January 8th, 2006 - Happy Birthday David Bowie!

David Bowie (born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947) is an English Grammy Winning singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, actor, producer, arranger and audio engineer whose work spans more than four decades.

Throughout the 1970s he took cues from art, philosophy and literature and appeared to elevate pop and rock to a more sophisticated level. He is also a film and stage actor, music video director and visual artist.

He was forced to stay out of school for eight months so that doctors could conduct operations in attempts to repair his potentially blinded eye. Page 85 of "Alias David Bowie" by Peter and Leni Gillman, ISBN 0-450-413468 records that Bowie's friend George Underwood, while wearing a ring on his finger, had punched him in the eye when the two were fighting over a girl. Underwood and Bowie remained good friends; Underwood went on to do artwork for Bowie's earlier albums. Doctors could not fully repair the damage, leaving his pupil permanently dilated. As a result of the injury, Bowie has faulty depth perception. Bowie has stated that although he can see with his injured eye, his color vision was mostly lost and a brownish tone is constantly present.

At the age of 17, David Jones was interviewed on BBC television's Tonight program by Cliff Michelmore as the founder of The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-haired Men.

Bowie stated that his earliest musical goal was to be a saxophone player in Little Richard's group. Initially a saxophonist, he was discovered, quite by accident, as a singer when he subbed in for a missing vocalist at a club in London. He played with various blues groups, such as The King Bees, The Mannish Boys and The Lower Third in the 1960s. Bowie adapted his public image to fit, and often anticipate, the prevailing musical trends. His early work shifts through the blues and Elvis-esque music while working with many British pop styles.

Influenced by the dramatic arts he studied at this age — from avant-garde theatre and mime to Commedia dell'arte — much of Bowie's work has involved the creation of characters or personae to present to the world. The aspiring rock star needed to use a different stage name to avoid confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees, so he chose the last name Bowie after the Alamo hero Jim Bowie and his famous Bowie knife. He pronounces Bowie to rhyme with Joey.

Bowie released his first solo album in 1967 for Deram records, simply called David Bowie, an amalgam of psychedelia and easy listening. Also released was a single, "The Laughing Gnome", with the cult-classic B-side "The Gospel According to Tony Day". None of these managed to chart; the 1967 album is hard to find today, although it exists in counterfeit copies. However, the materials of the album, the single, and several other works were later recycled in a multitude of compilation albums.

During 1967, Bowie also had minor success with a single he wrote for another artist, "Oscar" (an early stage name of actor-musician Paul Nicholas). Bowie wrote Oscar's third single, "Over The Wall We Go", which gained a degree of notoriety because it satirized a series of highly-publicized breakouts from British prisons.

David Bowie finally returned to the stage on 8 September 2005, alongside The Arcade Fire, for the nationally televised event Fashion Rocks, his first gig since the heart attack. Bowie has shown interest in the Montreal band since he was seen at one of their shows in New York City nearly a year earlier. Bowie had requested the band to perform at the show, and together they performed the Arcade Fire's song "Wake Up" from their album Funeral, as well as Bowie's own "Five Years". He joined them again on 15 September 2005, singing "Queen Bitch" and "Wake Up" from Central Park's Summer stage as part of the CMJ Music Marathon.

Bowie contributed back-up vocals for TV on the Radio's song "Province" from their album Return to Cookie Mountain. He made other occasional appearances, as in his commercial with Snoop Dogg for XM Satellite Radio. Made while Bowie was still recovering, the famously gaunt, glamorous singer's suddenly puffy, unwell appearance was startling to long-time fans. He appeared on Danish alt-rockers Kashmir's 2005 release, No Balance Palace, which was produced by Tony Visconti. The album also featured a spoken word performance by Lou Reed, making it the second project involving both Bowie and Reed in two years, since Reed's 2003 The Raven.

For 2006, Bowie once again announced a break from performance, though he made a surprise appearance at a David Gilmour concert on 29 May 2006 at the Royal Albert Hall, London, to sing the songs "Arnold Layne" and "Comfortably Numb", closing the concert.

On 8 February 2006, David Bowie was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In November, Bowie performed at the Black Ball in New York for the Keep a Child Alive Foundation alongside his wife, Iman, and Alicia Keys. He duetted with with Keys on "Changes", and also performed "Wild is the Wind" and "Fantastic Voyage".

In May 2007, Bowie, alongside other artists, will curate and perform in the abandoned railway park in New York called the Highline. He will select various musicians and artists to perform, and the festivities will include art shows and performances. This is to culminate in to a large, outdoor Bowie concert, his first major gig in nearly 3 years.

The couple made their main home at the time a $3.5 million castle in Ireland under the Irish Governments attractive tax laws for artists and performers. They also own houses in Africa, Switzerland, London, Los Angeles, the Mastic Islands in the Carribean; and their present main home, New York.