David Bowie The Most Fascinating Facts ... Anywhere

David Bowie found the melody for “Move On” by playing a tape backwards. He accidentally put a reel-to-reel tape on the wrong way and liked what he heard. So he tried reversing several more tapes. One was “All the Young Dudes”. That backwards tape became the musical basis of “Move On” on Lodger.

When Bowie recorded *“Heroes”*, some of the songs didn't exist yet. The musicians arrived in Berlin with chord changes and rhythm ideas — but no titles, melodies or lyrics. The backing track for “Beauty and the Beast” was built first. The vocal came later. They weren't recording finished songs. They were discovering them in the studio.

Fascinating fact: David Bowie's "Fame" began almost by accident — while jamming with John Lennon and guitarist Carlos Alomar, Lennon didn't know the riff's original song, so he just sang gibberish over it. Bowie thought it sounded like "fame," and built the entire song from there. It became Bowie's first-ever US #1, and the two had become close friends after meeting less than a year earlier at a party thrown by Elizabeth Taylor. 🎤🎸 I post stuff like this most days — follow if you're into it.

When the BBC used David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” during its coverage of the Apollo 11 Moon landing in July 1969, someone evidently noticed the problem: Major Tom gets stranded in space. The BBC stopped playing the song until Apollo 11’s astronauts had safely returned to Earth. Bowie later said it was “not a pleasant thing” to juxtapose with a Moon landing. Quite a soundtrack.

Before David Bowie became a rock star, he studied mime with Lindsay Kemp and formed his own mime troupe, Feathers, in 1969. He also performed with Kemp’s company in *Pierrot in Turquoise*. Bowie later said the experience taught him that “theatre was a very important part of rock”.

The cover of David Bowie’s *Space Oddity* album uses a photograph of Bowie over an optical design by Victor Vasarely, the Hungarian-French pioneer of Op Art. The V&A notes that Vasarely’s futuristic geometric design fitted the album’s space theme — making one of Bowie’s earliest album covers a direct meeting of pop music and contemporary art.

David Bowie wrote “Kooks” for his newborn son Duncan in May 1971. Remarkably, the BBC notes that Bowie performed the song publicly just **two days after writing it**. The performance survives in the BBC archive and is one of the earliest versions of the song.

As we all know, David Bowie wasn't originally David Bowie. He was born David Robert Jones and initially performed as Davie Jones. In 1965 he changed his stage name to Bowie to avoid confusion with Davy Jones of the Monkees. The name came from the Bowie knife — not, as is sometimes claimed, from Jim Bowie himself.

David Bowie’s archive contains **hundreds of boxes of press cuttings** covering his career, from more than 50 countries. The V&A says they form one of the largest sections of the archive, alongside project files for albums, tours, television appearances and films.

Around 1974–75, David Bowie wrote a synopsis for a proposed television film called *The Catastrophy Cabinet*. It was never realised. The handwritten synopsis survives in Bowie’s archive and is now held by the V&A, alongside other unrealised projects.

Among David Bowie’s photographs in the V&A archive is an image of an advertising poster reading “Use Eno’s Fruit Salt”. The museum suggests Bowie may have photographed it to share with Brian Eno, his longtime collaborator. Even Bowie’s casual photographs can now be found inside his 90,000-item professional archive.

David Bowie’s archive contains his advance copy of The Velvet Underground’s 1967 “I’m Waiting for the Man”. It is one of the personal items preserved by the V&A alongside Bowie’s instruments, lyrics, costumes and photographs.

David Bowie kept a stopwatch specifically for songwriting. It is now in the V&A’s David Bowie Archive. The museum says he used it as part of his working process — one of the more revealing objects in an archive containing more than 90,000 items.

David Bowie began seriously building his own professional archive in the 1990s. The V&A says he personally decided what was included — and even wrote “archive” on folders. The collection now contains more than 90,000 items, including costumes, instruments, lyrics, photographs and working notes.

David Bowie began seriously building his own professional archive in the 1990s. The V&A says he personally decided what was included — and even wrote “archive” on folders. The collection now contains more than 80,000 items, including costumes, instruments, lyrics, photographs and working notes.

One of the instruments in David Bowie’s archive is an EMS Synthi AKS — a small suitcase-style synthesizer associated with some of his most experimental 1970s work. The V&A records it as having been used by both Brian Eno and Bowie during the making of *Low*, *Heroes* and *Lodger*.

David Bowie wasn't merely collecting art. In 1994 he joined the editorial board of *Modern Painters* magazine and interviewed artists including Balthus, Roy Lichtenstein, Jeff Koons, Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst. His involvement became a substantial part of his work outside music.

David Bowie designed the poster magazine for his 1976 Isolar tour himself. It wasn't simply promotional photography commissioned from a designer: the V&A catalogue identifies the *Isolar* poster magazine as “designed by David Bowie”. It survives in the museum's collection today.

David Bowie was already a substantial chart presence in West Germany before his Berlin albums. In 1977, “Sound and Vision” reached No. 6 on the German singles chart. Yet “Heroes” itself did not chart there on its original release — it first entered the German chart after Bowie’s death in 2016.

