Experiencing David Bowie : a listener's companion

271 Pages·2015·1.86 MB·English

by  Bowie

Experiencing David Bowie
The Listener’s Companion
Gregg Akkerman, Series Editor
Titles in The Listener’s Companion provide readers with a
deeper understanding of key musical genres and the work of
major artists and composers. Aimed at nonspecialists, each
volume explains in clear and accessible language how to listen
to works from particular artists, composers, and genres. Looking
at both the context in which the music first appeared and has
since been heard, authors explore with readers the
environments in which key musical works were written and
performed.
Experiencing David Bowie: A Listener’s Companion, by Ian
Chapman Experiencing Jazz: A Listener’s Companion, by Michael
Stephans Experiencing Led Zeppelin: A Listener’s Companion,
by Gregg Akkerman Experiencing Leonard Bernstein: A
Listener’s Companion, by Kenneth LaFave Experiencing Mozart:
A Listener’s Companion, by David Schroeder Experiencing Rush:
A Listener’s Companion, by Durrell Bowman Experiencing
Stravinsky: A Listener’s Companion, by Robin Maconie
Experiencing Tchaikovsky: A Listener’s Companion, by David
Schroeder Experiencing Verdi: A Listener's Companion, by
Donald Sanders
Experiencing David Bowie
A Listener’s Companion
Ian Chapman
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Published by Rowman & Littlefield A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman &
Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 FORBES BOULEVARD, SUITE 200, LANHAM, MARYLAND 20706
www.rowman.com
Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB
Copyright © 2015 by Ian Chapman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote
passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chapman, Ian, 1960–
Experiencing David Bowie : a listener's companion / Ian Chapman.
pages cm. – (Listener’s companion)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4422-3751-3 (cloth : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4422-3752-0 (ebook)
1. Bowie, David–Criticism and interpretation. 2. Rock music–History and criticism. I.
Title.
ML420.B754C53 2015
782.42166092–dc23
2015010350
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for
Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
For Ben, Mia, and Arlo
Series Editor’s Foreword
The goal of the Listener’s Companion series is to give
readers a deeper understanding of pivotal musical genres and
the creative work of their iconic practitioners. Contributors meet
this objective in a manner that does not require extensive music
training or
any sort of elitist shoulder-rubbing. Authors of the series are
asked to situate readers in the listening environments in which
the music under consideration has been or still can be heard.
Within these environments, authors examine the historical
context in
which this music appeared, exploring compositional
character and societal elements
of the work. Positioned in real or imagined environments of
the music’s creation,
performance, and reception, readers can experience a
deeper enjoyment and appreciation of the work. Authors, often
drawing on their own expertise as performers and scholars, are
like tour guides, walking readers through major musical genres
and the achievements of artists within those genres, replaying
the music for them, if you will, as a lived listening experience.
I still recall a day in the 1970s when my tween-aged self
swiped an older brother’s copy of Circus magazine long enough
to ogle at the striking image on the cover. I had never seen
anything like the penetrating stare and spiked orange-rust hair
of pop star David
Bowie. He looked out from the cover—sickly, gaunt, brutally
sincere, unapologetically rakish, and deliciously attractive to my
twelve-year-old sensibilities. He was a beautifully young non-
American and I, without any sullied adult ideas blocking the
doorway, knew immediately that to look and act just like him
was the epitome of cool. I even went
so far as to take the picture with me on my next trip to the
barber and ask: “Can
you make my hair look like that?” The reply: “What do you
you make my hair look like that?” The reply: “What do you
think you are, kid, Japanese?”
Racial insensitivities aside, the barber’s comment aligned
with a common issue among the music journalists, fans, and
record companies in those days—just how do you categorize the
Bowie package? He embraced, some might even say defined
the essence then of what it meant to be a “rock star.” And yet
his music would eschew many of the most recognized elements
of rock. He dangled his thoughtfully marketed persona for all
the world to
see but the general public knew little about him offstage.
And throughout his career, he would cross and blur the lines
between acting, producing, songwriting, recording, and
performing. He bedded the various aesthetics like so many
enamored and willing
concubines. David Bowie was and remains a singular entity
in the history of rock music, one of the few to successfully avoid
any sort of ossified categorization while simultaneously topping
the charts of those same categories. In the movie version of
Hedwig and the Angry Inch, its angry protagonist describes the
importance of Bowie among his contemporaries:

Late at night I would listen to the voices of the American
masters: Tony Tennille, Debby Boone, and Anne Murray—
who was actually Canadian working in the American idiom.
And then there were the crypto-homo-rockers: Lou Reed,
Iggy Pop, and David Bowie—who was actually an idiom
working in America and Canada.

