Emi America

Tuesday, 16 October 2012

Emi America

David Bowie/Pat Metheny - This Is Not America (Promo Clip)

John Waite - Missing You (Original Version)

NY Giants All In - World Champions Edition

Kenny Rogers -- Lady [[ Official Video Live ]]

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United States
The United States of America (also referred to as the United States, the U.S., the USA, or America) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Caribbean and Pacific.
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Barbara Mandrell
Barbara Ann Mandrell (born December 25, 1948) is an American country music singer best-known for a 1970s–1980s series of Top 10 hits and TV shows that helped her become one of country's most successful female vocalists of the 1970s and 1980s. She is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
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Cliff Richard
Sir Cliff Richard, OBE (born Harry Rodger Webb; 14 October 1940) is an English singer, musician, performer, actor, entrepreneur and philanthropist, who has sold over 260 million records worldwide in a career spanning 7 decades.
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David Bowie
David Bowie ( ; born David Robert Jones, 8 January 1947) is an English rock musician, who has also worked as an actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for five decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s, and is known for his distinctive voice and the intellectual depth of his work.
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John Waite
John Charles Waite (born 4 July 1952) is an English rock singer and musician. He was lead vocalist for The Babys and Bad English. As a solo artist, he scored a #1 hit on the US Billboard Hot 100 with "Missing You" in 1984.
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Joss Stone
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Kate Bush
Kate Bush (born Catherine Bush 30 July 1958) is an English singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. Her eclectic musical style and idiosyncratic vocal style have made her one of the United Kingdom's most successful solo female performers of the past 30 years. Bush was signed by EMI at the age of 16 after being recommended by Pink Floyd's David Gilmour. In 1978, at age 19, she topped the UK Singles Chart for four weeks with her debut single "Wuthering Heights", becoming the first woman to have a UK number-one with a self-written song. She was also the most photographed woman in the United Kingdom that year.
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Kim Wilde
Kim Wilde (born Kim Smith, 18 November 1960 in Chiswick, west London) is an English pop singer, author and television presenter. She burst onto the music scene in 1981 with the new wave classic "Kids in America", which hit number two in the UK Singles Chart. Major U.S. success eluded her until 1987, when she topped the charts with her version of The Supremes' hit "You Keep Me Hangin' On". Since 1998, Wilde had an alternative career as a gardener, whilst still being active in music.
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Michael Stanley Band
http://wn.com/Michael_Stanley_Band
Sheena Easton
Sheena Easton (born Sheena Shirley Orr; 27 April 1959) is a Scottish recording artist who achieved worldwide fame in the 1980s. Easton became famous for being the focus of an episode in the British television program The Big Time, which recorded her attempts to gain a record contract and her eventual signing with EMI Records.
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David Bowie/Pat Metheny - This Is Not America (Promo Clip)

1985 EMI America Stereo....

published: 28 Aug 2007

Author: skytrax1

KWICK CAN'T HELP MYSELF EMI 1980 USA

Produced by Allen Jones for Unisound Productions - Emi America 1980 Printed in USA...

published: 06 Oct 2009

Author: MrAdrian64

John Waite - Missing You (Original Version)

1984 EMI America Records #SPRO 9154 (promo 12" single) Tracklisting: Side A- Missing ...

published: 28 Aug 2011

Author: HitsTownUSA

Celtic Woman - O, America!

Music video by Celtic Woman performing O, America!....

published: 28 Nov 2009

Author: emimusic

Kenny Rogers - Lucille.wmv

SA TOP 20 HISTORY: Entered: 8 July 1977 Highest position: 1 Weeks charted: 23 Kenneth Ray ...

published: 02 Apr 2010

Author: keurspel

Metal Ed.: Queensrÿche - Nightrider

Taken from the EP 'Queensrÿche'. 1983. 206 Records/EMI America. Line-up: Geof...

published: 26 Aug 2010

Author: CultOfMetal

Lady - Kenny Rogers

Lady...

published: 12 Jan 2008

Author: Robin Francis

Dan Seals - I Will Be There

Here is one of my favorite Dan Seals songs. This was a #1 song in 1987 and was on the char...

published: 28 Mar 2009

Author: KSMusicGeeks

Kenny Rogers - LADY [LYRICS]

Enjoy Singing!!!...

published: 25 Jul 2010

Author: acidburn950

NY Giants All In - World Champions Edition

I do not own any of this copyrighted material. The video footage is property of NFL Films,...

published: 15 Feb 2012

Author: CheddarPlax

Kenny Rogers - Lady

Nice song, and timeless www.myspace.com...

published: 25 Jan 2008

Author: impyink

Kenny Rogers -- Lady [[ Official Video Live ]]

...

published: 28 Jan 2011

Author: RockAndDiscoMusic

Cliff Richard - We Don't Talk Anymore (12" Mix) (Slayd5000)

Slayd5000 presents... Cliff Richard - We Don't Talk Anymore (12" Mix) (Promo 12&q...;

published: 04 Apr 2011

Author: sugabear

DOTTIE WEST-Here Comes My Baby - LIVE

The Great Dottie West...

published: 17 Jan 2008

Author: pottsking

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Photo: AP / Predrag Vuckovic

Skydiver Felix Baumgartner lands safely on Earth after skydiving fom 24 miles

Detroit Free Press

14 Oct 2012

Update: Extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner has landed on Earth after a jump from the stratosphere in what could be the world's first supersonic skydive. Baumgartner landed in eastern New Mexico desert...

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Photo: WN / Aruna Mirasdar

School children - girls and boys playing on the school ground in the school - India

Now, get info on schools at the click of a mouse

The Times of India

15 Oct 2012

PUNE: Profiles of all secondary schools in the state will now be available at the click of a mouse. A project to this effect has been undertaken by the state Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan, a...

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Photo: AP / Shakil Adil

Pakistani men hold pictures of 14-year-old schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai, who was shot last Tuesday by the Taliban for speaking out in support of education for women, during a candlelight vigil in Karachi, Pakistan, Saturday, Oct. 13, 2012.

Pakistan sends 14-year-old girl shot by Taliban to UK for care

Richmond Times Dispatch

15 Oct 2012

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan airlifted a 14-year-old activist who was shot and seriously wounded by the Taliban to the United Kingdom for treatment today, a move that will give her access to the...

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Photo: US DoD / Tyler Meister

U.S. Army overhauling its force for post-Afghanistan era

Denver Post

14 Oct 2012

FORT POLK, la. — Shortly after dark, the paratroopers jumped out of C-130s into a Caspian Sea country teeming with mayhem, political unrest and insurgents. Their first mission was to...

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The campus of ASU from Tempe Butte in nearby Tempe. Arizona State University is the main institution of higher education in the region, with campuses located in Tempe, Northwest Phoenix (ASU West Campus), Downtown Phoenix (ASU Downtown Campus) and Mesa (ASU Polytechnic Campus).

The Arizonification of America

The New York Times

16 Oct 2012

Phoenix, Ariz. With the “papers please” provision of Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 immigration law now in effect, Bill Clinton roused an overflowing crowd at Arizona State...

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Photo: WN / Marzena J.

John Zweifel on life, history, and the pursuit of all things America

The Washington Times

12 Oct 2012

Joseph Cotto Ask me a question. FLORIDA, October 11, 2012 — America is a special place, needless to say. Whether or not you agree with our nation’s political climate at any given time,...

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Photo: AP / Orlando Sentinel,Joe Burbank

Ann Romney co-hosts Good Morning America

The Guardian

10 Oct 2012

Would-be Republican first lady stands in for Robin Roberts, making her second appearance in the ABC breakfast slot Ann Romney the last time she appeared on Good Morning America....

