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By 1987, David Bowie was at a creative, critical and commercial low. His most recent album was dismissed by the music press, his latest tour written off as a disaster. Yet - almost 20 years later, Bowie has re-established himself at the very peak of his profession in one of the most extraordinary comebacks in rock history. While most biographies on Bowie still focus on the early years, Hallo Spaceboy is the first to chronicle the comeback in detail. Drawing upon exclusive interviews with fans, colleagues and associates, it is the follow-up to Moonage Daydream (1987).

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Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	16 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781554902712
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

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HALLO SPACEBOY
THE REBIRTH OF DAVID BOWIE
HALLO SPACEBOY
THE REBIRTH OF DAVID BOWIE
DAVE THOMPSON

Copyright © Dave Thompson, 2006
Published by ECW PRESS 2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200 , Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW press.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing In Publication
Thompson, Dave, 1960 Jan. 3– Hallo spaceboy : the rebirth of David Bowie / Dave Thompson.
ISBN 1-55022-733-5
1. Bowie, David. 2. Rock musicians—England—Biography. I. Title. ML420.B784T46 2006 782.42166’092 C2006-900494-3
Developing editor: Jennifer Hale Typesetting: Gail Nina Cover design: David Gee Text design: Tania Craan Cover photo: Lester Cohen / WireImage.com Color section, in order: Philippe Auliac; Philippe Auliac; Richard Beland; Richard Beland; Fernando Aceves; Fernando Aceves; Fernando Aceves (top and bottom); Fernando Aceves; Fernando Aceves (top and bottom); Richard Beland; Philippe Auliac; Richard Beland; Richard Beland; Philippe Auliac; PhilippeAuliac; Kevin Mazur/WireImage.com Ticket stubs courtesy: Robert Thompson (pp. 7, 64, 84); Graham McDougall (pp. 63, 75, 150, 155, 180, 183); Bianca Dietrich (p. 153); Simone Metge (pp. 185, 195, 212, 223, 240, 261, 262, 266, 274, 276, 279, 282)
Printing: Transcontinental
DISTRIBUTION
CANADA : Jaguar Book Group, 100 Armstrong Avenue, Georgetown, ON, L7G 5S4 UNITED STATES : Independent Publishers Group, 814 North Franklin Street, Chicago, Illinois 60610
PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE - Kissing the Viper s Fang
CHAPTER TWO - Don t Look on the Carpet
CHAPTER THREE - Andy, Where s My Fifteen Minutes?
CHAPTER FOUR - I m Glad You re Older Than Me
CHAPTER FIVE - When It s Good, It s Really Good
CHAPTER SIX - Where Have All Papa s Heroes Gone?
CHAPTER SEVEN - Nail Me To My Car
CHAPTER EIGHT - Don t Forget to Keep Your Head Warm
CHAPTER NINE - Standing Tall in the Dark
CHAPTER TEN - Business Cesspools Hating Through our Sleeves
CHAPTER ELEVEN - Living for the Best Times
CHAPTER TWELVE - Like Seeing Jesus on Dateline
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Everyone Says Hi
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Breaking the Ruptured Structures
FURTHER READING
DISCOGRAPHY
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For interviews and conversations conducted in person, by phone or via e-mail over the course of the past decade and more, all awaiting the day when they could fall into this framework, my thanks to: Carlos Alomar, Brett Anderson, Ian Astbury, Boz Boorer, Chris Carter, Billy Corgan, Peter Frampton, Lisa Germano, Dave Grohl, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Nile Rodgers, Mick Ronson, Tony Secunda, Robert Smith, James Stevenson, Tony Visconti, together with everybody who agreed to speak with me, but asked that they not be identified.
Grateful acknowledgments also go out to everybody at ECW, to Amy Hanson and Jo-Ann Greene, and to everybody else who helped bring the beast to life: Anchorite Man, Bateerz and family, Blind Pew, Mrs. B East, Ella and Sprocket, Gaye and Tim, Gef the Talking Mongoose, the Gremlins who live in the furnace, JD, K-Mart and Snarleyyowl, Geoff Monmouth, Naughty Miranda, Nutkin, Pointy Ghost Face, Sonny, a lot of Thompsons and Neville Viking.
Finally, two dedications: to Sherrill Chidiac, my agent for ten great years, but who passed away just as this book reached its final phase; and to the boy who wrote Cygnet Committee, and who still sounds like he meant it. This book would not have happened without the two of you.
INTRODUCTION
When the covers closed on the first volume of this biography, Moonage Daydream , back in 1987, it would have been a brave soul indeed who prophesied a second volume. Never Let Me Down , Bowie s album that year, was almost universally hammered, not because it was a bad record, but because it was the wrong one for the time and place in which it was released. Three years before the end of the decade, rock was in desperate need of fresh direction. The firestorms that had shaken and shaped it through the early 1980s had long since passed; worse than that, they had been utterly subverted, absorbed into the body of an entertainment industry that valued everything for which rock n roll had once been anathema.
