Music journalist Jordan Runtagh hosts Off the Record: David Bowie, providing a richly detailed account of David Bowie’s childhood and family, his multiple affairs and lovers, his years-long struggle to breakthrough in the music industry, and so much more through meticulous research, expressive storytelling, and in-depth interviews with the people who knew him best. In this episode, Jordan shares the story of David’s journey to writing “Space Oddity,” a winding path that includes constant professional rejection, mime and movement classes, a hokey cabaret act, countless affairs and love triangles, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and David’s first broken heart. He spent the 1960s “chasing trends,” Jordan says. “When he sang, he opened his mouth, but not his soul.” That all changed with Major Tom.
David was willing to try any and everything – musically and sexually – to make it in the music business. Jordan talks about his second father and manager Kenneth Pitt, who he also slept with from time to time; they lived together, and Ken recalled David’s habit of walking around nude with fondness in his memoirs. David’s life was changed when he heard The Velvet Underground for the first time. After his lack of commercial success, he thought about acting, and started taking classes with Lindsay Kemp on mime, movement, commedia dell’arte, and avant-garde theatre – laying the groundwork for the several personas he would adopt over the course of his career. Through Lindsay, he met his first true love, Hermione Farthingale. Their time together was “the happiest of David’s life,” but it came to an end when Hermione got a part in a movie shooting in Norway, and met another man.
David was heartbroken, which was an unusual sensation for him, and he felt lonely and isolated. He went to see 2001: A Space Odyssey, but “if he was looking for escape, this wasn’t it,” Jordan says; the dark, cold abyss of outer space reflected his psyche perfectly. The character of Major Tom began to take shape in his brain, but it would take a full-on love triangle with Mercury Records’ Calvin Mark Lee and David’s soon-to-be first wife Angie to get the demo recorded. But finally, David had a hit. Jordan shares all the juiciest details you could want while also breaking down the music and lyrics of each of Bowie’s records with caressing detail, painting a vivid picture of one of the most beloved musicians of all time. So while you’re here sitting in a tin can, listen to this episode of Off the Record: David Bowie.
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