David Bowie
David Bowie
David Robert Jones, better known by his stage name David Bowie, was an English singer, songwriter and actor. He was a figure in popular music for over five decades, regarded by critics and musicians as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, his music and stagecraft significantly influencing popular music. During his lifetime, his record sales, estimated at 140 million worldwide, made him one of the world's best-selling music...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth8 January 1947
CityLondon, England
Everything we look at and choose is some way of expressing how we want to be perceived.
Rather than really have, like a close relationship to anything that's coming out today, people are just, they've got it on as background music. It's kind of the same way the cabdrivers use music; it's very disposable.
The name Bowie just appealed to me when I was younger. I was into a kind of heavy philosophy thing when I was 16 years old, and I wanted a truism about cutting through the lies and all that.
If I wasn't going through a thing where I was also being my characters offstage, uh, I'm much happier just wearing the most low-profile things that I can come up with just so I can get down the street....
I think that my fascination with clothes generally was motivated by trying to create the characters for the stage.
People got extremely comfortable with being able to turn on their television and see MTV say, "This guy's hot you should buy this record."
I never really had much of an interest in fashion.
There seem to be a lot of black artists making very good videos that I'm surprised aren't being used on MTV.
People will keep the TV on even if a show is on that they hate - because, unfortunately, they've been programmed to do that.
Having not really written any generational songs - I think maybe two or three of the songs that I've ever written have any bearing on the age of the listener. My stuff tends to be far more concerned with the spiritual and with subjects like isolation and being miserable.
I'm not actually a very keen performer. I like putting shows together. I like putting events together.
There's not much point in getting any heavier... there's too many things to read and look at.
There's something about the style of living in the country that they feel, "This is what represents me." So style is about the philosophy of how we create our civilization.
Things have to hit for the moment. That's one of the reasons I'm into video; the image has to hit immediately. I adore video and the whole cutting up of it.