The Hare Krishna Years
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Read the opening free
3,744 words · no email, no account
No. 190 · Music · Rock
Berlin
a biography of David Robert Jones (David Bowie)
What the book is
Berlin, 1976. A thirty-year-old man rents a studio apartment over a Turkish cafe in Schöneberg, off the books, with cash. He is by some distance the most famous singer in Britain. He is also functionally bankrupt, hospitalised twice that year for cardiac arrhythmia, and convinced — for stretches he later admitted — that the records he is making in West Berlin will be the last ones anyone listens to.
Edmund Halloran writes the David Bowie biography that takes the middle, not the ascent. Hansa Studio One. Tony Visconti at the desk, Brian Eno at the EMS Synthi, Iggy Pop in the spare room. Low. Heroes. Lodger. The trilogy that the press resented and the next decade absorbed wholesale. Halloran's argument, against every previous biography, is that the Berlin records are the actual centre of the Bowie discography — not Ziggy Stardust, not the Aladdin Sane press cycle, not even the Lazarus death-album.
Drawing on Visconti's session notes, the Hansa archive, Iggy's tour diaries, decades of Bowie's own contradictory testimony, and his own thirty years writing the British rock magazines that no longer exist, Halloran assembles a portrait of an artist in retreat — and of the West Berlin that gave him the room to make the music that defines the second half of his life.
At a glance
- Subject
- David Robert Jones (David Bowie)
- Shelf
- Music · Rock
- Written by
- Edmund Halloran
- Chapters
- 19 across 221 pages
- Narrated by
- Desmond Vale
- Editions
- Paperback · Hardcover · EPUB · Audiobook
- Authorisation
- Unauthorised — no subject, estate or label had approval over the text.
Contents · 19 chapters
- 01Brixton BoyRead free
- 02Terry3,721 words
- 03The Wrong Eye2,923 words
- 04A Lad Insane3,824 words
- 05Space Oddity3,138 words
- 06Ziggy Stardust3,120 words
- 07Diamond Dogs3,354 words
- 08Station to Station3,556 words
- 09Heroes3,324 words
- 10Let's Dance3,054 words
- 11Glass Spider3,163 words
- 12Jump They Say2,664 words
- 13Outside / Earthling3,112 words
- 14Reality3,082 words
- 15The Ghost2,793 words
- 16The Next Day3,030 words
- 17Lazarus3,631 words
- 18Blackstar4,092 words
- 19Moonage Daydream3,449 words
The opening chapter is published in full — read it here.
Editions
- Paperback · $19.99
- 6 × 9 in · 221 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · perfect-bound paperback
- Hardcover · $24.99
- 6 × 9 in · 221 pp · 60# uncoated cream, black ink · case laminate on the same text block
- EPUB · $3.99
- EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books
ISBN 979-8-90470-022-5 - Audiobook · $5.99
- Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Desmond Vale
ISBN 979-8-90623-035-5
The printed edition has no ISBN registered yet. It affects library and retail listing, not your order.
Questions
01Who is Berlin about?
David Robert Jones (David Bowie). The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case Berlin — and the name goes on the line underneath.
02Is this an authorised biography?
No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented.
03Can I read some of it before buying?
Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 3,744 words of the book.
04How long is it?
About 64,000 words, 19 chapters, 221 pages in the paperback.
05What is the printed book like?
6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink, perfect-bound paperback, matte laminate. Every title in the series uses the same specification, so they line up on a shelf.
