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A review by kaelino
Bowie: The Biography by Wendy Leigh
1.0
I wanted to love this, a biography on my very favorite musician of all time. Instead, I really had a hard time not shoving it away from me and picking up something else. The Goodreads bio for this author says, "Ghostwriter & celebrity biographer. She has also written books on love, sex & relationships." Well that explains it. Keyword here... sex. You may enjoy this book if you're interested in basically a listing of every sexual partner David Bowie ever had (male or female) and not in the man, his music, and his talent. Those things are pretty incidental in this book, unfortunately. Yes, David Bowie had a lot of relationships and a lot of sexual partners. That is part of his history, but is it really interesting enough to fill a whole book, especially when you consider someone as multi-faceted, enigmatic, and alluring as David Bowie? The sex, sex, sex quickly became tedious and, frankly, uncomfortable to read.
For someone with as much talent, innovation and intrigue in the music world as well as pop culture, it's a shame Leigh chooses to focus on something as superficial (and ultimately uninteresting) as Bowie's multiple sexual partners throughout three decades. Sure she touches on other things, his beginnings in Brixton, his first bands, his rise to fame and the characters he created (Ziggy, Thin White Duke), his struggles with his marriage and with drugs and alcohol, and the songs he wrote and albums he put out, but it seems obvious what the author's main interest is here, his life in the bedroom, and I believe this really does a disservice to a fascinating man. He was far from perfect. He was reckless and he used a lot of the relationships he had with other people to get ahead and to further his career. But he also wrote amazing music. He was a fashion icon. He was a committed and model husband to Iman for nearly 25 years.
I would have liked to have read more about David Bowie, the person, not David Bowie the "sex addict". How did he think of his lyrics? Why did he decide to sing? There is nothing in this book whatsoever about his singing voice, which I think is superb and worth at least noting in a sentence or two!
Overall, just a big miss for me. I wish the book had been more flattering to him.
For someone with as much talent, innovation and intrigue in the music world as well as pop culture, it's a shame Leigh chooses to focus on something as superficial (and ultimately uninteresting) as Bowie's multiple sexual partners throughout three decades. Sure she touches on other things, his beginnings in Brixton, his first bands, his rise to fame and the characters he created (Ziggy, Thin White Duke), his struggles with his marriage and with drugs and alcohol, and the songs he wrote and albums he put out, but it seems obvious what the author's main interest is here, his life in the bedroom, and I believe this really does a disservice to a fascinating man. He was far from perfect. He was reckless and he used a lot of the relationships he had with other people to get ahead and to further his career. But he also wrote amazing music. He was a fashion icon. He was a committed and model husband to Iman for nearly 25 years.
I would have liked to have read more about David Bowie, the person, not David Bowie the "sex addict". How did he think of his lyrics? Why did he decide to sing? There is nothing in this book whatsoever about his singing voice, which I think is superb and worth at least noting in a sentence or two!
Overall, just a big miss for me. I wish the book had been more flattering to him.