Find the key words in the article and write them next to the definitions below. The paragraph numbers are given to help you.

Transcription

1 1 Quick quiz Do the quiz. Then, scan the article to check your answers. 1. David Bowie was... a. a British singer, songwriter and actor. b. a British painter and actor. c. an American musician and artist. 2. What do these people have in common? Ziggy Stardust the Thin White Duke 3. Put the following David Bowie albums in order of their release (one per decade). Blackstar David Bowie Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) Young Americans Black Tie White Noise 2 Key words Find the key words in the article and write them next to the definitions below. The paragraph numbers are given to help you. 1. someone who is the first to do something or to discover something (para 2) 2. changed in a sudden or noticeable way (para 2) 3. supported by, allowing it to succeed or continue to exist (two words, para 2) 4. natural ability that makes it easy for you to do something well (para 3) 5. natural ability to do some things well (para 6) 6. completely developed (two words, para 8) 7. very beautiful (para 8) 8. a role or character adopted by a performer (para 11) 9. a period of time spent doing something (para 12) 10. attack (para 14) 11. the period of time when a person, idea or object is most successful or popular (para 15) 12. a skill or ability (para 15) 13. do something very often in a short period of time (para 15) 14. affected by serious problems such as injury or illness (two words, para 21) 15. officially accepted into something such as a group (two words, para 22)

2 David Bowie obituary Artist blazed a trail of musical trends and pop fashion, reinventing himself, his music and media across many decades Adam Sweeting 11 January, Until the last, David Bowie, who has died of cancer, was still capable of springing surprises. His latest album, Blackstar, appeared on his 69th birthday on 8 January 2016 and proved that his gift for making dramatic statements as well as challenging, disturbing music hadn t deserted him. 2 Throughout the 1970s, Bowie was a trailblazer of musical trends and pop fashion. Having been a late-60s mime and cabaret entertainer, he evolved into a singer-songwriter, a pioneer of glam-rock, then veered into what he called plastic soul, before moving to Berlin to create innovative electronic music. His capacity for mixing brilliant changes of sound and image underpinned by a genuine intellectual curiosity is rivalled by few in pop history. 3 Bowie was born David Robert Jones in south London. In 1953, the family moved to Kent, where David showed aptitude in singing and playing the recorder. Later, he studied art, music and design. In 1961, David s mother bought him a plastic saxophone, introducing him to an instrument which would become a recurring ingredient in his music. 4 At 15, David formed his first band, the Kon-rads. It was clear that David s talents and ambition dictated that he should go solo. David adopted the name Bowie to avoid confusion with Davy Jones of the Monkees. 5 Bowie s first album, released in June 1967, was titled simply David Bowie. In July 1969, Bowie released Space Oddity, the song that would give him his initial commercial breakthrough. Timed to coincide with the Apollo 11 moon landing, it was a top five UK hit. 6 In March 1970, Bowie married art student, Angela Barnett. Artistically, Bowie was powering ahead. The Man Who Sold the World was released in the US in late 1970 and in the UK the following year, and with its daring songwriting and broody, hard-rock sound, it was the first album to do full justice to his writing and performing gifts. The album s themes included immortality, insanity, murder and mysticism, evidence that Bowie was a songwriter who was thinking way beyond pop s usual boundaries. 7 He followed it with 1972 s Hunky Dory, a mix of wordy, elaborate songwriting. It was an excellent collection that met with only moderate success but that all changed with The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars later that year. 8 This time, Bowie emerged as a fully fledged science-fiction character an intergalactic glam-rock star visiting a doomed planet Earth and the album effectively wrote the script for his own stardom. The hit single Starman brought instant success for the album, while Bowie s ravishing stage costumes and provocative performances triggered fan enthusiasm unseen since Beatlemania. 9 Everything Bowie touched turned to gold. He had his first UK number 1 album with Aladdin Sane (1973), which generated the hit singles The Jean Genie and Drive-in Saturday. But Bowie was already planning fresh career moves. 10 His increasing interest in funk and soul music came to the fore on the deliciously listenable Young Americans (1975), which gave him a US chart-topper with Fame (featuring John Lennon as a guest vocalist). 11 Station to Station (1976) introduced a new persona, the Thin White Duke, which Bowie had carried over from his headlining performance as a melancholy space traveller in Nicolas Roeg s film The Man Who Fell to Earth. 12 Bowie s relationship with his wife had been disintegrating under the pressures of success and the couple divorced in This was a year of further creative triumph, bringing a fine album, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), and its spinoff chart-topping single, Ashes to Ashes, followed by Bowie s well-received stint as John Merrick in The Elephant Man on the Broadway stage. 13 He achieved a number 1 single with his 1981 partnership with Queen, Under Pressure, while becoming increasingly involved in crossovers between different media. He appeared in the German movie Christiane F (1981) and wrote music for the soundtrack. He had another chart hit with Cat People (Putting Out Fire) from Paul Schrader s movie Cat People (1982). 14 Bowie continued to make progress as a screen actor with appearances in The Hunger and the second world war drama Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, both released in Musically, this

