History Trivia / DAVIDBOWIE

** Material from ''Music/{{Tonight}}'' and ''Music/NeverLetMeDown'' mostly vanished from Bowie's setlists following the Glass Spider Tour in 1987, owed to Bowie's fierce CreatorBacklash towards both albums. The most representation ''Tonight'' got post-1987 consisted of "Loving the Alien" and "Blue Jean" briefly reappearing during the Sound + Vision tour (which only featured the latter) and the supporting tour for ''Music/{{Reality}}''. Meanwhile, Bowie never touched anything from ''Never Let Me Down'' on-stage after 1987.

* RarelyPerformedSong: Bowie deliberately sought to invoke this with his 1990 Sound + Vision tour, done to promote Creator/{{Rykodisc}}'s remasters of his back-catalog. Not wanting to become a legacy act, the idea behind the tour was that he would perform all his greatest hits (plus the recent [[Music/KingCrimson Adrian Belew]] collaboration "Pretty Pink Rose") for one last run before permanently retiring them from his setlists. The plan mostly fell through during the supporting tour for ''Music/{{Outside}}'', where his unwillingness to play old songs drew staunch criticism and forced him to renege on his idea, but he still deprioritized them in favor of post-1990 material, and six tracks featured on the Sound + Vision tour [[https://bowiesongs.tumblr.com/post/29900916399/did-bowie-really-retire-his-oldies did indeed disappear]] from Bowie's setlists for good: [[Music/TheRiseAndFallOfZiggyStardustAndTheSpidersFromMars "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide"]], "John, I'm Only Dancing", "Amsterdam", "Music/YoungAmericans", [[Music/StationToStation "TVC 15"]], and "Pretty Pink Rose".

* ChannelHop: One of the most well-known examples with a solo artist. The sheer amount of labels Bowie operated under is fairly staggering, to the point where it's made his back-catalog the source of quite a few legal quandaries over the years (most notably with his pre-''Music/SpaceOddity'' material, as illustrated with the infamous shelving of ''Toy''). In order, Bowie operated under the following record labels:

*** Creator/VirginRecords (1993-2001)[[note]]Various single releases and albums from 1993-1997 were released through Virgin outside of the UK; Virgin also distributed remastered reissues of his 1983-1988 backlog in 1995 and his 1969-1989 backlog in 1999. ''Music/{{Hours}}'' was released exclusively through Virgin. Bowie eventually left the label in 2001 due to the shelving of ''Toy''.[[/note]]

** ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_(David_Bowie_album) Toy]]'' was intended to be the album between ''hours...'' and ''Heathen'' and it would've featured re-recordings of various early and obscure material in his back-catalog, including singles and B-sides from 1964-1970, a ''Ziggy Stardust'' outtake, a track from [[Music/DavidBowie1967 his 1967 debut album]], and a track from ''The Deram Anthology'', plus four new songs: "Uncle Floyd", "Afraid", "Hole in the Ground", and "Toy (Your Turn to Drive)". "Uncle Floyd" and "Afraid" were later re-recorded for ''Heathen'' (the former being renamed "Slip Away"), and a few other tracks appeared in the U.K. or Japan as B-sides. In the spring of 2011, roughly a decade after its cancellation, ''Toy'' was leaked online and generated enough press that it was formally reviewed by ''Classic Rock'' magazine. Perhaps in response to this, the deluxe edition of the 2014 ''Nothing Has Changed'' later included the ''Toy'' versions of "Let Me Sleep Beside You" and "Shadow Man" plus "Toy (Your Turn to Drive)", though the full album remained unreleased until 2021.

