DAVIDBOWIE: ALBUMTOALBUM

Join me and Nick Pegg for the fourth and final part of the 198more show, an all-singing, all-dancing odyssey through the wildly underrated Bowie 80s. In this part, we address post Live Aid Bowie, his work with Iggy Pop, Tina Turner, Jimmy Murakami, Martin Scorsese, La La La Human Steps and a fellow called Reeves Gabrels, who would play a huge role in reorientating our hero with his muse, as the 90...

It's Live Aid Special! Join us as we join Bowie behind the scenes at the global jukebox on July 13 1985 for a day that changed pop'n'roll history

Join us for this 90 minute epic as we continue our mid 80s odyssey through the hectic schedule of D. Bowie, who is dressed in a frightwig and tights hurtling around labyrinths, or smoother than a filtered Turkish gasper, suave and Soho-sexy for Absolute Beginners. We get to grips with the music from both movies, debate Bowie's astonishing work rate, enjoy his Iggy Pop impersonation, tell you all y...

The 1980s were Bowie's lost decade. True? No, says Nick Pegg. Join me and the much-loved author of The Complete David Bowie for a reappraisal of Bowie's musical adventures around and beneath the official albums released between 1980 and 1990. We're looking at Baal, Queen, Pat Metheny, Cat People, Live Aid, Band Aid, Labyrinth, Absolute Beginners and of course, as is always the case with Mr Pegg, a...

Part Two of my megachat with comedian and author Adam Buxton and in this episode, we’re joined by the one and only Chris O’Leary, returning to Albumtoalbum after his chat with us on ‘David Bowie’ (1967) some months back, author of Pushing Ahead of the Dame blog and collected essays on Bowie’s canon in ‘Rebel, Rebel’ and ‘Ashes To Ashes’. We travel through the album’s tracklisting in this episode,...

Welcome back to Albumto album with guest Bowie obsessive Adam Buxton!  Scary Monsters is a milestone album. It is one I have long wanted to tackle here and I have quite a few thoughts about it. Here are a few of them.  David Bowie entered 1980 restless for change and a new sense of purpose. The generally lukewarm reaction to his previous album Lodger clearly prompted an internal audit and the 33-y...

Tim Worthington - writer, podcaster and cultural archaeologist - is someone who digs deep and delights in obscure details. So, it follows that in this episode of Albumtoalbum, he chose to eschew the album format and instead, picked an intriguing slice of Bowie history - the 1971 single 'Holy Holy', originally recorded in the weird dead period just after the recording of The Man Who Sold The World...

Let us head back to the summer of 1967 and the second side of the debut album by promising pop hopeful David Bowie. On this side of the disk, we encounter Little Bombardier, Silly Boy Blue, Arthur (uncle Arthur?) a singer in a band, the Maid of Bond Street, the sneezing Mr Gravedigger and many others. Guiding me in this kaleidoscopic quest is my friendly guest, the man behind Pushing Ahead Of The...

Following on from our conversation about Bowie’s final album, this episode of albumtoalbum whizzes us back 53 years to his first, the eponymous debut, released in Britain on June 1 1967. Of course, any other artist in the world might be nervous about releasing an album - a debut album! - on the same day as The Beatles dropped their long-awaited follow up to Revolver, but that's showbusiness baby....

The third and final instalment of our epic conversation with Donny McCaslin and Leah Kardos takes a behind the scenes look at the recording of David Bowie's final album, ★ in New York. Donny tells us what it was like to work on Bowie's demos and how even in his last sessions, David B was as inspired, energised and excited as ever by his music and collaborators. Thanks to Donny for his time and gen...

Welcome to the second of a megachat with musicians Donny McCaslin and Leah Kardos, as we discuss at length the life and times of the final epic album, 2016’s ★  2016’s ★ is a dense, darkly textured epic that reveals Bowie in full flight as a musician, improvisator, lyricist and performer, a tour de force that demonstrated that Bowie was as much at ease with his past as he was with his present.  A...

2016’s ★ is a dense, darkly textured epic that reveals Bowie in full flight as a musician, improvisator, lyricist and performer, a tour de force that demonstrated that Bowie was as much at ease with his past as he was with his present.  A remarkable accomplishment indeed, of course, for as we know this was Bowie’s farewell. And what an album ★ is. Like Johnny Cash or Leonard Cohen, Bowie left us w...

The legendary bass player to the stars Guy Pratt joins us for a wonderful succession of amazing tales, rock and roll anecdotage, fashion advice, Floydian digressions and hot takes on Lodger in this second part of our megachat extravaganza! 1979's 'Lodger' is an often underrated album but upon further inspection, this blend of new wave, electrorock, globally-inspired music and esoteric experimentat...

