Why Bowie Matters
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A unique, moving and dazzlingly researched exploration of the places, people, musicians, writers and filmmakers that inspired David Jones to become David Bowie, what we can learn from his life’s work and journey, and why he will always matter. When David Bowie died on 10th January 2016, it seemed the whole world was united in mourning. His greatest hits were sung tearfully in pubs up and down Britain, garlands of flowers were left at the Aladdin Sane mural in his old stomping ground of Brixton and tributes poured in from a galaxy of stars. To many of us, Bowie was so much more than a pop idol. But why? In Why Bowie Matters, Professor Will Brooker answers that question persuasively, as both a fan and an academic. A Bowie obsessive since childhood, he hit the headlines over the course of a year-long immersive research project that took him from London to Berlin and New York, following in Bowie’s footsteps, only listening to music and reading books he loved, and even at times adopting his fashion. In this original and illuminating book, Professor Brooker approaches Bowie from various angles, re-tracing his childhood on the streets of Bromley, taking us through his record collection and bookshelves, and deciphering the symbols and codes of his final work, Blackstar to piece together how an ordinary suburban teenager turned himself into a legend, and how perhaps we too could be a little more Bowie. He shows us that while David Robert Jones died on that terrible day in January, David Bowie will live on forever.
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Things really matter to me.
David Bowie, Afraid
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By January 1964, a month after leaving The Konrads, he’d recruited three older musicians, along with Underwood, into a new band, Davie Jones and The King Bees. Now he was headlining. The green corduroy, striped tie and brown mohair trousers were out, replaced by jeans, T-shirts, piratical leather waistcoats and high-cut boots from a fashionable London boutique. Acquaintances of the time describe him as ‘very fashion conscious’, with ‘way-out clothes and dyed hair’; outrageous enough to embarrass his more conventional girlfriends. With a distinct focus on blues, rather than just playing every chart crowd-pleaser, the King Bees had a stronger identity, and the Davie Jones of his 1964 publicity shots is more recognisable as proto-David Bowie.
Again, with characteristic inventiveness and cheek – perhaps inspired by his dad’s insider knowledge – he wrote to a local entrepreneur, laundry magnate John Bloom, asking him to sponsor the band. Bloom passed the details on to talent scout Leslie Conn, who signed up David, offered the King Bees a prestigious gig and management, and negotiated a record deal with Decca. On 5 June, just six months after The Konrads’ failed Decca audition, Davie Jones released his first disc, ‘Liza Jane’: on the 19th they performed it on Rediffusion’s TV show, Ready Steady Go!. In July, David was fired from his job in advertising after a blazing row with his boss – he’d been working as a ‘junior visualiser’, a paste-up artist – or, if you believe his version of events, decided to quit and dedicate all his time to making it in the music business.
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