Glam rock (also known as glitter rock) is a style of rock and pop music that developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s, which was performed by singers and musicians who wore outrageous clothes, makeup and hairstyles, particularly platform-soled boots and glitter.^[1] The flamboyant costumes and visual styles of glam performers were often camp or androgynous, and have been connected with new views of gender roles.^[2] Glam rock visuals peaked during the mid 1970s with artists including T. Rex, David Bowie, Roxy Music and Gary Glitter in the UK and New York Dolls, Lou Reed and Jobriath in the US.

Characteristics[link]

Musically glam rock was very diverse, varying between the simple rock and roll revivalism of figures like Alvin Stardust to the complex art rock of Roxy Music, and can be seen as much as a fashion as a musical sub-genre.^[3] Visually it was a mesh of various styles, ranging from 1930s Hollywood glamour, through 1950s pin-up sex appeal, pre-war Cabaret theatrics, Victorian literary and symbolist styles, science fiction, to ancient and occult mysticism and mythology; manifesting itself in outrageous clothes, makeup, hairstyles, and platform-soled boots.^[4] Glam is most noted for its sexual and gender ambiguity and representations of androgyny, beside extensive use of theatrics.^[5] It was prefigured by the showmanship and gender identity manipulation of American acts such as The Cockettes and Alice Cooper, the latter of which combined glam with shock rock.^[6]

History[link]

David Bowie during the Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders Tour.

Glam rock emerged out of the English psychedelic and art rock scenes of the late 1960s and can be seen as both an extension of, and reaction against, those trends.^[3] Its origins are associated with Marc Bolan, who had renamed his folk duo T. Rex and taken up electric instruments by the end of the 1960s. Often cited as the moment of inception is his appearance on the UK TV programme Top of the Pops in March 1971 wearing glitter and satins, to perform what would be his second UK Top 10 hit (and first UK Number 1 hit), "Hot Love".^[7] From late 1971, already a minor star, David Bowie developed his Ziggy Stardust persona, incorporating elements of professional make up, mime and performance into his act.^[8] Bowie in a 1972 interview while noting that other artists described as glam rock was doing different work said "I think glam rock is a lovely way to categorize me and it's even nicer to be one of the leaders of it".^[9] These performers were soon followed in the style by acts including Roxy Music, Sweet, Slade, Mott the Hoople, Mud and Alvin Stardust.^[8] While highly successful in the single charts in the UK, very few of these musicians were able to make a serious impact in the United States; Bowie was the major exception becoming an international superstar and prompting the adoption of glam styles among acts like Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, New York Dolls and Jobriath, often known as "glitter rock" and with a darker lyrical content than their British counterparts.^[10]

In the UK the term glitter rock was most often used to refer to the extreme version of glam pursued by Gary Glitter and his support musicians the Glitter Band, who between them achieved eighteen top ten singles in the UK between 1972 and 1976.^[11] A second wave of glam rock acts, including Suzi Quatro, Roy Wood's Wizzard and Sparks, dominated the British single charts from about 1974 to 1976.^[8][12] Quatro directly inspired the pioneering Los Angeles based all-girl group The Runaways.^[13] Existing acts, some not usually considered central to the genre, also adopted glam styles, including Rod Stewart, Elton John, Queen and, for a time, the Rolling Stones.^[8] Punk rock, often seen as a reaction to the artifice of glam rock, but using some elements of the genre including makeup and involving covers versions of glam rock records,^[14] helped end the fashion for glam from about 1976.^[10]

Subsequent influence[link]

Noddy Holder (right) and Dave Hill (left) of Slade, near the height of their fame in 1973, showing some of the more extreme glam rock fashions

Although glam rock went into a steep decline in popularity in the second half of the 1970s it was a direct influence on acts that rose to prominence later, including Kiss and American glam metal acts like Quiet Riot, W.A.S.P., Twisted Sister and Mötley Crüe.^[15] It was a major influence on the New Romantics in Britain, acts like Adam Ant and Flock of Seagulls extended it, and its androgyny and sexual politics were picked up by acts including Culture Club, Bronski Beat and Frankie Goes to Hollywood.^[16] It also had an influence on the formation of gothic rock, which was completely informed by the make-up, clothes, theatricality and sound, and even on punk rock, which adopted some of the performance and persona-creating tendencies of the genre, as well as the genre's emphasis on pop-art qualities and simple but powerful instrumentation.^[10] In Japan in the 1980s, visual kei was strongly influenced by glam rock aesthetics.^[17] Glam has since enjoyed continued influence and sporadic modest revivals in R&B crossover act Prince,^[18] and bands such as Marilyn Manson, Placebo,^[19] Chainsaw Kittens and The Darkness.^[20]

Film[link]

Some examples of movies that reflect glam rock aesthetics include:

