David Bowie Biography Quotes 32 Report mistakes

Early Life and Musical Beginnings
David Bowie was born David Robert Jones on January 8, 1947, in Brixton, South London, and grew up in the suburb of Bromley. His parents, Margaret Peggy Jones and Haywood Stenton John Jones, encouraged his wide-ranging interests. At Bromley Technical High School he studied art and design under Owen Frampton, father of guitarist Peter Frampton, and developed a fascination with performance, movement, and the visual possibilities of popular music. As a teenager he played saxophone and cycled through local groups including the Konrads, the King Bees, the Manish Boys, and the Lower Third. To avoid confusion with Davy Jones of the Monkees, he adopted the stage name Bowie, inspired by the American frontiersman Jim Bowie.

Bowie signed early recording deals and released several singles in the mid-1960s with limited success. His curiosity led him beyond pop convention toward theater, mime, and avant-garde ideas. He found early collaborators who would become pivotal, among them producer Tony Visconti and guitarist Mick Ronson, whose partnership helped shape Bowie's songwriting and arrangements. In 1969, Space Oddity introduced the world to Major Tom and gave Bowie his first major hit as the Apollo 11 mission unfolded, hinting at a future where character and song would intertwine.

Breakthrough and Ziggy Stardust
The early 1970s brought creative acceleration. The Man Who Sold the World leaned into hard rock and unsettling themes, while Hunky Dory showcased melodic craft in songs like Changes and Life on Mars?, with Ronson's orchestral arrangements and contributions from musicians such as Rick Wakeman. In 1972 he unveiled Ziggy Stardust, a gender-bending extraterrestrial rock star whose rise and fall played out on the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Backed by Ronson, bassist Trevor Bolder, and drummer Mick Woodmansey, Bowie fused glam rock with theater, cultivating striking imagery aided by stylists and designers including Kansai Yamamoto and photographed memorably by Mick Rock.

As Ziggy, Bowie energized British music and profoundly influenced artists who followed. He also supported peers: he produced and wrote for Lou Reed on Transformer, worked closely with Mott the Hoople by giving them All the Young Dudes, and championed Iggy Pop. After Aladdin Sane and the covers album Pin Ups, he dramatically retired the Ziggy persona onstage in 1973, signaling his refusal to be trapped by any single identity.

American Years and Soul Experiments
Relocating to the United States, Bowie pursued darker, urban visions on Diamond Dogs, then pivoted toward what he called plastic soul with Young Americans. That album yielded Fame, co-written with John Lennon and guitarist Carlos Alomar, Bowie's first US number one. His stagecraft grew more elaborate, even as personal pressures mounted. On Station to Station he introduced the Thin White Duke, a stark, elegant figure channeling European cabaret and funk-inflected grooves. Acting became another outlet; he starred in Nicolas Roeg's film The Man Who Fell to Earth, an alienated role that mirrored the thematic concerns of his music.

Berlin Trilogy and Artistic Reinvention
Seeking renewal, Bowie moved to West Berlin, sharing an apartment and creative energies with Iggy Pop and working again with producer Tony Visconti. With Brian Eno he crafted the celebrated Berlin Trilogy: Low, Heroes, and Lodger. These albums blended fragmented pop songs with ambient instrumentals, pushing mainstream rock toward minimalism, electronics, and experimentation. Guitarist Robert Fripp's searing lines on Heroes and contributions from a core ensemble, including Dennis Davis, George Murray, and Carlos Alomar, anchored the innovation. Bowie also co-wrote and produced Iggy Pop's The Idiot and Lust for Life, while touring as Iggy's keyboardist, underscoring a mutual exchange of ideas.

1980s Stardom and Screen Roles
Bowie began the 1980s with Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), featuring Ashes to Ashes, a reflective sequel to Space Oddity that revisited Major Tom. He collaborated with Queen on Under Pressure and took to the stage in The Elephant Man on Broadway, earning praise for a stripped-back, physical performance. In 1983 he partnered with Nile Rodgers to create Let's Dance, an album that brought sleek production and global hits like Let's Dance, China Girl, and Modern Love. The Serious Moonlight tour made him a worldwide superstar, with guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan contributing at the album stage.

