David Bowie on the Make

HOW DO YOU write a biography of David Bowie? How do you pin down a grasshopper aesthete whose core belief is that the only thing worse than looking the same twice is sounding the same twice? One day Bowie is a curly-tressed hippie in paisleys and silks, the next a crop-headed proto-punk in denim and leather. One day he is a spiky post-apocalyptic doomster reciting poems about the horrors of late capitalism, the next he is all suits and slick-backed hair declaring that Britain is ripe for a fascist takeover. How to get a handle on him?