Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

at him at all, almost as if they’ve been gently
instructed not to. Bowie himself appears as if he’s
about to fall asleep standing up. He comes to just as
it’s time to (badly) lip-synch the vocals (even the
hand claps are off). Pete Doherty and Amy
Winehouse have never looked this wasted. Bowie’s
cheekbones are caving in like wet cardboard. His
yellow shirt and blue suit look two sizes too big.
When he sings, “Doing alright but you gotta get
smart,” he points to his brain. They should show it to
people in rehab. Three weeks later he appeared on
Cher’s post-Sonny and Cher variety show to sing a
medley. I don’t even know what to say about this one,
except it goes on for forty-five minutes and
encompasses every song that was ever written
between 1965 and 1975 except perhaps “Spiders
and Snakes” by Jim Stafford. Intent on making
Station to Station a hit, he would debut “Stay” on a
third show, the Dinah Shore show with Henry
Winkler, before the year was out. In England, Bowie
appeared via satellite from “beautiful downtown
Burbank” on the popular talk show Russell Harty
Plus. Harty, who affected a perpetual air of campy
suspicion, had interviewed Bowie in 1973 during the
apex of Ziggy Stardust’s popularity and takes pains
to remind Bowie that he might be out of touch with
England’s kids and their taste in pop. Bowie, with his
yellow-and-orange-streaked hair slicked back,
smokes thick Gitanes cigarettes, drinks Tree Top
apple juice from a glass and seems equally
unimpressed with the entire affair. Watching it now