Bowie: A Biography (68 page)

I

James Fitzgerald has been my agent for over ten years and is the patriarch of my New York City family (I say this knowing fully that much of my actual family lives in New York City). I have learned everything I know about publishing from him and a great deal of what I know about writing and even reading too. There were times during the writing of this book where the fur flew, but they were really exciting times, weren’t they? Jim keeps me from getting bored and old in this business, and I hope I can offer him the same. I don’t care what anyone might write on the walls, I could not have a better or smarter agent. Plus in a pinch or a blizzard he can always get a twenty-dollar bill from an ATM using one of his thirty bank cards.

Thanks to Tina Constable, Emily Timberlake, Aja Pollock, Robert Siek and everyone at Crown who worked so hard on this project and believed in me. Thanks to Carrie Thornton, who first acquired this book and whose wedding song was “Heroes.” Carrie really pushed me, and I would never have gotten rolling on the research without her tough love.

Thank you to my all-star team for their diligent work, dedication, intelligence, fiscal patience and moral support: Hal Horowitz, photo research and direction; Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna, research director and interviewer; Brendan Mullen, West Coast bureau chief; David Townsend, wild mercury transcription. This is yours as much as it is mine. These books don’t get done without you. Thank you to Rob Hughes for key interviews as well and Jason Gordon for his friendship and vision and being one of the first to read.

Special thank-you to Elizabeth D. Goodman for remote control removal and other things that are nobody’s business and are hard to say, but this book would not have worked without her and I don’t really either. Joni Mitchell the basset hound and Jerry Orbach the basset hound, for reminding me that in order to behave badly all the time one must have an abundance of charm and good looks—all writers of large, ambitious books should get dogs (or cats, or complicated fish); thank you to my mother and stepfather, Ricki and Al Josephberg, for giving me money and food, helping me organize and never telling me to give up writing again (after that first time); thanks to my father, Sid Spitz, sister Nicki, and her husband, Nick Miller, and daughter, my niece Eden, for their calm words, gentle inquiries and encouragement; they say a third space is vital in addition to home and work, and when you work from home, it’s even more so, so thanks to Richard, Jesse, Johnny, Omar and everyone at Black and White Bar NYC for being my first third space, to Tom Vaught, who can sing all of Bowie’s
Baal
soundtrack, not to mention “There Is a Happy Land,” and Dave, Rob, Robert, Kim, Liza and everybody at WXOU (Radio Bar) for being my second third space; thanks to Eric for being a dude and getting my broke ass paid; the legendary Mick Rock and Liz Vap, Sia Michel, Maureen Callahan, Michael Grace Jr. and Lisa Ronson of the excellent band the Secret History; Connor Raus for his Web savvy and enthusiasm; Bryan Smith, the Flim-Flam man and creator of a truly Bowie-worthy and eclectic discography (including
Watching the
Defectives
and
Sheep Shoes
—if you don’t own them, find them); Doug Brod at
Spin;
Chris Wilson; David Swanson at
Maxim;
Melissa Maerz at
Rolling Stone;
Tyler Gray at
Blender
(RIP); Michael Bonner at
Uncut;
Suzanne McElfresh and everyone at
budgettravel.com
for giving me recession-surviving assignments that had nothing to do with a book about David Bowie; Ron Oberman; Mary Finnegan; Chris Charlesworth, for helping me reach Kenneth Pitt; Imran Ahmed; King Kong Klub/Berlin; Robert Heide, for introducing me to Tony Zanetta at La Mama; Bobby Lauderdale; F and B Framingham; Ivanhoe Martin; Mark Bego; Chris Vrenna; Paula; Ron Shavers
(wherever you are);
Michelle David, for driving me to Giants Stadium to see the Glass Spider tour in ’87; Tough Shirts (totally awesome and totally cool); Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam; Full Force; Gay’s the Word; Click Banana; Chuck Klosterman, for sitting down with me very early on and talking Bowie, among many other things; same with Rob Sheffield, who has a truly hysterical anecdote from circa 1983 involving cigarette butts that did not make it into the book, but if you happen to run into him in NYC, make him tell it to you; Kuno; Mr. Alan Light, for always inquiring with great interest where I was at and patiently listening as I vented and vented in response; Ms. Tracey Pepper, for teaching me how to write about rock ’n’ roll in the first place; President Barack Obama, for making me believe fall ’09 will get here and be better than, fall ’08; Don Music; Caryn Ganz; John Roecker; Steve Malins; Alan Yentob; Nancy Miller; Sarah Ultragrrrl Lewitinn; Jonathan Lisecki and Alex Ross; Emma Forrest; Nerf Riley; and Koldo Barroso for his excellent Marquee club site and assistance with contacts and research.

Thanks to David Buckley, Peter and Leni Gillman, Tony Zanetta and Henry Edwards, Angie Bowie, Camille Paglia, Kerry Juby, Nicholas Pegg, Dave Thompson, George Tremlett, Thomas Jerome Seabrook, Christopher Sanford and everybody who has ever written about Bowie, whether in books, magazines and periodicals or on dedicated and intelligent Bowie sites like Bowie Wonderworld and Teenage Wildlife, and Bowienet, and also in ’zines like the
Voyeur
, among many, many other outlets. Your words and ideas have truly educated and comforted me over the years and I hope this book is worthy of inclusion in this archive.

Copyright © 2009 by Marc Spitz

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Crown is a trademark and the Crown colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

Frontispiece:
In the yard at Haddon Hall shortly before the transformation into Ziggy Stardust (1972) ©
2009 by Mick Rock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Spitz, Marc.
    Bowie : a biography / Marc Spitz.—1st ed.
    1. Bowie, David. 2. Rock musicians—England—Biography. I. Title.
ML420.B754S66         2009
782.42166092—dc22
[
B
]                     2009016806

eISBN: 978-0-307-46239-8

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