In 1953 the family moved to the suburb of Bromley, where, two years later, Bowie progressed to Burnt Ash Junior School.

Upon listening to " Tutti Frutti ", Bowie would later say, " I had heard God ".

Dissatisfied with the King Bees and their repertoire of Howlin ' Wolf and Willie Dixon blues numbers, Bowie quit the band less than a month later to join the Manish Boys, another blues outfit, who incorporated folk and soul — " I used to dream of being their Mick Jagger ", Bowie was to recall.

Released six weeks later, his album debut, David Bowie, an amalgam of pop, psychedelia, and music hall, met the same fate.

The Arts Lab hosted a free festival in a local park, later immortalised by Bowie in his song " Memory of a Free Festival ".

Exploiting his androgynous appearance, the original cover of the UK version unveiled two months later would depict the singer wearing a dress: taking the garment with him, he wore it during interviews — to the approval of critics, including Rolling Stones John Mendelsohn who described him as " ravishing, almost disconcertingly reminiscent of Lauren Bacall "— and in the street, to mixed reaction including laughter and, in the case of one male pedestrian, producing a gun and telling Bowie to " kiss my ass ".

" His later Ziggy shows, which included songs from both Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, were ultra-theatrical affairs filled with shocking stage moments, such as Bowie stripping down to a sumo wrestling loincloth or simulating oral sex with Ronson's guitar.

He later commented that the accompanying live album, David Live, ought to have been titled " David Bowie Is Alive and Well and Living Only In Theory ".

Towards the end of the year, Bowie performed the song for Marc Bolan's television show Marc, and again two days later for Bing Crosby's televised Christmas special, when he joined Crosby in " Peace on Earth / Little Drummer Boy ", a version of " The Little Drummer Boy " with a new, contrapuntal verse.

Four days later, Bowie and Iman were married in Switzerland.

Onstage in Oslo, Norway, on 18 June, Bowie was hit in the eye with a lollipop thrown by a fan ; a week later he suffered chest pain while performing at the Hurricane Festival in Scheeßel, Germany.

They were later greeted by James Bowie and Antonio Menchaca, and taken to the home of Don Erasmo Seguin.

After the game, McLain smilingly denied that he had served up an easy pitch for Mantle to hit, however, he was later reprimanded by Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn.

On October 7, at 8: 09 a. m., Iran Brown, a 13-year-old boy, was shot — accounts vary between the lower body, stomach and chest — as he arrived at the Benjamin Tasker Middle School at 4901 Collington Road in Bowie, Maryland, in Prince George's County ( Brown's name was concealed from the public but was later revealed ).

Two years later the town of Bowie annexed the Levitt properties, and then re-incorporated the now-larger area as a city in 1963.

In December 1978 David Bowie appeared in the audience and later declared to NME that he " had seen the future of pop music.

This disc was later released separately as The Best of David Bowie 1980 / 1987 ( 2007 ).

* Was released in UK on Queen's Greatest Hits II ( which would later be included in The Platinum Collection ( 2000 and 2002 )) removing the second time David Bowie sings, " This is our last dance.

They were later joined by guitarist Rob Dean, and signed a recording contract with the German disco label Hansa-Ariola in 1977, becoming an alternative glam rock outfit in the mould of David Bowie, T. Rex, and The New York Dolls.

Twelve years later, he would return to working with Bowie, acting as musical director on the 1990 Sound + Vision Tour, while also playing guitar and singing.

Alter egos would later be used for entertainment value by glam-associated artists such as David Bowie ( as Ziggy Stardust and The Thin White Duke ) and KISS, and to exploit horror themes by shock rockers Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson.

For example David Bowie initially adopted a role as an alien Ziggy Stardust, and later as The Thin White Duke.

* " Girls " ( Tina Turner song ), co-written by David Bowie and later recorded by him

The show was hugely popular, catapulting him to stardom as he toured the UK over the course of the next six months and creating, as described by Buckley, a " cult of Bowie " that was " unique — its influence lasted longer and has been more creative than perhaps almost any other force within pop fandom.

The band's album debut, Tin Machine ( 1989 ), was initially popular, though its politicised lyrics did not find universal approval: Bowie described one song as " a simplistic, naive, radical, laying-it-down about the emergence of neo-Nazis "; in the view of biographer Christopher Sandford, " It took nerve to denounce drugs, fascism and TV [...] in terms that reached the literary level of a comic book.

Bowie in a 1972 interview while noting that other artists described as glam rock was doing different work said " I think glam rock is a lovely way to categorize me and it's even nicer to be one of the leaders of it ".

Bowie was shot in the hip ; after regaining his feet he drew a knife, described as a butcher knife, and charged his attacker, who hit Bowie over the head with his empty pistol, breaking the pistol and knocking Bowie to the ground.

