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Halloween Jack was a real cool cat: New Bowie books for the holidaze
12.01.2023
05:42 am
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This is a guest post by Spencer Kansa, author of Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron, Zoning and Out There: The Transcendent Life and Art of Burt Shonberg.

(Authors note: This feature was meant to be accompanied by an interview with the artist Mark Wardel, but sadly, due to ill health, this has not been possible. We wish him the speediest of recoveries.)

Doubtless, there are naysayers who may wonder whether the world needs yet another book dedicated to David Bowie, a man whose many lives and multifaceted career have been exhaustively, though not always accurately, scrutinised over the past six decades. The Bowie shelf in the Rock and Pop Hall of Records is as prodigious as any, and it’s tricky to find a new angle on an artist who was a genre unto himself or discover any unexplored territory that hasn’t already been charted.

For the faithful, there remains a vain hope that his dutiful personal assistant, Corinne “Coco” Schwab, may one day share her memories of the man she devoted her life to. But, as the years pass, this looks unlikely to happen. Still, two new book releases underscore why Bowie remains such an endlessly fascinating and eternally elusive subject. A one-man cultural revolution whose protean influence impacted all the creative arts; whose sway cut across all strata of society: from gutter punks to members of European royalty.

For new/latecomers, David Bowie Rainbowman: 1967-1980, by Jérôme Soligny, presents a comprehensive guide, concentrating mostly on the decade Bowie musically, artistically and creatively owned; when the release of a new album by him was treated as a cultural event. As a veteran journalist for the French music bible Rock & Folk, Soligny interviewed ‘the Guv’nor’ many times over the years, and, as a fellow recording artist, he developed a friendship not only with his subject but with Tony Visconti and Mike Garson, too, who both provide flattering forwards.

Soligny sets up each chapter with an authoritative opening salvo from the Duke himself regarding each era, and then, in a workmanlike fashion, proceeds to document the year each landmark album was recorded, as well as all the creative offshoots, groundbreaking spectacles and social-cultural shockwaves that sprung from them. He then hands things over to the musicians and cohorts, famous fans and influencers who contributed to or were inspired by them, in an oral history that fleshes out the details.

For long-time disciples, this is already well-trodden ground, but there are nuggets sprinkled throughout including several surprising revelations. For instance, the book claims the look of the Droogs in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange was inspired by a photograph the director saw of The Riot Squad, the beat combo Bowie joined for a short-lived spell in 1967, which, if true, provides a neat slice of sartorial symmetry considering the Droogs inspired the early attire of Ziggy and the Spiders from Mars.

Hermione Farthingale, Bowie’s first great love, talks expansively about their time together and finally breaks her silence regarding the two bittersweet ballads he wrote about her on the Space Oddity album. Liverpool poet and Scaffold member, Roger McGough, is chuffed to learn that his poem, ‘At Lunchtime—A Story of Love,’ may have partially inspired ‘Five Years’. Ed Sanders is equally touched that Bowie was a Fugs fan and included Tales of Beatnik Glory in his list of 100 favorite books. https://www.nypl.org/blog/2016/01/11/david-bowies-top-100-books

We hear about the real-life inspiration for the feral ‘Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud.’ Donovan (who covered the Diamond Dogs cut, ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me’) recounts the improbable time Bowie successfully negotiated with local union officials to allow the ‘Sunshine Superman’ singer to play a concert in Boston in 1974. Mary Hopkin admits she always hated the “twee” intro she sang on ‘Sound and Vision,’ but concedes it’s become “iconic” now. And there’s also a little more info regarding the momentous occasion when Major Tom touched base with Hendrix.

Charges of plagiarism (which Bowie freely copped to, outing himself as a “tasteful thief”) are given when the author highlights the glaring similarities between the Bowie-scored Iggy number, ‘Tiny Girls,’ and the late 60s French chanson, ‘D’aventures en aventures’ by Serge Lama.

But his further assertions that the main two-chord motif in Billy Swan’s ‘I Can Help’ inspired ‘TVC15,’ and the “Heroes” closer, ‘The Secret Life of Arabia,’ is derived from ‘Cokane In My Brain,’ by reggae artist Dillinger, are a stretch and sound far less persuasive.

On the critical side, Soligny’s Gallic-tinged prose can sometimes veer into the purple, and he issues several statements that beg to be disputed. For example, Bowie’s responses to Dick Cavett during his wired TV interview are most certainly not “gibberish,” as he contends, and describing Aleister Crowley as “The father of modern Satanism,” is equally questionable. (On that same subject, the two Only Ones tracks Soligny cites as “Crowley-inspired,” ‘The Beast’ and ‘The Whole of the Law,’ have, in reality, nothing to do with Old Crow himself other than their titles.) And, despite what’s written, ‘Look Back in Anger’ was never part of the setlist on The Glass Spider Tour. 

But most egregious of all is his completely cockeyed claims that, between 1979-1984, Bowie left behind his “poster-boy image” and pointedly underplayed his physical beauty, and that the eighties “would not be his decade.” This flies in the face of the fact that in the wake of the huge commercial successes of Scary Monsters and Let’s Dance, Bowie only reinforced his status as the most glamorous pin-up on the planet, with an unprecedented, new-found popularity, bolstered by an entirely new generation of fans who’d come of age and latched onto his music, even though, unlike his previous work, both albums were now front-loaded with the best material.

One thing that will seriously disappoint the diehards is the photographic selection, as most will already be over-familiar with it, but that certainly isn’t true of David Bowie and Cracked Actor: The Fly in The Milk, a sumptuously illustrated behind-the-scenes account of the greatest rockumentary of them all.

Filmed by Alan Yentob for the BBC’s arts programme Omnibus, in August and September 1974, Cracked Actor remains a riveting study of Bowie as he breaks America wide open while performing in the guise of his elegantly wasted persona, Halloween Jack, during his celebrated Diamond Dogs Tour of that year.

Those familiar with the documentary will know the subtitle of the book alludes to one of the many quotable lines uttered by Bowie throughout the film. Asked by Yentob how he feels, submerged in the idioms of America, Bowie gazes down into the milk carton he’s holding and amusingly relates his situation to that of “a fly floating around in my milk. It’s a foreign body in it, you see, and he’s getting a lot of milk (chuckles). That’s kind of how I feel: a foreign body here, and I couldn’t help but soak it up.”

The idea for the book was suggested by the artist Mark Wardel to his co-author, Susan Compo, as a prequel to Earthbound, her 2017 study on the making of The Man Who Fell To Earth, which he contributed to. This made perfect sense considering one rapt viewer of the documentary was that film’s director Nicholas Roeg, who realized he’d found in Bowie the perfect entity to portray the lead in his next picture.

Wardel has been obsessed with the documentary ever since it was first aired, and the book showcases his portraits of Bowie from this era, which are as soigné and fierce as the man himself. It also boasts over a dozen never-before-seen concert shots, and the project was given a decisive boost when Yentob came on board and opened his archive up to them, revealing interviews and backstage scenes that never made the cut.
 

What you like is in the limo! Bowie captured by Mark Wardel.

For Bowiephiles the book is an absolute treat, and, among its many highlights is the full transcript of the combative TV news interview that opens the film, which not only confirms that the reporter, Wayne Satz, was even more dickish than the excerpt shown suggests, but underlines just how alarmed—and alarmist—mainstream America was by Bowie at the time. Mind you, as the book later details, some members of a BBC viewing panel were equally aghast, particularly after watching Bowie snogging a skull while embodying the Hollyweirdo-meets-Hamlet sleaze-meister from Cracked Actor.
 

 
One intriguing unused scene featured Bowie and Yentob watching a private screening of James Dean: The First American Teenager, in the presence of the film’s producer, David Puttman, and its director, Ray Connolly. Bowie saw definite parallels between himself and Dean, especially their shared sexual mystique, and was touched when Elizabeth Taylor told him he reminded her of her Giant co-star. And, in the documentary, she’s captured arriving at the Diamond Dogs concert in Anaheim, keen to enlist Bowie to play her leading man in the ill-fated dud, The Blue Bird. (Bowie would go on to model Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause garb and haircut during his epic, one and only appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1980, which brought the house down.)