The description, couched in satire, is wickedly precise in
referring to Bowie as his own idiom. Categories of art bend and
distort in order to accommodate Bowie’s work—and not the
other way around, as is so often the case with pop-star success
stories. Conveying Bowie’s unique standing in the development
of popular music requires the deft hand
of a writer keenly skilled at bringing together the full story
of a writer keenly skilled at bringing together the full story
of the artist’s work
and delivering it to the reader within its proper
contemporaneous context. As a fan
of Bowie’s music for over forty years, I can say that Ian
Chapman nails it. A full-time professor of music at New
Zealand’s University of Otago, Chapman has delved into the
iconography, history, and social implications of popular music at
great length, resulting in excellent writing on Bowie, Kiss, Bow
Wow Wow, and various Kiwi-related topics.
I had the pleasure of serving as first reader of his drafts and
anxiously devoured
each new submission. I never did get Bowie’s hair, but the
music is still with us,
and Chapman has now made it all the more approachable
for all of us.

Gregg Akkerman
Acknowledgments
As a lifelong fan my primary acknowledgment most
gratefully goes to David Bowie. Over the course of decades
you’ve had me alternately inspired, bewildered, delighted,
intrigued, disappointed (once or twice), gob-smacked, alarmed,
amazed . . . but never, ever, uninterested. You have provided a
soundtrack to the lives of millions of people, resplendent with
twists, turns, and thought-demanding “crunchy bits.” I’m thrilled
to be among their number.
Sarah Williamson has been a crucial ally in the preparation
of this book and I am indebted to her for her support, her
enthusiasm, her witty repartee, and her multifaceted help.
Dallas Synnott-Chapman, Shirley Chapman, Carol and Brian Foy,
Maureen Rice, Peter Adams, Ian Loughran, Greg Platt, David
Harrison, Rob Burns, Graeme Downes, Mary-Jane Campbell, Nick
Hollamby, Suzanne Little, Henry Johnson, Ian and Kath Oreibow,
and Mike and Miriam Lynch have all helped in ways both direct
and indirect. Thanks to you all. “Love-on ya!” (David Bowie, Pin
Ups, 1973).
Timeline
January 8, David Robert Jones born in Brixton, London, England.
1947
June 12, Debut live performance with his first proper band, the
1962 Konrads, at the Bromley Tech PTA School Fête.
April 14, First live performance with the King Bees at the Jack of
1964 Clubs, Soho, London.
May 9, First live performance with the Manish Boys at the Star Club,
1964 Maidstone.
June 5, Debut single release, “Liza Jane,” by the King Bees.
1964
March 5, Single release, “I Pity the Fool,” by the Manish Boys. The B
1965 side, “Take My Tip,” marks Bowie’s first singer-songwriter credit.
April 8, First live performance with the Lower Third at the Working
1965 Men’s Club, Minster.
August 20, Single release, “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving”/“Baby Loves
1965 That Way,” by Davy Jones and the Lower Third. Both songs
written by Bowie.
January David Jones changes his name (unofficially) to David Bowie.
1966
January Single release, “Can’t Help Thinking about Me”/”And I Say to
14, 1966 Myself,” released under the new band name David Bowie and the
Lower Third.
February First live performance by David Bowie and the Buzz at the
10, 1966 Mecca Ballroom, Leicester.
April 1966 Bowie signs a five-year management deal with Kenneth Pitt
as a solo artist.
June 1, Debut studio album, David Bowie, is released.
1967
July 11, “Space Oddity” is released as a single, eventually reaching
1969 number five on the UK singles chart.
November Second studio album, David Bowie, is released (in the US this
4, 1969 was retitled Man of Words/Man of Music).