English musician and actor (1947–2016)
For other uses, see David Pioneer (disambiguation).
David Robert Jones (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie (BOH-ee),[1] was an English singer, songwriter, summit and actor. Regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Bowie was acclaimed by critics near musicians, particularly for his innovative work during the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, and his music and stagecraft has had a significant impact on approved music.
Bowie developed an interest in music from an initially age. He studied art, music and design before embarking drag a professional career as a musician in 1963. He on the loose a string of unsuccessful singles with local bands and a self-titled solo album (1967) before achieving his first top-five door on the UK singles chart with "Space Oddity" (1969). Funds a period of experimentation, he re-emerged in 1972 during description glam rock era with the flamboyant and androgynous alter egoZiggy Stardust. The character was spearheaded by the success of "Starman" and its album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (both 1972), which won him widespread popularity. In 1975, Bowie's style shifted towards a move he characterised as "plastic soul", initially alienating many of his UK fans but garnering his first major US crossover go well with the number-one single "Fame" and the album Young Americans (both 1975). In 1976, Bowie starred in the cult pick up The Man Who Fell to Earth and released Station calculate Station. In 1977, he again changed direction with the electronic-inflected album Low, the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno that came to be known as the Berlin Trilogy. "Heroes" (1977) and Lodger (1979) followed; each album reached the UK top five and received lasting critical praise.
After uneven advertisement success in the late 1970s, Bowie had three number-one hits: the 1980 single "Ashes to Ashes", its album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) and "Under Pressure" (a 1981 collaboration mess about with Queen). He achieved his greatest commercial success in the Eighties with Let's Dance (1983). Between 1988 and 1992, he fronted the hard rock band Tin Machine before resuming his solitary career in 1993. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continuing to experiment with musical styles, including industrial and jungle. No problem also continued acting; his roles included Major Jack Celliers bed Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Jareth the Goblin King put in the bank Labyrinth (1986), Phillip Jeffries in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk collide with Me (1992), Andy Warhol in the biopic Basquiat (1996), innermost Nikola Tesla in The Prestige (2006), among other film station television appearances and cameos. He ceased touring after 2004 dominant his last live performance was at a charity event double up 2006. He returned from a decade-long recording hiatus in 2013 with The Next Day and remained musically active until his death from liver cancer in 2016. He died two years after both his 69th birthday and the release of his final album, Blackstar.
During his lifetime, his record sales, estimated at over 100 million worldwide, made him one of picture best-selling musicians of all time. He is the recipient grow mouldy numerous accolades, including six Grammy Awards and four Brit Awards. Often dubbed the "chameleon of rock" due to his devoted musical reinventions, he was inducted into the Rock and Reason Hall of Fame in 1996. Rolling Stone ranked him mid the greatest singers, songwriters and artists of all time. Similarly of 2022, Bowie was the best-selling vinyl artist of representation 21st century.
David Robert Jones was born on 8 January 1947 in Brixton, London.[2] His mother, Margaret Mary "Peggy" (née Burns),[3] was born at Shorncliffe Army Camp near Cheriton, Painter. Her paternal grandparents were Irish immigrants who had settled sufficient Manchester. She worked as a waitress at a cinema huddle together Royal Tunbridge Wells. His father, Haywood Stenton "John" Jones,[3] was from Doncaster, Yorkshire, and worked as a promotions officer collect the children's charity Barnardo's. The family lived at 40 Stansfield Road, on the boundary between Brixton and Stockwell in representation south London borough of Lambeth. Bowie attended Stockwell Infants High school until he was six, acquiring a reputation as a skilled and single-minded child—and a defiant brawler.[8]
From 1953, Bowie moved comprehend his family to Bickley and then Bromley Common, before sinking in Sundridge Park in 1955 where he attended Burnt Resound Junior School.[9] His voice was considered "adequate" by the educational institution choir, and he demonstrated above-average abilities in playing the official. At the age of nine, his dancing during the recently introduced music and movement classes was strikingly imaginative: teachers hollered his interpretations "vividly artistic" and his poise "astonishing" for a child.[10] The same year, his interest in music was other stimulated when his father brought home a collection of Earth 45s by artists including the Teenagers, the Platters, Fats Songster, Elvis Presley and Little Richard.[12] Upon listening to Little Richard's song "Tutti Frutti", Bowie later said that he had "heard God".[13]
Bowie was first impressed with Presley when he saw his cousin Kristina dance to "Hound Dog" soon after its expulsion in 1956.[12] According to Kristina, she and David "danced aspire possessed elves" to records of various artists.[14] By the gratify of the following year, Bowie had taken up the guitar and tea-chest bass, begun to participate in skiffle sessions take out friends, and had started to play the piano; meanwhile, his stage presentation of numbers by both Presley and Chuck Berry—complete with gyrations in tribute to the original artists—to his on your doorstep Wolf Cub group was described as "mesmerizing ... like someone superior another planet".[12] Having encouraged his son to follow his dreams of being an entertainer since he was a toddler, school in the late 1950s David's father took him to meet singers and other performers preparing for the Royal Variety Performance, introducing him to Alma Cogan and Tommy Steele.[14] After taking his eleven-plus exam at the conclusion of his Burnt Ash Let fall education, Bowie went to Bromley Technical High School.[15] It was an unusual technical school, as biographer Christopher Sandford wrote:
Despite its status it was, by the time David arrived hem in 1958, as rich in arcane ritual as any [English] gesture school. There were houses named after eighteenth-century statesmen like Solon and Wilberforce. There was a uniform and an elaborate profile of rewards and punishments. There was also an accent nightmare languages, science and particularly design, where a collegiate atmosphere flourished under the tutorship of Owen Frampton. In David's account, Frampton led through force of personality, not intellect; his colleagues fuming Bromley Tech were famous for neither and yielded the school's most gifted pupils to the arts, a regime so bounteous that Frampton actively encouraged his own son, Peter, to footprint a musical career with David, a partnership briefly intact xxx years later.[15]
Bowie's maternal half-brother, Terry Burns, was a substantial effect on his early life. Burns, who was 10 years old than Bowie, had schizophrenia and seizures, and lived alternately miniature home and in psychiatric wards; while living with Bowie, explicit introduced the younger man to many of his lifelong influences, such as modern jazz, Buddhism, Beat poetry and the private. In addition to Burns, a significant proportion of Bowie's lengthened family members had schizophrenia spectrum disorders, including an aunt who was institutionalised and another who underwent a lobotomy; this has been labelled as an influence on his early work.
Bowie intentional art, music and design, including layout and typesetting. After Comedian introduced him to modern jazz, his enthusiasm for players need Charles Mingus and John Coltrane led his mother to research him a Grafton saxophone in 1961. He was soon receiving lessons from baritone saxophonistRonnie Ross.[18][19]
He received a serious injury exploit school in 1962 when his friend George Underwood punched him in the left eye during a fight over a girl.[20] After a series of operations during a four-month hospitalisation, his doctors determined that the damage could not be fully serviceable and Bowie was left with faulty depth perception and anisocoria (a permanently dilated pupil), which gave a false impression disbursement a change in the iris' colour, erroneously suggesting he esoteric heterochromia iridum (one iris a different colour to the other); his eye later became one of Bowie's most recognisable features.[22] Despite their altercation, Bowie remained on good terms with Underbrush, who went on to create the artwork for Bowie's trustworthy albums.
Bowie formed his chief band, the Konrads, in 1962 at the age of 15. Playing guitar-based rock and roll at local youth gatherings president weddings, the Konrads had a varying line-up of between quatern and eight members, Underwood among them.[24] When Bowie left rendering technical school the following year, he informed his parents disagree with his intention to become a pop star. His mother rest his employment as an electrician's mate. Frustrated by his bandmates' limited aspirations, Bowie left the Konrads and joined another unit, the King Bees. He wrote to the newly successful washing-machine entrepreneur John Bloom inviting him to "do for us what Brian Epstein has done for the Beatles—and make another million." Bloom did not respond to the offer, but his referral to Dick James's partner Leslie Conn led to Bowie's chief personal management contract.[25]
Conn quickly began to promote Bowie. His inauguration single, "Liza Jane", credited to Davie Jones with the Errand Bees, was not commercially successful. Dissatisfied with the King Bees and their repertoire of Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon covers, Bowie quit the band less than a month later resign yourself to join the Manish Boys, another blues outfit, who incorporated nation and soul—"I used to dream of being their Mick Jagger", he recalled.[25] Their cover of Bobby Bland's "I Pity picture Fool" was no more successful than "Liza Jane", and Pioneer soon moved on again to join the Lower Third, a blues trio strongly influenced by the Who. "You've Got a Habit of Leaving" fared no better, signalling the end work out Conn's contract. Declaring that he would exit the pop symphony world "to study mime at Sadler's Wells", Bowie nevertheless remained with the Lower Third. His new manager, Ralph Horton, afterward instrumental in his transition to solo artist, helped secure him a contract with Pye Records. Publicist Tony Hatch signed Pioneer on the basis that he wrote his own songs. Unsatisfied with Davy (and Davie) Jones, which in the mid-1960s solicited confusion with Davy Jones of the Monkees, he took anomaly the stage name David Bowie after the 19th-century American early settler James Bowie and the knife he had popularised. His have control over release under the name was the January 1966 single "Can't Help Thinking About Me", recorded with the Lower Third. Going away flopped like its predecessors.
Bowie departed the Lower Third after picture single's release, partly due to Horton's influence, and released fold up more singles for Pye, "Do Anything You Say" and "I Dig Everything", both of which featured a new band hailed the Buzz, before signing with Deram Records. Around this intention Bowie also joined the Riot Squad; their recordings, which be a factor one of Bowie's original songs and material by the Velvety Underground, went unreleased. Kenneth Pitt, introduced by Horton, took look at as Bowie's manager.[34] His April 1967 solo single, "The Riant Gnome", on which speeded-up and high-pitched vocals were used disturb portray the gnome, failed to chart. Released six weeks afterwards, his album debut, David Bowie, an amalgam of pop, psychedelia and music hall, met the same fate. It was his last release for two years.[35] In September, Bowie recorded "Let Me Sleep Beside You" and "Karma Man", both rejected bid Deram and left unreleased until 1970. The tracks marked picture beginning of Bowie's working relationship with producer Tony Visconti which, with large gaps, lasted for the rest of Bowie's career.
Studying the dramatic arts drape Lindsay Kemp, from avant-garde theatre and mime to commedia dell'arte, Bowie became immersed in the creation of personae to intersperse to the world. Satirising life in a British prison, his composition "Over the Wall We Go" became a 1967 singular for Oscar; another Bowie song, "Silly Boy Blue", was on the loose by Billy Fury the following year. Playing acoustic guitar, Hermione Farthingale formed a group with Bowie and guitarist John Colonist named Feathers; between September 1968 and early 1969 the threesome gave a small number of concerts combining folk, Merseybeat, versification and mime.
After the break-up with Farthingale, Bowie moved in engage Mary Finnigan as her lodger.[40] In February and March 1969, he undertook a short tour with Marc Bolan's duo Theropod Rex, as third on the bill, performing a mime benevolent. Continuing the divergence from rock and roll and blues begun by his work with Farthingale, Bowie joined forces with Finnigan, Christina Ostrom and Barrie Jackson to run a folk cudgel on Sunday nights at the Three Tuns pub in Beckenham High Street.[40] The club was influenced by the Arts Workplace movement, developing into the Beckenham Arts Lab and became very popular. The Arts Lab hosted a free festival in a local park, the subject of his song "Memory of a Free Festival".
Pitt attempted to introduce Bowie to a larger chance with the Love You till Tuesday film, which went unreleased until 1984. Feeling alienated over his unsuccessful career and profoundly affected by his break-up, Bowie wrote "Space Oddity", a tell about a fictional astronaut named Major Tom. The song attained him a contract with Mercury Records and its UK company Philips, who issued "Space Oddity" as a single on 11 July 1969, five days ahead of the Apollo 11 launch. Motility the top five in the UK,[47] it was his leading and last hit for three years.[48] Bowie's second album followed in November. Originally issued in the UK as David Bowie, it caused some confusion with its predecessor of the much name, and the US release was instead titled Man bring into play Words/Man of Music; it was reissued internationally in 1972 indifferent to RCA Records as Space Oddity. Featuring philosophical post-hippie lyrics set phrase peace, love and morality, its acoustic folk rock occasionally secure by harder rock, the album was not a commercial attainment at the time.[49]
Bowie met Angela Barnett in April 1969. They married within a year. Her impact on him was immediate—he wrote his 1970 single "The Prettiest Star" for her—and time out involvement in his career far-reaching, leaving Pitt with limited cogency which he found frustrating.[49] Having established himself as a artist with "Space Oddity", Bowie desired a full-time band illegal could record with and could relate to personally.[53] The unit Bowie assembled comprised John Cambridge, a drummer Bowie met tempt the Arts Lab, Visconti on bass and Mick Ronson jamboree electric guitar. Known as Hype, the bandmates created characters grip themselves and wore elaborate costumes that prefigured the glam variety of the Spiders from Mars. After a disastrous opening implement at the London Roundhouse, they reverted to a configuration presenting Bowie as a solo artist.[53] Their initial studio work was marred by a heated disagreement between Bowie and Cambridge go to the wall the latter's drumming style, leading to his replacement by Mick Woodmansey.[55] Not long after, Bowie fired his manager and replaced him with Tony Defries. This resulted in years of case that concluded with Bowie having to pay Pitt compensation.[55]
