Today would have been the 74th birthday of my favourite musician, @DavidBowieReal. It's been Five Years (stuck on my eyes) since we lost him, so here's a little thread on some well-known - and little known - things about him.

First off: his attempt at using his own name was foiled... by none other than The Monkees! Bowie was born David Robert Jones, and went by Davy Jones in his initial years.

And then the Monkees, and Davy Jones, hit it big in the USA, and that put paid to that idea!

He was always very interested in music, a very good painter - and his friends at this time, in some major foreshadowing, would describe him as being "from another planet."

And his art teacher growing up was a Mr. Owen Frampton - the father of, who else, Peter.

He was in his teens when he founded his first band, The Kon-Rads. His bandmate was a (now) graphic designer by the name of George Underwood, who was responsible for the most iconic, constant part of Bowie's "look"....

... In that he was the reason for Bowie's 'two different eyes'. Bowie didn't have heterochromia (two differently coloured pupils), but one that was permanently dilated - because it was Underwood who punched his eye in a fight over a girl.

They were also bandmates and collabed..

... on several of Bowie's biggest albums, like these (my two personal favourites):

Ziggy... was shot just on London's Heddon Street, which today, of course, is unrecognisable from the cover. (It's a beautiful place to have a summer drink, though.)

Underwood was the designer.

Funnily enough, when this album came out, the K. West company - outside whose home he posed, were offended, and wrote to Bowie and the recording company, RCA, expressing their displeasure.

The album cover itself was also influenced by A Clockwork Orange....

...by design. If you zoom one, only one of Bowie's eyes is mascara-ed.

Bowie also has something interesting in common with Sherlock Holmes...

And it's that they are two of the very few recipients of plaques dedicated to fictional characters. Bowie's commemorates Ziggy Stardust at 23 Heddon Street, while the other, of course, is at 221b Baker Street :)

Like many bands at the time - including the Beatles, Bowie and his mates played Skiffle. It was his interest in jazz - spurred by his older half brother, Terry, that led Bowie's mother - also Terry's mum, to buy him an alto sax.. which he loved.

Bowie also wrote about Terry...

And Terry's struggles with mental illness. One of my favourite Bowie songs is this one, which Bowie at the time described as being 'nonsense' for Americans that 'liked to read into things'.. but was later revealed to be about Terry's schizophrenia.

Bowie also did this lovely cover of a song by another musical icon plagued by schizophrenia - the iconic Syd Barrett - it features on the brilliant Pin Ups - which also has him covering the Yardbirds and The Who. (I love this one!)

Pin-Ups came only six months after perhaps his most famous album and his most mistakenly-named avatar, Aladdin Sane.
A LOT of people describe the lightning bolt Bowie as "Ziggy Stardust" - NOT TRUE! Ziggy had a sun-disc on Bowie's forehead, Aladdin Sane the iconic lightning bolt.

Aladdin Sane had some of the greatest piano work you've probably ever heard - particularly its title track, but this is one of the greatest of all time, featuring the legendary @mikegarson (who's quite active on Twitter!).

Bowie got into a LOT of genres - and you can hear that on Diamond Dogs. There's a lot of great guitar on this album - all played by Bowie, because there was no Mick Ronson for this one. He'd wanted an album based on 1984, but Orwell's widow refused..and this album happened.

It's considered one of his best albums sonically, and while many of you may have heard Rebel Rebel, the title track is miles ahead in terms of melody (YMMV, of course).

Here's Bowie performing it, SPECTACULARLY, in 2004. He's 57 here. Seriously!

And after his final glam rock album came his soul album, featuring a young man named... Luther Vandross! He had always been into soul and R&B (more on his Little Richard fascination later), and this showed here. He also collaborated with another Briton-New Yorker..

A guy named John Lennon, on this funk-rock song.

Another of Bowie's most famous collaborators was also a funk icon, and one of its greatest guitarists.

That collaborator was the iconic Nile Rodgers, whom Bowie would work with nearly a decade later.

In the interim came one of his greatest ever albums, Station to Station. The album cover's a still from Nicholas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth (one of my favourite films) ..

and the album features lyrics inspired by Shakespeare and extreme occultism (something he had always been into).

This was also the birth of the Thin White Duke - and Thin and White it was indeed, with Bowie's 'milk, cocaine and peppers' diet at the time...

In fact, he was so addled on coke that he does not even remember producing the album. That album was melodically heavily introduced by Kraftwerk, and other bands of that era and genre.

You might also have heard it referred to in the 90s.. by #RHCP:

And then comes the Berlin Trilogy. Low, Heroes and Lodger were all born in Berlin, where Bowie stayed with Iggy Pop as the two attempted to get clean. The music became ambient and abstract, and this was where Bowie collaborated with Brian Eno at..

....Hansa Studios, nicknamed Hansa "By The Wall" for its proximity to the Berlin Wall.

Of course, that's where *that* song came about - the lyrics were actually about Bowie's longtime producer and friend @Tonuspomus kissing his girlfriend at the Berlin Wall.

And after Heroes came Lodger, lighter, poppier - and here's a track where Bowie emulates David Byrne - THAT David Byrne, whom you've heard on Psycho Killer, of course.

Danceable as HELL.

What really hit the big time again, though, came two albums later, with the ICONIC Let's Dance. Described as 'post-disco', this was produced in part by Nile Rodgers and featured the legend, the man, Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Now you might have heard that one on the soundtrack to #IngloriousBasterds, and Bowie and film had a long history. He had already acted in multiple films by now, including one that came out this same year - Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.

He was also featured in

Christiane F, Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo (We children of Bahnhof Zoo), with the lead character - (a very real person), struggling with addiction. She was a big fan of Bowie's at the time, so when the film was made, he provided the soundtrack.
Here's Christiane Vera Felscherinow.

That saw one of Bowie's most beautiful non-English tracks, and the film was also where I heard Helden - most recently used at the end of #JojoRabbit. I cried. A lot. :)

Perhaps Bowie's most famous film appearance of all was as the man described as "awakening a thousand sexualities".
Jareth the Goblin King, for which a juggler hid behind Bowie juggling his crystal balls (ha!). It was also the source of many people's crush on Jennifer Connelly :)

The other very very famous appearance of course was as Nikola Tesla in The Prestige (IMHO one of the greatest films of all time), a role that Chris Nolan - himself a massive Bowie fan, had to BEG him to play.

Bowie obviously accepted.

Bowie's son is the BAFTA-winning filmmaker Duncan Jones, who's also an incredibly nice person on this hellsite - in fact, Duncan was on set when a lot of Bowie's films were being shot.

The same year The Prestige came out, Bowie won a lifetime achievement Grammy.

The following years saw The Next Day (which generated some super controversy courtesy a video that featured his friend, Gary Oldman), and of course, 2016 - on this day, saw his final album - Blackstar - on which I have another thread coming :)
That video:

Oldman accepted the BRIT icon award on Bowie's behalf in 2016.

Hope you enjoyed this LONG-ASS Davy talk!