Guy Peellaert’s sci-fi cover for Bowie’s Diamond Dogs album, 1974... That year Elle magazine named the Belgian pop-artist “the Michelangelo of Pop”
➢ Nov 27 Update at davidbowie.com: Following news reports in today’s UK press, such as The Observer, here is the official statement from his spokesman…
“ Neither the David Bowie Organization, nor its co-publishers EMI Music and Chrysalis, has issued a license for this performance at the O2. There are no negotiations pending for a long-running musical featuring the music of Mr Bowie ”
❏ Nov 29 update: Julian Stockton at The Outside Organisation confirmed today: “That statement put out by me at the weekend still stands, there has been no change.” When I suggested that his phrase “long-running” doesn’t actually rule out a one-off show, and asked “Are negotiations pending for a one-off musical?” he replied: “To the best of my knowledge no there are not.”
➢ Dec 1 update: A Guardian blog today surmises that Bowie made “the right artistic call” over this jukebox musical, yet no correction to last Sunday’s report has been published or explanation of whether the reporter checked the facts with Bowie’s management.
SORRY, FANS, THIS HEROES SHOW IS A DEAD DUCK
❏ Despite the official denials expressed above, the website for Heroes the Musical is still announcing a performance on Sunday March 11, 2012… and its Facebook page says tickets go on sale 9am January 5. Meanwhile an email from Shapersofthe80s seeking clarification from the producers remains unanswered.
➢ Original report Sunday Nov 27 by Vanessa Thorpe in The Observer newspaper and still online without retraction Monday Nov 28:
“ PLANS HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED this weekend for the first full-scale musical based on the songs of the totemic British performer David Bowie. A futuristic fantasy called Heroes: The Musical will tell the story of Major Tom, as well as the starman and a “young dude” called David and will have its world premiere in March at the IndigO2, the nightclub venue with a flexible capacity of 2,400 inside London’s former Millennium Dome.
Bowie, who is one of Britain’s most successful songwriters, rarely gives permission for his songs to be used and has never allowed them to be used in this way before. Deep Singh, a former screenwriter who wrote the musical, believes that Bowie gave consent because he emphasised that his story was set in the future and aimed to show the timeless relevance of Bowie’s lyrics.
The villains of Singh’s story are the patrolling Diamond Dogs and the “ruthless Smart Simon” who has created, and now controls, a dystopian empire set in an indeterminate future… ”/ continued online
➢ A feast of Bowie-ana served in waffeur-thin slices
in Kevin Cann’s new book
➢ Discovered last week, a Bowie smile flashed to an amateur
cine camera in 1965
FRONT PAGE
❚ THERE ARE NO CLUES, just a screen full of letters and digits. If you can work out what the challenge is, then visit the special GCHQ website canyoucrackit.co.uk, submit your solution and you’ll be on your way to a job in government intelligence. GCHQ is the code-breaking department that works with MI5 and MI6 and is looking to hire about 35 people with expert code-breaking skills. Today they set a 10-day deadline when they launched the competition on Facebook and Twitter, and by midday had already received their first responses. Paradoxically, GCHQ says that anyone who is found to have illegally hacked the code will not be eligible!
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 