Their images are accompanied by personal essays and reflections about working with this astonishing artist. Bowie’s Berlin period, which stretched between 1976 and 1978, was about a partial retreat from those demands, into what then passed for (relative) sobriety and calm. This is the official catalog to the Victoria and Albert Museum's retrospective of David Bowie's presence in our culture.

David Bowie books and biography | Waterstones David Bowie books and biography | Waterstones

La mostra “David Bowie Is” è stata inaugurata a Londra nel 2013, e da allora è itinerante per il mondo. Ma poiché non è nella mia natura l'adorazione fanatica di alcunché, sinceramente non me ne sono mai occupata. Rumored to have read at least a book a day (and perhaps as much as eight), Bowie’s described his songs as “ little stories set to music. As a portrait of what Bowie was in Germany to escape from, his first wife Angie’s memoir, the infamous Backstage Passes: Life on the Wild Side with David Bowie (Cooper Square, 1993), takes some beating.The pages are a trip through Bowie’s various lives as a young man in Swinging London, a Tibetan Buddhist, a disillusioned hippie, a rock god, and a Hollywood recluse. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. And while there was no shortage of books about him during his lifetime, the market has virtually exploded since his passing. He yearned to be in the Berlin of Christopher Isherwood’s novels, to the point of even looking at times like Michael York’s character in Cabaret. And “Heat,” the closing track of The Next Day, opens with a reference to Spring Snow, the first part of Mishima’s last work, the Sea of Fertility quartet, whose thematic concerns of reincarnation, glamour, decadence, death and transformation are in Bowie’s late albums as well.

Recommended Books on David Bowie (updated) Recommended Books on David Bowie (updated)

A musical force to be reckoned with, Bowie was also widely regarded as a fashion icon, pushing the envelope of sexuality and style and having created an internationally renowned persona. I found myself getting misty-eyed as I flipped through the first fifty or so pages of this gorgeous book, mostly because every bit of it - the photographs, the items, the layout design, the "Bowie Is" phrasing concept - feels completely central to the sum of the man's career, iconography and combined personae. Whether it’s on-stage with The King Bees in the Sixties, off-stage at Haddon Hall in the Seventies, on-stage (again) with Iggy Pop in the Eighties, or back-stage with Morrissey in the Nineties, Steve Pafford, editor of the UK’s ‘Crankin’ Out’ Bowie fan club magazine (PO Box 3268, London NW6 4NH), has unearthed some fascinating pix. Bowie and Schapiro kidded and laughed about shooting a series of close-up portraits on a putrid green background because they felt it was the worst possible background colour for a magazine, and so they did on this lark – with the image eventually becoming a People magazine cover. Thankfully, one of the most high-profile biographies that appeared before Bowie’s death is very good indeed.

It’s no big secret why: The nature of Bowie’s fame, genius, influences, and influence is an all-encompassing thing that’s relevant to art and photography, fashion, theater and performance, and every shade and school of critical analysis. As a member of Bowie’s legendary band at the time – The Spiders From Mars – Woody Woodmansey played drums on four seminal albums: The Man Who Sold The World, Hunky Dory, The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars and Aladdin Sane. I must confess that in his post two thousand years I thought he simply picked suits to wear for ease.