Captain William Y. Lacey, who spent eight months living in the wilderness with Bowie, described him as a humble man who never used profanity or vulgarities.

By this time the ' Bowie knife ' was already being made in a variety of sizes, with the optimum blade length similar to " that of a carving knife " The blade design was described as:

His lyrics have been described as intensely personal and mystical, incorporating recurrent themes from his own personal mythos, and his songwriting and singing have been compared ( usually favourably ) to Syd Barrett and early Pink Floyd, referred by Ka-Spel, as being more a folk coincidence, not a direct influence ... Ka-Spel have mentioned so diverse influences and musical references as: Xenakis, Beatles, Otomo Yoshihide, Radiohead, Nurse With Wound, ( early ) David Bowie, Brainticket, Can, ( early ) The Residents, Magma, Ilicht, Es, Throbbing Gristle, etc.

" Bowie described the album as an effort " to produce some really dynamic, aggressive-sounding material.

In early drafts of the script, John Ryder had been described as skeletal in nature and so actors like David Bowie, Sting, Sam Shepard, Harry Dean Stanton, and Terence Stamp were mentioned.

Pop, speaking of Bowie, described the Krautrock-influenced " Nightclubbing " as " my comment on what it was like hanging out with him every night ".

Though author David Buckley has described the singer's previous record David Bowie ( Space Oddity ) as " the first Bowie album proper ", NME critics Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray have said of The Man Who Sold the World, " this is where the story really starts ".

He has described Cohen's song " Suzanne " as " the perfect lyric with the perfect melody " and Bowie as " so influential and the greatest solo artist of the 20th Century in any walk of art.

Ian Astbury described Specimen's unique hybrid of punk and glam as being " like a Death Bowie.

The title of the documentary was originally to be The Collector, after a comment that Bowie had made to interviewer Russell Harty the previous year, whereby he described himself as " a collector of accents ".

The final version of " 1984 " was faster and funkier than the medley and, as described by Bowie encyclopedist Nicholas Pegg ,"' an obvious single if there ever was one ".

Amos also featured her use of the clavinet on her 2004 recording " Not David Bowie ", released as part of her 2006 box set, A Piano: The Collection.

After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had UK number ones with the 1980 single " Ashes to Ashes ", its parent album Scary Monsters ( and Super Creeps ), and " Under Pressure ", a 1981 collaboration with Queen.

" I Pity the Fool " was no more successful than " Liza Jane ", and Bowie soon moved on again to join the Lower Third, a blues trio strongly influenced by The Who.

Declaring that he would exit the pop world " to study mime at Sadler's Wells ", Bowie nevertheless remained with the Lower Third.

Satirising life in a British prison, meanwhile, the Bowie-penned " Over the Wall We Go " became a 1967 single for Oscar ; another Bowie composition, " Silly Boy Blue ", was released by Billy Fury the following year.

Having established himself as a solo artist with " Space Oddity ", Bowie began to sense a lacking: " a full-time band for gigs and recording — people he could relate to personally ".

) Elsewhere, the album explored more serious themes, and found Bowie paying unusually direct homage to his influences with " Song for Bob Dylan ", " Andy Warhol ", and " Queen Bitch ", a Velvet Underground pastiche.

Described by Bowie as " Ziggy goes to America ", it contained songs he wrote while travelling to and across the United States during the earlier part of the Ziggy tour, which now continued to Japan to promote the new album.

Earning the distinction of being one of the first white artists to appear on the US variety show Soul Train, Bowie mimed " Fame ", as well as " Golden Years ", his November single, that it was offered to Elvis Presley to perform, but Presley declined it.

Bowie was quoted in Stockholm as saying that " Britain could benefit from a Fascist leader ", and was detained by customs on the Russian / Polish border for possessing Nazi paraphernalia.

After completing Low and " Heroes ", Bowie spent much of 1978 on the Isolar II world tour, bringing the music of the first two Berlin Trilogy albums to almost a million people during 70 concerts in 12 countries.

The final piece in what Bowie called his " triptych ", Lodger ( 1979 ), eschewed the minimalist, ambient nature of the other two, making a partial return to the drum-and guitar-based rock and pop of his pre-Berlin era.

The album bore the transatlantic top ten hit " Blue Jean ", itself the inspiration for a short film that won Bowie a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video, " Jazzin ' for Blue Jean ".

Tin Machine IIs arrival was marked by a widely publicised and ill-timed conflict over the cover art: after production had begun, the new record label, Victory, deemed the depiction of four ancient nude Kouroi statues, judged by Bowie to be " in exquisite taste ", " a show of wrong, obscene images ", requiring air-brushing and patching to render the figures sexless.

In October 2001, Bowie opened The Concert for New York City, a charity event to benefit the victims of the September 11 attacks, with a minimalist performance of Simon & Garfunkel's " America ", followed by a full band performance of " Heroes ".