The longer we mourn David Bowie the
more his absence becomes apparent. Nevertheless, in many ways the death of
a great rock star nowadays affects only those to whom they were personally
close, and makes little difference to most of their fans. Thanks to the
heritage industry they no longer fade away: we continue to buy and listen to
their records, watch their concerts on screens and read about them as if they
were still alive. True, we can’t see them in person any more but, because David
Bowie absented himself from public life for over a decade before his death, his
actual absence is illusive, like the extinction of an endangered species, regrettable
but remote. The obituaries have been written but the books keep on coming.
I thought about this a
lot as I read Dylan Jones’ David Bowie: A
Life, a book I welcome, albeit with some reservations. Though advertised as
a biography, it is in reality an oral history, Jones having interviewed and/or
solicited contributions from 182 individuals with connections to Bowie; some –
like myself – quite tangential and others – like his garrulous first wife, collaborating
musicians and long term associates – with much more to say. Bowie’s story is
told through their words, linked by Jones’ lucid and informative passages that set
the scene and hurry things along, and the result is both enlightening and
far-reaching, the best text-led Bowie book I’ve read since David Buckley’s Strange Fascination. It’s surprisingly
pacy too and, with so many opinions to decode, Bowie’s fluid, restless and
magpie-like character is fully developed well before fame beckons.
As the present editor of
GQ magazine, former editor of a few
more and the author of 20 other books, Jones has been awarded the OBE for
services to publishing, and his work ethic is clearly Herculean. This book is
556 pages long yet contains no images whatsoever, which is probably a first in
the Bowie book industry, and pretty audacious since he remains far and away the
most photogenic rock star the UK has ever produced. The format of the book
precludes Jones from having to take a view on matters that some fans might find
distasteful, thus enabling him to craft a ‘warts and all’ book that manages to
avoid the rather prurient sensationalism of several other Bowie biographies
I’ve read, yet include the debauchery anyway*.
At the same time Bowie’s work is venerated through the opinions of experts: fellow
musicians, record producers and prominent persons in the worlds of art and
fashion. Some might consider this approach dispassionate but any such charges
are mitigated by the scale of the undertaking, not to mention the wealth of
information, much of it fresh, that can be gleaned from its pages.
“The lack of
subjectivity… should enable the truth to shine through,” Jones asserts in his
acknowledgements, which is a nice way of saying that many of his interviewees
speak their mind without concern for the feelings of others. There was always
an element of bitchiness amongst those who surrounded Bowie, at least in the
Mainman era and immediately afterwards, and the book certainly benefits from
their candour and, probably, creative imagination. In this regard I would
question the reliability of certain interviewees, not least a journalist who states
that Bowie visited early manager Kenneth Pitt ‘just before Ken died’. I happen
to know that Pitt is alive and well, now 95 and well cared for. This is but one
dubious statement I found, not many but enough to create concern, leading me to
discern a tendency in Jones to value the impact of a juicy quote over its
truthfulness, with the old Fleet Street maxim of ‘don’t let the facts get in
the way of a good story’ never far away. Bowie himself, of course, was no
stranger to this tactic.
Just about everyone is
in awe of Bowie, and many of the anecdotes confirm the widely-held view that he
could switch on the charm at a moment’s notice, disarm new acquaintances with
his knowledge of just about everything under the sun and simultaneously take on
the air of a pubbable bloke with whom you’d enjoy exchanging corny jokes over a
couple of pints in your local. Most of the women interviewed, and some of the
men, seem to have been willing to leap into bed with him in an instant, and
Bowie wasn’t one to let such opportunities slip by. No one was immune to his allure,
and even those who were cast aside ultimately forgive him and appear delighted
if communication is restored. It is clear from the book that he had a profound
effect on almost everyone with whom he came into contact and that he was adept
at putting people at ease who might otherwise be intimidated simply by his
proximity. One of the few dissenting voices was an old man walking his dog who
in 1980 interrupted the filming of the ‘Ashes To Ashes’ video on Southend
beach. ‘Do you know who this is?’ asked film director David Mallett. ‘Of course
I do,’ he replied. ‘It’s some cunt in a clown suit.’ “Sometime later,” Jones
writes, “Bowie remembered, ‘That was a huge moment for me. It put me back in my
place and made me realise, ‘Yes, I’m just some cunt in a clown suit.’”
Touches like this, and what
I believe is a scoop about him singing backup on a Frank Sinatra recording
during the Station To Station
sessions, animate Jones’ book. Nevertheless, there are some important
absentees, the missing voices: Iman Abdulmajid, Bowie’s second wife, granted
only a few second-hand quotes; Corinne ‘Coco’ Schwab, his über-efficient personal
assistant for upwards of 40 years, always a model of discretion, unafraid to
offend A-list celebs who request an audience at the wrong moment; and Tony
Defries, Bowie’s artful manager during the Ziggy period who, perhaps
characteristically, tried to muscle in on the project and, when that failed, invoiced
Jones (more out of hope that expectation) for $360,000 ‘for his contribution’.
What was that about a leopard and its spots?
