13.Roxy Music and Bowie

      If Bowie was still essentially an excellent pop craftsman, then it was Roxy Music who were the avatars of change.Thematically, if not musically, there were similarities between Bowie and Roxy Music. The blast of ice nonemotion would have its disciples later in the decade (such as Gary Numan) and Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nail's graphic, cruel psycho-porn has its origins in the Ferry/Bowie artifice.
      Bowie and Roxy were both serious and contrived, pop and rock, jokey yet serious. Both Bowie and Ferry saw stage performance as drama and milked theatricality for all it was worth. Ferry made it an absolute prerequisite that his band looked good.
      Like Bowie, Ferry and Roxy Music delighted in the artificial.
      Bryan Ferry recalls: "Our music was not so much designed for the charts as for thinking audience. We didn't see ourselves as part of a glam-rock movement at all ... We were conscious of Marc Bolan and Bowie but we thought we were very much doing our own thing. "
      Roxy Music and Eno were actually the other side of the same coin. Bowie took from high art (such as steal from Baudelaire, or a namecheck for Jean Genet) and used it in pop ; Ferry and Eno took from un-artistic popular culture and turned it into art-pop. Whatever the spin, it made it for a thrilling musical experience.
      many critics were initially highly sceptical of them and they criticised them for almost exactly the same reasons they did Bowie. However, Roxy Music had the last laugh, of course, and eventually found themselves at Number 1 in the UK album charts late in 1973 with their third album, Stranded.

      Roxy were the only serious rivals to Bowie in the period 1972 to 1975. Although the media hype was centred on Bowie's rivalry with Bolan, in actuality it was Roxy Music who were Bowie's direct competitors. A huge number of Roxy Music fans were Bowie fans too. It's no surprise that in 1975 and 1976, when punk was breaking, many of the leading lights would declare for Bowie and Ferry, while trashing Rod and Elton.
      Bowie and Roxy kept a deliberate, watchful distance in the glam-rock era. Roxy Music played with Bowie at the Croydon Greyhound in June 1972. "He was on a roll at the time and we were just emerging. I think he asked for us to join him on tour. It was a very good audience for both turns", says Ferry.
      If with Roxy's first record we can see the beginnings of a definite rupture with the past,then conceptually,Ziggy Stardust is more important. The writer Jon savage called "Ziggy Stardust" the first post-modern pop record.

12.The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars

       Back in early 1972, Bowie, although striking, was not quite the shock of the new he would become in 1973.
       That said,the cover of his fifth, and , so many would say, greatest album, is one of rock's most iconic images.

       Work on the Ziggy Stardust album in 1972/73 also took place at Trident Studios.Bowie told Ken Scott,who had again been brought in to co-produce,that he wanted a very different sound.According to Ken Scott, however, although Bowie was keen to harden the sound, the influence of the then contemporary proto-punk sound of Iggy Pop and Lou Reed was minimal at best.

Tracks:

Side 1

1 Five Years
2 Soul Love
3.Moonage Daydream
4 Starman

5 It Ain't Easy

Side 2

1 Lady Stardust
2 Star
3 Hang On To Yourself
4 Ziggy Stardust
5 Suffragette City
6 Rock' n ' Roll Suicide

      The album has a wonderful unity,from the heartbeat-like drum intro on Five Years  to the calamitously overwrought ending of  Rock N Roll Suicide .
      If you ask me, all songs are masterpieces! My personal favourite has to be Rock n Roll suicide because of its lyrics.

      In Five Years , lyrically, Bowie strikes a deliberately unstable register, depicting a world five years from Armageddon in terms of universals or stereotypes - the priest, the soldier, the policeman, etc.. Crucially, Bowie's society in crisis deals with minorities: a black ( cast as the good guy), a gay ( who is repulsed by the priest and not the object of society's repulsion for once), a woman (out of control,downtrodden) and a physically handicapped person ( " I kiss you / You're beautiful / I want you to walk ") . Five Years  has a radical edge which helps position Bowie as a speaker for the dispossessed.