A transcript is then shared of a remarkable conversation between Bowie and Puttman who relays how the actor James Fox recently quit the business having been dealt a personal blow following the death of his father. Bowie empathises and admits his own father’s passing had a similar effect on his career (which may help explain why he failed to follow up ‘Space Oddity’ with another hit for several years). Bowie then makes the bombshell claim that, back in the late 60s, he visited the Kray twins in Brixton prison, accompanied by Fox, who wanted to draw upon them for his gangster role in Performance.
 

Halloween Jack in profile, by Mark Wardel.

August provided a month-long break for the tour, during which Bowie decamped to Sigma Sound Studio in Philadelphia, to record the first sessions of what would become Young Americans. When the second leg of the tour reconvened in September, with a series of shows in Southern California, Bowie included a selection of his new Philly Soul-inspired songs that didn’t go down too well with some of the glam rockers in the audience.

Still, when he opened for a week-long residency at the Universal Amphitheatre in LA, the show attracted a starry crowd, including such famous faces as Britt Ekland and Raquel Welch, who admitted to the press afterwards that she hoped to make a record with Bowie. The Dame’s teenage role model, Anthony Newley, also attended, accompanied by another Bowie connection, singer Peter Noone, but left his front-row seat midway through due to the racket caused by Earl Slick’s guitar playing! Nevertheless, he subsequently conceded that his former emulator was “…madly elegant and very, very original.”
 

Bowie floats out over the audience, sitting on the end of a cherry picker crane, as he performs ‘Space Oddity.’
 
Author Tosh Berman has written how his artist father, Wallace Berman, took him to see that LA show, where they sat behind the TV personality Steve Allen and his vivacious wife, the actress Jayne Meadows. And an impressionable 16-year-old Michael Jackson (and his brothers) attended on consecutive nights, where he witnessed a masterclass in showmanship, including Bowie’s take on the moonwalk (which dates back to the ragtime-era) and that leg waggle move (taught to him by tour choreographer and The Lockers dance troupe alum, Toni Basil) that he would appropriate a decade later.
 

Bowie with MJ and the Jackson family (and a bearded David Gest!) at the Jackson’s Hayvenhurst home in Encino. In the 2022 Janet Jackson documentary, it was revealed that Bowie generously offered Michael and brother Randy a snort from his coke stash, but they turned him down.

Though not often cited or discussed enough, Bowie would remain one of Jackson’s major influences throughout the rest of his life. During the eighties, he channelled the rock star’s otherworldly mystique and overhauled his milquetoast image in a studied effort to make himself an object of fascination, à la Bowie, even taking his ‘Jean Genie’ lyric about “sleep(ing) in a capsule” to heart. Then, for much of the nineties, he adopted Halloween Jack’s powdery pallor, dark suit and black Borsalino fedora look. One of Jacko’s biographers has even disclosed how the pop superstar kept a shrine dedicated to Bowie at Neverland. (Bowie performing ‘Panic in Detroit’ on the Diamond Dogs Tour. At the 1:35 mark, he does the leg waggle move that Michael Jackson copied a decade later.)

Halloween Jack’s orange-blonde ombré hairstyle and stylish wardrobe are really the first iteration and template for what would become Bowie’s greatest-ever look as Thomas Jerome Newton in The Man Who Fell to Earth and the Thin White Duke alter ego that followed. But as well as capturing his epicene beauty (during one interview Bowie looks disconcertingly like a proto-Princess Di) and the entrancing effect his music and stagecraft have on his audience, Cracked Actor also betrays the obvious signs of his drug use, although he actually appears more loaded when he’s on stage than when he’s off.
 

Halloween Jack’s orange-blonde ombré hairstyle was the template for what would become Bowie’s greatest-ever look as the Thin White Duke. Image; Mark Wardel.

You can taste the cocaine in his voice as he rasps through his repertoire. Curiously, back in 2008, a furtively filmed clip of Bowie huffing the devil’s dandruff from a baggie in his dressing room, mysteriously found its way online, but the authors haven’t been able to verify whether this is an actual outtake or if it was sourced from elsewhere.

But most dishearteningly for fans, the authors do confirm that the hunt for the missing Diamond Dogs concert footage, filmed by the BBC team, has gone cold since Yentob announced the search at a screening of the film in 2017. Adding an extra dollop of misery, they further reveal that all the footage from the Iggy Pop concert at the Santa Monica Civic in 1977, featuring Bowie on keyboards, and filmed by a professional four-camera crew, has gone missing, too.

Plans to bring the Diamond Dogs Tour back home to the UK proved too financially prohibitive, so when the documentary aired in January 1975, it was the only chance for Bowie’s British fans to see what he’d been up to since he left British shores, having only read about the extravaganza in the weekly music papers. Thanks to the film and the Young Americans album that followed in March, an entirely new subculture was born in Britain: The Bowie Soul Boy.
 

The documentary was trailed prominently in the Radio Times.
 

RCA ran an advert to promote ‘Cracked Actor’ and Bowie’s catalogue.

Wardel was seventeen when the film was transmitted, and one of that multitude of British Bowie fans whose life was changed irrevocably after watching him sing ‘Starman,’ albeit not the famous Top of the Pops version, but the performance given a month earlier when Ziggy and the Spiders appeared on Lift Off with Ayshea, a kids TV show broadcast in the Midlands and the North of England.

In June of 1978, the aspiring artist moved from his seaside home town on the Wirral to London and watched Bowie perform at Earls Court on his first night in The Big Smoke. With an impressive portfolio under his arm, he walked straight into a job at a design studio in Soho and became a portraitist to the alarmingly glamorous luminaries of the heavily Bowie-inspired Blitz Kids-New Romantic-Synth Pop scene. He palled around with Boy George and David Sylvian and earned some extra kudos from them due to the thank you letter he received from their hero in Berlin after Wardel sent him one of his pieces as a present. In the missive, Bowie proffered a couple of book recommendations: Brain of the Firm: The Managerial Cybernetics of Organization, by Stafford Beer and The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by the Princeton psychologist, Julian Jaynes, which also made Bowie’s list of favorite books.

Wardel then gained some national prominence when he was interviewed about his artwork twice by Paula Yates on The Tube, once while Hazel O’Connor sat for her portrait.

In recent years, he has become as famous for his stunning Bowie masks. The V&A commissioned 300 of them for their blockbuster Bowie Is exhibition in 2013 and a set of six was purchased by the man himself:

Naturally, his work continues to pull in people from the Bowie vortex, and last year he crafted the cover for Dana Gillespie’s 73rd album. He was also recently interviewed by the songstress, during which he gave a summary of his work and life.
 

Artist Mark Wardel and one of his pieces.

You can order a copy of David Bowie Rainbowman: 1967-1980  here.

You can order David Bowie and Cracked Actor: The Fly in The Milk from Red Planet Books here.

And you can discover more about Mark Wardel’s creations here.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.01.2023
05:42 am
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Across the Bowieverse: Brett Morgen’s ‘Moonage Daydream’
12.17.2022
02:33 pm
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This is a guest post by Spencer Kansa, author of Wormwood Star: The Magickal Life of Marjorie Cameron, Zoning and Out There: The Transcendent Life and Art of Burt Shonberg. Perfect gifts for the festive season!

In the welter of pre-publicity for Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream, Bowie fans were baited with the promise that the filmmaker had been granted enviable access to the Bowie archive, an Aladdin’s cave of five million audio-visual treasures which, for the hardcore devotees amongst us, sounded like a mouthwatering prospect. That was until Morgen subsequently claimed to have stumbled upon the “Holy Grail” of lost Bowie booty: an unseen travelogue of the ever-elegant Englishman sauntering around the streets of Bangkok and Singapore, filmed during the final Asian leg of his all-conquering Serious Moonlight Tour of 1983.

Problem was, as any fan would know, this was simply not true: Richochet, as the documentary is titled, has been in wide circulation amongst the Bowie faithful for decades. The BBC had already borrowed far too heavily from it for Five Years, the first in what became their own Bowie trilogy of documentaries, and, sadly, like far too much of the content in Morgen’s film, it already exists on YouTube.
 

 
Similarly, Morgen’s much-trumpeted inclusion of the ‘Jean Genie’/‘Love Me Do’ rock-out with Jeff Beck, during the encore of the final Ziggy Stardust show, has been in the possession of fans, in grainier bootlegged form, for decades, ever since it was first broadcast on ABC-TV in 1974 and, at a later date, by the Rai network on Italian television. So, even before viewing this eagerly anticipated movie, alarm bells were ringing in some quarters.

