1965–1974 ➤ A dozen turning points in
David Bowie’s career — but where else might they have led?
Posted on January 8, 2012
Bowie 1969: Beckenham Arts Lab at the Three Tuns pub. Photographed by Ray Stevenson
◼ WE’RE CELEBRATING David Bowie’s 65th birthday by looking back to the earliest expressions of the prodigious genius that shaped the behaviour and ambitions of the New Romantics generation. We’ve discussed elsewhere the Bowie bequest to the many teen generations he has influenced. But what if his own teen trajectory had been different?
Here let’s wonder aloud how else might the talents of the young David Jones have developed? Today we can find whole chapters of his formative experiments on video online, from mime artist and music-hall hoofer, to actor and fin-de-siècle soothsayer. In the dozen springboard moments captured in the videos here, Bowie is aged between 18 and 27. At any moment the fickle finger of fate could as easily have pointed his career in any number of other directions…
1965 — MANISH BOYS
1966 — LOWER THIRD
1967 — RUBBER BAND
1967 — THE IMAGE
Click on picture to run 1967 video of Bowie’s first acting role in Michael Armstrong’s horror short, The Image
1967 — SELL ME A COAT
1968 — WITH LINDSAY KEMP
1968 — WHEN I’M FIVE
1970 — SPACE ODDITY
1970 — WAITING FOR THE MAN
1971 — ARNOLD CORNS
1972 — STARMAN LIVE (2016 edit)
➢➢ Shapers of the 80s ➣➣ 