Dey Street Books

Like so many vital figures in British pop history, from Pete Townshend to Paul Weller, Bowie came from a blurry region of British society that encompasses the educated working class, the socially precarious petite bourgeoisie and what could be called the uncomfortably-off middle class, i.e. professional or office workers whose income didn’t quite match their aspirations.

Max’s Kansas City.” (No other NYC locale inspired English rock boys like this one—Marc Bolan’s “Baby Boomerang,” John Lennon’s “New York City,” Mick Jagger’s “Do You Think I Really Care

Ziggy Goes to Washington: Ziggy under the influence of America

He was still by far the world’s most high-profile out gay or bi man, though he was accused of using it as a gimmick

Bowie wrote the songs amid the frenzy of touring, with the working title Love Aladdin Vein. (In that same crazed year, he produced Lou Reed’s Transformer and mixed the Stooges’ Raw Power.)

Sadly, it was the final reconciliation for the glam gods: Bolan was killed in a car wreck less than two weeks later

That’s one of the things David Bowie came to show us—we go to music to hear ourselves change.

We’ve lived for just these twenty years, do we have to die for the fifty more?”—felt totally different

Bowie sounds old and vampirish, though he was only twenty-seven (just as Neil Young was only twenty-six when he sang “and I’m gettin’ old” in his lone Number 1 hit

Young Americans” is his testimony about the wages of being a poseur and the dangers of solipsism