‘Never open a door
yourself,’ was Defries’ sly advice to the client he signed in 1971, a bright,
personable young man terrified he might become a one-hit wonder after his 1969
single ‘Space Oddity’, just about all he had to show for seven years as a
professional musician, peaked at number five. Those seven years and the period
before, Bowie’s schooldays, are covered well with family, childhood and teenage
friends and early band mates, most of them the usual suspects, chipping in.
Troubled stepbrother Terry looms large, clearly a big influence, and a contrast
is drawn between supportive father Heyward ‘John’ Jones and his mother Peggy
who seems like a very cold fish indeed.
On the outside Bowie is
the model of cool but inside a bundle of neuroses and it was probably
desperation that led him to throw in his lot with Defries, a wonderful move in
the short-term but disastrous a few years down the line. The colourful Mainman
staffers have had their say in other books but it’s good to get them all
together again to more or less confirm what we all suspected – fabulous
presentation but absolute chaos behind the scenes – and many of their stories
still raise a smile, especially as I was on nodding terms with most of them. Photographer
Brian Duffy (who died in 2010) hits the nail on the head when he says that Defries ‘realised that
in order to get the record company really going, you had to get them up to
their neck in debt, which was… a masterstroke.’ It was a bit like a pyramid
scheme which imploded leaving many investors skint, and that includes just
about everyone apart from Defries and, to a lesser extent, Bowie from whose
earnings the profligacy was debited.
In the eye of the
hurricane, Bowie realised he had to kill Ziggy and in the aftermath his life
becomes disordered, as does the book. I was confused by the chronology in the
period between the recording of Pin Ups
and Station To Station; as if the disarray
of Bowie’s daily life between 1974 and ’76, exacerbated by his copious cocaine
consumption and the financial fallout of leaving Defries, was reflected in
these pages. It’s not as if matters aren’t covered – Diamond Dogs, the ‘theatre tour’, Young Americans, ‘Fame’, the friendship with John Lennon (excellent
quotes there), The Man Who Fell To Earth,
the ‘Isolar’ tour – just that the sequencing is askew, and not until we reach the recording of Low and subsequent sojourn in Berlin is
order restored, just as it was in Bowie's life.
The Berlin period is
fascinating, allowing Bowie to reconnect with reality after the horrors of Los Angeles,
though I was surprised that more attention was paid to the cover of Lodger than the music it contained and
that, ‘Ashes To Ashes’ aside, Scary
Monsters was glossed over compared to the dire Just A Gigolo movie and Bowie’s heroic stage performance in The Elephant Man. ‘Heroes’, the song,
gets the full treatment but not much else is said about the experimental music
he made with Brian Eno. I don’t believe Jones is being deliberately selective
here, just that revelations in the book are contingent on who’s willing to be
interviewed, with the result that where witnesses are available whatever they
witness gets fulsome coverage, and vice-versa when they aren’t accessible.
Thanks mainly to Nile
Rodgers no such problems occur with Let’s
Dance, Bowie’s best-selling album ever, which for better or worse took him
into the mainstream, and plenty of Bowie watchers line up to stick the knife
into Tonight, which followed, and
also Never Let Me Down. Plenty of
associates talk about Absolute Beginners,
the movie and the song, which like Jones I love, and he is especially good on
Live Aid, which isn’t surprising as his 2014 book The Eighties: One Day, One Decade, focused on just that. Geldof’s
charity bash, Bowie’s role in it and its repercussions get an enlightening
chapter all to themselves.
‘My biggest mistake during
the 80s was to try and anticipate what the audience wanted,’ states Bowie as we
move into the doldrums years, followed by the later years when David lived
‘like royalty in exile’, as Jones puts it. Though the 90s were not as
interesting as the two previous decades, plenty of people come forward to talk
about the less well known music that Bowie recorded in this more settled period
of his life, his ongoing need to check out new trends and canny ability to avoid
being recognised when he sought anonymity (often by wearing a hat and
pretending to read a Greek newspaper), while a few testify to his tetchiness
when things did not go precisely according to plan. A surprisingly large number of
people met up with Bowie in the period after he abandoned live performance in
2004 to live privately, enjoy his marriage to Iman and raise their daughter, and we learn of projects that were
mooted yet not acted upon and how remarkable it was that such secrecy was
maintained before the release of The Next
Day in 2013. Many interviewees confirm that the rumours concerning Bowie’s poor
state of health were ill-founded, at least until the very end, and that he
found peace in downtown New York where he could stroll unrecognised into book
stores and coffee shops. Almost everyone assumes that his heavy smoking was
fatal.
The
final chapter is devoted largely to tributes, many of them heartfelt, and the
conclusion I reached at the end was that it’s one hell of a shame that a man of
Bowie’s talent, wisdom, influence and allure didn’t live to be 100. The comment
that struck me most forcibly, however, came earlier in the book, from
film-maker Julien Temple: “There have been many people who have liberated us
politically, but David liberated us emotionally, sexually,” he says. “Ultimately
he wanted to set people free.”
* The claim
on page 155 by Lori Mattix that Bowie took her virginity when she was 14, sensationalised
earlier this month in The Daily Mail
as if it was a scoop, is from such an old interview that I honestly can’t
remember where I first read it. It has been available to read on the internet
for ages.
