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Books : Moonage Daydream: The Life and Times of Ziggy Stardust
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- Tantalising glimpse into the life and times of rock's greatest showman
This book first appeared as a lush, limited-edition collector's item. Autographed by Bowie and Rock, it was craft-bound, weighed in at 8 lb and cost a cool three hundred quid.
It was perhaps inevitable that given a decent interval, the book would reappear in a trade edition at a more reasonable price. Still the size of a breeze block and glamorous enough to grace the best of coffee tables, official photographer Rock's upmarket photo album traces the entire history of the Ziggy Stardust era from its flame-haired inception to its last gasp on the legendary 1973 TV special, the 1980 Floor Show.
And what pictures they are - cataloguing the evolution of the alien, anorexic Ziggy style from its Clockwork Orange beginnings through harlequin suits and wrestler's boots to the late-period oriental eccentricity of Aladdin Sane.
But that's not all. The pictures are annotated by Bowie's own reminiscences - fragmented, acerbic, funny, wry, wistful, often self-deprecating. In the absence of a proper Bowie memoir, this is as good as it gets, shedding sidelights on an era that now seems as remote as the roaring twenties.
Dip into this if you must, but even in its cheap and cheerful form, Moonage Daydream is that rare artefact - a coffee-table book that's worth reading from cover to cover.
- Tantalising glimpse into the life and times of rock's greatest showmanThis book first appeared as a lush, limited-edition collector's item. Autographed by Bowie and Rock, it was craft-bound, weighed in at 8 lb and cost a cool three hundred quid.
It was perhaps inevitable that given a decent interval, the book would reappear in a trade edition at a more reasonable price. Still the size of a breeze block and glamorous enough to grace the best of coffee tables, official photographer Rock's upmarket photo album traces the entire history of the Ziggy Stardust era from its flame-haired inception to its last gasp on the legendary 1973 TV special, the 1980 Floor Show.
And what pictures they are - cataloguing the evolution of the alien, anorexic Ziggy style from its Clockwork Orange beginnings through harlequin suits and wrestler's boots to the late-period oriental eccentricity of Aladdin Sane.
But that's not all. The pictures are annotated by Bowie's own reminiscences - fragmented, acerbic, funny, wry, wistful, often self-deprecating. In the absence of a proper Bowie memoir, this is as good as it gets, shedding sidelights on an era that now seems as remote as the roaring twenties.
Dip into this if you must, but even in its cheap and cheerful form, Moonage Daydream is that rare artefact - a coffee-table book that's worth reading from cover to cover.