The Age of Bowie: How David Bowie Made a World of Difference

Description

The 10th January, 2016 will no doubt resonate with David Bowie fans across the globe from now on. The world was shocked to wake to the sudden news of his death from cancer, which he had been secretly battling for eighteen months. The outpouring of grief, empathy and loss has been palpable, honest and raw. And he had only turned sixty-nine. Respected arts commentator Paul Morley, one of the team who curated the highly successful retrospective exhibition for the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, David Bowie Is . . . constructs the definitive story of Bowie that explores how he worked, played, aged, structured his ideas, invented the future and entered history as someone who could and would never be forgotten. Morley will capture the greatest moments of Bowie's career; from the recording studio with the likes of Brian Eno and Tony Visconti; to iconic live performances from the 1970s, 80s and 90s, as well as the various encounters and artistic relationships he developed with rock luminaries John Lennon, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. And of course, discuss in detail his much-heralded, and critically-acclaimed comeback with the release of Black Star just days before his shocking death in New York. Morley will offer a startling biographical critique of David Bowie's legacy, showing how he never stayed still even when he withdrew from the spotlight, how he always knew his own worth, and released a dazzling plethora of mobile Bowies into the world with a bloody-minded determination and a voluptuous imagination to create something amazing that was not there before.

Paul Morley is a writer, broadcaster, and cultural critic who has covered music, art, and entertainment since the 1970s. A founding member of the electronic collective Art of Noise and a member of staff at the Royal Academy of Music, he is the author of a number of books about music including the bestselling The Age of Bowie and A Sound Mind: How I Fell in Love with Classical Music and Decided to Rewrite its Entire History. He collaborated with music icon Grace Jones on her memoir, I'll Never Write My Memoirs, and his two most recent books are biographies of Bob Dylan, You Lose Yourself, You Reappear, and Tony Wilson of Factory Records, From Manchester With Love.

'A thrilling hymn to a brilliant and beloved "song and dance man". David Bowie did make a world of difference, and Paul Morley explains why.' -- Barney Hoskyns * The Observer * 'Morley has a deep understanding of Bowie's music . . . this is great fun.' * The Times * 'A huge sprawl of Bowieania that takes us from skiffle to social media' * The Herald * 'A discursive, free-associating ride across the life and work of the Starman Who Changed the World [...] The Age of Bowie does feel like an outpouring of the sincerest love for its subject, the fruit of an obsessive emersion of everything Bowie meant to him and us. Eschewing the conventionally dry biographical voice, Morley's expansive present-tense prose flows [...] I hold him to be one of the great pop writers. You might even call him the Bowie of rock journalism.' * The Guardian * 'Morley has not only plenty of insights into Bowie's life and work but also the kind of details that only a diligent biographer unearths' * The Times * 'Ultimately it is Bowie that makes this an enjoyable read, his life and art speak so loudly and profoundly that if you capture just a piece, as Morley has, you have something worth reading.' * Fortitude Magazine *