The Age of Bowie
The Age of Bowie

Author: Paul Morley

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-01-03

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 1501151177

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Respected arts commentator and author Paul Morley, an artistic advisor to the curators of the highly successful retrospective exhibition 'David Bowie Is...' for the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, constructs a definitive story of Bowie that explores how he worked, played, aged, structured his ideas, influenced others, invented the future, and entered history as someone who could and would never be forgotten. Morley captures the greatest moments from across Bowie's life and career; how young Davie Jones of South London became the international David Bowie; his pioneering collaborations in the recording studio with the likes of Tony Visconti, Mick Ronson, and Brian Eno; to iconic live, film, theatre, and television performances from the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, as well as the various encounters and artistic relationships he developed with musicians from John Lennon, Lou Reed, and Iggy Pop to Trent Reznor and Arcade Fire. And of course, discusses in detail his much-heralded and critically acclaimed finale with the release of Blackstar just days before his shocking death in New York.

Bowie's Bookshelf
Bowie's Bookshelf

Author: John O'Connell

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-11-12

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1982112557

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Named one of Entertainment Weekly’s 12 biggest music memoirs this fall. “An artful and wildly enthralling path for Bowie fans in particular and book lovers in general.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “The only art I’ll ever study is stuff that I can steal from.” ―David Bowie Three years before David Bowie died, he shared a list of 100 books that changed his life. His choices span fiction and nonfiction, literary and irreverent, and include timeless classics alongside eyebrow-raising obscurities. In 100 short essays, music journalist John O’Connell studies each book on Bowie’s list and contextualizes it in the artist’s life and work. How did the power imbued in a single suit of armor in The Iliad impact a man who loved costumes, shifting identity, and the siren song of the alter-ego? How did The Gnostic Gospels inform Bowie’s own hazy personal cosmology? How did the poems of T.S. Eliot and Frank O’Hara, the fiction of Vladimir Nabokov and Anthony Burgess, the comics of The Beano and The Viz, and the groundbreaking politics of James Baldwin influence Bowie’s lyrics, his sound, his artistic outlook? How did the 100 books on this list influence one of the most influential artists of a generation? Heartfelt, analytical, and totally original, Bowie’s Bookshelf is one part epic reading guide and one part biography of a music legend.

Bowie's Piano Man
Bowie's Piano Man

Author: Clifford Slapper

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-05-01

Total Pages: 491

ISBN-13: 1617137383

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Pianist Mike Garson was David Bowie's most frequent musician, on record and onstage throughout Bowie's life. They played over a thousand shows together between 1972 and 2004, and Garson is featured on over 20 of Bowie's albums. Bowie's Piano Man is the first-ever biography of Mike Garson, written by Clifford Slapper, a fellow pianist who also played for Bowie, working closely with him on his last-ever television appearance. The book explores the special relationship between Garson and Bowie, beginning with the extraordinary story of how Garson went overnight from playing in tiny jazz clubs to touring the world on arena rock tours with Bowie after one short phone call and audition. A noted master of jazz, classical, and other genres, Garson has composed thousands of original works and has taught countless students, acting as mentor to many. Bowie's Piano Man explores his roots and childhood in Brooklyn, his ongoing strong presence in the jazz world, and his collaborations with a huge range of other artists in addition to Bowie. Touring and recording with the Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails are given in-depth attention, as is his approach to teaching and creating music. Explored in detail in particular is his commitment to improvisation as a form of composition, a manifestation of his more general dedication to living in the moment and always moving forward – a trait he shared with Bowie.

Contemporary World Musicians
Contemporary World Musicians

Author: Clifford Thompson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-07

Total Pages: 3314

ISBN-13: 1135939616

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Music lovers, researchers, students, librarians, and teachers can trace the personal and artistic influences behind music makers from Elton John to Leontyne Price. Individual entries on over 400 of the world's most renowned and accomplished living performers, composers, conductors, and band leaders in musical genres from opera to hip-hop. Also includes an in-depth Index covering musicians of all eras, so that readers can learn which artists, alive or dead, influenced the work of today's most important figures in the music industry.

Charles Darwin's Barnacle and David Bowie's Spider
Charles Darwin's Barnacle and David Bowie's Spider

Author: Stephen B. Heard

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2020-03-17

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0300238282

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An engaging history of the surprising, poignant, and occasionally scandalous stories behind scientific names and their cultural significance, "More fun than you've ever had with taxonomy in your whole entire life!" (Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series and PhD in Quantitative Behavioral Ecology) Ever since Carl Linnaeus's binomial system of scientific names was adopted in the eighteenth century, scientists have been eponymously naming organisms in ways that both honor and vilify their namesakes. This charming, informative, and accessible history examines the fascinating stories behind taxonomic nomenclature, from Linnaeus himself naming a small and unpleasant weed after a rival botanist to the recent influx of scientific names based on pop-culture icons--including David Bowie's spider, Frank Zappa's jellyfish, and Beyoncé's fly. Exploring the naming process as an opportunity for scientists to express themselves in creative ways, Stephen B. Heard's fresh approach shows how scientific names function as a window into both the passions and foibles of the scientific community and as a more general indicator of the ways in which humans relate to, and impose order on, the natural world.