Tony Visconti
Tony Visconti, 2007
Background information
Born	(1944-04-24) 24 April 1944 (age 68)
Origin	Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Genres	Hard rock, Art rock, Alternative rock, Glam rock, Progressive rock, Folk rock, Pop rock
Occupations	Producer, Arranger, Musician
Instruments	Bass, Guitar, Piano
Years active	1967 – present
Associated acts	David Bowie T.Rex The Moody Blues Sparks Kristeen Young Morrissey Richard Barone Thin Lizzy Alejandro Escovedo Kaiser Chiefs
Website	http://www.tonyvisconti.com

Anthony Edward Visconti (born April 24, 1944) is an American record producer and sometimes a musician or singer.

Since the late 1960s, he has worked with an array of performers; his lengthiest involvement with any artist is with David Bowie: intermittently from Bowie's 1969 album Space Oddity to 2003's Reality, Visconti has produced and occasionally performed on many of Bowie's albums.

Personal life[link]

Visconti was born in Brooklyn, New York, and his father, a music enthusiast, taught Visconti to play the ukulele when he was five years old. He attended New Utrecht High School. Throughout his teenage years Visconti was involved with both a classical brass band (playing tuba) and a traditional orchestra (playing double bass), as well as playing rock 'n' roll-oriented guitar, valuable experience which served him well in later years. By the age of 15 he focused his efforts playing in local Brooklyn bands.

During the next few years of his life, he was involved with a number of soft-rock and lounge acts, playing both the bass and electric guitar. With his then-wife Siegrid, he attempted a career as pop duo Tony and Siegrid. Under this name, their first single "Long Hair" was a minor regional hit in New York City in late 1966, peaking at #33 on local top 40 station WMCA.^[1] However, this was to be the peak level of success for the duo, as no further singles charted.

After this failure to become a commercially successful pop singer, Visconti became in-house producer for his publisher, the Richmond Organization.

Visconti was married to Mary Hopkin, with whom he has two children, Morgan and Jessica; and later to May Pang, with whom he has two children, Sebastian and Lara.

Production[link]

Visconti met British producer Denny Cordell in 1968 while he was still working as Richmond's in-house producer. Cordell asked him to assist in recordings for successful jazz vocalist Georgie Fame. Visconti moved to London—in a move that would soon become permanent.

One of his first production projects in England with was the Welsh group The Iveys (later known as Badfinger). He produced several tracks for the band's first LP Maybe Tomorrow, released on The Beatles' Apple label. The title track from this album was released as a single and reached #67 on the Billboard Top 100 in 1968. More early production work on the album Prophets, Seers & Sages – The Angels of the Ages for the British outfit Tyrannosaurus Rex (later to become T.Rex) was to be of critical importance in kick-starting his influential career. It was to begin a relationship with T. Rex that would last for their next seven albums. One of Visconti's greatest successes was Electric Warrior, the album that made T.Rex frontman Marc Bolan a superstar and cemented Visconti's producing credentials. Shortly afterwards Visconti began to work with David Bowie and, along with guitarist Mick Ronson and drummer John Cambridge, formed and toured with the band Hype in which he played bass. Although the band name would be very short-lived, the line-up persisted and would go on to record the seminal album and single The Man Who Sold the World in 1970. He would further go on to work on the albums Diamond Dogs (1974), Young Americans (1975), Low (1977), "Heroes" (1977), Lodger (1979) and Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980).

In 1983, Visconti produced Stage, the first of four albums for British musical theatre star Elaine Paige. This was followed by Cinema (1984), Love Hurts (1985) and Christmas (1986).

Visconti would produce two full albums for the Moody Blues, The Other Side of Life (1986), and Sur La Mer (1988). In 1987, Visconti, together with Moodies' lead vocalist Justin Hayward, supplied incidental music for the BBC2 science fiction series Star Cops.

By the end of the 1980s, Visconti's consistent involvement with top artists had diminished, but despite this he continued to work with many newly formed outfits. In 1990, he produced and wrote the arrangements for the debut album from NYC band Electric Angels. He produced several tracks on the Moodies' Keys of the Kingdom album (1991), Luscious Jackson's Electric Honey, Leisure Noise by Gay Dad, Soul Caddy for Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Dawn of Ananda for Annie Haslam and Moonchild for Debbie Gibson. In 1997 Visconti produced the debut album of The Stone Roses member John Squire's new band, The Seahorses. The album, Do It Yourself was a moderate success. In the 2000s (decade), Visconti renewed his association with David Bowie, producing the albums Heathen in 2002, and Reality in 2003. These two albums hark back to his Berlin production work with Bowie. A list of the best known albums with which he has been associated is available from his official website.

He produced and played bass on a handful of tracks from The Dandy Warhols 2003 album Welcome to the Monkey House. In 2003 he teamed up with the Finn Brothers (Neil and Tim of Crowded House and Split Enz fame) to record and produce their second collaborative album, eventually released in 2004. For reasons largely unknown, the brothers re-recorded the entire album and Tony is credited for his string arrangements only. In 2004, he produced three songs on the Manic Street Preachers Album Lifeblood. In 2005, he collaborated with Copenhagen band Kashmir, whose fifth album, No Balance Palace, featured David Bowie. He has also collaborated as co-writer and producer on the album project by Richard Barone. He worked in Rome on the 2006 Morrissey album Ringleader of the Tormentors. His autobiography, Bowie, Bolan and The Brooklyn Boy, was published in February 2007 by Harper Collins UK. The imported soft cover version is now available in the United States. The book has been translated into French by Jérôme Soligny as Tony Visconti Bowie, Bolan et le Gamin de Brooklyn, published by Tournon^{[disambiguation needed ]}

In 2007 and 2008, Visconti was very active in the studio with Benin singer Angélique Kidjo, producing her Grammy-winning album Djin Djin (Razor & Tie). Guests artists include Alicia Keys, Peter Gabriel, Joss Stone, Josh Groban and Carlos Santana. He has also produced two albums at Saint Claire Recording Studio in Lexington, Kentucky: The Bright Lights of America (RCA) by Pittsburgh punk band Anti-Flag and an album by Alejandro Escovedo called Real Animal (Manhattan Records) released on June 2008. He has partially produced the new No. 1 album (in France) by French artist Raphael in Paris and New York. He has just completed work on the new Kristeen Young album Music for Strippers, Hookers, and the Odd On-Looker, due for release early in 2009. He has produced two tracks for the British group Razorlight for their album Slipway Fires released late 2008. He has written and conducted two string arrangements for the Fall Out Boy album Folie à Deux. He has produced an album for Australian singer Danielle Spencer was to be released in 2009. 2010 marked the release of Richard Barone's Glow album [1], which includes five songs co-written by Barone and Visconti and a remake of T.Rex's Girl.

Discography[link]

Production (albums)[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Tony Visconti – The Autobiography: Bowie, Bolan and the Brooklyn Boy, Harper Collins, 2007, ISBN 0-00-722944-5, ISBN 978-0-00-722944-4

External links[link]

• Official website
• Tony Visconti on Myspace
• Tony Visconti discography at Discogs

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John Varvatos
Born	June 15, 1964 Detroit, Michigan
Nationality	American
Occupation	Fashion designer
Awards	CFDA: Menswear Designer of the Year, 2005 and 2001; Perry Ellis Award for Menswear, 2000; GQ: Designer of the Year, 2007
Labels	John Varvatos

John Varvatos (born June 15, 1964) is an American contemporary high fashion menswear designer.

Biography[link]

The Varvatos family are originally from the village of Poulata on the Greek island of Cefalonia. John Varvatos was born on June 15, 1964 in Detroit and grew up in Allen Park. He attended Allen Park High School. Varvatos joined Polo Ralph Lauren in 1983. He then moved to Calvin Klein in 1990 where he was appointed head of menswear design and oversaw the launch of the men’s collection and the cK brand. In 1995, he returned to Ralph Lauren as Head of Menswear Design for all Polo Ralph Lauren brands and created the Polo Jeans Company.

John Varvatos Fashion House[link]

John Varvatos 2010 Fall Collection.

In late 1999, Varvatos started his fashion house, debuting his first clothing line at the end of 2000. The collection consisted of tailored high fashion wear, the brand now represents an entire lifestyle that includes belts, handbags, footwear, eyewear, limited edition watches, luxury skincare and fragrances, the latter for men and women.

In September 2000, within months of showing his first collection, John Varvatos opened a freestanding boutique in Soho. The collection is currently distributed in all John Varvatos boutiques including the 315 Bowery boutique in the space that formerly housed the underground music club CBGB. In addition, the collection is available in select luxury retail stores and specialty boutiques.

In 2001, John Varvatos was licensed to create a line of high-end Converse All-Star shoes for the Fall/Winter Season that year. Varvatos continues to design for Converse.

John Varvatos credits his early obsession with rock ‘n roll as the catalyst for his interest in fashion. A unifying theme in his design, it is deeply ingrained in all his efforts and evident in every expression of the brand. The ad campaigns for the main collection, shot by Danny Clinch, have featured such musicians and bands such as Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Velvet Revolver and Chris Cornell.

Music is also central to the brand’s philanthropic efforts, including the Save the Music Foundation the annual Stuart House benefit.

Fragrance and Skincare Partnership with Shiseido[link]

In the fall of 2004 John Varvatos launched his first fragrance, for men, named John Varvatos Classic. In 2006, BPI launched Vintage by John Varvatos, which shares similar notes as the classic. In 2008 Varvatos launched his fragrance for women. In Spring 2005, he also launched John Varvatos Skin, his line of skin care products for men. His new 'green' fragrance, called Artisan debuted Spring 2009. John Varvatos Skin products, along with John Varvatos fragrances, are made at Shiseido's facilities and distributed by Shiseido subsidiary Beauté Prestige International.

Awards[link]

John first received accolades from the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) in 2000 when he was honored with the Perry Ellis Award for Menswear. The following year he won the 2001 CFDA's Designer of the Year award.

In 2005 Varvatos received the CFDA's 2005 Menswear Designer of the Year award at the New York Public Library. The recipients are determined by a selection committee of top magazine editors, journalists, stylists and retailers from around the world. He competed for the top honor along with Ralph Lauren and John Bartlett for his third CFDA win.

In 2007 Varvatos was named GQ's Designer of the Year.^[1]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: John Varvatos

• Official Site
• Official Facebook Page
• Official Twitter Account
• Official YouTube Channel
• John Varvatos designer profile at Fashion Model Directory
• Video Blog interview with John Varvatos
• Interview with John Varvatos on Adversus

Alejandro Escovedo
Alejandro Escovedo in concert, 2007
Background information
Born	(1951-01-10) 10 January 1951 (age 61) San Antonio, Texas United States
Genres	Punk rock, roots rock, alternative country
Occupations	Musician, songwriter
Instruments	Vocals, guitar
Labels	Columbia, Vanguard Records, Birdman
Associated acts	The Nuns, Rank and File, The Sensitive Boys
Website	Alejandro Escovedo.com

Alejandro Escovedo (born January 10, 1951, in San Antonio, Texas) is an American singer-songwriter.

Biography[link]

The son of Mexican immigrants to Texas,^[1] Escovedo is from a family that boasts several professional musicians, including brothers (and percussionists) Coke Escovedo and Pete Escovedo, and Sheila E (Pete's daughter and Alejandro's niece). Another brother, Mario, fronted the hard rock band The Dragons, and yet another brother, Javier, was in the punk rock band The Zeros.

Escovedo began performing in the first-wave punk rock group The Nuns, with Jennifer Miro, and Jeff Olener, in San Francisco, California. After Escovedo's departure, The Nuns recorded an album on Posh Boy Records, but had little commercial success.

In the 1980s Escovedo moved to Austin, Texas, where he adapted a roots rock/alternative country style in the bands Rank and File (with Chip and Tony Kinman) and the True Believers (with his brother Javier and Jon Dee Graham). However, it was with the release of his first solo albums, Gravity in 1992 and Thirteen Years in 1994, that he found his true voice. Although he has yet to crossover to a large mainstream audience, Escovedo has a huge underground following, and many popular artists cite him as a strong influence.^{[citation needed]}

In 1997, Alejandro collaborated with Whiskeytown and Ryan Adams during the recording sessions for their album Strangers Almanac. He sings on "Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight", "Dancing with the Women at the Bar", and "Not Home Anymore". As a salute to Alejandro, a cover of a True Believers song written by Alejandro is covered by Whiskeytown on the re-released Strangers Almanac, Deluxe Edition.

In 1998 No Depression magazine named him Artist of the Decade.^[2] Alejandro was also involved in a side project that represents his hard rocking tastes. Buick MacKane released an album in 1997 The Pawn Shop Years, hearkening back to his musical roots from the 1970s.

In 1999, Escovedo contributed to the tribute album to Moby Grape's co-founder, Skip Spence, who was critically ill with cancer. The album was intended to raise funds to address Spence's medical bills. The album was titled, More Oar: A Tribute to the Skip Spence Album. The title refers to the title of Spence's only solo album, Oar (Columbia, 1969). On More Oar, Escovedo contributes his version of Spence's "Diana". Critic Rob Brunner commented, "The best contributions come from artists who realize that Spence's work is as much about atmosphere as words and chords. ...Alejandro Escovedo offers an appropriately bleary 'Diana', Spence's darkest song." ^[3](Birdman, 1999), was produced by Bill Bentley, a Warner Bros. Records executive and Austin-referenced music producer.

In 2003, after having lived with hepatitis-C for many years, Escovedo fell critically ill. In his long road to recovery, he faced increasing medical bills. Without medical insurance, Escovedo could not pay his substantial medical bills. Friends and admirers around the country organized benefit shows to help the songwriter. This effort grew into the album Por Vida: A Tribute to the Songs of Alejandro Escovedo, a two-disc set whose proceeds benefit the Alejandro Escovedo Medical and Living Expense Fund. Contributing musicians included Steve Earle, Jon Dee Graham, Lucinda Williams, John Cale, Jennifer Warnes, Ian Hunter, The Jayhawks, and Son Volt, as well as family members Pete Escovedo (with niece Sheila E.), Javier Escovedo, and The Dragons (featuring youngest brother, Mario Escovedo).

In 2005, Escovedo was declared to be free of the disease.^{[citation needed]}

Also in 2005, Escovedo's song "Castanets" appeared on the iPod playlist of George W. Bush.^[4]

Boxing Mirror came out on May 2, 2006 and included many of the songs he had promoted with The Alejandro Escovedo String Quintet, including Jon Dee Graham. Escovedo went on a short tour with the Quintet, which included a date at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall in early December 2006.

In April, 2008, Escovedo changed managers and began being managed by Jon Landau and Barbara Carr.

Escovedo released, Real Animal, produced by Tony Visconti, on June 24, 2008. All of the songs were co-written with Chuck Prophet.

In 2009, Escovedo was invited to contribute to a tribute album to the late Doug Sahm. Escovedo contributed his version of "Too Little Too Late" to Keep Your Soul: A Tribute to Doug Sahm (Vanguard Records).

In June, 2010, Escovedo released Street Songs of Love, also produced by Visconti but released on a new label, featuring songs that were originally presented during "Sessions On South Congress" at the Continental Club in Austin, Texas with his band, The Sensitive Boys. After starting out writing about nothing in particular, the record “ended up being an album about love, the pursuit of a feeling that is forever elusive, mysterious, and addictive,” said Escovedo.^[5] A New York Times "critic's choice" review of Street Songs of Love claimed that, "In another, less fragmented pop era, this would be the album of thoughtful but radio-ready love songs to finally get Mr. Escovedo the big national audience he deserves."^[6] Nationally syndicated radio shows such as Little Steven Van Zandt's Underground Garage gave prominent attention to Escovedo and his album, continuing to play the song "Silver Cloud" in particular well into the following year.

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• Gravity (1992)
• Thirteen Years (1994)
• The End/Losing Your Touch (1994)
• With These Hands (1996)
• More Miles Than Money: Live 1994-1996 (1998)
• Bourbonitis Blues (1999)
• A Man Under the Influence (2001)
• By the Hand of the Father (2002)
• Room of Songs (2005)

• The Boxing Mirror (2006)
• Real Animal (2008)
• Live Animal (2009)
• Street Songs of Love (2010)
• Big Station (2012)^[7]

Other Contributions[link]

• More Oar: A Tribute to the Skip Spence Album (Birdman, 1999)
• Hear Music Volume 7: Waking (2002, Hear Music) – "Wave"
• 107.1 KGSR Radio Austin – Broadcasts Vol.10 (2002) – "Ballad of the Sun & the Moon"
• WYEP Live and Direct: Volume 4 – On Air Performances (2002) – "Rosalie"
• Keep Your Soul: A Tribute to Doug Sahm (Vanguard, 2009)
• Metro: The Official Bootleg Series, Volume 1 2010

See also[link]

• Music of Austin

Articles[link]

• Alejandro Escovedo article at www.herohill.com
• Alejandro Escovedo article at www.harpmagazine.com
• Alejandro Escovedo article at www.honesttune.com
• Alejandro Escovedo article at www.browardpalmbeach.com

References[link]

External links[link]

• Alejandro Escovedo's website
• Posh Boy Records
• 5 Star review for The Boxing Mirror
• Alejandro Escovedo at NPR Music
• Alejandro Escovedo on Live Music Archive

Richard Barone
Richard Barone, performing at Carnegie Hall in New York City on October 1, 2008.
Background information
Born	Tampa, Florida, U.S.
Genres	Rock Pop Power pop Chamber pop Alternative rock
Occupations	Musician Songwriter Author Music director Record producer
Instruments	Guitar, Mellotron, keyboards, synthesizers, percussion, Stylophone, waterphone
Years active	1980s–present
Labels	Bar/None Records RCA Records MCA/Universal Geffen Records MESA/Atlantic Sony BMG Fetish Records Passport Records Stiff Records Cooking Vinyl others
Associated acts	The Bongos
Website	Official website

Richard Barone is a rock musician born in Tampa, Florida who gained attention as frontman for The Bongos. He works as a songwriter, arranger, author, director, and producer, releases albums as a solo artist, tours, and has created major concert events at Carnegie Hall, Hollywood Bowl and New York's Central Park.

Biography[link]

Barone began his career at age 7 as 'The Littlest DJ' on a local Tampa top-40 radio station, and later gained attention as the lead singer and songwriter for The Bongos, a critically acclaimed new wave band^[1] at the center of the early 1980s Hoboken, New Jersey music scene. After their first string of independent singles, released on the U.K.- based Fetish label and compiled for the U.S. as Drums Along the Hudson (PVC), the group signed to RCA Records. Barone has been called a "gifted pop-rock tunesmith,"^[2] and, stepping out as a solo artist, Barone's albums have ventured into chamber pop, orchestral, and more narrative singer-songwriter territory.

Barone actually released his first solo album, Cool Blue Halo (recorded live at the Bottom Line in New York) before The Bongos' amicable breakup in 1987. Anthony DeCurtis, writing in Rolling Stone, praised Barone's "spare, elegant arrangements" and credits him with fashioning "a kind of rock chamber music."^[3] While Trouser Press described the record as "intimate but confused,"^[4] NPR's Tom Moon, in a more recent assessment, called the album "a plaintive masterpiece," and credited Barone with foreshadowing Nirvana's Unplugged performance of David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World," adding "Cool Blue Halo feels timeless, and maybe even exotic."^[1] In 2012, for the 25th Anniversary of the album, a special reunion concert was planned along with a multi-disc boxset including the remastered album, concert DVD, and many special features. [1]

Two studio albums followed: the rock-dominated Primal Dream (MCA) in 1990, and the more acoustic-based Clouds Over Eden (WEA) in 1994, the latter dedicated to his late friend, rock journalist Nicholas Schaffner, and bearing a cover portrait by photographer Duane Michals. Trouser Press championed the "fine set of yearning love songs" on Primal Dream, while calling their production and arrangements as a "step backwards" from his debut album.^[4] But David Browne, writing in Rolling Stone, gave the album four stars and commented that "Barone is fast moving beyond the limited vocabulary of twelve strings and wimp-pop vocals." ^[5] Billy Altman, in The New York Times, called his next album, Clouds Over Eden "unquestionably the most fully realized effort of Barone's career," [2] while Trouser Press described the album as "wrenching and thoroughly worthwhile" and "the great album fans always imagined [Barone] making."^[4]

In 1997, Barone released Between Heaven and Cello, an album recorded live at NYC's intimate Fez nightclub, on some songs accompanied only by cellist Jane Scarpantoni. A boxed set of his first three solo albums was released in Europe in 2000 as The Big Three. In 2004, he released a limited edition solo anthology entitled, COLLECTION: An Embarrassment of Richard, comprising personal favorites from his back catalogue. Richard Barone Official Bio

Barone then turned his attention to producing, helming a number of recordings for a variety of artists including a recent duet between Liza Minnelli and pianist/vocalist Johnny Rodgers, a children's album for former model Jolie Jones, daughter of Quincy Jones, recordings for B-52's frontman Fred Schneider, and others. As a producer/director, he created large-scale concert events, including all-star tributes to Peggy Lee at Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and Chicago's Ravinia Festival in 2003 and 2004,^[6] and concerts for New York's Central Park SummerStage.

Other projects included executive producing The Nomi Song DVD (Palm Pictures, 2005), which includes his remix of operatic New Wave countertenor Klaus Nomi's "Total Eclipse"; musical direction and orchestration for Bright Lights, Big City at the New York Theatre Workshop (with Rent director Michael Greif); as well as directing and performing in The Downtown Messiah, a modern interpretation of Handel's baroque oratorio, broadcast annually on over 200 public radio stations nationwide for six consecutive years from 1999-2004. His songs and collaborations, including those written with singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, have been heard on several popular television programs, including The West Wing, Dawson's Creek, Felicity, and South of Nowhere. In 2004, Barone joined his childhood inspiration Donovan for series of the latter's Beat Café concert events, including nine performances at New York's Joe's Pub, at which he sang and read excerpts from Allen Ginsberg's Howl. Later, in 2008, he would produce a concert for Donovan, backed by an all-star band, which was recorded and released on DVD.

In 2006, he and the original Bongos reunited in the studio with Moby producing, to create a new version of "The Bulrushes," an early Bongos single, and a music video for the special edition re-issue of the group's debut album. The 27-track collection, Drums Along the Hudson - Special Edition, was released by Cooking Vinyl Records in June 2007. Several Bongos reunion concerts were held, culminating with an outdoor concert in Hoboken, at which the band was honored with a Mayoral Proclamation and the keys to the city.

In September 2007, Barone's memoir, FRONTMAN: Surviving the Rock Star Myth, with a nude cover photo of the author by Mick Rock) was published by Backbeat/Hal Leonard Books. That same month, his complete solo catalog was re-launched at the iTunes Music Store. [3] In late 2007, he began staging a series of 'musical readings' of FRONTMAN, both live and on radio, with excerpts of the book read by television actress Joyce DeWitt and radio personality Vin Scelsa, among others. Musical accompaniment was performed using the new Gibson Les Paul HD.6x-Pro Digital guitar (an instrument to which Barone contributed as artist consultant) in surround sound. [4] On his birthday, October 1, 2008, he brought FRONTMAN: A Musical Reading to the stage at Carnegie Hall in New York City, with "Special Guests and Legendary Friends," including Moby, Lou Reed, The Band's Garth Hudson, Marshall Crenshaw, Terre and Suzzy Roche, Randy Brecker, Carlos Alomar, and others as a benefit for public radio station WFUV. [5]

In July 2009, Barone entered the recording studio to complete production work on the album he began at age 16 for performer Tiny Tim. The album, "I've Never Seen a Straight Banana - Rare Moments: Volume 1," was released in October 2009 on Collector's Choice Records.^[7]

In May 2010, he produced, on behalf of Jonas Mekas, a concert to benefit Anthology Film Archives and honor avant-garde filmmaker/author Kenneth Anger. Performing on the bill were Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, The Virgins, Mekas' ensemble, Moby, M.C. Ben Foster and a rare appearance by Anger's experimental music project, Technicolor Skull. In July 2010, Barone joined forces with Pete Seeger, producing and performing in "Reclaim The Coast: Gulf Coast Oil Spill Benefit" at City Winery in New York.^[8] In August 2010, he and co-producer Matthew Billy recorded Seeger performing aboard the Sloop Clearwater, symbol of the drive to clean up the Hudson River, which started in the 1960s. The song and video are set to coincide with the release of Seeger's next album, due out in Spring 2012 on Appleseed Records.

Glow, Barone's fifth solo album, helmed by veteran producer Tony Visconti, was released in September 2010 on Bar/None Records.^[9] Also working on the project were producers Steve Rosenthal and Steve Addabbo, songwriter Paul Williams, engineer Leslie Ann Jones (at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, California), photographer Mick Rock, and others.^[10] Also that month, Barone appeared in Rock's career retrospective photography book Exposed: The Faces of Rock n' Roll wearing only a white Gibson Les Paul Custom guitar, an image that was echoed in the Glow CD booklet. A tour of the U.S. and the U.K. followed, through Spring 2011.

In August 2011 Barone was named to the Board of Advisors of Anthology Film Archives.^[11] In that same month, he was named music supervisor on a feature documentary chronicling the final days of Anna Nicole Smith. Besides his own music, the score will contain music by Moby, Scissor Sisters. and others. In Fall 2011, "Mr. Bricks: A Heavy Metal Murder Musical," directed by Travis Campbell was set for release, with Barone both appearing onscreen and performing on the soundtrack.^[12] Distributed by Troma Entertainment, Inc.,^[13] the film yielded a music video for Barone's performance of "Brick by Brick." ^[14] Throughout the fall, he again worked closely with Gibson Guitars, demonstrating their new Firebird X guitar system in numerous retail and trade events throughout the New York area.

For the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in September 2011, Barone and frequent collaborator Matthew Billy ^[15] created a special version of the 1894 song The Sidewalks of New York, which was released to excellent reviews and radio popularity.[6] [7] In December 2011, Barone was tapped to teach a performance workshop at the prestigious Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University. He was then appointed as a Professor in the department. [8] That same month, he released Collection 2: Before & Afterglow, mining his back catalogue to his pre-Bongos days and including recent work such as the Sidewalks single.^[16] He closed 2011 with an appearance at the 31st Annual tribute to John Lennon in New York City, along with Steve Forbert, Bettye Lavette, and others.

In March, 2012 it was announced that Barone had contributed a new song to the Occupy This Album project, along with Yoko Ono, Patti Smith, Jackson Browne, and others. [9] The four-disc set, to benefit the Occupy Wall Street Movement, was set for release on May 15, 2012. Richard's song, "Hey, Can I Sleep On Your Futon?" co-written once again with Matthew Billy, was a modern-day re-write of "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?" written in 1931 during the Great Depression.

Barone lives in Greenwich Village, where he is currently writing and producing for others, planning the followup to Glow, and continuing his professorship at New York University.

Discography[link]

For the Bongos' discography, see The Bongos.

• Collection 2: Before & Afterglow (2011), compilation (RBM Special Editions)
• Glow (2010), produced by Tony Visconti, Steve Addabbo, Steve Rosenthal, and Richard Barone (Bar/None Records)
• Glow E.P. (2008), produced by Tony Visconti, and Steve Addabbo (RBM Special Editions)
• Collection: An Embarrassment of Richard (2004), compilation (RBM Special Editions)
• The Big Three (2000), box set (Line Records, Germany)
• Between Heaven and Cello (1997), recorded live (Line Records)
• Clouds over Eden (1993), produced by Hugh Jones (MESA Bluemoon/Atlantic Records)
• Primal Cuts (1991), remixes by Ben Grosse and live tracks (Line Records)
• Primal Dream (1990), produced by Richard Gottehrer and Don Dixon (MCA Records)
• Cool Blue Halo (1987), recorded live at the Bottom Line, New York City (Passport Records)
• Nuts and Bolts (1983), with James Mastro; produced by Barone, Mastro, and Mitch Easter (Passport Records)

Publications[link]

• FRONTMAN: Surviving the Rock Star Myth, Backbeat/Hal Leonard Books, 2007, ISBN 0-87930-912-1, ISBN 978-0-87930-912-1

See also[link]

• The Bongos
• Tony Visconti
• Mick Rock

References[link]

External links[link]

• RichardBarone.com - Richard Barone's official website
• YouTube.com - Richard Barone's video channel on YouTube
• Allmusic - Richard Barone overview on Allmusic
• "Man About Town Barone Heads for Fresh Fields," by Jim Bessman -- (Billboard Magazine, September 22, 2001)

David Bowie
Bowie during the Heathen Tour in 2002.
Background information
Birth name	David Robert Jones
Born	(1947-01-08) 8 January 1947 (age 65) Brixton, London, England
Genres	Rock, glam rock, art rock, pop
Occupations	Musician, singer-songwriter, record producer, actor
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, keyboards, harmonica, saxophone, viola, cello, koto, percussion
Years active	1964–2008
Labels	Deram, RCA, Virgin, EMI, ISO, Columbia, BMG, Pye
Associated acts	The Riot Squad, Arnold Corns, Tin Machine, The Hype, The Lower Third, The Konrads
Website	davidbowie.com

David Bowie ( /ˈboʊ.i/ BOH-ee;^[1] 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."^[2] 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."^[2] 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[link]

1947–62: early years[link]

David Bowie was born David Robert Jones in Brixton, London, on 8 January 1947. His mother, Margaret Mary "Peggy" (née Burns), of Irish descent,^[3] 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.^[4][5]

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.^[6] 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.^[6] 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.^[7][8] Upon listening to "Tutti Frutti", Bowie would later say, "I had heard God".^[9] 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."^[8] 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."^[8] Failing his eleven plus exam at the conclusion of his Burnt Ash Junior education, Bowie joined Bromley Technical High School.^[10]

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

Despite its status it was, by the time David arrived in 1958, as rich in arcane ritual as any [English] public school. There were houses, named after eighteenth-century statesmen like Pitt and Wilberforce. There was a uniform, and an elaborate system of rewards and punishments. There was also an accent on languages, science and particularly design, where a collegiate atmosphere flourished under the tutorship of Owen Frampton. In David's account, Frampton led through force of personality, not intellect; his colleagues at Bromley Tech were famous for neither, and yielded the school's most gifted pupils to the arts, a regime so liberal that Frampton actively encouraged his own son, Peter, to pursue a musical career with David, a partnership briefly intact thirty years later.^[10]

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.^[11]

In 1962, George Underwood injured Bowie's eye in a fight over a girl. Bowie owes his unusual eyes to the fact that not all the damage could be surgically repaired. Despite their fisticuffs, Underwood and Bowie remained good friends, and Underwood went on to create the artwork for Bowie's early albums.^[12]

Eyes[link]

Bowie received a serious injury at school in 1962 when his friend George Underwood, while wearing a ring on his finger, punched him in the left eye during a fight over a girl. Doctors feared he would become blind in that eye. After a series of operations during a four-month hospitalisation,^[13] his doctors determined that the damage could not be fully repaired and Bowie was left with faulty depth perception and a permanently dilated pupil. The latter condition has misled some to believe that Bowie has different coloured eyes, when in reality both irises are the same blue colour. ^[14]

1962–68: the Konrads to the Riot Squad[link]

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.^[15] 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.^[16]

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.^[16] "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.^[17]

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.^[18] 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.^[19]

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."^[20] 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."^[20] 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.^[21] 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.^[22]

1969–73: psychedelic folk to glam rock[link]

[edit] 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.^[23] 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.^[23] Breaking up with Farthingale shortly after completion of the film, Bowie moved in with Mary Finnigan as her lodger.^[24] 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.^[24] 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".^[25] "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.^[26]

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.^[27] 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".^[28] The shortcoming was underlined by his artistic rivalry with Marc Bolan, who was at the time acting as his session guitarist.^[28] 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.^[28][29] 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.^[30] 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.^[30]

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".^[31][32] 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".^[31] 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".^[31]

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.^[33] (His parents chose "his kooky name"—he would be known as Zowie for the next 12 years—after the Greek word zoe, life.)^[34] 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^[35] but was ranked No.16 by voters in the All Time Top 1000 Albums.

[edit] Ziggy Stardust

David Bowie during the Ziggy Stardust Tour

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".^[2] 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.^[36] 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."^[36] 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.^[37]

Bowie contributed backing vocals to Lou Reed's 1972 solo breakthrough Transformer, co-producing the album with Mick Ronson.^[38] 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".^[39][40]

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."^[41] 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.^[42] 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.^[43]

	"Ziggy Stardust" noicon Sample of "Ziggy Stardust" (1972). A pioneer of glam rock, Bowie performed as the character Ziggy Stardust, backed by The Spiders from Mars.
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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.^[44] 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.^[45]

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

Bowie performing during the 1974 Diamond Dogs Tour

Bowie moved to the United States in 1974, initially staying in New York City before settling in Los Angeles.^[46] 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.^[47] 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.^[48] 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.^[49]

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."^[50] 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.^[51] 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".^[52] 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 November single,^[53] that it was offered to Elvis Presley to perform, but Presley declined it.^[53] 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.^[54] 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."^[55] 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."^[55] 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.^[56]

Bowie as the Thin White Duke at Maple Leaf Gardens, Toronto on 26 February 1976

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.^[57] 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."^[58] 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.^[48][59]

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 was detained by customs on the Russian/Polish border for possessing Nazi paraphernalia.^[60] 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.^[61] He later blamed his pro-Fascism comments and his behaviour during the period on his addictions and the character of the Thin White Duke.^[62] "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 ...".^[59] According to playwright Alan Franks, writing later in The Times, "he was indeed 'deranged'. He had some very bad experiences with hard drugs."^[63]

1976–79: the Berlin era[link]

Bowie performing in Oslo on 5 June 1978

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, and produced 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".^[64]

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.^[65] 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.^[66] 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".^[67][68] Glass has praised Bowie's gift for creating "fairly complex pieces of music, masquerading as simple pieces".^[69]

	"Heroes" noicon Sample of "Heroes" (1977). One of the ambient rock songs to emerge from Bowie's Berlin Trilogy era, "Heroes" gained lasting popularity.
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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.^[70] 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.^[71] 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.^[72]

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."^[73] Recordings from the tour made up the live album Stage, released the same year.^[74]

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.^[75] 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".^[76][77] 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.^[78]

1980–89: from superstar to megastar[link]

Serious Moonlight Tour 1983

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.^[79] 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.^[80] 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.^[81] 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.^[82]

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.^[83] Stevie Ray Vaughan was guest guitarist playing solo on "Let's Dance".

Performing during the critically maligned Glass Spider Tour, 1987

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.^[84]

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".^[85] 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.^[86]

1989–91: Tin Machine[link]

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.^[87]

Bowie in Chile during the 1990 Sound+Vision Tour

Though he intended Tin Machine to operate as a democracy, Bowie dominated, both in songwriting and in decision-making.^[88] 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."^[89] EMI complained of "lyrics that preach" as well as "repetitive tunes" and "minimalist or no production".^[90] The album nevertheless reached number three in the UK.^[89] 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.^[91] A series of Tin Machine singles failed to chart, and Bowie, after a disagreement with EMI, left the label.^[92] Like his audience and his critics, Bowie himself became increasingly disaffected with his role as just one member of a band.^[93] 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.^[94]

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.^[95] 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.^[96] 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.^[97]

1992–99: electronica[link]

Bowie performing in Finland in 1997

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.^[98] 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.^[99]

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".^[100] 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.^[101]

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.^[102] 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.^[103]

Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 17 January 1996.^[104] 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.^[105] 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'".^[106] 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.^[107]

1999–present: neoclassicist Bowie[link]

Bowie (left) on-stage with Sterling Campbell during the Heathen Tour in 2002.

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.^[108] Making extensive use of live instruments, the album was Bowie's exit from heavy electronica.^[109] 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.^[110] Alexandria Zahra Jones, Bowie and Iman's daughter, was born on 15 August.^[111]

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".^[112] 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.^[113] 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.^[114]

Bowie in 2009 with his son Duncan Jones at the premiere of Jones' directorial debut Moon

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.^[115] 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.^[116] 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.^[117] He contributed back-up vocals on TV on the Radio's song "Province" for their album Return to Cookie Mountain,^[118] made a commercial with Snoop Dogg for XM Satellite Radio,^[119] and joined with Lou Reed on Danish alt-rockers Kashmir's 2005 album No Balance Palace.^[120]

Bowie was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award on 8 February 2006.^[121] In April, he announced, "I’m taking a year off—no touring, no albums."^[122] 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.^[123] He performed again in November, alongside Alicia Keys, at the Black Ball, a New York benefit event for Keep a Child Alive,^[124] a performance that marks the last time Bowie performed his music on stage.^[125]

