Directed by Francis Whately, David Bowie: Finding Fame is a documentary film about the early years in the career of David Bowie from the time he would change his name to events and early moments of success that would kick-start an illustrious career. The third and final film in a trilogy of documentaries by Whatley, the film would feature rare and archival footage of Bowie in his early years trying to make it as a pop star while trying to find his own voice that would make him the beloved icon of music. The result is an engrossing and evocative film from Francis Whately about the early years of one of popular music’s most enduring artists.
The film chronicles the early years of the career of David Bowie from 1965 to 1971 having been in several failed bands and a solo career under his real surname in Jones where he would be called Davie Jones until another British singer with a similar name became a pop star before him. Through archival audio and TV interviews from Bowie as well as interviews from several colleagues and friends including music producers Tony Visconti and Mike Vernon, musicians Mick “Woody” Woodmansey, John Cambridge, John “Hutch” Hutchinson, Mark Plati, Gail Ann Dorsey, Carlos Alomar, Mike Garson, Earl Slick, and Rick Wakeman who all bring insight into Bowie’s music of those early years.
Along with interviews from other musicians who played in some of the early bands Bowie was in as well as those who knew him personally like Geoffrey MacKormick, George Underwood, and famed mime/choreographer Lindsay Kemp (whom the film is dedicated to) in one of his final interviews as well as Bowie’s cousin Kristina Amadeus and former girlfriends in Dana Gillespie and Hermione Farthingale. The film also touches upon Bowie’s early life in Brixton and Bromley that would shape a lot of the music he would create early on including a key moment where Amadeus enters the old Jones family home in Bromley as she would talk about Bowie’s parents and their troubled family life often due to histories of mental illness including Bowie’s half-brother Terry who would suffer from schizophrenia as he would inspire a few songs Bowie would create.
Francis Whately’s direction utilizes a lot of archival and rare audio including a widely-rare audio of a BBC audition Bowie did with one of the bands he was in the Lower Third as band members Phil Lancaster and Denis Taylor talk about the audition where the former reads a review of the audition. It’s one of the film’s comical moments where Lancaster looks at this old piece of paper that claims that Bowie as a singer is someone that lacks personality which amuses Lancaster who is aware that the BBC figures on that audition clearly missed the boat of what this young singer would become. Much of the interviews that Whately and cinematographers Louis Caulfield and Richard Numeroff would show are straightforward with Amadeus’ scene at the old Jones’ family home in Bromley being a major highlight as it must be a big surprise that the current owners of that home couldn’t believe they’re living in the childhood home of one of Britain’s great treasures.
Editor Ged Murphy would help Whately compile many archival footage including archival interviews from one of Bowie’s early managers Ken Pitt and music producer Gus Dudgeon from the early 1990s as well as interview footage from Mick Ronson from a related Bowie documentary that’s about Bowie’s collaboration with Ronson. The archival footage that includes remastered footage of the rarely-seen promotional film Love You Til’ Tuesday as well as footage of Bowie’s collaboration with Lindsay Kemp and some of Bowie’s early TV appearances. Sound re-recording mixer Greg Gettens would also compile some rare audio including an audio clip of Bowie’s performance at the Glastonbury Festival in 1971 where he played at dawn to an audience of a few hundred people that would include work-in-progress versions of songs he would later create in his 1972 breakthrough album Hunky Dory and then perform those songs 29 years to a massive audience at Glastonbury where he was the headliner in what some consider to be his most legendary performance.
Hermione Farthingale is among one of the most interesting individuals interviewed in the film as she was considered the first love of Bowie’s life as she revealed a lot about their relationship and collaboration as a multimedia trio known as Feathers with John Hutchinson. Even as she talked about their break-up and events afterwards as she wouldn’t see him during the time he would become famous until 2013 which was the last time they saw each other. The film also play into the many influences Bowie had at the time including the Velvet Underground where longtime collaborator Carlos Alomar reveal similarities to a song by the Velvet Underground with an early single by Bowie in The Laughing Gnome. Another music piece that is unveiled relates to the song The London Boys as it’s considered to be one of Bowie’s early gems as he would re-record it in 2000 for the unreleased Toy album as it features a rarely-seen clip of Bowie performing the song for 2000 BBC performance with the musicians he was playing at the time playing to the re-recording of the song in a studio.
