Story of David Bowie

The photo is of a paradigm. 178 inches of elegance, grace and intelligence. 

David Bowie is more than a multiartista. His gesture becomes a symbol of decadence, wit, sensitivity and glamor. It is one of the icons of the twentieth century and, despite the wear caused by the wattage of fame, become known and be unexpected with a risky and improper heat of the megastars.

Charming and fascinating, the most pluralistic of all pop artists of the second half of the twentieth century, seems to have retired unannounced.

The heart attack that just turned seven years broke the career of a guy who held January 65 and has left almost nothing to do since it debuted in 1964.

Next year they reissued all their albums and the huge catalog of unreleased music that holds Bowie, prolific to levels even seem foolhardy.

Meanwhile, this seems a good time to vindicate his work and to address a gossiping ... David Bowie.

David Jones,1955

1. Scars. Bowie's parents had suffered. Haywood Stenton Jones (1912-1969) dreamed every night with one hell of ammunition and lacerated flesh. As actual rifleman in World War II was fought in Africa and France. He suffered all his life from postwar stress. Barnardo worked in a network of shelters for orphans. The mother, Peggy Burns (1913-2000), was at the Ritz Cinema Match Girl. The Burns family had a tradition of serious mental illness, especially psychotic type. David Robert Jones, born on January 8, 1947, adored his father and his mother was feeling detached and cold. They lived at number 40 Stafield street in Brixton, a south London suburb where Charlie Chaplin had also grown. Bowie has mythologized his childhood, staining of clashes between gangs in the Barrens planted by the rubble of the Nazi bombings. The truth is that lap was a kid who rarely left the house. In 1953 the family moved to the nearby Bromley. David was admitted to the school choir and the dance troupe, where he excelled especially reptilian movements.

Bowie and George Underwood, his best friend at the technical school, 1962

2. God's name was Little Richard. His interest in music was born of a parental gift: a collection of singles that Haywood brought home in 1956. It included everything you need to light the flame: Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, The Platters, Fats Domino, Elvis Presley, Little Richard. "When I heard Tutti Frutti it seemed to have heard the voice of God", Bowie would say years later. Began receiving music lessons. As bad student remained: the note did not get enough to get into a high school and enrolled in graphic design at Bromley Technical School, where he fell to grace the art teacher, Owen Frampton, Peter Frampton student's father, who would one of the pretty faces of the middle of the road rock of the seventies. Bowie's best friend was George Underwood. Both wanted to be stars, both combed and teddy boys. In the spring of 1962, in a fit of rage because Bowie tried to seduce a girl he wanted Underwood, he hit his colleague a tremendous live in the left eye. The stroke affected the muscles that constrict the pupil, which was permanently dilated, giving the appearance of having a different color than the other eye. The alien would look very well exploited by Bowie in the future.

The King Bees, 1964 (Bowie, in the center. Underwood, right)

3. Name Slavehandler. Bowie (who had not yet changed his stage name and presented by parentage born David Jones) was shot in groups of all kinds since I was 15. It was mod, wanted to take the impact in the UK and made of black blues versions of The Who and The Kinks. His first recording came in single in June 1964: Liza Jane, an arrangement of a traditional English folk song with the addition of a guitar riff stolen from Howlin 'Wolf. Appeared signed by David Jones and The King Bees. It was a disaster, but the musician's rebounded with a decent arrangement for Toy fucking album, an album that closed in 2001 and posted on the Internet ten years later. The first solo album came out three years later, a single with The Laughing Gnome as Star Song: indigestion of psychedelia, vocal style cabaret and accelerated in the study plan The Chipmunks. The resulting album did not improve the calico. It was signed by David Bowie, who first appeared as artistic marks. He borrowed the name of the character played by Richard Widmark in the film The Alamo, James Bowie, a slave trader and mercenary buscafortunas nineteenth century who invented the knife fight that bears his name.

                                      First performance of David Bowie, August 16, 1969

 4. Ignition. I had dreams of grandeur and too effort to demonstrate their talents to arrive quickly to the top. The thud of the first recordings Bowie plunged into a deep depression. Then he found three people who will change life: dancer, actor and performer Lindsay Kemp, who gave dance and acting classes, she opened her eyes to the need to let the feelings emerge and introduced him to the bohemian London, where there were many gays, transvestites and drug addicts; manager Ken Pitt, who was listening to Bowie for the first time to the Velvet Underground, and producer Tony Visconti, a shrewd and competent magician of sound that would not stop working until 2003. When released the song and album Oditty Space (1969), passed away in the confusion, content, tense, populated by beings alienated and unable to understand, Bowie gave notice of what to expect: a work that remained in the forefront for four decades and located at the same height as those of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones by influence and impact on pop culture.

