MUSIC: KEVIN COURTNEYreviews The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and the 1970sBy Peter Doggett Bodley Head, 424pp. £20
NOW DAVID BOWIE has hung up his spacesuit for good, after the heart problems that forced him to cancel his 2003 tour, the way is clear for biographers to survey his contribution to popular culture. Earlier this year we were treated to Starman, Paul Trynka's fine biography, but this book is a different kettle of scary monsters altogether: a song-by-song analysis of Bowie's output in the 1970s, which for most fans is the only Bowie period that matters.
From his seminal moon-gazing single, Space Oddity,in 1969, to his 1980 album, Scary Monsters and Super Creeps,this book tracks Bowie's ever-changing masks and alter egos, as reflected in such albums as Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Aladdin Sane, Station to Station, Lowand (my favourite) Heroes. Over this period Bowie released 13 albums, of which perhaps only two ( Lodgerand Pin-Ups) were below par. Few artists have been able to sustain such high quality over a decade, which makes his subsequent creative fall seem crueller. As this book demonstrates, Bowie not only defined the 1970s but shaped its styles, stances, fears and foibles, and fed them back into his own myth.
In the 1960s scholars studied Bob Dylan's lyrics to divine his political and poetic message; Bowie was the 1970s Dylan, landed from Mars, and fans scrutinised his wild words for signs, omens and portents. In the documentary Cracked Actor, Bowie demonstrated his cut-up technique for lyric writing, which he used on Candidate, from Diamond Dogs. So dense and oblique are most of Bowie's lyrics from the time, you could assume they're just random words and phrases, but, as Doggett shows, he was a clever wordsmith.
He could also twist the truth. He claimed The Bewlay Brotherswas meaningless drivel he'd knocked off to bamboozle US audiences, when in fact it was a considered portrait of his relationship with his half-brother Terry, who suffered from schizophrenia and was institutionalised for much of his life.
Even the spaced-out stuff about Mars and aliens was a cloaking device: behind the futuristic veil he was addressing the concerns of the times, lacing them with just enough references to sci-fi, philosophy, psychology and religion to make them feel predictive. And the characters that peopled Queen Bitch, Five Years, Lady Stardustand Suffragette Citywere not so different from those you'd meet in the London and Manhattan haunts that Bowie frequented.
The book helps answer the question that most Bowie fans have asked at one time or another: what the hell is he on about? In Bowie's fertile mind, quite a lot. The Jean Genie is about a composite character based on Iggy Pop and Jean Genet, and the riff is based on Muddy Waters's I'm a Man. And though you wouldn't know it from the sneering tone of Andy Warhol, the song was intended as a tribute to his subterfuge-as-art rival.
The story behind Life on Mars?gives an insight into Bowie's offbeat motivations. In 1968 he was invited to write English lyrics for a Claude François song, Comme d'habitude. He came up with the awkward Even a Fool Learns to Love. The publisher passed on it, opting for a translation by Paul Anka. My Waybecame a global hit for Frank Sinatra, to Bowie's chagrin. In revenge he wrote Life on Mars?, using a structure similar to My Way's, but different enough not to attract a plagiarism suit.
This is the 1970s according to David Bowie. It was a pretty far-out place to be.
Kevin Courtney is an Irish Timesjournalist
