the end of a fallow '05. Instead, "I've been particularly excited about seeking out emerging artists and giving them a place in the festival," he says.
And so here he is, a moist-eyed seer in a darkened room, telling Wim Wenders about his undying love for Chicago blues, the fabulous experimental momentum of hip-hop, a wonderful samba version of Ziggy Stardust he heard recently.
Ultimately though, there's also the rather deflating disclaimer that, as far as the rest of his "to-listen-to pile" goes, "there's really not enough time sometimes".
Cripes, not you too, David? Oh well, many happy returns.
Golden years
1964: Secures first national TV exposure at 17, as founder of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men.
1969: Writes Space Oddity in time to capitalise on Apollo moon landing. Played throughout BBC telecast, it becomes his first hit.
1971: Reclines in flaxen hair and a "man's dress" on the cover of third album The Man Who Sold the World. "My sexual life is normal," he insisted.
1972: Incendiary Melody Maker cover story: "I'm gay; always have been."
1972: Unveils ready-made rock star alter-ego Ziggy Stardust, a self-fulfilling prophecy of success.
1975: Least comfortable moments in pop, No.1: Bowie cements US conquest singing R'n'B medley with Cher on her top-rating American TV show.
1977: Least comfortable moments in pop, No.2: Bowie discusses his son and sings Little Drummer Boy on Bing Crosby Christmas special (wins sole custody of Zoe soon afterwards).
1980s: Duets with Freddie Mercury, Tina Turner, Mick Jagger and Annie Lennox bring him comfortably in sync with "people who bought Phil Collins albums".
1990s: Selective photo-ops and collaborations - Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Brett Anderson, Tricky, Placebo - rebuild squandered credibility.
1996: Becomes first artist to offer new single exclusively on the internet. Telling Lies clocks 46,000 downloads in four days.
1997: BowieNet is first paid subscription artist website, includes unprecedented degree of personal input from Bowie. Bowie Bonds issued, backed by future revenues of his first 25 albums. $US55 million windfall ranks him high on Forbes' richest entertainers list.
2007: Royalties from first 25 albums return to Bowie. Extensive album reissue campaign scheduled.
[Edited by GotToRollMe]
6th January 2007 01:00 AM
pdog
I listened to Diamond Dogs today!
6th January 2007 01:12 AM
Dan
Looks like his touring days are behind him for sure now. I am probably just as dedicated to his live show as anyone I have seen (been to 14 Bowie shows) though it's a rare event indeed. Can't say I am all that excited about the opportunity to buy the same albums yet again. Sad to hear there may not be much new material, I was hoping he would follow up Reality with something a bit more experimental.
6th January 2007 01:24 AM
pdog
Is everything really going to be re-released again. Wasn't his catalog just remastered a few years ago?
6th January 2007 01:38 AM
glencar
He appears in The Rutles Part 2.
6th January 2007 01:30 PM
GotToRollMe
6 January 2007
FROM ZIGGY TO SIXTY
EXCLUSIVE
By Louise Gannon
JUST a few days ago, a distinguished-looking Englishman walked into a family bookshop in Greenwich Village, New York, and politely requested help in choosing a children's novel.
Putting a copy of the French children's classic Madeline on the counter, he asked the owner if the story was "absolutely suitable" for his six-year-old daughter, before handing over a credit card bearing the name Mr David R Jones.
In rock'n'roll terms, this is not an anecdote that would ever add to the great David Bowie myth.
But for a superstar who took sex, drugs and rock'n'roll to the extreme (and then some), it says everything about the man who turns 60 on Monday - and has finally found happiness as a father and family man.
Unlike his contemporary - and alleged former lover - Mick Jagger, Bowie's 60th birthday isn't being marked by a series of parties full of sexy models and expensive gifts.
Instead, Bowie will spend the day at home in his high-rise loft apartment, in downtown Manhattan.
His six-year-old daughter Lexi has made him a card, while Iman, his wife of almost 15 years, plans to cook his favourite dish, shepherd's pie.
Then the man formerly known as Ziggy Stardust will curl up on the sofa with Lexi to watch their favourite cartoon, SpongeBob Square Pants.
Bowie's 35-year-old ad director son, Duncan Jones (formerly Zowie Bowie) is due over in the evening along with Iman's daughter, Zulehka, 28, for a family celebration.
"David is going to be 60 but he's not freaking out about it," admits Iman, 51. "I guess that's because he's happy."
We just lead a very simple family life."
This was not a future Bowie predicted for himself back when even his image was banned from American record albums for being too wild.
Born in Brixton, South London, the young David Jones did anything he could to escape normality. After learning to play the saxophone at his school in Bromley, Kent, he realised that the only way to get noticed was by being a lead singer in a band. "I had a repulsive need to be more than human," he says.
Tall, thin and with two different coloured eyes - the result of a playground fight - he was the first of his generation to understand that image was key.
Before Madonna even existed, Bowie was the ultimate pop chameleon, morphing from Ziggy Stardust to Aladdin Sane to The Thin White Duke, outraging the public with his exotic make-up, subversive lyrics and talking openly about his sexual affairs with both men and women.
"Actually, back then I lied," he says now. "I said I was gay when actually I was bisexual." When he married Cypriot-born artist Angie Barnett, she famously complained he spent too much time in bed with Jagger.
Bowie admits that as his fame grew, his behaviour spiralled out of control as his addiction to drink and cocaine took over his gilded life.
He moved to Los Angeles in the 70s and spent most of his time being driven around in limos, snorting industrial quantities of cocaine and pushing the envelope of decadence.
"The night I met Iggy Pop and Lou Reed we all sat at a table together in Max's Kansas City not speaking. We were all out-cooling each other. It was all about attitude," he recalls.
"A lot of it was to do with my trying to function behind what really was an extremely shy personality. Like most people who get deeply involved in drugs, I felt it helped me to break out of my inhibitions but it just throws you into a quagmire of emotional hell."
He adds: "It was an awful period. I couldn't even eat. I weighed just 95lbs and it still amazes me I managed to survive.
"The only escape for me was to finish my association with cocaine."
Throughout the 70s he released hit after hit album, from Ziggy Stardust to Diamond Dogs to Young Americans to Low and Scary Monsters. Coke addiction gave way to alcoholism following a move to Berlin in 1977. And the 80s saw his most commercially successful time when, on the back of Let's Dance, he became a true stadium superstar, in what he now calls his "Phil Collins" period.
But personal happiness had always eluded him, until he met Somali-born supermodel Iman.
They were brought together by a mutual friend at a dinner party in LA in October 1990. Eighteen months later, Bowie proposed on boat trip through Paris and they wed in Florence in April 1992.
It was Iman's subsequent struggle to conceive that changed the superstar's life.
She went through IVF several times before giving birth to Lexi in August 2000. Since then, Bowie has turned his back on his celebrity lifestyle.
He bought a 64-acre country retreat in upstate New York - where he goes to write and paint - and sold off his "rock star" homes in Switzerland and Mustique.
Two years ago, after a heart operation, he cut down on work again.
"David really does lead the simple life," says a friend. "He's at home a lot. He walks Lexi to school and picks her up.
He's totally vice-free - the last thing to go were the fryups and cigarettes, which he gave up four years ago. But having known David for four decades, I can say he's happier now than ever. Lexi is the light of his life and he's as much in love with Iman as he was when they wed.
"They are not part of the New York party scene. Yes, they may go out to eat with friends such as Lou Reed but he's happiest with his family."
Recent projects included designing a child's lunch-box and vocal stints on Lexi's favourite show, SpongeBob, as well as a part in the children's film, Arthur And The Invisibles, which also features Madonna and Snoop Dogg.
Bowie himself admits he is now "a lot more David Jones", adding: "I'm now probably truer to my real nature than I ever have been. And it's wonderful."
6th January 2007 02:30 PM
Dan
quote:pdog wrote:
Is everything really going to be re-released again. Wasn't his catalog just remastered a few years ago?
It's happened a few times already. The last batch was nowhere near as appealing as the RYko editions of 1990 with the exception of the anniversary editions a few years ago but I didn't buy those.
6th January 2007 10:19 PM
Bruno
He still has his voice?
6th January 2007 10:25 PM
Nellcote
Diamond Dogs is right at the top of my best of Bowie. Many parts of it is very Stones sounding. The cover art was a scandal in the day, causing later versions of the famous painting to be airbrushed. Mick Ronson was absolutely killing on this lp. Bowie was my nickname in HS, as I'd wear my hair that way in the day...Here's a promo I found, remember MainMan Records....
6th January 2007 10:34 PM
mojoman
Making love with his ego, Ziggy sucked up into his mind
Like a leper messiah
When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band
6th January 2007 11:29 PM
Nellcote
7th January 2007 11:30 AM
GotToRollMe
quote:Nellcote wrote:
Diamond Dogs is right at the top of my best of Bowie. Many parts of it is very Stones sounding. The cover art was a scandal in the day, causing later versions of the famous painting to be airbrushed. Mick Ronson was absolutely killing on this lp. Bowie was my nickname in HS, as I'd wear my hair that way in the day...
Bowie was the absolute shizznit back in the day. I wore my hair like that too for awhile back in '74...lol!
7th January 2007 02:59 PM
morocco
Beware of Bowie.
7th January 2007 03:00 PM
morocco
Beware of Bowie.
7th January 2007 03:19 PM
Steamboat Bill, Jr.
quote:Nellcote wrote:
Mick Ronson was absolutely killing on this lp
Except Mick Ronson actually isn't on Diamond Dogs, Pin Ups was the last Bowie album with the Spiders from Mars. It's actually Bowie himself who plays most of the guitars (including that killer solo at the end of "Sweet Thing" right before "Candidate").
7th January 2007 08:52 PM
Soldatti
Long life to Bowie, I heard Heathen today, awesome album.
8th January 2007 07:25 AM
Gazza
quote:GotToRollMe wrote:
Bowie was the absolute shizznit back in the day. I wore my hair like that too for awhile back in '74...lol!
LOL..never went to that extreme, but as a kid growing up in the 70's, he was unquestionably the most important and influential musical icon here in that decade...and he's still the finest solo artist this country has ever produced.
[Edited by Gazza]
8th January 2007 07:32 AM
Gazza
'Bowie is an innovator' - Visconti
Starman: Visconti produced some of Bowie's most acclaimed albums
Tony Visconti's production skills feature on many of Bowie's classic albums such as Diamond Dogs, Heroes, Low, Lodger and Scary Monsters and Super Creeps.
He worked with Bowie again on his recent albums Heathen and Reality.
Visconti tells the BBC News Website why he thinks Bowie has endured and reflects on a partnership that began 40 years ago.
"I met David when he was 20, in my office in Oxford Street. He seemed very nervous but communicated very articulately - about everything under the sun!
We were supposed to talk about working together, but we ended up talking about Buddhism, obscure recordings and foreign films. We ended our first interview by going to the cinema to see A Knife In The Water by Roman Polanski.
It was so important that the words matched the impact of the radical music we had already recorded -
Tony Visconti
He is great fun to work with. His charming sense of humour and confidence pervades the recording studio and everyone is affected by it.
He has great ideas and surrounds himself with very talented musicians who embellish those ideas.
He is very respectful towards his co-workers, encourages creativity from them and fully credits others for their input.
Whilst working on the album Heroes he laboured with his lyric writing. It was hard for him to go home and write lyrics.
It was so important that the words matched the impact of the radical music we had already recorded.
Consequently, he composed his lyrics writing and singing them two lines at a time in front of the microphone.
He'd tell me to put the tape machine into record and when he finished two lines he'd say "stop". Then he'd scribble two more lines and ask for them to be recorded immediately after the last two lines.
Visconti also provided backing on the Heroes album
I have never worked with another artist who could do that!
His voice is much deeper and his music is more complicated now.
Some of the songs on Heathen and Reality could only be written by a more mature Bowie. The subject matter in these albums is far more philosophical in nature than the 70s music.
'Rule-breaker'
Bowie is the most flexible of all rock stars. He never got stuck in a rut.
I'm sure some of his fans would still love to see him in his Ziggy regalia, but David is still around these days, and still very vital, because he killed off his older "personas".
Visconti produced Bowie's most recent studio album, Reality (2003)
He is an innovator who's proved time and again that the only way to make music a vital part of our culture is to continue to break the rules.
He has given birth to movements in rock where his imitators actually did better than him in record sales, like Kiss and Alice Cooper.
There is nothing down-to-earth about his motivation. Rock music has only been one influence on him.
He's drawn artistic inspiration from jazz, music theatre, classical music, electronic music, Asian arts and philosophies and punk, to name a few!
He's managed to amalgamate all of his influences and come up with new genres.
In some way I think you've got the ultimate David Bowie in the album Hunky Dory. It is one of my favourites and I didn't even produce it.
Since 1967, when we started working together, we have influenced each other.
Whenever we work together we spend as much time talking about many non-musical topics as we do recording music. He sends me a lot of new music I haven't heard before.
I'm not working with him now and, as far as I know, he's not making a new album with anyone else.
I've produced and co-produced a dozen albums with him, but he's recorded as many without me.
It's his prerogative to "shuffle the deck", to change his band and his producer, and I respect that decision. But I would love to make at least one more album with him, within the next 10 years.
Tony Visconti's autobiography will be published on 7 February through Harper Collins.
www.bbc.co.uk
[Edited by Gazza]
8th January 2007 07:39 AM
Nellcote
I must admit (HA, I used that phrase!!!) I'd not ever read the liner notes about Ronson's lack of not playing on that LP. It was a period of "technicolor happenings", where I did not always read everything...
8th January 2007 07:41 AM
Gazza
Sixty things about David Bowie
By Jody Thompson
Entertainment reporter, BBC News
To mark the 60th birthday of David Bowie, here are 60 facts about the iconic singer, actor and artist.
CHILDHOOD
1. David Bowie was born David Robert Jones in Brixton, London, on 8 Jan 1947. He shares the same birthday as Elvis.
2. Bowie's family moved to Bromley when he was six years old.
3. He went to Bromley Technical High School, now called Ravenswood School.
4. Rock guitarist Peter Frampton was Bowie's friend at school - his dad was head of the art department. He's gone on to play guitar with Bowie many times during his career.
5. His right pupil is permanently dilated - due to his friend George Underwood punching him in the eye while the pair were still at school. The fight was over a girl.
6. Underwood and Bowie remained good friends with Underwood doing artwork for some of Bowie's earlier albums.
7. He started playing the saxophone when he was 12 years old.
PRE-FAME
8. His first ever release was Liza Jane / Louie Louie Go Home in June 1964, under the name of Davie Jones with The King-Bees.
9. He later changed his name to Bowie to avoid confusion with Monkee Davy Jones.
10. Bowie is pronounced to rhyme with Joey.
11. At the age of 17, he was interviewed on a BBC programme as the founder of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-haired Men. He complained: "It's not nice when people call you darling and that".
12. Around 1967, he wrote songs for actor Paul Nicholas of Just Good Friends fame, who was then recording under the name Oscar.
13. He released his debut album, the self-titled David Bowie, in 1967 after playing in a host of pub and club bands.
14. 1967 also saw the release of a single, The Laughing Gnome, which many fans argue is the worst song he has ever recorded.
15. When Bowie suggested that his fans should vote via phone which tracks he should pay for his 1990 world tour, The Laughing Gnome was the most requested. He didn't play it.
STARMAN
16. Bowie's first hit in the UK - 1969's Space Oddity - was used by the BBC in its coverage of the moon landing.
17. The fictional character of Major Tom has appeared in three Bowie hits - Space Oddity (1969), Ashes To Ashes (1980) and Hallo Spaceboy (1996).
18. Bowie's first US Number One was his single Fame in 1975. It was co-written by John Lennon and features the late former Beatle on backing vocals.
19. Model Twiggy features on the cover with him for his 1973 album Pin Ups.
20. Around the time of Bowie's 1975 Young Americans album, Chic founder Nile Rodgers auditioned to play guitar in Bowie's band. He didn't get the part.
21. But Rodgers later produced the biggest-selling album of Bowie's career, 1983's Let's Dance.
22. Bowie is believed to have sold in the region of 140 million albums over his career.
23. He was voted Number Four in the recent BBC Culture Show public vote to discover Britain's Greatest Living Icons. Above him were Sir David Attenborough at Number One, Morrissey (2) and Sir Paul McCartney (3).
THE PERFORMER
24. Bowie was hit in the eye by a lollipop while on stage in Oslo, Norway in 2004.
25. Toni Basil of Oh Mickey fame worked as Bowie's choreographer on his Diamond Dogs tour in 1974. She later worked on his Glass Spider tour of 1987.
26. In 1970, when Bowie briefly formed The Hype, everyone in the band dressed up as super heroes. They were booed off everywhere they played.
27. Director Nicolas Roeg cast Bowie in his first leading role, as a stranded alien in The Man Who Fell to Earth, in 1976.
28. He is to be the voice of a character in an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants this year.
29. In the 1986 Jim Henson movie Labyrinth, Bowie plays Jareth The Goblin King.
30. He has most recently appeared in The Prestige, alongside Hugh Jackman and Scarlet Johansson.
31. In 1969, Bowie formed his own mime troupe, Feathers, as well as an experimental art ensemble.
32. Bowie appeared as Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ.
33. Among his oddest film roles are: The Shark in Yellowbeard and a sinister FBI agent called Philip Jeffries in David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
PERSONAL LIFE
34. David is 5 feet and 10 inches (178cm) tall, according to most sources.
35. Bowie declined the CBE in 2000 and a knighthood in 2003.
36. Bowie married Somalian supermodel Iman in 1992. They have a daughter Alexandria Zahra Jones, born in 2000.
37. Iman has a Bowie knife tattooed on her ankle in tribute to her husband.
38. Bowie's schizophrenic half-brother Terry killed himself in 1985.
39. Nine years older than David, Terry was the inspiration for songs including Aladdin Sane, All The Madmen, The Bewlay Brothers and Jump They Say.
