David Bowie's career: Five pivotal moments, from Ziggy Stardust to Blackstar

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Jochan Embley13 June 2020

Few artists hold a place in popular culture quite like David Bowie.

Over the course of 50-odd years, he grew, evolved, mutated and metamorphosised into all matter of things, switching between alter egos and artistic mediums, constantly reinventing himself in search of something new and challenging.

All the while, he managed to remain one of the best-selling musicians the world has ever seen. Books have been written about how he became such a cultural icon, but there were few key moments throughout the decades that had a definite effect on his dazzling career.

Here, we've picked out five pivotal events. Without each of them, the cult of Bowie would have been unrecognisable to the one we know today.

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A breakthrough with of Space Oddity

By all accounts, in his early career, Bowie — or Davy Jones, as was his chosen moniker to begin with — was a restless failure. He moved from band to band, exasperated at each of their inadequacies, before renaming himself and releasing his debut self-titled album in 1967. It flopped.

It wasn’t until Space Oddity, released in July 1969, that the world got a glimpse of the artist Bowie was soon to become. Its space-travelling lyrics were disregarded by some as an easy leap aboard the bandwagon of the Apollo 11 mission, which put men on the moon nine days after the song’s release. But it still reached number five on the charts, and it was a startling piece of work — an indication of Bowie’s ability to fuse the strange and surreal with something universally affecting.

The rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust

It started in decidedly normal surroundings — the Toby Jug pub in Tolworth, to be exact — but there was something not quite of this world to Ziggy Stardust. Bowie’s new alter ego, androgynously dressed and with its glowing red hairdo, toured extensively in 1972 and 1973. It turned Bowie from cult hero to bonafide success, with songs such as Starman only strengthening his allure.

And then, at the height of it all, Ziggy was killed. In July 1973, towards the end of a particularly infamous gig at Hammersmith Odeon, Bowie told an incredulous crowd that it was “the last show we’ll ever do”. The onlookers were aghast: was this the final performance Bowie would ever give? As it turned out, it was just the last time we’d ever see Ziggy on stage — but his unearthly figure remains Bowie’s most enduring artistic creation.

The controversy of the ‘plastic soul’ era

After the runaway success of Ziggy Stardust, Bowie went looking for a new avenue to explore. He found it in the genres of soul, funk and R&B, first experimenting by fusing the styles into his glam rock norms on Diamond Dogs in 1974, and then embracing it fully on Young Americans a year later.

The albums were both commercial successes, but they coincided with one of the most controversial periods of Bowie’s career. He was hit with accusations of appropriation, taking music of black origin for his own gain — something Bowie seemed to accept, claiming this music was simply “plastic soul”. Meanwhile, his descent into cocaine addiction was quickening, and his sanity depleting: quotes about the supposed benefits of fascism in the UK were followed by a picture published in the NME which appeared to show Bowie making a Nazi salute from an open-top car. His character, then, was the Thin White Duke. The idea lies uneasy now.

The man was unravelling — and it could well have been an inglorious end for Bowie had something not changed. Luckily, he later denounced the ghastly statements, putting it down to drug-addled mania, and began to kick the habit. Who knows what might have happened if he didn’t.

Proving himself as an actor in The Man Who Fell To Earth and The Elephant Man

In another life, Bowie may well have been an actor who did a bit of music on the side. In our reality, though, it was the other way round. There’s always a hint of suspicion whenever a musician tries to convert to the silver screen — are they only there because of their showbiz connections?

For Bowie, his acting had actually come before his musical success. He toured as a support act for Marc Bolan’s Tyrannosaurus Rex in 1969, but was in fact performing as a mime artist. Still, it was his role as Thomas Jerome Newton in 1976’s The Man Who Fell To Earth that forced onlookers to take him seriously as an actor. To be fair, he was perfectly cast — an alien — but played it with all the necessary peculiarity. Perhaps his greatest moment came on stage, with his deeply felt turn as John Merrick in The Elephant Man on Broadway at the turn of the 80s.

The immaculate timing of Blackstar

Bowie seemed to live his life as one great piece of art, so it makes perfect sense that his final act was also his most magnificent. On January 8, 2016, his 69th birthday, Bowie released Blackstar, his 25th studio album. The reviews were breathless, and rightly so. It was a dazzlingly experimental release, the deep, dark sound of an eccentric master at his creative peak.

Then, two days later, Bowie passed, succumbing to the cancer he had kept secret from all but a close circle of confidants. It was, and still is, a painful moment, but that ache is eased by knowing just how immaculate a final statement this was, and how, amazingly, the whole thing was planned by Bowie. What a way to say goodbye.

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