Dylan Jones (1) (1960–)

Or how a twenty five year-old one-hit wonder reinvented himself as an extraterrestrial pop star and became the most influential pop star of the 1970s here on planet Earth. The Ziggy thing was certainly a high-stakes enterprise; Bowie coming on like a star and surrounding himself with the trappings of success, bodyguards and chauffeur-driven limos, at a time when he had no real fanbase and almost a decade of failure behind him. After that buildup, if the album had flopped, we would certainly never have heard of David Bowie again. Luckily, he had the talent to back up the ballyhoo.

The subtitle, ‘David Bowie and Four Minutes that Shook the World’, refers to Bowie’s appearance on the BBC TV programme Top of the Pops on 6 July 1972 to promote his new single ‘Starman’. Top of the Pops was watched by a family audience of up to fifteen million people each week. His androgynous and homoerotic performance had a profoundly liberating effect on many of the millions of young people who saw it, and it made Bowie a star. Jones rightly regards it as one of those era-defining and transformative pop moments, like Elvis on The Dorsey Brothers Stage Show or the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan show. Bowie was a startling flash of colour and strangeness in a monochrome and straight-laced Britain; even if many of us were watching in black and white. As Jones observes, it was one of those extraordinary shared national TV moments which no longer really happen with the decline of appointment television.

There are times when this book feels like a magazine article that has been teased out, not entirely successfully, to book length. There is a lot of rather perfunctory historical context setting and perhaps rather too many autobiographical reminiscences of the author’s adolescence. Still, I don’t want to sound overly negative. Jones writes highly readable prose, and although he doesn’t say anything startlingly original, he makes all the important points about Bowie’s breakthrough moment.… (mais)

If you can find this book and you can stand grizzly, drop everything and start on page one. Anyone who thought Silence of the Lambs was a bit lightweight, should go find this book immediately. My friend, Jeanie, got two copies and sent me one. I'd never heard of it or of Jones but knew I had found a new favorite author within the first 20 pages. Tom Meridith was left alive after watching a serial killer torture and kill his girlfriend. His memories and his life have stopped and the killer hasn't. In comes forensic psychiatrist, Natalie Vine to help him recover and remember in hopes of finding this killer. There are scenes in this book that I will never forget. Some research on the author turns up that he is a physician in Wales and has written one novel before this one and one after. I've ordered both and can't wait for them to get here.… (mais)

Idol, contemporary and hero, when David Bowie died it was like saying goodbye to a dear friend. Jones' choice to use oral histories to tell David's story is a good one - especially since he was so many things to so many people. It is also nice to get so many perspectives - the differences actually made for a more inclusive narrative. There are many especially memorable bits that I've only seen in this book - having read many of the other books on Bowie. More importantly, having so many people relate their own story about an event helps make Bowie into a human being. This was a man who could turn being the icon on when he donned a costume and moments later relate to people with charm and humor - unfettered by his fame. So many books focus on the albums, that it's nice to have perspective on what he was doing between the tours, his artwork, his interest in literature and incessant curiosity about what was currently happening in the world. This is a saga worthy of a true renaissance man. He made "intellectual discovery glamorous." "We're all just students that join in along the way and help him create the idea of David Bowie."… (mais)