New Bowie Hunky Dory book

My friend Ken Sharp has a new book about David Bowie's Hunky Dory, self-published. It's a 112-page paperback. Ken's written a lot of great stuff about Raspberries & Eric Carmen, Small Faces, Kiss, etc., so I'll bet it's a good read for Bowie fans.


Hunky Dory gave me a fabulous groundswell. It provided me, for the first time in my life, with an actual audience — I mean, people actually coming up to me saying, “Good album, good songs.” That hadn’t happened to me before.”
— David Bowie


KOOKS, QUEEN BITCHES AND ANDY WARHOL:
THE MAKING OF DAVID BOWIE'S HUNKY DORY

by Ken Sharp


Over the past five decades, David Bowie's towering musical legacy is rightfully acclaimed as among the most inventive, groundbreaking and compelling in rock history. Bowie's 1971 long player, Hunky Dory, in particular has garnered lofty praise, voted by Time magazine as one of the top 100 albums of all-time.

A new book, Kooks, Queen Bitches and Andy Warhol: The Making of David Bowie's Hunky Dory (Jetfighter/$10) chronicles the fascinating back story behind that celebrated album. Written by New York Times Best-selling author Ken Sharp, the book is constructed as an oral history and culls revelatory interviews with scores of the album's key participants for an all-encompassing look at this seminal release. Among those interviewed include Bowie's band, producer Ken Scott, RCA Records personnel plus countless others along with archival commentary from David Bowie and the late Mick Ronson.

The book is available exclusively though www.ken-sharp.com
TESTIMONIALS

Hunky Dory is still one of my all time favorite albums - it's my favorite of all the records I did with David Bowie. I have many fond memories of the making of it as this was the first recording I ever played on. Hunky Dory is unique, has wonderful songs of great warmth and feel and is beautifully recorded. Ken has really captured much of this sentiment and detail in his book, which I greatly enjoyed and highly recommend. —Trevor Bolder, bassist, Hunky Dory

I’m impressed with Ken’s approach to this project. It was a nice change to have intelligent questions and to be able to recount the making of this album. It will make a good read for any fan. — Woody Woodmansey, drummer, Hunky Dory

Teeming with a great depth of research and information, this is a genuine and honest appreciation of both the period and subject and fully complements an album that continues to entertain and delight now more than 40 years on from its creation. Carefully reexamining and investigating every aspect of this masterpiece, Ken spoke with all of those directly responsible for its recording and ultimately provided us with a very valuable future reference of a brief but essential area of David Bowie’s incredible artistic output – a rich period from which we can learn so much. —
Kevin Cann, author, David Bowie’s Any Day Now: The London Years 1947-1974
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SOLD!!!

 

Just sold another copy. Let's hope there are some unpublished photos from the period included. He wore some pretty interesting clothes back then!

 

My favorite Bowie album, it has such a unique and distinctive vibe but would the back story enhance or diminish the enjoyment? I think I'll wait for further comments here.

 

Sounds great, thanks for sharing

 

In general, that depends on how you feel about behind the scenes stories for anything, right? Which means that I may be the wrong person to ask, because I love behind the scenes stories for everything. Even if you tend to avoid "making of" features about movies, for example, I think that learning more about the making of Hunky Dory enhances the experience.

My favorite thing about the Hunky Dory back story is that there's nothing sordid. No drugs, no drama, no demons. Just a lot of hard work from a guy who was feeling the threads of his career and his talent start to weave themselves together into something special. He knew it was something special, and took it seriously. You read words like "diligent" and "slaved." Bowie himself said, "I forced myself to be a good songwriter. I made a job of work of being good."

That's pretty cool.

I have a particular obsession with 1971 in general, and I think it's Bowie's most pivotal year for sure. Not only did he do Hunky Dory that year, but almost all of Ziggy Stardust as well. For most of the world, it was when they also heard The Man Who Sold The World. (November 1970 release in the US, April 1971 in the rest of the world...and not like it exactly jumped off shelves in the US in late '70.) I'm not sure anybody ever had a year like this, before or since.

I mention the year in its totality also because Mojo magazine ran a wonderful piece called "Golden Year," that covered some of those bases, with a particular focus on Hunky Dory. (The quote above about forcing himself to be good is from that article.) Eight songs from Ziggy in the can notwithstanding, Hunky Dory is in fact the heart of the 1971 story for Bowie. Take a look.

My favorite book on this time until now (and on Bowie in general) has been Kevin Cann's David Bowie’s Any Day Now: The London Years 1947-1974 -- his endorsement of Ken's book really jumped out at me. But of course, Cann has a wider story to tell. Ditto Ken Scott's nice telling of Hunky Dory in Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust, and the other books covering Bowie's whole life. There's an awful lot of ground to cover, and "he worked really really hard" isn't as dramatic as living on cocaine and milk while hiding in the dark because you're afraid Jimmy Page is trying to steal your soul. A dedicated focus on telling a story too easily overlooked is why I'm jumping out of my skin waiting for this book in particular.

Trevor, I honestly think that you'll be glad you dug into the making of Hunky Dory.

Kent, you can tell Ken that, no kidding, I placed my order before the page with my first post in this thread finished refreshing. And yes, count on comments on this book in particular when I finish it.

Now where the hell is it? I ordered it like 38 hours ago, man.

 

One of my favorite Bowie albums. I just ordered the book also. Thanks for the info on this!

 

Thanks for the heads up Nick!

 

Since I was playfully giving grief to shipping time, I feel obliged to note that it arrived almost exactly 48 hours after I placed the order.

I've just started it and yowza, y'all are in for a treat. ...

 

Ken started a thread here, where I'll post a longer reply, but the short version is, great book. A definite must for any Hunky Dory fan, and I'd think most Bowie fans too. (I've never met anyone who's read any Bowie book to have read only one.)

 

Sounds a great read.

I think he was probably afraid Jimmy Page was going to steal his songs, not his soul. (Hiding now!)
DD