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Silhouettes and Shadows: The Secret History of David Bowie’s Scary Monsters
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…
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…
256 pages, Paperback
Published June 1, 2023
4 people are currently reading
75 people want to read
About the author
Adam Steiner
6 books10 followersAdam Steiner is a lifeguard, journalist and author. When not saving lives he sits dreaming about all the books he will never write. In 2020 his book Into The Never, a deep dive into the Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral album, was published by Rowman and Littlefield, his first novel, Politics Of The Asylum about a cleaner in a collapsing hospital was published in 2018
He created the Disappear Here poetry film project – 27 x collaborative poetry-films about Coventry Ringroad – and now curates the Living With Buildings series, screening experimental films about people, poetry and place.
www.adamsteiner.uk
www.disappear-here.org
@BurndtOutWard
He created the Disappear Here poetry film project – 27 x collaborative poetry-films about Coventry Ringroad – and now curates the Living With Buildings series, screening experimental films about people, poetry and place.
www.adamsteiner.uk
www.disappear-here.org
@BurndtOutWard
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
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June 20, 2023I am just thrilled by all of the Bowie-centric books that have hit the market the last few years.I’m not far into this one, but I wanted to stop to let y’all know how impressed I am with the exposè type intro and spot on descriptions. I’m really hoping this book is not one that NG and the publisher will expire from my bookshelf.
November 7, 2023
Very dense and overwrought, but then so is Scary Monsters, so seems appropriate.
March 2, 2024
Diving into Adam Steiner's exploration of Bowie's 'Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)' is a revelation. Steiner seamlessly weaves a detailed song-by-song analysis with Bowie's enigmatic philosophy, inviting readers to take imaginative leaps akin to the artist's call for exploration.
Throughout the book, Steiner unveils hidden meanings in Bowie's work, adding a layer of creative depth. Embracing messy, open-ended creativity, Steiner echoes Bowie's own affinity for the unpredictable nature of artistic expression.
At its core, Steiner's analysis unveils Bowie's relentless pursuit of transcending limitations. Connecting specific tracks, like the intriguing 'Up the Hill Backwards,' to Dadaism showcases Bowie's commitment to agency and pushing against constraints.
Steiner vividly captures Bowie's fight against confinement and his ability to turn obstacles into sources of creativity. The book paints a picture of Bowie's insatiable desire to evolve artistically, utilizing adversity as a catalyst.
Time emerges as a central theme, with Steiner quoting Bowie on the significance of not wasting a single day. Bowie's complex relationship with his past material is explored, emphasizing his constant need for reinvention and refusal to be tethered to past successes.
Summing up the impact of 'Scary Monsters,' Steiner references the phrase 'Bowie's best album since Scary Monsters,' which had kind of become an in-joke among those reviewing Bowie’s later albums but also encapsulates the enduring appeal of this influential work. In conclusion, Adam Steiner's book provides a concise and insightful exploration of the album, offering a fresh perspective on Bowie's artistic philosophy and the timeless legacy of this influential album."
Throughout the book, Steiner unveils hidden meanings in Bowie's work, adding a layer of creative depth. Embracing messy, open-ended creativity, Steiner echoes Bowie's own affinity for the unpredictable nature of artistic expression.
At its core, Steiner's analysis unveils Bowie's relentless pursuit of transcending limitations. Connecting specific tracks, like the intriguing 'Up the Hill Backwards,' to Dadaism showcases Bowie's commitment to agency and pushing against constraints.
Steiner vividly captures Bowie's fight against confinement and his ability to turn obstacles into sources of creativity. The book paints a picture of Bowie's insatiable desire to evolve artistically, utilizing adversity as a catalyst.
Time emerges as a central theme, with Steiner quoting Bowie on the significance of not wasting a single day. Bowie's complex relationship with his past material is explored, emphasizing his constant need for reinvention and refusal to be tethered to past successes.
Summing up the impact of 'Scary Monsters,' Steiner references the phrase 'Bowie's best album since Scary Monsters,' which had kind of become an in-joke among those reviewing Bowie’s later albums but also encapsulates the enduring appeal of this influential work. In conclusion, Adam Steiner's book provides a concise and insightful exploration of the album, offering a fresh perspective on Bowie's artistic philosophy and the timeless legacy of this influential album."
November 20, 2024
I want to give this book four stars. The writing and research that went into this book was very detailed. The author does a great job at setting the stage for both the global and personal mood and moment which Bowie used to create the album. The author repeats himself a lot throughout the book, and the language can get pretty flowery to the level of pretentiousness. The reader can often feel like Steiner is getting off on how great his own writing is. Just because a sentence contains a lot more words does not mean it's "saying" more. Also, the Notes section can be confusing, and it is obviously where everything the editor cut was dumped. The numbering is inconsistent and it can be difficult to line up which note goes with which in-text citation.