                               Angie Bowie and marry. Between them, mom Peggy. March, 1970

5. Angie and the Victorian Mansion. Bowie's first wife Angela Barnett (1949), was a middling model and a bad actress, but played with the extravagance-smelling cat piss for, say, "refine the smell" - true cosmopolitanism, uninhibited sexuality and character to take up arms. They married in 1970 after a lightning courtship and settled in the Victorian mansion of Haddon Hall, the community center across London over the next decade. They played with childish ways scandal (convocvaban urgently reporters to confess sexual tastes), drank white wine and began to use cocaine. His influence on Bowie's career was almost always forced him to evil-fire the agent Pitt, for example-and, after the divorce, in 1980, has been writing biographies with detailed sex scenes and depravity. Their website (Angie Bowie) is an example of the ilk of the character. It is an unfounded rumor, by the way, that the Rolling Stones song Angie is based on her figure. It is true that had a great influence in creating the most memorable character of her husband, Ziggy.

Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars on BBC (right of Bowie, Mick Ronson), July, 1972

6. "They're coming for your daughters.And also for your children!. On July 6, 1972, the BBC program Top of the Pops issued would be a generational moment of epiphany: the performance of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars performing Starman. The tabloid published the next day headlines of this caliber: "There have been only for your daughters.They also want your children ". Bowie created the glam rock: androgynous, ambiguous and polisexual. The singer's alter-ego, Zyggy Stardust tribute to Iggy Pop, was a kind of cowboy galactic makeup as a reinona and willing to stage a fellatio with the neck of the guitar of Mick Ronson (1946-1993). The songs were beautiful, irresistible melodies, lyrics and arrangements sci-fi muscular. Bowie suffered serious personal problems with Ziggy: came to feel that the character invaded the person and that he was going mad. "Off stage was like a robot in the hands of another," he said years later.

                                                                   Cokehead, 1974
7. Years whites. Become planetary star, author of three perfect albums in succession-The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), Aladdin Sane (1973) and Diamond Dogs (1974) - Bowie got out of hand fame. Used cocaine in gross amounts (this interview borders on the pathetic 1974), was convinced he needed an exorcism with several tried-cheesy-gurus, lost weight to have trouble moving, is morbidly interested in the occult, black magic and Nazis, stopped composing and have friends ... When tried reincarnated, chose a dangerous character, The thin white Duke (the thin white Duke), an unscrupulous, paranoid and mutant cold ultraconservatism preached and was unable to string together two sentences consecutive sense. He ran the cold funk and recorded a couple of records in which there are some remains of genius but a lot of filler: Young Americans (1975) and Station to Station (1976). In 1978 he attempted suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills, but could not and was thrown down the stairs. He broke his nose.

Hansa Studios, Berlin

8. "The place where all the girls and all drugs." For a while he retired to a villa near Lake Geneva (Switzerland) to try to calm the demons. He painted watercolors and wrote songs again. In an unexpected and almost miraculous, his musical line focused on minimalism. On a visit to Berlin Hansa Studios met, headquarters of German experimentalism. In the dilapidated building recorded with producer Brian Eno, the best albums of his career, the Berlin trilogy: Low (1977), Heroes (1977) and Lodger (1978), works that changed the course of pop music of the twentieth century and predicting the ambient, trance and synth-pop. As the world were amazed to hear the belching of punk, Bowie proposed building a soundscape of the decline of Europe. In these years he was also the producer and co-author of two works of Iggy Pop magnas solo, The Idiot and Lust for Life, both published in 1977.

With Iman Abdul Majid, 1990

9. Man of the world. Actor, billionaire, married (1992) to supermodel Iman, who owns a company active trading, step into the world of Bowie since the late seventies has been more of a megastar. Musically nothing of his recent work has interest. It piqued with noise and electronics and unfavorably ever left, or worse, ridiculed. Later bought several mansions world (New York, Los Angeles, Bermuda, London), but was legally established in Ireland to escape their tax obligations in the United Kingdom. "I make music so little compromised without hearing me stay," he said quite frankly in an interview. In 1997 celebrated its 50th birthday during a performance in New York. He was accompanied by many of his musical sons: Robert Smith (The Cure), Frank Black, Dave Grohl ... The notable absentee was Iggy Pop, with which it has never returned to relate, even though they became blood brothers, lovers and collaborators. Neither Mick Ronson attended the extraordinary guitarist who helped him build a Ziggy Stardust. He had died of cancer the previous year in 1993. Organized a posthumous festival in London but Bowie refused to play because it was a show "too modest" for him.

10. Heartbroken. The June 25, 2004, Bowie collapsed after a performance in Scheesel (Germany). It was a heart attack caused by a blood clot in an artery. More than a year later returned to the stage to sing the version of the video above Starman. Someone compared, not without reason, with Frank Sinatra. Excessively short pants, no socks calves, the bandage on his forearm ... were poignant and sad. The alien, for the first time, looked human.