Bowieland by Peter Carpenter – blog tour

It’s a little over nine years since David Bowie died in January 2016, but his memory lives on. Although I had Ziggy on my bedroom walls as a young teen, it was Bolan I was more obsessed with at the time. Later I grew to really love Bowie’s music and creativity, and now I hoover up all the better books about him that have appeared since including:

• The Age of Bowie by Paul Morley
• A Portrait of Bowie: A tribute to Bowie by his artistic collaborators and contemporaries
• David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the sun machine  by Nicholas Royle

I have another super book to add to that list now in Peter Carpenter’s Bowieland.

Told by his doctors after a heart-bypass op that the best thing he could do to further improve his health was walk, Carpenter took them at their word and did just that. A huge Bowie fan, a project evolved to make a pilgrimage to sites that were pertinent to Bowie’s life, to see if they still resonate now, to link up with anyone who knew him when he was there, and putting them into the context of his life and work. Carpenter makes no attempt to organise his trips into chronological order and likewise doesn’t order them in the book either, keeping to his own timeline as he did them, allowing reflection.

But we begin with the most iconic Bowie site of all, 23 Heddon Street, W1 – the location for the cover shoot for the Ziggy Stardust album. It’s a site Carpenter will revisit, it’s rarely without fans or tourists nearby who come to see the plaque marking the exact location, (it’s off the west side of Regent street – a pedestrianised loop of posh shops and eateries. The K. West sign is long gone, the building’s bricks are whitewashed, but still they come. ‘For now, I was please to be here; it felt right somehow.’ Carpenter strikes up a conversation with a chap taking photos, standing aside from the rest – he’s a lecturer making a film about Mick Ronson – the first of many contacts Carpenter will make on his journeys. He also checks out the nearby telephone booth that features on the back cover,

‘… it’s been santitised. The graffiti has been erased and painted over, so the metaphor of this as a portal, a conduit for the homage of any fans on a Bowie pilgrimage has been lost.

The second chapter moves into my territory, Coulsdon, south of Croydon in Surrey where I lived until I was ten. I was surprised – I hadn’t known of a Bowie connection with my home-town – but there is one in Cane Hill asylum, a huge mental hospital on the hill on the outskirts of town, a place us kids were totally scared by – even more so once I’d been inside it – carol-singing with the Brownies no less! A happier patient-free visit later was for a girl in my form’s birthday party – her father was a doctor there.

A cartoon drawing of the Gothic looking building features on the original US cover of The Man Who Sold the World, but it was also where Bowie’s older half-brother, Terry, was a suicidal resident, sadly succeeding on his third try at the nearby rail station in 1985. The hospital has long closed, converted into luxury flats and houses, but vestiges of its Victorian past lurked in the undergrowth when Carpenter walked there with his photographer friend, befpre they’d finished landscaping the site.

In the third chapter, it’s Carpenter’s friend, Dobbin, another Bowie obsessive, who persuades him that a trip to Berlin is in order. This chapter will remain the only one to step outside the UK. They dutifully see the sights, but it makes Carpenter realise that he needs to go back to David Jones’ roots to understand his Berlin albums better.

We return to England, and in chapter after chapter we explore all the areas of South London, Brixton, Bromley, Croydon, Beckenham – where the famous bandstand is – and more. Plus, his addresses in London, including South Kensington, where his producer Tony Visconti lived round the corner from him in Lexham Gardens – where I lived as a student in a villa converted into crummy bedsits around the same time. We were probably neighbours and I never knew it! Bowie wasn’t very kind about Croydon though, saying in an interview,

“I think it’s the most derogatory thing I can say about somebody of something: ‘God, it’s so f*****g Croydon!’ “

Us Croydonites spend our lives trying to get away, but keep getting drawn back (something Nick Royle comments on in his book).

We divert to the South Sussex coast to Hastings to explore the beach where the video for Ashes to Ashes was made. There’s a telling funny story where a bloke wouldn’t leave the beach for the ‘c*** in a clown suit,’ which amused Bowie and put him in his place.

Throughout, Carpenter combines the stories of Bowie-lore with impressions of each location today in true psycho-geographer mode but building in elements of memoir along the way. Sometimes he’s walking with friends, sometimes he’s able to link up with other fans, and very occasionally with people who’d met Bowie. Each of the chapters is accompanied by an evocative black and white photo from the area – showing unseen corners and suburban decay, close-ups on building features, amongst wider landscapes and buildings. The book is ended by comprehensive notes, bibliography and index.

Peter Carpenter also co-runs micro-press Worple, and visiting his site, I found he published the book of poems Buried at Sea by acclaimed psychogeographer Iain Sinclair that he mentions in the Hastings chapter. I had to order it and was delighted to find myself in possession of a limited signed copy with a set of postcards too! Thank you Worple.

To round off my review, let me say I absolutely adore this style of writing combining memoir, travelogue and a special topic. Capturing the mercurial Bowie’s creative spirit in these walks has inspired the author to keep going too, there is still more to explore and go deeper into Bowie-lore, and I’m sure he’ll return to Berlin one day. This is an absolutely fabulous addition to my Bowie collection.

Source: Review copy – thank you. Octopus/Monoray hardback, 335 pages incl notes etc.

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