David Bowie: The Artist, The Albums, The Music by Philippe Margotin

Translated by Claire Alejo

Being ten years since David Bowie died, his legacy lives on, and given the anniversary a number of new books about the man and his music have been published.

Philippe Margotin is a French music author, and has written numerous books about a variety of artists and their music, including U2, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, often in collaboration with Jean-Michel Guesdon. Most of these have been ‘All the Songs’ type books, going though chronologically track by track, album by album.

Although I’ve not read any of the above, I imagine this book on Bowie has many similarities, but also given that it’s for a different publisher, written by just Margotin, differences too. Divided into 8 chaoters, each a distinct period in Bowie’s life, they all then follow the same format.

Beginning with a straight-forward narrative of the period, introducing key people in Bowie’s life, musicians and musical collaborators and mentors, a few personal relationships; albums, singles and tours are all covered too. There are some sidebar interviews and for each chapter there is a feature setting the external musical context for the period .eg. Kraftwerk for the Berlin years. All are peppered with quotes from many attributed sources, and there are some fabulous photographs – many not published previously. A two page chronology shows Bowie’s work alongside other musical milestones.

Then we reach the albums, with recording details and analysis of key tracks, rather than every track. The whole is produced as a hardback-sized softback in full colour, only the main narratives of each chapter are traditional black text on the white page, but written in a two column format. This gives the book a magazine feel, made even more so by the glossy paper – which makes the photographs the stars really.

The format makes this book a great one for dipping into, and an easy read. At 280 pages with a lot of photographs, it is a concise history, and given the author’s backlist concentrates on the music rather than Bowie the man. There is room to mention his sideline in acting, but bar his two wives, Angie and Iman, not a lot of time for other relationships, like Dana Gillespie who gets scant mentions. The later albums post the Glass Spider era get less attention too as does his Tin Machine excursion, but arguably, the hits had largely stopped by then until ‘Where are we now?’ from The Next Day album. (In this respect I’m looking forward to reading Lazarus by Alexander Larman, which concentrates on the last third of Bowie’s career.)

This was an enjoyable read, with glorious photos and great detail on the selected tracks in particular, but the well-versed Bowie fan will not learn much new about the enigma that was the man, but that’s not possible in a single book!

Thank you to the publisher Aurora Metro for the review copy. They are an indie publisher and their imprint Supernova specialises in intelligent non-fiction.

Supernova softback, 280 pages, Jan 2026

BUY at Waterstones via my affiliate link.