Aside from the color correction and sound restoration that has been done, Morgen’s film is essentially an editing job pieced together in a collage fashion from the embarrassment of riches placed at his disposal; but based on the results, it would’ve been a wise move if he’d consulted more widely with Bowie connoisseurs before launching and landing the project.

While there has been some unfair criticism for what the film is not – a traditional, chronologically-paced documentary replete with exposition and talking heads – many of the rave reviews for Moonage Daydream appear to have been penned by casual fans, whereas for those in the know, the reaction has been decidedly more muted. And the reasons are manifold. Firstly, the fast cutting that Morgen periodically employs is often unnecessary and distracting, especially when your focus is the most supra-charismatic and aesthetically pleasing subject ever to appear in front of a camera. (During the ‘90s ‘Hallo Spaceboy’ section, a shot of an Earthling-era Bowie confabbing backstage at the Phoenix Festival with the Prodigy’s Keith Flint, which I’m sure both sets of fans would like to have savoured, flashes by in the blink of an eye.)

While the interpolation of classic films – from Bowie favs like Metropolis and Un Chien Andalou to clips culled from Kenneth Anger’s Magick Lantern Cycle, B-movie sci-fi schlockers and even The Matrix – is an act of supererogation, and the abstract visuals that animate several of the musical interludes are equally superfluous. 

In its favour, the film offers some welcome behind-the-scenes antics and alternate camera angles from the Ziggy farewell concert at Hammersmith Odeon, including risqué upskirt shots of the Leper Messiah that clearly made the filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker blanch when he saw them as they never made it into his final cut. (Bear in mind, given the time it was filmed, Pennebaker even overdubs the words “well-hung” when Ziggy recites his resume.)

Bowie’s felt-tip pen storyboards for the proposed Diamond Dogs movie are neatly brought to life. There are some on and off-camera extras from his chin-wags with Russell Harty, and private glimpses of his mid-70s video-television art experiments that prompted John Lennon to nickname him “Video Dave.” Another gem is the previously unseen footage of Bowie live on stage in ‘Gouster’ mode, grooving while decked out in beret and fatigues and crooning a coke-hoarse rendition of ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll With Me’, taken from Philly Dogs shows, the seldom-seen soul revue that cannibalized the abandoned Diamond Dogs Tour to air cuts from his new but then-unreleased album, Young Americans.

Excerpts from the hotly coveted Earls Court concert from 1978, originally filmed by the actor/director David Hemmings, that Bowie shelved for undisclosed reasons, include tantalising teases of ‘Warszawa’, ‘Sound and Vision’ and ‘Heroes’, although this abridged version of the latter lacks the mesmeric power of the one captured in its entirety by London Weekend Television on the second night of this Earls Court run for their Bowie special.

And there are eye-catching rushes from the suspenseful ‘Jump They Say’ music video, featuring the Duke at his most dashing, as well as arresting bonus scenes from the bewitching collaboration between Bowie and La La Human Steps siren, Louise Lecavalier, extricated from the ‘Fame ‘90’ promo and the scrim projections of the accompanying Sound and Vision Tour for which they were originally conceived.

But despite such enticements, Moonage Daydream is a frustrating watch at times, especially those moments when Morgen maddeningly muffs the money shot. The sublime segue from ‘Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud’ into ‘All the Young Dudes’ is one of the key moments of the entire Ziggy Stardust concert film, but instead of letting it play out to cast its spell, as the original footage does, Morgen cuts away to solar flares and ruins the effect.

When Bowie’s Lincoln Town Car arrives backstage for his concert at Earls Court, Morgen switches to fans filing into the arena, at precisely the wrong moment, so we don’t actually get to see the star of the show and his entourage emerge. (It’s hard to imagine that David Hemmings, who shot the actual footage, would have pulled away at that precise moment.)

While a montage, set to ‘Let’s Dance’, to showcase what a tasty little mover the Dame was, features his impressive tap dancing sequence from Absolute Beginners, but leaves out the crucial climax from the musical’s big production number (‘That’s Motivation’), where he out-Sinatra’s Sinatra and is winched into the air, Flying by Foy, to hand jive on top of a rotating globe. Morgen even excises the ending of the famous quote uttered by the bubbly moon-eyed fangirl outside the Diamond Dogs concert: “I’m just a space cadet – he’s the commander!”

I’m also surprised the filmmaker hasn’t received a litigious letter from the BBC, as he replays, in expanded form, pertinent Ziggy-era interviews about the rising importance of individualism and the rock star as false prophet that have already aired on their own Bowie documentaries. And he recycles two set pieces from their celebrated Cracked Actor doc. Firstly, by sampling the scene where a life mask is made of Bowie’s face, which Morgen marries to the very same song, ‘Quicksand’, albeit an alternative, non-album version. And although the ‘Cracked Actor’ live performance from the same programme is enhanced with some new footage, rather than cutting away, as the BBC does, to a waxwork of Elizabeth Taylor and other mannequins from the Golden Age of Hollywood, to help illustrate the theme of the song, Morgen merely superimposes stills from the famous photo session of Bowie with the movie queen instead.

And it’s not only major media corporations that Morgen’s recycled ideas from. The section dedicated to Bowie’s definitive film role, as Thomas Jerome Newton in The Man Who Fell To Earth, is scored with ‘Subterraneans’, an idea already realised, far more effectively, by Bowie superfan/film restorer, Nacho.
 

 
Furthermore, the insertion of Ziggy declaiming ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide’, inartfully juxtaposed with the Pepsi TV advert Bowie shot in exchange for their sponsorship of his highly ambitious but expensive to run Glass Spider Tour, that a couple of critics have taken as a rebuke to his, quite literal, ‘80s commercialism, doesn’t appear that mercenary at all if you already know that the money generated from it was used to pay for another stage – which took three days to assemble and pack down – so that Bowie could leapfrog shows and keep up a gruelling schedule.

The inclusion of late 60s deep cuts ‘Cygnet Committee’ and ‘Memory of a Free Festival’ (Bowie’s denunciation and celebration of hippiedom), which somewhat bookend the film, is another curious and unwelcome choice considering both are lower-tier tracks in his canon, and neither are indicative of the major themes that forged his legend during his Imperial Period that began when he left that decade for dead and relaunched himself into 70s rock superstardom.

And there are other strange anomalies. There’s a close-up of a widely seen schoolboy shot of the young master Jones, only his head has been transplanted from an even earlier school picture – for no reason whatsoever – so it makes him look like the younger brother of his classmates. And the ‘Ashes to Ashes’ promo, which was the life-changing moment for many second-generation Bowie fans, and remains one of his most magical moments, is marred by the oversaturation of colour that renders it a blur.

We expected so much more. Where’s the Ziggy rehearsal footage filmed at Haddon Hall? The recovered but still under-wraps performance of ‘Starman’ on Lift Off With Ayshea? The long-rumoured existence of Bowie’s full performance in The Elephant Man play? The Good Morning America interview with Rona Barrett? The unexpurgated footage of the Duke’s hero’s welcome at Victoria Train Station? The never-released concert footage of Bowie headlining the final night of the US Festival, in 1983, in front of an estimated 300,000 peoploids. Or Bowie being stalked and attacked by his alter-egos, in sinister puppet form, from the mothballed ‘The Pretty Things Are Going To Hell’ promo?

Inexplicably, the final chapter of the film, sees Morgen rerunning previously shown clips of Bowie riding the Escheresque escalators in the Singapore shopping plaza, and miming a flower blooming from an earlier seen outtake from ‘The Heart’s Filthy Lesson’ promo, for no apparent purpose. In fact, it seems like a shoddy oversight. And you can’t shake the nagging suspicion that, by now, Morgen has been so overwhelmed by his project that he’s resorted to just throwing stuff at the screen, and only makes you lament the other unseen material that could and should’ve been used in its place.

In this regard, Moonage Daydream has been rivalled for the Bowie highlight of the year by this recently shared pro-shot footage of a Serious Moonlight concert held at the Sydney Showground, which has lain unseen for nearly forty years.
 

 
Despite my misgivings, the film has struck big with cinema audiences, raking in millions at the regular box office and from special IMAX screenings, as well as via streaming services, where not only votaries but those uninitiated or new to the Bowieverse await. For the cognoscenti, the Earls Court concert footage is worth the price of admittance alone, although your appetite may be whetted, it won’t be satiated until the Bowie estate finally releases the full show. And how much longer are they going to wait? First-generation Bowie fans are now in their dotage, and us second-generation fans are getting up there in years, too. If the estate doesn’t start sharing some of the untapped jewels in the archive soon, many will no longer be around to see and appreciate them. And yet, the estate seems far more concerned with squeezing every last shekel from the fanbase – from licensing his name on Barbie dolls, NFTs, Stylophones and pop-up stores – to care.

Moonage Daydream is screening in select cinemas, and on streaming services, and is available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.17.2022
02:33 pm
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A one-of-a-kind saucepan with David Bowie’s face on it exists – and can be yours for $600


 
This one-off David Bowie aluminum saucepan will run you $611.78. The only person I can conceive of who would use such a thing is the Maid of Bond Street (you know the fancy ones who drive around in chauffeured cars?) and even she threw a side-eye toward this exorbitantly-priced piece of glam rock cookware.

The person behind this 2020 creation is Japanese artist and graphic designer Teru Noji, a graduate of the Vantan Design Institute in Tokyo. Noji has lived and worked in Arles, France for the last dozen years, and cites the work of renowned Japanese psychedelic artist Tadanori Yokoo as his biggest influence. Exactly what inspired Noji to etch an image of Bowie (pictured with his astral sphere created by make-up artist Pierre La Roche) on the bottom of a 20 x 20-cm aluminum pan is a mystery. All I know is that it is the only one Noji ever made and you can buy it over at the online shop for the Bowie Gallery which is physically located in Totnes, Devon, UK.

As for the pricey pan, well, I’ll let the images of it speak for themselves. Cooking with Bowie! It’s a thing.
 

 

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘I’m gonna kill you, Tin Man!’: Axl Rose’s knuckle-brawl with David Bowie over a girl, 1989
1970s glam rockers Cuddly Toys cover ‘Madman’ a song written by David Bowie & Marc Bolan
Beautiful images from David Bowie’s least favorite film role, 1978’s ‘Just a Gigolo’
David Bowie, Dennis Hopper and/or Dean Stockwell bring blow to Iggy Pop in a psych ward, 1975
Heartfelt letters written by a young David Bowie (and some of his youngest fans)
Intergalactic pimp: Donny Osmond dresses as ‘David Bowie’ and covers ‘Fame’ in 1976
Intimate photos of David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly & more from the set of ‘Labyrinth’

Posted by Cherrybomb
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02.21.2022
08:27 pm
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Bowie: The alt version of ‘Rebel Rebel’
04.21.2021
07:41 pm
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image
 
There is a (relatively speaking) lesser-known recording of David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” that was done in New York in 1974 and commonly known as the “U.S. Single Version.” Some of you will know this, some of you won’t. Even if you do, it’s fun to hear it again.

This furious variation on the song, released only as a 7” record (backed with “Lady Grinning Soul” and attributed only to “Bowie”) was out just for a few months when it was withdrawn and replaced with the album version. It’s a more uptempo, far more aggressive take on “Rebel Rebel” with Bowie himself allegedly playing all the instruments, save for the frenzied congas which were played by Geoff MacCormack.

Bowie’s guitar sounds like Keith Richards playing a rusty Strat through a transistor radio and he’s added the chorus of the “li li li li li li li li li li” bits not present on the LP version. It’s heavily phase-shifted and the vocals are a bit more shouted. All in all, I think it’s actually slightly superior to the better-known album track, although I love that one, too. Just an opinion.

This was (and still is) the loudest cut record I have ever heard. If you drop the needle on this baby with the stereo at a normal volume, it will blow your speakers (and ear drums) out. It always sends me diving for the volume knob before my speaker cones blow.

Here’s something from a posting about “Rebel Rebel (U.S. Single Version)” from the merry audiophile maniacs at the Steve Hoffman Forums:

Rebel Rebel (Bowie): three different versions exist. The familiar version was released in edited and remixed form (4’22” instead of 4’31” and much more echoey than the album version) as the the first single from Diamond Dogs (RCA LPBO 5009). The Australian Rebel Rebel EP (RCA RCA 20610) features a shorter 4’06” edit. Further mixes of this version are found on bootlegs: a ‘dry mix’ (“BBC Version”) was released on Absolutely Rare (no label) and The Axeman Cometh (DB003) has a “Mix 1”, supposedly from a 1973 acetate, but this version is very similar (if not completely identical) to the regular single edit.

The second version (often referred to as the US or “phased” version) is rumored to be played entirely by Bowie. It was released in May 1974, three months after the first issue, but only in the US, Canada (both RCA APBO-0287) and Mexico (RCA SP-4049). The US single version was re-released on several bootleg singles and albums, before officially appearing on Sound + Vision II and the 30th Anniversary 2CD Edition of Diamond Dogs.

There are two versions that you can pick up on Discogs. It’s the Hollywood pressing that’s the really crazy loud one.

The performance of “Rebel Rebel” on David Live has a similar arrangement to US single version.
 

 
 

Lip-syncing to the more familiar album edit on Dutch television’s TopPop in 1974. Afterwards, Bowie is presented the Dutch Edison award for sales of Ziggy Stardust and served “an old fisherman’s drink” called Schelvispekel.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.21.2021
07:41 pm
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DEVO’s Booji Boy, David Bowie, Hunter S. Thompson, Lemmy & Wendy O. Williams as marionettes


Lemmy and his trusty Rickenbacker bass and his pal Wendy O. Williams with her chainsaw. These marionettes were made by Canadian artist, Darren Moreash of Darrionettes.
 
If there is one thing I have learned as a contributor to Dangerous Minds for the last seven years is this—you can always count on the members of this collective to bring things to your attention that you perhaps did not know existed. I’ve done this many times myself here, including when I wrote about the fact an anatomically correct GG Allin marionette exists, poop stains, and all dubbing him the “Masturbator of Puppets.” I still get a kick out of that wordplay because I am, as far as you know, a fifteen-year-old boy. Also, my DM colleague, the always intriguing Paul Gallagher posted about these gorgeous marionettes fashioned after rock and roll royalty last summer, and boy, did you all dig that (as you should).

Anyway, as people do, I recently spent too much time scrolling through my social media feeds and looking at old photos of Alice Cooper from the early 70s and BOOM. Suddenly there was a photo of Alice holding an Alice Cooper puppet by its little paddle control that pulls its strings, and the search to find out more began.

This brings us to Canadian artist (and stand-up metal fan, I might add) Darren Moreash—the self-dubbed “Geppeto” of Harrietsfield, Nova Scotia. And Moreash’s efforts have brought him good fortune. Apparently, when he was still dating his soon-to-be wife, he gifted her with an Alice Cooper marionette. In 2012, Cheap Trick used puppets Moreash made in their images for their video “I Want You For Christmas.” Of the countless marionettes Moreash has produced during his lifetime, he has been able to gift them to many of his childhood heroes like Lemmy Kilmister and Stan Lee.

Now, I have to say that my kid went through a phase when he was a little kiddo, during which he became quite enamored with marionettes. And I gotta say, they were a lot of fun to play with once you got the hang of making them move the way you wanted. If I had known about Moreash during that time period, I would absolutely be the proud owner of a David Bowie marionette that I would lie to people about, telling them it’s really for my kid. In the past, Moreash’s marionettes have been auctioned off for charity fetching as much as $500. Anyway, as it’s the photos you came here for so, I’ll stop jawing so you can keep scrolling and see some of Moreash’s marionettes. If you are curious, yes, it does appear that you can get in touch with Moreash and have one of his wooden creations for your very own, such as his latest, a marionette in honor of the Bernie Sanders mitten meme. More info on that, here.
 

Feel the BERN!
 

Booji Boy!
 

Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO wearing his red energy dome.
 

Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman.
 

 

Peter Gabriel.
 
Many more of Moreash’s marionettes after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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01.25.2021
09:09 am
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‘Come and Buy My Toys’: David Bowie Monopoly is here just in time for the holidays
12.18.2020
06:18 am
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A shot of David Bowie on the set of ‘Bing Crosby’s Merrie Old Christmas,’ 1977.
 
Well, it’s about time 2020 actually gave us some good news. Though it’s not actually from Mars (BOO!), a David Bowie Monopoly-themed game does exist, and yes, you can have one.

