BOWIELAND
Walking In The Footsteps Of David
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BOWIELAND
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Narrated by:
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Peter Carpenter
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By:
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Peter Carpenter
About this listen
'Vividly celebrates Bowie as not just a chameleonic visionary, but a nomadic one, a creature informed by place and circumstance" STUART MACONIE
'Bowieland will make you want to take your very own pilgrimage, accompanied by the great man's songs.'
ALEXANDER LARMAN, THE OBSERVER
BOWIE IS STILL OUT THERE...
Following open heart surgery, poet and writer Peter Carpenter was given one instruction - 'Walk, if you want to stay on this planet'. And so when his hero and inspiration David Bowie died in 2016, he knew what he had to do. The man who was to so many a companion and guide had left no shrine, no focal point of understanding. To reconnect with Bowie, he would take a walk into the past, to the streets, towns and places where David Jones became something more.
Walking to recover, to stay alive, Peter realised he was also recovering his lost hero. Leaving behind Heddon Street and Brixton, well-known Bowie shrines, he moved out through South London edgelands and suburbia to remoter Bowie haunts: Croydon, Aylesbury, Pett Level, Southend-on-Sea. Finding the windows Bowie had stared out from in Clareville Grove; the streets in Beckenham where he'd scurried by. He sifted through debris on a patch of waste ground in Tunbridge Wells where Bowie's parents first met. He turned the handle and entered Shirley Parish Hall to find the same stage where a young Davy Jones and the Kon-Rads set up to play back in 1962; and travelled to Berlin, to emerge from the S-Bahn to gape at the ruined portico of the Anhalter Bahnhof and asked 'What is this?'
In Bowieland, Carpenter's peripatetic trampings seem to echo Bowie's own wandering creative spirit, the walks often uncovering hidden layers, and making fresh connections to key Bowie stories, revealing influences conscious and subconscious. Through walking, an understanding is reached of where Bowie sits in the culture, his place among the poets, painters, artists and musicians who came before him, who inhabited the same spaces and in doing so passed on their wisdom to Bowie.
Through Carpenter's travels these suburban lands became a new, very real place, that anyone can visit if they take the time... Welcome to 'Bowieland'©2025 Peter Carpenter (P)2025 Octopus Publishing Group
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What listeners say about BOWIELAND
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- veyza
- 23-04-25
One for serious fans and Bromley boys - like me!
I am in the core demographic for this book - growing with this music in Bromley. Frequently I enjoyed walking with the author in my mind’s eye. But it is the very blandness of these streets that gave Bowie (and me) something to escape from.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- exile71
- 13-04-25
Highly recommended!
I am only 6 chapters in but I am hooked on this book and my husband is regretting suggesting it to me! It is a very personal account of Peter’s travels to discover what made Bowie such an enigmatic character. I must add that I am very familiar with the areas described in the book, as I grew up in SE London and Beckenham and Bromley were my stomping grounds, so this makes the book all the more special for me - I can picture so many of the places described, even the 3 Tuns pub in Beckenham which I used to frequent! I recently did the Hansa Studio tour in Berlin and was happy to hear Thilo mentioned in the book/he’s a great tour guide! I love the detail that Peter goes into and how the book portrays the early suburban life of someone who became a globally recognised superstar. A must for any Bowie fan anyone interested in popular culture! Excellent.
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