to the 80's-

[di47f]

When I listened to Teenage Wildlife for the first time,
it felt somewhat absurd - I was surprised - because he sang like 
some wacky Enka singer.



February, 1980

Bowie started to work on the album Scary Monsters with Tony Visconti at The Power Station, NY.





Hisashi Miura translated the English lyrics of It's No Game (Pt 1) into Japanese.



And Michi Hirota(right) sang the part.



March, 1980

He wrote Crystal Japan, went to Kyoto to do the commercials for "Jun" shochu, the product of Takara Shuzo.











and the product today (ha!)



At the time, he stayed at...



...Tawaraya Ryokan.







In the Bowie picture above, you can see his garments, his umbrella, a hand pouring in water,
and a book on the table.
I turned the picture upside down,



and I think the portrait on the book is this.



Arthur Rimbaud.
Maybe... some influence from Patti Smith and Tom "Verlaine"?
The book looks thick enough, I think it was a biography instead of poems.
Anyway, he read Rimbaud in Kyoto :-)

Bowie, before the Keihan Keishinsen subway train.



A train of the same kind in 1976. (source)



This time, he's before a train operated on the section (maybe) between Umeda and Kyoto.



He did the shopping :-)



pretended to make a call to someone,


   
 (the public phone at around that time)

walked around, or visited a restaurant(?) named Lollipop(I think...).


   

(* At the restaurant, he wore the same vest as in the first pic taken in the studio.)
According to this Japanese blog on Bowie, he used to order "coffee, sandwitch, ice cream" there,
helped the owner's daughter to do her English homework (!!!).
And it says there was this rumor that he bought a vacation home at Yamashina,
because he was seen to visit frequently the house of the executive of Takara Shuzo there.



It's interesting that there is this cafe, named Cafe David in Kyoto.



This Bowienetter Eri Wilde introduces that there's this man's portrait. David Kidd.



(Like Bowie) He looks like an anime character here, but he's not.

Eri Wilde wrote about this mysterious gentleman, too. I received the impression that
he was another Christopher Isherwood, at least for Bowie.



It's a really mysterious story, I couldn't find very much information from the web.
I became more curious as I read about his life, his singular devotion to Japanese traditional art and the Oomoto school,
his death(maybe in about 1997 as far as I remember), and the oblivion, his mansion gone to be ruined......

And, there's this picture.



I think I saw this picture on the blog of the stylist Yacco Takahashi and I thought the girl sitting on the left side of Iggy was her. (I don't have the link now.) And as you see, there's Coco Schwab on the right side of Iggy.
Iggy pop is holding some black thing, I think it was a tea cup used in the tea ceremony.
But when did Iggy visit Japan "with Bowie"? I couldn'f find any information on it.

May, 1980

Shooting the video for Ashes to Ashes.



I don't know the exact date when they had the photo session for the album cover,
so I spread all the pics related to that (sad but lovely) clown :-)

Richard Sharah, makeup artist who had already worked with Steve Strange, did the makeup for Bowie.



Brian Duffy took the photographs, and the artist Edward Bell added his paintings.
(The long pictures below are screenshots of a documentary on the artist. But I forgot where I took them from.)







August, 1980

The Elephant Man was performed in Chicago.
During that time, a journalist and the photographer Anton Corbijn from NME interviewed him.

FRIDAY afternoon finds Anton and I awaiting Bowie and Coco in a small, seedy bar opposite the Blackstone. They arrive on time and Bowie, sharing Anton's delight at having found Sinatra's 'God's Face Looks Like' on the jukebox, agrees to the photographer's request to do a session there and then, but not without first consulting Coco...





And here, what I found are...

the "Cold Beer" sign, the mirror sign and lamps...



and this! The jukebox model :D



It was this Rock-Ola 450 and it seemed to be made in Chicago.







September, 1980

The album was released.
And Bowie attended the premiere of David Lynch's Elephant Man in New York.





November, 1980

Bowie was featured on the cover of The Face magazine.



And more from the next years :-)

I don't know when exactly, but maybe in February, 1981? Bowie and Tony Visconti received the Brit Award.
(There seems to be almost no information about that year's show except Visconti's website.









1982

Bowie visited Monte Carlo in Monaco. Photographer Helmut Newton took pictures of him there.



It seems he posed for the camera at the bay near the Beach Hotel.



And in this picture taken around the same time, Helmut Newton(the shirtless one) was in front of that hotel.









These two met each other again in 1983, when Bowie visited Berlin during his Serious Moonlight tour.
Bowie was staying at Kempinsky Hotel.





The Classic Zimmer today.



I was curious why Newton took such pics in a hotel room, and if he really took the pictures himself.



Then, I found this page from the November issue of New York Magazine.



I tried to put all the pictures I collected in this post altogether before I would have no time to post ;-)
So this became an enormously long picspam. I hope you understand...... :-)