Bowie PDF Book from JFK247

As far as Tonight was concerned, Bowie’s sense of
risk, of the random, had ebbed away. Yet when it
came to a new medium, the music video, David was
energised, fired up that there was still much to learn.
After seeing the work of Julien Temple – whom he’d
searched out at a preview screening of the director’s
Sex Pistols documentary The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll
Swindle back in 1980 – Bowie had done as
consummate a job of charming and enthusing the
director as he had with Nile Rodgers on Let’s
Dance. He opened up to him, talked about his
philosophy: ‘There is a real side of him which isn’t
confident. And then there is the dazzling super-star,’
says the director. ‘He can be quite a normal guy at
times, with this amazing ability to transform into a
glittering star. The charisma is not always there.’
It was this nervous, self-critical Bowie, the ‘nerdy
fan’ persona that he displayed to Temple, who would
be immortalised in the video Jazzin’ for Blue Jean.
Temple had played with the idea of two personae on
some of his previous long-form videos, but David
took the self-mockery further, splitting David
Jones/Bowie into two characters. In the twenty-oneminute
film, Bowie plays the geeky Vic – an artless
cockney with an incessant, hopeless sales patter –
who is attempting to impress the glacial Eve Ferret
by taking her to meet rock star Screaming Lord
Byron, David’s other persona – a New Romantic
concoction of silk and slap, haughty and
unreachable, but helpless and isolated behind his
painted sneer. Vic’s efforts come to naught, and
when Eve Ferret disappears with Screaming Lord