95 - David Bowie with Paul Morley

95 - David Bowie with Paul Morley

Author: Rock n Roll Book Club December 20, 2025 Duration: 1:23:01

This week we are joined by music writer Paul Morley to guide us through the early years of David Bowie - from his early life in Brixton & Bromley through to his formative experiences in Soho, his early bands & his original desire to be a saxophone player. 


We find out what led to his rebranding of himself from David Jones into the David Bowie the world came to know. 


After meeting Marc Bolan, Bowie was signed by Leslie Conn & released his debut album in 1967, featuring the novelty release The Laughing Gnome. 


Space Oddity follows & after producer Tony Visconti dismissed the song as a novelty, Gus Dudgeon ends up coming in to produce. 


The song has a singular quality & becomes a hit although such is its uniqueness David struggles to follow it up. His 2nd album (also titled David Bowie) follows shortly after & David’s time as an unknown comes to an end. 


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Hosted, Produced & Edited by Simon Cardwell

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The Music Maps Podcast from the Rock n Roll Book Club isn't your typical music show. It's an audio expedition where geography is the guide. Every episode starts with a specific location-a city, a venue, a forgotten roadside attraction-and uses that place as a launchpad to explore the sounds, stories, and scenes connected to it. You might find yourself deep in the blues clubs of Chicago one week and tracing the underground punk threads of a small European town the next. The conversations are wide-ranging, connecting the dots between iconic artists and obscure movements, all anchored to a point on the map. Listening to this podcast feels like adding a new, richly detailed pin to a global atlas of musical influence. It’s about the context behind the chords and the cultural soil from which genres grow. The result is a continuously evolving, deeply human portrait of how music and place are inextricably linked, one fascinating destination at a time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

Music Maps Podcast
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