David Bowie: Finding Fame is a sensational film from Francis Whately. It’s a film that explore Bowie trying to find himself in his attempts to be famous where he would get his first taste of success with Space Oddity and continuously search to stand out. The film is a rich documentary that serves as a fitting end to a trilogy of documentaries that explore the music and life of David Bowie told by the man himself as well as those who knew him. In the end, David Bowie: Finding Fame is an incredible film from Francis Whately.
Related: Cracked Actor - David Bowie: Five Years - David Bowie: The Last Five Years
© thevoid99 2019
Directed by Francis Whately, David Bowie: The Last Five Years is the follow-up to the 2014 BBC documentary David Bowie: Five Years about the final five years in the life of one of music’s most creative and revered icons. Told through rare footage and audio clips of Bowie as well as new interviews from many of his collaborators including the musicians that worked with him in the final years of his life. The film follows the events that led to his seclusion and then his unexpected return with 2013’s The Next Day as well as the creation of his final album Blackstar and the play Lazarus. The result is an engrossing yet heartfelt film about the final years of one of the greatest people who lived on the face of the Earth.
On January 10, 2016 just two days after his 69th birthday and the release of his final album Blackstar, the world received news that David Bowie has died as it was followed by grief and tributes. It was news that shocked everyone as no one knew the man was ill yet it proved how mysterious he was as a person and as an artist who had often refused to be defined by any category. The film is about the final five years of his life broken down into these five years but also with reflections of his life during his time as a musical icon with a prologue that begins in 2003 during the tour to promote his twenty-third studio album Reality as he got rid of the personas that he was known for and was being himself in a jovial way. It was during the European leg of the world tour in 2004 where things went wrong as a show in Prague, Czech Republic had Bowie feeling ill during the performance as he was unable to finish the song as it was clear something wrong. Then on June 24, 2004, Bowie would play at the Hurricane Festival in Hamburg, Germany as he performed with some restrained power as it would be the last time he would play to large audience.
It was in that moment that Bowie suffered a mild heart attack as he would made sporadic public appearances in the next two years to do a few live performances and then he disappeared from the public eye for good only to make rare appearances at events. Then the film would shift into the final five years that led to the slow creation of his twenty-fourth album The Next Day which took two years to make where many of the musicians he had played with for years including producer Tony Visconti would make the album in secrecy with everyone signing non-disclosure agreement contracts. The musicians that include longtime collaborators like guitarist Earl Slick and pianist Mike Garson reveal the process of what Bowie wanted to do musically as Slick, guitarists Gerry Leonard and David Torn, bassist Gail Ann Dorsey, drummers Zachary Alford and Sterling Campbell, and multi-instrumentalist Catherine Russell play a few of the songs on that album.
Francis Whately’s direction doesn’t just feature the interviews with those musicians that also include old collaborators Geoff MacCormack and Carlos Alomar but take a look through old and rare footage of Bowie in the past during his time of stardom. Especially as a few of the songs on The Next Day doesn’t just evoke elements of nostalgia but also his disdain towards fame and celebrity culture as well as his own view of life in the 21st Century told in the song Valentine’s Day. The years focused on 2014 and 2015 isn’t just about the creation of the song Sue (Or in a Season of Crime) with collaborators Maria Schneider and Donny McCaslin. It’s also in the making of the play Lazarus as actor Michael C. Hall, co-writer Edna Walsh, director Ivo Van Hove, and one of the producers talk about the making of the play as it was something Bowie wanted to do for a long time going back to his attempted play adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 that was rejected by Orwell’s estate.
Whatley and his editors would unveil rare footage of an unmade and unfinished film staging of Diamond Dogs that featured elements of his aborted 1984 play as it showed that long ambition of Bowie to stage a play. It would then be inter-cut with the making of his final album Blackstar with very few people including video director Johan Renck who knew that Bowie was dying. There is also a rare picture of Bowie in the rehearsal for Lazarus that is quite devastating as it shows how much his cancer was taking away from him yet he was still fighting. Whatley also would unveil the vocal outtakes of Bowie singing the songs from that album as it showed a man fighting to sing with every ounce of his body no matter how little time he had.
