Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

Introduction
T
he idea was not even mine. I had just visited with
my agent at the famous and now shuttered Cedar
Tavern on University Place, where painters and
composers and writers once ate and drank. We
discussed what my next book should be. I’d lived a
rock ’n’ roll life and written a lot about rock ’n’ roll in
my twenties, and by the time I was in my late
thirties, I wanted to understand what it all meant a
bit better. I needed the next project to really stand
for something. It was spring 2006 and I’d just
completed a very difficult biography on the Bay
Area punk trio Green Day. Spin magazine, where I
was a senior writer, fired me that March, after
almost nine years following the sale of the
publication and an attendant staff bloodbath. I’d
never had a career before rock journalism so I’d
never stood at a professional crossroad before.
In truth, I was not thinking about the next book as
much as leaving New York City, moving up to
southern Vermont, or maybe out to New Mexico,
and looking for work in an indie record store or a
shake shack. I suppose that my agent knew that
there was interest in a Bowie book. There’s always
interest in a Bowie book, which is why there are
three or four dozen of them, of varying levels of