BOWIELAND: Walking In The Footsteps Of David

by Peter Carpenter

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SYNOPSIS

BOWIE IS STILL OUT THERE...

Following open heart surgery, poet and writer Peter Carpenter was given one instruction - 'Walk, if you want to stay on this planet'. And so when his hero and inspiration David Bowie died in 2016, he knew what he had to do. The man who was to so many a companion and guide had left no shrine, no focal point of understanding. To reconnect with Bowie, he would take a walk into the past, to the streets, towns and places where David Jones became something more.

Walking to recover, to stay alive, Peter realised he was also recovering his lost hero. Leaving behind Heddon Street and Brixton, well-known Bowie shrines, he moved out through South London edgelands and suburbia to remoter Bowie haunts: Croydon, Aylesbury, Pett Level, Southend-on-Sea. Finding the windows Bowie had stared out from in Clareville Grove; the streets in Beckenham where he'd scurried by. He sifted through debris on a patch of waste ground in Tunbridge Wells where Bowie's parents first met. He turned the handle and entered Shirley Parish Hall to find the same stage where a young Davy Jones and the Kon-Rads set up to play back in 1962; and travelled to Berlin, to emerge from the S-Bahn to gape at the ruined portico of the Anhalter Bahnhof and asked 'What is this?'

In Bowieland, Carpenter's peripatetic trampings seem to echo Bowie's own wandering creative spirit, the walks often uncovering hidden layers, and making fresh connections to key Bowie stories, revealing influences conscious and subconscious. Through walking, an understanding is reached of where Bowie sits in the culture, his place among the poets, painters, artists and musicians who came before him, who inhabited the same spaces and in doing so passed on their wisdom to Bowie.

Through Carpenter's travels these suburban lands became a new, very real place, that anyone can visit if they take the time... Welcome to 'Bowieland'

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REVIEW

A slightly different review from me today. I have listened to David Bowie all of my life, I guess it was inherited at first from my parents and then I became a fan myself when I was a bit older. Bowieland follows Peter Carpenter as he attempts to walk and find important landmarks, things and places that made David Bowie the genius that he was. This has got to be one of the most creative and interesting books I've read - it's difficult to describe because it's part memoir, part musical biography, part travel guide, part personal pilgrimage but the great thing is that you don't have to be a fan of David Bowie, or know anything about his life to be completely absorbed into this story. It's all about discovery.

I am very much a 'one book at a time' reader, but the beauty of Bowieland is that you can dip in and out - read as much or as little as you like and not feel like you've lost what was going on at the last point you finished reading. It's also split into sections so if you are interested in Bowie's time in Berlin, you can just read that particular section etc. Having said that, I did find the book surprisingly addictive - I didn't know what to expect or how it would be written but it's completely immersive and I got lost following the author on his journey. Bowieland also has a gorgeous cover and photographs at the start of each chapter so it would make the perfect gift for a Bowie fan or general music fans.

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Thanks to Anne Cater - @RandomTTours and Monoray / Octopus Books for the opportunity to read and review.

Fiction: Music History & Criticism / Rock Biographies

Publisher: Monoray / Octopus Books

ISBN: 978-1800961548

Pages: 320pp