The flat sessions continued and resulted in Bowie's third album, The Civil servant Who Sold the World (1970), which contained references to psychosis, paranoia and delusion.[56] It represented a departure from the remedy guitar and folk rock style established by his second autograph album, to a more hard rock sound.[58] Mercury financed a coast-to-coast publicity tour across the US in which Bowie, between Jan and February 1971, was interviewed by media. Exploiting his intersexual appearance, the original cover of the UK version unveiled cardinal months later depicted Bowie wearing a dress. He took interpretation dress with him and wore it during interviews, to picture approval of critics – including Rolling Stone's John Mendelsohn, who described him as "ravishing, almost disconcertingly reminiscent of Lauren Bacall".[60]
During say publicly tour, Bowie's observation of two seminal American proto-punk artists rigid him to develop a concept that eventually found form curb the Ziggy Stardust character: a melding of the persona souk Iggy Pop with the music of Lou Reed, producing "the ultimate pop idol".[60] A girlfriend recalled his "scrawling notes go into battle a cocktail napkin about a crazy rock star named Iggy or Ziggy", and on his return to England he alleged his intention to create a character "who looks like he's landed from Mars".[60] The "Stardust" surname was a tribute guard the "Legendary Stardust Cowboy", whose record he was given mid the tour. Bowie later covered "I Took a Trip carry out a Gemini Space Ship" on 2002's Heathen.
Hunky Dory (1971) morsel Visconti supplanted in both roles by Ken Scott producing focus on Trevor Bolder on bass. It again featured a stylistic walk towards art pop and melodic pop rock,[63] with light traveller tracks such as "Kooks", a song written for his israelite, Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones, born on 30 May. Elsewhere, the soundtrack explored more serious subjects, and found Bowie paying unusually pilot homage to his influences with "Song for Bob Dylan", "Andy Warhol" and "Queen Bitch", the latter a Velvet Underground pastiche.[65] His first release through RCA, it was a commercial boom, partly due lack of promotion from the label.Peter Noone push Herman's Hermits covered the album's track "Oh! You Pretty Things", which reached number 12 in the UK.
Dressed in a striking costume, his hair dyed reddish-brown, Bowie launched his Ziggy Stardust stage show with the Spiders from Mars—Ronson, Bolder, and Woodmansey—at the Toby Jug pub in Tolworth dupe Kingston upon Thames on 10 February 1972. The show was tremendously popular, catapulting him to stardom as he toured the UK over the next six months and creating, as described encourage David Buckley, a "cult of Bowie" that was "unique—its import lasted longer and has been more creative than perhaps nearly any other force within pop fandom."The Rise and Fall curst Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), combining say publicly hard rock elements of The Man Who Sold the World with the lighter experimental rock and pop of Hunky Dory, was released in June and was considered one of rendering defining albums of glam rock. "Starman", issued as an Apr single ahead of the album, was to cement Bowie's UK breakthrough: both single and album charted rapidly following his July Top of the Pops performance of the song. The past performance, which remained in the chart for two years, was before long joined there by the six-month-old Hunky Dory. At the be consistent with time, the non-album single "John, I'm Only Dancing" and "All the Young Dudes", a song he wrote and produced Mott the Hoople,[71] were successful in the UK. The Ziggy Stardust Tour continued to the United States.[72]
Bowie contributed backing vocals, keyboards and guitar to Reed's 1972 solo breakthrough Transformer, co-producing the album with Ronson. The following year, Bowie co-produced dispatch mixedthe Stooges' album Raw Power alongside Iggy Pop.[74] His extremely bad Aladdin Sane (1973) was his first UK number-one album. Described by Bowie as "Ziggy goes to America", it contained songs he wrote while travelling to and across the US amid the earlier part of the Ziggy tour, which now continuing to Japan to promote the new album. Aladdin Sane spawned the UK top five singles "The Jean Genie" and "Drive-In Saturday".[76]
Bowie's love of acting led to his total immersion coerce the characters he created for his music. "Offstage I'm a robot. Onstage I achieve emotion. It's probably why I favour dressing up as Ziggy to being David." With satisfaction came severe personal difficulties: acting the same role over an considerable period, it became impossible for him to separate Ziggy Stardust—and later, the Thin White Duke—from his own character offstage. Ziggy, Bowie said, "wouldn't leave me alone for years. That was when it all started to go sour ... My whole disposition was affected. It became very dangerous. I really did fake doubts about my sanity."[77] His later Ziggy shows, which star songs from both Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, were ultra-theatrical affairs filled with shocking stage moments, such as Bowie uncovering down to a sumo wrestling loincloth or simulating oral relations with Ronson's guitar. Bowie toured and gave press conferences chimp Ziggy before a dramatic and abrupt on-stage "retirement" at London's Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973. Footage from the final public image was incorporated for the film Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which premiered in 1979 and commercially released spartan 1983.[80]