• T.Rex's documentary Born to Boogie (1972);^[21]
• David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars: The Motion Picture (1973);^[22]
• Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise (1974);^[23]
• Gary Glitter's Remember Me This Way (1974);^[24]
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975);^[23]
• Slade's Slade in Flame (1975);^[25]
• Never too Young to Rock (1975);^[26]
• Todd Haynes's Velvet Goldmine (1998);^[27]
• John Cameron Mitchell's film version of Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001);^[28]
• Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto (2005).^[29]

See also[link]

• List of glam rock artists
• Glam punk

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Philip Auslander, Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2006 ISBN 0-472-06868-7
• Rock, Mick, Glam! An Eyewitness Account Omnibus Press, 2005 ISBN 1.84609.149.7

External links[link]

• A Biased History of UK Glam Rock

Look up GLAM or glam in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Glam is a shortened form of the word glamour. Glam or GLAM may also refer to:

• GLAM (industry sector), an acronym for Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums, the cultural heritage institutions
• Glam Media, a life-style related Web company
• Groupe de Liaisons Aériennes Ministérielles, a unit of the French Air Force, between 1945 and 1995

People[link]

• Moshe Glam (born 1970), Israeli footballer and a football manager
• Rami Glam (born 1978), former Israeli footballer
• Glamourina (born 1988), fashion stylist

Music[link]

• Glam (album), by Mouse on Mars
• Glam rock, a style of rock and pop music
• Glam metal, a sub-genre of heavy metal music
• Glam punk, a genre that mixes elements of glam rock with protopunk or punk rock
• "Glam", a song by Christina Aguilera from Bionic

See also[link]

• Glamorous (disambiguation)
• Glamour (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Look up Rock, The Rock, rock music, or rock in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Rock usually refers to:

• Rock (geology), naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloid
• Rock music, form of popular music

It can also refer to:

Geology[link]

• Rock (geology), naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids
• Rock salt or halite, mineral form of sodium chloride

People[link]

• Rock (name), several people

Fictional characters[link]

• Rock (comics), a fictional character in the DC Comics universe
• Rock (manga character), a recurrent major character in most of Osamu Tezuka's manga series
• Robert Orin Charles Kilroy (ROCK), from the Styx rock opera Kilroy was here - see Mr. Roboto

Music[link]

• Rock music, form of popular music
• Rocks (album), by Aerosmith
• Rocks (Harem Scarem album), 2001
• "The Rock" instrumental song by The Who from Quadrophenia
• "Rocks" (song), by Primal Scream
• "Rock", one of the tracks on "Soft/Rock", a single by Lemon Jelly
• Rock (Casting Pearls EP), by Casting Pearls
• The Rock (Rachmaninoff), an orchestral composition
• The Rock (The Frankie Miller Band album), the third album from The Frankie Miller Band
• The Rock (John Entwistle album), the sixth solo album by John Entwistle, bassist for The Who
• The Rock (Tracy Lawrence album), the tenth studio album by American country music artist Tracy Lawrence
• The Rocks (band), a former UK indie rock band
• "The Rock", a song by Atomic Rooste from In Hearing of Atomic Rooster

Entertainment[link]

• Another term for uprock, a form of street dance
• The Rock (film), 1996 film starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage directed by Michael Bay
• The Rock (play), T.S. Eliot's 1934 pageant play

Places[link]

Australia[link]

• The Rocks, New South Wales, a locality in Sydney, Australia
• The Rock, New South Wales, a town in southern New South Wales

Canada[link]

• The Rocks or Hopewell Rocks, New Brunswick, a coastal formation
• Newfoundland (island), Canada

United Kingdom[link]

• Rock, Cornwall, village in Cornwall, England
• Rock, Northumberland, village in Northumberland, England
• Rock, West Sussex
• Rock, Worcestershire, village in Worcestershire, England
• Lewis, an island in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland
• Rock, County Tyrone – a small village in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland

United States[link]

• Kodiak Island, Alaska
• The Rock or Alcatraz Island, small island in San Francisco Bay, California, United States
• The Rock, Georgia
• The Rock (Northwestern University), a landmark at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois
• Rock Island, Illinois, county seat of Rock Island County, Illinois, United States
• Memorial Stadium (Indiana), on the Indiana University campus
• Rock, Kansas, unincorporated community in Cowley County, Kansas, United States
• The Rock (Michigan State University), a boulder on the campus of Michigan State University
• Rock Township, Benson County, North Dakota, civil township in United States
• The Rocks or McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, a borough
• Rock, West Virginia, a community in Mercer County, West Virginia, United States
• Rock County, Wisconsin, county in United States
• Rock, Rock County, Wisconsin, town in Rock County, Wisconsin, United States
• Rock, Wood County, Wisconsin, town in Wood County, Wisconsin, United States

Other Places[link]