July 6, 2023
I was really excited to get an advanced copy of this book. I am a huge Bowie fan. I was expecting a behind the scenes, deep insight into every moment that went into making this album. I was a bit disappointed. There are bits of behind the scenes of how songs were recorded, but there are more tangents going on here that take away from the “making of an album.” The author does a good job of painting a picture of the times and mindset of Bowie, but spends little time in the actual making of the album. If you’re a David Bowie fan, you should read it. I do wish the galley had a better formatting instead of just one long chapter, no page breaks, chapters, or any formatting around quotes, poems(?), etc. Reading the actual printed book might have been more enjoyable. Thanks to @netgalley and Backbeat for the advanced copy.
August 18, 2023
Adam Steiner has done it again. Just like he did for Nine Inch Nails in his previous book ("Into the Never") , Mr. Steiner gives you a deep dive into David Bowie and his 1980 album "Scary Monsters and Super Creeps". Not only do you get all of the stories from the studio, and lyrical analysis, but Steiner connects the themes of the records to the political landscape of the incoming 80's, and Bowies own growth as an artist and person. If you like Bowie, or biographies of critical top ten albums, this book has it all.
Read
April 14, 2025A truly academic work which firmly places a landmark album and its artist at their musical and personal points in time. Adam Steiner does not engage in adulation of Bowie - allowing him to appear what (in the singer's words borrowed from a passer-by) he simply was at times: "just a c**t in a clown suit".
But always praise where praise is due.
But always praise where praise is due.
November 10, 2024
Fantastic!
February 19, 2024
Excellent retrospective look at the 1980’s album and historical backdrop that cutting edge artists such as David Bowie struggled to continue to transcend through the decade.
June 3, 2023
My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Globe Pequot, Backbeat Books for an advanced copy of this book on the making and influence of one of David Bowie's best albums, considered by many to be one of the best recordings in rock history.
An album is never created in a vacuum. There are engineers, and producers, and record executives, sometimes with ideas that can be ignored, or have the deep pockets that allow the record to exist at all. Friends weigh in, that sounds great, ughh, why. Band members can come up with a riff, a comment could be turned into a lyrics, an accident made art. The outside world weighs in, politics, the music scene, the push by management to stop with art and make some money. Love, or lack of can add ambience, a city bursting with new sounds, new ideas can fill a tape. And of course the artist, David Bowie and his ability to absorb everything and release it with his own flair. Out of Berlin, dealing with the fallout of punk, the advent of post-punk and new age,with a need to make a commercial album, Bowie did what Bowie did best. Create a new album for a new decade. Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) was the result. Silhouettes and Shadows: The Secret History of David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) by music writer Adam Steiner is both a personal look by the author of the meaning of the album to Steiner, and a look at its creation, and the influence it had on Bowie and the music that was to come.
David Bowie was at a crossroads. Finishing his Berlin trilogy of albums with Brian Eno, albums that have grown in stature and fame, but at the time were received kind of flatly, Bowie wanted something different. New wave was coming in, punk was out, and Bowie found himself competing with bands and people who were new on the scene with new sounds and even more new attitudes. Bowie decided the next album was going to be more commercial. Bowie started in New York working at the Power Station without Brian Eno but with Tony Visconti and some of the same musicians. Bowie created music that was different for him, not as improvisational, but infused with what was going on in the New York music scene, with a few old friends. Bowie returned to England to work on lyrics, drawing from older works, bringing back Major Tom, in an album that was to end the seventies in many ways, and set up a new sound that would bring Bowie back to the mainstream, if not bigger.
Scary Monsters is considered not only very good Bowie album but a classic album in many ways. An album that ends the Ziggy/ Great White Duke/ past personas, and brings in more modern music, more of a new wave, post disco feeling. Adam Steiner starts the book with how much he loved the album, buying it for one pound to play on his car radio and how transformative the album was to him. This continues as he unfolds more about the making of the album, the political times of Thatcher, the music that was being played, and even the way Bowie was looking at his career. Steiner looks at the songs, telling stories about their creation, being in the studio with Bowie and the other musicians, even a bit from what the producer was thinking about the project. Steiner has talked to many people involved and around the album, parses gossip and other tales in attempt to get to the truth, which as in any behind the music story can be hard to get.
Steiner is a very good writer, and this book is a must for fans of both Bowie and the era this music was created in. Recommended for music historians, Bowie readers and people who like books about the creative process and how art is created.
An album is never created in a vacuum. There are engineers, and producers, and record executives, sometimes with ideas that can be ignored, or have the deep pockets that allow the record to exist at all. Friends weigh in, that sounds great, ughh, why. Band members can come up with a riff, a comment could be turned into a lyrics, an accident made art. The outside world weighs in, politics, the music scene, the push by management to stop with art and make some money. Love, or lack of can add ambience, a city bursting with new sounds, new ideas can fill a tape. And of course the artist, David Bowie and his ability to absorb everything and release it with his own flair. Out of Berlin, dealing with the fallout of punk, the advent of post-punk and new age,with a need to make a commercial album, Bowie did what Bowie did best. Create a new album for a new decade. Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) was the result. Silhouettes and Shadows: The Secret History of David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) by music writer Adam Steiner is both a personal look by the author of the meaning of the album to Steiner, and a look at its creation, and the influence it had on Bowie and the music that was to come.
