David Bowie – Adam Steiner

INTERVIEW – BOWIE PHOTOGRAHPER – SUKITA

Masayoshi Sukita is a Japanese photographer, renowned for his rock and roll photography and his long and enduring friendship with David Bowie. As part of the research for my new book Silhouettes And Shadows, a deep dive into Bowie’s Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), I spoke to Sukita about the story behind his photographs that feature in the book.

INTERVIEW – LEAH KARDOS

I first discovered Leah Kardos music and writing during my research for Silhouettes And Shadows – particularly her book Blackstar Theory: The Last Works of David Bowie (2022) and her blog post on Scary Monsters. This interview is a record of our discussion, from Leah’s first encounter with Bowie’s music, working through his back catalogue and how she experiences his albums now.

FREAKS BECOMES US – SCARY MONSTERS, BOWIE FANS AND FREEDOM

The title track of Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) lifts the lid on a restless and troubled mind. A place of monsters, weirdos, freaks that cast long shadows; the song becomes a horror movie populated by people pushed to extremes, wounded, broken and flawed, just like us.

Kingdom Come – David Bowie does Television

If heaven was ever a place on earth by 1980 David Bowie had yet to find it. Adopting “Kingdom Come” a song written by Tom Verlaine, as his chosen cover for Scary Monsters, Bowie elevates the lyrical struggle with God and the search for an afterlife into a new realm of spiritual angst.

/REMAKE//REMODEL///RELIVE – HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVID BOWIE [2023]

In astronomy we allow for the shift of light years to bring images of stars and planets to us long after they have faded and completely disappeared from our little universe. We witness these events of the past as if they were occurring in the present day but really we are catching the aftermath of their glow – having drifted beyond the half-way point of their explosive birth. So it has been with future-history of David Bowie, the original pop starman whose birthday it is today (the same day, though not the year, as the original king of rock and roll, Elvis Presley 8/1/1935) begging the question – where is his legacy now?