3 was the year in which he put his energy into an all-out commercial onslaught with the album Let s Dance and follow-up concerts. Let s Dance moulded Bowie into a crowd-friendly global rock star, with the album and its singles Let s Dance, China Girl and Modern Love all becoming huge international hits. 15 This was the heyday of MTV and Bowie s knack for eye-catching videos fuelled this commercial splurge, while the six-month Serious Moonlight tour drew massive crowds. It was to be the most commercially successful period of his career. 16 His profile gained another boost from his appearance at the 1985 Live Aid famine relief concert at Wembley Stadium, where he was one of the standout performers. In addition, he teamed up with Mick Jagger to record the fundraising single Dancing in the Street, which sped to number A few days after his appearance at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert at Wembley Stadium in April 1992, Bowie married the Somalian model Iman and the couple bought a home in New York. This new start in his private life coincided with a search for fresh musical inspiration. 18 For the album Black Tie White Noise (1993), he sprinkled elements of soul, electronica and hip hop into the mix. It topped the UK album chart and yielded a top 10 single, Jump They Say. 19 New media and technology influenced his recordings, too. His 1999 album Hours was based around music he had written for a computer game called Omikron, in which Bowie and Iman appeared as characters. The birth of Bowie and Iman s daughter, Alexandria, followed in August As an adopted New Yorker, Bowie was the opening act at the Concert for New York City in October 2001, where he joined Paul McCartney, Jon Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, the Who and Elton John in a benefit show six weeks after the 9/11 attacks. 21 Bowie was back in the studio the following year for Reality. However, in the midst of his Reality tour in 2004, Bowie was stricken with chest pains while performing in Germany and underwent emergency surgery in Hamburg to clear a blocked artery. 22 He took the medical emergency as a warning and reduced the pace of his activities. In 2006, he announced he would be taking a year off from touring and recording. In February that year, he was given a Grammy lifetime achievement award, having been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in The Next Day (2013) was his first album of new material in a decade. It contained the single Where Are We Now?, which gave him his first UK top 10 hit since The album topped charts in Britain and around the world. In 2014, Bowie was given the Brit Award for Best British Male, making him the oldest British recipient in the awards history. 24 He is survived by Iman, their daughter, Alexandria, his stepdaughter, Zulekha, and his son, Duncan, from his first marriage. 25 David Bowie (David Robert Jones), singer, songwriter and actor, born 8 January, 1947; died 10 January, 2016 Guardian News and Media 2016 First published in The Guardian, 11/01/16 3 Biographical information Answer the questions about David Bowie s life, if possible without referring back to the article. 1. Where was David Bowie born and in what year? 2. What was Bowie s birth name? 3. Why did he change his name? 4. What did he study at college? 5. What was the name of his first band? 6. What style of music is he considered to be a pioneer of? 7. What was he inducted into in 1996? 8. What awards did he receive in 2006 and 2014 respectively? 9. How many times did he marry? 10. How many children did he have?