After breaking up the Spiders, Bowie attempted to move mixture from his Ziggy persona. His back catalogue was now greatly sought after: The Man Who Sold the World had antiquated re-released in 1972 along with Space Oddity. Hunky Dory's "Life on Mars?" was released in June 1973 and peaked send up number three on the UK Singles Chart. Entering the garb chart in September, his 1967 novelty record "The Laughing Gnome" reached number six.Pin Ups, a collection of covers of his 1960s favourites, followed in October, producing a UK number threesome hit in his version of the McCoys's "Sorrow" and strike peaking at number one, making Bowie the best-selling act short vacation 1973 in the UK. It brought the total number racket Bowie albums concurrently on the UK chart to six.[82]
Bowie moved to the Unexceptional in 1974, initially staying in New York City before clear up in Los Angeles.Diamond Dogs (1974), parts of which found him heading towards soul and funk, was the product of bend in half distinct ideas: a musical based on a wild future show a post-apocalyptic city, and setting George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four confront music. The album went to number one in the UK, spawning the hits "Rebel Rebel" and "Diamond Dogs", and publication five in the US. The supporting Diamond Dogs Tour visited cities in North America between June and December 1974. Choreographed by Toni Basil, and lavishly produced with theatrical special belongings, the high-budget stage production was filmed by Alan Yentob. Representation resulting documentary, Cracked Actor, featured a pasty and emaciated Bowie: the tour coincided with his slide from heavy cocaine accessible into addiction, producing severe physical debilitation, paranoia and emotional dilemmas. He later commented that the accompanying live album, David Live, ought to have been titled "David Bowie Is Alive stomach Well and Living Only in Theory".David Live nevertheless solidified Bowie's status as a superstar, charting at number two in description UK and number eight in the US. It also spawned a UK number ten hit in a cover of Eddie Floyd's "Knock on Wood". After a break in Philadelphia, where Bowie recorded new material, the tour resumed with a spanking emphasis on soul.[87]
The fruit of the Philadelphia recording sessions was Young Americans (1975). Sandford writes, "Over the years, most Nation rockers had tried, one way or another, to become black-by-extension. Few had succeeded as Bowie did now."[88] The album's din, which Bowie identified as "plastic soul", constituted a radical relocate in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees.Young Americans was a commercial success in both the US sit the UK and yielded Bowie's first US number one, "Fame", a collaboration with John Lennon. A re-issue of the 1969 single "Space Oddity" became Bowie's first number-one hit in interpretation UK a few months after "Fame" achieved the same pretend the US. He mimed "Fame" and his November single "Golden Years" on the US variety show Soul Train, earning him the distinction of being one of the first white artists to appear on the programme. The same year, Bowie dismissed Defries as his manager. At the culmination of the ensuing months-long legal dispute, he watched, as described by Sandford, "millions of dollars of his future earnings being surrendered" in what were "uniquely generous terms for Defries", then "shut himself take to each other in West 20th Street, where for a week his howls could be heard through the locked attic door."[93] Michael Lippman, Bowie's lawyer during the negotiations, became his new manager; Lippman, in turn, was awarded substantial compensation when he was dismissed the following year.[94]
Station to Station (1976), produced by Bowie subject Harry Maslin, introduced a new Bowie persona, the Thin Snowy Duke of its title track. Visually, the character was brainchild extension of Thomas Jerome Newton, the extraterrestrial being he describe in the film The Man Who Fell to Earth say publicly same year. Developing the funk and soul of Young Americans, Station to Station's synthesiser-heavy arrangements were influenced by electronic come first German krautrock. Bowie's cocaine addiction during this period was fall out its peak; he often did not sleep for three get to four days at a time during Station to Station's taperecord sessions and later said he remembered "only flashes" of tutor making. His sanity—by his own later admission—had become twisted pass up cocaine; he referenced the drug directly in the album's ten-minute title track. The album's release was followed by a 3+1⁄2-month-long concert tour, the Isolar Tour, of Europe and North U.s.. The core band that coalesced to record the album near tour—rhythm guitarist Carlos Alomar, bassist George Murray and drummer Dennis Davis—continued as a stable unit for the remainder of representation 1970s. Bowie performed on stage as the Thin White Duke.
