The Man Who Sold the World

THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD ManWhoSold_i_xii_1_500_4p.indd 1 2/28/12 3:58 PM TH E MAN DAVID BOWIE AND THE 1970S W HO SOL D TH E WORLD PETER DOGGEtt HARPER An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers www.harpercollins.com ManWhoSold_i_xii_1_500_4p.indd 3 2/28/12 3:58 PM the man who sold the world. Copyright © 2012 Peter Doggett. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or repro duced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Harper Collins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022. Harper Collins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promo tional use. For information, please write: Special Markets Department, Harper Collins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022. Originally published in different form in Great Britain in 2011 by The Bodley Head, The Random House Group Limited. first u.s. edition Designed by Leah Carlson-Stanisic Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for. ISBN: 978 0 06-202465-7 12 13 14 15 16 ov/rrd 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ManWhoSold_i_xii_1_500_4p.indd 4 2/28/12 3:58 PM CONTENts PREFACE . vii INTRODUctION . 1 THE MAKING OF DAVID BOWIE: 1947–1968. 17 THE SONGS OF DAVID BOWIE: 1969–1980 . 55 EssAYS: SOUND AND VISION #1: LOVE You till Tuesday . 63 DAVid BOWie LP . 80 THE LURE OF THE OccULT . 92 THE Man WHO Sold THE World LP . 105 BOWIE AND THE HOMO SUPERIOR . 110 THE MAKING OF A STAR #1: ARNOLD CORNS . 124 ANDY WARHOL: POP TO PorK AND BACK AGAIN . 136 HunKY Dory LP . 151 GLAD TO BE GAY . 154 THE MAKING OF A STAR #2: THE BIRTH OF ZIGGY STARDUst . 164 THE MAKING OF A STAR #3: THE Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and THE Spiders from Mars LP . 172 GLAM, GLIttER, AND FAG ROCK . 177 Transformer: BOWIE AND LOU REED . 182 FASHION: TURN TO THE LEFT . 195 Aladdin Sane LP . 203 THE UNMAKING OF A STAR #1: ROCk ’N’ ROLL SUICIDE . 205 SIXTIES NOstALGIA AND MYTH: Pin Ups LP . 217 THE ART OF FRAGMENTATION . 233 Diamond Dogs LP . 247 THE HEART OF PLAstIC SOUL . 250 THE UNMAKING OF A STAR #2: DAVid LIVE LP . 254 ManWhoSold_i_xii_1_500_4p.indd 5 2/28/12 3:58 PM Young Americans LP . 278 SOUND AND VISION #2: THE Man WHO Fell to EartH. .. 279 THE UNMAKING OF A STAR #3: COCAINE AND THE KABBALAH . 282 Station to Station LP . 296 FAscIsm: TURN TO THE RIGHT . 299 THE ActOR AND THE IDIOT: BOWIE AND IGGY . 302 THE ART OF MINIMALIsm . 314 BERLIN . 320 LOW LP . 324 ROCK ON THE Titanic: PUNK . 326 “Heroes” LP . 340 THE ART OF EXPREssIONIsm . 341 SOUND AND VISION #3: Just A Gigolo . 347 EXIT THE ActOR: Stage LP . 349 Lodger LP . 361 Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) LP . 384 SOUND AND VISION #4: A NEW CAREER IN A NEW MEDIUM . 385 AFTERWORD . 389 AppENDIX: THE SONGS OF DAVID BOWIE: 1963–1968 . 399 AcKNOWLEDGMENts . 453 NOTES . 455 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 471 INDEX . 479 ManWhoSold_i_xii_1_500_4p.indd 6 2/28/12 3:58 PM PREFACE There have been numerous biographies of David Bowie, but never before a book that explains how he emerged as the most vital and influential pop artist of the 1970s, or identifies the full depth and im plications of his achievements. The Man Who Sold the World is intended to fill that gap, with a detailed examination of the man, the work, and the culture beyond. After an initial study of how the David Jones who was born in 1947, and who struggled through the 1960s, was transformed into the David Bowie who shaped the 1970s, The Man Who Sold the World is focused squarely on the songs in which he reflected his times, and expressed his unique personality. Indeed, the book includes an en try on every song he wrote and/or recorded during that decade— the “long” seventies, as I call it, running from 1969 to 1980, and from “Space Oddity” to its sequel, “Ashes to Ashes.” These entries make up the bulk of the text, with each song numbered (in square brack ets, from 1 to 189) in chronological order of composition. (When that information isn’t available, as with all of Bowie’s albums after 1975, the songs are covered in the sequence in which they appear on those records. The songs he wrote and recorded between 1963 and 1968 can be found in the appendix, and are numbered A1–A55.) Interspersed at appropriate points among those song-by-song studies are reviews of every commercial project (albums and films) that Bowie undertook during this time frame and short essays on the major themes in his work and times, from the occult to glam rock, and fashion to fascism. Together, these elements build up a chronological portrait of an artist who set out to explore all the possibilities