“The Age of Bowie: How David Bowie Made a World of Difference”, by Paul Morley

504 pages, Gallery Books, ISBN-13: 978-1501151170

The proper title of this book should be The Age of Bowie: How David Bowie Made a World of Difference – to Paul Morley, for that is what we get over 500+ pages: a self-aggrandizing piece of monotonous drivel in which the author puts himself forward wherever he can, with whole pages being about Paul Morley and not about his ostensible subject. I should have seen it coming from the opening, for after a short Prologue we dive into the author’s personal recollections about Bowie: “It is 1970, I am thirteen, and at some point during the year I hear the name David Bowie spoken for the very first time”. Or this: “I found him, and at the same time, he found me” (as if this was a moment in which geniuses discovered one another). Or this cringeworthy piece of shit: “This meant we were to an extent sleeping together” after Morley learns that Bowie once stayed overnight in Stockport, not too far from his home. Need more? Okay: “He was right next to me. So close he could hear me breathe, in my bedroom cocoon, and be very knowing when my breathing got faster” and “We were in this together, and he was getting inside my head and I was getting inside his”. If Bowie weren’t already dead he should file a restraining order against this weepy delusional fanatic.

Thus is the table set for what turns out to be a seemingly never-ending stream of consciousness regarding any and all things David Bowie…as they pertain to Paul Morley. Hell, the book doesn’t even get going until page 217 when the author then takes the next 150 or so pages to look at Bowie at his peak during the 1970s, described in 140 episodes – but don’t get your hopes up, for if you think you’re gonna get an account of how Bowie actually lived there and filled his days you’ll be wrong wrong wrong. If you haven’t discovered by now this is certainly not a traditional biography as Bowie’s life (y’know, David Robert Jones? Known by the stage name David Bowie? Born on January 8^th, 1947? Died almost exactly 69 years later on January 10^th, 2016? That guy?) is covered with perfunctory duty as key persons in his life – his wives Angie and Iman, managers Ken Pitt and Tony Defries, and even his parents – appear as little more than subsidiary characters. Nor is this a critical biography, for while his music is covered with (a little) reflection, Morley’s focus is on David Bowie as a work of art himself: he is perceived as a mystery, albeit not one to be solved or categorized. Morley embraces the idea of Bowie as a cultural anthropologist, “a human Google through which you can search where pop has bounced and rebounded since the 1960s.” Thafuck? Morley states at one point that “This is my Bowie. It is not true, it is not false. It is not right, it is not wrong”. It is, however, unreadable – I coulda vomited a better biography than this dreck.