* ChannelHop: One of the most well-known examples with a solo artist. The sheer amount of labels Bowie operated under is fairly staggering, to the point where it's made his back-catalog the source of quite a few legal quandaries over the years (most notably with his pre-''Music/SpaceOddity'' material, as illustrated with the infamous shelving of ''Toy''). In order, Bowie has operated under the following record labels:

** His busy schedule in TheEighties not only forced him to drop out of the title role in the ''Series/FaerieTaleTheatre'' adaptation of Literature/ThePiedPiperOfHamelin (Eric Idle took over the part), but also kept the ''Series/DoctorWho'' producers from casting him as Sharaz Jek in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E6TheCavesOfAndrozani "The Caves of Androzani"]] (the Fifth Doctor's final serial)!

* FanNickname:
** His crotch has been deified and named The Area by fans. It has its own [[http://id34111.securedata.net/areaology/ website]] and religion.
** Bowie himself is called "The Dame" in the British music press. This dates back to TheEighties and the height of his mainstream success, and was initially used as a putdown (according to journalist Charles Sharr Murray). Likely inspired by the "Dame" character in British {{Pantomime}}, who is a comic old woman played by a beloved, famous LargeHam male performer in drag. The name of [[https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/ Pushing Ahead of the Dame]], the blog run by music critic Chris O'Leary that features in-depth essays on every song Bowie ever recorded, is a pun on both this nickname and a line from "Queen Bitch".

** Creator/RCARecords (1971-1982)[[note]]RCA also reissued ''Music/SpaceOddity'' and ''Music/TheManWhoSoldTheWorld'' worldwide, being granted legal ownership of them once Bowie signed onto the label; RCA's rights to Bowie's 1969-1982 catalog would expire in 1988. Bowie left the label due to both CreativeDifferences with executives regarding ''[[Music/LowDavidBowieAlbum Low]]'' and an unsatisfactory contract that only gave Bowie a sliver of the profits his music earned. He would later make amends with RCA, leading them to be given UK distribution rights for Bowie's 90's albums as well as for ''Music/TheNextDay'' and ''[[Music/BlackstarAlbum ★]]''.[[/note]]

** Creator/ParlophoneRecords (1964-1965)[[note]]Parlophone has also distributed reissues of Bowie's back-catalog throughout TheNewTens, under license from Bowie's rights-holding company ISO Records[[/note]]

** Creator/ColumbiaRecords (2002-2017)

* MissingEpisode: ''Toy,'' which would have come after ''[='hours...'=]''.

** ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_(David_Bowie_album) Toy]]'' was intended to be the album between ''hours...'' and ''Heathen'' and it would've featured re-recordings of various early and obscure material in his back-catalog, including singles and B-sides from 1964-1970, a ''Ziggy Stardust'' outtake, a track from [[Music/DavidBowie1967 his 1967 debut album]], and a track from ''The Deram Anthology'', plus four new songs: "Uncle Floyd", "Afraid", "Hole in the Ground", and "Toy (Your Turn to Drive)". "Uncle Floyd" and "Afraid" were later re-recorded for ''Heathen'' (the former being renamed "Slip Away"), and a few other tracks appeared in the U.K. or Japan as B-sides. In the spring of 2011, roughly a decade after its cancellation, ''Toy'' was leaked online and generated enough press that it was formally reviewed by ''Classic Rock'' magazine. Perhaps in response to this, the deluxe edition of the 2014 ''Nothing Has Changed'' later included the ''Toy'' versions of "Let Me Sleep Beside You" and "Shadow Man" plus "Toy (Your Turn to Drive)", though the full album remains without an official release (possibly due to rights issues).

** ''New Music: Night and Day'' for ''Music/LowDavidBowieAlbum''

*** ''1. Outside'' itself evolved out of an unreleased "improvised opera" called ''Leon'', an album that would have consisted of two discs worth of [[EpicRocking 20 minute to half hour pieces]] edited together from various jam sessions - Brian Eno also proposed that they release it with [[TextlessAlbumCover solid black, textless packaging]], then let it leak that it was a Bowie album as a way to get press for their next project. The label rejected ''Leon'' altogether, but ''1. Outside'' retained its concept, characters, and themes, and a few songs and interludes were reworked from ''Leon''.

