David Bowie: A Life

Repetitive and boring One of the worst written biographies I ve had the displeasure to read.

For a David Bowie lunatic that I m, it s impossible to put down Dylan Jones David Bowie A Life First of all, this is an oral biography, meaning there are many voices here talking about a specific subject Bowie As a format I love the oral biography because what s interesting is not them exposing their subject matter Bowie but how they expose themselves in the telling of the tale Jones work is really as an editor, and he does a good job here The inside information is that Bowie is a charmer, but c [...]

Dylan Jones has presented us with an insightful documentary of David Bowie s life What sets this book apart from other rock biographies is the format Rather than proceeding in an expository fashion, Jones tells Bowie s story through snippets of interviews with people who knew him, played with him, grew up with him, dated him, and did business with him It s a technique used in television documentaries with people who are essentially life witnesses sitting around and musing about someone they once [...]

via my blog bookstalkerblog.wordpress David loved oddities, loved people who were somehow different Dylan Jones has written a biography overflowing with insight and stories about David Bowie as told by his friends, lovers, rivals and so on There was so much I had never known, and I think many of his fans grew up with a different Bowie Growing up an 80 s kid, he will always be my Goblin King, Jareth The only problem with writing about a person through collective thoughts and memories is you can l [...]

This book is for those who have read countless of Bowie biographies If you re a newly converted David Bowie fan just like me , then I wouldn t recommend this book Simply because this isn t just about David Bowie It s also about everyone else who contributed to this weird version of a biography You re not just reading about Bowie himself, you also get a glimpse of other people who worked with Bowie Simply put this book has a weird format because it doesn t look like a biography to me To me, it lo [...]

The music of David Bowie is something I ve held in mild regard over the decades I had an 8 track of Young Americans back in the seventies and who doesn t love Space Oddity I also remember enjoying the strains of Modern Love and Let s Dance in the 80 s I own a Greatest Hits CD of Bowie and that is the extent of his importance in my life I m primarily a major Beatles fan However, this biography of David Bowie in its oral history format has affected me so much that I am prompted to read his other b [...]

A rather gossipy, salacious take on Bowie s life This is about the sex and drugs than the rock n roll but nevertheless an essential read for the Bowie fanatic.

This is not a biography, but an oral history, there s almost no interpretation, no intellectualizing, just the anecdotes of the people who knew him, across the entire length of his life Much of this we already knew, but encountering it compressed together in this way has an effect I was particularly moved by the glimpses of his friendship with John Lennon, the sense of mutual understanding and affection they had for one another it made me respect Lennon all the , knowing that he had found a fell [...]

I do wonder why there s no Trent Reznor or Todd Haynes in here, but, hey, it s otherwise an enjoyable entry in a crowded field of Bowieographies.

A good book, well researched It was full of so much that I never heard before about Davie Bowie Quite interesting.

Like so many other people, I was greatly affected by David Bowie s death This seems very strange to me because I knew very little about his life He represented a part of my childhood that ceased, the day he died When I saw this book available on NetGalley, I jumped at the chance to read it I wanted to know about this icon I had hoped this book would be a typical biography and so when I saw it wasn t, I was a little uncertain as to whether or not I would like it I totally enjoyed reading this, i [...]

Read my review Friday on bookreporter.

Didn t love the format, interview after interview after interview Mostly saying the same thing, Bowie did A LOT of coke, had A LOT of sex, and was very polite and inquisitive While he did live a fascinating life, I think Jones could have hit the highlights and it would have made for a interesting read.

In the wake of Bowie s death, I bought a bunch of biographies of the man, wanting to know Hell, I guess we all did, round then after all, how do you account for a single version of the life of one guy who lived so many variants, and was held close by so many for such a multiplicity of reasons I figured I d get around to em all in time, and then the idea of there being no David Bowie caused me to chuck the brakes on the whole read the biog thing Until now David Bowie A Life, the most recent Bow [...]

He showed that what he was doing was not a trend, but rather a direction, one that would change on a whim, or indeed with the wind He excelled at the art of individualism, rarely tacking toward the center Bowie didn t give a fuck about authenticity He was like a magpie If something looked good he d take it Mainly what he wanted to accomplish was bringing the idea of theatre to music, dressing up rock and roll and having some fun with it His vocals were pitch perfect 95% of the time My acid test [...]

David Bowie is an icon of music not because he was the most famous musician in the 20th century, but because he was the most famous guy to the outliers, outcasts, and freaks that couldn t have chosen a better person to emulate This book by Dylan Jones is a not a straight biography, but instead a collection of anecdotes by those who knew him best, including those who acknowledge that no matter how close, most people never really knew him at all There are plenty of stories from his early years thr [...]