• "The Rock" is a poetic and popular term for Bermuda.
• The Rock or Gibraltar, British overseas territory near the southernmost tip of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain)
• Corregidor, an island in the Philippines
• Niue, an island near Tonga
• Rockall, a islet in the Atlantic Ocean, part of the United Kingdom
• Tutuila, the main island of American Samoa
• Marine Corps Base Camp Smedley D. Butler, a Marine Corps Base Camp in Okinawa Japan
• Foundation Stone, the rock inside Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock
• Newark's Prudential Center, nicknamed "The Rock" due to Prudential Financial's logo

Food[link]

• Rock candy, type of confectionery composed of large sugar crystals
• Rock (confectionery), type of stick-shaped boiled sugar confectionery
• Edinburgh rock, stick-shaped Scottish confection, notably different from ordinary rock
• Plymouth Rock (chicken), breed of chicken
• Rock salmon, Often referred to as Rock. Sold in UK fish and chip shops.

Computers[link]

• Rock (processor), microprocessor by Sun Microsystems
• Rocks Cluster Distribution, Linux distribution for cluster computing
• Rocks (PHP)

Sports[link]

• Rock, used in the sport of Curling
• The Rock (rugby team) or Atlantic Rock, a rugby union team based in St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada
• The Rocks or the Scottish Rocks, a basketball team
• "The Rock," nickname of the athletic teams of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania
• "Rock" is a slang term for a basketball.

Other uses[link]

• ROCK1, human gene
• Rock or islet, small island
• Rock, or distaff, a tool used in spinning
• Rock, slang term for crack cocaine
• The Rock, a headland occupied by the original fortified town of Monaco, today's Monaco-Ville
• The Rock or Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, former Class I railroad in the United States
• The Rocks, Inc., US military officers' organization
• The Rock (New Zealand), a New Zealand rock music radio station

See also[link]

• All pages beginning with "Rock"
• All pages with titles containing "Rock"
• Rock of Ages (disambiguation)
• Rock and roll (disambiguation)
• Rockman or Mega Man
• Rok (disambiguation)
• ROC (disambiguation)
• Roque (disambiguation)
• Rockfish (disambiguation)
• Rock River (disambiguation)
• David Rock (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Marc Bolan (born Mark Feld; 30 September 1947 – 16 September 1977) was an English singer-songwriter, guitarist and poet. He is best known as the frontman of glam rock group T. Rex.

Biography[link]

Early life and career[link]

Plaque marking Marc Bolan's childhood home, 25 Stoke Newington Common, Hackney. (November 2005)

Bolan grew up in post-war Hackney, northeast London, the son of Phyllis Winifred (née Atkins) and Simeon Feld, a lorry driver. His father was Jewish (of Russian and Polish origin) and his mother was from a Christian background.^[1][2][3] Later moving to Wimbledon, southwest London, he fell in love with the rock and roll of Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Arthur Crudup and Chuck Berry^{[citation needed]} and was considered a mod because of dress, hanging around coffee bars such as the 2 I's in Soho.^{[citation needed]} He appeared as an extra in an episode of the television show Orlando, dressed as a mod. At the age of nine, Bolan was given his first guitar and began a skiffle band. While at school, he played guitar in "Susie and the Hoops," a trio whose vocalist was a 12-year old Helen Shapiro. At 15, he left school "by mutual consent".^{[citation needed]}

He briefly joined a modelling agency and became a "John Temple Boy", appearing in a clothing catalogue for the menswear store. He was a model for the suits in their catalogues as well as for cardboard cut-outs to be displayed in shop windows. "TOWN" magazine featured him as an early example of the mod movement in a photo spread with two other models. Mark Feld had changed his stage-name to Toby Tyler when he met and moved in with child actor Allan Warren, who was to become his first manager. This fortuitous encounter afforded Bolan a lifeline to the heart of show-business, as Warren saw Toby Tyler's potential whilst the latter spent hours sitting cross-legged on Warren's floor playing his acoustic guitar. A series of photographs was to be commissioned with photographer Michael McGrath, who later recalls that Bolan "left no impression" on him.^[4] Warren also hired a recording studio and had Bolan's first acetates cut. One track was the Bob Dylan song "Blowin' in the Wind". A version of Betty Everett's "You're No Good" was later submitted to EMI for a test screening but was turned down.

Warren later sold Bolan's contract and recordings for £200 to his landlord, property mogul David Kirch, in lieu of three months' back rent. Kirch was too busy with his property empire to do anything for him. A year or so later, Bolan's mother pushed into Kirch's office and shouted at him that he had done nothing for her son. She demanded he tear up the contract and willingly he complied.^[5][6][7] The tapes produced during the Toby Tyler recording session vanished for over 25 years before resurfacing in 1991 and selling for nearly $8,000. Their eventual release on CD in 1993 made available the earliest of Marc's known recordings.