      Starman ,the second RCA single, was released on 28th April 1972,although it took until the chart for the week ending 8 July for it to hit the Top 40. The band played it on ITV's Lift Off  in front of a backdrop of huge gold stars, and on Top of the Pops  on 5th July 1972. It was these 2 television appearances in the early Summer of 1972 that were crucial in making David Bowie a star. Many fans date their conversion to all things Bowie to this Top of the Pops appearance,even myself! This was the first David Bowie video I've seen,and this was the song that convinced me to try more of Bowie,made me curious about the other songs,though I did not live in the 70s.Lavishly plastered in make-up, his hair dyed a brilliant carrot-orange,and lovingly limp arm draped round guitarist Mick Ronson's broad shoulders, a little piece of pop history was made. An event changed people's lives. Nobody had seen anything quite like it before. Enjoy it!

      The writer Jon Savage called Ziggy Stardust  the 'first post-modern pop record',and it's easy to see what's he getting at. Bowie littered the songs with allusion to real pop world.The reference in Ziggy Stardust  to Jimi Hendrix is unmissable - " He played it left hand, but made it too far " (Bowie himself,though a leftie,plays the guitar right-handed) .

      In Lady Stardust  his references are to Marc Bolan - " People stared at the make-up on his face / Laughed at his long black hair,his animal grace" . This is also one of my favourite songs from the album.

      Soul Love another beautiful song - his voice is amazing!

     Lyrically Moonage Daydream,is full of references to bisexuality and gender crossing : " I'm an alligator / I'm a mama papa commin' for you "

     Star,like Changes before it - is another brazen declaration of intent: " So inviting - so enticing to play the part / I could play the wild mutation as a rock n roll star / I could do with the money "

    Suffragette City its faster than the other songs of the album,another favourite of mine

      By thr Summer of 1972, Bowie had finally achieved UK succes, The Zigy Stardust album rocketed into the charts and was to stay there for two years.

7.Look out all you rock'n'rollers,1970-1972

" We never got off on all that revolution stuff
Such a drag - too many snags "
[Mott the Hoople,"All the Young Dudes",1972,words and music by David Bowie]

And here we are!Finally we are going to speak about glam,and we have finally arrived to David's 'golden age'.

How did Bowie start the decade?Not only with his first hit single under his belt,but also with a string of commercial and artistic failures to his name,too.In 1970,he made a number of important commercial and personal decisions which would dictate the course of his career for the first half of the decade.
First,he sacked his manager,Ken Pitt;second,he 'invented' glam rock;third,he hooked up with a inexperienced rock manager but very smart businessman-lawyer named Tony Defries;and last,he decided to get angaged to his girlfriend,Angela Barnett,who for a while basket in his limelight and joined his spangled journey to stardom.

A. The Marc Bolan - David Bowie dispute

The dispute is related to who has actually started the whole glam thing off.Marc Bolan was the first to have use glitter in his 1971 Top of the Pops show,and he claims being the godfather of glam.However,what mattered most to Bolan was stardom at any cost.Tony Visconti says: "Marc's weakness was his sense that he had 'arrived',and he never developed himself as a musician beyond the stage he was at during his hit-single years.He also got caught liying too many times - he felt he could sau anything to manipulate journalists.His tall tales were legend!David never shared any of Marc's weaknesses".Marc was less of a diplomat than Bowie,and tended to piss people off more easily.
In many respects,Bolan paved the way for Bowie.Bowie himself wrote in 1998: " The little imp opened the door".
Both had ploughed similar furrows in the late 1960s.Both were from a folk-pop base,but Bolan made the transition from minority acoustic elfin cult artist to mainstream - rogering pop god first.Bowie followed,doing it better,and taking it further,but Bolan had opened the door.



