After the long, illustrious career of David Bowie, which ended on a high note with the release of the acclaimed “Blackstar” album just days before his passing in 2016, there have been lots of think pieces about the meaning and relevance of his work, and quite a few books published, too. As a somewhat unusual artist among his classic rock peers, Bowie reinvented himself several times along the course of his career, sometimes being called the “chameleon of rock” for his shifts in personae and style. This can make it somewhat difficult to follow along with his work. The BBC may have simplified this process for us all, though, having recently published a 4-decade spanning collection of interviews with Bowie as Bowie at the BBC, which you can borrow from the Polley Music Library.
A book consisting of interviews can
be tricky to navigate sometimes, but BBC reporter and Bowie authority Tom
Hagler was brought in to provide context and a degree of narrative structure to
this book’s astonishing 36 radio and television interviews spanning 1964 to
2005. Hagler writes a short introduction and conclusion, but perhaps more
importantly, he sets up each interview with the circumstances of the time and
place in Bowie’s life. In his introduction, he makes a startling point that I
think is probably news to most audiences outside of the British Isles: we may
never have had David Bowie the artist if it weren’t for the BBC, since they
dominated all radio and television coverage in England at the time he launched
into music. And he got off to a rough start with them, as well: at first, the
BBC panel who selected artists for radio play rejected Bowie’s music as not
being compelling enough. DJ John Peel had to intervene and ask them to
reconsider! Of course, they did, and their relationship became a mutually
beneficial one: Hagler notes that Bowie’s appearance of Top of the Pops in
1972, for example, both helped to make him a household name in England, and
gave kids the impression that the show was still “cool.”
Speaking of Top of the Pops, the
first interview featured in the book dates to November 12, 1964, which was an
early night in the broadcast history of that show. Bowie wasn’t a guest that
night, though — instead, he was on the show immediately preceding it, called
“Tonight.” He was only 17, and he was still Davy Jones, not David Bowie. And he
wasn’t a musical guest! Instead, he had started a somewhat tongue-in-cheek
organization called The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired
Men, ostensibly concerned about getting kicked out of taverns or not getting
hired at factories for their choice of hairstyle. Hagler’s introduction notes
that Bowie must have gotten the idea from some of the heckling he received while
performing with his first band, and that this was an interesting way for him to
look for more publicity since David Jones and the King Bees hadn’t captured the
public’s imagination. The next interview jumps five years ahead to 1969, in a
moment that Hagler notes was especially difficult for Bowie, as his father had
just died, his girlfriend had left him, his first solo record had flopped, and
his manager had abandoned him. “Space Oddity” had just entered the top 10, but
typical for Bowie, he was always looking ahead, and he chose different tunes
for his appearance on the DLT Show. This is followed by his band’s first
appearance on John Peel’s show, a headlining concert that was broadcast live on
BBC radio.
The next entry in the book isn’t an
interview, but it documents that famous 1972 performance of “Starman” on Top of
the Pops, which many regard as a kind of sea change in pop music. Glam rock had
officially made it to the mainstream with this performance, complete with the
bright, tight-fitting clothes and makeup. Many of the important bands of the
70s and 80s attributed their musical aspirations to catching this performance
on TV when they were kids. It was a new thing, with a little of the 60s hippie
sentiments of peace and love left over, but the new look, outer space lyrics,
and more of a funky hard rock sound opened the doors to new musical approaches.
A clip from this performance is featured on the cover of the book, too.
But the BBC was still a bit of a
stodgy old organization, even when they knew a good thing. The following year,
a special edition of “Nationwide” featured Bowie, and host Bernard Falk was
somewhat rude and condescending to his subject. BBC Radio was more receptive,
though, hosting several friendly interviews with Bowie throughout the rest of
the 70s. Of note, these document Bowie’s “Berlin trilogy” period, somewhat
misunderstood by the record-buying public at first, but now generally regarded
as the pinnacle of his work. Then we launch into the 1980s, which was a
relatively slow decade for coverage of Bowie. He was still quite busy, but had
branched into acting, and there wasn’t as much music to talk about with the
BBC. Of course, there is another sad reason: two days after the December 1980
BBC radio interview featured in the book, Bowie’s mentor, hero, and friend John
Lennon was assassinated outside of his NYC apartment. As police investigated
the plans of murderer Mark David Chapman, they discovered that Bowie was also
on his hit list, and that he had tickets to the next day’s performance of “The
Elephant Man,” where Bowie was making his Broadway debut. If his plans hadn’t
worked out with Lennon, it’s very possible that Bowie would have been his
victim instead. At the next performance, Bowie noted that there were three
empty seats in the front row, belonging to Yoko Ono, Lennon, and Chapman. This
led to Bowie becoming a more private and guarded person during the 80s.
The bulk of the book, though,
documents interviews and appearances with the BBC from the 90s and Oughts. Even
within the context of such a regularly-transformative career, Bowie’s run in
the 90s was astonishing. He started the decade with a retrospective of his work
in the form of a reissue series and a worldwide tour, after which he vowed to
leave his previous material behind and strike out in new directions. Renowned
composer Philip Glass began turning his “Berlin trilogy” albums into
symphonies. And Bowie created some of his most interesting work, though not his
most popular, such as the cyberpunk-inspired “Outside,” and the straight-ahead
modern rock band Tin Machine, in which he refused to take top billing.
Industrial, hip-hop, and EDM genres were incorporated into his music throughout
the decade. And he toured with the hippest bands of the day like Nine Inch
Nails. Overall, these interviews show an artist navigating a difficult
crossroads for many artists of the classic rock era: instead of settling for
becoming a kind of rock music elder statesman, Bowie managed to both retain his
previous audience and their love for his music of the 70s and 80s, while
putting himself in front of brand new audiences with his latest music. As a
child of the 90s, I especially enjoyed this period in the book, too, and I
remember how Bowie was thought of as much “cooler” than other artists of the
classic rock era: he collaborated with Trent Reznor. Nirvana covered “The Man
Who Sold the World.” He was embraced as both an influence and a part of the new
musical generation.
The interviews featured in the book
end in 2005, when Bowie entered a period of mostly private life. Some of this
was probably related to his health—he suffered a heart attack in 2004, and
pulled away from large tours and making records after that. In fact, there was
a 10-year gap between his 2003 album “Reality” and his return in 2013 with “The
Next Day.” He completed a final burst of activity in his remaining few years,
with the debut of the musical “Lazarus” in 2015, and the release of the album
“Blackstar” in 2016, upon which we soon learned that he had been fighting
cancer. Though there are periods of his life that aren’t as well-documented by
the interviews in this book, it’s fair to say that those periods aren’t more
comprehensively covered anywhere else, either. Inevitably, there will be
periods in the life and world of a chameleon like Bowie that forever remain a
mystery.
(If you enjoy this, you may also
wish to try David Bowie All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track by
Benoit Clerc, Bowie on Bowie: Interviews and Encounters with David Bowie
by Sean Egan, or David Bowie in Darkness: A Study of “1. Outside” and the Late
Career by Nicholas P. Grego.)
See
Scott C.’s review of The Best of Bowie in the January 2016 Staff
Recommendations here on BookGuide.
Recommended
by Scott S.
Polley Music Library
Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!
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