David Bowie recorded “Heroes” in three versions: English, German and French. The German version, “Helden”, wasn’t a translation made later — Bowie recorded it at Hansa Studios in West Berlin in 1977, with Antonia Maass helping him with the German pronunciation. The song became closely identified with Berlin and was later performed in German on German television.

David Bowie’s version of *Peter and the Wolf* wasn’t recorded all at once. The Philadelphia Orchestra recorded Prokofiev’s music with Eugene Ormandy in Philadelphia in 1975. Bowie added his narration in New York in December 1977, during his Berlin period. RCA Red Seal released the result in 1978 — an unlikely Bowie/Ormandy collaboration.

David Bowie’s 1982 *Baal* EP was recorded at Hansa Studios in Berlin — the same studio where Bowie had made his Berlin trilogy. The five songs came from Bertolt Brecht’s play, with new music by Dominic Muldowney, except “The Drowned Girl”, which retained Kurt Weill’s music. It was Bowie’s final new release for RCA.

David Bowie played his first concerts outside Britain in France — three nights in Paris between 31 December 1965 and 2 January 1966. He was performing with the Lower Third at the Golf-Drouot and the Bus Palladium, just months after permanently adopting the name David Bowie.

A tiny continuity error in The Man Who Fell to Earth: David Bowie’s Thomas Newton has a centre parting in one shot, then a side parting in the next. It’s particularly noticeable because his orange hairstyle was meticulously maintained throughout filming — the hairdresser said Nicolas Roeg insisted it was kept perfectly in place.

While filming Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence in 1982, David Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto reportedly spent time together almost every evening for a month. Sakamoto later recalled Bowie as “straightforward” and “nice”. Sakamoto also said he never asked Bowie for help with the film’s music because Bowie was so focused on acting.

David Bowie played Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Scorsese later recalled that when Bowie appeared on set in Pilate’s costume, he looked like “the ancient world” had suddenly come alive. Bowie is only on screen briefly, but Scorsese said he was his first and only choice for Pilate.

David Bowie and Marc Bolan first met in 1964, when both were still teenagers and were represented by the same manager, Les Conn. Bowie later recalled that Conn put them to work whitewashing his office. They became friends, rivals and occasional collaborators — and remained close enough that Bowie was godfather to Bolan’s son, Rolan.

When David Bowie finally met Andy Warhol at the Factory on 14 September 1971, he had already written a song about him. Bowie brought Warhol a pre-release copy of Hunky Dory, inscribed “To Andy with respect – Bowie”. The encounter was filmed, and Bowie even performed a mime for the camera. Warhol’s Factory diary preserves the meeting.

David Bowie & Egon Schiele
Bowie was approached twice to play painter Egon Schiele in unmade biopics, circa 1977 and 1979 — neither ever got made. Schiele's contorted self-portraits directly shaped the Lodger album cover. The bandaged hand on Lodger's cover wasn't styling at all — Bowie genuinely burned it in a coffee spill on the first morning of the shoot. 🎨🎹

Fascinating fact: David Bowie's "Heroes" cover pose wasn't inspired by Egon Schiele — it was Erich Heckel's 1917 expressionist painting "Roquairol," which Bowie encountered at Berlin's Brücke Museum. The same painting inspired Iggy Pop's The Idiot cover too, shot the same year. Schiele's influence belongs to a different Bowie album entirely — Lodger. 🎨🎹

Mick Ronson
After being dropped by Bowie and two flopped solo albums, Ronson's career was unexpectedly revived when he bumped into Bob Dylan on a New York street and was invited straight onto his legendary Rolling Thunder Revue. Years later, he produced Morrissey's Your Arsenal — a genuinely odd pairing, given Ronson was a devout Mormon a full generation older than Morrissey. He died of liver cancer just a year after its release. 🎸🎻

David Sylvian & David Bowie
As teenagers, Sylvian, Mick Karn and Steve Jansen all attended Bowie's Ziggy Stardust show at Earls Court in May 1973. The band's own name, Japan, is widely believed to come directly from a line in "Ziggy Stardust" itself — "like some cat from Japan." That is from Steve Jansen's own recollection. # 🎹🕺

David Bowie & Morrissey
As a 13-year-old, Morrissey waited outside a 1972 Ziggy Stardust show with a note for his hero. Two decades later, Bowie unexpectedly joined him on stage in 1991 for a cover of T. Rex's "Cosmic Dancer." Three years on, Morrissey agreed to support Bowie's Outside Tour — but quit after just nine dates, citing illness, before touring Japan solo weeks later. Bowie later declined two separate chances to reconcile and collaborate with him. 🎤💔

David Bowie & Trent Reznor
By 1995, Nine Inch Nails were technically a bigger concert draw than Bowie — an awkward problem for a co-headlining tour. Reznor's solution: both bands would share the stage together, morphing from NIN's set straight into Bowie's, with no teardown or gap between them. Reznor later admitted he'd landed the gig by leaving "every possible breadcrumb of flattery" toward Bowie in interviews for years beforehand. 🎸🖤