B. The Glam Era

Calling it a glam "movement" is a bit of a misnomer as it implies a sort of united front.There were far too few American bands to actually even form a glam-rock scene over there.A scene did exist centred around the Warhol crowd in New York in 1970/71,an absrudist movement concerned not so much with music,but with theatre and film.
Very broadly speaking,there were always two wings of glam,or "glitter" rock as it was more referred to at the time:

a)there was the arty,serious,more subversive end :
- David Bowie
- Roxy Music
- The New York Dolls
- Alice Cooper
- Lou Reed ( for a time )

b)then,there were the lads in silly trousers
- Gary Glitter
- Sweet
- Alvin Stardust


With the exception of Suzi Quatro( this girl is amazing,you should try some of her songs,esspecially Stumbulin' In,with Chrish Norman),glam was almost overwhelmingly male as well as overwhelmingly heterosexual.Despite all the limp-wristedness,few of the glam-rock acts were actually gay.Elton John 'came out' in 1976,well after the high-water mark of the glam-rock movement.For the first half of the 70s,Elton was at pains to hide his homosexuality from the media and his fans.Lou Reed,whose bisexuality was an obvious factor,stayed on the glam bandgagon for one album only.
No,UK glam rock was unremittigly male and laddish,despite the make-up and posing.Gary Glitter was the "leader of the gang".The Sweet,too,were all lads together,'hell raising' on a 'teenage rampage',while Slade ( this guys are also gorgeous,try 'Far Far Away')the boozing Midlands skinheads-turned-glitter-freaks,and probably the best of glam pop bands at the time,also demonstrated their impeccably laddish credentials by misspelling their half dozen hits ( Far Far Away is an amazing song,listen to it :D ).
But you had to have real nerve to be,or indeed even to look like,David Bowie.He soon had a community of fans who dared to be different and who ,as we shall see,were a ace apart from the rest of the glam-rock fans.
In general,Bowie was dismissive of most of the competition,although Alice Cooper (with School's Out for Summer),Elton John and Rod Stewart and The Faces were releasing very strong material in 1972 and 1973.Bowie's competition with Bolan was a feature of the 'glam wats' during the period.One of the few contemporary acts Bowie had any time for would appear to have been Roxy Music.Some critics consider Roxy Music and possibly Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel as the only true glam-rock bands in that they actually started their professional careers as glam or art-rock acts,rather than twiddly folkies.
The glam era was possibly the last big male-band era in UK pop:

- Gary Glitter ( 3 nr 1s,4 nr 2s) VS Sweet ( 1 nr 1, 4 nr 2s) VS Slade (6.1,3.2) VS T-Rex ( 4.1,4.2) VS Wizzard (2.1)

This was an intensely competitive period.That's why the Oasis VS Blur face-off in 1995,when the two Britpop acts schedueled their single relaes for the same day,was important.


So,what was glam rock all about?Was it simply,as John Lennon once put pit "just rock'n'roll with lipstick on'?
Glam rock definitely had a more show-business side,in form of the often fun Gary Glitter and the hardly ever fun Alvin Stardust.
The Bowie version of glam was as much to do with the floutinf of gender codes and injecting a certain artiness and detachement into popular music as with attempts to shock the masses in the era of hippy,joss-stick-tingled stupefaction.Its origins are to be found in figures such as Little Richard,whose stage persona was flamboyantly garish and androginous.
Syd Barrett,the first of the 60s psychedelic performers to wear make-up and an acknowledged influence on Bowie in particular.Before his collapse into mental illness,Barrett briefly promised an alarming future for pop,a future full of space-out tripping and flaunted convention.Barrett prefigured Bowie's space-age fascination wish songs such as 'Interstellar Overdrive','Astromine Domine','Arnold Layne'.Had Barrett continued,there might have been less room for Bowie to manoeuvre in the 1970s.But he didin't.By the earlt 1970s,he was,very sadly,a comatose wreck,pop's most famous acid casualty;an innovator destroyed before his prime.
In the hands of Bowie,glam challenged pop's masculine ethos.Bowie's version of glam was about gender violence.Lou Reed and Iggy Pop only started to wear obtrusive make-up on stage once Bowie and Bolan had begun to do so.
Soon,every self-respecting British teen band to have at least one of its members kitted out in a fake leopard-skin jumpsuit with assorted glittery attachements.Bowie,however,had very little to do with these glitter rockers.

