David Bowie’s 65 birthday: 65 crazy facts and bizarre myths – mirror.co.uk: “David Bowie’s 65 birthday: 65 crazy facts and bizarre myths
By Paul Cockerton 8/01/2012
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Image 1 for ‘David Bowie at 65’ gallery
Image 1 for ‘David Bowie at 65’ gallery
Click here for ‘David Bowie 65th birthday: 65 iconic images of the ever-changing star’
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1 First things first – how do you pronounce David Bowie’s name? It is ‘Bowie’ to rhyme with ‘Joey’, rather than as if it were similar to the acronym for The Only Way is Essex, TOWIE.
2 Did Bowie help start the credit crunch? BBC journalist Evan Davis suggests he may have had a role. In 1997, Bowie sold bonds on his future back catalogue royalties, an idea which was copied by the banks who sold on mortgage income. This ‘securitisation’ was partly responsible for the problems banks developed in the late Noughties.
3 Bowie says he was moonwalking years before Michael Jackson wowed the world in 1983’s Billie Jean. He wrote on his official website that choreographer Toni Basil taught him a type of moonwalk for his 1974 Diamond Dogs tour.
4 Bowie was interviewed on a BBC programme as the founder of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-haired Men at the age of 17. He complained: “It’s not nice when people call you darling and that”.
5 Bowie shares his birthday with Elvis Presley, who was exactly 12 years older. In her book, Stardust, Angie Bowie writes David Bowie could do a “devastating” impersonation of Elvis Presley. And Elvis once considered recording a cover version of Bowie’s 1976 hit, Golden Years.
6 Bowie’s first ever release was Liza Jane/Louie Louie Go Home in June 1964, under the name of Davie Jones with The King-Bees.
7 Born David Robert Jones in Brixton, London in 1947, he changed his name to avoid the similarity with Davy Jones from The Monkees. Due to the similar-sounding name, a popular misconception is that Bowie was actually in The Monkees.
8 Bowie got just one O Level – in art. He still draws, paints and sculpts with his favourite artists listed as Picasso, Michael Ray Charles, Tintoretto and Erich Heckel.
9 Many young boys in the 1970s and 1980s grew up wanting to be Bowie – and so did girls. Queen of Shops Mary Portas said Bowie was her hero as a child and she dressed up as Ziggy Stardust aged 12.
10 Blue-eyed boy Bowie’s left pupil is permanently dilated thanks to a punch thrown by friend George Underwood at school over a girl. His thumbnail dug into Bowie’s eye, which now appears either brown or blue depending on the light.
11 The fictional Major Tom has appeared in three of Bowie’s hits: ‘Space Oddity’ in 1969, ‘Ashes To Ashes’ in 1980 and ‘Hallo Spaceboy’ in 1996.
12 Rock guitarist Peter Frampton was Bowie’s friend at school and he has played guitar with Bowie many times during his career.
13 Bowie released his debut album, called ‘David Bowie’, in 1967 after playing in pub and club bands.
14 The Laughing Gnome – regarded by many as Bowie’s worst song – was the most requested track by fans when invited to make phone votes to select songs for him to perform on the 1990 world tour – although he didn’t play it.
15 His first hit in the UK was ‘Space Oddity’ in 1969 and – aptly enough – was used by the BBC for the coverage of the moon landing.
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16 Nicolas Roeg cast Bowie in his first lead role in 1976, as a stranded alien, in The Man Who Fell to Earth.
17 His first number one in the United States was Fame, in 1975. Co-written by John Lennon, it features the late Beatle on backing vocals.
18 Bowie wrote the soundtrack for the BBC dramatisation of Hanish Kureishi’s novel, ‘Buddha Of Suburbia’.
19 On album ‘Diamond Dogs’, Bowie plays pretty much every instrument, including the guitar riff on ‘Rebel Rebel’.
20 Bowie was ahead of the pack when the internet started to take off. In 1997 Bowie made single ‘Telling Lies’ available for release only on the internet. He launched Bowienet, his own ISP, a year later.
21 Bowie made a special guest appearance on the SpongeBob SquarePants episode Atlantis SquarePantis as the Lord Royal Highness in Atlantis SquarePantis on November 12, 2007.
22 Bowie formed his own mime troupe in 1969 called Turquoise, later to change their name to Feathers.
23 Bowie appeared as Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ.
24 In contrast, in the 1986 movie Labyrinth, Bowie plays Jareth The Goblin King.
25 Bowie married supermodel Iman in 1992. In fact they married twice – at a registry office
26 Bowie’s hit ‘Ziggy Stardust’ is about Vince Taylor, proto-punk and frontman for The Playboys.
27 A version of ‘Space Oddity’ was recorded in Italian titled ‘Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Solo’ which translated means ‘Lonely Boy, Lonely Girl’.
