Bowie Odyssey 70

Simon Goddard OMNIBUS

Bowieology is brought to life in brilliant inspection of one year.

Just when you thought there were too many Bowie books and nothing new to say about him, this tremendously imaginative, truly riveting read finds a way to zoom in and extrapolate out. As gripping as fiction, it occurs entirely as the decade turns, focusing on the young Bowie who worries that Space Oddity has left him a one-hit-wonder, washed up and somewhat slightly dazed. He needs a band, a change of manager, to make choices regarding his family and love life, and to work out whether he’s friends with Marc Bolan. He also needs to decide who he is: an issue which, perhaps happily, he never definitively resolved.

The sense of time and place is tactile, as all those factoids you know about Bowie’s life are probed, questioned, fleshed out, moment by moment. Groovy Portobello couple Bolan and June Child visit David, awkwardly, at (Bowie's soon to be ex-manager) Kenneth Pitt’s: “It’s not that David dislikes Ken. He might even love him as a cat loves the sound of an opening fridge”. We’re taken into Haddon Hall and Trident Studios; Britain

is cold, with power cuts. Bowie keeps dreaming: subsequent volumes will continue the tale year by year. God knows, this is good. ■■■■■■■■■■