Hype

The origins of glam,Bowie-style,can be traced back to the very first months of the 70s.At the Roundhouse in London,in February 1970,Bowie and his band,Hype,played one of the most significant and most indifferently received concerts in rock history.
Hype were intended as a cartoonesque caper,a sort of rock'n'roll pantomime for the new decade,and the name was intended to run counter hippy-era notions of an anti-commercialistic rock community.Bowie was Rainbow Man,wearing a cape of many colours and lots of diaphanous scarves.Drummer John Cambridge was Cowboy Man,Mick Ronson on lead guitar was Gangster Man,wearing a borrowed gold lame suit from Bowie,and bassist Tony Visconti was Hype Man,a kind of comic-book superhero.
Bowie is in no doubt that this was the first British glam-rock gig.Marc Bolan-in an attempt to get into the theatricality of the project- stood at the foot of the stage wearing a child's plastic Roman breastplate.
Tony Visconti,about the concert: " I think that is the night that the germ of glam rock was born "



David Bowie and Mick Ronson

Ronson was a very important musical component in the Bowie sound at the time.
Visconti remembers him as charming,but adds: "He always looked a bit lost;he hardly had an ambitious bone in his body."
Gus Dungeon also remembers Ronno with great affection: "He was also an utterly charming fellow,I mean,just a total sweetheart and desperately embarassed at having to pull all those stunts every night during the Ziggy period.He hated doing it.He was very shy."


David Bowie and Angela

Bowie was also by now a married man.On 20 March 1970,he and Angie were wed at Beckenham Registry Office.Angie was dressed in a second hand,purple and pink,floral silk dress bought the day before.David wore tight leather trousers,black satin shirt and Afghan coat,cut something of an unconventional dash for the wedding day.Instead of rings they exchaned Peruvian bangles during the brief ceremony.The night before their wedding was spent in bed with a mutual friend.The night after was spent down the pub getting blasted.

 Angela acted as a behind-the-scenes promoter of her husband's talents,persuading and pressurising record companies and pluggers,helping with the costumes,making phone calls,suggesting ideas,entertaining friends,listening to Bowie's work-in-progress.
 She was also into outrage and bisexuality in a big way;her hair was often shorter,spikier and punkier than her husband's.
 Many contemporaries are at pains to poit out that Bowie only really weirdified his image after living with Angie.Before the Angie years,Bowie was actually fairly quiet as an individual and had not yet discovered the flair for sartorial flamboyance we now assosicate with him.
 Angiw would constantly encourage Bowie to try on new,and ever weider,designs.



 Bowie and Angie always had a love\hate relationship.Manager Ken Pitt apparently strongly disliked her.Gud Dudgeon didin't get Angie either : " I thought she was just a typical groupie.I just thought she was really loud and full of crap and I still do."
Ken Scott says about her: "She was very flamboyant.When she walked into a room,you knew it.Musically she had no influence whatsoever.She would stop by the studio once in a while with a 'Hello,dahlings!Oh,that's lovely,yes!' and then go out and so some more shopping or something.But she was fine.I had no problems with her"

According to Angie's second biography,Bowie was quite upfront about his feelings.He told her back in 1969 that he didn't really love her,and if they married it would be something of a marriage of convenience.'Their relationship,though,was weird;supposedly an "open relationship"' says Scott 'But every time I've heard of that,it always ends up with someone jealous,and that's what eventually happened.'

Tony Visconti says about Angie: "She was there for him in a difficult transitional period.But I could see when this wasn't enough for her.At one concert David was surrounded by fans and Angie was next to him dressed even more outrageously than he was (her breasts were visible).Since all the attention was on him,she feigned fainting (something she did often) and suddently she created an emergency drama around herself,taking the limelight away from David."

For a while tough,everyone was a big happy family.Bowie and Angie had soon turned their home into something of a sex-and-style laboratory,picking up blokes and girls from venues such as gay disco The Sombrero,a nigh-spot frequented by Bowie mainly as a way to get a hit of the flamboyance of gay style.
Visconti remembers moving in with his wife Liz,at Bowie and Angie's place. " Bowie was the only one among us who had any money.[...] As for wild sex - it only happened occasionally.David and Angela never tried to invove us in their sexcapades"

The Haddon Hall (their house) was apparently haunted,and Bowie spent some of the most creative years of his life there,tapping into the eerie vibe of this rambling Victorian mansion.
It was in this spooky mansion that Bowie and Angie set about starting a family of their own.By the end of the summer of 1970,Angie was pregnant.