28 Chart rivals Roxy Music were miffed when Bowie copied their catsuit look on stage – so they ‘stole’ his trusty lighting engineer.
29 Bowie’s duet with Bing Crosby of ‘The Little Drummer Boy’, recorded for Christmas 1977 and a hit five years later, was Crosby’s last ever single.
30 A letter that Bowie sent to Young American Sandra Adams in 1967, thanking her for sending his first fanmail from across the Atlantic, was unearthed in 2010.
31 It’s nothing new for bands to be pelted by missiles during gigs, but the projectile usually takes the form of a beer cup of water bottle. Not so during a gig by Bowie in Norway in 2004 when he was hit in the eye by a lollipop while onstage. The gig was stopped while Bowie received medical attention.
32 Actor and musician Scarlett Johansson said: “I learned I was a sexual being through David Bowie’s songs.”
David Bowie performing The Jean Genie on Top of the Pops in 1973
33 Lost Top of the Pops footage of The Jean Genie from 1973, regarded as the ‘holy grail’ by Starman’s fans, was found in a dusty box by a former cameraman on the show last year. It had been wiped by the BBC and assumed to be gone forever.
34 ‘The Man Who Sold The World’ has been covered by Nirvana and Lulu.
35 Bowie proposed to Iman in Paris while on a boat cruise on the Seine while it was passing under the Pont Neuf.
36 His favourite aftershaves are Minotaure by Paloma Picasso and anything by Guerlain.
37 David Bowie has been immortalised in stone to celebrate turning 65. Artist Ed Chapman, 40, created this tile mosaic of the Starman in time for his milestone birthday. Ed, who lives in Manchester, has previously made of a portrait of Lord Sugar out of sugarcubes and Jimi Hendrix from 5,000 plectrums.
Bowie pin-up
38 Bowie declined the CBE in 2000 and a knighthood in 2003. He said: “I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. I seriously don’t know what it’s for. It’s not what I spent my life working for.”
39 He was the star of an episode in the second series of Ricky Gervais, where he makes up a song ridiculing Gervais’ character Andy Millman.
40 Bowie grew up in Bromley, London, but his family hail from Doncaster in South Yorkshire and Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
41 Rumour has it that Bing Crosby did not know who Bowie was before they recorded their Little Drummer Boy duet, but Bing’s son recommended him.
42 29-year-old Bowie was arrested for cannabis possession in Rochester, New York in 1976.
43 Wife Iman has a Bowie knife tattooed on her ankle as well as the name ‘David’ in Arabic writing.
44 Estimates of Bowie’s wealth range from £100m to £500m.
45 Other pseudonyms Bowie has used over the years include Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, Tao Jones, Halloween Jack and John Merrick.
46 His Glastonbury performance in 2000 is regarded by fans as one of the greatest Glasto shows of all time. And in a poll of who festival fans want to headline Glastonbury when it returns next year, Bowie was number one choice.
47 A new spider species discovered in Malaysia in 2009 was called Heteropoda Davidbowie.
48 Guitarist Mick Ronson’s work with David Bowie is sometimes credited as being the ‘birthpoint of heavy metal’.
49 The video for Ashes to Ashes was voted the 27th greatest music video of all time in a poll by Channel 4.
50 When recording the Magic Dance song for the Labyrinth soundtrack, the baby wouldn’t provide the necessary coos and giggles so David Bowie did it himself.
51 His mum Peggy was a waitress and his dad John worked for Barnardo’s.
52 A pupil at Stockwell Infants School in south London, he had a reputation for ‘defiance and brawling’.
53 Bowie began playing the piano at the age of ten and played the ukelele and tea-chest bass in skiffle seesions with mates.
54 He met first wife Angela Barnett in 1969 – they married within a year.
55 The song ‘Kooks’ on 1971 album ‘Hunky Dory’ was written for his son Zowie.
56 Now know better as Duncan Jones, he is an award-winning director responsible for science fiction-techno-thriller 2011 flick Source Code.
57 ‘Diamond DOgs’ was planned to be a musical version of George orwell’s 1984.
58 In 1980, Bowie did a three-month run on Broadway in The Elephant Man.
59 He turned down the chance to play baddie Max Zorin in James Bond film ‘A View To A Kill’ – a role that was performed by Christopher Walken.
60 In 1992, he played FBI agent Phillip Jeffries in ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’.
61 He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
62 He and Iman appeared as characters in 1999 game Omikron – for which he provided the soundtrack.
63 Bowie suffered an acutely blocked artery that required emergency heart surgery in 2004 and went into semi-retirement.
64 Rolling Stone magazine declared him 39th on the list of the 100 Greatest Artists Of All Time.
65 Bowie was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.”
(Via .)
