David Bowie (1947

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"WXPN World Cafe Interview" — October 2, 1997

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Biography

David Robert Jones, known as David Bowie, was an English singer, songwriter and actor. Regarded as among the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Bowie received particular acclaim for his work in the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, and his music and stagecraft have had a significant impact on popular music.

Timeline

The story of David Bowie, told in moments.

1947 Birth

Born David Robert Jones in Brixton, south London. His half-brother Terry introduces him to jazz and Buddhism. A schoolyard fight at 15 permanently dilates his left pupil. One eye appears blue, the other brown.

A schoolyard fight permanently changed your eyes. Did that make you feel different or just look different? What did your half-brother Terry give you besides jazz and Buddhism?

1969 Event

"Space Oddity" releases five days before the Apollo 11 moon landing. Major Tom, floating helplessly in a tin can. The BBC plays it during its lunar coverage. Bowie goes from obscurity to the British top five in a week.

Space Oddity released five days before the moon landing. Luck or planning? Is Major Tom floating alone your self-portrait?

1972 Event

Ziggy Stardust. The album and the character arrive together. Red mullet hair, kabuki makeup, platform boots, androgyny as performance art. He tells an interviewer he's bisexual. It's 1972. He makes otherness look like the only option worth choosing.

Ziggy Stardust. Was the character a mask or the real you? Telling an interviewer you re bisexual in 1972. Were you terrified?

1977 Event

Moves to West Berlin. Records Low and Heroes with Brian Eno in Hansa Studios, 500 yards from the Wall. The Berlin Trilogy. Electronic, ambient, fractured. "Heroes" is about two lovers kissing by the Wall. It becomes an anthem for German reunification twelve years later.

500 yards from the Berlin Wall, recording Heroes. Did you feel history in the studio? Was the Berlin Trilogy running away from fame or running toward something new?

1983 Life

Let's Dance. Produced by Nile Rodgers. The biggest-selling album of his career. "Modern Love," "China Girl," "Let's Dance." He fills stadiums. He's wealthy, mainstream, and bored by it. He spends the next decade trying to get lost again.

Let s Dance made you rich and bored. Was mainstream success a trap? Did you spend the next decade deliberately trying to get lost?

2016 Event

Releases Blackstar on his 69th birthday. Dark, jazzy, cryptic. "Look up here, I'm in heaven." He's had liver cancer for 18 months. Nobody outside his inner circle knows.

Releasing Blackstar while secretly dying. Was that the final performance? Look up here, I m in heaven. Were those lyrics a goodbye?

2016 Death

Dies in New York. Two days after Blackstar. Two days after his birthday. He's turned his own death into a final work of art. 100 million records sold. 26 studio albums. The chameleon goes still.

Two days after your birthday, two days after Blackstar. Did you time it? 26 albums, 100 million records. Was the chameleon act exhausting or liberating?

In Their Own Words (20)

I always had a repulsive sort of need to be something more than human. I felt very very puny as a human. I thought, "Fuck that. I want to be a superman."

Quoted in this interview in Rolling Stone #206 (12 February 1976); a slightly altered version of the quote has appeared in various sources such as Fas Ferox - A Modern Day Mythology - World Walkthrough (2006), edited by Anna Young and James Curcio: "I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human. I felt very puny as a human. I thought, 'Fuck that. I want to be a superhuman.'", 2006

I get offered so many bad movies. And they're all raging queens or transvestites or Martians.

1983 Comment, quoted in Halliwell's Who's Who in the Movies 15th Edition (2003) by Leslie Halliwell, p. 60, 2003

I think fame itself is not a rewarding thing. The most you can say is that it gets you a seat in restaurants.

Interviewed in Q magazine (April 1990), 1990

Don't let me hear you say life's taking you nowhere, angelCome get up my baby.Look at that sky, life's begunNights are warm and the days are youngCome get up my baby.

Golden Years, 1976

Fame, (fame) makes a man take things overFame, (fame) lets him loose, hard to swallowFame, (fame) puts you there where things are hollowFame (fame)Fame, it's not your brain, it's just the flameThat burns your change to keep you insane (sane).

Fame, written with Carlos Alomar and John Lennon, 1975