This is not a biography of David Bowie in the traditional sense Because it s a collaborative book with so many individual contributions, it s not a linear narrative it felt like a written documentary So many people shared their stories, whether they worked with Bowie in some capacity, knew him socially, or met him by chance But almost everyone came away with a positive opinion of his charm, his talent, or his work ethic The book offered incredible insight to his evolution as an artist, his crea [...]

This is not your standard biography It is of a documentary style biography from the eyes voices of people who have been around David Bowie throughout his life Of course, it is subjective and one needs to be careful not to make assumptions The reader needs to remember that this is how other people perceived David Bowie, and not necessarily the way he perceived himself or made the decisions he made throughout his life.This book may not be everyone s cup of tea for the mere reason that it doesn t [...]

David Bowie A Life is an oral history biography made up of selections from over 180 interviews with friends, collaborators, and rivals about David Bowie and his long spanning career It follows his life chronologically, but with room for personal anecdotes that relate to one another and give different perspectives on the public figure and glimpses of the man underneath.The oral history format makes this long book readable, cut into a lot of small chunks and with different focuses as people have t [...]

Real Rating 2.5I received this book in exchange for an honest review.I remember my first taste of Bowie s music It was the early 80s and MtV was still in the stages of infancy Yet whenever Let s Dance came on I always found myself singing along I really did not get into music until I saw him as the Goblin King in The Labyrinth Since then his music always plays whenever I am in the car or I am in the mood to listen to music When I found this book, I was excited This book offered a glimpse behind [...]

Oral history is a funny thing The stories included in an oral history are mediated by the choices that the author makes in terms of which interview subjects and which parts of a story to include, but unmediated by a biographer s voice telling you who might have had a grudge, who truly loved the subject, etc So it s sometimes hard to know whose perspectives to accept, and whose to reject and perspective is everything This oral history of Bowie is no different If you need to believe that Bowie was [...]

In all honesty, I am not the most devoted fan of Davie Bowie, but I love chunky biographies about singers from the sixties and seventies so I decided to try this out My first piece of advice would be to only pick this up if you ve already read a chunky biography about David Bowie because this is not that at all This reads like a documentary, where it cuts to different people discussing different aspects of the artist s life and career It is basically snippets from different interviews following [...]

This book needed a better editor It was bloated and should have been trimmed severely Not every bit and story needed to be included Some anecdotes seemed completely irrelevant and didn t connect to anything said before or after They should have been cut Some anecdotes contradicted one another, sometimes on the same page, without any acknowledgement from the author And he had plenty of his own to say He wrote of his experience often enough that he should have tagged his sections with his name lik [...]

A veritable who s who of names associated with David Bowie over the decades with many interesting and entertaining anecdotes from those who knew him to varying degrees I like the style and layout which works very well I will admit that this is the first book I have ever read about Bowie received it as a wonderful gift and also admit that I lost interest in the early 80s in relation to his music His death still hit me as he was very much part of my music collection in my formative years, initiall [...]

An oral history bio of Bowie I m not crazy about the oral history format frankly, I want an authoritative narrating voice in my non fiction works The format works OK here, but I realized over halfway through that a lot of background context is missing I didn t notice it earlier on because I m fairly well steeped in Bowie info up to the mid 80s I still bought the occasional Bowie album after the disappointing Never Let Me Down, but his later chameleon changed were boring and the music seemed to b [...]

I really enjoyed this, mostly because the oral history format speeds right along and mostly keeps at bay anything too eggheaded, crit speak wise On the other hand, it s not revelatory Rather, it gives ample space to name brand witnesses Angie Bowie, Brian Eno, Iggy Pop, etc so that they can confirm what we already understand Sixties Bowie is ambitious Seventies Bowie is ambitious and also debauched and comically oversexed Eighties Bowie is less ambitious but lucrative Nineties Bowie is personal [...]

An excellent biography of David Bowie Written in the style of reflections by those who knew him Some behaviors present in childhood carry on until the end the constant changing of personas, the stimuli toward creativity, movement, using people to influence his art a common practice and I m going to be writing a piece on David Bowie and perfume, solely based on a passing comment made in this book Why on earth they would bother interviewing Courtney Love, and yet not a word from his first wife Co [...]

It s a big, but brilliant read I really enjoyed it David Bowie was, I think, quite ahead of his time He did what he wanted, when he wanted Even though his younger lifestyle choices were somewhat questionable, with plenty of chemical and sexual excess he, nevertheless, represented our generation admirably with his creative genius And somehow he came through those wild days, raised children and managed to stay alive until cancer tragically clipped his wings in 2016 For those of us who are 50 somet [...]

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the chance to read this book The following is my honest review.I went into this as a lifelong David Bowie fan, and reader of other books about David Bowie I enjoyed a lot of it, but didn t enjoy a lot of it as well I like the idea of a compilation of interviews with people who knew Bowie The interviews with musicians and other collaborators were especially interesting to me However, some of the interviews that focused mainly on groupies and sex just [...]