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National Boss Day: America’s 5 favorite bosses 16 Oct 2012

The Examiner Related topics LifestyleNational Boss DayMichael Scott Advertisement A good boss is fair, approachable, kind, and a good communicator and listener. A good boss doesn’t act like he is superior or show-off every fancy detail of his life. They don’t gossip or instigate issues. If the above...(size: 6.9Kb)

Bank of America offers mortgage aid event Downtown Mortgage aid event 16 Oct 2012

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Bank of America, which has had difficulties handling delinquent mortgages, is reaching out to local homeowners who are behind in their payments, offering to review their financial situations to determine if there is a chance to save their homes. More than 2,600 customers of Bank of America who are...(size: 4.3Kb)

Multiples for America 16 Oct 2012

Khaleej Times It is almost a quarter-century since George H.W. Bush, accepting the nomination at the 1988 Republican Convention, uttered the now famous words: 'Read my lips: â€¨no new taxes.' Bush, as president, went on to raise taxes to reduce the deficit, a flip-flop seized upon by Bill Clinton in the 1992...(size: 5.2Kb)

Pacific Union International Supports Artemis Racing in America's Cup Competition 16 Oct 2012

PR Newswire Google...(size: 7.8Kb)

'Taken 2' again tops North America box office 16 Oct 2012

New Straits/Business Times LOS ANGELES: Liam Neeson’s return as ex-CIA agent Bryan Mills in “Taken 2” topped the North American box office for a second straight week, besting the Ben Affleck thriller “Argo,” industry figures showed Monday. “Taken 2”, whose prequel relaunched Neeson as a Hollywood action star four years...(size: 2.1Kb)

The Spooky Stories Behind 10 Of America's Most Famous Haunted Houses 16 Oct 2012

Business Insider Carolwood Estate Hits Market for $90 Million How to Protect Yourself Against Bad Landlords Zillow Speaker Series: Joel Spolsky of Stack Exchange Creaking floors, inexplicable cold drafts and eerie sounds usually don’t top the list of dream house features....(size: 2.0Kb)

BRIEF-A123 Systems entered into waiver agreement with Wanxiang America 16 Oct 2012

MSNBC Oct 15 (Reuters) - A123 Systems Inc : * On October 12, entered into waiver agreement with wanxiang America corp, the lender under co's $75 million loan agreement * On October 16, 2012, the company expects to be in default under certain of its material debt agreements * Is considering a broad set of...(size: 14.7Kb)

Marvel update: Ant-Man gets release date; Agent Coulson returns for S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show; Josh Holloway linked to Captain America 2 16 Oct 2012

IMDb Marvel has announced that Ant-Man, to be directed by Edgar Wright (Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs the World), will be released on...(size: 1.0Kb)

"Paul Ryan shirtless": How America grew to love its liars 16 Oct 2012

The Examiner Related topics presidential debate 2012Paul RyanPoliticselectionLiesvote 2012 Advertisement While the general public opinion regarding the Republican Vice Presidential candidate is mixed, one thing can be said without reservation or credible dispute: Paul Ryan is a liar. This is not to say that...(size: 11.1Kb)

Fiesta de Aviles draws crowds and media attention to America's oldest street 16 Oct 2012

The Examiner Related topics St Augustine FloridaSt AugustineSt Augustine art galleries Advertisement “A street that’s over 400 years old has probably seen it before, and this is some party!” said Flynn, a guy who lives down the street, but for the weekend’s third annual Fiesta de Aviles, he had declared himself...(size: 12.0Kb)

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EMI America Records was started in 1978 by EMI as a second US label next to Capitol Records. It absorbed Liberty Records in 1984. In the late 1980s EMI America was consolidated with Manhattan Records to form EMI Manhattan Records, which later became known simply as EMI in 1990, then part of EMI Records Group North America (ERG) in 1992. Currently, this organization of labels is under EMI's Capitol Music Group.

On YouTube, a video channel with the EMI America name has been launched, though it contains videos from various labels in the US-signed EMI family.^[1] There is also a MySpace page.^[2]

Past artists have included: Blessid Union of Souls, David Bowie, Lenny Burns, Kim Carnes, Sheena Easton, Joe "Bean" Esposito, Go West, Huey Lewis and the News, Barbara Mandrell, Naked Eyes, Queensrÿche, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Cliff Richard, Roxette, Talk Talk, George Thorogood and the Destroyers, John Waite, Kim Wilde, and others. Later artists include Asia and Joss Stone.

1 Selected discography
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

Selected discography [link]

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17001 Spellbound Spellbound
17002 Michael Johnson The Michael Johnson Album
17003 Kate Bush, The Kick Inside
17004 Kim Carnes St Vincent's Court
17005 Zwol Zwol
17006 J. Geils Band, The Sanctuary.
17007 Robert John Robert John
17009 Gambler Teenage Magic
17010 Michael Johnson Dialogue
17011 Pamala Stanley This Is Hot
17012 Aviator Aviator
17015 Long John Baldry Baldry's Out!
17018 Cliff Richard We Don't Talk Anymore
17019 Wilson Pickett I Want You
SW-17024 The Fools Sold Out
SW-17025 Kwick Kwick
SW-17026 The Scooters Young Girls
SW-17027 Robert John Back On The Street
SW-17029 Kittyhawk Kittyhawk
SW-17030 Kim Carnes Romance Dance
SW-17032 Chuck Francour Under The Boulevard Lights
SW-17033 Rocky Burnette The Son Of Rock And Roll
SW-17035 Michael Johnson You Can Call Me Blue
SW-17037 Eddie & The Hot Rods* Fish 'N' Chips
SW-17038 Long John Baldry Long John Baldry
SW-17039 Cliff Richard I'm No Hero
SW-17040 Michael Stanley Band, Heartland
SW-17041 Breathless Nobody Leaves This Song Alive
SW-17042 Dexys Midnight Runners Searching For The Young Soul Rebels
SW-17043 Wilson Pickett Right Track
SW-17045 The Scooters Blue Eyes
SW-17046 The Fools Heavy Menta
ST-17048 Kwick To The Point
ST-17049 Sheena Easton Sheena Easton
ST-17050 Alan David Alan David
SO-17051 Gary U.S. Bonds Dedication
SO-17052 Kim Carnes Mistaken Identity
ST-17053 Kittyhawk Race For The Oasis
SO-17054 Marty Balin Balin
SO-17055 Peter Tosh Wanted Dread & Alive
SW-17056 Michael Stanley Band North Coast
SW 17057 Michael Johnson Home Free
SW-17058 The John Hall Band All Of The Above
SW-17059 Cliff Richard Wired For Sound
ST-17060 Melba Moore What A Woman Needs
SW-17061 Sheena Easton You Could Have Been With Me
ST-17063 Kasim Sulton Kasim
ST-17064 Dwight Twilley Scuba Divers
ST-17065 Kim Wilde Kim Wilde
SO-17068 Gary U.S. Bonds On The Line
ST-17070 Stray Cats Built For Speed
ST-17071 Michael Stanley Band, MSB
ST-17073 S·P·Y·S S·P·Y·S
ST 17074 Talk Talk The Party's Over
ST-17075 Our Daughter's Wedding Moving Windows
ST-17076 George Thorogood & The Destroyers Bad To The Bone
ST-17077 Hot Chocolate Mystery
SO-17078 Kim Carnes Voyeur
ST-17080 Sheena Easton Madness, Money And Music
ST-17081 Cliff Richard Now You See Me... Now You Don't
ST-17082 The John Hall Band Searchparty
ST-17083 Talk Talk The Party's Over
ST-17084 Kate Bush, The Dreaming
ST-17086 Little Steven And The Disciples Of Soul Men Without Women
SO-17087 J. Geils Band, The Showtime!
ST-17089 Naked Eyes Naked Eyes
ST-17092 Jules Shear Watch Dog
ST-17093 David Bowie Let's Dance
ST-17094 Kajagoogoo White Feathers
SO-17095 Peter Tosh Mama Africa
ST-17096 Any Trouble Any Trouble
ST-17097 The Coconuts Don't Take My Coconuts
ST-17098 S·P·Y·S Behind Enemy Lines
ST-17100 Michael Stanley Band, You Can't Fight Fashion
ST-17132 Sheena Easton A Private Heaven