After changing his name again to Marc Bolan (via Mark Bowland) while with Decca Records he released his first single "The Wizard". According to Danny Baker speaking on QI Series G, episode 15 on BBC television, Bolan is a contraction of Bob Dylan.^[8][9] In early 1967, manager Simon Napier-Bell added him to the pop art/mod band John's Children, which achieved some success as a live band but sold few records. A John's Children single written by Marc Bolan called "Desdemona" was banned by the BBC for its line "lift up your skirt and fly." His tenure with the band was brief. Bolan claimed to have spent time with a wizard in Paris who gave him secret knowledge and could levitate. The time spent with him was often alluded to but remained "mythical"; in reality the wizard was probably U.S. actor Riggs O'Hara with whom Bolan made a trip to Paris in 1965. His song-writing took off and he began writing many of the neo-romantic songs that would appear on his first albums with Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Tyrannosaurus Rex[link]

When John's Children collapsed (amongst other problems, the band were stunned to discover their equipment had been stolen from a studio, according to a Bolan biographer), Bolan and Steve Peregrin Took created Tyrannosaurus Rex, a psychedelic-folk rock acoustic duo, playing Bolan's songs, with Took playing assorted hand and kit percussion and occasional bass to Bolan's acoustic guitars and voice.

This version of Tyrannosaurus Rex released four albums and four singles, flirting with the charts, reaching as high as number fifteen and supported with airplay by Radio 1 DJ John Peel. One of the highlights of this era was when the duo played at the first free Hyde Park concert in 1968. Although the free-spirited, drug-taking Took was fired from the group after their first American tour, they were a force to be reckoned with in the hippy underground scene while they lasted. Their music was filled with Marc's otherworldly poetry, a book of which he published in 1969, 'The Warlock Of Love'. In keeping with his early rock and roll interests, Bolan began bringing amplified guitar lines into the duo's music, buying a vintage Gibson Les Paul guitar (later featured on the cover of the album T. Rex in 1970). After replacing Took with Mickey Finn, he let the electric influences come forward even further on A Beard of Stars, the final album to be credited to Tyrannosaurus Rex. It closed with the song "Elemental Child," featuring a long electric guitar break influenced by Jimi Hendrix.

Bolan, by now married to his girlfriend June Child (a former secretary to the manager of another of his heroes, Syd Barrett), shortened the group's name to T. Rex and wrote and recorded "Ride a White Swan", dominated by a rolling, hand clapping back-beat, Bolan's electric guitar and Finn's percussion.

T. Rex and glam rock[link]

Bolan and his producer Tony Visconti oversaw the session for "Ride a White Swan", the single that changed Bolan's career. Recorded on 1 July 1970 and released later that year, it made slow progress in the UK Top 40, until it finally peaked in early 1971 at number two.

Bolan took to wearing top hats and feather boas on stage as well as putting drops of glitter on each of his cheekbones. Stories are conflicting about his inspiration for this—some say it was introduced by his personal assistant, Chelita Secunda, although Bolan told John Pidgeon in a 1974 interview on Radio 1 that he noticed the glitter on his wife's dressing table prior to a photo session and casually daubed some on his face there and then. Other performers—and their fans—soon took up variations on the idea.

The glam era also saw the rise of Bolan's friend David Bowie, whom Bolan had come to know in the underground days (Bolan had played guitar on Bowie's 1970 single "Prettiest Star").

Bolan followed "Ride a White Swan" and T. Rex by expanding the group to a quartet with bassist Steve Currie and drummer Bill Legend, and cutting a five-minute single, "Hot Love", with a rollicking rhythm, string accents and an extended sing-along chorus inspired somewhat by "Hey Jude". It was number one for six weeks and was quickly followed by "Get It On", a grittier, more adult tune that spent four weeks in the top spot. The song was renamed "Bang a Gong (Get It On)" when released in the United States, to avoid confusion with another song of the same name by the American band Chase. The song reached #10 in the United States in early 1972, the only Top 40 single the band had in America.

In November 1971, the band's record label, Fly, released the Electric Warrior track "Jeepster" without Bolan's permission. Outraged, Bolan took advantage of the timely lapsing of his Fly Records contract and left for EMI, who gave him his own record label, the T. Rex Wax Co. Its bag and label featured an iconic head-and-shoulders image of Bolan. Despite the lack of Bolan's endorsement, "Jeepster" peaked at number two.

In 1972, Bolan achieved two more British number ones with "Telegram Sam" and "Metal Guru" (the latter of which stopped Elton John getting to the top with "Rocket Man") and two more number twos in "Children Of The Revolution" and "Solid Gold Easy Action". Bolan told Gloria Jones the track "Metal Guru" would be "the smoothest song in history".

In the same year he appeared in Ringo Starr's film Born to Boogie, a documentary showing a concert at Wembley Empire Pool on 18 March 1972. Mixed in were surreal scenes shot at John Lennon's mansion in Ascot and a session with T. Rex joined by Ringo Starr on second drum kit and Elton John on piano. At this time T. Rex record sales accounted for about 6 percent of total British domestic record sales. The band was reportedly selling 100,000 records a day; however, no T. Rex single ever became a million-seller in the UK, despite many gold discs and an average of four weeks at the top per Number One hit.