Bowie was chosen to curate the 2007 High Line Festival, selecting musicians and artists for the Manhattan event,^[126] and performed on Scarlett Johansson's 2008 album of Tom Waits covers, Anywhere I Lay My Head.^[127] 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.^[128] A Reality Tour, a double album of live material from the 2003 concert tour, was released in January 2010.^[129]

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.^[130][131]

Acting career[link]

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."^[132] 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."^[133] 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).^[134] 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.^[135] The same year, the film of Leslie Thomas's 1966 comic novel The Virgin Soldiers saw Bowie make a brief appearance as an extra.^[135] In 1976 he earned acclaim for his first major film role, portraying Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien from a dying planet, in The Man Who Fell to Earth, directed by Nic Roeg. Just a Gigolo (1979), an Anglo-German co-production directed by David Hemmings, saw Bowie in the lead role as Prussian officer Paul von Przygodski, who, returning from World War I, is discovered by a Baroness (Marlene Dietrich) and put into her Gigolo Stable.

Bowie took the title role in the Broadway theatre production The Elephant Man, earning high praise for an expressive performance. He played the part 157 times between 1980 and 1981.^[81] Christiane F. – Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo, a 1981 biographical film focusing on a young girl's drug addiction in West Berlin, featured Bowie in a cameo appearance as himself at a concert in Germany. Its soundtrack album, Christiane F. (1981), featured much material from his Berlin Trilogy albums.^[136] 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).^[137]

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.^[138] 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.^[139] 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.^[140][141]

Sexual orientation[link]

Buckley writes, "If Ziggy confused both his creator and his audience, a big part of that confusion centred on the topic of sexuality."^[142] 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.^[42] In a September 1976 interview with Playboy, Bowie said: "It's true—I am a bisexual. But I can't deny that I've used that fact very well. I suppose it's the best thing that ever happened to me."^[143]

In a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone, Bowie said his public declaration of bisexuality was "the biggest mistake I ever made" and "I was always a closet heterosexual".^[144] 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".^[145][146]

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

Interesting. [Long pause] I don’t think it was a mistake in Europe, but it was a lot tougher in America. I had no problem with people knowing I was bisexual. But I had no inclination to hold any banners nor be a representative of any group of people. I knew what I wanted to be, which was a songwriter and a performer, and I felt that bisexuality became my headline over here for so long. America is a very puritanical place, and I think it stood in the way of so much I wanted to do.^[147]

Buckley's view of the period is that Bowie, "a taboo-breaker and a dabbler ... mined sexual intrigue for its ability to shock",^[148] 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'."^[149] 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."^[150] 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."^[150]

Musicianship[link]

Bowie's guitar located in Hard Rock Café Warsaw.

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 by not only rock and rollers like Little Richard and Elvis Presley but also 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).^[19][151] Bowie's music hall fascination continued to surface sporadically alongside such diverse styles as hard rock and heavy metal, soul, psychedelic folk and pop.^[152]

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."^[153]

Voice instructor Jo Thompson describes Bowie's vocal vibrato technique as "particularly deliberate and distinctive".^[154] Schinder and Schwartz call him "a vocalist of extraordinary technical ability, able to pitch his singing to particular effect."^[155] 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."^[156]

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.^{[157][158][159][160]}

Legacy[link]

David Bowie's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

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.^[161] 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."^[162][163] 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..."^[164] 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.^{[161][165][166]}

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."^[2]

Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.^[104] 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."^[167] 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."^[168]

Personal life[link]

Bowie and wife Iman

Bowie married Mary Angela Barnett (also known as Angie Bowie) on 19 March 1970 at Bromley Register Office in Beckenham Lane, Kent. They had a son together, Zowie Bowie (also known as Duncan Jones, film director), and divorced on 8 February 1980 in Switzerland.

The 1971 song "Kooks" on the album Hunky Dory was written for his newborn son.

In 1992 Bowie married Somali-American model Iman. They have one daughter, Alexandria Zahra Jones, born 15 August 2000.^[169] The couple resides primarily in Manhattan and London.^[170]

Regarding his compositions, in 2005 he said "Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always." because he is "not quite an atheist and it bothers me."^[171]

Awards and recognition[link]

Bowie's 1969 commercial breakthrough, the song "Space Oddity", won him an Ivor Novello Special Award For Originality.^[172] For his performance in the 1976 science fiction film The Man Who Fell to Earth, he won a Saturn Award for Best Actor.^[173] In the ensuing decades he has been honoured with numerous awards for his music and its accompanying videos, receiving, among others, two Grammy Awards^[174][175] and two BRIT Awards.^[176]

In 1999, Bowie was made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.^[177] He received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music the same year.^[178] He declined the royal honour of Commander of the British Empire in 2000, and turned down a knighthood in 2003,^[179] 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."^[180]

Throughout his career he has sold an estimated 250 million albums.^[181] 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.^[182][183] In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, he was ranked 29.^[181] In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him 39th on their list of the 100 Greatest Rock Artists of All Time^[184] and the 23rd best singer of all time.^[185] Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 17 January 1996.^[104]

Discography[link]

Filmography[link]

As Actor[link]

As Musician[link]

• 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[link]

• 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[link]

• 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[link]

	Book: David Bowie
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

• Best selling music artists
• Bowie Bonds
• Bowie (Flight of the Conchords)
• 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[link]