DAVID BOWIE Biography - Musicians

 
 

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DAVID BOWIE

Name: David Bowie                                                                     
Birth name: David Jones                                                               
Born: 8 January 1947 Brixton, England                                                 
                                                                                     
David Bowie (born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947) is                           
an English singer, songwriter, actor, multi-instrumentalist, bandleader,             
producer, arranger, and audio engineer. Active in five decades of rock music and     
frequently reinventing his music and image, Bowie is widely regarded as an           
influential innovator, particularly for his work through the 1970s. Bowie has         
taken cues from a wide range of fine art, philosophy and literature. He is also       
a film and stage actor, music video director, and visual artist.                     
                                                                                     
Although he released an album and numerous singles earlier, David Bowie first         
caught the eye and ear of the public in the autumn of 1969, when his space-age       
mini-melodrama "Space Oddity" reached the top five of the UK singles chart.           
After a three-year period of experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the         
glam rock era as a flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded     
by the hit single "Starman" and the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust         
and the Spiders from Mars. The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona epitomised a     
career often marked by musical innovation, reinvention and striking visual           
presentation.                                                                         
                                                                                     
In 1975, Bowie achieved his first major American crossover success with the           
number-one single "Fame" and the hit album Young Americans, which the singer         
identified as "plastic soul". The sound constituted a radical shift in style         
that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. He then confounded the             
expectations of both his record label and his American audiences by recording         
the minimalist album Low the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno. His       
most experimental works to date, the so-called "Berlin Trilogy" nevertheless         
produced three UK top-five albums. The anthem-like, towering title track of the       
second work "Heroes" (1977) is ranked 46 on Rolling Stone magazine's 500             
Greatest Songs of All Time.                                                           
                                                                                     
After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had UK number ones with     
the 1980 single "Ashes to Ashes" and its parent album, Scary Monsters (and Super     
Creeps). He paired with Queen for the 1981 UK chart-topper "Under Pressure", but     
consolidated his commercial and, until then, most profitable sound in 1983           
with the album Let's Dance, which yielded the hit singles "China Girl", "Modern       
Love", and most famously, the title track.                                           
                                                                                     
In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, Bowie ranked 29. Throughout       
his career he has sold an estimated 196 million albums, and                           
ranks among the ten best-selling acts in UK pop history. In 2004, Rolling Stone       
magazine ranked him 39th on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.