David Bowie was at a crossroads. Finishing his Berlin trilogy of albums with Brian Eno, albums that have grown in stature and fame, but at the time were received kind of flatly, Bowie wanted something different. New wave was coming in, punk was out, and Bowie found himself competing with bands and people who were new on the scene with new sounds and even more new attitudes. Bowie decided the next album was going to be more commercial. Bowie started in New York working at the Power Station without Brian Eno but with Tony Visconti and some of the same musicians. Bowie created music that was different for him, not as improvisational, but infused with what was going on in the New York music scene, with a few old friends. Bowie returned to England to work on lyrics, drawing from older works, bringing back Major Tom, in an album that was to end the seventies in many ways, and set up a new sound that would bring Bowie back to the mainstream, if not bigger.
Scary Monsters is considered not only very good Bowie album but a classic album in many ways. An album that ends the Ziggy/ Great White Duke/ past personas, and brings in more modern music, more of a new wave, post disco feeling. Adam Steiner starts the book with how much he loved the album, buying it for one pound to play on his car radio and how transformative the album was to him. This continues as he unfolds more about the making of the album, the political times of Thatcher, the music that was being played, and even the way Bowie was looking at his career. Steiner looks at the songs, telling stories about their creation, being in the studio with Bowie and the other musicians, even a bit from what the producer was thinking about the project. Steiner has talked to many people involved and around the album, parses gossip and other tales in attempt to get to the truth, which as in any behind the music story can be hard to get.
Steiner is a very good writer, and this book is a must for fans of both Bowie and the era this music was created in. Recommended for music historians, Bowie readers and people who like books about the creative process and how art is created.
September 4, 2023
Steiner’s 'Silhouettes and Shadows' is another scholastically impressive offering. With comparative cultural history that would be influencing David Bowie in tandem with the artist’s personal biography we watch a precise dissection of the phantasmagoria that is the pop-punk fever dream ‘Scary Monsters and Super Freaks’.
After a brief and touching opening on the meaning of this album to Steiner the author, we are heralded by the cacophony of Neoliberal politics that leads us through Bowie’s journey of addiction, a survived assassination attempt, and in-studio accounts of the creative collaborations during the making of the album and those inspired after (including a cantankerous Pete Townshend and a livid Trent Reznor). Each song gets its own chapter that meticulously breaks down the sonic and lyrical elements at play, how they inform the song’s meaning, and the origin of what inspired their place in the album. Richly researched and warranted, Steiner successfully explains the deconstruction at play in the album while doing exactly that – deconstructing it.
For the Bowie fan who especially loves the Berlin era of Bowie, this book will serve as means to enrich the journey of those albums. At the end of the experiment in exile was a sense of nothingness for Bowie. In ‘Silhouettes and Shadows’ we read about what that nothing did to him and what he did with it. Steiner paints ‘Scary Monsters and Super Freaks’ an apt album for the era of late-stage capitalism and the struggle for meaning inside it.
After a brief and touching opening on the meaning of this album to Steiner the author, we are heralded by the cacophony of Neoliberal politics that leads us through Bowie’s journey of addiction, a survived assassination attempt, and in-studio accounts of the creative collaborations during the making of the album and those inspired after (including a cantankerous Pete Townshend and a livid Trent Reznor). Each song gets its own chapter that meticulously breaks down the sonic and lyrical elements at play, how they inform the song’s meaning, and the origin of what inspired their place in the album. Richly researched and warranted, Steiner successfully explains the deconstruction at play in the album while doing exactly that – deconstructing it.
For the Bowie fan who especially loves the Berlin era of Bowie, this book will serve as means to enrich the journey of those albums. At the end of the experiment in exile was a sense of nothingness for Bowie. In ‘Silhouettes and Shadows’ we read about what that nothing did to him and what he did with it. Steiner paints ‘Scary Monsters and Super Freaks’ an apt album for the era of late-stage capitalism and the struggle for meaning inside it.
July 12, 2023
A well-researched and thorough look into the making of one of David Bowie's career highlights. Adam clearly loves his material and his passion comes through in his narrative structure. It's not merely a recap of each song what it entails; this book explains the lead-up and circumstances surrounding the creation of each track. Stories about Bowie and his band are woven through each chapter.
June 19, 2024
Essential reading for Bowie-heads
October 8, 2023
An avant-garde pop album that encapsulates Bowie’s experimental genre-shifting of the ’70s, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) marked a pivotal point in his career, effectively shedding the characters and personas, such as Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke, that had defined him and looking towards a new decade. Steiner’s thoroughly accomplished analysis will appeal to those with a passing interest in Bowie, and those looking for a deep exploration of this art-rock classic.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews