{{unit of length| |name= inch |m= 0.02540 |accuracy=8 }}

An inch (plural: inches; abbreviation or symbol: in or ″ – a double prime) is the name of a unit of length in a number of different systems, including Imperial units, and United States customary units. There are 36 inches in a yard and 12 inches in a foot. Corresponding units of area and volume are the square inch and the cubic inch.

Usage

The inch is one of the most common units of length in the United States, and is also widely used in the United Kingdom, and Canada, despite the introduction of metric to the latter two in the 1960s and 1970s, respectively. The inch is sometimes used informally in other Commonwealth nations, such as Australia.

Even in countries otherwise using the metric system, the inch is used as standard for certain measurements, such as the diagonal of two-dimensional display sizes.

International inch

From July 1, 1959, the United States and countries of the British Commonwealth defined the length of the international yard to be exactly 0.9144 metres. Consequently, the international inch is defined as exactly 25.4 millimetres. This creates a slight difference between the international units and American surveyor's units which are described in the article on the foot.

The international standard symbol for inch is in (see ISO 31-1, Annex A). In some cases, the inch is denoted by a double prime, which is often approximated by double quotes, and the foot by a prime, which is often approximated by an apostrophe.

Equivalence to other units of length

1 international inch is equal to:

1,000 thou (also known as mil) (1 mil = 1 thou = 0.001 inches)

1,000,000 microinches (1 μin is one millionth of an inch.)

≈ 0.02778 yards (1 yard is equal to 36 inches.)

2.54 centimetres (1 centimetre ≈ 0.3937 international inches.)

Historical origin

The origin of the inch is disputed. Historically, different parts of the world (even different cities within the same country) and at different points in time, used the word to refer to similar but different standard lengths.

The English word ''inch'' comes from Latin ''uncia'' meaning "one twelfth part" (in this case, one twelfth of a foot); the word ''ounce'' (one twelfth of a troy pound) has the same origin. The vowel change from ''u'' to ''i'' is umlaut; the consonant change from ''c'' (pronounced as ''k'') to ''ch'' is palatalization (see Old English phonology).

In some other languages, the word for "inch" is similar to or the same as the word for "thumb"; for example, inch/thumb; inch/thumb; inch, ''pulgar'' thumb; inch, ''polegar'' thumb; inch, ''tumme'' thumb; inch/thumb; inch, ''anguli'' finger; inch/thumb; inch/thumb, Danish and ''tommer'' inch/inches and ''tommel'' thumb. Given the etymology of the word "inch", it would seem that the inch is a unit derived from the Foot unit, but this was probably only so in Latin and in Roman times. In English, there are records of fairly precise definitions for the size of an inch (whereas the definitions for the size of a foot are probably anecdotal), so it seems that the foot was then defined as 12 times this length. For example, the old English ''ynche'' was defined (by King David I of Scotland in about 1150) as the width of an average man's thumb at the base of the nail, even including the requirement to calculate the average of a small, a medium, and a large man's measures. To account for the much larger length later called an inch, there are also attempts to link it to the distance between the tip of the thumb and the first joint of the thumb, but this may be speculation.

There are records of the unit being used circa AD 1000 (both ''Laws of Æthelberht'' and ''Laws of Ælfred'').

An Anglo-Saxon unit of length was the barleycorn. After 1066, 1 inch was equal to 3 barleycorn, which continued to be its legal definition for several centuries, with the barleycorn being the base unit. One of the earliest such definitions is that of 1324, where the legal definition of the inch was set out in a statute of Edward II of England, defining it as "three grains of barley, dry and round, placed end to end, lengthwise".

Similar definitions are recorded in both English and Welsh medieval law tracts. One, dating from the first half of the 10th century, is contained in the Laws of Hywel Dda which superseded those of Dyvnwal, an even earlier definition of the inch in Wales. Both definitions, as recorded in ''Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales'' (vol i., pp. 184,187,189), are that "three lengths of a barleycorn is the inch".

Charles Butler, a mathematics teacher at Cheam School, in 1814 recorded the old legal definition of the inch to be "three grains of sound ripe barley being taken out the middle of the ear, well dried, and laid end to end in a row", and placed the barleycorn, not the inch, as the base unit of the English Long Measure system, from which all other units were derived. John Bouvier similarly recorded in his 1843 law dictionary that the barleycorn was the fundamental measure. Butler observed, however, that "[a]s the length of the barley-corn cannot be fixed, so the inch according to this method will be uncertain", noting that a standard inch measure was now (by his time) kept in the Exchequer chamber, Guildhall, and ''that'' was the legal definition of the inch. This was a point also made by George Long in his 1842 Penny Cyclopædia, observing that standard measures had since surpassed the barleycorn definition of the inch, and that to recover the inch measure from its original definition, in the event that the standard measure were destroyed, would involve the measurement of large numbers of barleycorns and taking their average lengths. He noted that this process would not perfectly recover the standard, since it might introduce errors of anywhere between one hundredth and one tenth of an inch in the definition of a yard.

Before the adoption of the international inch (see above), the United Kingdom and most countries of the British Commonwealth defined the inch in terms of the Imperial Standard Yard. But Canada had its own, different, definition of the inch, defined in terms of metric units. The Canadian inch was defined to be equal to 25.4 millimetres, the amount later accepted as the international inch.

Metric or decimal inch

A metric inch (25 mm instead of 25.4 mm) was the equivalent of an inch under a former proposal for the metrification and unification of the English system of measures.

In Sweden, between 1855 to 1863, the existing Swedish "working inch" of ≈24.74 mm was replaced by a "decimal inch" of ≈29.69 mm which was one tenth of the Swedish foot. Proponents argued that a decimal system simplifies calculations. However, having two different Swedish inch measures (and the English inch on top of that) proved to be complicated. So in a transition period between 1878 and 1889 the metric units were introduced as the overall standard measures. However, the various inches survived some time in building and construction trades.

Scottish inch

A Scottish inch () was a Scottish measurement of length. It equals 1/12 ft in Scottish measures, and 1.0016 inches in imperial units (about ). It was used in the popular expression '''' "Give him an inch, and he'll take an ell". (The ell, equal to 37 inches or about 94 cm, was in use in England until 1824.) A Scottish square inch was equivalent to 1.0256 imperial square inches and 6.4516 square centimetres.

See also

Anthropic units

English units

Gry

Guz

Imperial unit

Pyramid inch

United States customary units

References

''Collins Encyclopedia of Scotland''

''Weights and Measures'', by D. Richard Torrance, SAFHS, Edinburgh, 1996, ISBN 1-874722-09-9 (NB book focusses on Scottish weights and measures exclusively)

''Scottish National Dictionary'' and ''Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue''

Category:Customary units in the United States Category:Human-based units of measure Category:Imperial units Category:Units of length Category:Scottish weights and measures

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Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
name	Al Pacino
birth name	Alfredo James Pacino
birth date	April 25, 1940
birth place	New York City
occupation	Actor, director, screenwriter, producer
years active	1968–present
children	2 daughters, 1 son }}

Alfredo James "Al" Pacino (; born April 25, 1940) is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in ''The Godfather'' trilogy, Tony Montana in ''Scarface'', Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in ''Dick Tracy'' and Carlito Brigante in ''Carlito's Way'', though he has also appeared several times on the other side of the law — as a police officer, detective and a lawyer. His role as Frank Slade in ''Scent of a Woman'' won him the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1992 after receiving seven previous Oscar nominations.

He made his feature film debut in the 1969 film ''Me, Natalie'' in a minor supporting role, before playing the leading role in the 1971 drama ''The Panic in Needle Park''. Pacino made his major breakthrough when he was given the role of Michael Corleone in ''The Godfather'' in 1972, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Other Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor were for ''Dick Tracy'' and ''Glengarry Glen Ross''. Oscar nominations for Best Actor include ''The Godfather Part II'', ''Serpico'', ''Dog Day Afternoon'', ''...And Justice for All'' and ''Scent of a Woman''.

In addition to a career in film, he has also enjoyed a successful career on stage, picking up Tony Awards for ''Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?'' and ''The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel''. A longtime fan of Shakespeare, he made his directorial debut with ''Looking for Richard'', a quasi-documentary on the play ''Richard III''. Pacino has received numerous lifetime achievement awards, including one from the American Film Institute. He is a method actor, taught mainly by Lee Strasberg and Charles Laughton at the Actors Studio in New York.

Although he has never married, Pacino has had several relationships with actresses and has three children.

Early life and education

Pacino was born in East Harlem, New York City to Italian American parents Rose and Salvatore Pacino, who divorced when he was two years old. When he was two, his mother moved to the South Bronx near the Bronx Zoo, to live with her parents, Kate and James Gerardi, who originated from Corleone, Sicily. His father moved to Covina, California, and worked as an insurance salesman and restaurateur. Pacino attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in New York. During his teenage years 'Sonny', as he was known to his friends, aimed to become a baseball player, though he was also nicknamed 'The Actor'. Pacino flunked nearly all of his classes except English and dropped out of school at 17. His mother disagreed with his decision; they had an argument and he left home. He worked at a string of low-paying jobs, including messenger boy, busboy, janitor, and postal clerk, in order to finance his acting studies.

He started smoking at age nine, drinking and casual marijuana use at age thirteen, but never took hard drugs. His two closest friends died young of drug abuse at the ages of 19 and 30. Growing up in the Bronx, he got into occasional fights and was something of a troublemaker at school.

He acted in basement plays in New York's theatrical underground but was rejected for the Actors Studio while still a teenager. Pacino then joined the Herbert Berghof Studio (HB Studio), where he met acting teacher Charlie Laughton, who became his mentor and best friend. During this period, he was frequently unemployed and homeless, and sometimes had to sleep on the street, in theaters, or at friends' houses. In 1962, his mother died at the age of 43. The following year, his grandfather, James Gerardi, one of the most influential people in his life, also died.

Actors Studio training

After having spent four years at HB Studio, Pacino successfully auditioned for the Actors Studio. The Actors Studio is a membership organization for professional actors, theatre directors and playwrights in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Pacino studied "method acting" under acting coach Lee Strasberg, who later appeared with Pacino in the films ''The Godfather Part II'' and in ''...And Justice for All''. During later interviews he spoke about Strasberg and the Studio's effect on his career. "The Actors Studio meant so much to me in my life. Lee Strasberg hasn’t been given the credit he deserves ... Next to Charlie, it sort of launched me. It really did. That was a remarkable turning point in my life. It was directly responsible for getting me to quit all those jobs and just stay acting." During another interview he added, "It was exciting to work for him [Lee Strasberg] because he was so interesting when he talked about a scene or talked about people. One would just want to hear him talk, because things he would say, you’d never heard before ... He had such a great understanding... he loved actors so much."

Pacino is currently co-president, along with Ellen Burstyn and Harvey Keitel, of the Actors Studio.

