The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and the 1970s

Doggett's ‘You Never Give Me Your Money” is one of the great books about The Beatles, or more specifically the tangled web of financial affairs the Fabs enmeshed themselves in through bad management and naive idealism. Another great Beatles book (bear with me, I'm getting to Bowie), is Revolution In The Head, by Ian MacDonald, where every Beatles song is analysed in the order of composition.

MacDonald was contracted to write a similar book about Bowie and the 70's, but sadly died before starting the project. So it landed in his friend and colleague's lap, Doggett. And so we have Bowie's ‘long seventies' chronicled song by song, from 1969's ‘David Bowie' album to 1980's ‘Scary Monsters', interspersed with essays on various other aspects of the Dame's artistic pretensions.

To be honest it's not as good as Revolution in The Head. Doggett piles on meaning after meaning to songs that probably can't bear the weight of such analysis. Bowie was making it up as he went along a lot of the time and along the way fashioned some of the great pop/rock/dance music of the 70's. But more by instinct than design I think.

Similarly the essays shoehorn in everything from Nietzsche and Expressionism to Antony Newley in the quest to analyse every last inch of Bowie's intentions. A lot of it ends up as blather.

Doggett's musical analysis is a bit “erm, okay” and it becomes obvious that he rates early 70's Bowie more highly than late 70's Bowie (he positively despises Lodger and has little good to say about Scary Monsters).

All in all a brave effort, but there are probably better books about Bowie out there and Doggett has himself written far better on other subjects. A missed opportunity I feel.