References [link]

External links [link]

This article about a United States record label is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

http://wn.com/EMI_America_Records

http://es.wn.com/EMI America Records

This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMI_America_Records

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

Look up America in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

America usually refers to either:

The Americas, a landmass comprising North America and South America
The United States of America, a country in North America

America may also refer to:

1 Other locations
2 Astronomy
3 Film and television
4 Literature
5 Music
- 5.1 Albums
- 5.2 Songs
6 Other media
7 People
8 Sports
9 Vehicles
- 9.1 Ships
10 Video games
11 See also

Other locations [link]

América, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
America, Limburg, Netherlands
América, Tamaulipas, Mexico
America, Illinois, U.S.
America, Oklahoma, U.S.

Astronomy [link]

916 America, a minor planet

Film and television [link]

America (1924 film), a film by D. W. Griffith
America (2009 film), an American made-for-television film
America (2011 film), a 2011 Puerto Rican film
America: Freedom to Fascism, a 2006 documentary
América (TV series), a Brazilian telenovela
America (US TV series), a syndicated afternoon talk show
Amreeka, a 2009 film (Amreeka the Arabic pronunciation for America)
America America, an American film by Elia Kazan
America: A Personal History of the United States, a 13-part BBC television documentary series
America: The Story of Us, a six-part, 12-hour television documentary depicting the history of the United States

Literature [link]

America (novel), a young adult novel by E. R. Frank
"America" (Judge Dredd story), a story by John Wagner
"America" (poem), a poem by Allen Ginsberg
America (The Book), a book written by the staff of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
"America" (short story), by Orson Scott Card
America, a Jake Grafton novel by Stephen Coonts
"America", a poem by Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass

Music [link]

America (band), an English-American rock band
America Records (France), a French jazz record label

Songs [link]

"America" (Bree Sharp song)
"America" (Killing Joke song)
"America" (Neil Diamond song)
"America" (Prince song)
"America" (Razorlight song)
"America" (Simon & Garfunkel song)
"America" (West Side Story song)
"America, Fuck Yeah", the satirical theme song of the 2004 film Team America: World Police
"America", a song by Tracy Chapman from Where You Live
"America", a song by Waylon Jennings from Turn the Page
"America", a song by Nas from his untitled ninth studio album
"America", a song by Santana featuring P.O.D. from Shaman
"América", a song by José Luis Perales
"America", a song by Bobby Susser from America: An Album for All Ages
"My Country, 'Tis of Thee" or "America", a patriotic song of the United States

Other media [link]

America (magazine), a weekly Roman Catholic magazine
America (XM), an XM satellite radio channel
América 2, an Argentine television station
America One, an American over-the-air television network
América Televisión, a Peruvian television network

People [link]

America Ferrera, American actress
America Hoffman, son of activist Abbie Hoffman
America Olivo, American actress

Sports [link]

América Football Club (disambiguation)
América de Cali, a football club from Cali, Colombia
América Managua, a football club from Managua, Nicaragua
Club América, a football club from Mexico City
Copa América (Spanish and Portuguese for "America Cup") football competition in South America

Vehicles [link]

America (aircraft), a multi-engine airplane used by Richard E. Byrd and his crew on a 1927 transatlantic flight
America (airship), an airship flown in 1907 and 1909 attempts to reach the North Pole, and a 1910 attempt to cross the Atlantic
America (Spanish automobile), an automobile produced in Barcelona, Spain
America (American automobile)
America, the callsign of the Apollo 17 Command/Service Module

Ships [link]

America (yacht), a racing yacht that won the America's Cup in 1851
French ship America (1788), a Téméraire-class ship of the French Navy
- America class ship of the line, derived from the French ship America
SS America, several ships of the name
HMS America, several ships of the Royal Navy
USS America, several ships of the United States Navy
America class steamship, Cunard sidewheel transatlantic steamships
- RMS America, first of the America-class
America class amphibious assault ship

Video games [link]

America (video game), a 2001 Wild West-themed real-time strategy game

http://wn.com/America

http://fr.wn.com/America

http://pt.wn.com/América (desambiguação)

http://it.wn.com/America (disambigua)

http://nl.wn.com/America

http://es.wn.com/América (desambiguación)

This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

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]

Main article: David Bowie filmography

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]

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by David Bowie

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]

Main article: David Bowie discography

David Bowie (1967)
Space Oddity (1969)
The Man Who Sold the World (1970)
Hunky Dory (1971)
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
Aladdin Sane (1973)
Pin Ups (1973)
Diamond Dogs (1974)
Young Americans (1975)
Station to Station (1976)
Low (1977)
"Heroes" (1977)

Lodger (1979)
Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980)
Let's Dance (1983)
Tonight (1984)
Never Let Me Down (1987)
Black Tie White Noise (1993)
The Buddha of Suburbia (1994)
Outside (1995)
Earthling (1997)
'Hours...' (1999)
Heathen (2002)
Reality (2003)

Filmography [link]

As Actor [link]

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

As Musician [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)

Notes [link]

^ "How to say: Bowie". bbc.co.uk. 8 January 2008. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2007/01/how_to_say_bowie.shtml. Retrieved 16 September 2010.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Buckley (2005): pp. 516–17, 524, 529
^ "From Morrissey to Tony Blair: How Irelands children are at the heart of English culture". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/from-morrissey-to-tony-blair-how-irelands-children-are-at-the-heart-of-english-culture-445584.html. Retrieved 6 July 2011.
^ Hume, John et al (2008). Britain & Ireland: Lives Entwined III. British Council. p. 127. ISBN 978-0-86355-612-8.
^ Sandford (1997): pp. 9–16
^ ^a ^b Sandford (1997): pp. 18–19
^ Buckley (2000): p. 21.
^ ^a ^b ^c Sandford (1997): pp. 19–20
^ Doggett, Peter (January 2007). "Teenage Wildlife". Mojo Classic (Mojo) (60 Years of Bowie): 8–9.
^ ^a ^b Sandford (1997): pp. 21–22
^ Sandford (1997): p. 25
^ Buckley (2005): p.19
^ Evans, Mike (2006). Rock 'n' Roll's Strangest Moments: Extraordinary Tales from Over Fifty Years. Anova Books. p. 57. ISBN 978-1-86105-923-9.
^ Heterochromia Central - What Is Central Heterochromia?
^ Sandford (1997): p. 28
^ ^a ^b Sandford (1997): pp. 29–30
^ Sandford (1997): pp. 35–39
^ Buckley (2000): p. 33
^ ^a ^b Sandford (1997): pp. 41–42
^ ^a ^b Buckley (2005): pp. 41–42
^ Buckley (2005): p. 46
^ Buckley (2005): pp. 49–52
^ ^a ^b Sandford (1997): pp. 49–50
^ ^a ^b Sandford (1997): p. 53
^ McKay, George (1996). Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance. Verso. p. 188. ISBN 978-1-85984-908-8.
^ Sandford (1997): p. 60
^ Sandford (1997): pp. 54–60
^ ^a ^b ^c Sandford (1997): pp. 62–63
^ Buckley (2000): pp. 89–90
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^ "Space Is the Place: Innovative Brooklyn rockers blast off to the future". Spin (Spin Media LLC): 1. June 2006.
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^ Gilmore, Mikal (2 February 2012), "How Ziggy Stardust Fell to Earth", Rolling Stone magazine (1149): 36–43,68
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^ "David Bowie to release "Space Oddity" multi-tracks to celebrate moon landing". NME News. 6 July 2009. http://www.nme.com/news/david-bowie/45872. Retrieved 2 September 2010.
^ Diver, Mike (5 February 2010). "David Bowie A Reality Tour Review". bbc.co.uk. http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/5gwx. Retrieved 2 September 2010.
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^ Michaels, Sean (23 March 2011). "David Bowie's unreleased album Toy leaks online". The Guardian (UK). http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/mar/23/david-bowie-toy-album-leak. Retrieved 25 March 2011.
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References [link]

