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  • Published: 6 October 2011
  • ISBN: 9781409041399
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 432
Categories:

The Man Who Sold The World

David Bowie And The 1970s




Brilliant musical critique; biographical insight and acute cultural analysis, The Man Who Sold The World is a unique study of David Bowie and the 1970s.

No artist offered a more incisive and accurate portrait of the troubled landscape of the 1970s than David Bowie. Cultural historian Peter Doggett explores the rich heritage of Bowie's most productive and inspired decade, and traces the way in which his music reflected and influenced the world around him. From 'Space Oddity', his dark vision of mankind's voyage into the unknown terrain of space, to the Scary Monsters album, Doggett examines in detail Bowie's audacious creation of an 'alien' rock star, Ziggy Stardust, and his increasingly perilous explorations of the nature of identity and the meaning of fame.

Mixing brilliant musical critique with biographical insight and acute cultural analysis, The Man Who Sold The World is a unique study of a major artist and his times.

  • Published: 6 October 2011
  • ISBN: 9781409041399
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 432
Categories:

About the author

Peter Doggett

Peter Doggett has been writing about popular music and social and cultural history for more than thirty years. His books include the acclaimed There's a Riot Going On: Revolutionaries, Rock Stars and the Rise and Fall of '60's Counter-culture, The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and the 1970s and Electric Shock:From the Gramophone to the iPhone - 125 years of Pop Music.

Also by Peter Doggett

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Praise for The Man Who Sold The World

A forensic analysis of the songs that helped forge his many myths...an impressive, exhaustive account

Times Literary Supplement

A meticulous and engaging insight into the golden years of one of pop's true innovators. For those who love Bowie - a must

Mark Radcliffe

An astonishing and absorbing work that expertly unpicks this explosively creative time in Bowie's life... Ultimately, Doggett's insight and enthusiasm should send you back to the music. If you do so the book will ensure you experience something entirely new

Sunday Times

An exemplary introduction to a star in the making...excellent at placing the sexuality-stretching Bowie within the context of a decade struggling to find its identity

Metro

Compels you to listen to Bowie's best-known songs afresh and his less obvious songs anew

Time Out

Doggett exhaustively chases Bowie's inspirations and intentions as he morphs from the gender-bending glam rock Ziggy Stardust to the plastic soul-spinning Thin White Duke

Daily Telegraph

Doggett is no uncritical fan – his intimate knowledge of the industry lends him a cool eye when assessing the extent of Bowie’s originality… Overall it will leave readers of a certain age yearning for the days when they could throw their homework on the fire and take the car downtown

Sally Morris, Daily Mail

Part historical commentary, part fanboy's breakdown of every Bowie song from the era

The Times

Superb

The Word

This book tracks Bowie's ever changing masks and alter egos... [and] helps answer the question that most Bowie fans have asked at one time or another: what the hell is he on about?

Irish Times

This is a book, which can be dipped into as a fine song-by-song guide, but even more so, as an excellent cultural history

Mojo

Thrilling...takes its place next to Revolution in the Head on the short shelf of necessary reading about pop. Praise doesn't come any higher

Observer