Stage career

In 1967, Pacino spent a season at the Charles Playhouse in Boston, performing in Clifford Odets' ''Awake and Sing!'' (his first major paycheck: $125 a week); and in Jean-Claude Van Itallie's ''America, Hurrah'', where he met actress Jill Clayburgh while working on this play. They went on to have a five-year romance and moved together back to New York City.

In 1968, Pacino starred in Israel Horovitz's ''The Indian Wants the Bronx'' at the Astor Place Theater, playing Murph, a street punk. The play opened January 17, 1968, and ran for 177 performances; it was staged in a double bill with Horovitz's ''It's Called the Sugar Plum'', starring Clayburgh. Pacino won an Obie Award for Best Actor for his role, with John Cazale winning for Best Supporting actor and Horowitz for Best New Play. Martin Bregman saw the play and offered to be Pacino's manager, a partnership that became fruitful in the years to come, as Bregman encouraged Pacino to do ''The Godfather'', ''Serpico'' and ''Dog Day Afternoon''. Pacino and this production of ''The Indian Wants the Bronx'' traveled to Italy for a performance at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto. It was Pacino's first journey to Italy; he later recalled that "performing for an Italian audience was a marvelous experience". Pacino and Clayburgh were cast in "Deadly Circle of Violence", an episode of the ABC television series ''N.Y.P.D.'', premiering November 12, 1968. Clayburgh at the time was also appearing on the soap opera ''Search for Tomorrow'', playing the role of Grace Bolton. Her father would send the couple money each month to help.

On February 25, 1969, Pacino made his Broadway debut in Don Petersen's ''Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?'' at the Belasco Theater. It closed after 39 performances on March 29, 1969, but Pacino received rave reviews and won the Tony Award on April 20, 1969. Pacino continued performing onstage in the 1970s, winning a second Tony Award for ''The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel'' and performing the title role in ''Richard III''. In 1980s Pacino again achieved critical success on the stage while appearing in David Mamet's ''American Buffalo,'' for which Pacino was nominated for a Drama Desk Award. Since 1990 Pacino's stage work has included revivals of Eugene O'Neill's ''Hughie'', Oscar Wilde's ''Salome'' and in 2005 Lyle Kessler's ''Orphans''.

Pacino made his return to the stage in summer 2010, as Shylock in a Shakespeare in the Park production of ''The Merchant of Venice''. The acclaimed production transferred to Broadway at the Broadhurst Theatre in October, earning US$1 million at the box office in its first week. The performance also garnered him a Tony Award nomination for Best Leading Actor in a Play.

Film career

Early film career

Pacino found acting to be enjoyable and realized he had a gift for it while studying at The Actors Studio. However, his early work was not financially rewarding. After his success on stage, Pacino made his movie debut in 1969 with a brief screen appearance in ''Me, Natalie'', an independent film starring Patty Duke. In 1970, Pacino signed with the talent agency Creative Management Associates (CMA).

1970s

It was the 1971 film ''The Panic in Needle Park'', in which he played a heroin addict, that brought Pacino to the attention of director Francis Ford Coppola, who cast him as Michael Corleone in the blockbuster Mafia film ''The Godfather'' (1972). Although several established actors – including Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, and then little-known Robert De Niro – also tried out for the part, Coppola selected the relatively unknown Pacino, much to the dismay of studio executives. He was even teased on the set because his short stature. Pacino's performance earned him an Academy Award nomination, and offered a prime example of his early acting style, described by Halliwell's Film Guide as "intense" and "tightly clenched". Pacino boycotted the Academy Award ceremony, as he was insulted at being nominated for the Supporting Acting award, noting that he had more screen time than costar and Best Actor winner Marlon Brando – who was himself boycotting the awards.

In 1973, he co-starred in ''Scarecrow'', with Gene Hackman, and won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. That same year Pacino was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor after starring in ''Serpico'', based on the true story of New York City policeman Frank Serpico, who went undercover to expose the corruption of fellow officers. In 1975, he enjoyed further success with the release of ''Dog Day Afternoon'', based on the true story of bank robber John Wojtowicz. It was directed by Sidney Lumet, who also directed him in ''Serpico'' a few years earlier, and Pacino was again nominated for Best Actor.

In 1977, Pacino starred as a race-car driver in ''Bobby Deerfield'', directed by Sydney Pollack, and received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Actor – Drama for his portrayal of the title role, losing out to Richard Burton, who won for ''Equus''. His next film was the courtroom drama ''...And Justice for All'', which again saw Pacino lauded by critics for his wide range of acting abilities, and nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for a fourth time. and the comedy-drama ''Author! Author!'' were critically panned. However, 1983's ''Scarface'', directed by Brian De Palma, proved to be a career highlight and a defining role. Upon its initial release, the film was critically panned, but did fairly well at the box office, grossing over US$45 million domestically. Pacino earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role as Cuban drug lord Tony Montana.

In 1985, Pacino worked on his personal project, ''The Local Stigmatic'', a 1969 Off Broadway play by the English writer Heathcote Williams. He starred in the play, remounting it with director David Wheeler and the Theater Company of Boston in a 50-minute film version. The film was never released theatrically but was later released as part of the ''Pacino: An Actor's Vision'' box set in 2007.

His 1985 film ''Revolution'' about a fur trapper during the American Revolutionary War, was a commercial and critical failure, which Pacino blamed on a rushed production, resulting in a four-year hiatus from films. During this time Pacino returned to the stage. He mounted workshop productions of ''Crystal Clear'', ''National Anthems'' and other plays; he appeared in ''Julius Caesar'' in 1988 in producer Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival. Pacino remarked on his hiatus from film: "I remember back when everything was happening, '74, '75, doing ''The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui'' on stage and reading that the reason I'd gone back to the stage was that my movie career was waning! That's been the kind of ethos, the way in which theater's perceived, unfortunately." Pacino returned to film in 1989's ''Sea of Love'', in which he portrayed a detective hunting a serial killer who finds victims through the singles column in a newspaper. The film earned solid reviews.

1990s

Pacino received an Academy Award nomination for playing Big Boy Caprice in the box office hit ''Dick Tracy'' in 1990, in which critic Roger Ebert wrote that Pacino is "the scene-stealer". Later in the year he followed this up by a return to one of his most famous characters, Michael Corleone, in ''The Godfather Part III'' (1990). The film received mixed reviews, and had problems during pre-production due to script rewrites and the withdrawal of actors shortly before production. In 1991, Pacino starred in ''Frankie and Johnny'' with Michelle Pfeiffer, who co-starred with Pacino in ''Scarface''. Pacino portrays a recently paroled cook who begins a relationship with a waitress (Pfeiffer) in the diner he works in. It was adapted by Terrence McNally from his own Off-Broadway play ''Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune'' (1987), which featured Kenneth Welsh and Kathy Bates. The film received mixed reviews, although Pacino later said he enjoyed playing the part. Janet Maslin in ''The New York Times'' wrote, "Mr. Pacino has not been this uncomplicatedly appealing since his "Dog Day Afternoon" days, and he makes Johnny's endless enterprise in wooing Frankie a delight. His scenes alone with Ms. Pfeiffer have a precision and honesty that keep the film's maudlin aspects at bay."

In 1992, Pacino won the Academy Award for Best Actor, for his portrayal of the blind U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in Martin Brest's ''Scent of a Woman''. That year, he was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor for ''Glengarry Glen Ross'', making Pacino the first male actor ever to receive two acting nominations for two different movies in the same year, and to win for the lead role.

Pacino starred alongside Sean Penn in the crime dramas ''Carlito's Way'' in 1993, in which he portrayed a gangster who is released from prison with the help of his lawyer (Penn) and vows to go straight. Pacino starred in Michael Mann's ''Heat'' (1995), in which he and Robert De Niro appeared on-screen together for the first time (though both Pacino and De Niro starred in ''The Godfather Part II'', they did not share any scenes).

In 1996, Pacino starred in his theatrical docudrama ''Looking for Richard'', which is both a performance of selected scenes of William Shakespeare's ''Richard III'' and a broader examination of Shakespeare's continuing role and relevance in popular culture. The cast brought together for the performance included Alec Baldwin, Kevin Spacey and Winona Ryder. Pacino played Satan in the supernatural thriller ''The Devil's Advocate'' (1997) which co-starred Keanu Reaves. The film was a success at the box office, taking US$150 million worldwide. Roger Ebert wrote in the ''Chicago Sun-Times'', ‘The satanic character is played by Pacino with relish bordering on glee.’ In ''Donnie Brasco'' Pacino played mafia gangster "Lefty", in the true story of undercover FBI agent Donnie Brasco (Johnny Depp) and his work in bringing down the mafia from the inside. Pacino also starred as real life ''60 Minutes'' producer Lowell Bergman in the multi-Oscar nominated ''The Insider'' opposite Russell Crowe, before starring in Oliver Stone's ''Any Given Sunday'' in 1999.

2000s

Pacino has not received another nomination from the Academy since ''Scent of a Woman'', but won two Golden Globes since the year 2000, the first being the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2001 for lifetime achievement in motion pictures.

In 2000, Pacino released a low budget film adaptation of Ira Lewis' play ''Chinese Coffee'' to film festivals. Shot almost exclusively as a one-on-one conversation between the two main characters, the project took almost three years to complete and it was funded entirely by Pacino. ''Chinese Coffee'' was included along with Pacino's two other rare films he has been involved in producing, ''The Local Stigmatic'' and ''Looking for Richard'', on a special DVD boxset titled ''Pacino: An Actor's Vision'' which was released in 2007. Pacino produced prologues and epilogues for the discs containing the films.

Pacino turned down an offer to reprise his role as Michael Corleone in the computer game version of ''The Godfather''. As a result, Electronic Arts was not permitted to use Pacino's likeness or voice in the game, although his character does appear in it. He did allow his likeness to appear in the video game adaptation of the remake of 1983's ''Scarface'', titled ''Scarface: The World is Yours''.

Director Christopher Nolan worked with Pacino for ''Insomnia'', a remake of the Norwegian film of the same name, co-starring Robin Williams. ''Newsweek'' stated that "he [Pacino] can play small as rivetingly as he can play big, that he can implode as well as explode". The film and Pacino's performance were well-received, gaining a favorable rating of 92 percent on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes. The film did moderately well at the box office, taking in $113 million dollars worldwide. His next film, ''S1m0ne'', was one that Pacino liked, but which did not gain much critical praise or box office success.

He played the part of a publicist in ''People I Know'', a small film that received little attention despite Pacino's well-received performance. Rarely taking a supporting role since his commercial breakthrough, he accepted a small part in the box office flop ''Gigli'' in 2003 as a favor to director Martin Brest. and was described by Pacino as something he "personally couldn't follow".

Pacino starred as Shylock in Michael Radford's 2004 film adaptation of ''The Merchant of Venice'', choosing to bring compassion and depth to a character traditionally played as a villainous caricature. In ''Two for the Money'', Pacino portrays a sports gambling agent and mentor for Matthew McConaughey, alongside Rene Russo. The film was released on October 8, 2005 and received mixed reviews. Desson Thomson wrote in ''The Washington Post'', "Al Pacino has played the mentor so many times, he ought to get a kingmaker's award (...) the fight between good and evil feels fixed in favor of Hollywood redemption."