In 1973, Bolan played twin lead guitar alongside his friend Jeff Lynne on the Electric Light Orchestra songs "Ma-Ma-Ma Belle" and "Dreaming of 4000" (originally uncredited) from On the Third Day, as well as on "Everyone's Born To Die", which was not released at the time but appears as a bonus track on the 2006 remaster.

Bolan played guitar on the track "Have You Seen My Baby (Hold On)" on Ringo Starr's album Ringo.

By late 1973, his pop star fame gradually began to wane, even though he achieved a number three hit, "20th Century Boy", in February and mid-year "The Groover" followed it to number four. "Truck On (Tyke)" missed the UK Top 10 reaching only #12 in December. However, "Teenage Dream" from the 1974 album Zinc Alloy And The Hidden Riders of Tomorrow showed that Bolan was attempting to create richer, more involved music than he had previously attempted with T. Rex. He expanded the line up of the band to include a second guitarist, Jack Green, and other studio musicians, and began to take more control over the sound and production of his records.

In 1974, Bolan played guitar for Ike & Tina Turner. He appeared on "Nutbush City Limits", "Sexy Ida (Part II)", and "Baby Get It On". Tina Turner confirmed this in a BBC Radio 1 interview.^{[citation needed]}

Eventually, the vintage T. Rex line-up disintegrated. Legend left in 1973 and Finn in 1975 and Bolan's marriage came to an end because of his affair with backing singer Gloria Jones. He spent a good deal of his time in the U.S. for much of the next three years, continuing to release singles and albums which, while less popular to the masses, were full of unusual lyrics and sometimes eccentric musical experiments. Although Bolan's health began to fail as he put on weight, the former glam rock icon cleaned up and continued working, producing at least one UK chart hit every year until his death in 1977.

Resurgence[link]

Gloria Jones gave birth to Bolan's son in September 1975, whom they named Rolan Bolan (although his birth certificate lists him as 'Rolan Seymour Feld'). That same year, Bolan returned to the UK from tax exile in the U.S. and Monaco and to the public eye with a low-key tour. Bolan made regular appearances on the LWT pop show Supersonic, directed by his old friend Mike Mansfield and released a succession of singles, but he never regained the success of his glory days of the early 1970s. The last remaining member of Bolan's halcyon era T. Rex, Currie, left the group in late 1976.

In early 1977, Bolan got a new band together, released a new album, Dandy in the Underworld, and set out on a fresh UK tour, taking along punk band The Damned as support to entice a young audience who did not remember his heyday. Granada Television commissioned Bolan to front a six-part series called Marc, where he introduced new and established bands and performed his own songs. By this time Bolan had lost weight, appearing as trim as he had during T. Rex's earlier heyday. The show was broadcast during the post-school half-hour on ITV earmarked for children and teenagers; it was a big success.^{[citation needed]} One episode reunited Bolan with his former John's Children-bandmate Andy Ellison, then fronting the band Radio Stars. The last episode featured a unique Bolan "duet" with David Bowie during which Bolan fell off the stage just as the singing was commencing.^[10] With no time for a retake, this occurrence was aired and Bowie's amusement was clearly visible.

Death[link]

Bolan's shrine, on what would have been his 60th birthday, 30 September 2007.

Bolan died on 16 September 1977, two weeks before his 30th birthday.^[11][12] He was a passenger in a purple Mini 1275GT (registration FOX 661L) driven by Gloria Jones as they headed home from Mortons drinking club and restaurant in Berkeley Square. Jones lost control of the car and it struck a sycamore tree after failing to negotiate a small humpback bridge near Gipsy Lane on Queens Ride, Barnes, southwest London. Richard Madeley of daytime TV fame informed fans that it was low tyre pressure that contributed to the fatal crash.^[11]

Bolan died instantly, while Jones suffered a broken arm and broken jaw and spent time in hospital; she did not learn of Bolan's death until the day of his funeral. Bolan's home, which was less than a mile away at 142 Upper Richmond Road West in East Sheen, was quickly looted. Fans quickly turned the site of the crash into a shrine and in 2007 the site was officially recognised as Bolan's Rock Shrine.

At Bolan's funeral, attended by James Stroud, David Bowie, Paul Davis and Rod Stewart, a swan-shaped floral tribute was displayed outside the service in recognition of his breakthrough hit single. His funeral service was at the Golders Green Crematorium which is a secular provision in North London. Bolan himself stated that he was Jewish, the religion of his father. However, because his mother was not Jewish he would be considered a gentile under Orthodox Jewish law (Halakha). His ashes were buried at Golders Green Crematorium.

