Davanna Cimino - David Bowie: A Biography

Even in the days when he was Davie (or Davy) Jones of the the Kon-Rads, King Bees or the Manish Boys (a few of his early bands) David Bowie was, and still is, a fully formed, timeless pop artist. Although he always experimented and changed stylistically, he seems to have simply burst into this world as Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, David Bowie, and finally just Mr. Jones all rolled into one. He is a shimmering chimera changing to reflect what we hope to find, and what we dont expect to find: the romantic troubadour, the glammed outer space messiah, the burnt-out case from another world, the sophisticated, world-weary philosopher, the aging artist facing his own mortality.

David Bowies best known, and most groundbreaking character is Ziggy Stardust. If the trappings of Ziggy Stardust, glam-androgyn, are stripped away, what we have left is simply great pop music. The gender-smashing concept of Ziggy as stimulating, and some would say, as freeing for society as it was isnt a bolt out of the blue for us today as it was then. What survives is the music. So the sociological effect of David Bowies depiction of gender with his character Ziggy Stardust isnt his most valuable contribution to pop music. The music is.

Besides his popular success, part of why David Bowie is such a great contributor to late 20th century rock and roll is that the answer to who or what David Bowie is is a reflection of who we are. Like all great artists he shows us aspects of our own imaginations. And in an uncanny way, he has always managed to presage certain trends or events at a time when Western pop culture was changing in a way that in hindsight seems inevitable. At any given time, the shape of the future is unknown. An obvious observation, but one that needs restating in order to place ourselves more fully in the shoes of those who came before us.

In 2004, Rolling Stone put David Bowie at number 39 on its 100 Greatest Artists of All

Time list. His friend and sometime collaborator, Lou Reed, commented that he has a melodic sense that is just way above anyone else in rock and roll. Listen to just a few of his songs, and it becomes obvious that he is a great songwriter as well as a great performer: Space Oddity, Changes, Ziggy Stardust, Life on Mars?, Young Americans, Fame, Sound and Vision, Heroes, Lets Dance. His music varies so much over the years from the English music hall style of some of the songs on the 1967 album, David Bowie , to the American soul style of Young Americans , to the euro-rock, post punk sounds of the Berlin Trilogy, Heroes , Low , and Lodger , to mainstream hits of the 80s, Lets Dance and Modern Love, to his late career, jazz-influenced song Bring Me the Disco King.

Despite the fact that he has varied his approach stylistically, Bowie explains his approach to his subject matter in this YouTube video of a Danish interview given at the start of his A Reality Tour of 2003. He has returned to the same themes throughout his life: loneliness, isolation, abandonment, spirituality, and the lack thereof. He tells the interviewer that he is fundamentally the same person that he was a teenager, except that he is three and a half inches taller.

According to Bowie, he has shifted his perspective, but not his artistic preoccupations.

At the time that David Robert Jones came into this world, his birthplace, Brixton, still bore scars of the Second World War bombardment. The German bombs that fell on the area south of the river Thames left their mark in the vacant spaces and ruined buildings. This landscape was a strange, wonderful playground for the postwar children who played games like hide and seek, football, and cricket in the streets and bombed-out ruins .

As the postwar generation began life anew amid the devastation, so Britains culture began to bloom in the post war years. This rebirth culminated in the British rock and roll invasion of the 1960s. While Bowie was slightly behind the wave of British rock music that crashed across the Atlantic and washed over the world, as soon as he gained prominence, he became a major influence in pop music from then on. His musical vision is a powerful shaper of pop music right up to now .

There is a story that the Lambeth Town Hall clock struck thirteen the morning of January 8, 1947 the morning David Robert Jones was born at the family home at 40 Stansfield Road. The winter that year was exceptionally cold; this was the explanation for the extraordinary occurrence of the clock striking thirteen.

Lambeth Town Hall by Stuart Taylor viageograph.org

Davids father, Haywood Stenton Jones, was a Yorkshireman. Haywood, known as John, lost his father in World War I. Johns mother also died when he was quite young; he was raised by the local council, and by an aunt. Although he had a family inheritance, John lost it in unwise investments in a theater troupe, and a London West End nightclub. Inspired by a dream about his working for a childrens charity, John went to work for Dr. Barnardos, a British philanthropic organization which sheltered, trained, and cared for homeless children.

Johns work took him to Royal Tunbridge Wells in the county of Kent. Here in her hometown, he met Margaret Mary Burns, Davids mother. Peggy, as she was known, worked at the cafe of the local Ritz cinema. After they married, she and John set up home in Brixton, South London. Both Peggy and John had children from previous marriages or relationships a situation not uncommon in the fractured war years.

The chaos and privation of living in wartime Britain no doubt left their mark on John and Peggy. Perhaps this can account for the fact that Peggy was an exacting and hypercritical mother. John was also cautious and fiscally conservative although he enjoyed a warmer relationship with David than did Peggy. David is remembered as a perfectly behaved and impeccably groomed little boy.

The Joneses moved out of Brixton to Bromley when David was six years old. Bromley was a more middle class, suburban environment than the funky, eclectic, working class Brixton.

Peggy had struggled during the war; she had two children out of wedlock one of which, a girl, she gave up for adoption. She had to deal with the reality of the family malady, schizophrenia, that left its mark on three of her sisters, her mother, and on her son Davids older, half-brother, Terry Burns. Peggy is remembered by her contemporaries neighbors and family as an animated woman of intelligence, and also as someone who was overly concerned with appearances. George Tremlett, in his book David Bowie: Living on the Brink writes that Peggy was not happy with Davids choice of a career, preferring that he find a steady job. John was ever supportive of Davids musical ambitions. (Tremlett, 21)

From about 1955, Terry was in the Royal Air Force, and later worked for Amalgamated Press. He was in and out of Davids life. During his visits back home, Terry introduced young David to Jack Kerouac and Tibetan Buddhism influences which stimulated Davids artistic and intellectual curiosity. Around the time when he was convalescing from the famous eye injury dealt him by his friend, George Underwood, David was the beneficiary of Terrys interests in the beat writers and poets, jazz and Buddhism. David told George Tremlett Yes, it was Terry who started everything for me (Tremlett, 19). David also feared for his sanity based upon what he witnessed of mental illness in his own family.