5.In the late 60s : Visconti,Bolan,Kemp,Hermione,Angela

By the middle of 1967,Bowie's career had reached something of an impasse.He had received some good reviews,but had negligible sales.It was at this time that he met one of the most important figures in his career,Brooklyn-born would-be producer Tony Visconti.

Here's a pic with both of them ( though it's form the 70s).

In Visconti,Bowie had found a friend who shared similar interests and who was,very importantly,an American,and therefore by definition rather cool.However,the change of producer from Vernon to Visconti had no immediate impact on Bowie's fortunes.

David Bowie was a natural convention-breaker.Personal style,and its articulation through dress,was central to this revolt.In 1997 he said: " And outfit is an entire life experience.An outfit is much more than just something to wear.It's about who you are ,it's a badge and it becomes a symbol".Even at school Bowie was a stylishly rebellious dresser,then,as now,something of a shoe fetishist : he was one of the first to wear what have now become known as winkle-pickers.

During the late '60s,he developed a rather uneasy friendship with Marc Bolan,that was a mixture of mutual respect and bitchy rivalry.

They were both often at Visconti's flat in Earls Court for many musical soirees.Marc Bolan,who was married,used his apartment about three nights a week to bath,and so did his wife.Bowie often used his flat as a place to bring girlfriends back.

Mod fashion was very important to both Bolan and Bowie.The first mods in the early 1960s were dangerous modernists: they wore expensice suits,lipstick,blusher,and eye shadow.They were yet another scion of gay subculture and sartorially part of glam's forbears.

Both Bowie and Bolan would hang around the chich joints of swinging London,raigind the dustbins of Carnaby Street for any discarded seconds which could be salvaged for nigh-time clobber.

Here you can listen to David Bowie's story about meeting Marc Bolan:

In terms of personal style in the 1960s,Bowie for the most part followed,rather than set,fashion trends,although he was one of the first teenagers in Britain to have long hair.On 12 November 1964 he appeared as the president of the Society for The Prevention Of Cruelty To Long-Haired Men on the Tonight programme and told an amused Cliff Michelmore how members were being taunted for their sartorial excess.

The young Bowie lved all this taboo-breaking and flaunting of moral codes.He wanted attention,he wanted to be known,and,back in 1964,to be a man and to have long hair was one way of achieving this aim.

In 1965,Bowie was a mod,in 1966 and in 1967 a hippy,but by 1968 he had begun developing his own post-hippy,slightly feminised cool.In performance,Bowie demonstrated a theatricality that was,for the time,certainly out of the ordinary for British pop.

Under the tutelage of dancer Linsday Kemp,Bowie's innate love of the bizarre flourished widly.

Kemp's influence had less to do with the fact that Bowie attented some of his dance classes,and more with the fact that,by his very being,he increased Bowie's awareness of the bizzare.In 1997 Bowie said of Kemp: he lived on his emotions,he was a wonderful influence.His day to day life was the most theatrical thing I had ever seen,ever.It was everything I thought

Bohemia probably was.I joined the circus."

Bowie's first performance with Kemp and his partner Jack Brikett,came in Pierrot in Turquoise,at the OXford New Theatre on 28 December 1967.

Bowie went to mix rock and mime in the late 1960s,touring in early 1969 with Tyrannosaurus Rex (T-Rex) as an opening act and performing a mime called Yet-San And The Eagle,with 'Silly Boy Blue' as his backing track.

Visconti,about the friendship between Marc Bolan ( the lead singer of T-Rex) and David Bowie: " David was open to friendship but Marc was quite cruel about David's as yet unproven musical career.I think it was with great sadistic delight that Marc hired David to open for Tyrannosauurus Rex,not as a musical act,but as a mime."

Bowie had,undoubtedly,more false starts than any other superstar in pop,and his early work provides us with not even a glimpse of the greatness to come.However,in the 60s you were allowed to fail.Bowie would probably not have made it if he had started out today - record companies and managers would not stick with a consistently unsucessful,if talented,artist ( here we must give Ken Pitt the credit fot sticking with "his boy",despite year after year of commercial disappointments).

Bowie interested himself in Buddhism,befriended the Buddhist priest,Chime Youngdong Rimpoche,and,according to some sources,come close to becoming a monk himself.However,Tony Visconti,himself curious about Buddhism at the time,doubts Bowie took his own interest too seriously.