The Thin White Duke’s version of Monopoly came out earlier this year, first via an exclusive distribution with UK site Booghe. Sometime around the end of the summer, it found its way across the pond and can be easily found on all kinds of U.S. e-commerce sites. Now that you know you can actually have one, here’s the scoop on the gameplay for this Ziggy-centric edition of Monopoly.

First, speaking as a collector of Monopoly board games, one of the things geeks like me look forward to are the game pieces, and wham-bam, thank you ma’am, the ones created for Bowie Monopoly do not disappoint. There is Major Tom, an astronaut helmet, a rolled-up tie for Bowie’s 1993 album Black Tie White Noise, and a replica of the hat Bowie wore as Pierrot in the video for “Ashes to Ashes” and on the cover of Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), designed by Natasha Korniloff. Of course, there is a lightning bolt in honor of Aladdin Sane, a star to signify Bowie’s musical swan song, Black Star, and a skull, which of course, was often a Hamlet-esque Bowie stage prop. SOLD? Right? Not yet because as the saying goes “But wait! There’s MORE!” is in full effect here as Bowie Monopoly bends Monopoly’s classic gameplay just like many other versions of Monopoly have done over time.

In the case of Bowie-Opoly, instead of buying property, the squares on the board represent albums from Bowie’s vast musical catalog. Once you own one of his albums, you can then build stages (instead of houses) and then stadiums (instead of hotels) to increase the “rent” paid when other players land on your square. Other play includes hitting up Bowie on tour and hiring your crew and other musicians to increase your star power and bank account. There are also Sound and Vision cards (like the Chance and Community Chest cards), which bring both good and bad fortune to players drawing from the deck.

It’s hard to conceive there might be a Bowie fan out there who also digs board games that would not want a Bowie-themed Monopoly game. I should know; I am one of those people currently waiting for their very own Bowie-Opoly to arrive. Images of the Queen Bitch of Monopoly games follow.
 

 

 

 

Oh You Pretty Things!’
 

 

David Bowie’s performance of ‘Heroes’ as shown on ‘Bing Crosby’s Merrie Olde Christmas’ in 1977.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘I’m gonna kill you, Tin Man!’: Axl Rose’s knuckle-brawl with David Bowie over a girl, 1989
‘She asked for my love and I gave her a dangerous mind’: Goodbye David Bowie from Dangerous Minds
A night spent hanging out with David Bowie and Iggy Pop: Ivan Kral tells us what it was like
Beautiful images from David Bowie’s least favorite film role, 1978’s ‘Just a Gigolo’
Burn baby, burn: Did David Bowie REALLY torch his 360-ton ‘Glass Spider’ stage prop in 1987?
David Bowie, Dennis Hopper and/or Dean Stockwell bring blow to Iggy Pop in a psych ward, 1975

Posted by Cherrybomb
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12.18.2020
06:18 am
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When Bowie met Bing: Mary Crosby relives their iconic duet
12.23.2019
01:54 pm
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This is a guest post by Spencer Kansa, author of the Marjorie Cameron biography Wormwood Star, coming out soon in a new edition.

Bing Crosby and David Bowie bookend the 20th century of popular music. Massively influential and innovative in their own individual ways, these master vocalists were bona fide icons of their respective generations, with careers spanning 50 years. Still, few at the time would have believed that their collaboration in 1977, on Crosby’s Merrie Olde Christmas TV show, would become the beloved cultural artifact it is today.

On paper, it seemed an improbable pairing. The easygoing crooner, whose smooth reassuring voice helped shepherd Americans through the Depression and Second World War into peacetime prosperity, singing carols with the premier rock star of the Space Age, who’d risen to become the artistic driving force behind Western popular music. But any lingering doubts were banished that magical moment when Bowie’s cockneyfied croon gels perfectly with Bing’s bass-baritone and they start to sing. 

For Crosby, the duet was a marvellous capper on an illustrious career in which he conquered the mediums of radio and television; become an Academy Award-winning actor and one of the biggest box office draws of the 1940s and 50s and, above all, reigned as one of the most successful recording artists in history, with a staggering 41 #1 hits, including “White Christmas,” which remains the world’s best-selling record of all time with over 50 million copies sold.

For Bowie, the duet was another surprising left turn that confirmed his status as the most audacious and uncategorizable pop artist of the 1970s; occurring at a midway point in his imperial period, that had seen him revolutionize how pop music was synthesised and presented on stage, on video, and on a dozen long-playing masterpieces. An astonishing creative streak that would further yield the new wave classics Lodger and Scary Monsters; the pop perfection of Let’s Dance and the global domination gained by its accompanying Serious Moonlight Tour, culminating with his commanding performance at Live Aid in 1985.

But the story behind the duet has generated certain myths over the years, and to iron out a few of them, I recently spoke with Bing’s daughter, the actress Mary Crosby, who, in 1980, rose to international prominence herself playing Kristin Shepard, the conniving, sloe-eyed seductress in the popular soap opera Dallas, and famously fired a couple of slugs into the dastardly J. R. Ewing, in a cliffhanger reveal watched by over 350 million viewers worldwide.

Since they began being broadcast in 1970, Bing Crosby’s Christmas specials had become a televisual tradition: a welcome, perennial presence in American homes. The 1977 episode happened to coincide with Bing’s 50th anniversary in showbiz, and as part of that celebration included concert performances in the UK that autumn, the programme-makers decided to film and set that year’s show in England, casting British entertainers. According to Mary, the idea to invite Bowie onto the show came from one of the producers, whose attitude was: ‘Wouldn’t it be wild?’ “They knew it was a long shot but it was a stroke of genius.” The offer came at an opportune for both singers who were, fortunately, able to synchronise their busy schedules. Bowie was already in England to drum up publicity for his latest single and album, Heroes, which was set to be released on September 23rd and October 14th respectively.

His TV itinerary began on September 7th, when he travelled to Granada Studios in Manchester to sing the title track on the teatime TV show fronted by his old mucker, Marc Bolan. He sang it to a backing track created by Bolan’s studio band, which included previous Bowie alums, Herbie Flowers (on bass) and Tony Newman (on drums), with Bowie himself trying his best to approximate Robert Fripps’s original guitar lines. Although they’d planned to end the show duetting a new song together (“Sitting Next To You”), this was scuppered when Bolan slipped off his monitor and the jobsworth crew refused to shoot another take.

Four days later, Bowie arrived at Elstree Studios in Borehamwood to perform “Heroes” again and “do something” with Bing Crosby.

For Mary Crosby, who performed on the show, alongside her actress mother, Kathryn, and her brothers, Harry and Nathaniel, Bowie’s arrival proved particularly memorable: “My brothers and I were teenagers at the time and Bowie walks in with this woman and they’re both wearing mink coats with full makeup on and red hair – and they matched! It was such an outrageous entrance.” Although she concedes that Bowie’s appearance – especially his Ziggy red hair – might not have been exactly as she remembers it, she’s adamant that he and his female companion – whom she assumed was his wife, although it was most likely Coco Schwab, Bowie’s personal assistant, as Bowie’s marriage to Angie was already in tatters – entered wearing full make-up. “Your memory changes with history, but their entrance was so outrageous. And they cleaned Bowie up for sure. They took off his full make-up. We were tickled; we were stunned. And we thought it was fantastic – and it was!”

One of the great anomalies of the show is the repeated story about how Bowie refused to sing the suggested “The Little Drummer Boy” song because he hated it and threatened to walk unless he was given an alternative number. This is the reason given for why the “Peace on Earth” counterpoint was hastily composed by the show’s writer, Buz Kohan, the composer, Larry Grossman, and the show’s music director, Ian Fraser. And yet, Bowie does actually perform “The Little Drummer Boy” tune; he and Crosby sing the first eight bars together before Bowie launches off into the counter-melody, and Mary Crosby believes this change of heart happened “once they got together. Any resistance there may have been was shifted when they realized they were in good hands with each other. When they went to the piano and started playing, David was nervous and dad was leery, but the moment the song started they both relaxed because it was all about the music.”

