1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980
DAVID LIVE | YOUNG AMERICANS | STATION TO STATION | LOW | HEROES | LODGER | SCARY MONSTERS
CRACKED ACTOR | THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH | JUST A GIGOLO | THE ELEPHANT MAN
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JANUARY |
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Bowie sends Tony DeFries a telegram from New York informing him that his and MainMan's services would no longer be required and legal action had begun to free Bowie of existing contracts. |
1 Bowie enters Electric Lady studios with producer Harry Maslin to record a cover of Across the Universe with John Lennon. While there, Carlos Alomar works up Footstompin' into a jam which becomes Fame. Bowie decides to replace Who Can I Be Now and It's Gonna Be Me with the two new tracks on the album tracklisting. Producer Tony Visconti who was in London completing the mixing of the album and unaware of the change. Bowie spends time working on a Diamond Dogs video project in his house in New York. Visconti was reminded of the recording of The Man Who Sold the World. "He made just two sessions, just like The Man Who Sold the World when he was preoccupied with Angie." |
Young Americans / Knock on Wood single released in the US (RCA PB-10152). |
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"Johnny Ray's Better Whirlpool" by Lester Bangs published in Creem magazine. On the town excursions with Mick and Bianca and Ava Cherry included a night at Madison Square Gardens to see Led Zeppelin. Bowie showed particular interest in their laser show system Later in the week, Bowie and Ava Cherry visited Zeppelin at the Plaza Hotel, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones being old friends of Bowie's. (Page had played guitar on Bowie's 1965 single with Manish Boys I Pity The Fool) Other excursions included Trude Heller's club with Cherry Vanilla to see Lance Loud's band, and Manhattan Transfer at the Cafe Carlyle with Jagger |
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26 Cracked Actor, an Omnibus documentary about Bowie, is broadcast (BBC 1). The film, by Alan Yentob, traced Bowie's career up to and including the 1974 US tour gave UK viewers a glimpse of the Diamond Dogs show and the Soul Tour that followed as it never came to UK or Europe. Yentob's interviewed Bowie backstage, in hotel rooms and in his limo. English film director Nic Roeg's casting agent saw the documentary and suggested using Bowie in his forthcoming film, The Man Who Fell to Earth, since Peter O'Toole was no longer a possibility. Roeg also cast Bowie's MainMan limo and driver (Tony Mascia) and replicated the Cracked Actor in-car footage situation for the film. |
FEBRUARY |
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Bowie agrees to meet with Roeg about the film. Roeg arrived in New York but Bowie had forgotten their appointment and arrived home eight hours later to find Roeg patiently sitting in the kitchen. They spent the rest of the night discussing The Man Who Fell To Earth, Bowie almost sold on the project from the start. Up to that point Peter O'Toole had been Roeg's leading choice for the alien role. Officially announced that Bowie and Tony DeFries had started legal proceedings against each other. A lawsuit announced by Bowie's solicitors, declares a motion to end all agreements between Bowie and MainMan, including publishing, management and recording controls. Bowie leaves New York for California to avoid the upsetting legal complications. 21 Young Americans / Suffragette City single released in UK (RCA 2523). Charts at #18. Interview with Bruno Stein published in Creem, showing the extent of Bowie's cocaine-fuelled fantasies, harping on conspiracies and seeing UFOs every five minutes. A clip of Bowie singing Young Americans, shot during his Soul Tour in late 1974 broadcast on Top Of The Pops. |
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MARCH |
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1 Bowie appears on the Grammy Awards ceremony. Bowie gives a long speech and presents Aretha Franklin with the award for "Best R&B Performance by a Female Artist". |
7 Young Americans LP released on RCA |
24 Bowie sees Rod Stewart and The Faces at Madison Square Garden with Ava Cherry and Warren Peace, going backstage for the aftershow party. |
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MAY |
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In an episode covered by Cameron Crowe in an extensive feature article for Rolling Stone Bowie and Iggy Pop attempt some recording at Oz Studios in Hollywood. The session with Iggy produce an adlibbed Drink To Me and an early version of Turn Blue, which was eventually recorded in Berlin for Lust For Life. After the session Bowie writes a new song, Moving On which was never heard of again. Bowie was driving around LA in a borrowed VW and staying at the home of Glenn Hughes - an old friend of Bowie - who at that time was on tour with Deep Purple. Later he moved into his new manager Michael Lippman's home in central Hollywood where he is interviewed by Tina Brown for The Sunday Times Magazine and again by Cameron Crowe. |
Iggy Pop fails to show up at further booked studio sessions, is caught for drugs possession and is given a choice between jail and rehab. Iggy opts for the latter and is checked in at UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. Bowie, accompanied by actor Dean Stockwell, visits Iggy who later revealed that Bowie was the only person to do so. Bowie attempts to coax Iggy out of the institute to return to recording. The idea is aborted when Iggy disappears again. This same month it is announced that Bowie was to star in Nicolas Roeg's film The Man Who Fell to Earth, an adaptation of the novel by Walter Tevis. Bowie’s relationship with Ava Cherry winds down as he prepares to leave LA to start filming. Leaves North Doheny Drive and takes the Santa Fe Super Chef railway to New Mexico. |