By mid 1967,Bowie had finally flown the parental nest,to lodge with Ken Pitt, taking the spare room upstairs in Ken's flat and coming and going when he wanted.Terry's mental ilness and schizophrenic episodes were becoming more harrowing,the general domestic situation was confininf,and Bowie needed space.During his residence chez Pitt,Bowie recorded a prototype rock musical,Ernie Johnson ,about a character who throwns a party to mark his intended suicide,planned for the next day.

Then as now,Bowie was a huge fan of new music.He was one of Britain's first Velvet Underground fans.

There are numerous unrealised,unflinished,unreleased and unreleasable tracks from this era,including a remarkable song recorded with The Riot Squat in April 1967 called "Little Toy Soldier" (Sadie's song) ,which tells the story of Sadie,who has a clockwork toy soldier who comes to life and whips her when he is wound up.One day the girl winds it up too much and it beats her to death.The song itself is basically The Velvet Underground's 'Venus in Furs',with some changes.

By 1968,so dire were his financial circumstances that Bowie was forced,on an occasional basis,into operating a photocopier at Legastar,and also to raise some cash,was forced into appearing a telvision ad for Lyons Maid 'Luv' ice creams,incidentally made by future Alien and Bladerunner director Ridley Scott.He then acted in a short silent film,The Image ,directed by Michael Armstrong,but with little impact.

Hermione Farthingal

In early 1968,Linsday Kemp was asked by the BBC to choreograph The Pistol Shot , a play by Pushkin.For the production ,Kemp chose Bowie and a beautiful red-haired dancer,Hermione Farthingale,to dace a poetic minuet.Very soon an item,the pair lived together.

Bowie's next project would be Feathers.

By the summer of 1968,the 21-year-old Bowie had set up home in a flat in Clareville Grove,London,with hermione.

His relationship with the classic "English rose",with long strawberry-blonde hair,high cheeckbones and 'Clodagh Rodgers' wispy folk vocal,and its abrupt termination in early 1969,apears to have had something of a devastating effect on Bowie.Farthingale ran off with a dancer and later lived abroad after marrying an anthropologist.

After the split,Bowie returned to live briefly at the parental home in Bromley.Later,he met Mary Finnigan,a divorcee with two children of her own to look after and she mothered Bowie too,during their brief affair.

Bowie moved in with Finnigan in the first half of 1969 and,much to her horrified amusement,took over the entire flat - a bass amp there,a twelve-string guitar there.A freelance journalist,Mary Finnigan was at the time working regularly for the Sunday Times as well for the underground newspaper IT.She therefore supported him financially for three months.Altough nominally her lodger,Bowie paid no rent or household bills.

The Arts Lab

He soon opened the Arts Lab,and gave it a suitably hippy-dippy name - Growth,and became moderately successful locally. Tony Visconti says: " What I liked about David's relationship with his Arts Lab was that it gave him a purpose...I admired his healthy attitude he had then."

Although committed to this grass-roots populism,Bowie never really fitted into the hippy underground.While the rest of his peers were into dope and LSD,Bowie was more into drinking bottles of barley wine and falling over outside the pub.In fact,on occasion,Bowie wouls lecture his audience at the Arts Lab about the dangers of hard drugs.Apart from cannabis tincture,which seemed to be particularly fond of at the time,Bowie was into alcohol.

Mary Angela Barnett

But life in Beckenham was far from uneventful.Following a trip away,Mary Finnigan returned to her flat to fint it,quite remarkably,spotlessly clean and well ordered. (According to Finnigan,the young Bowie was incredibly untidy).She had been usurped by a certain Mary Angela Barnett.

Mary Barnett,or Angie as she was known,was born in 1950 in Xeros,Cyprus,of American parentage.She met David while bot were dating the same lover,Calvin Mark Lee,who was working as an A&R man for Bowie's new record company,Mercury records.

Angie was attractive,actively bisexual,extravagant,prone to huge self-dramatisation and scene-stealing faints,tantrums and collapses.She also had aspirations of becoming an actress and a movie star.
http://www.5years.com/angie11.jpg