He continued to act and soundtrack films, appearing in Absolute Beginners and most memorably as Jareth the Goblin King in Jim Henson's Labyrinth. However, Tonight and Never Let Me Down drew mixed reviews, and the ambitious Glass Spider tour divided critics. Still, Bowie's role as a connector remained undimmed; he duetted with Bing Crosby on a televised holiday special and remained a figure whose cultural reach extended beyond music.

Band Experiments and 1990s Explorations
Resisting the weight of 1980s fame, Bowie formed the band Tin Machine with guitarist Reeves Gabrels and the Sales brothers, Tony and Hunt. The group's raw sound stripped away gloss, foreshadowing alternative rock's rise. Returning to solo work, he reunited with Rodgers for Black Tie White Noise and ventured into conceptual terrain with Eno on Outside. He toured with Nine Inch Nails, trading audiences with Trent Reznor and embracing industrial textures. Earthling folded drum-and-bass and electronica into his palette, while Hours... signaled a reflective turn at the century's end.

Bowie also pioneered novel approaches to career and technology. He issued Bowie Bonds, a financial instrument securitizing future royalties, working with banker David Pullman. He launched BowieNet, an early artist-driven internet service, foreshadowing the ways musicians would cultivate online communities. Throughout, collaborators such as Gail Ann Dorsey, Reeves Gabrels, Mike Garson, and producer Mark Plati helped Bowie translate restless ideas into evolving sound.

New Millennium, Health Scare, and Quiet Years
The 2000s brought critically acclaimed work with Heathen and Reality, produced with Tony Visconti. While touring in 2004, Bowie suffered a health emergency related to his heart, after which he significantly reduced live performances. He devoted time to family life with his wife, the model and humanitarian Iman, whom he had married in 1992, and their daughter, Alexandria. His son from his first marriage to Angela Bowie, the filmmaker Duncan Jones, forged a career of his own, a source of evident pride.

For nearly a decade Bowie released little new music, appearing only occasionally onstage and in guest spots. The silence broke in 2013 with The Next Day, announced without warning. The album revisited Berlin-era textures and modern anxieties, and its unexpected arrival reaffirmed Bowie's command of surprise as an artistic tool.

Final Act and Legacy
In 2015 Bowie collaborated with composer Maria Schneider on Sue (Or in a Season of Crime) and then began working closely with jazz saxophonist Donny McCaslin and his quartet, channeled through Visconti's production. The result was Blackstar, released on Bowie's 69th birthday, January 8, 2016. Two days later, on January 10, he died in New York City after a private battle with liver cancer. The album's themes and the Off-Broadway musical Lazarus, created with director Ivo van Hove and playwright Enda Walsh and inspired by Walter Tevis's story The Man Who Fell to Earth, cast his final work as an elegant farewell, dense with coded reflection on identity, mortality, and art.

Bowie's influence is pervasive: in the theatricality of pop, the fluid performance of gender and persona, and the fearless recombination of styles from glam to soul, ambient, industrial, and jazz. His collaborations with figures such as Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Brian Eno, Nile Rodgers, John Lennon, Robert Fripp, Queen, Trent Reznor, and so many others reveal a career built on creative dialogue. Honors accumulated, including induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, yet his most enduring recognition lies in the artists he inspired and the audiences he emboldened to change. Across five decades, David Bowie never stopped reinventing himself, showing how pop could be both experimental and popular, intimate and spectacular, personal and profoundly communal.

Our collection contains 32 quotes who is written by David, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Truth - Art - Music - Mother.

Other people realated to David: Camille Paglia (Author), Freddie Mercury (Musician), Mick Jagger (Musician), Marlene Dietrich (Actress), Brian May (Musician), Brian Molko (Musician), Annie Lennox (Musician), Adrian Belew (Musician), Rip Torn (Actor), Slash (Musician)

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