Bowie & Hutch is an unusual memoir, Bowie a world superstar and Hutch a comparatively little known, semi-retired jazz guitarist living in rural East Yorkshire. John 'Hutch' Hutchinson was Bowie's musical collaborator, side-man, accompanying musician and friend, and his story should be an essential read for Bowie fans around the world. An off and on musical relationship then continued for seven years, from the Marquee Club days to the fall of Ziggy Stardust in 1973. Hutch's valuable contributions to David's music during the early years are amongst the building blocks of David Bowie's spectacular career. Looking back with good humour and affection, Hutch is able to give his first-hand account of life on the road with David Bowie. The book also covers Bowie & Hutch's musical lives in parallel from the beginnings, through the rock and roll years and up to the present day. John 'Hutch' Hutchinson is still playing regular gigs in York, Scarborough and The Yorkshire Wolds area.
A band member recounts his experience with David Bowie during the early years: “Those interested in rock history won’t want to miss this.” —Publishers Weekly For millions of people, David Bowie was an icon celebrated for his music, his film and theatrical roles, and his trendsetting influence on fashion and gender norms. But until now, no one from Bowie’s inner circle has told the story of how David Jones—a young folksinger, dancer, and aspiring mime—became one of the most influential artists of our time. Drummer Woody Woodmansey’s Spider from Mars reveals what it was like to be at the white-hot center of a star’s self-creation. With never-before-told stories and never-before-seen photographs, Woodmansey offers details of the album sessions for The Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardustand the Spiders from Mars, and Aladdin Sane: the four albums that made Bowie a cult figure. And, as fame beckoned and eventually consumed Bowie, Woodmansey recalls the wild tours, eccentric characters, and rock ‘n’ roll excess that eventually drove the band apart. A vivid and unique evocation of a transformative musical era and the enigmatic, visionary musician at the center of it, with a foreword by legendary music producer Tony Visconti and an afterword from Def Leppard’s Joe Elliot, Spider from Mars is a close-up portrait of David Bowie, by one of the people who knew him best. “Wild tours, behind-the-scenes drama, and album sessions . . . revealing.” —USA Today “An engaging behind-the-scenes look at an early phase in the life of one of rock’s most triumphant figures.” —Booklist
In Bowie, Cambo & All the Hype we get a backstage pass to key people and events during those crucial early years. This is a heartfelt story of a unique friendship. Drummer, musician and friend John 'Cambo' Cambridge lived with Bowie at Haddon Hall when he had his first hit record 'Space Oddity' and toured with him in Junior's Eyes. He was there for him at many key moments – when Bowie lost his father, passed his driving test, played his first Glam Rock gig with Hype, even acting as best man when Bowie married Angela Barnett in 1970. And if John had not persuaded his former Rats colleague Mick Ronson to join Bowie in February 1970, there might never have been a Ziggy Stardust or the stellar career which followed.
A relentless innovator, scoring chart hits while simultaneously incorporating radical and ground-breaking elements into his work. As with all great pop stars, Bowie's image changed with almost every new album release. This appetite for reinvention, both musically and visually, saw him dubbed the 'chameleon of pop'. But Bowie's influence extended well beyond his discography and make-up drawer. His androgynous qualities and public statements on his sexuality proved liberating for those who were uncertain about their own. Lives of the Musicians: David Bowie covers the years he spent struggling to find the right artistic outlet to the dramatic breakthrough in 1972 with Ziggy Stardust - and afterwards, the excessive lifestyle that nearly cost him his sanity. It continues with his artistic rebirth in Berlin during the late Seventies, the mainstream success he achieved with Let's Dance in 1983 and the artistic price that he paid for it.
David Bowie: every single song. Everything you want to know, everything you didn't know. David Bowie remains mysterious and unknowable, despite 45 years of recording and performing. His legacy is roughly 600 songs, which range from psychedelia to glam rock to Philadelphia soul, from avant-garde instrumentals to global pop anthems. Rebel Rebel catalogs Bowie's songs from 1964 to 1976, examines them in the order of their composition and recording, and digs into what makes them work. Rebel Rebel is an in-depth look at Bowie's early singles and album tracks, unreleased demos, session outtakes and cover songs. The book traces Bowie's literary, film and musical influences and the evolution of his songwriting. It also shows how Bowie exploited studio innovations, and the roles of his producers and supporting musicians, especially major collaborators like Brian Eno, Iggy Pop and Mick Ronson. This book places Bowie's music in the context of its era. Readers will discover the links between Kubrick's 2001 and "Space Oddity"; how A Clockwork Orange inspired "Suffragette City". 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. With a cast of thousands, including John Lennon, William S. Burroughs, Andy Warhol and Cher.
