David Bowie Biography

One of only a handful of rock artists to have maintained a steady recording career from the '60s through the '90s, David Bowie (David Robert Jones, Jan. 8, 1947, Brixton, South London) became a vastly influential rock figure in the '70s, known equally for the cutting-edge quality of his music--which consistently was well ahead of its time stylistically--and his brilliant incorporation of theatrical elements into live performance. 

Dubbed early on as "the chameleon of rock," Bowie spent his '70s heyday changing his look, sound, and style with the release of nearly every album. During the course of the '70s alone, the singer took on the role of futuristic rock star (1972's The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars), slick white-soul singer (1975's Young Americans), Euro-rock instrumentalist (1977's Low) and even punkish world-music avatar (1979's Lodger). If there was a dilemma to be had--and at the time there didn't appear to be--it may have been that Bowie's constant shifts precluded the establishment of a central artistic focus: In short, the music often seemed to take a back seat to the new look or style itself.

Though Bowie's arrival on the scene for most fans came via 1972's Ziggy Stardust, those captivated by the album soon discovered much had preceded it. Uncovering the singer's past work seemed much like peeling the layers of an onion: Prior to Ziggy came the warm and friendly Hunky Dory (1971); before that were the obscure Mercury albums Man Of Words, Man Of Music (1969) and The Man Who Sold The World (1970), then already out of print; before even that was the extremely obscure debut album David Bowie, released on Deram Records in April 1967. 

As the singer's popularity climbed throughout the '70s and later, additional reissue packages emerged that included singles Bowie had recorded as far back as 1964--under such names as Davy Jones & the Kingbees, the Manish Boys, the Lower Third, and David Bowie (he had changed his name due to the rising Monkee star) & the Buzz. 

What made all this extremely relevant was that by 1972, when Bowie appeared to be making his American "debut" with Ziggy Stardust, he was already a well-seasoned performer, fully aware of the ins and outs of the music business and by no means naive. Unlike most new artists of the '70s, who often took two or three records to fine-tune one particularly well-received aspect of their style or repertoire, Bowie had "arrived" complete and fully-formed.

Still, the singer's stylistic shifts were more noteworthy for their disparity than for any sort of innovation; Bowie was often forthright about the artists who directly influenced his sound. In rough order, between 1967 and 1970, they included British singer Anthony Newley, Bob Dylan and Lou Reed (both who were acknowledged on the liner to 1971's Hunky Dory), Iggy Pop (whose name inspired Bowie's "Ziggy" persona and with whom he would often collaborate), Bruce Springsteen, the entire Philadelphia soul sound (Bowie dubbed 1975's R&B-filled Young Americans his "plastic soul" phase), Eno, Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, and even Talking Heads. Further, his '60s British pop influences were made abundantly clear by his trendsetting 1973 "tribute" album Pin Ups, which featured covers of past songs by the Pretty Things, Them, Yardbirds, Pink Floyd, the Who, Australia's Easybeats, and the Kinks, among others.

Bowie's international fame sprang not only from his music, but his work in films. One of few pop stars to have made a believable transition from music to the screen, the singer won praise for his work in The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976), Just A Gigolo (1978), The Hunger (1983), Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Absolute Beginners and Labyrinth (both 1986). Additionally, he starred in the Broadway play The Elephant Man in 1980 and the BBC-TV adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's Baal in 1982.

Despite Bowie's seeming ubiquitousness, his music was not played much on the radio during the height of his '70s fame. Discounting the '73 hit "Space Oddity"--which had originally been recorded in 1969 and was thus pre-Ziggy--Bowie had only three top 40 hits during the decade, with his biggest single, the No. 1 "Fame," featuring prominent backing vocals by John Lennon. Perhaps oddly, Bowie's ascendancy to the top 40 with 1983's "Let's Dance" almost precisely coincided with his gradual falling out of favor with the countless critics who had spent the prior decade praising his every move. While that single's source, the album Let's Dance, was initially viewed as yet another "phase" in his chameleon-like career--it combined the R&B sound of co-producer Nile Rodgers with the bluesy guitar of Stevie Ray Vaughan--the same general style remained throughout 1984's much weaker follow-up Tonight. And where Bowie had once seemed a songwriter with an unlimited supply of catchy new tunes, both albums were distressingly filled with older material, such as remakes of Bowie & Iggy Pop's "China Girl" and "Tonight" as well as covers of songs by Brian Wilson, Leiber & Stoller, and others. The low point came in 1985, when Bowie and Mick Jagger recorded a pointless duet version of "Dancing In The Street," which nonetheless became a top 10 hit.

Unfortunately for Bowie, despite the noticeable resurgence in the quality of his material that began with 1987's Never Let Me Down (which wrongly received the bad reviews its two predecessors deserved), his singing career has been in a downward spiral ever since. He formed the quartet Tin Machine in 1989, and the band context sparked him to write some of his finest material since 1980's Scary Monsters. But the group's three albums were among the least commercially successful records he made--with 1991's Tin Machine II peaking at No. 126, and 1992's live set Oy Vey, Baby incredibly failing to enter the charts at all. Perhaps even more mortifying, when the singer resumed recording under his own name with 1993's Black Tie White Noise--again one of his best efforts in years--his new label, Savage Records, went under a few short weeks after issuing the album, and the set went into commercial limbo. Thus Bowie's next album The Buddha Of Suburbia did not see release until some years later--after the singer struck a new deal with Virgin Records and issued the well-received Outside (1995) and Earthling (1997).

Bowie saw the millennium out via EMI's full-scale reissue of his back catalog in 1999 (similar in most respects to the early-'90s Ryko CD versions, except that the extra non-album tracks had been unceremoniously--and ungenerously--dropped) and with Hours..., a collection of new songs that, in a rare move for Bowie, seemed to look back instead of forward, with several tracks conjuring up fond memories of past sonic personae. Yet the singer's most attention-grabbing acts in the late '90s were not musical, but business-related: his launching of the davidbowie.com Internet service provider and his extremely successful sale of shares in himself (or, more precisely, the profits from his projected future royalties) on the bond market, both of which helped catapult him into the ranks of the planet's wealthiest rock stars.

In 2002 Bowie reappeared with Heathen on a new label, his ISO imprint via Columbia, assisted by an old friend, producer Tony Visconti. Not surprisingly the album found Bowie once again mining his past with respectable results. He also celebrated the 30th anniversary of his landmark Ziggy Stardust album in 2002 with yet another reissue. The re-release of soundtrack to the Ziggy Stardust concert film, and the film itself, issued on DVD, followed in 2003.

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