Bowie and Bing rehearsed this new arrangement, as well as their playful banter, which played upon their intergenerational differences, for an hour and then recorded the finished song in three takes. According to Kohan, Bing “loved the challenge,” and Mary relates how gracious and accommodating her father was when Bowie asked if they could change the original key to better suit his voice. For whatever reason the counterpoint was created, it proved to be an inspired course of action because it created a dynamic that wouldn’t have existed if they’d just settled on a straightforward singalong of the song. Mary agrees and remembers watching in amazement as the duet took shape: “My brothers and I didn’t know how it would pan out, and we watched as they worked through it on the soundstage, and it made me really happy when it happened. Even at the time, I knew magic was being made. I knew it was an extraordinary moment in time.”
 

 
The premise of the TV special sees the Crosby family travelling to England to spend Christmas at the home of their posh, long-lost relative, Sir Percival Crosby; and the show spoofs several characters from the then-popular British period drama, Upstairs, Downstairs, the Downton Abbey (without the budget) of its day. The Scottish comic actor, Stanley Baxter, drags up as Mrs. Bridges, the cook, and Rose the scullery maid, as well as portraying Hudson, the butler, from the original show.

Much more after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.23.2019
01:54 pm
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Highway to Hell: Marilyn Manson’s cyber-goth covers of AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Bowie, & more
11.18.2019
09:03 am
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Marilyn Manson looking more than a bit like David Bowie.
 
It makes sense that Marilyn Manson would campaign hard to make his cover of the Eurythmics 1983 world-wide smash, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” the single of his 1995 EP Smells Like Children. Dave Stewart, praised the cover calling it “oddly infectious.” Vocalist Annie Lennox agreed with Stewart, who appreciated Manson’s “extreme” take on “Sweet Dreams.”

His instinct proved to be right on the money, and “Sweet Dreams” a-la Marilyn Manson, would become an international hit. “Sweet Dreams” was not the only cover on Smells Like Children as Manson also took on Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ signature song, “I Put a Spell on You” and Patti Smith’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll N***er.” During his career, Manson has covered songs which range from selections that totally make sense like Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” to a chilling rendition of “Suicide is Painless,” the theme song for the film and television series M*A*S*H. The list of artists and songs covered by Marilyn Manson is long and full of surprises, including a tune made famous by Johnny Cash, “God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” which Manson recorded for the soundtrack of the 2017 film 24 Hours to Live.

In 2002, Irish bootleg label Murphy Records put out Killer Wasps-The Real Ultra Rare Tracks best described as a schizophrenic sampling of Manson rarities. The various covers on the release include Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” and David Bowie’s “Golden Years.” A huge Bowie fan, Manson would collaborate with Shooter Jennings (the son of Waylon Jennings) on a mystical cover of “Cat People (Putting out the Fire)”—a song Manson used for years as a warm-up for his live shows. The song appears on Jennings’ 2016 record Countach (For Giorgio)—a collection of covers originally done by electro-music wizard Giorgio Moroder. Jennings and Manson’s “Cat People” would also spawn a curious eight-plus minute NSFW video presented in old-school 16-bit style.

A selection of Marilyn Manson’s many covers follows after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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11.18.2019
09:03 am
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Burn baby, burn: Did David Bowie REALLY torch his 360-ton ‘Glass Spider’ stage prop in 1987?
09.10.2019
10:29 am
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David Bowie performing under one of the massive, glowing arachnids designed by Mark Ravitz for The Glass Spider Tour in 1987.
 

“I got up on it myself. Anything I design, if I can do it, they can do it. So one day I got up in the head of the spider. Sixty feet in the air. There’s a three-foot square you’re standing on, steel pipe welded to it with weight lifter straps. Foot pedal to make the wings open up. You gotta shit a brick when you’re up there…”

—artist and designer Mark Ravitz on the glass spider he designed from Marc Spitz’s book Bowie: A Biography.

David Bowie’s The Glass Spider Tour in 1987 was his most ambitious outing since the pricey Diamond Dogs Tour. At the cost of one million per week to stage, the set was designed by artist Mark Ravitz, with help from lighting expert Allen Branton and video director Christine Strand. A glowing 64-foot wide spider floated over the stage with its legs (made from vacuum tubes) dangling from its body. Every night, Bowie would descend from the spider and a platform sixty feet in the air (as described by Ravitz above), as long as weather conditions would permit.

Once the 86-date tour hit the U.S. the decision was made to construct two additional identical stages, and a third smaller set for Madison Square Garden (which was too small to accommodate the original stage). This was necessary to avoid any complications that would prevent the set from not being ready at least three times a week. For the first date of the U.S. tour in Philadelphia, it took four days and nearly 300 members of Bowie’s crew to assemble the massive stage in time for the show at Veterans Stadium. The shows were non-stop marathons of entertainment including elaborate, rigorous dance numbers choreographed by Toni Basil. So intense were Basil’s dance numbers, a fan claims to have seen poor David vomit off the side of the stage after a particularly grueling groove session. After playing 44 shows in America, the tour headed to Australia for its last fifteen shows, the final gig set for Auckland, New Zealand on November 28th.

According to those close to Bowie, he was more than ready for the wildly successful, attendance-breaking tour to end and was planning something big to celebrate. His plan? Destroy The Glass Spider set and bury it somewhere in the desert in New Zealand.

Bowie’s story regarding the demise of The Glass Spider set has been documented in a few books including The Complete David Bowie by Nicholas Pegg (2000). The last few shows in Melbourne were plagued by terrible weather—the rain and high winds meant Bowie would not be descending from the spider, and many of the shows dance routines had to be scaled back or eliminated entirely. After the final show in Auckland, Bowie would tell the press what became of his giant spider:

“It was great to burn the spider in New Zealand at the end of the tour. We just put the thing in a field and set light to it. That was such a relief!”

 

One of the Glass Spider’s used for the Glass Spider Tour in 1987.
 
Bowie’s ceremonious burning of The Glass Spider set would become the stuff of legend, and on a certain level, it’s incredibly gratifying to think the Thin White Duke was able to exorcise his spidery demons just as you would expect him to. There are other stories associated with The Glass Spider set and its possible whereabouts, such as some of the remains being buried in a hole at the Auckland airport. Bowie bassist Erdal Kizilcay recalls asking Bowie about the set while they were traveling together from Auckland, to which Bowie responded, “They’re burning it.” At the time, Kizilcay found Bowie’s explanation a bit strange. Later, after getting confirmation from others close to the spider set situation, Kizilcay agreed Bowie’s story was probably true. This brings us to New Zealand promoter Peter Grumley—the man who claims to have recovered many parts of the Glass Spider set.

Grumley disputes the story of the set being buried at the airport in Auckland as well as Bowie’s version. In a 2015 interview Grumley asserted he purchased the set from “friends of his” working on the tour, and put it away in one of his warehouses. What he didn’t buy allegedly went to the dump. The only artifacts currently in Grumley’s possession are two staircases used on the set. Chris Davis, a guitar tech for Peter Frampton (who was a part of The Glass Spider Tour) also had some insight into what happened to the pricey stage set and backs up Grumley’s claim. Here’s Davis’ very specific “But wait! There’s more!” moment on this weird tale…

Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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09.10.2019
10:29 am
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‘The Side Effects of the Cocaine’: Mini-comic about David Bowie’s paranoid, coked-up years
08.27.2019
10:12 am
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In August of 2010, Sean T. Collins (writer) and Isaac Moylan (artist) posted “The Side Effects of the Cocaine” on a Tumblr dedicated for the purpose. It had as a subtitle, “David Bowie 01 April 1975-02 February 1976,” which puts us squarely in the Thin White Duke era, of course, covering Station to Station (the title of the comic comes the title track of that album), Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, Bowie’s appearance on Soul Train, Bowie’s Playboy interview, conducted by Cameron Crowe, who also wrote “Ground Control to Davy Jones,” a profile on Bowie for Rolling Stone that appeared in February 1976. As Peter Bebergal wrote in his excellent book Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, “When a nineteen-year-old Cameron Crowe visited David Bowie for a Rolling Stone magazine interview in 1975, he found a coked-out Bowie lighting black candles to protect himself from unseen supernatural forces outside his window” of his home in Hollywood.

In that Playboy interview Bowie made some comments about the appeal of fascism that would get him into trouble:
 

Television is the most successful fascist, needless to say. Rock stars are fascists, too. Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars. ... Look at some of his films and see how he moved. I think he was quite as good as Jagger. It’s astounding. And, boy, when he hit that stage, he worked an audience. Good God! He was no politician. He was a media artist himself. He used politics and theatrics and created this thing that governed and controlled the show for those 12 years. The world will never see his like. He staged a country.