'[Soligny] has talked to just about anyone who had anything to do with Bowie's music... Reading [their memories and comments] you can almost believe you're in the studio with Bowie as he tries out new ideas, fades out one sound to boost another or comes up with another of those astonishing chord changes...There are now almost as many Bowie books as there are Bob Dylan books but Rainbowman outclasses them all. Beautifully translated, [it] brings you closer to the great man than any conventional biography... Quite simply the best book there is on David Bowie.'-MAIL ON SUNDAY 'This is a book unlike any other, the definitive analysis of David's music, told in a quiet natural way, but with absolute authenticity, by the people around him.' - HERMIONE FARTHINGALE 'Jérôme Soligny is one of the best authorities in the world on David Bowie's career and life in general... His new biography Rainbowman is a thorough and honest account of the great man.' - TONY VISCONTI 'Jérôme is a guy who is still aware that popular music is an art form and not a money suppository. He writes from the heart and is one of the last exemplars of a dying breed. The critic, armed with intelligence and brute compulsive honesty, as dangerous as a river.' - IGGY POP 'Not long ago, Jérôme told me something that I find very true: "David played saxophone, guitar, a bit of keyboards, but above all, he played musicians!" I think he really hit the nail on the head.' - MIKE GARSON In David Bowie Rainbowman, Jérôme Soligny tells the story of David Bowie the musician with the help of those intimately involved with the creation of his music. This uniquely exhaustive work on Bowie's 1967-1980 albums draws on over 150 interviews with the musicians, producers and friends who knew Bowie best, including Robert Fripp, Hermione Farthingale, Lou Reed, George Underwood, Mick Ronson, Carlos Alomar, Trevor Bolder, Mike Garson, Woody Woodmansey and many, many others. With an essay by Soligny on each album followed by oral histories from the most trusted and influential figures in Bowie's musical life, David Bowie Rainbowman is the definitive guide to a singular and mercurial genius - the Rainbowman himself. · With a foreword by Tony Visconti, an introduction by Mike Garson and cover photo by Mick Rock · A beautiful and stylish gift for Bowie fans, over 700 pages long, filled with iconic photographs and with striking cover design by Barnbrook
David Bowie was one of the world’s most famous rock stars. But, as David Bowie FAQ shows, he was also far more than that. After spending the latter part of the 1960s searching for the best medium through which to express his artistic aspirations—and trying out several performing arts in the process—he experienced fleeting but significant success in music with the top-ten UK hit “Space Oddity,” released at the time of the successful Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. Subsequently he achieved true international fame in the early 1970s through playing the role of the androgynous alien rock-star Ziggy Stardust. From here he went on to a career that spanned five decades, exploring numerous artistic disciplines, challenging societal mores and conventions, and building a platform of constant change and reinvention. Whereas most rock stars would find a winning formula and rigidly stick to it to avoid alienating their fans, David Bowie made stylistic variation his cornerstone—an entirely new and model for rock stardom. But David Bowie was more than a rock star. Reflecting an approach to art that knew no boundaries, he also made his mark in movie acting, legitimate stage acting, and more. There was a unifying factor in all of the roles he played, regardless of medium, because even from childhood he’d felt himself to be an outsider, alienated and estranged. Bowie’s fans quickly recognized this quality in him, and it created a bond that went far beyond the usual star-fan relationship. Through David Bowie, fans found themselves able to accept their sense of difference as a positive thing rather than a negative one. David Bowie didn’t simply entertain people—he empowered them.
The biggest edition yet – expanded and updated with 35,000 words of new material Critically acclaimed in its previous editions, The Complete David Bowie is widely recognized as the foremost source of analysis and information on every facet of Bowie’s career. The A-Z of songs and the day-by-day dateline are the most complete ever published. From the 11-year-old’s skiffle performance at the 18th Bromley Scouts’ Summer Camp in 1958, to the emergence of the legendary lost album Toy in 2011, to his passing in January 2016, The Complete David Bowiediscusses and dissects every last development in rock’s most fascinating career. * The Albums – detailed production history and analysis of every album from 1967 to the present day. * The Songs – hundreds of individual entries reveal the facts and anecdotes behind not just the famous recordings, but also the most obscure of unreleased rarities – from ‘Absolute Beginners’ to ‘Ziggy Stardust’, from ‘Abdulmajid’ to ‘Zion’. * The Tours – set-lists and histories of every live show. * The Actor – a complete guide to Bowie’s career on stage and screen. * Plus – the videos, the BBC radio sessions, the paintings, the Internet and much more.
Rock 'n' Roll fanatics, mods, beat group wannabes, underground hippies, glam rock icons: David Bowie and Marc Bolan spent the first part of their careers following remarkably similar paths. From the day they met in 1965 as Davie Jones and Mark Feld, rock 'n' roll wannabes painting their manager's office in London’s Denmark Street, they would remain friends and rivals, each watching closely and learning from the other. In the years before they launched an unbeatable run of era-defining glam rock masterpieces at the charts, they were both just another face on the scene, meeting for coffee in Soho, hanging out at happenings and jamming in parks. Here, they are our guides through the decade that changed everything, as the gloom of post-war London exploded into the technicolor dream of the swinging sixties, a revolution in music, fashion, art and sexuality. Part dual-biography, part social history, part musical celebration of an era, The London Boys follows the British youth culture explosion through eyes of two remarkable young men on the front lines of history.
The Sunday Times bestseller. David Bowie was arguably the most influential artist of his time, reinventing himself again and again, transforming music, style and art for over five decades. David Buckley's unique approach to unravelling the Bowie enigma, via interviews with many of the singer's closest associates, biography and academic analysis, makes this unrivalled biography a classic for Bowie fans old and new. This revised edition of Strange Fascination captures exclusive details about the tours, the making of the albums, the arguments, the split-ups, the music and, most importantly, the man himself. Also including exclusive photographic material, Strange Fascination is the most complete account of David Bowie and his impact on pop culture ever written.
