David Bowie

Bowie married Mary Angela Barnett in 1970 and had a son, Duncan, who eventually became a film director. The couple divorced in 1980.

Several years later, he married Somali-American model Iman in a private ceremony in Lausanne in 1992. This marriage produced a daughter.

He breathed his last on 10 January 2016, two days after his 69th birthday after suffering from cancer for several months.

He was born as David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947 in Brixton, London, England, to Margaret Mary "Peggy" and Haywood Stenton "John" Jones. His mother worked as a waitress while his father was a promotions officer for the children's charity Barnardo's.

He was a creative child who developed an early interest in music. He listened to songs of artists like Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, the Platters, Fats Domino, Elvis Presley and Little Richard. He was greatly influenced by Elvis Presley.

After attending Burnt Ash Junior School, he moved on to Bromley Technical High School. As a teenager he started playing multiple instruments like ukulele, tea-chest bass, and piano, and also began performing at the local Wolf Cub group. At school he studied art, music and design, including layout and typesetting.

He formed his first band at the age of 15 and performed at local youth gatherings and weddings. He changed his band mates quite frequently over the next few years as he struggled to get a footing in the competitive music industry.

During the mid-1960s, he changed his name to David Bowie in order to avoid confusion with Davy Jones of the Monkees. He released his eponymous debut album in 1967 which proved to be a flop.

Later in 1967, he met dancer Lindsay Kemp and enrolled in his dance class at the London Dance Centre. There he also studied dramatic arts under Kemp, from avant-garde theatre and mime to commedia dell'arte.

David Bowie received his first breakthrough in 1969 when he released the single ‘Space Oddity’. The song, which is about the launch of Major Tom, a fictional astronaut, reached the top five in the UK. It became a huge success and gave Bowie some much needed exposure in the music industry. The song was later released in the United States and climbed to No. 15 on the charts.

In 1972, he released ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’ in collaboration with the Spiders from Mars—Ronson, Bolder and Woodmansey. Based on the story of a fictional rock star named Ziggy Stardust, the album peaked at No. 5 in the UK and No. 75 in the United States on the Billboard Music Charts. It became very popular due to its glam rock influences and themes of sexual exploration and social commentary, and catapulted Bowie to superstardom.

His best known album was ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’ which is loosely based on a story of a fictional rock star named Ziggy Stardust. The album made Bowie a superstar and was eventually certified platinum and gold in the UK and US respectively. It has been consistently considered one of the greatest albums of all time, with ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine ranking it the 35th greatest ever.