* AuthorExistenceFailure: In January 2016 of liver cancer, causing a worldwide outpouring of grief. Despite originally intending ''Music/BlackstarAlbum'' to be his final album, Bowie changed his mind after recording it and made demo recordings of five new songs for what he intended to be its follow-up, but he died before he could complete it.

** Part of the reason why ''Music/{{Tonight}}'' and ''Music/NeverLetMeDown'' continued to try and appeal more to fans of the pop rock-oriented ''Music/LetsDance'' was because of pressure from EMI Records following ''Let's Dance''[='s=] runaway success. ''Never Let Me Down'' is an especially bad case in the sense that Bowie wanted to return to his rock roots for the album after the poor reception of ''Tonight'', but his indifferent attitude towards the production gave EMI free reign to stuff in as much flourish as they desired. The end result was an album widely seen as unnecessarily bombastic, overproduced, artificial (even more so that ''Tonight''), and conspicuously dated-sounding. To the day he died, Bowie regarded ''Never Let Me Down'' as one of the biggest mistakes of his career, and longed to get a chance to redo it (which eventually came true in the form of ''Never Let Me Down 2018'', albeit [[AuthorExistenceFailure over two years after his death]]).

* WritingByTheSeatOfYourPants: On many albums, Bowie went into the studio with a few chord changes and wrote the songs on the hoof (''Music/HeroesDavidBowieAlbum'' was being written as it was recorded). Averted, however, on ''Music/HunkyDory'', on which Bowie carefully crafted the songs on the piano before entering the studio.

** "Golden Years" was written for Music/ElvisPresley, but he turned it down, which explains its uncharacteristically doo-wop sound compared to the rest of ''Station to Station'' (fun fact: Presley and Bowie were both born on January 8).

** ''Dancin''', ''Somebody Up There Likes Me'', ''One Damned Song'', ''The Gouster'' and ''Shilling the Rubes'' and ''Fascination'' for ''Music/YoungAmericans''

** ''Dancin''', ''Somebody Up There Likes Me'', ''One Damned Song'', ''The Gouster'' and ''Shilling the Rubes and Fascination'' for ''Music/YoungAmericans''

** ''Love Aladdin Vein'' for ''Music/AladdinSane''

** ''The Golden Years'' for ''Music/StationToStation''

** ''Planned Accidents'' for ''Music/{{Lodger}}'', which explains why Bowie appears as a car wreck victim on the cover art

** ''Tin Machine II'' itself is an example of this. The album received little to no reissues after its initial release in 1991, largely owing to the fact that the label it was released on, Victory Records, went defunct in 1994, and the commercial disappointment of the album seems to have demotivated any other labels from trying to put it out again. The only re-releases ''Tin Machine II'' has seen were not only few and far-between, but also [[NoExportForYou exclusive to Japan and Russia]] for whatever reason. This was finally averted on July 17, 2020, when the album was given its first major reissue on both silver vinyl and CD via sister reissue labels Music on Vinyl and Music on CD, respectively.
** The 1985 Creator/RCARecords [=CDs=] are an odd example of this trope. While Bowie's 1969-1980 albums have definitely seen plenty of reissues over the years on every format imaginable, the RCA [=CDs=] in particular seem to be in hot demand on the secondhand market. This is largely on the basis of them being the most problem-free CD releases of Bowie's albums prior to the Parlophone remasters throughout the latter half of TheNewTens. While they're sourced from later-generation tapes and suffer from the issues typical of such transfers[[note]]between the German and Japanese plants that RCA used, there's no generally "better" manufacturer, with the preferred CD version of each album in RCA's reissue campaign differing on a case-by-case basis[[/note]], they're seen as more tolerable compared to the thin-sounding Creator/{{Rykodisc}} remasters (which were actually highly praised at first-- if only because they sounded ''different'' than the RCA [=CDs=]-- but have since become the subject of greater scrutiny) and the LoudnessWar-afflicted Virgin/[=EMI=] remasters. Even after Parlophone released their own remasters of the majority of Bowie's studio albums, there's still a considerable number of people attempting to hunt down surviving copies of the RCA [=CDs=], which are highly unlikely to see any re-pressings due to RCA losing the rights to Bowie's back-catalog in 1988. The only repressing of an RCA Bowie CD to date was with the inclusion of the 1985 West German ''Music/StationToStation'' CD in the 2010 deluxe edition release of that album.

** He performed on Bing Crosby's last Christmas special partly because his mother was a fan.

** Creator/RCARecords (1971-1982)[[note]]RCA also distributed ''Music/SpaceOddity'' and ''Music/TheManWhoSoldTheWorld'' worldwide, being granted legal ownership of them once Bowie signed onto the label; RCA's rights to Bowie's 1969-1982 catalog would expire in 1988. Bowie left the label due to both CreativeDifferences with executives regarding ''[[Music/LowDavidBowieAlbum Low]]'' and an unsatisfactory contract that only gave Bowie a sliver of the profits his music earned. He would later make amends with RCA, leading them to be given UK distribution rights for Bowie's 90's albums as well as for ''Music/TheNextDay'' and ''[[Music/BlackstarAlbum ★]]''.[[/note]]

* BigNameFan: He launched the solo careers of Music/LouReed and Music/IggyPop, helped revive the career of Music/MottTheHoople, and acted as a mentor figure to some of his favorite younger indie bands, such as Music/TVOnTheRadio and Music/ArcadeFire. Generally, Bowie had a fairly open mind about the music scene over the years, with a good number of both mainstream and cult bands garnering his approval as the decades went on, going all the way up to his final years: Music/KendrickLamar's 2015 album ''To Pimp a Butterfly'' was a significant influence on Bowie's swan song album, ''Music/BlackstarAlbum''. As for other artists, it's easier to name more contemporary artists who aren't fans of his music than those who are.
** Apparently said he wished he'd written Music/ElvisCostello's "Shipbuilding".

* ReclusiveArtist: He was once so accessible that he regularly communicated with his fanbase via his official website at the TurnOfTheMillennium. But then he slowly became this. He had not released a new album since 2003, His last tour -- one cut short by a heart attack that required multiple bypass surgeries -- was in 2004, and his last live performance was in 2006. A few film/[=TV=] roles and guest appearances on other artists' albums later, and that was all. He only seemed to surface for the odd premiere or charity fundraiser, and didn't grant interviews. In TheNewTens, it was generally accepted by fans and the music press that he quietly retired to raise his family, preserve his health, indulge in his hobbies (he painted, sculpted, and was an avowed BookWorm), and enjoy the fruits of his labors... which made January 8, 2013 something of a WhamEpisode for '''everybody''' when the website was relaunched, a new album announced, and a video for its first single released. ''The Next Day'' was a huge hit, but he still would not grant interviews -- longtime producer and friend Tony Visconti has said Bowie ruled out the possibility completely -- and would not be going on tour to support any new releases. His only guest appearance afterwards was as a backing vocalist on the TitleTrack of Music/ArcadeFire's ''Reflektor'' in 2013, and public appearances were nonexistent (with even his attendance of the premiere of ''Lazarus'' only becoming known after people noticed him there first). Any chances of this changing ended with his death three years later.

* BigNameFan: He launched the solo careers of Music/LouReed and Music/IggyPop, helped revive the career of Music/MottTheHoople,and acted as a mentor figure to some of his favorite younger indie bands, such as Music/TVOnTheRadio and Music/ArcadeFire. Generally, Bowie had a fairly open mind about the music scene over the years, with a good number of both mainstream and cult bands garnering his approval as the decades went on, going all the way up to his final years: Music/KendrickLamar's 2015 album ''To Pimp a Butterfly'' was a significant influence on Bowie's swan song album, ''Music/BlackstarAlbum''. As for other artists, it's easier to name more contemporary artists who aren't fans of his music than those who are.