and repercussions of fragmentation during this era— artistic, psychological, and cultural. The unabashed model for The Man Who Sold the World is Revolution in the Head, the pioneering study of the Beatles’ songs against the back drop of the sixties, by the late British journalist Ian MacDonald. At ManWhoSold_i_xii_1_500_4p.indd 7 2/28/12 3:58 PM viii ] PREFACE the time of his death, MacDonald was under commission to write a similar book about Bowie and the seventies, and his UK editor in vited me to pick up the torch. MacDonald was a trained musicolo gist, and Revolution in the Head sometimes tested the understanding of anyone who lacked his grounding in musical theory. I have chosen to take more of a layman’s path through Bowie’s music, assuming only a limited knowledge of musical terminology, and the ability to grasp how (for example) a change from minor to major chords in a song can alter not only the notes that Bowie plays and sings, but the emotional impact that those notes have on the listener. I have used abbreviations for chords— Am for A minor, etc.— that will be famil iar to anyone who has ever strummed a guitar. On a few occasions, I have also employed the Roman numeral system of denoting chords within a particular key. I-vi-IV-V, for example, refers to a chord se quence that begins with the tonic or root chord of the key, moves to a minor sixth (minor denoted by being in lowercase), then a major fourth and major fifth. In this instance, the sequence denotes a se ries of chords that will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever heard 1950s doo-wop music: in the key of C major, it equates to a sequence of C-Am-F-G. Musicology aside, I have employed the widest possible param eters for my critiques of each song: examining the words, the music, how they fit together, how they are performed, how they affect the audience, what they represent in Bowie’s career, what they tell us about the wider culture, and what influenced him to create them. The result is a book that examines David Bowie the artist, rather than the celebrity, and helps to explain the significance of a song catalogue that is as revealing a guide to the seventies as the Beatles’ music was to the sixties. Early in this project, I realized that every Bowie fan carries a dif ferent version of the artist in his or her heart. His career has been so eclectic and multifaceted that it can support multiple interpre tations. This is, unashamedly, mine— the work of someone whose relationship with Bowie’s music has undergone almost as many changes over the past forty years as the man himself. During that ManWhoSold_i_xii_1_500_4p.indd 8 2/28/12 3:58 PM PREFACE [ ix time, there have certainly been periods (much of the eighties, for example) when I felt that each new, and disappointing, manifesta tion of Bowie’s career ate away at the luster of what had gone before. Then, as the nineties progressed, it became obvious that Bowie had succeeded in reconnecting with his artistic selves and compressing them into work that may not have been as radical as the peaks of his seventies catalogue, but still demonstrated a fierce critical intel ligence alongside his enduring musical skills. Writing this book has allowed me the delightful indulgence of being able to study a collection of music that bears comparison with any comparable catalogue within the very broad remit of popular entertainment. I have been thrilled by Bowie’s versatility, touched by his emotional commitment, and most of all, stunned by the dar ing with which he approached a genre (rock, in its broadest sense) that was becoming increasingly conformist during the course of the seventies. At a time when pop artists are encouraged to repeat them selves endlessly within crushingly narrow margins, his breadth of vision and sense of adventure remain truly inspiring. ManWhoSold_i_xii_1_500_4p.indd 9 2/28/12 3:58 PM THE MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD ManWhoSold_i_xii_1_500_4p.indd 11 2/28/12 3:58 PM INTRODUctION PEOPLE LOOK TO ME TO SEE WHAT THE SPIRIT OF THE 70S IS, AT LEAST, 50% OF THEM DO— CRITICS I DON’T UNDERSTAND. THEY GET TOO INTELLECTUAL. —David Bowie, 1973 I Historians often prefer to ignore the rigid structure of the calen dar and define their own decades. These can be “short” or “long,” lasting six years or sixteen: for example, the “short” sixties might be bracketed by the impact of Beatlemania in 1963 and the Manson murders in 1969; their “long” equivalent could stretch from Har old Macmillan’s “never had it so good” speech in 1957 to America’s withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973.

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