David Bowie was so much more than a musician. The legendary British singer and songwriter was a musical chameleon, changing the world of pop and performance forever with his amazing, eccentric on-stage costumes, characters and songs.
Now, the late legendary singer’s daughter, Lexi Jones, is heading into show business as well.
For David Bowie, life was like a playground. He was a trail blazer, creating trends in everything from music to fashion, and reinvented himself ten times over.
Bowie was some sort of shape-shifting genius, never stopping just because he felt he was happy. He wanted much, took plenty, and gave even more back to his fans all over the world.
David Bowie – rock ‘n’ roll legend
Bowie is the artist that forever changed music, and to me, he is a true icon and one of the greatest ever. He passed away following a battle with cancer around the time of the release of his final album, Blackstar. To be fair, that’s the way I think he would’ve wanted to say goodbye.
As late as one of his last music videos, he left all of us with a wonderful little piece that one of his greatest and most mysterious characters, Major Tom, was finally home.
He was a music, fashion, and, according to many, sexual icon. This is Bowie’s story – and what has become of his beloved daughter, who he dedicated his entire life to while she grew up.
David Bowie – childhood
David Bowie was born in Brixton, London, England on January 8, 1947. His birth name was David Robert Jones, but when he was in the early days of his music career, he decided to change his surname to “Bowie”. It’s said that he wanted another name to avoid being mistaken for Davy Jones, a member of The Monkees.
Bowie’s mother Peggy worked as a cinema usher, while his father John was a promotions manager. David grew up with his half-brother Terry, who oftentimes has been credited as being the biggest inspiration for Bowie’s love of music.
When he was 6 years old, Bowie’s family moved to Bromley, another borough of London. He went to school there with Peter Framton, who would go on to be a famous guitarist.
Bowie’s childhood wasn’t full of love. He endured periods where he felt he was largely ignored, which gave him a drive to be noticed.
“It wasn’t a particularly happy childhood,” Bowie said in the film David Bowie: Finding Fame, as quoted by NME. “My parents were cold emotionally. There weren’t many hugs. I always craved affection because of that.”
David Bowie is often described as an alienated musician, and as early as age 12, he was taking unconventional steps to achieve his goals.
Special pupils story
In 1962, he and friend George Underwood both fancied the same girl, who George succeeded in getting a date with. Bowie decided to sabotage the date by telling his friend that she wasn’t interested anymore, later going on to see the same girl himself.
George wasn’t happy.
“He put me right in it, and I thought, ‘You bastard,’” Underwood said, laughing. “It wasn’t really my style, but I just walked up to him and hit him.”
David Bowie was taken to the hospital after being punched in the eye. When his friend George found out, he rushed to Bowie’s side and asking him for forgiveness. Bowie ended up with a permanently-dilated pupil. Or should we say “extraterrestrial Ziggy Stardust” eyes?
Despite the fight, Bowie and Underwood stayed great friends. And in fact, Underwood did artwork for some of Bowie’s earlier albums later on.
“He later said I did him a favor,” Underwood recalled.
Bowie himself became very interested in music early on, learning to play the saxophone at age 12. He graduated from Bromley Technical High School at age 16, and started to work as a commercial artist.
David Bowie – music career
In 1964, he, along with his band ‘The King Bees’, released a debut album Liza Jane under his real name David Jones. The band wasn’t great, and at one point in time, Bowie was close to quitting music to become a monk.
“I wanted to become part of the order and go up to a Tibetan monastery in Scotland,” Bowie said according to Herald Scotland. “He [a young monk who became Bowie’s guru for several years] advised me not to even consider it. He said my purpose was in music.”
Bowie’s interest in buddhism began to fade around the same time he started to become a real star. However, he retained an interest in spirituality, which he also incorporated in his music.
It was in 1969 that Bowie got his big breakthrough. The commercial success of the release of Space Oddity was huge. The BBC even used the single with the same name during their coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing. In 1970, he released The Man Who Sold the World, which also was greatly praised by both critics and audience.
Space Oddity turned out to also be a big success on the international stage, with the song reaching No. 15 on the US charts when released there in 1973.
Birth of Ziggy Stardust
But before that Bowie took the world by storm with a new character, which biographer Peter Doggett described as “the perfect rock’n’roll star. Male and female, king and queen, alien and human, transcendental and sublime.”
In 1972, David Bowie released The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. His magical character Ziggy Stardust was born, and the world was hooked.
According to Bowie himself, Ziggy was created as someone who’d keep his demons at bay.
“I had enormous self-image problems and very low self-esteem,” he told GQ Magazine, as quoted by The Guardian. “I was driven to get through life very quickly, I really felt so utterly inadequate, I thought the work was the only thing of value.”
