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| − | David Bowie (born David Robert Jones in Doncaster Royal Infirmary on 8 January 1947) is an English multidisciplinary artist best known as a singer and musician and also as an actor. Perhaps his most famous and enduring characteristic is his development through a series of images, personae and musical styles. His first hit was <I>Space Oddity</I> in 1969, a psychedelic hippie ballad referencing the film <I>[[2001]]</i>, in which aliens are compared to God. He used the money to marry his first wife Angie; Bowie stated that they had met while "fucking the same bloke" (an Asian). During this period Bowie studied mime and terrorism, as recorded on his 1970 single <I>Bombers/London Bye Ta-Ta</i>. This was followed with 1971's <I>Quicksand</i>, which synthesized the diverse philosophies of notorious Satanist and animal abuser [[Aleister Crowley]] and Hindu prophet [[Buddha]]; although their teachings were very different they had obesity in common. But Bowie remained slim, perhaps because of his intake of "[[heroin|white horsey]]" or the rigours of so-called bisexuality. For Bowie had declared himself a bisexual in an interview with <I>Melody Maker</i> and assumed the image of an androgynous space alien named Ziggy Stardust after the comic strip superhero and a euphemism for the drug [[cocaine]]. He returned to his successful science fiction theme with 1972's <I>Starman</i>, in which God is compared to an alien with the "xenosexual" Ziggy Stardust cast as a homoerotic and masochistic Christ-figure. The early seventies were a period of great turmoil for Bowie in his personal life; like pedophile [[Oscar Wilde]] before him he seemed determined to live out his image of decadent chic in his real life and scandalize the then still staunchly conservative cultural sensibilities of Middle England with his promiscuity. He soon slid down the slippery slope from comparatively innocent liasons with such wholesome pop stars as [[Lulu]] and [[Marc Bolan]] into orgies with [[Mott the Hoople]], as documented on 1972 single <i>All The Young Dudes</i>. Another 1972 song, <I>Suffragette City</i>, suggested that Bowie felt emasculated by feminism and misdirected his libido onto his "droogies", a reference to the dystopian novel [[A Clockwork Orange]] by transgressive homosexual writer [[Anthony Burgess]]. Finally Bowie pushed his luck too far. The audience invaded the stage of the Hammersmith Odeon in 1973, outraged to see tarnished space hero Ziggy fellating alleged guitarist Mick Ronson and Bowie was badly beaten when he was unmasked. He had become a pariah in his own country and was forced to flee to America. <I>Aladdin Sane</i> shifted Bowie's focus from space aliens to a contemptuous critique of patriotism and the sacrifices made in the first two World Wars. After a whirlwind romance with willowy street poet [[Lou Reed]] restored his heterosexuality Bowie was taken in by fellow sexile [[John Lennon]], whose marriage to a "[[Yoko Ono|diminutive Japanese woman]]" had been similarly jeered in his native Liverpool. Unfortunately Bowie repaid Lennon's hospitality by falling in unrequited love with his wife and would immortalize her in such songs as <i>China Girl</i>, <I>Cat People</i>, <I>Scary Monsters</i> and <I>Crystal Japan</i> in the years that followed. He showed no more loyalty to the country which had given him refuge with singles such as <I>Young Americans</i>, which pilloried patriots such as [[President Nixon]] and [[Senator Joseph McCarthy]] while championing the innovative hip hop of black homosexual activist [[Rosa Parks]]. He would continue to express these anti-American sentiments in such songs as <I>This Is Not America</i> on the soundtrack for a film lionizing homosexual Soviet spies and latterly <i>I'm Afraid Of Americans</i>. In 1979's <I>Red Money</i> however Bowie recanted his earlier support for spies and his attempts to return home were frustrated by his increasingly conservative views. He expressed admiration for [[Adolf Hitler]]'s stagecraft in interviews and attempted to reenact <I>[[Triumph of the Will]]</i> outside Victoria Station but was pilloried in the Jewish press and forced out of the country again. This time he fled to the continent where anti-Christian sentiments remained a recurring theme in his music throughout the next two decades. <i>Loving The Alien</i> was an attack on organised religion in the guise of his most commercial subject matter; sex with bug-eyed men from space. 1983's <I>Modern Love</i> plagiarised the tune of fellow flamboyant homosexual Elton John's priapic hymn <i>I'm Still Standing</i> but rendered it hostile to God rather than simply ungodly.This neatly summed up the album from which it came, <I>Let's Dance</i>, which married the hedonism of eighties dance music to sinister lyrics about the war between man and God. By 1993's <i>Pallas Athena</i> Bowie seemed to be openly embracing paganism. This was perhaps just part of a long-standing interest in such superstitions on Bowie's part, from <I>The Laughing Gnome</i> to <I>Goblin Dance</i> from <I>Labyrinth</i> and so on to <I>Letter To Hermione</i> from <i>Harry Potter</i>. Only in 1999 did Bowie seem to find inner peace with the release of a single from the soundtrack of the religious film <I>Stigmata</i>. <I>The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell</i> was a bold break with the superficial, fashionable decadence in which he and black model wife [[Iman]] had indulged their baser selves throughout the preceding years and a recognition of the inevitability of damnation.
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