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The Age of Bowie
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
36 posts | 6 read | 2 reading | 7 to read
'A handsome six footer with a warm and engaging personality, Davie Jones has all it takes to get to the show business heights including . . . talent.' David Bowie at 17 in May, 1964 writing his own press biography. 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 Bowies 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 Bowies 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.
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blurb
SconsinBookyBadger
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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Twitter post often attributed to Simon Pegg, but original source was somebody else.
“If you're ever sad, just remember the world is 4.543 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie.”

readordierachel Yes 💖 5y
26 likes1 comment
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Lizpixie
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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#MarchIntoThe70s #day12 #Heroes There‘s so many heroes in this world, most of them with no glory, no pay & no recognition. Bowie wrote this song about silent heroes, sometimes a little act can be so heroic. He was also a hero to me for his love of reading, there‘s so many photos of him with a book in his hand. He inspired a lot of his fans to read more, which though a small act was very heroic.

Cinfhen #PREACH 🙏🏻💋 6y
writerlibrarian 👊🏻🙂 6y
55 likes2 comments
review
annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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Mehso-so

F I n a l l y. Not a bad book but it took forever to get to the point. And Morley like many male middle aged music critics, is a little (lot) too enamored with how cool he himself is.

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annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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Alllmmooooost

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annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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If I have to keep reading it, you have to keep seeing the updates (it's not bad, just occasionally tedious and really fucking long, plus not the book the recommender sold me)

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annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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On page 285 out of 462, yeah, it's never ending.

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annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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This is a feature Morley uses throughout the book, and it gets really forced around chapter five. The book continues to never end.

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annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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Did I read much in Montanaland? No. Slept and listened to podcasts on the way there and - shock - my back hurts from too much sitting even when I'm not at home. Also baby niece.

Also also, this book never fucking ends.

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annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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Travel reading

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annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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You may wonder why there are so much coffee ☕ in my book posts. Well, mainly, I don't find much peace to read at home. At least once a week I head to a local coffee shop and spend some time getting through a few pages. Million times mentioned back issues makes the time spent reading shorter, but oh well. Today I got here and every seat was taken except the best one??

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annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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"were not so keen on the idea or an actual hairstyle..." ?

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annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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Still at it. I can't carry this one around, as it's heavy, so it's a weekend project. It may take a while, which is an issue, as I really want to read Goss' newest.

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annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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Getting better, both the book and the smoke levels.

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annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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Nothing wrong with this book, but I'm not feeling it. I have a damn list though, so I'll slog through.

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annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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Aaand we're back in the Bowie book

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annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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This is... Not going well. At least I've read a lot of other stuff instead?? #tbrbingo

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annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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The doors aren't quite clean yet (going to need a stronger solvent than vinegar to deal with the remnants of some terrible painter's tape), but I still 100% love this cabinet I renovated (my biggest project so far!) & it houses the prettiest books.

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CaitlinElizabeth
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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As a kid, and up until recently, I never really listened to David Bowie. My parents weren't fans, so I wasn't exposed to him as a child. And growing up, although I liked his singles, I never delved in deeper. Although I always liked the idea of his music and his image, I never made the effort. Then, he passed away. I felt like a fraud suddenly, wanting to listen to his music. But a friend said: it's never too late to start to listen to Bowie

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annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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Xmas gift I forgot about. Has some trouble getting to a point. But good so far

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Lizpixie
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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#Characters2017 #day20 #JukeboxHero I dare you to find a jukebox anywhere in the world that doesn't have a Bowie song on it!From his first beginnings with Space Oddity to Life On Mars,Ziggy Stardust,Golden Years,Young Americans,Heroes,Fashion,Ashes To Ashes,then on to Let's Dance,China Girl & his collab with Jagger,Dancin In The Street.He was unique,just a little strange,flawed but above all,hugely talented. 🎶Ground Control to Major Tom🎶🚀📻

JazzFeathers One of my favourite singers when l was a kid 💙 7y
LibrarianRyan 👍❤️🤓. Long live the Goblin King. 7y
57 likes1 stack add2 comments
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Lizpixie
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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#JuneTunz #day14 #Afterlife My interpretation of this prompt has to do with musicians & how even after their deaths, they still live on. When you look at artists like Bowie, John Lennon, George Michael, Freddy Mercury etc, even years after they're gone, they still sell records, are on tv & radio, written about. If that's not eternal life, what is?

Cinfhen Brilliant 😎❤️🎵👍🏻#TRUTH 7y
56 likes1 comment
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Lizpixie
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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#RockInMay #day20 #Cocaine There was a few years there in the 70s,after his Ziggy Stardust era, during the recording of Young Americans & his Thin White Duke stage, that his addictions almost took him from us way too soon. There's a particular tv interview I'm thinking of when he was so stoned he could barely keep his eyes open & he was so painfully thin he looked cadaverous. Thankfully he managed to get clean & stay that way the rest of his life.

Cinfhen Such a talent 😊He still died too young, but credit to him for turning his life around 7y
JazzFeathers True. We were lucky 😊 And great marit to him for pushing through 7y
60 likes1 stack add2 comments
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rogueitup
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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"... everyone has their own David Bowie. So many Bowies: how do you keep up with them in a book, and try to keep him inside the pages as he constantly, provocatively moves somewhere else and becomes someone else?"
Finally diving into this tome, and I can't wait to learn about the different facets of the man I fell in love with as the Goblin King.

review
Clare_Riley
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
Pickpick

A very good biography, actually. I was drawn in purely by the book cover (who wouldn't be?!), and was pleasantly surprised by the whole book having seen interviews with the author (I can't say as I was impressed). He comes over much better in print than on TV. Not that I'm a huge Bowie fan or anything, but I felt that it all seemed very realistic and un-gushy (is that even a word? No? Looks like it might be now!

