Bowie Style

For the first half of his career, David Bowie
regarded business matters as something that other
people did. As a teenage hopeful, he was too busy
waiting for his picture to appear in the papers to
read the small print in his contracts. Besides, as he
wasn’t earning much, 50% of nothing hardly
mattered.
When the cash began to roll in during the early
Seventies, Bowie was living the life of a pampered
superstar and profligacy prevailed. One day, late in
1974, he woke up in his hotel room and realised the
party he’d been subsidising for the past three years
was over. But the hangover, in terms of legal battles
and financial follies, had several years yet to run. In
the midst of his 1976 Station To Station tour, he
announced to Melody Maker’s Chris Charlesworth
that he was broke, an exaggeration perhaps but then
David was never one to let the whole truth get in the
way of a spectacular quote.
Chicago, October 1972. Tony Defries once said of Bowie:
“He always looks like a refugee unless he’s been properly
dressed and put together for the day.”
By the early Eighties, Bowie had extricated himself
from most of his obligations to MainMan and began
to invest in art and antiques. In 1997 he raised
further capital by selling the sound and publishing
rights to his catalogue via a bond scheme. This
enabled him to buy out DeFries completely; Bowie
now controls his master-tapes outright. He has
houses in several corners of the world and a wife