DAVID BOWIE, RICK WAKEMAN AND ME

It is always strange when one reads a book on a subject which one knows very well indeed, and discovers all sorts of major new facts. We are not talking minutiae here, but pivotal pieces of information which actually make sense of things that you haven’t really understood for several decades. This happened to me a couple of Christmases ago, when my lovely wife Corinna bought me a copy of Philip Norman’s biography of John Lennon. I have dozens of books on The Beatles, and Lennon in particular on my library shelves, and I was amazed to discover so much new material about him; material that in some cases was over 50 years old.

Now, the same thing has happened to me again, only – if it is possible – more so. I have just finished reading Paul Trynka’s biography of David Bowie. The cover is emblazoned with endorsements from major national newspapers saying things like ‘superb’, ‘fascinating’ and ‘essential’, and by golly they ain’t kidding. About 30 years ago I read Alias David Bowie by Peter and Leni Gillman. It revealed many things that Bowie had probably wanted to keep hidden, mostly about his brother Terry who spent most of his adult life in Cane Hill psychiatric hospital, eventually taking his own life by jumping in front of a train. It was a remarkable book, but told you very little about the music.

In the last few months I have been working on two biographies of Rick Wakeman, one written by the man himself, and the other by Dan Wooding (it will be out in a couple of weeks, guys, so keep your eyes peeled). Both books told me a lot that I didn’t know about Bowie’s late 60s and early 1970s recordings, including the fact that he had originally invited Wakeman to join the nascent Spiders from Mars. Rick decided to join Yes instead, and the sound of Bowie’s music – live at least - took off at an entirely new tangent. This wetted my appetite for more Bowie, and when the Trynka book bounced through my letter box courtesy of those jolly nice people at Sphere, I sat myself down and started to devour it.

This is a much more balanced tome than the one written by the Gillmans all those years ago, and it tells you more about what really matters; the music. The descriptions of the sessions for ‘Young Americans’ and ‘Scary Monsters’ are particularly illuminating. Sadly, the vast majority is about Bowie’s career up until 1980. His life until then takes up 300 pages and the subsequent 32 years a mere 96. This is, fairly standard fare in rock biographies, but unlike many artists who do all their interesting stuff in their youth and twenties, and churn out a parade of dull, fan fodder until they are finally kicked off their record company roster in late-middle age, Bowie has continued to produce interesting, radical and often confrontational music throughout his career. Yes, the albums that came out in the second half of the 1980s are best forgotten, but in the past 20 years, he has produced some really stunning stuff.

Starman is actually one of the best rock biographies I have read in recent years, if not ever and it really was a treat for someone like me, who still suffers from the delusion that rock music has some cultural and even spiritual importance. All the young, and not so young, dudes should get their collective fingers out and get hold of a copy.