Bowie album success ?

[andyrushworth]

How does Bowie manage to have such huge success without even touring let alone giving interviews ,as far as I can see he did two videos to accompany the two singles and thats it , incredible ?

Could Alice have this kind of success or is Bowie a bigger artist end of ????

[A_MichaelUK]

How does Bowie manage to have such huge success without even touring let alone giving interviews ,

Because that became the story. He had been silent all that time and then when everyone had more or less given up, new material arrived without warning (and online, not on the radio).

>Could Alice have this kind of success

That would be unlikely.

>or is Bowie a bigger artist end of ????

It depends on what you mean by "bigger", though.

[andyrushworth]

I know on the Bowie site a few of the people are dying for Bowie to tour or do interviews etc ,personally I think by making albums alone Bowie could reach new heights of popularity ,he should become a kind of Howard Hughs of music because he's nothing to prove I M O ?

I shouldn't have comparred him to Alice in terms of success because they are totally different !

[danielleV]

Bowie is just a good marketing product.
no special voice, no good music , and he has bad face with age

[While Heaven Wept]

and he has bad face with age[/color]

You really have nothing useful to say

[patrick]

I think there are several people amongst Alice fans that like Bowie as well, including me..
whereas Alice has stuck to his character most of the time (and returned to it after sideways like Dada or Flush the fashion to name a few), but had so many different styles that he attracted different fans as well :you can hardly compare Diamond Dogs to lets say Young Americans..
could that be a basis for a bigger fanbase?

[patrick]

hm : correction : but had so many... should be : bowie had so many..

[mestreech]

Bowie is just a good marketing product.
no special voice, no good music , and he has bad face with age

Sorry, this is a stupid remark. I love Alice but I do think he's really not good looking at all.
And yes this only my personal opinion.

[andyrushworth]

I must say I agree with Bowie being a savvy buisness ,but without a good product he would have not lasted through the 70s let alone till now !

I'd have to say that while I'm a fan of AC it doesn't come close to my admiration of Bowie ,I've seen AC twice ,seen Bowie over twenty times sooo I'd be a fool to say anything else BUT I do agree with the idea that AC was the first real shock rocker to make it into the main stream and would definitely be the driving force behind Bowie's glam period ,to try and out outrage the Coop ?

But I M O that the only parallel between the two ?

[A_MichaelUK]

>But I M O that the only parallel between the two ?

This page at http://www.alicecooperpics.co.uk/Sickth ... -bowie.php is worth looking at for anyone interested.

[andyrushworth]

Ziggy was a theatrical show without props probably more in line with say Iggy Pop ? as for sexual ambiguity I think Bowie has always flaunted this ! Diamond Dogs changed into a soul show because Bowie basically got bored two thirds through ?
Personally I was into Alice before Bowie ! when Bowie first appeared I pretty much thought he was a sick ,but I was young and before long I realised for me to be thinking this meant Bowie had shocked me more than Alice !
I did go off Alice for a while but have reaquainted myself recently and bought Dada which I think is a wonderful album !

[Mr. Skull]

Bowie/Ronson were on the same level as Alice Cooper IMHO, Bowie without Ronson not quite...

[patrick]

Thanks Andy for that very interesting link.
I wasn't aware about them being rivals, at least in the press..
(it's nothing like the beatles-stones rivalry !)
Alice was hard rock'nroll, Bowie ...something else..
but still, great artists both of them imo.

[A_MichaelUK]

>I wasn't aware about them being rivals, at least in the press..

It was kind of exaggerated.

[andyrushworth]

A bit of interesting trivia about Bowie ,apparently Christopher Lee was gonna be on Diamond Dogs [assumedly reading Future Legend ? ] but thought he was going to do a duet with Bowie anyway the plan got scrapped , had it happened it would have been similar to Vincent Price's spoken intro to Welcome To My Nightmare ? and would have predated it by 12 months ?

This isn't meant as a Bowie beats Alice because in my book both DDs and WTMN are pure class and also vitally important for both acts Bowie's first album without the Spiders and and Alice's first without BDBs ,there are quite a lot of similarities between Bowie and Alice !

I like to think of it as sharing ideas ,and certainly not rivalry at least in Alice's case ! though Bowie was certainly a Magpie throughout ,but a very clever one !

Bowie's greatest skill is in bringing lesser known mmusic to the masses ? I think an album like Low said to be Bowies Ground breaking album is only an amalgamation of Bowie's interests at the time i.e Kraftwerk ,Tangerine Dream and NEU ! mixed and played by a basically black funky band can't fail ,but why didn't someone else do it ?

If Alice did indeed feel Bowie stole ideas ? then how must Bowie have felt about the likes of Gary Numan ,Bauhaus and Japan also didn't David Geffen try to create an American Bowie with Jobriath ? [not easy as Geffen found out ] .

[A_MichaelUK]

>have felt about the likes of Gary Numan

Just as pieces of trivia, the first show he ever saw (so I understand) was the "Welcome To My Nightmare" show at Wembley (and many have commented on Numan's influence on "Clone's (We're All)") and also, at the premiere of "The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King", in London, Numan did a double - take when Alice walked into the room and at one point it seemed like Numan didn't want to look away. Alice wanted to meet him but it was too manic a scene. I tried to introduce them to each other at Knebworth in 2010 but again, it was too much hassle.

[recoop]

Rr Bowie/Cooper rivalry etc...there used to be a youtube clip of flo and eddie interviewing Bowie...they discussed something along lines of the characters of Alice and Bowie had to be separated out...I can't find the clip after a quick look on youtube but for those who want to persevere its probably somewhere in the ether...Bowie seemed to accept he and Alice were in some ways operating in a similar fashion..I have always liked both and indeed really liked the album David Live (would like a video of it sometime if ever released)...think a lot more people cited Bowie as an influence partly as he figured more in the charts/media throughout early to mid eighties...both brilliant and worth copying!

[SickThings]

Rr Bowie/Cooper rivalry etc...there used to be a youtube clip of flo and eddie interviewing Bowie...they discussed something along lines of the characters of Alice and Bowie had to be separated out...

It's here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLch76J7464

Hunter

[While Heaven Wept]

I remember reading Gary Numan's autobiography (very good read by the way) and Alice's influence was acknowledged.

I do like alot of Bowie's work, however I find him to be somewhat cynical of Alice's impact from what i've read.

More so, I find institutions such as the BBC really do re-write history when it comes to describing the early years of glam and heavy rock. A recent documentary decided to totally disregard the impact of Gary Glitter. Regardless of what he has done since and his personal misdemeanors, I find it unnecessary to pretend the guy never existed.

[A_MichaelUK]

>More so, I find institutions such as the BBC really do re-write history when it comes to describing the early years of glam and heavy rock.

As was discussed in a previous thread, the programme - maker is separate from the broadcaster with most of those kind of documentaries.