Bolan never learned to drive, fearing a premature death. Despite this fear, cars or automotive components are at least mentioned in, if not the subject of, many of his songs. He also owned a number of vehicles, including a famed white Rolls-Royce, which had been lent by his management to Hawkwind on the night of his death.

Fellow T. Rex member Steve Currie also died in a car crash less than four years later.

Equipment[link]

Guitars

Electric: Marc Bolan was mostly seen playing Gibson Les Pauls. His main guitar, a Les Paul Standard (fitted with a Les Paul Custom replacement neck after the original neck was broken) was refinished in a translucent orange to resemble Gretsch guitars played by one of his heroes Eddie Cochran. He was also seen playing a black Gibson Flying V with tremolo and a late 1960s model Olympic White Fender Stratocaster. One with both an eye and ear for the unusual, Bolan also played various models of visually striking guitars from smaller independent companies, among them a Veleno aluminium guitar, and the Burns Flyte.

Acoustic: Bolan favoured the Epiphone and Gibson brands. Most notably the Gibson Hummingbird and Gibson J-160E models.

In 2011, Gibson Guitar Corporation issued a specification-correct model of his main Gibson Les Paul guitar as part of their Signature series.

Amplification

While Bolan was known to use makes as diverse as Vox, Orange, HH Electronics and Marshall, he is perhaps most associated with the short-lived Vampower line of British amplifiers. Used through 1970–1973, the model MK1A Vampower 100 watt stack was present and utilised on the T. Rex tours and recordings of that period.

Signal processors

Dallas-Arbiter Fuzz Face, Electro-Harmonix Screaming Tree, MXR Blue Box, Vox wah.

Legacy[link]

In 1979, Siouxsie and the Banshees released a cover of "20th Century Boy" as the b-side to the single "The Staircase (Mystery)".

In December 1980, "Telegram Sam" was the fourth single released by British gothic rock band Bauhaus.

Also in 1980, The Bongos were the first American group, with "Mambo Sun," to enter the Billboard charts with a T.Rex cover. Since then, Bongos frontman Richard Barone has recorded several other Bolan compositions ("The Visit," "Ballrooms of Mars"), worked with T.Rex producer Tony Visconti for his current solo album, Glow (2010, Bar/None Records) that includes a remake of Bolan's "Girl" from Electric Warrior, and has himself produced tracks for Bolan's son Rolan.

In 1981, Department S released a cover of "Solid Gold Easy Action" as the b-side to the single "Is Vic There?".

In 1984, The Replacements released a cover of "20th Century Boy" as a B-side to the single "I Will Dare"; it is also included on the reissue version of their album Let It Be.^[13] In 1993, Adam Ant covered the track live on the Limed Edition live disc of his Antmusic: The Very Best of Adam Ant collection.

In 1985, Duran Duran splinter band Power Station, with Robert Palmer as vocalist, took a version of "Get It On" into the UK Top 40 and to US #6, the first cover of a Bolan song to enter the charts since his death. They also performed the tune (with Michael Des Barres replacing Palmer) at the U.S. Live Aid concert.

In 1986, the Violent Femmes performed "Children of the Revolution" on their third album The Blind Leading the Naked, for which they also recorded a music video.

In 1989, X released a live cover of "20th Century Boy" as the B-side to their single "Kurenai".

In 1990, Baby Ford did a cover of "Children of the Revolution" that appeared on the album Oooh, The World of Baby Ford.

In 1993, Guns N' Roses covered "Buick MacKane" on 'The Spaghetti Incident?" but it was mislabelled on the album as "Buick Makane".

In 1994, Billy Idol wore a t-shirt reproducing The Slider album cover in his popular video supporting the song "Speed". That was a clear homage to Marc Bolan, who helped Generation X to rise at the very beginning of their career.

Also in 1994, A House covered "Children of the Revolution" as a B-side on their "Here Come the Good Times" single alongside tracks originally by Bolan's erstwhile support band, The Damned, and by Donna Summer.

In 1995 Darryl Read released "Teenage Dream" as a single and Bill Legend of T. Rex drums on this version - for the second time round. This single was reissued in 2009 along with a promotional video filmed at the Roundhouse London - featuring Read and Legend with T. Rex fans.

In 2003 Depeche Mode's Martin Gore recorded a cover of "Life Is Strange", and included it as a b-side of the single "Stardust".^[14]

In 2006 Def Leppard released their album Yeah which contains covers of their favourite bands while growing up, the first song on this album is "20th Century Boy". Joe Elliott wanted to sing "Metal Guru" while Vivian Campbell wanted "Telegram Sam" but end up agreeing to "20th Century Boy". It's not the first time that Def Leppard has sung a T.Rex song; there is a live version of Get It On.

"Children of the Revolution" was similarly performed by Elton John and Pete Doherty of The Libertines at Live 8, 20 years later. U2's Bono and Gavin Friday also covered "Children of the Revolution" on the Moulin Rouge! soundtrack.

