On Bowie

by Rob Sheffield

Overview

From the New York Times bestselling author of Love Is a Mix Tape, a thoughtful and loving meditation on the life of the late David Bowie that explores his creative legacy and the enduring and mutual connection he enjoyed with his fans.

Innovative. Pioneering. Brave. Until his death in January 2016, David Bowie created art that not only pushed boundaries, but helped fans understand themselves and view the world from fantastic new perspectives.

When the shocking news of his death on January 10, 2016 broke, the outpouring of grief and adulation was immediate and ongoing. Fans around the world and across generations paid homage to this brilliant, innovate, ever evolving artist who both shaped and embodied our times.

In this concise and penetrating book, featuring color photographs, highly regarded Rolling Stone critic, bestselling author, and lifelong Bowie fan Rob Sheffield shares his own feelings about the passing of this icon and explains why Bowie’s death has elicited such an unprecedented emotional outpouring from so many lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062562722
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/16/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	203
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Rob Sheffield is a columnist for Rolling Stone, where he has been writing about music, TV, and pop culture since 1997. He is the author of the national bestsellers Love Is a Mix Tape: Love and Loss, One Song at a Time; Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut; Turn Around Bright Eyes: A Karaoke Journey of Starting Over, Falling in Love, and Finding Your Voice, On Bowie and Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Rob Sheffield is a columnist for Rolling Stone, where he has been writing about music, TV, and pop culture since 1997. He is the author of the national bestsellers Love Is a Mix Tape: Love and Loss, One Song at a Time; Talking to Girls About Duran Duran: One Young Man’s Quest for True Love and a Cooler Haircut; Turn Around Bright Eyes: A Karaoke Journey of Starting Over, Falling in Love, and Finding Your Voice, On Bowie and Dreaming the Beatles: The Love Story of One Band and the Whole World. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

The Night David Bowie Died 23

The London Boy 33

Major Tom (1969-1980-2016) 39

The Queen Bitch Who Sold the World 59

The Starman 67

The Night Ziggy Met America 75

Aladdin Sane 81

The Cracked Actor 87

Young Americans 93

The Plastic Soul Brother 103

The Man Who Fell to Earth 111

The Thin White Duke 117

The Dictator 129

The Low Profile 135

The DJ 145

The Lodger 151

The Modern Lover 157

Let's Not Dance 163

Looking for Satellites 171

Where Are We Now? 179

The Blackstar 183

Acknowledgments 193

Notes 195

About the Author 198

Editorial Reviews

07/04/2016
Not quite a biography, Sheffield's book, written shortly after Bowie's death earlier this year, focuses on the impact of the artist's music on pop culture and society. After an opening chapter called "The Night David Bowie Died," the book follows Bowie's career from his first hit, "Space Oddity" to the release of his final album, Blackstar, just days before his death. Written over the months following Bowie's death, Sheffield's book intertwines accounts of his own encounters with the artist's music and more biographical elements, in order to investigate the musician's legacy. Sheffield details the experiences that shaped Bowie's work, including a stoned viewing of 2001: A Space Odyssey and studying the Kabbalah and the Stations of the Cross. The timeline is mostly linear, but it often veers ahead to discuss how future generations enjoying Bowie's music might interpret his work. A quick and stylish read, Sheffield's eulogy-like piece memorializes Bowie while leaving the future of the artist's legacy open-ended. Sheffield contextualizes it with ample research and interviews throughout, keeping a personal tone while a tapestry of voices praise Bowie's music and its impact on their lives. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Funny, poignant and wickedly insightful” — Billboard

“A passionate, witty, not entirely uncritical homage to the shape-shifting superstar.” — USA Today

“Rob Sheffield explores the British rock icon’s career, his legacy and his powerful, enduring connection with his fans in the thoughtful and meditative On Bowie.” — Parade

“With On Bowie, Sheffield offers a galaxy of admirers a concise primer through which we may relive our favorite moments with the Thin White Duke again and again.” — Shelf Awareness

“On Bowie is shot through with color and feeling….The true delight of On Bowie is that it succeeds in grieving for all of us.” — Pop Matters

From the Publisher

Funny, poignant and wickedly insightful

Billboard

On Bowie is shot through with color and feeling….The true delight of On Bowie is that it succeeds in grieving for all of us.

Pop Matters

With On Bowie, Sheffield offers a galaxy of admirers a concise primer through which we may relive our favorite moments with the Thin White Duke again and again.

Shelf Awareness

Rob Sheffield explores the British rock icon’s career, his legacy and his powerful, enduring connection with his fans in the thoughtful and meditative On Bowie.

Parade

A passionate, witty, not entirely uncritical homage to the shape-shifting superstar.

USA Today

A passionate, witty, not entirely uncritical homage to the shape-shifting superstar.

USA Today

Narrator Tristan Morris perfectly channels the languid cool of ROLLING STONE writer and David Bowie superfan Rob Sheffield. As author, Sheffield straddles tones of nerdy sincerity and rock hipness, and Morris’s relaxed, warm, enthusiastic delivery is just right for this love letter. Sheffield muses on Bowie’s lasting impact on pop culture, music, style, and teenage fans feeling like misfits. He analyzes Bowie’s career chronologically—from breakout to Ziggy Stardust to Berlin Bowie to thin, white duke to '80s mediocrity and back to genius late in his career. Sheffield is thankful for Bowie’s final gift to the world, BLACKSTAR, released on his 69th birthday, two days before his death. Bowie’s lyrics are liberally sprinkled throughout this production, and Morris adds a slight singsong quality so the listener can distinguish the author’s words from the musician’s. A.B. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2016 - AudioFile

2016-06-28
A critic's earnest elegy for the late rock star's influence on music, fashion, sexuality, and personal transformation.When David Bowie died on Jan. 10, 2016, Rolling Stone writer Sheffield (Turn Around Bright Eyes: The Rituals of Love and Karaoke, 2013, etc.) was well-equipped to put his career in context. A cassette of Bowie songs was in his boom box when he got the news, and unlike many critics who gave up on Bowie during the creatively depleted 1990s, the author not only kept up, but believed the singer was in the midst of a career revival. That enthusiasm sloshes and froths in this mash note, which was crashed to publication in a month. Sheffield is prone to cringeworthy overstatement (Bowie delivered his final opus, "Blackstar," because "he knew his death would make the world lonely"), head-scratching digressions ("C-3PO's Bowie-est moment is Return of the Jedi"), and an overused and overly cute habit of ending paragraphs with snippets of Bowie lyrics. This is all unfortunate, because when Sheffield tones down his jazz-hands-y prose, he's a cleareyed thinker about Bowie's place in the pop firmament. Blending personal recollections with a mad dash through his discography, Sheffield persuasively tracks the influence of one TV performance of "Starman," explores how Bowie's omnivorous appetite for drugs shaped his persona and music, and—Sheffield's particular emphasis—muses on how Bowie's rejection of sexual, musical, and sartorial fetters made him a one-man safe space for at least two generations of outcasts. "Bowie was all about eroticizing what you don't know for sure," writes the author, a sentiment that seems exactly right. Sheffield wants to demystify his hero, but only so much; after all, his Sphinx-like presence was part of his charm. But a better book would explore his often perplexing metamorphoses, not just clumsily honor his "Ovid-like sense of constant mutation." Sheffield is the right writer for this book, but its hasty production is evident on nearly every page.

Kirkus Reviews