Since September 16, 2022, the documentary Moonage Daydreamdevoted to the fifty-year career of David Bowie, is available in all theaters. Through recordings, videos, drawings, images captured by fans and excerpts from concerts, it allows us to dive back into the abundant, diversified and atypical work of the British artist. Because the anecdotes around the one who is considered the 23rd “greatest singer of all time” by the famous American magazine Rolling Stone do not miss. On the occasion of the release of this film by Brett Morgen, a look back at this icon like no other.
Why the pseudonym of David Bowie?
From his real name David Robert Jones, the artist was born on January 8, 1947 in London, to a mother who worked in the cinema and a father in charge of public relations for a charity organization. He discovered music thanks to his half-brother, who was ten years older than him, and started in the field at the age of 17, after having dropped out of technical school. Member of various groups, he fears a possible confusion with another popular singer of the time in England, Monkee Davy Jones. David Robert Jones then decides to take the nickname of Tom Jones… But no luck, his namesake, the Welsh interpreter of It’s Not Unusual in particular, is enjoying growing success at the same time.
Bowie’s pseudonym first appeared in 1966: the single Can’t Help Thinking About Me is credited to “David Bowie with The Lower Third”. “I don’t have to tell you why I changed my name”, wrote the musician in a letter to his first American fan, the year after. But he will later admit that “Bowie” comes from the knife of the same name, popular in the United States in the 19th century. In the book America in the British Imagination published in 2013, the author John F. Lyons will even affirm that it is more precisely the creator of the opinel, an American pioneer, who would have inspired David Robert Jones. Fan of Hollywood cinema, he would also have been a fan of the film The Alamo (1960) whose hero is none other than the famous Jim Bowie. But he never confirmed this hypothesis.
The alter egos of David Robert Jones
The song that launched his career, Space Oddity (1969) — and was the credits of the broadcasts on the mission Apollo 11— introduces a recurring character in his work: Major Tom, a fictional astronomer, a sort of alter ego of Bowie. It is moreover on him that opens the clip of Blackstar, whose eponymous project was released two days before the death of the artist, who died of liver cancer on January 10, 2016. Another role he will take on is the flamboyant and glam-rock Ziggy Stardust, with extravagant costumes and looks as well as red haired. He will also play this extraterrestrial, descended on Earth with the aim of being a rock icon, during a sold-out tour for his album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spider from Mars (1972), which will be a hit.
However, his concerts are increasingly theatrical and shocking, exacerbated by drug use. Beginning to be unable to detach himself from this projection, Bowie abandons Ziggy Stardust. He prefers a darker version, that of Aladdin Sane, eponym of his 1973 album and famous for the red and blue flash on his face. His love for the storytelling does not stop there, since it is the character of “Halloween Jack” who will appear on the cover and for the tour of his concept album Diamond Dogs (1974). Station to Station (1976) marked the creation of the “Thin White Duke”, partly inspired by his role in The Man Who Came From Elsewhere (1976) — for which he received the Saturn Awards for best actor.
Five decades of style changes
It was his half-brother Terry Burns who introduced David Bowie to modern jazz, so much so that he began to play on a Grafton alto saxophone given to him by his mother at the age of 13. During his life, he will be able to play the harmonica, the ukulele, the guitar, the keyboards, the stylophone, the koto, the marimba or even the drums. Skills that he put to good use in his first rock’n’roll-inspired bands (the Konrads, King Bees, Mannish Boys, Lower Third…). But very quickly, he injected blues, folk and soul into it. His first album The Buzz (1967) is a mixture of baroque pop and music hall. He will also devote a constant fascination to this last genre during his fifty-year career – and his 28 studio albums.
In all these, the singer-songwriter will go so far as to explore electric sounds or psychedelics, through hard rock. Indeed, while his beginnings will be marked by space rock, he will be part of the musical new wave that appears at the end of the 1970s, alongside artists like Iggy Pop, with whom he composes. Her second single to reach number 1 on the chart US Billboard Hot 100 (with Fame) is a pure funk rock and post-disco track, Let’s Dance (1983). Finally, after immersing himself in the drum and bass and hip-hop culture of the late 1990s – and having kept a low profile – he returned in the 2000s to his first love, jazz.
Mismatched eyes that make it unique
Contrary to what his strange look suggests, David Bowie did not have odd eyes (heterochromia). This distinctive trait is actually the result of a fight between the young David Robert Jones and his friend George Underwood. As teenagers, they lusted after the same girl, so much so that the former was punched in the left eye by the latter. Several operations will not be enough to heal the damaged muscles allowing the organ to adapt to the ambient light. So that his pupil will remain perpetually dilated (permanent mydriasis)… until the blue of his eye becomes brown, with the deficit of light received by the iris. Despite this incident, the two friends remained on good terms, so George designed some of the artist’s covers.
Pioneer against gender stereotypes
He didn’t want “to be the representative of any group of people”he said to Blender in 2002. However, David Bowie has become an icon despite himself LGBT. Not only because of his sexuality, initially defining himself as gay (Meolody Maker1972), then bisexual (Playboy, 1976) and finally “outside the box”. By his clips, his performances on stage, his words also, carrying a liberating message. But also and above all by its looks. In his productions, he presents a thousand faces and a thousand characters, with whom he plays with dress codes, without worrying about gender – he is moreover very often an androgynous quality. On the cover of his third The Man Who Sold the World (1970), for example, he wears a dress, without worrying about shocking his time.
Did you know ? An asteroid (Davidbowie, 342843) a species of spider (Heteropoda davidbowie), as well as extinct species of a mammal in Brazil (Brasilestes stardusti) and a wasp (Archaeoteleia astropulvis) were nicknamed in homage to David Bowie, or his character Ziggy Stardust.
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