Name: Bowie
ISBN: 9781476767079

Wendy Leigh

A revealing look at David Bowie, including rarely seen photos, draws on interviews with his lovers, girlfriends, business associates, groupies, and band members to shine a light on the life and career of this hypnotic performer.

The Biography

Bowie

Lynette Pedersen

I think this book should be renamed David Bowie's Penis: Where It's Been, What People Think of It, and How It Was Used, a Biography with Bonus Mini-Biography of Iman. The author clearly has zero interest in David Bowie beyond his cocaine-fueled sexcapades era in the 70s and early 80s, and you can tell by the sheer weight of the text focused on this versus the rest of his life. My copy of this book (thankfully from the library, so my wallet does not bemoan my poor judgement as much as my time does) has 271 pages. On page 229, Bowie meets Iman and the next 50 pages are dedicated to that relationship peppered with brief mentions of Bowie's professional, artistic, and/or intellectual accomplishments in the 24 years between the Sound + Vision tour, during which he met Iman, and the publication of this book. There are constant mentions in both the narrative and quoted material about how intelligent Bowie was, and yet what we get is a vapid blow-by-blow of how well hung he was, who he was fucking, and how he manipulated people with his giant junk despite how he was "the epitome of the English gentleman." Wendy Leigh drags us through all the different name changes of Bowie's first born Zowie/Joey/Joe/Duncan, but somehow makes the rather shocking error of referring to Ziggy Stardust's successor as "Aladdin Insane," indicating (to me at least) that the woman has very likely completely missed the point of just about any and everything Bowie has done with that tiny two-letter screw up. All of this is on top of the whiplash of the narrative bouncing back and forth, sometimes months at a time, sometimes decades, to where you really need to already have a fairly good handle on the general timeline of Bowie's career to understand what she's getting at. So, ultimately, Wendy Leigh has managed to take a man who has straddled the music, fashion, film, and literary industries along with being a critical part of the discourse on sexuality in the Western world and whittled him down to simply *who* he straddled. If you want any real insight into Bowie the person, look elsewhere, but if you're looking for a Groupie's Guide to David Bowie, then this is totally the book.

Bowie The Biography

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