In 2000, Naoki Urasawa created a Japanese manga entitled 20th Century Boys that was inspired by Marc Bolan's song, "20th Century Boy". The series is a multiple award-winner, and has also been released in North America. The story was adopted into three successful live-action movies from 2008 to 2009, which were also released in the US, Canada and the UK.

"20th Century Boy" introduced a new generation of devotees to Bolan's work in 1991 when it was featured on a Levi's jeans TV commercial featuring Brad Pitt, and was re-released, reaching the UK Top 20. The song was performed by the fictional band The Flaming Creatures (performed by Placebo, reprised by Placebo and David Bowie at the 1999 BRIT Awards) in the 1998 film Velvet Goldmine. In every decade since his death, a Bolan greatest hits compilation has placed in the top 20 UK albums and periodic boosts in sales have come via cover versions from artists inspired by Bolan, including Morrissey and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Similarly, "I Love to Boogie" was briefly used on an advert for Robinson's soft drink in 2001, bringing Bolan's music to a new generation. Mitsubishi also featured "20th Century Boy" in a 2002 car commercial, prompting Hip-O Records to release a best-of collection CD titled 20th Century Boy: The Ultimate Collection.

His music is still widely used in films, recent notable cases being Breakfast on Pluto, Death Proof, Lords of Dogtown, Billy Elliot, Jarhead, Moulin Rouge!, Herbie: Fully Loaded, Breaking-Up, Hot Fuzz, Click, School of Rock & Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Bolan is still cited by many guitar-centric bands as a huge influence (Joy Division/New Order's Bernard Sumner has said that the first single he owned was "Ride a White Swan".) However, he always maintained he was a poet who put lyrics to music. The tunes were never as important as the words.

An altogether less welcome legacy for his friends and family is the ongoing row about his fortune. Bolan had arranged a discretionary trust to safeguard his money. His death left the fortune beyond the reach of those closest to him and both his family and journalists have taken an active interest in investigating the situation, so far with little result other than bringing the story to wider attention. A small, separate Jersey-based trust fund has allowed his son to receive some income. However, the bulk of Bolan's fortune, variously estimated at between £20 and £30 million pounds (approx $38 – $57 million), remains in trust. As of 2007, Bolan's family is supposed to have a house paid for by the trust, and Rolan is supposed to receive an allowance.^[15]

Bolan returned to the top of the UK charts in 2005 when the remastered, expanded Born to Boogie DVD hit No. 1 in the Music DVD charts.

Steve Kilbey – a self-confessed Marc Bolan fan and singer for renowned Australian art-rock group The Church – performed Bolan's "One Inch Rock" on the Steve Kilbey Live DVD, released in January 2008.^[16]

In 2006, it was revealed that English Heritage had refused to commission a blue plaque to commemorate Bolan, as they believed him to be of "insufficient stature or historical significance".^[17] There is, however, an existing plaque dedicated to Bolan at his childhood home, put there by Hackney Council.

There are also two plaques dedicated to his memory at Golders Green Crematorium in North London. The second one to be displayed was placed there by the official Marc Bolan fan club and fellow fans in September 2002, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his passing. The inscription on the stone, which also bears his image, reads '25 years on – his light of love still shines brightly'. Placed beneath the plaque there is an appropriate ceramic figure of a white swan.

In 2006, TV series Life on Mars, William Matheson portrays Marc Bolan, circa 1973, in a bar in Manchester. Time-travelling Sam Tyler recognises him, has a fan boy moment, and warns him to be careful of riding in Minis. In the American version of the series, the character is replaced by that of Jim Croce, who died later that year in a plane crash, and Sam warns him. However, the T. Rex version of "Get It On" is played in the New York dance club in that scene.

One of Bolan's guitars, a Gibson Flying V, recently^[when?] turned up on Antiques Roadshow in the hands of a private collector. The appraiser estimated the value of the guitar to be approximately £50,000–60,000.

A school is planned in his honour, to be built in Sierra Leone: The Marc Bolan School of Music and Film.^{[citation needed]}

The Cameron Crowe-created movie "Almost Famous" features a scene where a Black Sabbath groupie is telling aspiring journalist William Miller (said to be created in Crowe's own image) about how, "Marc Bolan broke her heart, man. It's famous," regarding the character of Penny Lane, played by Kate Hudson.

My Chemical Romance's song "Vampire Money" taken from their album Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys released on 22 November 2010 features the lyric 'glimmer like Bolan in the morning sun', referencing Marc Bolan.

A musical, 20th Century Boy, based on Bolan's life, and featuring his music, premiered at the New Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich.^[18] in 2011.

Discography[link]

Singles

• Nov. 1965 The Wizard/Beyond The Rising Sun. Decca F 12288.
• June 1966. The Third Degree/San Francisco Poet. Decca F 12413.
• Dec. 1966. Hippy Gumbo/Misfit. Parlophone R 5539.

