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Praise & Reviews
10.30.09 » Blogcritics
Like Spitz, I grew up on David Bowie and remain a huge fan to this day. As you might expect, reading and re-reading through Spitz's exhaustively researched book — which is easily the most thorough Bowie bio I have come across to date — has also brought back a ton of memories.
10.26.09 » Elle Book Club
"Some of the books about David Bowie are excellent, but they’re not funny,” observes music journalist Marc Spitz. “None of them are friendly, none are inviting.” Spitz, a former scribe for Spin, who’s penned tomes on Green Day and the Smiths, aims to remedy this situation with Bowie: A Biography, a comprehensive account of the glam-rock legend’s life that combines historical details with warm personal anecdotes that testify to the author’s longtime devotion to the artist (such as a failed attempt to go Bowie blond with lemon juice and Sun-In circa “Let’s Dance”). Spitz talked to us about why biographies shouldn’t feel like required reading, Bowie’s oft-overlooked talent for lyricism, and the strange coincidence that cued him to take on the book.
10.23.09 » Zócalo Public Square
Marc Spitz has been writing on rock and roll and pop since 1997, when he wrote his first piece for Spin. Since then he’s written three books, including We Got the Neutron Bomb : The Untold Story of L.A. Punk, Nobody Likes You: Inside the Turbulent Life, Times, and Music of Green Day, and a novel, How Soon Is Never?, about a man trying to reunite The Smiths. His experience with Green Day — who authorized his biography and then recanted — made Spitz decide not to seek his subject’s approval for his latest, Bowie: A Biography. It’s “not a classical biography,” he says, featuring brief snippets of Spitz’s life alongside the well-detailed Bowie story. “I think more biographies should be in that mode. I don’t know why they’re so chilly.” Below, he explains why Bowie has such a hold on our imaginations, the rise of the “teenage dollar,” and whether any pop artist can claim the Bowie mantle today.
09.07.09 » Publishers Weekly
Despite the plethora of existing books about the British glam rocker (e.g., David Buckley's Strange Fascination), Spitz, formerly of Spin magazine and the author of a look at the punk band Green Day (Nobody Likes You), concentrates on the complex evolution of Bowie's music to deliver an evenhanded, critically thorough, while still reverential life of the Thin White Duke. Born David Jones in the Brixton suburbs of London in 1947, Bowie treaded the musical edges from blues to mod to rock-and-roll, moving from band to band in his teens and trying out different personas. Assuming the name of an American frontiersman who died at the Alamo, Bowie took his cues from influences as diverse as Bob Dylan, the Velvet Underground, and Marcel Marceau, playing with mime, theater, fashion and sheer showmanship. In the beginning, record companies didn't know how to classify him, with albums like Space Oddity, The Man Who Sold the World and Hunky Dory; it was The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and Spiders from Mars, depicting Bowie's red-haired rooster haircut and bisexual persona, that sparked the public's fancy. Phenomenal success ensued, and even in his most cocaine-fueled paranoid period during the mid-1970s, Bowie never stopped changing himself, constantly experimenting with new forms, be they Kabuki, disco, New Wave, punk or Brit pop. Spitz concentrates on the heady years culminating in Scary Monsters and underscores the deafening void that Bowie's recent silence has left in the music world.
10.01.09 » Kirkus Reviews
A breezy, well-lit portrait of the ever-enigmatic rocker.
Born David Jones in 1947, David Bowie became one of the most shape-shifting artists in the history of rock ’n’ roll. From psychedelic folkie, to dramatic glamster, to blue-eyed soul crooner, to electronic new waver, to hard-rocking alterna-dude, to elder hipster statesman, Bowie is a restless—some would say contradictory—soul. A charismatic, arresting presence on both the music and social scene, the lanky Brit has always spent considerable amounts of time in the public eye. However, few know what he’s really about. Fortunately for Bowie’s multitudinous minions, veteran pop-culture scribe Spitz delivers the goods, despite his subject’s lack of participation in the making of this filmic book. The author (Nobody Likes You: Inside the Life, Turbulent Times, and Music of Green Day, 2006, etc.) takes great care in his dissection of the details of Bowie’s long, eventful career, from the highs—e.g., the success of his remarkably entertaining alter ego Ziggy Stardust—to the lows, most notably a lengthy coke bender that almost ended it all. Unauthorized biographies are often frustratingly shallow for serious fans of the book’s subject—especially when lacking new material, an original spin or a legitimate sense of enthusiasm—but Spitz’s encyclopedic knowledge and obvious appreciation for Bowie’s work separate this book from countless cookie-cutter rock stories.
Only time will tell if this is the definitive Bowie bio, but for now it should satisfy hardcore Ziggy freaks and most casual fans.
