Book : Bowie The Biography - Leigh, Wendy

-Titulo Original : Bowie The Biography

-Fabricante :

Gallery Books

-Descripcion Original:

Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke. Gender Bender. Rebel. Songwriter. Fashion Icon. Rock God. One of the most influential creative artists of his generation, David Bowie morphed from one glittering incarnation to the next over the course of five decades-an enduring superstar who remained endlessly enigmatic and always ahead of his time. Discover the man behind the myth in this intimate and in-depth biography-featuring a full-color sixteen-page photo insert.David Bowie passed away after an eighteen-month battle with cancer on January 10, 2016. Few knew of his illness, and Bowie flawlessly orchestrated his last goodbye with the release of his final (and some say best) album, Blackstar, featuring the haunting song “Lazarus,” and its accompanying video, a farewell message to his millions of fans. Throughout his iconic career that included such hits as “Let’s Dance,” “Space Oddity,” “Heroes,” “Modern Love,” and “Life on Mars,” Bowie managed to retain his Hollywood star mystique. Through in-depth interviews with those who knew him best, New York Times bestselling author Wendy Leigh reveals the man behind Bowie’s myriad images-up to and including his role as stay-at-home dad, happily monogamous in his quarter-of-a-century-plus marriage to supermodel Iman. In this “sizzling” (Radar Online) new biography, Leigh brings fresh insights to Bowie’s battles with addiction; his insatiable sex life-from self-avowed gay to bisexual to resolutely heterosexual-and countless conquests; his childhood in a working-class London neighborhood and the troubling family influences that fueled his relentless pursuit of success; and much more. This exploration of an artist beloved by so many reveals the man at the center of the mythos. About the Author Wendy Leigh is the New York Times bestselling author of sixteen books, including Bowie, Prince Charming: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story, and The Secret Letters of Marilyn Monroe & Jacqueline Kennedy, and the coauthor of Life with My Sister Madonna, Jeannie Out of the Bottle, and Shirley Jones. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Bowie ONE ABSOLUTE BEGINNING David Bowie’s first hit, “Space Oddity,” followed by “Life on Mars?” and “Starman,” insured that he would be forever associated with the planets, space, the moon, and the stars-and later on, when he made his cinematic debut in The Man Who Fell to Earth, with aliens and other worlds. Yet David Bowie was born in what in 1947 was one of the most mundane, down-to-earth, run-down communities in Britain: Brixton, in the London borough of Lambeth, a poor, grimy, working-class enclave. Yet stark and ordinary as Brixton was in those days, in true contrasting Bowie fashion, David’s birthplace also carried the visual blueprint of some of his creative dreams, his fantasies, his lyrics, his future. As history tells us, during the Second World War German bombs didn’t drop on London’s historic landmarks, like Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament, the Tower of London, St. Paul’s Cathedral. Documents have revealed that after double agents planted deliberate misinformation within the Luftwaffe, the Germans set the coordinates of the flying bombs so they didn’t fall on Central London and destroy England’s most hallowed historic edifices, but rather on the East End and South London, which bore the brunt of the bombing. Between October 1940 and June 1941, 1,215 bombs fell on Lambeth, an area three miles wide and seven miles long. And there was worse to come. Toward the end of the war, the lethal V-1 pilotless flying bombs (aka buzz bombs or doodlebugs) wrought havoc on London. At exactly 7:47 A.M. on July 16, 1944, a V-1 bomb hit Rumsey Road just one street north of Stansfield Road, where David Robert Jones (aka David Bowie) would be born just over two and a half years later, and in the process, demolished twelve houses and damaged forty others. The ravages of that deadly attack (along with