Hindsight offers any number of flash points, from the British New Romantic crowd dancing with royalty at sundry showbiz galas, through to Live Aid, the single most successful charity event in rock history (and the single most damaging blow to the notion that rock stands outside the societal norm).
True, there were bands who didn t play at Live Aid, and who wouldn t have if they d been asked - there were even one or two, led by such (then) underground concerns as Chumbawamba and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who spoke out against the notion that a day of live music could suddenly reverse the western world s culture of greed and selfishness. But bands such as these operated so far below the mainstream radar that they could only preach to the same handful of listeners they d always spoken to. To the public in general, the rock rebellion had finally thrown in the towel - and now it could reap the rewards of its common sense.
Shocked and shaken by their elevation to a level of royalty that had hitherto been afforded only to the true aristocrats of rock - the Stones and ex-Beatles, Cliff and Dead Elvis - performers that were scarcely worthy of tying John Lennon s shoelaces were suddenly pronouncing on all of the world s faults and failings, or else subverting any urge to rock the boat that they might have entertained, and delving deep into the soft, gooey underbelly of mass entertainment with records that might have made all the right noises in all the right places, but actually said - and did - nothing. Worthless platters from pointless prognosticators.
David Bowie had already made a couple of albums that fell into that void, although one (1983 s Let s Dance ) was so successful that its manifold failings remain a closely guarded secret more than twenty years on, while the other (1984 s Tonight ) is usually best ignored. Besides, every artist should be permitted the odd dodgy stretch, where the music and the mind fall out of step with one another. But surely enough had occurred in the years since then, both personally and in the wider world of music, to stir Bowie back to some form of outrageous opinion? Rock was looking for leaders, and, as he had done so often before, Bowie was expected to be among them.
Instead, he delivered Never Let Me Down , an album that, while vastly superior to Tonight and eternally more enjoyable than Let s Dance , nevertheless completed a trilogy as solid and unmistakable as either the Ziggy / Aladdin / Dogs triumvirate of the glam era, or the Low/ Heroes /Lodger lineup of the late 1970s. The problem was, this one was as brutally out of synch with its times as those albums had been brilliantly aware of theirs (although, let us not forget, both Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs were given a rough ride by the media, while the bulk of Lodger remains better in theory than in the actual execution).
Much of the credit for Never Let Me Down s renaissances, such as they were, must go to Bowie s choice in collaborators. David Richards, Erdal Kizilcay and Carlos Alomar were familiar names from the past, of course, each well aware of precisely what the boss man wanted, and how he d want it done. The wild card, however, was Peter Frampton, the second most famous man to have attended Beckenham Secondary School.
Frampton had been a couple of years behind Bowie at school, but he was a couple of years ahead of him in the stardom game. Frampton had been a chart topper with The Herd while Bowie was still stringing out the sixties in a variety of novelty voices; he was a stadium filler with Humble Pie while Bowie played the folk clubs and bars; and a bona fide superstar while Bowie played at provincial Godhead. But by the early eighties, Frampton had - in commercial terms at least - fallen on hard times, withdrawing from the front line to concentrate on his family and homelife.
By 1986, however, a new album, Premonition , had reawakened Frampton s hunger, and a surprise phone call from Bowie, raving about the record, did the rest.
I was on the road, in Chicago, and the phone rang: Hi, it s Dave . . . I ve just heard your new album and I want you to come to Switzerland and do some of that great playing on my new record. So he sent me a ticket and I went over there.
Frampton plays on all but three of the songs on Never Let Me Down , and he views the album as one that has withstood the test of time considerably better than Bowie himself thinks it has.
He was great with it at the time, the guitarist recalls. He s always got a great excitement. I ve seen him record before, and he gets very intense, he really gets into it. It s this way or no way at all, and then someone says try it this way and he ll go, yeah, you were right. But he s totally in control of every aspect, he doesn t pass the buck as it were, and let someone else do the dirty work.
This is in stark contradiction to Bowie s own insistence that he barely showed his face at the sessions, preferring to let the guys arrange it, then I d come in and do a vocal, then bugger off and pick up a bird. But Frampton will not budge. The first thing he did when I got there was give me cassettes of the tracks, and show me the lyrics he was proud of; he d got a new baby and he wanted to share it. It was great.
It c