The man called ‘David Bowie’ was a recording artist between 1966 and 2016; Brixton’s David Jones tried and failed to have a hit single for a few years before he changed his name, and it would be the early 70s before he achieved anything approaching success. After that, though, the dam broke, and Bowie became a) the world’s premier gender-bending art-rocker, b) an inspiration to any number of subsequent musicians, c) a composer and performer of several genre-defying singles and albums, and d) shorthand for the sort of combination of ‘commercial appeal’ and ‘artistic integrity’ that most recording artists would conceivably kill for.
And on top of that, he was always profoundly concerned with the sound, and the texture, and the colour of his recordings, a fiend for an unusual arrangement, and extremely judicious in the people he chose to collaborate with – especially studio personnel. All of which makes many of his recordings excellent for revealing the secrets of the system that’s playing them.