4 4 Collocations a. Join the words to make collocations from the article. 1. benefit a. breakthrough 2. Broadway b. relief 3. commercial c. single 4. creative d. concert 5. eye-catching e. vocalist 6. famine f. triumph 7. fundraising g. character 8. guest h. show 9. instant i. stage 10. provocative j. videos 11. science-fiction k. success 12. tribute l. performances b. Use the collocations to complete the sentences about David Bowie and his work. Bowie s first (1) came with the song Space Oddity in Well known for his different personas, in 1972, Bowie presented himself as a (2) named Ziggy Stardust, an intergalactic glam-rock star visiting planet Earth. The hit single Starman brought (3) for the album titled The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. He first topped the US charts with Fame, which featured John Lennon as a (4) was a year of (5) for Bowie with the album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) and the hit single Ashes to Ashes. That same year he played the title role in The Elephant Man on the (6). Bowie s fans were extremely enthusiastic about his stage costumes and (7). In the 1980s, his commercial success was supported by his (8), which people could watch on the popular music TV channel MTV. He was one of the most outstanding performers at the Live Aid (9) concert at Wembley Stadium in He had hit singles with many other well-known artists, such as Queen, and also with Mick Jagger on the charttopping (10) Dancing in the Street. Shortly after performing at the Freddie Mercury (11) in 1992, Bowie married Iman, a model from Somalia, and they bought a home in New York. Six weeks after the 9/11 attacks in New York, Bowie was the opening act at a (12) for the victims of the attack.

5 5 Word fields a. Complete the word wheels with words from the article that the author used to describe Bowie s music and songwriting, and his styles of music. b. Which of these words could you use to talk about which other musicians? Words describing Bowie s songwriting Bowie s music styles 6 Discussion Music is known for its ability to evoke our memories. Do you connect any of Bowie s music with particular memories or periods of your life? Are there any other artists whose music, when you hear it, brings back personal memories? What would you say is the soundtrack of your childhood and youth? 7 Webquest See photos of some the David Bowie s key looks (including Ziggy Stardust) here: See pictures from his life and career here:

6 KEY 1 Quick quiz 1. a 2. They are personas created by David Bowie. 3. David Bowie (1967) Young Americans (1975) Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) (1980) Black Tie White Noise (1993) Blackstar (2016) 2 Key words 1. trailblazer 2. veered 3. underpinned by 4. aptitude 5. gifts 6. fully fledged 7. ravishing 8. persona 9. stint 10. onslaught 11. heyday 12. knack 13. splurge 14. stricken with 15. inducted into 3 Biographical information 1. in South London; in David Robert Jones 3. to avoid confusion with Davy Jones of the pop group, the Monkees 4. art, music and design 5. the Kon-rads 6. glam-rock 7. the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 8. a Grammy lifetime achievement award; a Brit Award for Best British Male 9. twice, to Angela Barnett and to Iman 10. two of his own, Duncan and Alexandria, and a step-daughter, Zulekha 4 Collocations a. 1. h 2. i 3. a 4. f 5. j 6. b 7. c 8. e 9. k 10. l 11. g 12. d b. 1. commercial breakthrough 2. science-fiction character 3. instant success 4. guest vocalist 5. creative triumph 6. Broadway stage 7. provocative performances 8. eye-catching videos 9. famine relief 10. fundraising single 11. tribute concert 12. benefit show 5 Word fields Bowie s songwriting: challenging, disturbing, innovative, daring, broody, wordy, elaborate, deliciously listenable Bowie s music styles: glam-rock, plastic soul, electronic, electronica, hard rock, funk, soul, hip hop