Bowie

When he was starting out as a young man in bands in the early 60s, Paul Nicholas could only have dreamed that he would still be working more than 60 years on. He is now nearing the end of a seven-month theatre tour. It must be tiring by this stage, I suggest. But no, he says. “It’s really the one thing that I enjoy doing more than anything. Performing on stage is kind of a release for me.” He smiles. “It sounds a bit heavy, doesn’t it?”Nicholas is about to release the audio version of the memoir he wrote during lockdown,…

The first album I boughtGoodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John. I wore that thing out. I had no idea songs like Funeral for a Friend and Candle in the Wind could be so deep. I would lie on the living room floor with the great big stereo listening on a pair of headphones. I’ve since met Elton John and got to know him a bit.The song that I do at karaokeYou want memorable lyrics and a melody everybody knows instinctively. Stand By Me by Ben E King has that soaring chorus: “Darling, darling, stand by me.” If you want to…

There’s no shortage of flashy, high-octane David Bowie photographs out there depicting the rock icon’s many transformations, from ’60s mod to ’70s glam rock to ’80s suit-slick to his sparkly, orange-hued Ziggy Stardust alter ego. An exhibition at Culver City’s Wende Museum, however, offers rare, intimate photos of Bowie on holiday — in the Cold War-era Soviet Union.In 1973, after performing in Japan as part of his Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane tour, Bowie headed home to Europe through the Soviet Union. He was fearful of…

DAVID SAVED TINA(Photo Credit: Bang Showbiz) Tina Turner credited her rumoured one-time lover David Bowie with helping salvage her career. The ‘Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll’, whose death aged 83 was announced on Wednesday (24.05.23) after a six-decade career, told how the late ‘Ziggy Stardust’ icon helped her back on her feet after she was left feeling lost and isolated following her divorce from her violent, controlling husband Ike Turner. Tina Turner told Female First in a resurfaced interview from 2004: “In 1983 David…

Five years ago, in November 2017, I published an essay titled What Do We Do With the Art of Monstrous Men? It went viral right at the peak of the #MeToo avalanche. The Harvey Weinstein accusations had just been made public, followed by allegations against the comedian Louis CK, senator Al Franken, TV news stars Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer and many more. All this was set against the backdrop of the dawning of the Trump era, which was ushered in by the soon-to-be-president’s Access Hollywood tape, in which he described…

David Bowie’s Let’s Dance should prove to be the most commercial album he’s made yet, and justify the undisclosed, allegedly enormous sum that EMI, his new record company, paid for him. There must be considerable depression over at RCA, his former company.Bowie told me that RCA had been unhappy with his last three, impressively experimental albums, Lodger, Low and even Scary Monsters, and that the company had offered to get him a flat in Philadelphia in the hope that he’d record another album like Young Americans.…

The famous flash of lightning across David Bowie’s closed eyelid was a tiny emblem gracing the rock star’s cheekbone until the celebrated photographer Brian Duffy stepped in.“He told the makeup artist ‘No, no, not like that’,” said the photographer’s son, Chris. So Duffy grabbed some lipstick to draw an outline of a much bigger flash … and Aladdin Sane was born.The photograph is the centrepiece of an exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Bowie album that was released with 100,000 advance orders, taking…

Group Shot 1975‘Trying out ideas for Station to Station at Cherokee Studios. From left, Dennis Davies, Bobby Womack, David, Roy Bitten from Bruce Springsteen’s band and Ronnie Wood in the foreground’ Share on Facebook Share on Twitter…

Before he became one of Australia’s best-loved actors, Jack Thompson had already been many things. At the age of 15, he became a jackaroo in the Northern Territory, working on the remote cattle station of Elkedra. There, he says, he observed a life that no longer exists. At camp, he was the only white person among the adult Alyawarra men.It was fine preparation for his cinematic work in the 1970s and early 80s when he became an icon of the Australian New Wave, taking leading and supporting roles in classics including…

The physical legacy of David Bowie is to become publicly available following the donation of the cultural pioneer’s extensive archive to the V&A.Lyrics for Blackout from the album Heroes, 1977. Photograph: The David Bowie Archive/PAThe enormous cache of more than 80,000 items – including handwritten lyrics, instruments, costumes, set designs, letters and album artwork – spanning more than six decades will be held in a special centre being created in east London.Opening in 2025, the David Bowie Centre for the Study of…