“Put your Blu-Ray to my head.…” *
• DVD/Blu-Ray: 15th November in US
• DVD/Blu-Ray: 5th December in UK, Australia, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy
• Digital from 5th December in all international territories except for Australia (23rd November), Germany (24th November) and UK (2nd December)
You can pre-order from the Bowie Official Store here.
* Sorry
#BowieMoonageDaydreamFilm
“He could scream and still relax, unbelievable...”
Here’s the second of the short films wherein Ken Scott talks about revisiting the Hunky Dory tapes and how he feels about the album fifty years later.
Watch the full thing here.
#HunkyDory50 #BowieDivineSymmetry #BowieKenScott
“You gotta make way for the Homo Superior...”
The second track to be taken from the upcoming Divine Symmetry set is a previously unreleased live version of Oh! You Pretty Things, recorded at Friars, Aylesbury, 25th September, 1971.
The track is available now (if it’s 21st October where you are) and you can find it here. Listen out for the Monty Python reference in the intro.
Regular visitors to this page will know how important the Aylesbury venue was to David Bowie and just four months later he would launch what became the Ziggy Stardust tour there.
Around the same time as the January show he had this to say to Penny Valentine about the previous September visit from where Oh! You Pretty Things was recorded: “We did this gig in Aylesbury before Christmas and got such a great reception, it got us off.”
You’ll be able to judge for yourself just how great that reception was with the release of Divine Symmetry next month.
#BowieDivineSymmetry #BowieOYPT
“Battle cries and champagne...”
Welbeck Publishing Group today announces that it will publish Aladdin Sane 50, a definitive book by Chris Duffy celebrating the 50th anniversary of David Bowie’s classic album. The book contains a plethora of photographs, including many previously unpublished portraits of Bowie from the iconic Aladdin Sane cover shoot by Chris’s father, photographer Duffy, fifty years since they were taken.
The 256-page Aladdin Sane 50 will publish on 30th March 2023, ahead of the 50th anniversary of the album’s release. Pre-order here.
Alongside Duffy’s photographs are essays on Aladdin Sane and the story behind the famous cover itself, with contributions from Paul Morley, Charles Shaar Murray, Nicholas Pegg, Kevin Cann, Jérôme Soligny and Geoffrey Marsh.
Designed by Bowie collaborators Barnbrook creative studio, the book pays tribute to a seminal album and an image that will live forever more in rock ‘n’ roll history – ‘the Mona Lisa of pop’, Aladdin Sane.
Joe Cottington, Associate Publisher at Welbeck, said: “To say I’m thrilled to be publishing this book is an understatement – sharing the full story behind music’s single most iconic image. And to combine Duffy’s remarkable images with essays on David’s music by some of the most respected writers in the Bowiesphere in a gorgeous design by Barnbrook studio – I can’t quite believe it’s all come together so perfectly, and I can’t wait for Bowie fans everywhere to see it.”
Chris Duffy, CEO at the Duffy Archive, said: “Every photographer wants a jewel in the crown and out of the thousands of photographs of David Bowie, the Aladdin Sane image has become Duffy’s jewel and David’s most recognisable image, becoming a cultural icon in the process.
They say a picture can say a thousand words – there’s no debate that thousands have been written about the Aladdin Sane album cover and it’s an honour fifty years after its release to be able to share previously unpublished images from the session. I’m privileged to honour two great men and I thank all of those who continue to hold the flame.”
#AladdinSane50Book
“We could steal time... ”
The "Heroes" 45th anniversary grey vinyl LP bricks and mortar and the Live In Berlin (1978) (US exhibition exclusive - digital release), which we told you about in July, are both available today (14th October).
Here’s the link to Live In Berlin.
If this is all news to you, here’s the press release.
#BowieHeroes45 #BowieHeroes #BowieBerlin #Bowie1977 #Bowie1978
“Turn and face the strange...”
View the first of a couple of short films wherein Ken Scott talks about the daunting task for him and David of co-producing their first album together, Hunky Dory. Go here.
#HunkyDory50 #BowieDivineSymmetry #BowieKenScott
“Hey, that’s far out so you heard him too?”
David Bowie’s 1972 performance of Starman on the BBC’s Top Of The Pops, has been ranked as the greatest BBC music performance of all time in today’s Guardian in the UK.
We won’t provide another history lesson regarding the broadcast, instead, here’s a superb snippet from Alexis Petridis who says it rather more succinctly than we ever could.
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The most famous three and a half minutes of music television in British history isn’t so much about the performance itself as its impact on viewers. No matter how weird and alien you felt, you couldn’t have been as weird and alien as David Bowie and his bandmates looked: the cavalry was here for you. The point where Bowie camply throws his arm around Mick Ronson gathered headlines at the time, but its apex comes 30 seconds later. Umpteen viewers have testified to the life-changing, he’s-talking-to-me effect of the moment when Bowie points down the camera as he sings the line “I had to phone someone so I picked on you”: Lord Kitchener for weirdos, successfully recruiting an army of suburban misfits.
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Read the full top 100 entries here.
Considering this generous though thoroughly deserved accolade, it would seem churlish to point out that the image of Bowie used in the actual newspaper is not from the BBC broadcast at all, but from the earlier performance on Lift-Off with Ayshea. Well, if we didn’t point it out, you would!
Watch the BBC performance now on YouTube.
#BowieStarman50 #ZiggyStardust50 #StarmanOnTOTP