Buckley, David (2000) [First published 1999]. Strange Fascination — David Bowie: The Definitive Story. London: Virgin. ISBN 0-7535-0457-X.
Buckley, David (2004). David Bowie: The Complete Guide To His Music. Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-1-84449-423-1.
Buckley, David (2005) [First published 1999]. Strange Fascination — David Bowie: The Definitive Story. London: Virgin. ISBN 978-0-7535-1002-5.
Buckley, Peter (2003). The rough guide to rock. Rough Guides. ISBN 1-84353-105-4.
Campbell, Michael (2008). Popular Music in America: And The Beat Goes On. Schirmer. ISBN 978-0-495-50530-3.
Carr, Roy; Murray, Charles Shaar (1981). Bowie: An Illustrated Record. New York: Avon. ISBN 0-380-77966-8.
Cole, Shaun (2000). 'Don we now our gay apparel': gay men's dress in the twentieth century. London: Berg. ISBN 1-85973-415-4.
Ditmore, Melissa Hope (2006). Encyclopedia of prostitution and sex work, Volume 2. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313-32970-2.
Pegg, Nicholas (2004) [First published 2000]. The Complete David Bowie. London: Reynolds & Hearn. ISBN 1-903111-73-0.
Perone, James E. (2007). The Words and Music of David Bowie. Praeger. ISBN 978-0-275-99245-3.
Sandford, Christopher (1997) [First published 1996]. Bowie: Loving the Alien. Time Warner. ISBN 0-306-80854-4.
Schinder, Scott; Schwartz, Andy (2007). Icons of Rock: An Encyclopedia of the Legends Who Changed Music Forever. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-33845-8.
Thomson, Elizabeth (1993). The Bowie Companion. Macmillan. ISBN 0-283-06262-2.
Thompson, Dave (2006). Hallo Spaceboy: The Rebirth of David Bowie. Ecw Press. ISBN 978-1-55022-733-8.

External links [link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: David Bowie

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: David Bowie

Official website
Official Myspace page
Official YouTube channel
Documentary Film - David Bowie: Sound and Vision
Bowieart – paintings, printmakings, etc.
Works by or about David Bowie in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Authority control: LCCN: n81112099 | WorldCat

v t e David Bowie

Discography Awards and nominations Filmography Tours

Studio albums	David Bowie (1967) David Bowie (1969) The Man Who Sold the World Hunky Dory The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars Aladdin Sane Pin Ups Diamond Dogs Young Americans Station to Station Low "Heroes" Lodger Scary Monsters Let's Dance Tonight Never Let Me Down Black Tie White Noise Outside Earthling 'Hours...' Heathen Reality

With Tin Machine	Tin Machine Tin Machine II Tin Machine Live: Oy Vey, Baby

Live albums	David Live Stage Ziggy Stardust: The Motion Picture LiveAndWell.com Live Santa Monica '72 Glass Spider Live VH1 Storytellers A Reality Tour

Soundtracks	Christiane F. Love You till Tuesday Labyrinth The Buddha of Suburbia

EPs	Baal Earthling in the City Live EP (Live at Fashion Rocks)

Compilations	The World of David Bowie Changesonebowie The Best of Bowie Changestwobowie Rare Golden Years Fame and Fashion Changesbowie The Singles Collection Bowie at the Beeb All Saints Best of Bowie The Platinum Collection iSelect

Box sets	Sound + Vision Bowie Box Set

Concert videos	Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars Serious Moonlight Glass Spider A Reality Tour VH1 Storytellers

Promotional films and compilations	Love You till Tuesday Bowie – The Video Collection Black Tie White Noise Best of Bowie

Tours	Ziggy Stardust Tour Diamond Dogs Tour Isolar Isolar II Serious Moonlight Tour Glass Spider Tour Tin Machine Tour Sound+Vision Tour It's My Life Tour Outside Tour Outside Summer Festivals Tour Earthling Tour The Hours... Tour Mini Tour Heathen Tour A Reality Tour

Related artists	The Spiders from Mars Tin Machine Tony Visconti Brian Eno Mick Ronson Mick Woodmansey Trevor Bolder Mott The Hoople Iggy Pop Mike Garson Reeves Gabrels Earl Slick Carlos Alomar George Murray Dennis Davis Arnold Corns Lou Reed Robert Fripp Gail Ann Dorsey Adrian Belew Pete Townshend

Related articles	Major Tom The Thin White Duke Berlin Trilogy "Bowie" The Sovereign Omikron: The Nomad Soul

Book:David Bowie / Part 2: Singles and songs Category:David Bowie

Persondata
Name	Bowie, David
Alternative names	David Robert Jones
Short description	English singer, songwriter, musician
Date of birth	8 January 1947
Place of birth	London, England, UK
Date of death
Place of death

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Pat Metheny

Background information
Born	(1954-08-12) August 12, 1954 (age 57) Lee's Summit. Missouri, United States
Genres	Jazz, jazz fusion, folk jazz world fusion, post-bop, jazz-rock, crossover jazz
Occupations	Musician, songwriter
Instruments	Electric guitar, acoustic guitar, guitar synthesizer
Years active	1974–present
Labels	ECM, Geffen, Nonesuch
Associated acts	Pat Metheny Group, Noa, The Orb, Steve Reich
Website	www.patmetheny.com
Notable instruments
Gibson ES-175 Ibanez PM20 Signature Model Ibanez PM100 Signature Model Ibanez PM35 Roland GR-300 Pikasso guitar

Patrick Bruce "Pat" Metheny (/məˈθiːni/mə-THEE-nee; born August 12, 1954) is an American jazz guitarist and composer.

He is the leader of the Pat Metheny Group and is also involved in duets, solo works and other side projects. His style incorporates elements of progressive and contemporary jazz, post-bop, latin jazz and jazz fusion.^[1] Pat Metheny has three gold albums and 19 Grammy Awards.^[2] He is the brother of jazz flugelhornist and journalist Mike Metheny.

1 Biography
2 Pat Metheny Group
3 Side projects
4 Guitar contributions
5 Influences
6 Metheny Brothers
7 Bibliography
8 Discography
9 Early recognition
10 Awards & Recognition
11 References
12 External links

Biography [link]

Metheny was born and raised in Lee's Summit, Missouri, a suburb southeast of Kansas City. Following his graduation from Lee's Summit High School, he briefly attended the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida in 1972, where he was quickly offered a teaching position. He then moved to Boston to take a teaching assistantship at the Berklee College of Music with jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton.^[3] He first made his name as a teenage prodigy under the wing of Burton.^[4] In 1974 he made his recording debut on two sessions for pianist Paul Bley's and Carol Goss' Improvising Artists label, along with fretless electric bassist Jaco Pastorius.

