1. The real name of this music legend was David Robert Jones and he was born on the 8th of January 1947 in Brixton, London, UK. The funny fact is that David Bowie had the same birthdate as Elvis Presley. He would later change his name to David Bowie for fear of being mistaken for then rather famous David Jones from The Monkees. And the very first instrument he started playing was not the guitar or the piano, but the saxophone and the future start was only about 12 years old at the time. 2. It wasn't some sort of makeup or contacts, one of his pupils seemed to be of a different colour because it was actually permanently dilated. It was the right one, and it had been like that ever since he was 15, during the school years, when he was punched in the eye. The argument that lead to permanent damage was over a girl, and the perpetrator was the future artist George Underwood. The two would remain friends and later even worked together.
3. David Bowie was also an avid reader and book collectors, and those who knew him often found him reading, leaving it all behing. Not only the brought his to-read collection on tours or when he was recording, but also bought the books he was interested in during his tours and travels. And according to several interviews his tastes were rather eclectic, ranging from Stephen King or William Burroughs to Martin Amis, Truman Capote, Nabokov, Flaubert, John Kennedy Toole or Julian Barnes. And that is just to name a few. He would eventually publish his personal list of favourite one hundred titles, and there are many surprises in there.
4. Over his long, controversial and succesfull music career David Bowie would create and use several alter egos, and these were more, much more than simply names or characters, as he seemed to give it all and end up really beeing that new, strange person. The alter egos range from Ziggy Stardust (the one that according to Bowie nearly drove him insane) to Major Tom, Thin White Duke, Halloween Jack, Aladdin Sane and the list goes on. It is no wonder that Bowie would appear in about 25 movies in his lifetime, ranging from cameos to main roles, and always did it with charisma, style and a lot of involvement. 5. Among the songs that he wrote together with other musicians the best known would probably be Under Pressure (1981), recorded with Queen and featured on their 1982 album Hot Space. Developping from an earlier demo called Feel Like and starting a jam session the details of which have become hazy over the years, Bowie and Queen managed to put together a track that was always in the set list at Queen's concerts. Bowie himself didn't sing Under Pressure on stage until 1992, at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, when he sang it together with Annie Lennox. Yet Mercury and Bowie had met before, about a decade before actually. It was during the early years, when Mercury worked at a second hand clothes little store, and Bowie came there to try on some boots. At least that was the legend.
6. David Bowie was also a painter and sculptor, as well as an art collector, and he even exhibited his work. Not only his fans but also art critics were genuinely impressed by the end results, and who knows, maybe the musicians could have been as famous as a painter. He seemed to enjoy painting mainly portraits and self-portraits.
7. He could have been Sir David Bowie, like many other singers and actors, but in 2003, when he was offered knighthood, he politely rejected the idea. For many of his fans - and mostly for the general public - it was a shock, but Bowie said that he had never ever intented to accept such awards and titles. Just a personal thing.
Photo: billboard.com, mirror.co.uk