 
Bowie’s diet during this period was famously red peppers, milk, and cocaine, with more than a soupçon of fame and paranoia.

It’s one of Bowie’s best and most interesting periods—Station to Station is my favorite Bowie album—and in “The Side Effects of the Cocaine” Collins and Moylan take a peek at the romantic/fucked-up mythos of that period. What is the significance of the dates April 1, 1975-February 2, 1976? Well, April 1, 1975 was the date that Bowie severed ties with MainMan, Tony Defries’ management company, and it’s that scene that kicks us off in the comic. On February 2, 1976 was the start of his Isolar tour, in Vancouver, British Columbia, which ends the comic. You can read an account of that show by Jeani Read under the title “Sinatra Having a Bad Dream,” which presumably ran in the Vancouver Sun the next day (but I don’t know this):
 

Bowie performances are-have been-legendary for being massively orchestrated orgies of visual and musical sensationalism. Which makes the current offering the biggest no-show of his career. And possibly the best. The thing was absolutely brilliant, maybe for its sheer audacity than anything else, but brilliant nonetheless.

Dressed in black 40’s style vest and pants, white French-cuff shirt, edge of blue Gitanes cigarette pack sneaking out of his vest pocket. Posturing-a naked kind of elegance now, brittle and brave-in front of a bare essential band of guitars, keyboards, drums and bass, on a bare black stage in the bare glare of white-only stage and spots. Looking about as comfortable as Frank might fill-in as lead singer for Led Zeppelin, and even within that assuming total control over the proceedings.Bowie has always said that on stage he feels like an actor playing the part of the rock star.

 
Collins and Moylan take a slice-of-life approach with Bowie’s life, with the proviso that his life wasn’t anything like a normal person’s at this time. Towards the end some of the panels feature Bowie making utterances from his Playboy interview.

Click here to read the whole thing.
 

 

 
Continues after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Martin Schneider
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08.27.2019
10:12 am
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The Man Who Fell to Earth: David Bowie tries to fly, fails, 1973
06.21.2019
02:25 pm
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David Bowie getting up close with his fans on stage at Salisbury City Hall in Salisbury, England on June 14th, 1973.
 

“I thought, “This guy thinks he can fly.” There may be some acrobats could have handled that. He’s a pretty rubbery guy, but I know it was too high. He went flying past me at the piano and just wiped out.”

—Long-time Bowie pianist/keyboard player Mike Garson on Ziggy’s failed attempt at flying in 1973 (noted in the 2015 book David Bowie: The Golden Years).

The lucky souls in attendance for David Bowie’s performance at Salisbury City Hall on June 14th, 1973 would get to see him with the Spiders from Mars a few weeks before Bowie pulled the plug on his most famous alter-ego, Ziggy Stardust. They would also get to see Bowie attempt to take flight when he jumped from a speaker five feet above the stage, only to faceplant on the stage itself leaving a breathless audience wondering if the he was going to get up again.

Before the show, fans started arriving in glammed-out getups, and Ziggy-a-like hairdos. Those who got there early enough apparently got to sneak a look at Bowie hanging out in the foyer of the theater clad in a purple suit. As excitement was building for Bowie’s performance, an announcement boomed over the PA asking the rabble-rousing question “ARE YOU READY FOR BOWIE?” to which the already amped-up crowd answered “YEAH!” As Bowie and The Spiders from Mars were about to take the stage, they were given one more announcement from the announcer:

“Welcome to the fantastic and successful world tour including the United States of America, Japan, and now, his home country of the United Kingdom—David Bowie!”

During the show Bowie would, of course, make various costume changes including several designs created by Kansai Yamamoto, such as his asymmetric knitted, one-leg bodysuit (pictured above) and an elaborate cloak decorated with kanji characters which Bowie would also wear during the Aladdin Sane tour. Under the massive cloak, Bowie had yet another surprise for his fans—Yamamoto’s famous “Woodland Creatures” bodysuit which, when he wasn’t facing the crowd, gave the audience a look at his thin, white butt cheeks. After a short break, so fans could go scoop up merch (after spending a mere £2.50p per ticket mind you), Bowie and The Spiders would return and whip through a few more jams including a cover of the Stones’ “Let’s Spend the Night Together.” At some point during this part of the show, Bowie climbed to the top of a PA stack on stage. According to one fan who was there, Bowie stood momentarily on the top of the PA’s with his arms outstretched and, perhaps channeling his pal Iggy Pop, or a bird, lept to the stage. As noted by piano player Mike Garson, for a few short moments it did appear as though David Bowie was flying until he hit the stage. As Bowie was always pretty much an actual superhero in real life, he would continue the show with a limp before exiting once more before the encore.

When he returned to the stage to chants of “WE WANT DAVID” Bowie brought a chair as he could no longer stand after his flying/stage diving mishap before kicking into two more covers: the Velvet Underground’s “White Light White Heat,” and Chuck Berry’s “Round & Round.” As he was introducing the Berry cover, he gave his fans an update about his injuries:

“Personally I think I’ve broken my ankle. No, not really, but it hurts a bit. If you wanna make this next one work, you’ve gotta work together, ‘cause I’m gonna do this one sitting down. This is an old one by Chuck Berry, and it’s called “Round & Round.”

You can hear some really, really rough audio of the show below, though it’s nearly impossible to tell exactly what’s happening or when Bowie’s short flight came to an end.
 

Super rough audio of the show at Salisbury City Hall on June 14th, 1973.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘I’m gonna kill you, Tin Man!’: Axl Rose’s knuckle-brawl with David Bowie over a girl, 1989
‘She asked for my love and I gave her a dangerous mind’: Goodbye David Bowie from Dangerous Minds
David Bowie explains what ‘Ziggy Stardust’ is all about before it was released, 1972
David Bowie, Dennis Hopper and/or Dean Stockwell bring blow to Iggy Pop in a psych ward, 1975
Behind-the-scenes footage of David Bowie & Amanda Lear from ‘The 1980 Floor Show’

Posted by Cherrybomb
|
06.21.2019
02:25 pm
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Iggy Pop and David Bowie: Their final times on stage together
06.05.2019
11:02 am
Topics:
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China Club 1
 
In 2017, we told you about the time when David Bowie was in Iggy Pop’s band, specifically the final concert of The Idiot tour. But that’s not the last time Bowie and Pop performed together in public—there would be two additional times. Both moments had the element of surprise.

During the 1979 recording sessions for Iggy Pop’s album Soldier, David Bowie dropped by the studio. Initially there just to offer his moral support, he ended up co-writing the song “Play It Safe,” and singing backing vocals on the track. Iggy’s spring 1980 European tour in support of Soldier included an April 27 club show at the Metropol in Berlin. The city had been the stomping grounds of Iggy and Bowie for a couple of years; the two shared a Berlin apartment, and embraced the city’s culture, frequently attending area bars and nightclubs, as well as art shows and museums. It was an intense period of creativity for them, with Pop’s The Idiot and Lust For Life (both with significant contributions from Bowie), and DB’s Low and “Heroes”, all coming out in a single calendar year (1977).
 
Berlin 1976
David Bowie and Iggy Pop in Berlin, 1976.

In April 1980, Bowie traveled to London to finish up Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). Knowing Iggy was in Berlin, Bowie then made his way to visit his friend and colleague. During Iggy’s set at the Metropol, Bowie stunned everyone by jumping on stage to play keyboards, sitting in for two songs.
 
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Berlin 1980 2
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Bart Bealmear
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06.05.2019
11:02 am
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Back to the Future: Bryan Ferry live in concert, Japan 1977
05.22.2019
09:17 am
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In 1983, Dexy’s Midnight Runners’ frontman Kevin Rowland managed to get his band booted off their prestigious support gig on David Bowie’s Serious Moonlight tour. Dexy’s were riding high as a ragamuffin band of “Celtic soul rebels” who had scored big with their single “Come on Eileen.” Despite the plum role on Bowie’s show-bill, Rowland was no fan of the Thin White Duke. Unfortunately, he made his antipathy public during one gig at the Hippodrome d’Auteuil, Paris, when he told the audience David Bowie was “full of shit,” before adding:

“I don’t know why you are so fussed about Bowie. Bryan Ferry has much more style.”