Metheny entered the wider jazz scene in 1975 when he joined Gary Burton's band, where he played alongside resident jazz guitarist Mick Goodrick. Goodrick was a 1967 alumnus of Berklee, who had held a teaching post there in the early 1970s. The two guitarists were interviewed jointly by Guitar Player Magazine in 1975, bringing them to the attention of fellow guitar aficionados around the world. Metheny's musical momentum carried him rapidly to the point that he had soon written enough material to record his debut album Bright Size Life with Pastorius and drummer Bob Moses.

Metheny's next recording, 1977's Watercolors, was the first to feature pianist Lyle Mays, Metheny's most frequent collaborator. The other musicians on this session were Eberhard Weber on upright bass and Danny Gottlieb on drums. Metheny's next album formalized his partnership with Mays and began the Pat Metheny Group, featuring several songs they co-wrote; the album was released as the eponymous Pat Metheny Group on West German musician/producer Manfred Eicher's ECM record label. Pat Metheny also has released notable solo, trio, quartet and duet recordings with musicians such as Jim Hall, Dave Holland, Roy Haynes, Toninho Horta, Gary Burton, Chick Corea, Pedro Aznar, Jaco Pastorius, Charlie Haden, John Scofield, Jack DeJohnette, Herbie Hancock, Bill Stewart, Ornette Coleman, Brad Mehldau, Joni Mitchell and many others.

Pat Metheny has also joined projects such as Song X with Ornette Coleman; Parallel Realities; and Jazz Baltica, with Ulf Wakenius and other Nordic jazz players like E.S.T., Nils Landgren and has played with unique singers from all over the world, such as Silje Nergaard on Tell Me Where You're Going (1990), Bruce Hornsby on Harbor Lights (1993) and Hot House (1995), Noa on Noa (1994), Abbey Lincoln on A Turtle's Dream (1994) and Anna Maria Jopek on Upojenie (2002). His collaboration with other great musicians also contains works with Milton Nascimento, Santana, Dominic Miller, Michael Brecker, Trilok Gurtu etc.

Pat Metheny has been touring for more than 30 years, playing between 120 and 240 concerts a year.

Pat Metheny Group [link]

Main article: Pat Metheny Group

The Pat Metheny Group is a fusion band founded in 1977. The first Pat Metheny Group release, 1978's Pat Metheny Group, featured the writing duo of Pat Metheny and pianist Lyle Mays, a collaboration which has spanned over 25 years and 15 albums. The recording featured the electric bass playing of Jaco Pastorius's protégé Mark Egan. The second group album, American Garage (1980), was a breakout hit, reaching #1 on the Billboard Jazz chart and crossing over onto the pop charts as well, largely on the strength of the up-tempo opening track "(Cross the) Heartland" which would become a signature tune for the group. This early incarnation of the group included Mark Egan on electric bass and Dan Gottlieb on drums.

The group built upon its success through constant touring across the USA and Europe. The early group featured a unique sound, particularly due to Metheny's Gibson ES-175 guitar coupled to two Eventide Clockworks' Harmonizer digital delay units and Mays' Oberheim and Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 synthesizers and Steinway piano. Even in this early state the band played in a wide range of styles from folk to rock to experimental. Metheny later started working with the Roland GR-300 guitar synthesizer and the Synclavier guitar system made by New England Digital. Mays expanded his setup with the Synclavier keyboard and later with various other synthesizers.

Left to right: Steve Rodby and Pat Metheny.

From 1982 to 1985 the Pat Metheny Group released Offramp (1982), a live set Travels (1983), and First Circle (1984), as well as The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), a soundtrack album for the movie of the same name in which they collaborated with David Bowie. A single from the soundtrack, 'This Is Not America', reached number 14 in the British Top 40 in early 1985 as well as number 32 in the USA.

Offramp marked the first appearance of bassist Steve Rodby (replacing Mark Egan) and Brazilian "guest artist" Nana Vasconcelos whose work on percussion and wordless vocals marked the first addition of Latin music shadings to the Group's sound, a trend which would continue and intensify on First Circle with the addition of Argentinian multi-instrumentalist Pedro Aznar, which also marked the group debut of drummer Paul Wertico (replacing Dan Gottlieb) - both Rodby and Wertico were members of the Fred Simon Group at the time, and had played in Simon-Bard as well, in Chicago, before joining Metheny.

This period became a peak of commercial popularity of the band, especially for the live recording Travels. First Circle would also be Metheny's last project with ECM Records; Metheny had been a key artist for ECM but left following conceptual disagreements with label founder Manfred Eicher. The next Pat Metheny Group releases would be based around a further intensification of the Brazilian rhythms first heard in the early 1980s. Additional Latin musicians appear as guests, notably Brazilian percussion player Armando Marçal. Still Life (Talking) (1987) was the Group's first release on new label Geffen Records, and featured several popular tracks, followed by Letter from Home (1989) which also featured Aznar and Marçal. During this period The Steppenwolf Theater Company of Chicago featured an assortment of compositions by Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays for their production of Lyle Kessler's play Orphans where it has remained special optional music for all productions of the play around the world since.

Metheny then again delved into adventurous solo and band projects, and four years went by before the release of the next record for the next Pat Metheny Group, a live set entitled The Road to You, which featured tracks from the two Geffen studio albums amongst new tunes. The group integrated new instrumentation and technologies into its work, notably Mays' unique playing technique accomplished by adding midi-controlled synth sounds at command during acoustic solos via a pedal on the piano.

Mays and Metheny themselves refer to the following three Pat Metheny Group releases as the triptych: We Live Here (1995), Quartet (1996), and Imaginary Day (1997). Moving away from the Latin style which had dominated the releases of the previous 10 years, these albums were the most wide-ranging and least commercial Group releases, including experimentations with sequenced synthetic drums on one track, free-form improvisation on acoustic instruments, and symphonic signatures, blues and sonata schemes.

After another hiatus, the Pat Metheny Group re-emerged in 2002 with the release Speaking of Now, another change in direction adding musicians to the band who are one generation younger and thus grew up with the Pat Metheny Group. The new members on the bandstand are the drummer Antonio Sanchez from Mexico City, trumpet player Cuong Vu, and bassist, vocalist, guitarist, and percussionist Richard Bona from Cameroon.

Metheny touring in 2003
Courtesy: Tyrone Lancaster

The latest release, 2005's The Way Up, is another large concept record which consists of one 68 minute-long piece (although split into four sections solely for CD navigation), a tightly organized, but not through-composed piece based on a pair of three-note kernels: The opening B, A#, F# and the derived B, A, F#. The reception of The Way Up was consistent, with standing ovations in each of the almost 90 concerts during the world tour 2005. On The Way Up, harmonica player Grégoire Maret from Switzerland was introduced as a new group member, while Richard Bona contributed only as a guest musician.

During the world tour Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Nando Lauria completed the line-up of the Pat Metheny Group. The Way Up was released through Nonesuch Records and all of Metheny's Geffen and Warner Brothers back catalogue is to be released on the label. Core members of the group are leader and founder, guitarist Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays (piano, keyboards) and Steve Rodby (double and electric bass) who joined in 1980. Drummer Paul Wertico replaced Dan Gottlieb in 1983 and continued to play with the group for more than 18 years, until he was replaced by Antonio Sanchez, currently also a member of The Pat Metheny Trio.

The current Pat Metheny Group members are Pat Metheny (guitars), Lyle Mays (piano and keyboards), Steve Rodby (double bass, electric bass), Antonio Sanchez (drums), Cuong Vu (trumpet). Other musicians that have been hired regularly for Metheny Group tours are: the late Mark Ledford (vocals, trumpet, guitar); David Blamires (vocals, miscellaneous instruments); Armando Marçal (percussion); Pedro Aznar (vocals, guitar, percussion); Richard Bona (vocals, guitar, bass, and percussion). On the most recent tour to promote the record "The Way Up", Grégoire Maret (harmonica, percussion, vocals) and Nando Lauria (guitar, percussion, vocals) joined the Group. Pat Metheny has collected 19 Grammy Awards, and of them, as part of The Pat Metheny Group, 10 of those awards were consecutive.