John's Children:

• May 1967. Desdemona/Remember Thomas A Beckett. Track 604 003.
• July 1967. Midsummer's Night Scene/Sara Crazy Child. (Track 604 005, withdrawn; very few copies exist)
• Aug. 1967. Come And Play With Me In The Garden/Sara Crazy Child. Track 604 005.
• Oct. 1967. Go Go Girl/Jagged Time Lapse (B side not with Bolan). Track 604 010.

Tyrannosaurus Rex:

• April 1968. Debora/Child Star.(34). Regal Zono RZ 3008.
• Aug. 1968. One Inch Rock/Salamada Palaganda.(28). Regal Zono RZ 3011.
• Jan. 1969. Pewtor Suitor/Warlord Of The Royal Crocodiles. Regal Zono RZ 3016.
• July 1969. King Of The Rumbling Spires/Do You Remember.(44). Regal Zono RZ 3022.
• Jan. 1970. By The Light Of A Magical Moon/Find A Little Wood. Regal Zono RZ 3025.
• March 1970. Debora/One Inch Rock/Woodland Bop/Seal Of Seasons.(7). Magnifly ECHO 102.

Dib Cochran and the Earwigs:

• 1970. Oh Baby/Universal Love/Deep Summer. Bell 1121.

T. Rex:

• Oct. 1970. Ride a White Swan/Is It Love/Summertime Blues. Fly BUG 1.
• Feb. 1971. Hot Love/Woodland Rock/King Of The Mountain Cometh. Fly BUG 6.
• July 1971. Get It On (Bang a Gong)/There Was A Time/Raw Ramp. Fly BUG 10.
• Nov. 1971. Jeepster/Life's A Gas. Fly BUG 16.
• Jan. 1972. Telegram Sam/Cadillac/Baby Strange. T.Rex Wax 101.
• May 1972. Metal Guru/Thunderwing/Lady. EMI Marc 1.
• Sept. 1972. Children of the Revolution/Jitterbug Love/Sunken Rags. EMI Marc 2.
• Dec. 1972. Solid Gold Easy Action/Born To Boogie. EMI Marc 3.
• March 1973. 20th Century Boy/Free Angel. EMI Marc 4.
• June 1973. The Groover/Midnight. EMI Marc 5.

Electric Light Orchestra:

• Jan. 1973. On the Third Day – Marc Bolan played twin lead guitar on the track "Ma-Ma-Ma Belle" and 5 other songs.

Big Carrot:

• Aug. 1973. Blackjack/Squint Eye Mangle. EMI 2047.

T. Rex:

• Nov. 1973. Truck On (Tyke)/Sitting Here.(12). EMI Marc 6.
• Jan. 1974. "Teenage Dream"/"Satisfaction Pony".(13). EMI Marc 7.

Marc Bolan:

• June 1974. Jasper C. Debussy/Hippy Gumbo/The Perfumed Garden Of Gulliver Smith. Track 2094 013.

T. Rex:

• July 1974. Light Of Love/Explosive Mouth.(22). EMI Marc 8.
• Nov. 1974. Zip Gun Boogie/Space Boogie.(41). EMI Marc 9.
• July 1975. New York City/Chrome Sitar.(15). EMI Marc 10.
• Sept. 1975. Dreamy Lady/Do You Wanna Dance?/Dock Of The Bay.(30). EMI Marc 11.
• Nov. 1975. Christmas Bop/Telegram Sam/Metal Guru.(Scheduled for release but cancelled). EMI Marc 12.
• Feb. 1976. London Boys/Solid Baby.(40). EMI Marc 13.
• April 1976. Hot Love/Get It On. Cube BUG 66.
• June 1976. I Love To Boogie/Baby Boomerang.(13). EMI Marc 14.
• Sept. 1976. Laser Love/Life's An Elevator.(41). EMI Marc 15.

Marc Bolan and Gloria Jones:

• Jan. 1977. To Know Him Is To Love Him/City Port. EMI 2572.

T. Rex:

• March 1977. The Soul Of My Suit/All Alone.(42). EMI Marc 16.
• May 1977. Dandy In The Underworld/Groove A Little/Tame My Tiger. EMI Marc 17.
• Aug. 1977. Celebrate Summer/Ride My Wheels. EMI Marc 18.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Marc Bolan Signature Les Paul from Gibson
• Born to Boogie: a site dedicated to Marc Bolan and T.Rex in the Ringo Starr-produced film and its redux release in 2005
• Marc Bolan and T. Rex information website
• Marc Bolan School of Music and Film
• Marc Bolan Myspace
• Marc Bolan and T. Rex information website
• Morton's Club, Berekeley Square, London W1J
• Marc Bolan at the Internet Movie Database
• Marc Bolan at Find a Grave

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.
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

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]