To be fair, Rowland had a point—well, half a point. Bryan Ferry has always been stylish, while Bowie often latched onto trends, characters, and talented collaborators (like Mick Ronson, Tony Visconti, and Brian Eno) to find his style and further his career. Ferry always seemed to know exactly who he was, what he was about, and where he was going.

A baby boomer born into a working class family in Washington, County Durham in 1945, Ferry inherited his obsession for music from his mother. Music was just noise to his father, but for his mother it was a passion. From the age of ten, Ferry was obsessed with rock and jazz. He preferred American artists like Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Charlie Parker, rather than the homegrown sounds of ‘50s skiffle. He got a Saturday job delivering newspapers and magazines so he could read up on all the new record releases and any reviews or interviews with his favorite artists.

Ferry said he never quite fit in at school and always felt a bit of “an oddity.” While his classmates argued about the differences between Bill Haley and Chuck Berry or Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele, he chose to follow the artists on the Stax and Tamla Motown labels. It wasn’t just the music he liked but how these artists presented themselves—synchronized dance routines, sharps suits, and beautifully coiffed hair styles. It was show business where the image was as important as the sound.

The confirmation that he was on the right track came when he started studying fine art at Newcastle University. Under the guidance of noted British pop artist Richard Hamilton, Ferry became more confident in his own nascent talents and began writing songs. These were at first influenced by Hamilton’s pop aesthetic, best heard in songs like “Virginia Plain” which was inspired by a painting Ferry had made of a packet of cigarettes (Virginia Plain was then a brand of cigarette).

His musical ambitions were brought into sharper focus after he hitch-hiked to London to see Otis Redding perform in concert in 1967. It was then that Ferry knew he had to become a singer.
 
Watch stylish Bryan Ferry in concert, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.22.2019
09:17 am
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David Bowie and the making of ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’

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The director Nicolas Roeg wanted to cast David Bowie as the lead in his next film The Man Who Fell to Earth—the story of humanoid alien called Thomas Jerome Newton, who comes to this world in search of water. A copy of the script was sent to the singer and a meeting arranged. Roeg arrived at a recording studio in New York where Bowie was working on his next album. “David will be finished by ten, so if you come round about nine-thirty….” Roeg wanted to cast Bowie after seeing him in the BBC Arena documentary Cracked Actor. There was something ethereal about him, something alien, he seemed isolated in the world around him, traveling in a limo, drinking milk from a carton, watching the world go by. As Roeg later said:

“[Bowie’s} actual social behaviour was extraordinary—he hardly mixed with anyone at all. He seemed to be alone—which is what Newton is in the film—isolated and alone.”

Roeg waited, drank a couple of Martinis, met some exotic people, and wondered what was going on? Ten o’clock. No Bowie. Another call came through: “David will be finished by eleven.” Half-past eleven, no Bowie. Twelve, no Bowie. “He’ll be with you by two.” Five in the morning Bowie arrived. He was pale thin strange looking. Roeg started talking to him about the film. Did he want to do it? What did he think about the script? What about that scene where…? Bowie seemed keen, agreed with most of Roeg’s points, but was also nervous. He said he would do the film, yes, he’d be there. But he seemed more in a hurry to get Roeg out of the studio. Bowie was worried that if the director asked any more questions he would get wise to the fact he hadn’t as yet read the script.

Bowie was writing his own film scripts. He moved to L.A. with some vague idea of getting into movies. “Me and rock-and-roll have parted company,” he told Tina Brown from the Sunday Times.

“Don’t worry, I’ll still make albums with love and with fun, but my effect is finished. I’m very pleased. I think I’ve caused quite enough rumpus for someone who’s not even convinced he’s a good musician. Now I’m going to be a film director.

“I’ve always been a screen writer, my songs have just been practice for scripts.”

Bowie read the script and watched one of Roeg’s previous films Walkabout—a movie based on a fourteen page screenplay by playwright Edward Bond. He liked both and signed-up to play Newton.

Filming took place over eleven weeks in New Mexico starting in July 1975. According to Bowie, he was “blasted” off his tits on cocaine, snorting ten grams a day. This runs counter to what his co-star Candy Clark claimed. She said Bowie gave a vow to Roeg he would take “no drugs.” Bowie was focussed, on the mark, and “luminescent.” Though Bowie later fessed up:

“I just learned the lines for that day and did them the way I was feeling. It wasn’t that far off. I actually was feeling as alienated as that character was. It was a pretty natural performance—a good exhibition of somebody literally falling apart in front of you. I was totally insecure with about ten grams a day in me. I was stoned out of my mind from beginning to end.”

Whatever the truth, Bowie gave (arguably) his best performance. Bowie liked Roeg, they got on well together, with the singer desperate to please the director. The New York Times noted:

Mr. Roeg has chosen the garish, translucent, androgynous‐mannered rock‐star, David Bowie, for his space visitor. The choice is inspired. Mr. Bowie gives an extraordinary performance. The details, the chemistry of this tall pale figure with black‐rimmed eyes are clearly not human. Yet he acquires a moving, tragic force as the stranger caught and destroyed in a strange land.

When Roeg delivered the finished film to Paramount, the studio refused to pay for it, saying it was not the movie they had agreed upon. It was eventually distributed by British Lion Films. Critical reception was mixed. Some thought it “preposterous and posturing” (Roger Ebert), others (Richard Eder) thought it “absorbing” and “beautiful.” From its initial release, The Man Who Fell to Earth gained a cult status, and a fanbase that has grown to the point where the movie is now considered one of Roeg’s and Bowie’s best work.

In February 1976, Films and Filming magazine gave a sneak preview of Roeg’s latest “masterpiece,” which was followed by a four star (“not to be missed”) review in the May issue from that year.
 
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More pages of Bowie and ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth,’ after the jump….
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.17.2019
08:09 am
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David Bowie wanted Flo & Eddie of the Turtles to star with him in a film he wrote
02.28.2019
08:51 am
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People cover
 
In the mid 1970s, David Bowie was working on a script that he wanted to turn into a film. The movie, conceived as a comedy, would star Bowie and the duo known as Flo & Eddie (Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan of the fabulous Turtles). Volman and Kaylan are funny dudes, and Bowie felt they were the guys to help make his film a cinematic success. 

In late March 1976, Bowie flew Volman and Kaylan to New York City to meet and discuss his script notes, which were several hundred pages long.
 
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Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman.

In his autobiography, Shell Shocked, Howard Kaylan wrote about the Bowie project.

Bowie flew Mark and me into New York at the end of the month to meet about his screenplay. It was a first-class journey that wound up at his Madison Square Garden concert, backstage. Then we went to the Village for more of the same. Limos took us everywhere, although we got to see David for all of about ten minutes. Still, I don’t think there were any complaints about the trip. Whatever Bowie wanted.

There was a screening of The Man Who Fell to Earth, starring Bowie, at a theater in Westwood. David had sent us our invitations in a large cardboard box. What the hell? Ah, also enclosed were two copies, some 750 pages each, of David’s screenplay notes for a feature film to be called The Traveler. The film was to deal with the very real alter ego that Bowie had created for himself, that of the Thin White Duke. Eschewing air travel, David would only travel to and from American via ocean liner where, once aboard, he would assume a disposable two-week identity where his lines between fact and fiction blurred and he regaled the other passengers with amazing tales of his conquests and heroics.

There was a lot to take and it offered a great many opportunities for fantasy and wordplay. I was excited. It took many hours to read this “outline,” as David called it.

About a year and a half later, Volman & Kaylan returned to New York to go over the film idea with Bowie in more detail. They met up at the Mayfair Hotel, where Bowie was staying. The three spent the next couple of days hanging out, culminating with Volman and Kaylan interviewing Bowie for the Canadian TV program, 90 Minutes Live. After the interview, Flo & Eddie hugged Bowie and said their goodbyes.

The duo never heard another word about The Traveler.
 
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Mark Volman, Ronnie Spector, David Bowie, and Iggy Pop. New York City, March 26, 1976.

A portion of the 90 Minutes Live interview is embedded below. The segment aired stateside on The Midnight Special in April 1978.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘I’m gonna kill you, Tin Man!’: Axl Rose’s knuckle-brawl with David Bowie over a girl, 1989
Little Ziggy: Photographs of a young David Bowie
When David Bowie was in Iggy Pop’s band: Their final concert
Happy Together: The Turtles in the 1960s

Posted by Bart Bealmear
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02.28.2019
08:51 am
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