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JUNE - AUGUST |
JULY |
AUGUST |
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20 "The Bowie Odyssey" published in Sunday Times magazine. |
15 Fame / Right single released and becomes Bowie's first US #1. RCA 2579 (UK) Filming for The Man Who Fell To Earth completed at the end of the month. Returns to Los Angeles. Now renting a house in 1349 Stone Canyon Road in Bel Air. |
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Production on the film scheduled to last eleven weeks. Bowie and friends stayed at the Hilton Inn in Albuquerque. |
He writes new songs and stories, mainly his autobiography, The Return of the Thin White Duke, excerpted in Rolling Stone 12 February 1976. Interviewed on set for a feature, "Spaced Out In The Desert" published in Creem magazine, December 1975. |
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SEPTEMBER |
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8 Bowie attends Peter Sellers's 50th birthday party in Los Angeles. Bowie run through a few blues numbers with an impromptu group named Trading Faces comprising: David Bowie (saxophone), Bill Wyman (bass), Ron Wood (guitar), Joe Cocker (vocals), Jesse Ed Davis (guitar), Danny Kortchmar (guitar), Bobby Keyes (saxophone) Nigel Olsson (drums), Keith Moon (organ, vocal, drums) and Steve Madaio (trumpet). |
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Bowie begins work on new album Station To Station, at Cherokee studios on 751 North Fairfax Avenue, West Hollywood. Sessions continue through October and November. |
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26 Space Oddity / Changes, Velvet Goldmine single released in UK (RCA 2593). This third release of Space Oddity gave Bowie his first UK #1. |
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NOVEMBER |
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4 Bowie appears on Soul Train, miming Fame, Golden Years and fielding questions from the presenter and audience before his performance. |
17 Golden Years / Can You Hear Me single released on RCA RCA 2640 [UK] Highest chart pos #8 |
23 Bowie appears on the Cher show (CBS TV, US) singing Fame, duets with Cher on Can You Hear Me and a medley beginning and ending with Young Americans. |
28 Russell Harty broadcast (ITV, UK). Via satellite from California, Bowie announces the UK leg of the 1976 tour. Harty runs the Golden Years clip and excerpts from The Man Who Fell To Earth. » read more |
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DECEMBER |
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The Man Who Fell To Earth soundtrack sessions After Station To Station sessions are completed, Bowie began work on MWFTE soundtrack with Harry Maslin producing at Cherokee Studios, Los Angeles. Paul Buckmaster was brought in on cello to accompany Bowie's guitar, synthesisers and drum machines. The sessions produced five or six working tracks (influenced by Bowie's current favourite, Kraftwerk's Autobahn) before the project was abandoned. According to Maslin, Bowie was burned out to the point of collapse and could not focus sufficiently. The soundtrack was never released but a reversed bass part from one of the pieces was used in Subterraneans (from Low). Bowie maintains it is the only vestige of the work remaining. In the film Thomas Jerome Newton composes and releases a record called The Visitor in the hope that it will be broadcast on the radio and perhaps be picked up by his wife on his home planet, Anthea. |
The rumoured existence of an early bootleg purporting to be Bowie's soundtrack music called - appropriately - The Visitor stemmed from its inclusion in Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray's book, An Illustrated Record. They later admitted it was a hoax.. Since then, the recordings' mythic status has resulted in a number of recordings claiming to be them are circulating among collectors. They are generally dismissed as fakes. Bowie had originally been invited by the studio to submit soundtrack music but as post-production on the film neared completion, Bowie's score failed to materialise and Roeg gave the job to John Phillips. Bowie's ideas eventually materialised on side two of Low, a copy of which he sent to Roeg with a note explaining that this was what he had wanted to do for the film. Bowie's manager, Michael Lippman, had pledged to Bowie that he would have the rights to score the film, and by some reports, it was another reason Bowie signed on to the film. Bowie's disappointment with the whole affair was one of the reasons for his subsequent fallout with Lippman. |
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Bowie's residence at 637 North Doheny Drive (Photo by Spencer Kansa) Spaced Out in the Desert, a report on the production of The Man Who Fell To Earth by Steve Shreyer and John Lifflander is published in Creem. |
Rumours circulate in the press suggesting that Bowie was intending to star in a biopic of Frank Sinatra. Bowie later denied these when interviewed on tour in 1976. European tour details released for Bowie's 1976 tour. Christmas spent at Keith Richards' Jamaican home, rehearsing the new band for his return to world touring. Guitarist Earl Slick – also managed by Lippman – is dropped from the tour lineup. An immediate replacement was found in Stacey Heydon, a previously unknown Canadian barroom guitarist. On Bowie's arrival in Jamaica, finding that no arrangements had been made for him there, Bowie telephoned manager Michael Lippman to tell him that he was fired. |
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1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980
DAVID LIVE | YOUNG AMERICANS | STATION TO STATION | LOW | HEROES | LODGER | SCARY MONSTERS
CRACKED ACTOR | THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH | JUST A GIGOLO | THE ELEPHANT MAN