Silhouettes and Shadows

Silhouettes and Shadows explores the secret history of David Bowie’s 1980 album Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)—an avant-garde pop album rich with tension and fear which closed Bowie’s golden years of the 1970s.

Featuring exclusive interviews with close collaborators, this book uncovers the studio stories and hidden meanings behind Scary Monsters as Bowie stood at the crossroads of the new decade. Caught between the experimental Berlin Trilogy (Low, Heroes, and Lodger) and 1983’s smash hit Let’s Dance, it is here Bowie reached the end of his long road to recovery, overcame his demons, and buried the ghosts of his past to become a global superstar reaching millions of new fans.

Scary Monsters’ hit singles “Fashion” and “Ashes to Ashes” would break Bowie back into the charts, confronting listeners with chaotic images of paranoia, addiction, social breakdown, and state control. Bowie would ride a new wave of inspiration with the post-punk of Joy Division, synth-pop of Gary Numan, and Culture Club’s sexual emancipation to the Blitz Kids and the New Romantics that followed in his wake.

Marking a final goodbye to Space Oddity's lost hero, Major Tom, and the personas of Ziggy Stardust, Halloween Jack, Plastic Soul (the Gouster) and The Thin White Duke, in this rare moment, David Bowie, the pierrot clown of everyday romance, suffering, and song, let his mask slip to reveal David Jones, the man within.