On October 20, 2006, the American Film Institute named Pacino the recipient of the 35th AFI Life Achievement Award. On November 22, 2006, the University Philosophical Society of Trinity College, Dublin awarded Pacino the Honorary Patronage of the Society.

Pacino starred in Steven Soderbergh’s ''Ocean's Thirteen'' alongside George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Elliott Gould and Andy García as the villain Willy Bank, a casino tycoon targeted by Danny Ocean and his crew. The film received generally favorable reviews.

''88 Minutes'' was released on April 18, 2008 in the United States, having already been released in various other countries in 2007. The film co-starred Alicia Witt and was critically panned, although critics found the fault to be in the plot instead of Pacino's acting. In ''Righteous Kill'', Pacino and Robert De Niro co-star as New York detectives searching for a serial killer; rapper 50 Cent also stars in it. The film was released to theaters on September 12, 2008. Although it was an anticipated return for the two stars, it was not well received by critics. Lou Lumenick of ''The New York Post'' gave ''Righteous Kill'' one star out of four, saying: "Al Pacino and Robert De Niro collect bloated paychecks with intent to bore in ''Righteous Kill'', a slow-moving, ridiculous police thriller that would have been shipped straight to the remainder bin at Blockbuster if it starred anyone else."

2010s

Pacino played Dr. Jack Kevorkian in an HBO Films biopic entitled ''You Don't Know Jack'', which premiered April 2010. The film is about the life and work of the physician-assisted suicide advocate. The performance earned Pacino his second Emmy Award for lead actor and his fourth Golden Globe award.

Pacino and Robert De Niro are reportedly set to star in the upcoming project ''The Irishman'', that will be directed by Martin Scorsese and co-star Joe Pesci. He's also filming a biographical picture about Phil Spector.

It was announced in May 2011 that Pacino was to be honored with the "Glory to the Film-maker" award at the 68th Venice International Film Festival. The award will be presented ahead of the premier of his film ''Wilde Salome'', which is the third film Pacino has directed. Pacino, who plays the role of Herod in the film, describes it as his "most personal project ever".

Personal life

Although he has never married, Pacino has three children from two of his many relationships. The eldest, Julie Marie (born 1989), is his daughter with acting coach Jan Tarrant. He also has twins, son Anton James and daughter Olivia Rose (born 2001), with actress Beverly D'Angelo, with whom he had a relationship from 1996 until 2003. Pacino had a relationship with Diane Keaton, his co-star in the Godfather Trilogy. The on-again, off-again relationship ended following the filming of ''The Godfather Part II''. Other women he has had relationships with include Tuesday Weld, Marthe Keller, Kathleen Quinlan and Lyndall Hobbs.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1969	''Me, Natalie''	Tony	Film debut
1971	''''	Bobby
1972	''''	Michael Corleone	Nominated—Academy Award for Best Supporting ActorNominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama
1973		Francis Lionel 'Lion' Delbuchi
1973	''Serpico''	Frank Serpico	Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture DramaNominated—Academy Award for Best Actor
1974	''''	Michael Corleone
1990	''''	Michael Corleone	Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama
1991		Johnny
1992			Nominated—Academy Award for Best Supporting ActorNominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture
1992	''Scent of a Woman''	Frank Slade	Academy Award for Best Actor
1996		John Pappas
1997
1997	''''	John Milton
1999	''''	Lowell Bergman
1999	''Any Given Sunday''	Tony D'Amato
2000	''Chinese Coffee''	Harry Levine	Also director; filmed in 1997
2002		Will Dormer
2002	''S1m0ne''	Viktor Taransky
2002	''People I Know''	Eli Wurman
2003	''''	Walter Burke
2003	''Gigli''	Starkman
2003		Roy Cohn	Emmy Award for Best Lead Actor – Miniseries or a MovieGolden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion PictureScreen Actors Guild Award–Best Actor in A Mini-Series or Television Movie
2004	''''	Shylock
2005		Walter Abrams
2007	''Ocean's Thirteen''	Willie Bank
2007	''88 Minutes''	Dr. Jack Gramm
2008	''Righteous Kill''	Detective David "Rooster" Fisk
2010		Dr. Jack Kevorkian	TV filmEmmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor – Miniseries or a Movie Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Screen Actors Guild Award–Best Actor in A Mini-Series or Television Movie
2011	''The Son of No One''	Detective Stanford
2011	''Wilde Salome''		director
2011		Himself
2013		Aniello Dellacroce

Awards and nominations

Pacino has been nominated and has won many awards during his acting career including eight Oscar nominations (winning one), 15 Golden Globe nominations (winning four), five BAFTA nominations (winning two), two Emmy Awards for his work on Television and two Tony Awards for his work on the Stage. In 2007 the American Film Institute awarded Pacino with a lifetime achievement award and in 2003 British television viewers voted Pacino as the greatest film star of all time in a poll for Channel 4.

Notes

References

External links

Al Pacino at Emmys.com

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Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
name	David Bowie
background	solo_singer
birth name	David Robert Jones
birth date	January 08, 1947
birth place	Brixton, London, England
occupation	Musician, singer-songwriter,record producer, actor
years active	1964–present
instrument	Vocals, guitar, saxophone, piano, keyboards, harpsichord, synthesizer, mellotron, harmonica, koto, drums, vibraphone, viola, cello
genre	Rock, glam rock, art rock, pop
associated acts	The Riot Squad, Arnold Corns, Tin Machine, The Hype, The Lower Third, The Konrads, Iggy Pop, Brain Eno
label	Deram, RCA, Virgin, EMI, ISO, Columbia, BMG, Pye
website	davidbowie.com }}

David Bowie ( ; born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947) is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. He is known for his distinctive voice and the intellectual depth and eclecticism of his work.

Bowie first caught the eye and ear of the public in July 1969, when his song "Space Oddity" reached the top five of the UK Singles Chart. After a three-year period of experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded by the hit single "Starman" and the album ''The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars''. Bowie's impact at that time, as described by biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture." The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona proved merely one facet of a career marked by continual reinvention, musical innovation and striking visual presentation.

In 1975, Bowie achieved his first major American crossover success with the number-one single "Fame" and the hit album ''Young Americans'', which the singer characterised as "plastic soul". The sound constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. He then confounded the expectations of both his record label and his American audiences by recording the minimalist album ''Low'' (1977)—the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno over the next two years. The so-called "Berlin Trilogy" albums all reached the UK top five and garnered lasting critical praise.

After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had UK number ones with the 1980 single "Ashes to Ashes", its parent album ''Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)'', and "Under Pressure", a 1981 collaboration with Queen. He then reached a new commercial peak in 1983 with ''Let's Dance'', which yielded several hit singles. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with musical styles, including blue-eyed soul, industrial, adult contemporary, and jungle. His last recorded album was ''Reality'' (2003), which was supported by the 2003–04 Reality Tour.

Buckley says of Bowie: "His influence has been unique in popular culture—he has permeated and altered more lives than any comparable figure." In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, Bowie was placed at number 29. Throughout his career, he has sold an estimated 140 million albums. In the UK, he has been awarded nine Platinum album certifications, 11 Gold and eight Silver, and in the US, five Platinum and seven Gold certifications. In 2004, ''Rolling Stone'' ranked him 39th on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and 23rd on their list of the best singers of all-time.

Biography

1947–62: early years

David Bowie was born David Robert Jones in Brixton, London, on 8 January 1947. His mother, Margaret Mary "Peggy" (née Burns), of Irish descent, worked as a cinema usherette, while his father, Haywood Stenton "John" Jones 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. A neighbour recalled that "London in the forties was the worst possible place, and the worst possible time for a child to grow up in." 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: 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 ukelele and tea-chest bass and begun to participate in skiffle sessions with friends, and had started to play the piano; meanwhile his stage presentation of numbers by both Presley and Chuck Berry—complete with gyrations in tribute to the original artists—to his local Wolf Cub group was described as "mesmerizing ... like someone from another planet." Failing his eleven plus exam at the conclusion of his Burnt Ash Junior education, Bowie joined Bromley Technical High School.

It was an unusual technical school, as biographer Christopher Sandford writes:

Bowie studied art, music, and design, including layout and typesetting. After Terry Burns, his half-brother, introduced him to modern jazz, his enthusiasm for players like Charles Mingus and John Coltrane led his mother to give him a plastic alto saxophone in 1961; he was soon receiving lessons from a local musician. He received a serious injury at school in 1962 when his friend George Underwood, wearing a ring on his finger, punched him in the left eye during a fight over a girl. Doctors feared he would lose the sight of the eye, and he was forced to stay out of school for a series of operations during a four-month hospitalisation. The damage could not be fully repaired, leaving him with faulty depth perception and a permanently dilated pupil (the latter producing Bowie's appearance of having different coloured eyes, though each iris has the same blue colour). Despite their fisticuffs, Underwood and Bowie remained good friends, and Underwood went on to create the artwork for Bowie's early albums.

1962–68: the Konrads to the Riot Squad

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. He wrote to the newly successful washing-machine entrepreneur John Bloom inviting him to "do for us what Brian Epstein has done for the Beatles—and make another million." Bloom did not respond to the offer, but his referral to Dick James's partner Leslie Conn led to Bowie's first personal management contract.

Conn quickly began to promote Bowie. 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. "I Pity the Fool" was no more successful than "Liza Jane", and Bowie soon moved on again to join the Lower Third, a blues trio strongly influenced by The Who. "You've Got a Habit of Leaving" fared no better, signalling the end of Conn's contract. Declaring that he would exit the pop world "to study mime at Sadler's Wells", Bowie nevertheless remained with the Lower Third. His new manager, Ralph Horton, later instrumental in his transition to solo artist, soon witnessed Bowie's move to yet another group, the Buzz, yielding the singer's fifth unsuccessful single release, "Do Anything You Say". While with the Buzz, Bowie also joined the Riot Squad; their recordings, which included a Bowie number and Velvet Underground material, went unreleased. Ken Pitt, introduced by Horton, took over as Bowie's manager.

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", utilising sped-up Chipmunk-style 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 would be his last release for two years.

Bowie's fascination with the bizarre was fuelled when he met dancer Lindsay Kemp: "He lived on his emotions, he was a wonderful influence. His day-to-day life was the most theatrical thing I had ever seen, ever. It was everything I thought Bohemia probably was. I joined the circus." Kemp, for his part, recalled, "I didn't really teach him to be a mime artiste but to be more of himself on the outside, ... I enabled him to free the angel and demon that he is on the inside." 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. Satirising life in a British prison, meanwhile, the Bowie-penned "Over the Wall We Go" became a 1967 single for Oscar; another Bowie composition, "Silly Boy Blue", was released by Billy Fury the following year. After Kemp cast Bowie with Hermione Farthingale for a poetic minuet, the pair began dating; they soon moved into a London flat together. Playing acoustic guitar, she formed a group with Bowie and bassist John Hutchinson; between September 1968 and early 1969, when Bowie and Farthingale broke up, the trio gave a small number of concerts combining folk, Merseybeat, poetry and mime.

1969–73: psychedelic folk to glam rock

''Space Oddity'' to ''Hunky Dory''

Because of his lack of commercial success, Bowie was forced to try to earn a living in different ways. He featured in a Lyons Maid ice cream commercial, but was rejected for another by Kit Kat. Intended as a vehicle to promote the singer, a 30-minute film featuring performances from his repertoire, ''Love You till Tuesday'', was made. Although not released until 1984, the filming sessions in January 1969 led to unexpected success when Bowie told the producers, "That film of yours—I've got a new song for it." He then demoed the song that would provide his commercial breakthrough. "Space Oddity" was released later in the year to coincide with the first moon landing. Breaking up with Farthingale shortly after completion of the film, Bowie moved in with Mary Finnigan as her lodger. Continuing the divergence from rock and roll and blues begun by his work with Farthingale, Bowie joined forces with Finnigan, Christina Ostrom and Barrie Jackson to run a folk club on Sunday nights at the Three Tuns pub in Beckenham High Street. This soon morphed into the Beckenham Arts Lab, and became extremely popular. The Arts Lab hosted a free festival in a local park, later immortalised by Bowie in his song "Memory of a Free Festival". "Space Oddity" was released on 11 July, five days ahead of the Apollo 11 launch, to become a UK top five hit. Bowie's second album, ''Space Oddity'', followed in November; originally issued in the UK as ''David Bowie'', it caused some confusion with its predecessor of the same name, and the early US release was instead titled ''Man of Words/Man of Music''. Featuring philosophical post-hippie lyrics on peace, love and morality, its acoustic folk rock occasionally fortified by harder rock, the album was not a commercial success at the time of its release.

Bowie met Angela Barnett in April 1969. They would marry within a year. Her impact on him was immediate, and her involvement in his career far-reaching, leaving Pitt with limited influence. Having established himself as a solo artist with "Space Oddity", Bowie now began to sense a lack: "a full-time band for gigs and recording—people he could relate to personally". The shortcoming was underlined by his artistic rivalry with Marc Bolan, who was at the time acting as his session guitarist. A band was duly assembled. John Cambridge, a drummer Bowie met at the Arts Lab, was joined by Tony Visconti on bass and Mick Ronson on electric guitar. Known as The Hype, the band members created characters for themselves and wore elaborate costumes that prefigured the glam style of The Spiders From Mars. After a disastrous opening gig at the London Roundhouse, they reverted to a configuration presenting Bowie as a solo artist. Their initial studio work was marred by a heated disagreement between Bowie and Cambridge over the latter's drumming style; matters came to a head when Bowie, enraged, accused, "You're fucking up my album." Cambridge summarily quit and was replaced by Mick Woodmansey. Not long after, in a move that would result in years of litigation, at the conclusion of which Bowie would be forced to pay Pitt compensation, the singer fired his manager, replacing him with Tony Defries.

The studio sessions continued and resulted in Bowie's third album, ''The Man Who Sold the World'' (1970). Characterised by the heavy rock sound of his new backing band, it was a marked departure from the acoustic guitar and folk rock style established by ''Space Oddity''. To promote it in the United States, Mercury Records financed a coast-to-coast publicity tour in which Bowie, between January and February 1971, was interviewed by radio stations and the media. Exploiting his androgynous appearance, the original cover of the UK version unveiled two months later would depict the singer wearing a dress: taking the garment with him, he wore it during interviews—to the approval of critics, including ''Rolling Stone''s John Mendelsohn who described him as "ravishing, almost disconcertingly reminiscent of Lauren Bacall"—and in the street, to mixed reaction including laughter and, in the case of one male pedestrian, producing a gun and telling Bowie to "kiss my ass". During the tour Bowie's observation of two seminal American proto-punk artists led him to develop a concept that would eventually find form in the Ziggy Stardust character: a melding of the persona of Iggy Pop with the music of Lou Reed, producing "the ultimate pop idol". A girlfriend recalled his "scrawling notes on a cocktail napkin about a crazy rock star named Iggy or Ziggy", and on his return to England he declared his intention to create a character "who looks like he's landed from Mars".

''Hunky Dory'' (1971) found Visconti, Bowie's producer and bassist, supplanted in both roles, by Ken Scott and Trevor Bolder respectively. The album saw the partial return of the fey pop singer of "Space Oddity", with light fare such as "Kooks", a song written for his son, Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones, born on 30 May. (His parents chose "his kooky name"—he would be known as Zowie for the next 12 years—after the Greek word ''zoe'', life.) Elsewhere, the album explored more serious themes, and found Bowie paying unusually direct homage to his influences with "Song for Bob Dylan", "Andy Warhol", and "Queen Bitch", a Velvet Underground pastiche. It was not a significant commercial success at the time but was ranked No.16 by voters in the All Time Top 1000 Albums.

''Ziggy Stardust''

With his next venture, Bowie, in the words of biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture". Dressed in a striking costume, his hair dyed red, Bowie launched his Ziggy Stardust stage show with the Spiders from Mars—Ronson, Bolder and Woodmansey—at the Toby Jug pub in Tolworth on 10 February 1972. The show was hugely popular, catapulting him to stardom as he toured the UK over the course of the next six months and creating, as described by Buckley, a "cult of Bowie" that was "unique—its influence lasted longer and has been more creative than perhaps almost any other force within pop fandom." ''The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars'' (1972), combining the hard rock elements of ''The Man Who Sold the World'' with the lighter experimental rock and pop of ''Hunky Dory'', was released in June. "Starman", issued as an April single ahead of the album, was to cement Bowie's UK breakthrough: both single and album charted rapidly following his July ''Top of the Pops'' performance of the song. The album, which would remain in the chart for two years, was soon joined there by the six-month-old ''Hunky Dory''. At the same time the non-album single "John, I’m Only Dancing", and "All the Young Dudes", a song he wrote and produced for Mott the Hoople, became UK hits. The Ziggy Stardust Tour continued to the United States.

Bowie contributed backing vocals to Lou Reed's 1972 solo breakthrough ''Transformer'', co-producing the album with Mick Ronson. His own ''Aladdin Sane'' (1973) topped the UK chart, his first number one album. Described by Bowie as "Ziggy goes to America", it contained songs he wrote while travelling to and across the United States during the earlier part of the Ziggy tour, which now continued to Japan to promote the new album. ''Aladdin Sane'' spawned the UK top five singles "The Jean Genie" and "Drive-In Saturday".

Bowie's love of acting led his total immersion in the characters he created for his music. "Offstage I'm a robot. Onstage I achieve emotion. It's probably why I prefer dressing up as Ziggy to being David." With satisfaction came severe personal difficulties: acting the same role over an extended period, it became impossible for him to separate Ziggy Stardust—and, later, the Thin White Duke—from his own character offstage. Ziggy, Bowie said, "wouldn't leave me alone for years. That was when it all started to go sour ... My whole personality was affected. It became very dangerous. I really did have doubts about my sanity." His later Ziggy shows, which included songs from both ''Ziggy Stardust'' and ''Aladdin Sane'', 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. Footage from the final show was released in 1983 for the film ''Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars''.

After breaking up the Spiders from Mars, Bowie attempted to move on from his Ziggy persona. His back catalogue was now highly sought: ''The Man Who Sold the World'' had been re-released in 1972 along with ''Space Oddity''. "Life on Mars?", from ''Hunky Dory'', was released in June 1973 and made number three in the UK singles chart. Entering the same chart in September, Bowie's novelty record from 1967, "The Laughing Gnome", would reach number four. ''Pin Ups'', a collection of covers of his 1960s favourites, followed in October, producing a UK number three hit in "Sorrow" and itself peaking at number one, making David Bowie the best-selling act of 1973 in the UK. It brought the total number of Bowie albums currently in the UK chart to six.

1974–76: soul, funk and the Thin White Duke

Bowie moved to the United States in 1974, initially staying in New York City before settling in Los Angeles. ''Diamond Dogs'' (1974), parts of which found him heading towards soul and funk, 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. The album went to number one in the UK, spawning the hits "Rebel Rebel" and "Diamond Dogs", and number five in the US. To promote it, Bowie launched the Diamond Dogs Tour, visiting cities in North America between June and December 1974. Choreographed by Toni Basil, and lavishly produced with theatrical special effects, the high-budget stage production was filmed by Alan Yentob. The resulting documentary, ''Cracked Actor'', featured a pasty and emaciated Bowie: the tour coincided with the singer's slide from heavy cocaine use into addiction, producing severe physical debilitation, paranoia and emotional problems. He later commented that the accompanying live album, ''David Live'', ought to have been titled "David Bowie Is Alive and Well and Living Only In Theory". ''David Live'' nevertheless solidified Bowie's status as a superstar, charting at number two in the UK and number eight in the US. It also spawned a UK number ten hit in Bowie's cover of "Knock on Wood". After a break in Philadelphia, where Bowie recorded new material, the tour resumed with a new emphasis on soul.

The fruit of the Philadelphia recording sessions was ''Young Americans'' (1975). Biographer Christopher Sandford writes, "Over the years, most British rockers had tried, one way or another, to become black-by-extension. Few had succeeded as Bowie did now." The album's sound, which the singer identified as "plastic soul", constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. ''Young Americans'' yielded Bowie's first US number one, "Fame", co-written with John Lennon, who contributed backing vocals, and Carlos Alomar. Lennon would call Bowie's work as "great, but just rock and roll with lipstick on". Earning the distinction of being one of the first white artists to appear on the US variety show ''Soul Train'', Bowie mimed "Fame", as well as "Golden Years", his October single, and that it was offered to Elvis Presley to perform, but Presley declined it. ''Young Americans'' was a commercial success in both the US and the UK, and a re-issue of the 1969 single "Space Oddity" became Bowie's first number one hit in the UK a few months after "Fame" achieved the same in the US. Despite his by now well established superstardom, Bowie, in the words of biographer Christopher Sandford, "for all his record sales (over a million copies of ''Ziggy Stardust'' alone), existed essentially on loose change." In 1975, in a move echoing Ken Pitt's acrimonious dismissal five years earlier, Bowie fired his manager. At the culmination of the ensuing months-long legal dispute, he watched, as described by Sandford, "millions of dollars of his future earnings being surrendered" in what were "uniquely generous terms for Defries", then "shut himself up in West 20th Street, where for a week his howls could be heard through the locked attic door." Michael Lippman, Bowie's lawyer during the negotiations, became his new manager; Lippman in turn would be awarded substantial compensation when Bowie fired him the following year.

''Station to Station'' (1976) introduced a new Bowie persona, the "Thin White Duke" of its title track. Visually, the character was an extension of Thomas Jerome Newton, the extraterrestrial being he portrayed in the film ''The Man Who Fell to Earth'' the same year. Developing the funk and soul of ''Young Americans'', ''Station to Station'' also prefigured the Krautrock and synthesiser music of his next releases. The extent to which drug addiction was now affecting Bowie was made public when Russell Harty interviewed the singer for his London Weekend Television talk show in anticipation of the album's supporting tour. Shortly before the satellite-linked interview was scheduled to commence, the death of the Spanish dictator General Franco was announced. Bowie was asked to relinquish the satellite booking, to allow the Spanish Government to put out a live newsfeed. This he refused to do, and his interview went ahead. In the ensuing conversation with Harty, as described by biographer David Buckley, "the singer made hardly any sense at all throughout what was quite an extensive interview. [...] Bowie looked completely disconnected and was hardly able to utter a coherent sentence." His sanity—by his own later admission—had become twisted from cocaine; he overdosed several times during the year, and was withering physically to an alarming degree.

''Station to Station''s January 1976 release was followed in February by a three-and-a-half-month concert tour of Europe and North America. Featuring a starkly lit set, the Isolar – 1976 Tour highlighted songs from the album, including the dramatic and lengthy title track, the ballads "Wild Is the Wind" and "Word on a Wing", and the funkier "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 continue as a stable unit for the remainder of the 1970s. The tour was highly successful but mired in political controversy. Bowie was quoted in Stockholm as saying that "Britain could benefit from a Fascist leader", and detained by customs on the Russian/Polish border for possessing Nazi paraphernalia. Matters came to a head in London in May in what became known as the "Victoria Station incident". Arriving in an open-top Mercedes convertible, the singer waved to the crowd in a gesture that some alleged was a Nazi salute, which was captured on camera and published in ''NME''. Bowie said the photographer simply caught him in mid-wave. He later blamed his pro-Fascism comments and his behaviour during the period on his addictions and the character of the Thin White Duke. "I was out of my mind, totally crazed. The main thing I was functioning on was mythology ... that whole thing about Hitler and Rightism ... I'd discovered King Arthur ...". According to playwright Alan Franks, writing later in ''The Times'', "he was indeed 'deranged'. He had some very bad experiences with hard drugs."

1976–79: the Berlin era

Bowie moved to Switzerland in 1976, purchasing a chalet in the hills to the north of Lake Geneva. In the new environment, his cocaine use increased; so too did his interest in pursuits outside his musical career. He took up painting, producing a number of post-modernist pieces. When on tour, he took to sketching in a notebook, and photographing scenes for later reference. Visiting galleries in Geneva and the Brücke Museum in Berlin, Bowie became, in the words of biographer Christopher Sandford, "a prolific producer and collector of contemporary art. [...] Not only did he become a well-known patron of expressionist art: locked in Clos des Mésanges he began an intensive self-improvement course in classical music and literature, and started work on an autobiography".

Before the end of 1976, Bowie's interest in the burgeoning German music scene, as well as his drug addiction, prompted him to move to West Berlin to clean up and revitalise his career. Working with Brian Eno while sharing an apartment in Schöneberg with Iggy Pop, he began to focus on minimalist, ambient music for the first of three albums, co-produced with Tony Visconti, that would become known as his Berlin Trilogy. During the same period, Iggy Pop, with Bowie as a co-writer and musician, completed his solo album debut, ''The Idiot'', and its follow-up, ''Lust for Life'', touring the UK, Europe, and the US in March and April 1977. ''Low'' (1977), partly influenced by the Krautrock sound of Kraftwerk and Neu!, evidenced a move away from narration in Bowie's songwriting to a more abstract musical form in which lyrics were sporadic and optional. It received considerable negative criticism upon its release—a release which RCA, anxious to maintain the established commercial momentum, did not welcome, and which Bowie's ex-manager, Tony Defries, who still maintained a significant financial interest in the singer's affairs, tried to prevent. Despite these forebodings, ''Low'' yielded the UK number three single "Sound and Vision", and its own performance surpassed that of ''Station to Station'' in the UK chart, where it reached number two. Leading contemporary composer Philip Glass described ''Low'' as "a work of genius" in 1992, when he used it as the basis for his ''Symphony No. 1 "Low"''; subsequently, Glass used Bowie's next album as the basis for his 1996 ''Symphony No. 4 "Heroes"''. Glass has praised Bowie's gift for creating "fairly complex pieces of music, masquerading as simple pieces".

Echoing ''Low''s minimalist, instrumental approach, the second of the trilogy, ''"Heroes"'' (1977), incorporated pop and rock to a greater extent, seeing Bowie joined by guitarist Robert Fripp. Like ''Low'', ''"Heroes"'' evinced the zeitgeist of the Cold War, symbolised by the divided city of Berlin. Incorporating ambient sounds from a variety of sources including white noise generators, synthesizers and koto, the album was another hit, reaching number three in the UK. Its title track, though only reaching number 24 in the UK singles chart, gained lasting popularity, and within months had been released in both German and French. Towards the end of the year, Bowie performed the song for Marc Bolan's television show ''Marc'', and again two days later for Bing Crosby's televised Christmas special, when he joined Crosby in "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy", a version of "The Little Drummer Boy" with a new, contrapuntal verse. Five years later, the duet would prove a worldwide seasonal hit, charting in the UK at number three on Christmas Day, 1982.

After completing ''Low'' and ''"Heroes"'', Bowie spent much of 1978 on the Isolar II world tour, bringing the music of the first two Berlin Trilogy albums to almost a million people during 70 concerts in 12 countries. By now he had broken his drug addiction; biographer David Buckley writes that Isolar II was "Bowie's first tour for five years in which he had probably not anaesthetised himself with copious quantities of cocaine before taking the stage. [...] Without the oblivion that drugs had brought, he was now in a healthy enough mental condition to want to make friends." Recordings from the tour made up the live album ''Stage'', released the same year.

The final piece in what Bowie called his "triptych", ''Lodger'' (1979), eschewed the minimalist, ambient nature of the other two, making a partial return to the drum- and guitar-based rock and pop of his pre-Berlin era. The result was a complex mixture of New Wave and World Music, in places incorporating Hejaz non-Western scales. Some tracks were composed using Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies cards: "Boys Keep Swinging" entailed band members swapping instruments, "Move On" used the chords from Bowie's early composition "All the Young Dudes" played backwards, and "Red Money" took backing tracks from "Sister Midnight", a piece previously composed with Iggy Pop. The album was recorded in Switzerland. Ahead of its release, RCA's Mel Ilberman stated, "It would be fair to call it Bowie's ''Sergeant Pepper'' [...] a concept album that portrays the Lodger as a homeless wanderer, shunned and victimized by life's pressures and technology." As described by biographer Christopher Sandford, "The record dashed such high hopes with dubious choices, and production that spelt the end—for fifteen years—of Bowie's partnership with Eno." ''Lodger'' reached number 4 in the UK and number 20 in the US, and yielded the UK hit singles "Boys Keep Swinging" and "DJ". Towards the end of the year, Bowie and Angela initiated divorce proceedings, and after months of court battles the marriage was ended in early 1980.

1980–89: from superstar to megastar

''Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)'' (1980) produced the number one hit "Ashes to Ashes", featuring the textural work of guitar-synthesist Chuck Hammer and revisiting the character of Major Tom from "Space Oddity". The song gave international exposure to the underground New Romantic movement when 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 accompanying video, renowned as one of the most innovative of all time. While ''Scary Monsters'' utilised 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 conspicuous guitar contributions from Robert Fripp, Pete Townshend, Chuck Hammer and Tom Verlaine. As "Ashes to Ashes" hit number one on the UK charts, Bowie opened a three-month run on Broadway on 24 September, starring in ''The Elephant Man''. The same year, he made a cameo appearance in the German film ''Christiane F.'', a real-life story of teenage drug addiction in 1970s Berlin. The soundtrack, in which Bowie's music featured prominently, was released as ''Christiane F.'' a few months later.

Bowie paired with Queen in 1981 for a one-off single release, "Under Pressure". The duet was a hit, becoming Bowie's third UK number one single. Bowie was given the lead role in the BBC's 1981 televised adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's play ''Baal''. Coinciding with its transmission, a five-track EP of songs from the play, recorded earlier in Berlin, was released as ''David Bowie in Bertolt Brecht's Baal''. In March 1982, the month before Paul Schrader's film ''Cat People'' came out, Bowie's title song, "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)", was released as a single, becoming a minor US hit and entering the UK top 30.

Bowie reached a new peak of popularity and commercial success in 1983 with ''Let's Dance''. Co-produced by Chic's Nile Rodgers, the album went platinum in both the UK and the US. Its three singles became top twenty hits in both countries, where its title track reached number one. "Modern Love" and "China Girl" made number two in the UK, accompanied by a pair of acclaimed promotional videos that, as described by biographer David Buckley, "were totally absorbing and activated key archetypes in the pop world. 'Let's Dance', with its little narrative surrounding the young Aborigine couple, targeted 'youth', and 'China Girl', with its bare-bummed (and later partially-censored) beach lovemaking scene (a homage to the film ''From Here to Eternity''), was sufficiently sexually provocative to guarantee heavy rotation on MTV. By 1983, Bowie had emerged as one of the most important video artists of the day. ''Let's Dance'' was followed by the Serious Moonlight Tour, during which Bowie was accompanied by guitarist Earl Slick and backing vocalists Frank and George Simms. The world tour lasted six months and was extremely popular. Stevie Ray Vaughan was guest guitarist playing solo on "Let's Dance".

''Tonight'' (1984), another dance-oriented album, found Bowie collaborating with Tina Turner and, once again, Iggy Pop. It included a number of cover songs, among them the 1966 Beach Boys hit "God Only Knows". The album bore the transatlantic top ten hit "Blue Jean", itself the inspiration for a short film that won Bowie a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video, "Jazzin' for Blue Jean". Bowie performed at Wembley in 1985 for Live Aid, a multi-venue benefit concert for Ethiopian famine relief. During the event, the video for a fundraising single was premièred, Bowie's duet with Mick Jagger. "Dancing in the Street" quickly went to number one on release. The same year, Bowie worked with the Pat Metheny Group to record "This Is Not America" for the soundtrack of ''The Falcon and the Snowman''. Released as a single, the song became a top 40 hit in the UK and US.

Bowie was given a role in the 1986 film ''Absolute Beginners''. It was poorly received by critics, but Bowie's theme song rose to number two in the UK charts. He also appeared as Jareth, the Goblin King, in the 1986 Jim Henson film ''Labyrinth'', for which he wrote five songs. His final solo album of the decade was 1987's ''Never Let Me Down'', where he ditched the light sound of his previous two albums, instead offering harder rock with an industrial/techno dance edge. Peaking at number six in the UK, the album yielded the hits "Day-In, Day-Out" (his 60th single), "Time Will Crawl", and "Never Let Me Down". Bowie later described it as his "nadir", calling it "an awful album". Supporting ''Never Let Me Down'', and preceded by nine promotional press shows, the 86-concert Glass Spider Tour commenced on 30 May. Bowie's backing band included Peter Frampton on lead guitar. Critics maligned the tour as overproduced, saying it pandered to the current stadium rock trends in its special effects and dancing.

1989–91: Tin Machine

Bowie shelved his solo career in 1989, retreating to the relative anonymity of band membership for the first time since the early 1970s. A hard-rocking quartet, Tin Machine came into being after Bowie began to work experimentally with guitarist Reeves Gabrels. The line-up was completed by Tony and Hunt Sales, whom Bowie had known since the late 1970s for their contribution, on drums and bass respectively, to Iggy Pop's 1977 album ''Lust For Life''.

Though he intended Tin Machine to operate as a democracy, Bowie dominated, both in songwriting and in decision-making. The band's album debut, ''Tin Machine'' (1989), was initially popular, though its politicised lyrics did not find universal approval: Bowie described one song as "a simplistic, naive, radical, laying-it-down about the emergence of neo-Nazis"; in the view of biographer Christopher Sandford, "It took nerve to denounce drugs, fascism and TV [...] in terms that reached the literary level of a comic book." EMI complained of "lyrics that preach" as well as "repetitive tunes" and "minimalist or no production". The album nevertheless reached number three in the UK. Tin Machine's first world tour was a commercial success, but there was growing reluctance—among fans and critics alike—to accept Bowie's presentation as merely a band member. A series of Tin Machine singles failed to chart, and Bowie, after a disagreement with EMI, left the label. Like his audience and his critics, Bowie himself became increasingly disaffected with his role as just one member of a band. Tin Machine began work on a second album, but Bowie put the venture on hold and made a return to solo work. Performing his early hits during the seven-month Sound+Vision Tour, he found commercial success and acclaim once again.

In October 1990, a decade after his divorce from Angela, Bowie and Somali-born supermodel Iman were introduced by a mutual friend. Bowie recalled, "I was naming the children the night we met ... it was absolutely immediate." They would marry in 1992. Tin Machine resumed work the same month, but their audience and critics, ultimately left disappointed by the first album, showed little interest in a second. ''Tin Machine II''s arrival was marked by a widely publicised and ill-timed conflict over the cover art: after production had begun, the new record label, Victory, deemed the depiction of four ancient nude Kouroi statues, judged by Bowie to be "in exquisite taste", "a show of wrong, obscene images", requiring air-brushing and patching to render the figures sexless. Tin Machine toured again, but after the live album ''Tin Machine Live: Oy Vey, Baby'' failed commercially, the band drifted apart, and Bowie, though he continued to collaborate with Gabrels, resumed his solo career.

1992–99: electronica

In April 1992 Bowie appeared at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, following the Queen frontman's death the previous year. As well as performing "Heroes" and "All the Young Dudes", he was joined on "Under Pressure" by Annie Lennox, who took Mercury's vocal part. Four days later, Bowie and Iman were married in Switzerland. Intending to move to Los Angeles, they flew in to search for a suitable property, but found themselves confined to their hotel, under curfew: the 1992 Los Angeles riots began the day they arrived. They settled in New York instead.

1993 saw the release of Bowie's first solo offering since his Tin Machine departure, the soul, jazz and hip-hop influenced ''Black Tie White Noise''. Making prominent use of electronic instruments, the album, which reunited Bowie with ''Let's Dance'' producer Nile Rodgers, confirmed Bowie's return to popularity, hitting the number one spot on the UK charts and spawning three top 40 hits, including the top 10 song "Jump They Say". Bowie explored new directions on ''The Buddha of Suburbia'' (1993), a soundtrack album of incidental music composed for the TV series adaptation of Hanif Kureishi's novel. It contained some of the new elements introduced in ''Black Tie White Noise'', and also signalled a move towards alternative rock. The album was a critical success but received a low-key release and only made number 87 in the UK charts.

Reuniting Bowie with Eno, the quasi-industrial ''Outside'' (1995) was originally conceived as the first volume in a non-linear narrative of art and murder. Featuring characters from a short story written by Bowie, the album achieved US and UK chart success, and yielded three top 40 UK singles. In a move that provoked mixed reaction from both fans and critics, Bowie chose Nine Inch Nails as his tour partner for the Outside Tour. Visiting cities in Europe and North America between September 1995 and February the following year, the tour saw the return of Gabrels as Bowie's guitarist.

Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 17 January 1996. Incorporating experiments in British jungle and drum 'n' bass, ''Earthling'' (1997) was a critical and commercial success in the UK and the US, and two singles from the album became UK top 40 hits. Bowie's song "I'm Afraid of Americans" from the Paul Verhoeven film ''Showgirls'' was re-recorded for the album, and remixed by Trent Reznor for a single release. The heavy rotation of the accompanying video, also featuring Reznor, contributed to the song's 16-week stay in the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100. The Earthling Tour took in Europe and North America between June and November 1997. Bowie reunited with Visconti in 1998 to record "(Safe in This) Sky Life" for ''The Rugrats Movie''. Although the track was edited out of the final cut, it would later be re-recorded and released as "Safe" on the B-side of Bowie's 2002 single "Everyone Says 'Hi'". The reunion led to other collaborations including a limited-edition single release version of Placebo's track "Without You I'm Nothing", co-produced by Visconti, with Bowie's harmonised vocal added to the original recording.

1999–present: neoclassicist Bowie

Bowie created the soundtrack for ''Omikron'', a 1999 computer game in which he and Iman also appeared as 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. Sessions for the planned album ''Toy'', intended to feature new versions of some of Bowie's earliest pieces as well as three new songs, commenced in 2000, but the album was never released. Bowie and Visconti continued their collaboration, producing a new album of completely original songs instead: the result of the sessions was the 2002 album ''Heathen''. Alexandria Zahra Jones, Bowie and Iman's daughter, was born on 15 August.

In October 2001, Bowie opened The Concert for New York City, a charity event to benefit the victims of the September 11 attacks, with a minimalist performance of Simon & Garfunkel's "America", followed by a full band performance of "Heroes". 2002 saw the release of ''Heathen'', and, during the second half of the year, the Heathen Tour. Taking in Europe and North America, the tour opened at London's annual ''Meltdown'' festival, for which Bowie was that year appointed artistic director. Among the acts he selected for the festival were Philip Glass, Television and The Polyphonic Spree. As well as songs from the new album, the tour featured material from Bowie's ''Low'' era. ''Reality'' (2003) followed, and its accompanying world tour, the A Reality Tour, with an estimated attendance of 722,000, grossed more than any other in 2004. Onstage in Oslo, Norway, on 18 June, Bowie was hit in the eye with a lollipop thrown by a fan; a week later he suffered chest pain while performing at the Hurricane Festival in Scheeßel, Germany. Originally thought to be a pinched nerve in his shoulder, the pain was later diagnosed as an acutely blocked artery, requiring an emergency angioplasty in Hamburg. The remaining 14 dates of the tour were cancelled.

Since recuperating from the heart surgery, Bowie has reduced his musical output, making only one-off appearances on stage and in the studio. He sang in a duet of his 1972 song "Changes" with Butterfly Boucher for the 2004 animated film ''Shrek 2''. During a relatively quiet 2005, he recorded the vocals for the song "(She Can) Do That", co-written with Brian Transeau, for the film ''Stealth''. He returned to the stage on 8 September 2005, appearing with Arcade Fire for the US nationally televised event Fashion Rocks, and performed with the Canadian band for the second time a week later during the CMJ Music Marathon. He contributed back-up vocals on TV on the Radio's song "Province" for their album ''Return to Cookie Mountain'', made a commercial with Snoop Dogg for XM Satellite Radio, and joined with Lou Reed on Danish alt-rockers Kashmir's 2005 album ''No Balance Palace''.

Bowie was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award on 8 February 2006. In April, he announced, "I’m taking a year off—no touring, no albums." He made a surprise guest appearance at David Gilmour's 29 May concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The event was recorded, and a selection of songs on which he had contributed joint vocals were subsequently released. He performed again in November, alongside Alicia Keys, at the Black Ball, a New York benefit event for Keep a Child Alive, a performance that marks the last time Bowie performed his music on stage.

Bowie was chosen to curate the 2007 High Line Festival, selecting musicians and artists for the Manhattan event, and performed on Scarlett Johansson's 2008 album of Tom Waits covers, ''Anywhere I Lay My Head''. On the 40th anniversary of the July 1969 moon landing—and Bowie's accompanying commercial breakthrough with "Space Oddity"—EMI released the individual tracks from the original eight-track studio recording of the song, in a 2009 contest inviting members of the public to create a remix. ''A Reality Tour'', a double album of live material from the 2003 concert tour, was released in January 2010.

In late March 2011, ''Toy'', Bowie's previously unreleased album from 2001, was leaked onto the internet, containing material used for ''Heathen'' and most of its single B-sides, as well as unheard new versions of his early back catalogue.

Acting career

Biographer David Buckley writes, "The essence of Bowie's contribution to popular music can be found in his outstanding ability to analyse and select ideas from outside the mainstream—from art, literature, theatre and film—and to bring them inside, so that the currency of pop is constantly being changed." Buckley says, "Just one person took glam rock to new rarefied heights and invented character-playing in pop, marrying theatre and popular music in one seamless, powerful whole." Bowie's career has also been punctuated by various roles in film and theatre productions, earning him some acclaim as an actor in his own right.

The beginnings of his acting career predate his commercial breakthrough as a musician. Studying avant-garde theatre and mime under Lindsay Kemp, he was given the role of Cloud in Kemp's 1967 theatrical production ''Pierrot in Turquoise'' (later made into the 1970 television film ''The Looking Glass Murders''). In the black-and-white short ''The Image'' (1969), he played a ghostly boy who emerges from a troubled artist's painting to haunt him. The same year, the film of Leslie Thomas's 1966 comic novel ''The Virgin Soldiers'' saw Bowie make a brief appearance as an extra. Bowie starred in ''The Hunger'' (1983), a revisionist vampire film, with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. In Nagisa Oshima's film the same year, ''Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence'', based on Laurens van der Post's novel ''The Seed and the Sower'', Bowie played Major Jack Celliers, a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp. Bowie had a cameo in ''Yellowbeard'', a 1983 pirate comedy created by Monty Python members, and a small part as Colin, the hitman in the 1985 film ''Into the Night''. He declined to play the villain Max Zorin in the James Bond film ''A View to a Kill'' (1985).

