David Bowie
(David Robert Jones; London, 1947 - 2016) British pop singer and actor. A chameleonic artist, he mutated his style several times and collected multiple influences, especially from psychedelia and punk, which made him adopt a provocative androgynous aspect in the 1970s, anticipating characters like Boy George. He worked alongside artists of the stature of Mick Jagger, Iggy Pop, John Lennon or Brian Eno, and collaborated with young artists, to whose fame he would contribute notably, as is the case of Lenny Krawitz. Ziggy Stardust (1972) or Let’s dance (1983) are some of the mythical records of his career, always marked by success and controversy. Bowie's forays into the film world were also frequent; his most celebrated film is Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) by Naghisa Oshima.
David Bowie
David Bowie began his career singing and playing the saxophone in small venues and also in institutes, with amateur musicians such as The Manish Boys, David Jones & The King Bees or Lower Third. In the late 1960s he began recording his first singles, which would later be integrated into his first album, David Bowie (1967). He was also interested in the theater, becoming a mime and actor with Lindsay Kemp, an influence that would be noticed later in his performances.
In 1969 he recorded the album Man of Words / Man of Music, which included the single "Space Oddity", which would reach number five on the charts in the United Kingdom. After performing in various countries, he became friends with what would become his new manager, Toni De Fries. In 1970 and 1971 he published the albums The Man Who Sold The World and Hunky Dory, in which he offered a provocative androgynous image, in keeping with glam, the trend that dominated British rock at the time.
From 1972 the great cycle of transformations that characterizes his chameleonic personality began: in The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, he plays a bisexual rock star from another planet. This tendency to ambiguity would continue in Aladdin Sane (1973), his next work. That same year Bowie posed alongside model Twiggy on the cover of Pinups, a compilation of some of the best rock songs from the '60s, and appeared naked in the folder for his album Diamond Dogs (1974).
Bowie's songs generated a futuristic, obsessive atmosphere, where he accommodated brief winks aimed at American rock and developed deep and dense sequences in which Orwellian characters (the Big Brother of the 1984 novel, by George Orwell) paraded, archetypes of a decadent modernity or characters that seem to have emerged from the Gothic genre. In Britain criticism of this latest album was harsh, and Bowie decided to turn his career around, adopting a more sober personal image and introducing disco and soul music as stylistic influences on his compositions. He launched to conquer the American market with Young Americans (1975), an album that rose to the top of the sales charts and included the song Fame, written with former Beatles leader John Lennon. Backed by Andy Warhol, with whom he became very close, his popularity grew rapidly.
In this second half of the 1970s Bowie continued to experiment with new sounds. The electronic element was increasingly present in his music, through the recurrent use of synthesizers and the manipulation of his voice in the songs. This is evident in albums such as Station to Station (1976) and Low (1977), in which he began his association with musician and producer Brian Eno. Bowie was evolving into a cold-looking, distant-looking character, wrapped in long leather coats, earning him the nickname of The White Duke.
Heroes (1977) would offer even denser and more complex structures and sounds. In the following years, and still with Eno, Bowie recorded Stage (1978), a live album resulting from his tour that year, and Lodger (1979), which signal his return to a fresh, original and easily marketable rock, although enriched by all the innovations of the previous stage. With Scary Monsters (1980), who followed this same trend, another stage of his career ended.