“Astonishing and absorbing…from glam rock, minimalism and punk, to radical left-wing politics, music video, and a mass of other subjects that helped shape the ideas behind Bowie’s songs.”
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Sunday Times (London)
The Man Who Sold the World by Peter Doggett—author of the critically acclaimed Beatles biography,
You Never Give Me Your Money—is a song-by-song chronicle of the evolution of David Bowie. Focusing on the work and the life of one of the most groundbreaking figures in music and popular culture during the turbulent seventies, Bowie’s most productive and innovative period,
The Man Who Sold the World is the book that serious rock music lovers have been waiting for. By exploring Bowie’s individual achievements and breakthroughs one-by-one, Doggett paints a fascinating portrait of the performer who paved the way for a host of fearless contemporary artists, from Radiohead to Lady Gaga.
No artist offered a more compelling portrayal of the landscape of the 1970s than David Bowie. From his first hit, "Space Oddity," in 1969 to the release of the LP Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) in 1980, Bowie cultivated an innovative and shocking brand of performance, a mesmerizing blend of high-concept science fiction and old-fashioned rock 'n' roll, delivered in skintight spandex and operatic alien makeup. Through songs at once prescient and esoteric, beautiful and haunting, Bowie cut hard against the grain of '60s and '70s pop music, replacing it with something far more intriguing: a dark, fantastical vision that heralded the dawn of a new decade.
In The Man Who Sold the World, acclaimed journalist Peter Doggett explores the rich heritage of Bowie's most productive and inspired decade. Viewing the artist through the lens of his music and his many guises, Doggett offers a detailed analysis—musical, lyrical, conceptual, social—of every song Bowie wrote and recorded during that period, as well as a brilliant exploration of the development of a performer who profoundly affected popular music and the idea of stardom itself.
"There aren't many writers who have the combination of classic-rock knowledge, reverence for an artist and sheer patience to successfully pull off this sort of project."