''Absolute Beginners'' (1986), a rock musical based on Colin MacInnes's 1959 novel about London life, featured Bowie's music and presented him with a minor acting role. The same year, Jim Henson's dark fantasy ''Labyrinth'' found him with the part of Jareth, the king of the goblins. Two years later he played Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's 1988 film ''The Last Temptation of Christ''. Bowie portrayed a disgruntled restaurant employee opposite Rosanna Arquette in ''The Linguini Incident'' (1991), and the mysterious FBI agent Phillip Jeffries in David Lynch's ''Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me'' (1992). He took a small but pivotal role as Andy Warhol in ''Basquiat'', artist/director Julian Schnabel's 1996 biopic of Jean-Michel Basquiat, and co-starred in Giovanni Veronesi's Spaghetti Western ''Il Mio West'' (1998, released as ''Gunslinger's Revenge'' in the US in 2005) as the most feared gunfighter in the region. He played the ageing gangster Bernie in Andrew Goth's ''Everybody Loves Sunshine'' (1999), and appeared in the TV horror serial of ''The Hunger''. In ''Mr. Rice's Secret'' (2000), he played the title role as the neighbour of a terminally ill twelve-year-old, and the following year appeared as himself in ''Zoolander''.

Bowie portrayed physicist Nikola Tesla in the Christopher Nolan film, ''The Prestige'' (2006), which was about the bitter rivalry between two magicians in the late 19th century. He voice-acted in the animated film ''Arthur and the Invisibles'' as the powerful villain Maltazard, and lent his voice to the character Lord Royal Highness in the ''SpongeBob's Atlantis SquarePantis'' television film. In the 2008 film ''August'', directed by Austin Chick, he played a supporting role as Ogilvie, alongside Josh Hartnett and Rip Torn, with whom he had worked in 1976 for ''The Man Who Fell to Earth''.

Sexual orientation

Buckley writes, "If Ziggy confused both his creator and his audience, a big part of that confusion centred on the topic of sexuality." Bowie declared himself bisexual in an interview with Michael Watts of ''Melody Maker'' in January 1972, a move coinciding with the first shots in his campaign for stardom as Ziggy Stardust.

In a 1983 interview with ''Rolling Stone'', Bowie said his public declaration of bisexuality was "the biggest mistake I ever made", and on other occasions he said his interest in homosexual and bisexual culture had been more a product of the times and the situation in which he found himself than his own feelings; as described by Buckley, he said he had been driven more by "a compulsion to flout moral codes than a real biological and psychological state of being".

Asked in 2002 by ''Blender'' whether he still believed his public declaration was the biggest mistake he ever made, he replied: }}

Buckley's view of the period is that Bowie, "a taboo-breaker and a dabbler ... mined sexual intrigue for its ability to shock", and that "it is probably true that Bowie was never gay, nor even consistently actively bisexual ... he did, from time to time, experiment, even if only out of a sense of curiosity and a genuine allegiance with the 'transgressional'." Biographer Christopher Sandford says that according to Mary Finnigan, with whom Bowie had an affair in 1969, the singer and his first wife Angie "lived in a fantasy world [...] and they created their bisexual fantasy." Sandford tells how, during the marriage, Bowie "made a positive fetish of repeating the quip that he and his wife had met while 'fucking the same bloke' [...] Gay sex was always an anecdotal and laughing matter. That Bowie's actual tastes swung the other way is clear from even a partial tally of his affairs with women."

Musicianship

From the time of his earliest recordings in the 1960s, Bowie has employed a wide variety of musical styles. His early compositions and performances were strongly influenced not only by rock and rollers like Little Richard and Elvis Presley but also by the wider world of show business. He particularly strove to emulate the British musical theatre singer-songwriter and actor Anthony Newley, whose vocal style he frequently adopted, and made prominent use of for his 1967 debut release, ''David Bowie'' (to the disgust of Newley himself, who destroyed the copy he received from Bowie's publisher). Bowie's music hall fascination continued to surface sporadically alongside such diverse styles as hard rock and heavy metal, soul, psychedelic folk and pop.

Musicologist James Perone observes Bowie's use of octave switches for different repetitions of the same melody, exemplified in his commercial breakthrough single, "Space Oddity", and later in the song "Heroes", to dramatic effect; Perone notes that "in the lowest part of his vocal register [...] his voice has an almost crooner-like richness."

Voice instructor Jo Thompson describes Bowie's vocal vibrato technique as "particularly deliberate and distinctive". Schinder and Schwartz call him "a vocalist of extraordinary technical ability, able to pitch his singing to particular effect." Here, too, as in his stagecraft and songwriting, the singer's chamaeleon-like nature is evident: historiographer Michael Campbell says that Bowie's lyrics "arrest our ear, without question. But Bowie continually shifts from person to person as he delivers them [...] His voice changes dramatically from section to section."

Bowie plays many instruments, among them electric, acoustic, and twelve-string guitar, alto, tenor and baritone saxophone, keyboards including piano, synthesizers and Mellotron, harmonica, Stylophone, xylophone, vibraphone, koto, drums and percussion, and string instruments including viola and cello.

Legacy

Bowie's innovative songs and stagecraft brought a new dimension to popular music in the early 1970s, strongly influencing both its immediate forms and its subsequent development. A pioneer of glam rock, Bowie, according to music historians Schinder and Schwartz, has joint responsibility with Marc Bolan for creating the genre. At the same time, he inspired the innovators of the punk rock music movement—historian Michael Campbell calls him "one of punk's seminal influences". While punk musicians trashed the conventions of pop stardom, Bowie moved on again—into a more abstract style of music making that would in turn become a transforming influence. Biographer David Buckley writes, "At a time when punk rock was noisily reclaiming the three-minute pop song in a show of public defiance, Bowie almost completely abandoned traditional rock instrumentation." Bowie's record company sought to convey his unique status in popular music with the slogan, "There is old wave, there is new wave, and there is Bowie..." Musicologist James Perone credits him with having "brought sophistication to rock music", and critical reviews frequently acknowledge the intellectual depth of his work and influence.

Buckley writes that, in an early 1970s pop world that was "Bloated, self-important, leather-clad, self-satisfied, ... Bowie challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day." As described by John Peel, "The one distinguishing feature about early-70s progressive rock was that it didn't progress. Before Bowie came along, people didn't want too much change." Buckley says that Bowie "subverted the whole notion of what it was to be a rock star", with the result that "After Bowie there has been no other pop icon of his stature, because the pop world that produces these rock gods doesn't exist any more. ... The fierce partisanship of the cult of Bowie was also unique—its influence lasted longer and has been more creative than perhaps almost any other force within pop fandom." Buckley concludes that "Bowie is both star and icon. The vast body of work he has produced ... has created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture. ... His influence has been unique in popular culture—he has permeated and altered more lives than any comparable figure."

Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Through perpetual reinvention, he has seen his influence continue to broaden and extend: music reviewer Brad Filicky writes that over the decades, "Bowie has become known as a musical chameleon, changing and dictating trends as much as he has altered his style to fit", influencing fashion and pop culture.". Biographer Thomas Forget adds, "Because he has succeeded in so many different styles of music, it is almost impossible to find a popular artist today that has not been influenced by David Bowie."

Awards and recognition

Bowie's 1969 commercial breakthrough, the song "Space Oddity", won him an Ivor Novello Special Award For Originality. For his performance in the 1976 science fiction film ''The Man Who Fell to Earth'', he won a Saturn Award for Best Actor. In the ensuing decades he has been honoured with numerous awards for his music and its accompanying videos, receiving, among others, two Grammy Awards and two BRIT Awards.

In 1999, Bowie was made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. He received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music the same year. He declined the royal honour of Commander of the British Empire in 2000, and turned down a knighthood in 2003, stating: "I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. I seriously don't know what it's for. It's not what I spent my life working for."

Throughout his career he has sold an estimated 250 million albums. In the United Kingdom, he has been awarded 9 Platinum, 11 Gold and 8 Silver albums, and in the United States, 5 Platinum and 7 Gold. In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, he was ranked 29. In 2004, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine ranked him 39th on their list of the 100 Greatest Rock Artists of All Time and the 23rd best singer of all time. Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 17 January 1996.

Discography

''David Bowie'' (1967)

''Space Oddity'' (1969)

''The Man Who Sold the World'' (1970)

''Hunky Dory'' (1971)

''The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars'' (1972)

''Aladdin Sane'' (1973)

''Pin Ups'' (1973)

''Diamond Dogs'' (1974)

''Young Americans'' (1975)

''Station to Station'' (1976)

''Low'' (1977)

''"Heroes"'' (1977)

''Lodger'' (1979)

''Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)'' (1980)

''Let's Dance'' (1983)

''Tonight'' (1984)

''Never Let Me Down'' (1987)

''Black Tie White Noise'' (1993)

''Outside'' (1995)

''Earthling'' (1997)

'''Hours...''' (1999)

''Heathen'' (2002)

''Reality'' (2003)

Filmography

As Actor

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%;" border="2" cellpadding="4" background: #f9f9f9; |- align="center" ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Year ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Film ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Role ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Notes |- | 1967 | ''The Image'' | The Boy | short film |- | 1969 | ''The Virgin Soldiers'' | Soldier |(extra) |- | 1970 | ''Pierrot in Turquoise or The Looking Glass Murders'' | Cloud | television film |- | 1976 | ''The Man Who Fell to Earth'' | Thomas Jerome Newton | Saturn Award for Best Actor |- | 1978 | ''Just a Gigolo'' | Paul Ambrosius von Przygodski | |- | 1981 | ''Christiane F. (''Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo)'' | Himself | cameo |- |rowspan="2"| 1982 | ''The Snowman'' | Narrator | re-released version |- | ''Baal'' | Baal | television film |- |rowspan="3"| 1983 | ''Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence'' | Maj. Jack 'Strafer' Celliers | |- | ''The Hunger'' | John | |- | ''Yellowbeard'' | The Shark | cameo (uncredited) |- | 1985 | ''Into the Night'' | Colin Morris | cameo |- |rowspan="2"| 1986 | ''Labyrinth'' | Jareth the Goblin King | |- | ''Absolute Beginners'' | Vendice Partners | |- | 1988 | ''The Last Temptation of Christ'' | Pontius Pilate | cameo |- | 1991 | ''The Linguini Incident'' | Monte | |- | 1991 | ''Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me'' | Phillip Jeffries | cameo |- | 1996 || ''Basquiat'' || Andy Warhol || |- | 1998 || ''Gunslinger's Revenge'' (''Il mio West'') || Jack Sikora || |- | 1999 || ''Everybody Loves Sunshine'' || Bernie || |- | 2000 || ''Mr. Rice's Secret'' || William Rice || |- | 2001 || ''Zoolander'' || Himself || cameo (nominated for MTV Movie Award) |- | 2006 || ''The Prestige'' || Nikola Tesla || |- | 2007 || ''Arthur and the Invisibles'' || Emperor Maltazard || voice: English version |- | 2008 || ''August'' || Cyrus Ogilvie || cameo |- | 2008 || ''Spongebob Squarepants'' || L.R.H || guest voice |- | 2009 || ''Bandslam'' || Himself || cameo |- |}

As Musician

''Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture'' (1983) (VHS, DVD in 2003)

''Love You Till Tuesday'' (1984) (VHS, DVD in 2005)

''Serious Moonlight'' (1984) (VHS, unofficial DVD in 1999, official DVD in 2006)