David Bowie & Brian Eno
For 1. Outside, Bowie typed articles on outsider art into a computer program that rearranged them into random, disjointed phrases — his source for the album's disorienting lyrics. Eno took a parallel approach, handing musicians flashcards assigning them specific roles to improvise. 🎹🎲

David Bowie
Bowie wrote "Let's Dance" on a 12-string acoustic guitar strung with only six strings. Producer Nile Rodgers, woken from sleep to hear it, immediately told him: "Darling, I think this is a hit." He then completely transformed Bowie's basic folk chords into the funk-rock track we know, after Bowie simply told him, "I want you to make hits." 🎸💤

David Bowie
Guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, then completely unknown, was hired for "Let's Dance" after Bowie saw him play at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival and was, in his own words, "completely floored." Vaughan recorded his entire guitar part in a single day at New York's Power Station — yet was never invited to appear in the videos, or to join Bowie's subsequent Serious Moonlight Tour. 🎸🎷

David Bowie
"Life on Mars?" exists purely out of spite — Bowie wrote it as a deliberate answer to Frank Sinatra's "My Way," after his own English lyrics to that same French melody were rejected in favour of Sinatra's. "That really made me angry for so long," he later admitted, "eventually I thought, I can write something as big as that." Rick Wakeman's piano part was recorded on the very same piano The Beatles used for "Hey Jude." 🎹🎤

David Bowie
Listen closely to the end of "Life on Mars?" and you can hear a telephone ringing — a nearby bathroom phone picked up by Rick Wakeman's piano microphones mid-take. Producer Ken Scott wanted it removed; Bowie refused: "No, leave it — I like it." 📞🎹

David Bowie
The Ziggy Stardust haircut was styled by Suzi Fussey, girlfriend of guitarist Mick Ronson — coloured Schwarzkopf Red Hot Red, costing just £2. It was directly inspired by a model dressed by Kansai Yamamoto in a 1971 issue of Honey Magazine. 💇‍♂️🎸

David Bowie
Only "Heroes" was recorded entirely in Berlin, despite giving its name to the whole Berlin Trilogy — Low was mostly recorded in France, and Lodger in Switzerland and New York. Bowie later called the trilogy's sound his own "DNA." 🎹🇩🇪

David Bowie
In 2017, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was formally selected for preservation in the US National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress, deemed "culturally, historically, or artistically significant." Between the album's release and its follow-up, the band played over 170 live shows across three continents. 🎸🏛️

David Bowie
Bowie has a real spider species named after him — Heteropoda davidbowie, a huntsman spider discovered in Malaysia in 2009, named partly for its Ziggy-esque facial markings and partly as a nod to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. 🕷️⭐

David Bowie & Queen
"Under Pressure" almost didn't happen — Bowie only came to the studio to sing backing vocals on a different Queen song, "Cool Cat," which he later had wiped entirely. What he improvised instead, in one spontaneous jam session, became one of the greatest duets ever recorded. 🎸🎤

David Bowie
"The Jean Genie" is a pun on French novelist Jean Genet — Bowie called it "a clumsy pun upon Jean Genet" in his own 2005 book, Moonage Daydream. The song's lyric "he can't drive his module" would later give Simple Minds their name. 🎸📖

David Bowie
Bowie's final release for RCA wasn't a rock record at all — it was Baal, an EP of Bertolt Brecht songs recorded at Hansa Studios in Berlin. Critic Chris O'Leary called it "a kiss-off to a label Bowie had grown to hate," and, after Scary Monsters, arguably his best record of the decade. 🎭🇩🇪

David Bowie
Bowie modelled his Hunky Dory album cover on photos of Marlene Dietrich — then years later took a role in Just a Gigolo specifically to finally work with her. The film flopped, and the two never actually shared a scene in person; their footage was shot separately and edited together. He later called it "my 32 Elvis Presley movies rolled into one." 🎬🎭

David Bowie
Bowie planned an entire stage musical based on George Orwell's 1984, writing up to 20 songs for it. Orwell's widow, Sonia, flatly refused the rights. Denied, he salvaged the material into a different album entirely: Diamond Dogs. 📖🎸

David Bowie & Kraftwerk
During Bowie's Isolar Tour, Kraftwerk's music played before he took the stage — a tribute both ways. Florian Schneider was once spotted watching from the audience through a hole in the curtain rather than backstage, wanting to "see the show from the audience for once." Bowie later named "V-2 Schneider" after him. 🎹🇩🇪

David Bowie
Bowie was genuinely huge in Italy — Ziggy Stardust alone sold around 285,000 copies there, and he played full stadium tours across Florence, Milan, Rome and Turin. Italian artists embraced him too: Bluvertigo covered "Always Crashing in the Same Car," Enrico Ruggeri covered "The Jean Genie." 🇮🇹🎸

David Bowie & Chris Hadfield
Astronaut Chris Hadfield needed Bowie's actual permission to post his "Space Oddity" cover, filmed floating on the International Space Station — granted for one year only. When the licence expired, Hadfield pulled it down exactly as agreed, after 22 million views. 🚀🎸