Music

David Robert Jones was born in London in 1948. From an early age, the young boy was interested in music, joining his school choir and learning the flute, piano and dance.

His parents saw their son's passion and enrolled him in a grammar school where he could study art and music. As a teenager, he played saxophone in several small bands. Music was definitely in his blood. He also had a volcanic temperament, which led him to get punched in the left eye during a fight with a friend. The result is a constantly dilated pupil. And a look like no other!

At sixteen, he left school to train as a mime artist. He went on to perform in a series of shows, learning from every piece of advice and every experience, which undeniably made him the complete and unique artist that he is today. He continued to perform in a number of bands and even released a few titles, but without any success. He moved from band to band until “Space Oddity”, released a few days before the launch of Apollo 11, finally brought him to the attention of the general public. 

On the cover of his third album, “The Man Who Sold The World", he poses lasciviously in a dress, playing up his androgynous side. He promotes the album in the same outfit, which is bound to raise curiosity, given his penchant for provoking, disturbing and playing. He also acheives this by creating the character of Ziggy Stardust, an extraterrestrial who descended to Earth to become a rock icon.

It was with his band The Spiders From Mars and this intriguing persona that his fame spread beyond the borders of the UK. David Bowie fascinates, provokes and intrigues. He hides behind his persona until he loses himself at the frontiers of reality. The singer decides to leave this role, which engulfed both him and his band. 

Bowie then moved to the United States and worked on several albums, each of which were met with critical and public acclaim. Bowie's drug addiction and paranoia continued to plague him, but this didn't stop him from churning out hit after hit, culminating in “Fame”, recorded with John Lennon, reaching the top of the American charts. “After we met in a club in New York, Lennon and I spent several nights getting to know each other and talking before going into the studio to record the song 'Fame'. That period of my life isn't very clear, I have a lot of very hazy memories, but I know we spent hours and hours talking about fame: what it's like to have had a life and not have one anymore. How much you want to be famous when you're not, and how much, when you are, you wish you could go back.”

At the end of the 70s, the singer decided to leave behind the intensity of his life in Los Angeles, the drugs and the characters that had gradually consumed him. He moved to Switzerland, then Germany, where he shared an apartment with Iggy Pop. There he worked on what he calls his Berlin trilogy, with the albums “Low”, “Heroes” and “Lodger” and a sober world tour. 

His popularity peaked with the release of “Let's Dance” in 1983, co-produced with Nile Rodgers (Chic). Bowie gradually abandoned his singing career, however, and turned his attention to the cinema, with “Goodbye MR. Lawrence”. In the 90s, however, he returned to singing and enjoyed renewed success, before gradually withdrawing from the spotlight, suffering from poor health. 

To everyone's surprise, he announced the release of a new album in early 2013, recorded in the greatest secrecy in New York. “The Next Day” will be followed by ‘Blackstar’. Two days after this new release, Bowie passed away on January 10, 2016, overcome by the cancer that had been eating away at him for several years. Like a last reverence, the album was a success, a final salute to the immense artist that he was. 

(CMa - Photo: © Etienne Tordoir)
Photo: David Bowie in one of his last artistic incarnations with Tin Machine on the Paradiso stage in Amsterdam (Netherlands) in June 1989.