Side projects [link]

When working outside of the confines of the PMG, Metheny has shown different sides to his musical personality. On Secret Story (1992) and Orchestrion (2009), he has ventured into forms of orchestrating his music not covered by the PMG. In the late '80s Metheny began collaborating more with established jazz figures such as Ornette Coleman, Chick Corea, Michael Brecker, Joshua Redman, Charlie Haden, Jim Hall, Dave Holland, Christian McBride, David Sanchez and Roy Haynes. Despite his conversion from Brazilian and Latin jazz into more traditional jazz, Metheny still pushed the envelope in the mid-90s with avante garde albums in Zero Tolerance for Silence and The Sign of Four (with Derek Bailey). Metheny's latest side projects teams him with Brad Mehldau and his Trio. In 2006, Metheny appeared as a sideman on Brecker's last album, Pilgrimage.

Guitar contributions [link]

Pat Metheny and his guitar.

Continuing the tradition of jazz guitarists borrowing tones and techniques from their rock counterparts, Metheny has made alterations to the jazz guitar tone palette.

Twelve-string electric [link]

Prior to Metheny, Pat Martino had used the electric twelve-string guitar on a studio album, Desperado, and John McLaughlin had used a double-neck electric guitar with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. (Lenny Breau had introduced the acoustic twelve-string to jazz.^{[citation needed]}) Metheny introduced alternate 12-string tunings to jazz^{[citation needed]}; these can be heard on tunes such as "Sirabhorn" (from Bright Size Life) and San Lorenzo (from Pat Metheny Group and Travels).

Six-string electric [link]

Metheny's tone, which has evolved over the years, involves using the natural full-frequency response of his hollow-body guitar, combined with high-midrange settings on his amplifier to create a smooth, sustaining lead sound that is virtually devoid of piercing treble yet is able to cut through a dense mix. By using digital signal processing that involves digital delay/chorus and reverb, he has created a big, rich, and resonant instrumental voice.

Guitar synthesizer [link]

Metheny was also one of the first jazz guitarists to make heavy use of the Roland GR-300 Guitar Synthesizer. While John Abercrombie and Bill Frisell also used it heavily in the 1980s, Metheny is the only one of the three who still uses the instrument on a regular basis. Unlike many guitar synth users, Metheny limits himself to a very small number of sounds. In interviews, he has argued that each of the timbres achievable through guitar synthesis should be treated as a separate instrument, and that he has tried to master each of these "instruments" instead of using it for incidental color. One of the "patches" that Pat used often is on Roland's JV-80 "Vintage Synth" expansion card titled "Pat's GR-300".

42-string Pikasso guitar [link]

Main article: Pikasso guitar

Metheny plays a custom-made Pikasso I created by Canadian luthier Linda Manzer on "Into the Dream" and on the albums Quartet, Imaginary Day, Jim Hall & Pat Metheny, Trio→Live, and the Speaking of Now Live and Imaginary Day DVDs. Metheny has also used the guitar in his guest appearances on other artist's albums.

Manzer has also made many acoustic guitars for Metheny, including a mini guitar, an acoustic sitar guitar, and also the baritone guitar, which Metheny used for the recording of One Quiet Night. His latest use of the Pikasso is found on the album Metheny Mehldau Quartet, his second collaboration with pianist Brad Mehldau and his trio sidemen Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard; the Pikasso is featured in Metheny's impressionistic composition "The Sound of Water."

Influences [link]

Metheny playing the guitar controller for the Roland GR300 Guitar Synthesizer.

As a young musician, Pat Metheny did everything he could to sound like Wes Montgomery, but when he was 14 or 15, he decided that he felt that it was disrespectful to imitate him.^[5] In the liner notes on the 2-disc Montgomery compilation Impressions: the Verve Jazz Sides, Metheny is quoted as saying, "(Smokin' at the Half Note) is the absolute greatest jazz-guitar album ever made. It is also the record that taught me how to play."

The angular compositions, asymmetrical lines, relentless rhythmic drive, and deep blues feeling of Ornette Coleman's New York is Now (Blue Note) inspired Metheny to find his own direction.^[6] He has recorded Coleman compositions on a number of his records (starting with a medley of "Round Trip" and "Broadway Blues" on his debut Bright Size Life); worked extensively with Coleman collaborators such as Charlie Haden, Dewey Redman, and Billy Higgins; and has even made a record, Song X, with Coleman.

Metheny's playing (as well as his tone) also show significant influence by Jim Hall, Joe Diorio, Kenny Burrell, Joe Pass, John McLaughlin and other classic jazz players^{[citation needed]}. Metheny has often been quoted saying that he is as likely to name non-guitarists as significant stylistic influences as fellow guitar players, giving as examples players like Clifford Brown and John Coltrane^{[citation needed]}. He has stated that Miles Davis' live album Four & More was hugely influential on his pursuit into jazz music. He has also admitted to being heavily influenced by The Beatles, going so far as to say that everything by The Beatles has impacted him as a musician. He has paid significant attention to the evolution of guitar playing across genres, however, and is familiar with the playing of notables from the likes of rocker Eddie Van Halen to Leo Kottke.^{[citation needed]}

In particular, he has been influenced by Brazilian music--both the European-influenced jazz sound of the bossa nova and the intensely polyrhythmic Afro-Brazilian sounds of the country's northeast.^{[citation needed]} Metheny made 3 albums on ECM with the Brazilian vocalist and percussionist Naná Vasconcelos in the early 1980s. He also lived in Brazil from the late 1980s to the early 1990s and performed with several local musicians such as Milton Nascimento and Toninho Horta. He also played with Antonio Carlos Jobim as a tribute, in a live performance in Carnegie Hall Salutes The Jazz Masters: Verve 50th Anniversary before Jobim’s passing away.

He is also a fan of several pop music artists, especially singer/songwriters including The Beatles; James Taylor (after whom he named the song "James" on Offramp); Bruce Hornsby, Cheap Trick, Joni Mitchell, with whom he performed on her Shadows and Light (1980, Asylum/ Elektra) live tour. Metheny is also fond of Buckethead's music. He also worked with, sponsored or helped to make attractive recordings of unique singer/songwriters from all over the world such as Pedro Aznar (Argentina), David Bowie (UK), Silje Nergaard (Norway), Noa (Israel), and Anna Maria Jopek (Poland).^[7]

Two of Metheny's recordings, The Way Up and Orchestrion, evidence the influence of American minimalist composer Steve Reich and utilize similar rhythmic figures structured around pulse. Reich's composition Electric Counterpoint was first recorded by Metheny and appears on the Different Trains CD released by Nonesuch Records in 1987.

Metheny Brothers [link]

Pat took part in recording some of the CDs by his older brother, trumpeter Mike Metheny, a jazz musician and a trumpet player based in Kansas City, Missouri, among them Day In - Night Out (1986) and more recently Close Enough for Love (2001).^[8]^[9]

Bibliography [link]

Goins, Wayne E. (2001). Emotional Response to Music: Pat Metheny's Secret Story. Edwin Mellen Press.

Discography [link]

Main article: Pat Metheny discography

Early recognition [link]

Chuck Lorre (producer of Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory) mentions Pat Metheny in his weekly 'vanity card'^[10] (shown briefly after the credits of the Season 1 Episode 12 episode of The Big Bang Theory entitled "The Jerusalem Duality"). To summarize, Chuck Lorre was a professional guitarist at the age of 22. He was invited to audit a jazz guitar class at the University of Miami, and his ego was crushed when Pat Metheny began to play. Chuck says that this experience played a part in shifting his focus toward television.