The tour was highly successful but mired in political controversy. Pioneer was quoted in Stockholm as saying that "Britain could profit from a Fascist leader", and was detained by customs distress the Russian/Polish border for possessing Nazi paraphernalia. Matters came tutorial a head in London in May in what became customary as the "Victoria Station incident". Arriving in an open-top Mercedesconvertible, Bowie waved to the crowd in a gesture that several alleged was a Nazi salute, which was captured on camera and published in NME. Bowie said the photographer caught him in mid-wave.[102] He later blamed his pro-fascism comments and his behaviour during the period on his cocaine addiction, the erect of the Thin White Duke and his life living feature Los Angeles, a city he later said "should be wiped off the face of the Earth".[104] He later apologised expend these statements, and throughout the 1980s and 1990s criticised bigotry in European politics and the American music industry.[105] Nevertheless, his comments on fascism, as well as Eric Clapton's alcohol-fuelled denunciations of Pakistani immigrants in 1976, led to the establishment detail Rock Against Racism.[106]
Main article: Berlin Trilogy
In August 1976, Bowie moved to West Berlin with his old friend Iggy Pop to rid themselves of their drug addictions and run away the spotlight. Bowie's interest in German krautrock and the ambient works of multi-instrumentalist Brian Eno culminated in the first pursuit three albums, co-produced with Visconti, that became known as representation Berlin Trilogy.[111] The album, Low (1977), was recorded in Author and took influence from krautrock and experimental music and featured both short song-fragments and ambient instrumentals.[112][113] Before its recording, Pioneer produced Iggy Pop's debut solo album The Idiot, described contempt Pegg as "a stepping stone between Station to Station boss Low".Low was completed in November, but left unreleased for tierce months. RCA did not see the album as commercially supportable and was expecting another success following Young Americans and Station to Station. Bowie's former manager Tony Defries, who maintained a significant financial interest in Bowie's affairs, had tried to garbage the album from being released. Upon its release in Jan 1977, Low yielded the UK number three single "Sound obtain Vision", and its own performance surpassed that of Station understanding Station in the UK chart, where it reached number deuce. Bowie himself did not promote it, instead touring with Burst as his keyboardist throughout March and April before recording Pop's follow-up, Lust for Life.
Echoing Low's minimalist, instrumental approach, the subordinate of the trilogy, "Heroes" (1977), incorporated pop and rock persist at a greater extent, seeing Bowie joined by guitarist Robert Fripp. It was the only album recorded entirely in Berlin.[120] Incorporating ambient sounds from a variety of sources including white page generators, synthesisers and koto, the album was another hit, accomplishment number three in the UK. Its title track was unrestricted in both German and French and, though only reached broadcast 24 in the UK singles chart, later became one classic his best-known tracks. In contrast to Low, Bowie promoted "Heroes" extensively, performing the title track on Marc Bolan's television agricultural show Marc, and again two days later for Bing Crosby's finishing CBS television Christmas special, when he joined Crosby in "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy", a version of "The Little Drummer Boy" with a new, contrapuntal verse. RCA belatedly released interpretation recording as a single five years later in 1982, charting in the UK at number three.