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Erik3003
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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1973.

He is becoming a cat from Japan. wearing the saturated creations and Japanese theatrical finds of Kansai Yamamoto, who he's met in New York, who made clothes not meant for man or woman, but whatever came first, or whatever comes next. Clothes meant for a figment of the imagination, for a mind that refuses to be tethered, for an entertainment guru that loves to look the part.

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Erik3003
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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1972.

He is landing amongst us like a missile.

He is observing himself becoming the star he always knew he would be, making sense of the life within a life he was living, like a film within a film, which now would be filmed.

He is learning the best way for him to be real on stage, as real as he wants to be, is to become someone else.

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Erik3003
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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1971.

Hunky Dory was everything he then knew about himself as a 24-year-old, and his love of music, art, self-promotion, self-awareness and the vexed, vamping glamour of show business, in one forty-minute place. It was a piece of work that said, I have grown up, and this is how I have grown up, by being interested in these sorts of things, and in having the confidence to become those things myself.

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Erik3003
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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1970.

He is a romantically irrational, already acutely self-reflexive 23-year-old, loftily rehearsing creative genius, as horny as Lucifer, a gawky manic eclectic obsessed with the provocative joys of juxtaposition, naturally attracted to excess and outrage, anxious he might be accused of some mental infirmity, blatantly relishing the alleged thin line between mental illness and artistic creativity, between mere eccentricity and absolute delirium

Erik3003 understanding the instabilities of the categories of male and female, preoccupied with his own physical sensations and the tortured history of his own soul, helplessly infatuated with the highfalutin, keen on acknowledging and addressing a strange world that is not exactly reassuring, intensely fascinated by the apocalyptic, mortality and religious ecstasy, dazzled by the mongrel interconnection between human destinies, (...) 8y
Erik3003 crazily ambitious to rise above mediocrity, sincerely believing that art can transform the world, beginning to follow the voice of his nature and impulses which wildly oppose prevailing laws, rules and conventions, struggling to work out how to sonically represent constantly coalescing internal perceptions and his belief, using pop music, that time is a living thing only made sense of by deatch.
8y
2 comments
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Erik3003
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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1969.

As soon as his first hit single started to drop from the chart, Bowie tumbled with it, falling back to earth. He wasn‘t destined to be remembered because of ‘Space Oddity‘, not at the time. For a while it seemed as though it would become his own tin can that he was sealed inside, drifting off into ultimate obscurity, never able to contact planet earth again in the same way.

Erik3003 (...)
He disappeared around the other side of the moon for a while into the darkness, but he would soon reappear, returning to a changed world, heading for a hero‘s reception
8y
1 comment
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Lizpixie
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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#readjanuary #day21 #topicyoudliketoknowmoreabout 60s/70s music is a topic I'd like to know more about. That era of music in general fascinates me, some of the best bands/singers ever were from this period. I have books on Led Zep, Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, Hendrix, The Doors & the whole Laurel Canyon California rock scene. Maybe because I was born right in the middle of that period, I'm not sure. But I love that whole period of music.

CherylDeFranceschi ❤👩🏼‍🎤💔 8y
56 likes1 stack add1 comment
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AbstractMonica
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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I went to Fingerprint Records in Long Beach this morning, and they had a pretty cool book collection 👌🏼👩🏼‍🎤⚡️🎤

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Erik3003
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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Kwam er vandaag achter dat één van m'n favoriete pop journalisten een boek over één van m'n favoriete pop muziekanten heeft geschreven ! ⚡️

Erik3003 David Bowie had always been a collaborative between the artist and the audience, much of what he was having been created by the response of his fans, and enemies. 8y
2 likes1 comment
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Lizpixie
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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#readjanuary #day3 #bookface I swear I'm running to catch up already this year, I've already forgotten three things today. Here is my BookFace for yesterday, the original space alien himself. Just on a year since he left us as well. I love this period of Bowie, Life On Mars is one of my all time favourites, the video for it is Bowie at his finest. I've always loved the strange ones, the weird ones, the misfits.

Suet624 Me too. Love the misfits. 8y
RealLifeReading Fantastic pick! 8y
72 likes2 comments
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annamatopoetry
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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So excited to read this one. Best book xmas present.

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TheLondonBookworm
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley
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Be still my beating heart 😍😍😍 so yeah, I have a Mild Bowie obsession, I couldn't help myself I had to buy it ...

QueenAnne So cool😍😍 enjoy!! 8y
Mayread You should talk to @CherylDeFranceschi about Bowie! 8y
TheLondonBookworm @Skiles @CherylDeFranceschi I found another one! ⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️⚡️ 8y
See All 8 Comments
[DELETED] 3803335244 I'm so sad he's gone, what a wonderful person & icon. 💙 8y
TheLondonBookworm @AustenNerd16 I agree wholeheartedly, if you get the chance visit the memorial painting in Brixton- it is emotional and heartwarming. 8y
CherylDeFranceschi Omg, the swooning! ❤️⚡️❤️⚡️ 8y
CherylDeFranceschi @Skiles Thank you for remembering me! 8y
TheLondonBookworm @CherylDeFranceschi That is the only acceptable reaction to this book 😂😂 8y
40 likes3 stack adds8 comments
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Tonton
The Age of Bowie | Paul Morley

Have read excerpts in The Guardian, and this is on my to buy list.