- David Bowie
David Robert Jones was born in Brixton on January 8, 1947. At age thirteen, inspired by the jazz of the London West End, he picked up the saxophone and called up Ronnie Ross for lessons. Early bands he played with – The Kon-Rads, The King Bees, the Mannish Boys and the Lower Third –provided him with an introduction into the showy world of pop and mod, and by 1966 he was David Bowie, with long hair and aspirations of stardom rustling about his head. Kenneth Pitt signed on as his manager, and his career began with a handful of mostly forgotten singles but a head full of ideas. It was not until 1969 that the splash onto the charts would begin, with the legendary Space Oddity (which peaked at No. 5 in the UK). Amidst his musical wanderings in the late 60s, he experimented with mixed media, cinema, mime, Tibetan Buddhism, acting and love. The album, originally titled David Bowie then subsequently Man of Words, Man of Music, pays homage to all the influences of the London artistic scene. It shows the early song-writing talent that was yet to yield some of rock-n-roll’s finest work, even if it would take the rest of the world a few years to catch up with him.
Bowie's first TV experience was not musical but as the spokesman for the self-titled Society for the prevention of Cruelty to Long haired Men in 1964. Although perhaps not obviously related to his musical career, in this BBC interview he goes by his orginal name David Jones, not his stage name David Bowie, the controversy and androgyny on his hairstyle is something he carries on throughout his career, as well as the humour in which he portrays himself.
Space Oddity was Bowie's first big hit reaching number five on the charts helped by the synergy of it's release with the first moon landing. Space is a concurent theme throughout Bowie's work and the charachter Major Tom features under different guises in much of his other work. The video was recognised as one of the first pop music videos, shot by photographer Mick Rock on a low budget. The link above is the orginal music video, although experimental and using many unusual angels and editing techniques in comparison to Bowie's later looks and videos is far more safe. Bowie is playing his charachter Major Tom in the video so as a representation of a fictional charachter dresses futuristicaly in all white with excessively big sunglasses that were probably fashionable then. The futuristic representation reflects a lot of the idealism that was sparked by the advancement of technology and excitment that humans could now explore space for the first time.
Although his albums The Man who sold the world and Hunky Dory were ciritcally aclaimed it was not until he transformed into his charachter Ziggy Stardust that he really caught on to commerical success. This song from the album Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, was performed on the iconic BBC show The Old Grey Whistle Test two months before the albums release. This was the point where Bowie asserted himself as a performance artist to the public, he went on to play many charachters such as The White Duke as well as working as an actor for theatre and films, one of his most memorable performance in the Elephant Man. In this video Bowie has his hair in a rugged crop contrasted with an elaborate, tight jumpsuit cut to show off his skinny physice, not something that is linked to the stereotypical image of masculinity. It is important to note as well that 'Spiders' the other members of the band were also dressed in a similar way to Bowie giving a sense of unity to the band of this ecletic style.
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