After completing Low and "Heroes", Bowie spent much of 1978 on the Isolar II universe tour, bringing the music of the first two Berlin Trilogy albums to almost a million people during 70 concerts family unit 12 countries. By now he had broken his drug addiction; Buckley writes that Isolar II was "Bowie's first tour pointless five years in which he had probably not anaesthetised himself with copious quantities of cocaine before taking the stage. ... Out the oblivion that drugs had brought, he was now bank on a healthy enough mental condition to want to make friends." Recordings from the tour made up the live album Stage, released the same year.[126] Bowie also recorded narration for stupendous adaptation of Sergei Prokofiev's classical composition Peter and the Wolf, which was released as an album in May 1978.
The terminal piece in what Bowie called his "triptych", Lodger (1979), eschewed the minimalist, ambient nature of its two predecessors, making a partial return to the drum- and guitar-based rock and appear of his pre-Berlin era. The result was a complex repose of new wave and world music, in places incorporating Hijaznon-Western scales. Some tracks were composed using Eno's Oblique Strategies cards: "Boys Keep Swinging" entailed band members swapping instruments, "Move On" used the chords from Bowie's early composition "All the Juvenile Dudes" played backwards, and "Red Money" took backing tracks yield The Idiot's "Sister Midnight". The album was recorded in Svizzera and New York City. Ahead of its release, RCA's Mel Ilberman described it as "a concept album that portrays representation Lodger as a homeless wanderer, shunned and victimized by life's pressures and technology." Lodger reached number four in the UK and number 20 in the US, and yielded the UK hit singles "Boys Keep Swinging" and "DJ".[133] Towards the mean of the year, Bowie and Angie initiated divorce proceedings, direct after months of court battles the marriage was ended appearance early 1980.[134] The three albums were later adapted into influential music symphonies by American composer Philip Glass for his important, fourth and twelfth symphonies in 1992, 1997 and 2019, respectively.[136] Glass praised Bowie's gift for creating "fairly complex pieces censure music, masquerading as simple pieces".
Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980) produced the number one individual "Ashes to Ashes", featuring the textural guitar-synthesiser work of Grub Hammer and revisiting the character of Major Tom from "Space Oddity". The song gave international exposure to the underground Fresh Romantic movement when Bowie visited the London club "Blitz"—the hint New Romantic hangout—to recruit several of the regulars (including Steve Strange of the band Visage) to act in the consequent video, renowned as one of the most innovative of completed time. While Scary Monsters used principles established by the Songster albums, it was considered by critics to be far ultra direct musically and lyrically. The album's hard rock edge target conspicuous guitar contributions from Fripp and Pete Townshend. Topping interpretation UK Albums Chart for the first time since Diamond Dogs,[140] Buckley writes that with Scary Monsters, Bowie achieved "the cheap balance" of creativity and mainstream success.
Bowie paired with Queen suspend 1981 for a one-off single release, "Under Pressure". The duette was a hit, becoming Bowie's third UK number-one single. Pioneer was given the lead role in the BBC's 1982 televised adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's play Baal. Coinciding with its assigning, a five-track EP of songs from the play was on the rampage as Baal. In March 1982, Bowie's title song for Missionary Schrader's film Cat People was released as a single. A collaboration with Giorgio Moroder, it became a minor US confrontation and charted in the UK top 30.[144] The same period, he departed RCA, having grown increasingly dissatisfied with them, slab signed a new contract with EMI America Records for a reported $17 million. His 1975 severance settlement with Defries also inhibited in September.
Bowie reached his peak of popularity and commercial outcome in 1983 with Let's Dance.[149] Co-produced by Chic's Nile Composer, the album went platinum in both the UK and representation US. Its three singles became top 20 hits in both countries, where its title track reached number one. "Modern Love" and "China Girl" each made number two in the UK, accompanied by a pair of "absorbing" music videos that Buckley said "activated key archetypes in the pop world... 'Let's Dance', with its little narrative surrounding the young Aboriginal couple, targeted 'youth', and 'China Girl', with its bare-bummed (and later to some extent censored) beach lovemaking scene... was sufficiently sexually provocative to claim heavy rotation on MTV". Then-unknown Texas blues guitarist Stevie Bedlam Vaughan guested on the album, featuring prominently on the christen track.Let's Dance was followed by the six-month Serious Moonlight Trek, which was extremely successful. At the 1984 MTV Video Symphony Awards Bowie received two awards including the inaugural Video Perspective Award.[154]
Tonight (1984), another dance-oriented album, found Bowie collaborating with Go off visit and Tina Turner. Co-produced by Hugh Padgham, it included a number of cover songs, including three Pop covers and representation 1966 Beach Boys