1979's 'Lodger' is an often underrated album but upon further inspection, this blend of new wave, electrorock, globally-inspired music and esoteric experimentation stands the test of time. It's a shift away from the previous two 'Berlin' albums and probably the most Eno-esque of all Bowie's records, until 1995's '1. Outside'. The tough line up of Carlos Alomar, Dennis Davis and George Murray are o...

With our tin cans and string stretching across the locked down nation, Stuart and I return to conclude our scuttle through the dark underworld of Bowie's Diamond Dogs. In this episode, we rattle through what we quaintly call 'Side 2', taking in the soul-inflected death disco vibe and pondering its debt to Orwell. Along the way, we look at the disparate influences that come into play and touch on d...

"This is not the end. This is not the beginning of the end. But it is the end of the beginning." Winston Churchill could have been talking about this episode of Albumtoalbum, in which Stuart and I continue our deep dive into the world of Bowie's* Diamond Dogs and conclude the first part of our chipper chat session. In this handy, pocket-sized episode, we marvel at Sweet Thing/Candidate and Rebel R...

In the year of the Diamond Dogs... while the zombie peoploids were crawling through Hunger City yowling with rage, a cheerful 13 year old lad in Wigan encountered Bowie's chilling, thrilling 'Diamond Dogs' LP. Today, Stuart Maconie, BBC DJ, critic and author joins me for a wonderfully rambling and enjoyable chat about all things Diamond Dogs. In this first episode, as well as recalling those halcy...

The final part of our king-sized 'Outside' chat with the MC of DB, Nicholas Pegg sweeps us up in a torrent of facts, trivia, analysis and architecture and morality. We push to the close of our investigation into this esoteric masterpiece and ask the important questions of the day including whether Oxford is actually a town or city, what track would make Bowie duck onstage when he played it live an...

Spongebob Squarepants, Scott Walker, Eno, murder, murder, madness, the Pet Shop Boys, Algeria Touchshriek, Noah and Nelly, death, millennial angst and one of Bowie's finest albums, yes it's more from the dark, dangerous world of Outside, with the one and only Nicholas Pegg. 

Released in September 1995, 1. Outside (The diary of Nathan Adler or the art-ritual murder of Baby Grace Blue: A non-linear Gothic Drama Hyper-cycle), was [Wikipedia says] "set in 1999, in which the government, through its arts commission, had created a new bureau to investigate the phenomenon of Art Crime".  How disappointing that 1999 in fact, just brought us "...hours" instead.  Anyway, 1. Outs...

WELCOME TO THE NEW episode of Album To Album in which we meet former Labour Home Secretary and award-winning memoirist Alan Johnson, former MP for Hull West and Hessel. We met recently in his Hull offices – ‘in Spiders From Mars land!’ as he proudly informs me - to reminisce about Hunky Dory, the 1971 LP which ch-ch-changed everything, not only for Bowie, but for legions of young rock’n’rollers.  ...

The long-delayed and oft-promised second part of my two-parter on 'Space Oddity' with Samira Ahmed is finally here, almost 50 years to the month after Part 1. It covers not only the latter half of Bowie's 1969 LP, but veers across a number of topics as we trudge through the dampened grass to approach the summer's end. Tall Venusians will be passing through. I hope you enjoy this - and don't forget...

It's back to 1969, and a repeat appearance on Albumtoalbum for Space Oddity, the second full-length Bowie LP and with me to discuss all things Oddity-esque is BBC Radio 4 presenter and journalist Samira Ahmed. In this revealing chat - again, a here a two-parter - Samira explains her love of Bowie, her particular love of this album, the influence it had on her as a young Asian child growing up in 1...

A multi-million selling critical smash, laden with inventiveness, melody, reflection and profoundly questioning lyrics, 'Heathen' was the album everyone was waiting for, back in 2002. As Nick Pegg and I discover, during the course of this second part of our megachat, 'Heathen' touches on many facets of Bowie's artistry over the years. It revisits familiar themes of mortality, angst, identity and G...

We're back! Happy new year and a very happy birthday David Bowie... In this episode - the first in another two-parter - Bowie biographer and solid superstar Nick Pegg dissects the rich, complex tapestry of Bowie's 2002 magnum opus 'Heathen'. An album brimming with imagery, profundity, magisterial ambition and beautiful music it's amongst the very best of the canon. In this two-part episode, record...