David Bowie: A Life in Pictures by Chris Welch

David Bowie: A Life in Pictures Reviews

• 
  Debra Komar

  The text is forgettable - full of typos, omissions and convoluted sentences - but the photos are absolutely stunning. Many are classics we've seen many times but there are some rare photos here that make the book worthwhile. It definitely focuses more on the early part of his career but there are interesting shots throughout. A must for fans.
• 
  Alma Sofia Söderquist

  Härliga bilder, sämre text.
• 
  Jen

  Happy birthday to the Thin White Duke. I flipped through this book tonight and listened to Ziggy Stardust and remembered just how strange and beautiful a being he was. My favorite is Labyrinth Bowie, closely followed by The Man Who Fell To Earth Bowie.
  
  "I smiled sadly for a love I could not obey.."
• 
  Anna

  The pictures were beautiful. Incredible. Absolutely fantastic.
  The information was full of typos and often blatantly wrong.
  The two biggest pieces of misinformation I caught were pretty significant. The author states that David Bowie's album The Man Who Fell to Earth didn't sell well and prompted him to begin work on Hunky Dory, his next album. That would be fine - except The Man Who Fell to Earth is a film that Bowie starred in a few years after his The Man Who Sold the World album was released. To a small-time fan, this may seem like an easy-to-make mistake, but it's a fairly significant one because you should be able to remember the album names of the rock star you're writing a book about. And an editor should have picked up the inconsistency. The next mistake was that the author stated that the musical Lazarus featured 18 brand-new David Bowie songs. WRONG. The musical has several new recordings of old Bowie songs for the stage and 3 brand new Bowie songs, only released posthumously.
  The fact that someone like me, a huge fan but by no means an expert on Bowie, caught such mistakes makes me concerned for the other mistakes present in this book.
  To sum up: Pictures=good. Words=BAD.
• 
  Erika_kartmann

  I will miss you, David Jones.
• 
  Luke

  5* for the photographs, 2* for the biography.
• 
  Wilde Sky

  A biography of a British singer / songwriter/ star.
  
  The writing was clear and concise (except for two grammatical errors that I spotted) and many of the images were striking. The chronology could have done with being more linear.
  
  Reading time around four hours.
• 
  romney

  Excellent pictures, forgettable text.
• 
  Kate

  This 2013 edition displays and describes David Robert Jones (Bowie) and his enigmatic and ever-changing periods of music. From his transitions of hard rock bands, songwriter, glam rocker, to disco, and pop rock there's his ebb and flow to experiment. The book describes his constant pursuit of change of the listener's previous expectations. I loved seeing the photos alongside these descriptions showing his evolution from a young artist trying to find his stage identity to becoming more confident in who he naturally is/was.
  
  * I say this in a posthumously fashion, I do wish they had created a new edition for the follow-up of the next couple years after 2013. It's only details up to his Reality album of 2003. Not only would it help fix some of the typos I found in the text, it could further talk about his career progression. Perhaps describing some of the songs that came out on his Blackstar 2016 album and of course when he passed.
• 
  Simon Sweetman

  a pretty basic summary of Bowie's career - up to Outside. Then it stops. Abruptly. Some cool photos, but.
• 
  RB

  Simply beautiful. Full of stunning pictures of a wonderful man that sadly is no longer with us.