Awards & Recognition [link]

In 2011, Pat Metheny was voted "Guitarist of the Year" in the DownBeat Magazine's Readers Poll.

In 2010, Pat Metheny was voted "Guitarist of the Year" in the DownBeat Magazine's Readers Poll.

In 2009, Pat Metheny was voted "Guitarist of the Year" in the DownBeat Magazine Readers Poll.

In 1995, Pat Metheny was granted the Miles Davis Award by the Montreal International Jazz Festival.

List of Grammy Awards received by Pat Metheny:^[11]

Year	Category	Title	Note
2012	Best New Age Album	What's It All About
2008	Best Jazz Instrumental Album	Pilgrimage	Won as a Producer
2006	Best Contemporary Jazz Album	The Way Up	Pat Metheny Group
2004	Best New Age Album	One Quiet Night
2003	Best Contemporary Jazz Album	Speaking of Now	Pat Metheny Group
2001	Best Jazz Instrumental Solo	"(Go) Get It"	Won as a Soloist
2000	Best Jazz Instrumental Performance	Like Minds	with Chick Corea, Dave Holland, Gary Burton, Roy Haynes
1999	Best Rock Instrumental Performance	"The Roots of Coincidence"	Pat Metheny Group
1999	Best Contemporary Jazz Performance	Imaginary Day	Pat Metheny Group
1998	Best Jazz Instrumental Performance	Beyond the Missouri Sky (Short Stories)	with Charlie Haden
1996	Best Contemporary Jazz Performance	We Live Here	Pat Metheny Goup
1994	Best Contemporary Jazz Performance	The Road to You	Pat Metheny Group
1993	Best Contemporary Jazz Performance	Secret Story
1991	Best Instrumental Composition	"Change of Heart"	Won as a Composer
1990	Best Jazz Fusion Performance	Letter from Home	Pat Metheny Group
1988	Best Jazz Fusion Performance	Still Life (Talking)	Pat Metheny Group
1985	Best Jazz Fusion Performance	First Circle	Pat Metheny Group
1984	Best Jazz Fusion Performance	Travels	Pat Metheny Group
1983	Best Jazz Fusion Performance	Offramp	Pat Metheny Group

References [link]

^ Yanow, Scott (2010). "Pat Metheny". allmusic. Rovi Corporation. http://www.allmusic.com/artist/p7121. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
^ "Past Winners Search". GRAMMY.com. http://www.grammy.com/nominees/search?artist=pat+metheny&title=&year=All&genre=All. Retrieved November 7, 2011.
^ Taylor, B. Kimberly (1999). "Pat Metheny". Encyclopedia.com. HighBeam Research, Inc. http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Pat_Metheny.aspx. Retrieved 2010-04-04.
^ Chinen, Nate (2010-01-28). "19th-Century Concept, With a Few Upgrades". The New York Times (The New York Times Company). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/arts/music/31metheny.html. Retrieved 2010-04-05.
^ Ratliff, Ben (2005-02-25). "Pat Metheny: An Idealist Reconnects With His Mentors". The New York Times (The New York Times Company). http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/arts/music/25meth.html?pagewanted=4. Retrieved 2010-04-11.
^ Jeff Kitts and Brad Tolinski, Eds. (2002-10-01). Guitar World Presents 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 70. ISBN 978-0-634-04619-3. http://books.google.com/books?id=Fg838EcECUwC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.
^ "Pat Metheny". Pat Metheny. http://www.patmetheny.com/pat_recommends.cfm. Retrieved 2011-07-19.
^ "Mike Metheny official website". Mikemetheny.com. 2011-06-07. http://www.mikemetheny.com. Retrieved 2011-07-19.
^ "Metheny Music Foundation, Inc". Methenymusicfoundation.org. 2010-07-23. http://www.methenymusicfoundation.org/history.htm. Retrieved 2011-07-19.
^ "Chuck Lorre Vanity Card #202". Chucklorre.com. 2008-04-14. http://www.chucklorre.com/index-bbt.php?p=202. Retrieved 2011-07-19.
^ "Past Winners Search". GRAMMY.com. http://www.grammy.com/nominees/search?artist=pat+metheny&title=&year=All&genre=All. Retrieved September 25, 2011.

External links [link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pat Metheny

The Pat Metheny homepage - biographies, discographies, discussion and songbook forums, tour dates, etc.
The most complete Pat Metheny discography with radio shows, promos a. o.
Pat Metheny entry at AllMusic.com
Pat Metheny profile, NNDB
Pat Metheny's guitar rig
Pat Metheny at the Internet Movie Database
Pat Metheny discography at MusicBrainz
Pat Metheny's artist file on the Montreal International Jazz Festival's website

v t e Pat Metheny Group

Pat Metheny Lyle Mays Steve Rodby Antonio Sanchez Cuong Vu Grégoire Maret Nando Lauria Mark Egan Danny Gottlieb Naná Vasconcelos Pedro Aznar Paul Wertico Armando Marcal David Blamires Mark Ledford Luis Conte Richard Bona

Discography	Pat Metheny Group (1978) American Garage (1980) Offramp (1982) Travels (1983) First Circle (1984) The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) Still Life (Talking) (1987) Letter from Home (1989) The Road to You (1993) We Live Here (1995) Quartet (1996) Imaginary Day (1997) Speaking of Now (2002) The Way Up (2005)

Pat Metheny

Pat Metheny Group

Albums	Pat Metheny Group American Garage Offramp Travels First Circle The Falcon and the Snowman Still Life (Talking) Letter from Home The Road to You We Live Here Quartet Imaginary Day Speaking of Now The Way Up

Singles	Are You Going With Me? This Is Not America

Albums as leader

Solo albums

Collaborations

Compilations

Works
Works II
Selected Recordings:rarum IX

Soundtracks

Passaggio per il paradiso
A Map of the World

Persondata
Name	Metheny, Pat
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1954-08-12
Place of birth	Lee's Summit. Missouri, United States
Date of death
Place of death

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This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Metheny

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

For other people named John Waite, see John Waite (disambiguation).

John Waite
John Waite at Sound Check before the Surf and Song Festival
Background information
Birth name	John Charles Waite
Born	(1952-07-04) 4 July 1952 (age 59) Lancaster, Lancashire, England
Genres	Pop rock, hard rock, power pop, pop
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, musician
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, bass
Years active	1975–present
Labels	Chrysalis Records EMI Epic Records Gold Circle Records Rounder Records No Brakes Records Imago Records Frontiers Records
Associated acts	The Babys Bad English Alison Krauss Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band Journey
Website	www.johnwaitethesinger.com

John Charles Waite (born 4 July 1952^[1]) is an English musician. He was lead vocalist for The Babys and Bad English. As a solo artist, he scored several international hits, including 1984's "Missing You", a #1 hit on the US Billboard Hot 100 and a top ten hit on the UK Singles Chart.

1 Biography
2 Personal life
3 Discography
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

Biography [link]

Waite was born in Lancaster, England. He first came to attention as the lead singer and bassist of The Babys, a British group which had moderate chart success, including two pop hits that both coincidentally peaked at #13 on the Billboard Hot 100, "Isn't It Time" (1977) and "Everytime I Think Of You" (1979),^[2] and a solid following for their concert tours. Over the course of five years, the band produced five albums ending with the final album On the Edge in October 1980, after which the group broke up.^[3]

Waite subsequently launched his solo career with his 1982 debut album Ignition, which produced the hit single "Change". The Chrysalis 45 failed to chart on Billboard's Hot 100 during its initial release but was a top track on AOR radio stations as well as a very popular music video on MTV as the 'new' cable channel celebrated its first full year of operation. The pulsating track was written by Holly Knight (The song was originally recorded in 1981 by Knight's band Spider) and in 1985 was included on the Platinum selling Vision Quest soundtrack. (The single was reissued and this time it reached the Top 50 on the Hot 100.) "Going To The Top" was released as the original follow-up single to "Change".

