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David Bowie
Five Bowie personas that caused a stir...
 THE '60s MOD BOD
Bedecked with chunky sideburns and ash-blond locks, urchin-faced early Bowie blended into the crowd - probably for the one and only time in his life. Looking like a chubby Brian Jones, he was all mod style and cockney charm. His first album, titled simply 'David Bowie - The Album', did next to no business when it was released in 1967. Still a classic for die-hard fans, his work from this time includes rare gems such as 'The Laughing Gnome' - Bowie's 'hillarious' attempt at novelty rock -Ìýnot to mention 'Please, Mr Gravedigger', a very odd rant about, erm, a Lambeth gravedigger "digging little holes for the dead and the maimed". Just the stuff that pop was made for!
Sexual persuasion: definitely heterosexual.
  HELLO, SPACEBOY!
As the
'60s wound to a close, Bowie was
regarded as an artist who had released many records for many labels without success, but all that changed when he unleashed his new space-age punk look to a waiting world. In the autumn of 1969 he released 'Space Oddity' to coincide with the American moon launch. Major Tom captured the imagination as the sad and lonely astronaut who decides to stay in space rather than return to earth, but would you believe it took six years and 63 days to eventually reach the No. 1 spot! And another bizarre fact: David also recorded a version in Italian titled 'Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Solo' - which literally means 'Lonely Boy, Lonely Girl'. Erm, OK...
Sexual persuasion: verging on the androgynous.
  GETTIN' ZIGGY WITH IT
With his bright orange mullet-gone-wrong, open-chested all-in-one stretch fabric suits and super-psychadelic make-up, Mr Jones's new incarnation was an ulikely sex symbol for screaming teens and grown men alike. Bursting with ass-kicking attitude and seething sauciness, Ziggy was the apocalyptic rock god whose meteoric rise and disastrous fall from grace was a metaphor for the end of the world. Heavy, man! And if David were to meet his alter-ego now, he says: "I think that [Ziggy] would probably be fairly shocked that, one, I was still alive and that, two, I seem to have regained some sense of rationality about life and existence." Quite! Sexual persuasion: Looking more like a lady by the minute.
  THIN WHITE DUKE
After killing off Ziggy, the Brixton boy went on to reinvent himself yet again as a pale-faced pixie of extreme elegance (and we're not talking about that look as the Goblin King Jareth in Labyrinth). Bowie's elfin looks were enhanced with pointy collars, sculpted shirts and over-chiselled cheekbones to die for, darling. A prolific time for Dave, as he released the Philly soul-tinged 'Young Americans' in 1975 - containing the John Lennon co-written 'Fame' - 'Station To Station' in 1976 and 'Heroes' in 1977. Unfortunately the drugs were also beginning to take hold, and coke was it for Mr B. Sexual persuasion: A more sedate - and definitely male - look.
 
THE EXPERIMENTAL PHASE
OK, none of us could
ever envisage that the coolest of cats would become a web geek, but
Bowie embraced the world wide web with the eagerness of a spotty
schoolboy. So much so, that in 1998 he launched the first
artist-created Internet service provider, Bowienet. He also started
to branch out into the industrial noise-rock and dance music with
1997's 'Earthling' and with that hard-edged sound he adopted a, quite
frankly, raunchy rock look complete with dodgy dangly earing and
softly permed hair. Oi Bowie, no!
Sexual persuasion: Macho. More David Lee Roth than David Bowie!
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