David Bowie Changes: His Life in Pictures 1947 - 2016

by Chris Welch

David Bowie made a huge impact on popular music and culture, and his recent death stunned and saddened fans everywhere. Featuring new photos and additional text, this updated edition of David Bowie Changes showcases the best images of the chameleon-like performer, from his humble beginnings as Davy Jones to global domination as a musical legend, fashion icon, and constantly evolving superstar. Poignant photos and a newly written chapter capture the shocking news of his death in January 2016, and the impact it had around the world. Included as part of this visual celebration of his life are both famous and little-known images from some of the best contemporary photographers, including Terry O’Neill, Gijsbert Hanekroot, and Mick Rock, alongside commentary by award-winning journalist and author Chris Welch.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Debra Komar · Rating 5 out of 5]

The text is forgettable - full of typos, omissions and convoluted sentences - but the photos are absolutely stunning. Many are classics we've seen many times but there are some rare photos here that make the book worthwhile. It definitely focuses more on the early part of his career but there are interesting shots throughout. A must for fans.

[Alma Sofia Söderquist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Härliga bilder, sämre text.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Happy birthday to the Thin White Duke. I flipped through this book tonight and listened to Ziggy Stardust and remembered just how strange and beautiful a being he was. My favorite is Labyrinth Bowie, closely followed by The Man Who Fell To Earth Bowie.

"I smiled sadly for a love I could not obey.."

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

The pictures were beautiful. Incredible. Absolutely fantastic.
The information was full of typos and often blatantly wrong.
The two biggest pieces of misinformation I caught were pretty significant. The author states that David Bowie's album The Man Who Fell to Earth didn't sell well and prompted him to begin work on Hunky Dory, his next album. That would be fine - except The Man Who Fell to Earth is a film that Bowie starred in a few years after his The Man Who Sold the World album was released. To a small-time fan, this may seem like an easy-to-make mistake, but it's a fairly significant one because you should be able to remember the album names of the rock star you're writing a book about. And an editor should have picked up the inconsistency. The next mistake was that the author stated that the musical Lazarus featured 18 brand-new David Bowie songs. WRONG. The musical has several new recordings of old Bowie songs for the stage and 3 brand new Bowie songs, only released posthumously.
The fact that someone like me, a huge fan but by no means an expert on Bowie, caught such mistakes makes me concerned for the other mistakes present in this book.
To sum up: Pictures=good. Words=BAD.

[Erika_kartmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I will miss you, David Jones.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

5* for the photographs, 2* for the biography.

[Jaimie · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you’re going to subtitle a biographical book “a life in pictures,” you better make a concerted effort to design the narrative carefully around the pictorial illustrations. Unfortunately, Chris Welch’s efforts to meet his titular mandate were mediocre at best, and at no point did I feel like I was on a visual journey through the life of David Bowie… Bowie is an artist who rose to stardom with a carefully curated (and extremely well documented) visual image that made him into an icon as much, if not more so, than his music did, so it should have been exceedingly simple to narrate his life alongside a selection of photographs showing his life’s personas. While the book does contain some lovely photographs throughout, Welch’s accompanying text is lack lustre and rarely pairs well with the visual story - and forget about any sort of concerted effort towards a graphic design sensibility to blend the two storytelling mediums. The photographs appear haphazardly throughout the chapters, contain little in terms of captioning or credits, and are far from revelatory, so reading the book (in any sense of the form) quickly became a fool’s errand. The only reason that I’m going to keep the book in my collection (for now, at least) is because a few of the images are worth saving, since the print quality is decent, but if I find a better composed pictorial biography this one may get relegated to the scrapbook/printwall.

[Wilde Sky · Rating 4 out of 5]

A biography of a British singer / songwriter/ star.

The writing was clear and concise (except for two grammatical errors that I spotted) and many of the images were striking. The chronology could have done with being more linear.

Reading time around four hours.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

5* for the pictures. However the text was in 1996 and the picture was from 1977. It was like this throughout. Embarresing and certaily didn't do justice to a great multitalented artist: the man was the Leonardo of our age.

[romney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent pictures, forgettable text.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 2013 edition displays and describes David Robert Jones (Bowie) and his enigmatic and ever-changing periods of music. From his transitions of hard rock bands, songwriter, glam rocker, to disco, and pop rock there's his ebb and flow to experiment. The book describes his constant pursuit of change of the listener's previous expectations. I loved seeing the photos alongside these descriptions showing his evolution from a young artist trying to find his stage identity to becoming more confident in who he naturally is/was.

* I say this in a posthumously fashion, I do wish they had created a new edition for the follow-up of the next couple years after 2013. It's only details up to his Reality album of 2003. Not only would it help fix some of the typos I found in the text, it could further talk about his career progression. Perhaps describing some of the songs that came out on his Blackstar 2016 album and of course when he passed.

[Simon Sweetman · Rating 3 out of 5]

a pretty basic summary of Bowie's career - up to Outside. Then it stops. Abruptly. Some cool photos, but.

[RB · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply beautiful. Full of stunning pictures of a wonderful man that sadly is no longer with us.