40. In 2004, Bowie underwent emergency heart surgery in Germany to treat a blocked artery.
THE MUSICIAN
41. Bowie co-wrote some of the best tracks on Lou Reed's legendary album Transformer.
42. His hit Ziggy Stardust is about Vince Taylor, who wrote Brand New Cadillac - later covered by The Clash.
43. David recorded a version of Space Oddity in Italian titled Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Solo - which literally means Lonely Boy, Lonely Girl.
44. The Lodger album's Move On track is a backwards rewrite of his All The Young Dudes.
45. He has been in 10 bands - The Konrads, The Hooker Brothers, The King Bees, The Manish Boys, The Lower Third, The Buzz, The Riot Squad, The Hype, Tin Machine and Tao Jones Index. (Some of these have performed under other names).
46. Bowie's song The Man Who Sold The World has been covered by Lulu and Nirvana.
47. Bing Crosby recorded his last ever single with David Bowie. Their duet version of The Little Drummer Boy was recorded for Christmas 1977. It was a hit five years later.
48. Bowie wrote the soundtrack for the 1993 dramatisation of Hanish Kureishi's novel Buddha Of Suburbia.
49. Bowie plays sax on To Know Him Is To Love Him from Steeleye Span's Now We Are Six album.
50. He plays just about every instrument on Diamond Dogs - including the famous guitar riff on Rebel Rebel.
MISCELLANEOUS
51. He was the final guest on Marc Bolan's ITV music show, Marc, in 1977. Bolan was killed in a car crash in south west London shortly afterwards.
52. Steve Strange, recently of BBC's Celebrity Scissorhands, was in the video for Bowie's 1980 Number One hit Ashes To Ashes.
53. Bowie's favourite current bands include Arcade Fire and TV On The Radio.
54. Mary Hopkin of Those Were The Days fame sings the "doo doo doo" backing vocals on Sound And Vision.
55. Almost a decade before The Cocteau Twins popularised the approach, Bowie sang in a completely self-invented language on the 1976 Low album track, Subterraneans.
56. His image appears on every single one of his album covers - except the UK release of The Buddha Of Suburbia.
57. He is mentioned in Kraftwerk's song Trans Europe Express ("Meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie - TRANS EUROPE EXPRESS!") and Backside by the Strawbs ("The boy stood on the burning deck, his back against the mast. He did not dare to turn around till David Bowie passed").
58. In 1997 David Bowie broke new ground, yet again, with the internet-only release of his single Telling Lies. A year later, he launched his own internet service provider, Bowienet.
59. Bowie draws, paints, sculpts and writes in his spare time. His favourite artists are Tintoretto, John Bellany, Erich Heckel, Picasso and Michael Ray Charles.
60. David got just one O Level, in art.
www.bbc.co.uk
8th January 2007 07:51 AM
Gazza
8th January 2007 07:57 AM
LadyJane
--Disturbing on sooo many levels.
Nonetheless, I've always admired Bowie's talent.
"Heroes" may be one of the greatest songs ever released.
Happy Birthday David.
LJ.
8th January 2007 08:33 AM
SweetVirginia
quote:LadyJane wrote:
--Disturbing on sooo many levels.
8th January 2007 08:50 AM
Gazza
I think Lou is admiring Mick's nail varnish...
8th January 2007 09:09 AM
SweetVirginia
What is Lou admiring in this pic?
8th January 2007 10:53 AM
Gazza
Bowie's teeth?
8th January 2007 03:23 PM
Gimme Shelter
Happy B-day, David
8th January 2007 03:26 PM
GotToRollMe
quote:Gazza wrote:
Bowie's teeth?
I miss those teeth! The new ones aren't nearly as interesting (also see: Keef).
Happy Birthday anyway, Mr. Jones.
8th January 2007 03:38 PM
Erik_Snow
quote:GotToRollMe wrote:
I miss those teeth! The new ones aren't nearly as interesting (also see: Keef).
Agreed, the old teeth were really cool.
5 minutes about those teeth:
8th January 2007 03:54 PM
texile
bowie has aged well...
more gracefully than his peers, including jagger.
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