His next album, No Brakes, resulted in international attention - and was a Top 10 Billboard album in the US - due to the smash hit "Missing You" which went to #1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.^[4] It knocked Tina Turner's "What's Love Got To Do With It?" out of #1. For that very reason, Turner later recorded and released Waite's smash song herself. (Turner's single peaked at a disappointing #84 on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1996.) "Missing You" also hit #1 on Billboard's Album Rock Tracks as well as the Top 10 of Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart. No Brakes sold over a million and a half US copies yet has never been certified above the RIAA Gold standard (a record company must apply to the RIAA for such certification). Two more singles from No Brakes followed, including "Tears" which was a Top 10 hit on the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts.

The next album Mask of Smiles followed in 1985 featuring the hit single "Every Step of the Way". Another single, "If Anybody Had a Heart", was released from the soundtrack of the 1986 film About Last Night..., starring Demi Moore. In 1987, "Rover's Return" was released with the single "These Times Are Hard For Lovers". Waite would have another soundtrack appearance in 1990 from Days of Thunder with "Deal for Life", written by Martin Page and Bernie Taupin.

In 1988, Waite joined former Babys bandmates Jonathan Cain and Ricky Phillips along with Neal Schon from Journey and drummer Deen Castronovo, to form the supergroup Bad English. In 1989, the Bad English ballad "When I See You Smile" (penned by Diane Warren) went to #1 on Billboard's Hot 100 and earned a Gold-certified single. Its parent album reached Billboard's Top Five and sold nearly two million copies in the United States alone. Bad English released two albums before tensions amongst the members led to the band's dissolution by 1992.

Waite returned to solo work and since 1995 has produced five solo albums including his latest album Rough And Tumble. He still tours, including in 2003 with Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band, and as an opening act for Journey in 2005.

In 2006, "Missing You" was released as a duet with Alison Krauss and reached the Top 40 on the Country Charts in the United States. Waite appeared with Krauss on the Tonight Show on February 5, 2007 to perform "Missing You."

In 2008 he recorded as a guest vocal the track "In God's Shadow" from the Keith Reid Project's The Common Thread.

Waite appears as himself and performs two songs in the 2010 feature film, New Day, from L'Oiseau Blanc Films. In 2011 the title track from his tenth solo album " Rough and Tumble " went number one on Classic Rock radio.

Year	Album details	Peak chart positions			Certifications (sales threshold)
Year	Album details	UK ^[6]	SWE ^[7]	US ^[8]	Certifications (sales threshold)
1982	Ignition First studio album Release date: May 21, 1982 Label: Chrysalis Records	—	—	68
1984	No Brakes Second studio album Release date: June 15, 1984 Label: EMI	64	—	10	US: Gold CAN: Platinum
1985	Mask of Smiles Third studio album Release date: July 26, 1985 Label: EMI	—	—	36
1987	Rover's Return Fourth studio album Release date: June 19, 1987 Label: EMI	—	28	77
1995	Temple Bar Fifth studio album Release date: February 14, 1995 Label: Imago Records	—	—	—
1997	When You Were Mine Sixth studio album Release date: September 23, 1997 Label: Mercury Records	—	—	—
2001	Figure in a Landscape Seventh studio album Release date: August 21, 2001 Label: One Way Records	—	—	—
2004	The Hard Way Eighth studio album Release date: September 21, 2004 Label: No Brakes	—	—	—
2006	Downtown: Journey of a Heart Ninth studio album Release date: January 9, 2007 Label: Rounder Records	—	—	—
2011	Rough & Tumble Tenth studio album Release date: 2011 Label: Frontiers Records	—	—	—
"—" denotes releases that did not chart

Live albums [link]

Year	Album	Label
2001	Live & Rare Tracks	One Way
2010	In Real Time	Frontiers Records

Compilation albums [link]

Year	Album	Label
1992	The Essential John Waite	Chrysalis
1996	Complete	Capitol

Singles [link]

Year	Single	Peak chart positions^[6]									Album
Year	Single	UK	CAN	NZ	SWI	US ^[9]	US Main	US AC	US Dance	US Country	Album
1982	"Change"	—	—	—	—	—	16	—	—	—	Ignition
1982	"Going to the Top"	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Ignition
1984	"Missing You"	9	1	18	12	1	1	7	27	—	No Brakes
	"Tears"	—	45	—	—	37	8	—	—	—
	"Dark Side of the Sun"	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
1985	"Restless Heart"	—	—	—	—	59	28	—	—	—
	"Change" (re-release)	—	—	—	—	54	—	—	—	—	Vision Quest (soundtrack)
	"Every Step of the Way"	—	39	—	—	25	4	—	—	—	Mask of Smiles
	"Welcome to Paradise"	—	—	—	—	85	—	—	—	—	Mask of Smiles
1986	"If Anybody Had a Heart"	—	—	—	—	76	24	—	—	—	About Last Night... (soundtrack)
1987	"These Times Are Hard for Lovers"	77	—	—	—	53	6	—	—	—	Rover's Return
1987	"Don't Lose Any Sleep"	—	—	—	—	81	—	—	—	—
1988	"Rover's Return"	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
1990	"Deal for Life"	80	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Days of Thunder (soundtrack)
1991	"Time Stood Still" (Bad English featuring John Waite)	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Backlash (Bad English)
1993	"In Dreams"	—	—	—	—	103	—	—	—	—	True Romance (soundtrack)
1993	"Missing You" (re-entry)	56	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	The Essential John Waite
1995	"How Did I Get By Without You?"	—	—	—	—	89	20	—	—	—	Temple Bar
2001	"Fly"	—	—	—	—	—	—	27	—	—	Figure in a Landscape
2005	"New York City Girl"	—	—	—	—	—	—	23	—	—	The Hard Way
2006	"Missing You" (with Alison Krauss)	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	34	Downtown: Journey of a Heart
2011	"Shadows of Love"	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Rough & Tumble
2011	"If You Ever Get Lonely"	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	Rough & Tumble
"—" denotes releases that did not chart

References [link]

^ Holly George-Warren, Patricia Romanowski, Jon Pareles (2001) The Rolling stone encyclopedia of rock & roll p. 36. University of Michigan
^ All Music Guide: The Babys: Billboard Singles
^ Life Story of John Waite - The Babys
^ Fred Bronson (1997) The Billboard book of number one hits p.594. University of Virginia
^ John Waite inverview
^ ^a ^b Roberts, David (2006). British Hit Singles & Albums (19th ed.). London: Guinness World Records Limited. p. 589. ISBN 1-904994-10-5.
^ Steffen Hung (1987-07-29). "Swedish Charts Portal". swedishcharts.com. http://swedishcharts.com/search.asp?cat=a&search=john+waite. Retrieved 2011-12-31.
^ http://www.allmusic.com/artist/p5776
^ Whitburn, Joel (2011). Top Pop Singles 1955–2010. Record Research, Inc. p. 949. ISBN 0-89820-188-8.

External links [link]

v t e Bad English

John Waite Neal Schon Jonathan Cain Ricky Phillips Deen Castronovo

Studio albums	Bad English Backlash

Singles	"When I See You Smile"

Portal:Biography Portal:Rock and roll Portal:Rock music

Persondata
Name	Waite, John
Alternative names
Short description	English male singer
Date of birth	4 July 1952
Place of birth	Lancaster,Lancashire,England,United Kingdom
Date of death
Place of death

This page contains text from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Waite

This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.

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