''Glass Spider'' (1988) (VHS, unofficial DVD as ''Glass Spider Tour'' in 2001, official DVD in 2007)

''Bowie – The Video Collection'' (1993) (VHS)

''Black Tie White Noise'' (1993) (VHS, DVD in 2005)

''Best of Bowie'' (2002) (DVD)

''A Reality Tour'' (2004) (DVD)

As Producer

''Büvös vadász'' (1994) (... aka Magic Hunter)

''Passaggio per il paradiso'' (1998) (... aka Gentle Into the Night, ... aka Passage to Paradise)

''Scott Walker: 30 Century Man'' (2006)

Documentaries

''Love You Till Tuesday'' (1969) (as the subject, short)

''Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars'' (1973) (as the subject, documentary/concert film)

''Cracked Actor'' (1974) (as the subject, BBC)

''Group Madness'' (1983)

''Cool Cats: Twenty-Five Years of Rock 'N' Roll Style'' (1983)

''Queen: The Magic Years'' (1987)

''Imagine: John Lennon'' (1988)

''Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol'' (1990)

''Travelling Light'' (1992)

''Inspirations'' (1997)

''Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart'' (1998)

''Mayor of the Sunset Strip'' (2003)

See also

Best selling music artists

Bowie Bonds

List of artists who reached number one on the Hot 100 (US)

List of artists who reached number one on the US Dance chart

List of David Bowie tours

List of number-one hits (United States)

List of Number 1 Dance Hits (United States)

List of people who have declined a British honour

Notes

References

Further reading

Trynka Paul, ''Starman: David Bowie – The Definitive Biography'', Little, Brown Book Group Limited, 2011

Cann, David, ''Any Day Now: David Bowie the London Years 1947–1974'', Kenneth Pitt in Books, 2011

Jacke, Andreas, ''David Bowie – Station To Station'', Psychosozial- Verlag, 2011

Seabrook, Thomas Jerome, ''Bowie in Berlin: A New Career in a New Town'', Jawbone Press, 2008.

Spitz, Marc, ''Bowie: A Biography'', Crown Publishers, 2009.

Tremlett, George, ''David Bowie: Living on the Brink'', Carroll and Graf, 1997.

Waldrep, Shelton, "Phenomenology of Performance", ''The Aesthetics of Self-Invention: Oscar Wilde to David Bowie'', University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

Welch, Chris, ''David Bowie: We Could Be Heroes: The Stories Behind Every David Bowie Song'', Da Capo Press, 1999.

Wilcken, Hugo, ''33⅓: David Bowie's'' Low, Continuum, 2005.

External links

Official Myspace page

Official YouTube channel

Documentary Film - David Bowie: Sound and Vision

Bowieart – paintings, printmakings, etc.

Category:1947 births Category:Actors from London Category:Bisexual actors Category:Bisexual musicians Category:Brit Award winners Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Category:Decca Records artists Category:EMI Records artists Category:English film actors Category:English male singers Category:English multi-instrumentalists Category:English people of Irish descent Category:English record producers Category:English rock musicians Category:English singer-songwriters Category:Glam rock Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:LGBT musicians from the United Kingdom Category:LGBT people from England Category:Living people Category:Musicians from London Category:People from Brixton Category:RCA Victor artists Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Singers from London Category:Saturn Award winners Category:Virgin Records artists Category:Androgyny Category:Tin Machine members

az:Devid Boui be:Дэвід Боўі bg:Дейвид Боуи bs:David Bowie br:David Bowie ca:David Bowie cs:David Bowie co:David Bowie cy:David Bowie da:David Bowie de:David Bowie et:David Bowie el:Ντέιβιντ Μπόουι es:David Bowie eo:David Bowie eu:David Bowie fa:دیوید بویی fr:David Bowie ga:David Bowie gl:David Bowie ko:데이비드 보위 hi:डेविड बोवी hr:David Bowie io:David Bowie id:David Bowie is:David Bowie it:David Bowie he:דייוויד בואי jv:David Bowie ka:დევიდ ბოუი lv:Deivids Bovijs lt:David Bowie li:David Bowie hu:David Bowie mk:Дејвид Боуви nl:David Bowie ja:デヴィッド・ボウイ no:David Bowie nn:David Bowie oc:David Bowie uz:David Bowie pms:David Bowie pl:David Bowie pt:David Bowie ro:David Bowie ru:Боуи, Дэвид sq:David Bowie scn:David Bowie simple:David Bowie sk:David Bowie sl:David Bowie sr:Дејвид Боуи sh:David Bowie fi:David Bowie sv:David Bowie te:డేవిడ్ బౌవీ th:เดวิด โบวี tr:David Bowie uk:Девід Боуї vi:David Bowie vls:David Bowie zh-yue:大衛寶兒 zh:大卫·鲍伊

Réda Tamni better known as Reda Taliani (in Arabic رضى الطلياني) (born 1980 in El Biar, Algiers, Algeria) is an Algerian raï singer and musician. He has been residing in Aubagne, Marseille, France for a long time. His music blends chaabi, raï and traditional musical styles of the Maghreb, and many of his songs depict the realities and aspirations of the Algerian youth.

Career

Born in El Biar, in the Algerian capital Algiers from a family originating from Constantine, Algeria, Reda Taliani grew in Koléa, a town in Tipaza Province, in northern Algeria. His musical career started at 5 when he joined the Koléa Conservatory of Arab and Andalusian Music where he studied playing a number of instruments and excelled in playing the mandolin. He was captivated by raï music very early on and opted for leaving the more classcal Andalusian music entirely devoting himself to raï. The name Taliani (the Italian) is a nickname given to him when he was just 8 because of the way he dressed.

Reda Taliani's first album entitled ''Ache Dani Elwahd Tayra'' was released in 2000 with producer Issame and Eleulma Phone. He stayed with the label until 2004 when he moved to Dounia Production label where he released his successful album ''Joséphine'' the same year. Since then he has found popularity and success mainly in Algeria with ''Les Algériens des Kamikazes'' and ''Khobz Dar''. His music is widely influenced by Cheb Khaled and Sahraoui styles, but also by Bob Marley and Santana.

He has collaborated with many French artists, most notably the rap formation 113 on their album 113 Degrés. The single emanating from the collaboration entitled "Partir loin" was very successful. He was featured in ''Raï N B Fever 2'' with the song "Cholé Cholé" with Rappeurs d'Instinct. He also sang "Ca passe où ça casse" with French rapper of Tunisian origin Tunisiano.

Discography

''Ache dani elwahd tayra''

''Joséphine "

''Bahr el Ghadar''.

''Dis moi''

''Loumina''

''Khobz dar''

''Les algériens des kamikhazes''

''Suis-le, il te fuit, fuis-le, il te suit'' (''El moudja li datou'')

''Les algériens rassa''

''Mon cœur n'aie pas peur''

''Taaya Tebghini''

Collaborations

"Ca passe ou ca casse" (with Tunisiano)

"Cholé Cholé" (with group Rappeurs d'Instinct)

"Famille nombreuse" (feat rim'k and 113)

"Partir loin" (with 113 from ''113 Degrés'')

"Raï Kaï" (with Lim feat Samira)

References

Category:1980 births Category:Living people Category:Algerian musicians Category:Algerian singers Category:People from Algiers Category:Raï musicians

ar:رضى الطلياني fr:Reda Taliani nl:Reda Taliani

Coordinates	12°58′0″N77°34′0″N
name	Future Islands
background	group_or_band
origin	Greenville, NC, United States
instrument	Synthesizer, keyboard, bass guitar, Drum machine
genre	Synthpop, Future Shock, Post-Wave Dance
years active	2006–present
label	Thrill Jockey, Upset the Rhythm
associated acts	Art Lord & the Self Portraits, Moss of Aura, The Snails, Ruin Yer Stereo
website	www.myspace.com/futureislands
current members	J. Gerrit Welmers William Cashion Samuel Herring
past members	Erick Murillo Samuel N. Ortiz-Payero
notable instruments	}}

Future Islands are a Post-Wave band based in Baltimore, Maryland. The band is composed of Gerrit Welmers (keyboards & programming), William Cashion (bass, acoustic & electric guitars), and Samuel T. Herring (words & voices). Future Islands formed in January 2006 in Greenville, NC.

History

The band met and formed in while studying art at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. Their first band was Art Lord & the Self-Portraits, which included Samuel T. Herring, William Cashion, Gerrit Welmers, Adam Beeby, and Kymia Nawabi. That band lasted from February 2003 until Fall of 2005. In 2006, Cashion, Herring, and Welmers formed Future Islands with Erick Murillo, who played an electronic drum kit.

Future Islands released ''Little Advances'' in April 2006 and a self-released split CD with Welmers' solo project Moss of Aura in January 2007. They recorded their debut album "Wave Like Home" with Chester Gwazda at Backdoor Skateshop in Greenville, NC later that year. London-based label Upset the Rhythm released ''Wave Like Home'' in the Summer of 2008. The cover art was designed by Kymia Nawabi, a former member of Art Lord & the Self-Portraits.

In late 2007/early 2008, the band relocated to Baltimore, MD. The "Feathers and Hallways" 7" was recorded in Oakland, CA during their first US tour and was their first release as a focused three-piece. Their second album, "In Evening Air", was recorded in the band's living room in the historic Marble Hill neighborhood in Baltimore.

In 2009 the band signed to Chicago independent record company Thrill Jockey.

Discography

Albums

''Wave Like Home'' (Upset the Rhythm - August 25, 2008)

''In Evening Air'' (Thrill Jockey - May 4, 2010)

''On the Water'' (Thrill Jockey - October 11, 2011)

EPs and Singles

''Little Advances'' (self-released - April 28, 2006)

Split CD-R with Moss of Aura (self-released - January 6, 2007)

Split 7" with Dan Deacon (307 Knox Records - August 5, 2008 - purple vinyl, limited to 1000)

''Feathers & Hallways'' 7" EP (Upset the Rhythm - April 15, 2009 - white virgin vinyl)

''Post Office Wave Chapel'' 12" remix EP (Free Danger - February 2010, limited to 500)

''In The Fall'' 12" EP (Thrill Jockey - April 2010 - Blue Vinyl, limited to 1000)

''Undressed'' 12" EP (Thrill Jockey - September 2010, limited to 1000)

Split 7" with Lonnie Walker (Friends Records - November 2010, limited to 1000)

''Before the Bridge'' 7" single (Thrill Jockey - July 19, 2011, limited to 750)

As Art Lord & the Self-Portraits:

''Searching for a Complement'' (self-released - August 2003)

''In Your Boombox'' (self-released - October 2003)

''Ideas for Housecrafts'' (self-released - February 2004)

''Snail'' (self-released - 2005)

"Sad Apples, Dance!" featured on ''Compulation Vol. 2: Songs from North Carolina'' (Poxworld Empire)

''In Your Idea Box'' digital-only "best-of" release (307 Knox Records - September 2008)

References

Category:Synthpop groups Category:American pop music groups

fr:Future Islands