David Bowie: The Last Five Years is an incredible film from Francis Whately and BBC Films. It’s a documentary film that fans of Bowie will definitely want to see but it also offer something for those who don’t know much about Bowie or his music. Yet, it is portrait of a man who remained defiant to his dying day in making you think he’s this when he’s really indefinable. In the end, David Bowie: The Last Five Years is a remarkable film from Francis Whately.
Related: Cracked Actor - David Bowie: Five Years - David Bowie: Finding Fame
© thevoid99 2017
Directed by Francis Whately, David Bowie: Five Years is a documentary into the key five years that defined David Bowie’s ascent to superstardom. Told through archival and rare footage along with interviews from collaborators and journalists, the film is an exploration into Bowie’s thirst for re-invention and how he managed to keep people guessing from his days as Ziggy Stardust in the early 1970s to becoming a pop megastar in the early 1980s. The result is a fascinating and comprehensive film about the career of one of popular music’s greatest icons.
For nearly fifty years, there has been no artist in the history of popular music who had managed to reinvent himself with such precision and artistry better than David Bowie. Whether it’s through space-folk music, glam rock, plastic soul, art-rock, or whatever he is doing. Bowie would often be at the center of a certain movement or create something new that would spark new trends despite his hatred for them. What this film does is tell Bowie’s ascent to mega-stardom in five different years of his career. The first is about Bowie as the glam-rock superstar Ziggy Stardust while the second year focuses on his flirtation with Philadelphia soul music and his Thin White Duke persona. The third is about Bowie’s Berlin trilogy with Brian Eno while the fourth year is about the making of his 1980 album Scary Monsters and the groundbreaking videos he would make for two of its singles. The fifth and final year is about Let’s Dance and becoming part of the mainstream after being known as a cult artist.
Though it’s not surprising that Bowie is only presented through archival footage including some rare footage of concert performances and outtakes along with some audio interviews as the man himself hasn’t spoken publicly in nearly a decade. The film allows Bowie to be told not just through these footage but also to the people that had worked with him such as producers Ken Scott, Tony Visconti, and Nile Rodgers as well as collaborators like Brian Eno, Carlos Alomar, Dennis Davis, Rick Wakeman of Yes, Robert Fripp of King Crimson, Earl Slick, Robin Clark, Geoff MacCormack, filmmaker David Mallet, Carmine Rojas, Ava Cherry, the late Trevor Bolder, and the late Mick Ronson from a 1992 interview. Also interviewed are journalists in John Harris, Camille Paglia, Charles Shaar Murphy, and hip-hop historian Nelson George.
Many of them talk about Bowie’s methods as an artist and what he was doing at the time where Alomar and Davis both talked about how Eno would get them out of their comfort zone during the sessions for 1977’s Low while Clark and Cherry talked about Bowie’s approach to vocal arrangements in how unconventional they were as much of it was done with the collaboration of a then-unknown singer in Luther Vandross. Nelson George talked about Bowie’s contribution to soul music as well as his importance in the 1980s when Let’s Dance became a major hit as it crossed all barriers from his hardcore fans to the casual ones who had just discovered him. Alomar, Rodgers, and Slick would showcase how some of Bowie’s great songs were made as does Rick Wakeman who would play the piano accompaniment for Life on Mars? which he hadn’t played since it was recorded.
Through some stylish editing that displays much of the footage including some rare outtakes of the Life on Mars? video along with rare interviews and performances from the tours that Bowie did between 1972 and 1983. Yet, the film bookends with Bowie’s current state of seclusion as many of his collaborators and journalists feel that the release of his most recent album The Next Day is just another of Bowie’s constant game in reinventing himself and the art of playing the world of celebrity in an age where so much is expected in the world of celebrity.
David Bowie: Five Years is an excellent documentary from Francis Whately and the BBC about the artist. The film is definitely something that Bowie fans will definitely find essential in the rare footage that they see while audiences who don’t know much about Bowie will get the chance to understand his approach as an artist. In the end, David Bowie: Five Years is an extraordinary film from Francis Whately.
Related: Cracked Actor - David Bowie: The Last Five Years - David Bowie: Finding Fame
© thevoid99 2014