The story of David Bowie is incredible, with him truly proving to be the master of reinvention. While appearing on Top of the Pops in 1972, he garnered massive success throughout Britain, Europe and the US. Before long, he was a fully-fledged rock star.
Successful career
By 1973, Ziggy Stardust was gone and Halloween Jack had taken his place. Then, in the 1970s, Thin White Duke appeared, a new character through whom Bowie released the album Station to Station, which reached the top five chart listings in both the UK and US.
“Sometimes, I don’t feel as if I’m a person at all,” he said. “I’m just a collection of other people’s ideas.”
Not only did Bowie’s career go straight to the top, but in 1970 he married American model Angie Barnett, and the following year they welcomed son Duncan Jones, also known as “Zowie Bowie”.
Their marriage lasted for ten years, after which Bowie was given custody of his son. But at the same time as he was a father, he was a rock star. Bowie couldn’t give Duncan a normal upbringing, which he, later on, made sure to give his daughter.
For much of his life, David Bowie had to live with the fact that people thought he was gay. Maybe not so strange – considering some of his interviews in the early 70s. In an interview with Melody Make, Bowie declared that he was gay, and while talking with Playboy in 1976, Bowie said this:
” It’s true — I’m a bisexual. But I can not deny that I’ve used that fact very well. I suppose it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Bowie’s first wife, Angie, agreed and claimed that Bowie had a relationship with the frontman of the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger.
Many years later, Bowie regretted his statements. In a 1983 interview, the artist claimed that his public declaration of bisexuality was “the biggest mistake I ever made” and “I was always a closet heterosexual.”
In 1992, he married supermodel Iman Abdulmajid, and their interracial relationship blossomed. The couple had met on a blind date two years prior to the wedding and the Ziggy Stardust singer fell in love immediately.
Eight years later, the couple welcomed daughter Alexandria Zahra Jones.
David Bowie – family
As early as when the couple first met, Bowie started naming their future children.
“Hell yes. My attraction to her was immediate and all-encompassing. I couldn’t sleep for the excitement of our first date,” Bowie told Hello Magazine.
“That she would be my wife, in my head, was a done deal. I’d never gone after anything with such passion in all my life. I just knew she was the one.”
Alexandria Zahra Jones, better known today as Lexi Jones, is a beautiful soul, and certainly looks a lot like her father. Even the doctor remarked on the latter fact when she was born.
“It happened with my son Duncan as well,” Bowie explained. “We look so much alike it’s spooky. Sometimes I look at him and see myself again at his age. Of course, he’s a lot more sporty than I ever was. He’s really buff. Very thickset and muscular. When Zahra was born the doctor’s first comment was, ‘My goodness, David, you’ve given her your entire gene pool.’”
David Bowie’s life was full of joy, innovation, spiritual experiences, beautiful and meaningful music and family. Just three months before he passed away, while working on his 25th album, Blackstar, he discovered his cancer was terminal.
Cause of death
He passed away on January 10, 2016, days after turning 69 years of age. Until the end, he kept his illness a secret from the world.
“I found out later that, the week we were shooting, it was when he was told it was over, they were ending treatments and that his illness had won,” Swedish video director Johan Renck, who was working with Bowie at the time, said in the BBC film David Bowie: The Last Five Years.
Blackstar became David Bowie’s farewell to the world. And in the music video to the song Blackstar, a spaceman skeleton with a bejewelled skull can be seen. Maybe this was his way of saying that Major Tom had been found.
David Bowie’s legacy will forever live on. And now, his daughter Lexi Jones is the next generation of Bowie to head into the arts.
Lexi Jones – David Bowie’s daughter
Alexandria “Lexi” Zahra Jones was born on Aug 15, 2000, at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, New York City.
She was Bowie’s second child, but as mentioned earlier, this time things were different. When his first son Duncan was born in the ’70s, Bowie was in the middle of breaking out as a world-famous star, meaning he was largely in the studio or out on tour.
He felt terrible about the fact that he wasn’t there for Duncan during his childhood, and this time, with Lexi, he was determined to be there 100 percent.
This time, Bowie was going to be there to see his child grow up.
“He missed out on much of “Zowie’s” young life, and wanted to spend as much time as possible with Lexi,” biographer David Buckley said.
Lexi Jones – childhood
Lexi grep up in the Bowie family’s lofty apartment in the artistic New York area of SoHo. For many, New York City can be a place where you can be anonymous, no matter how big of a celebrity you are. John Lennon felt it, and so did David Bowie and his family.
“It’s so easy to be a person here, a regular guy,” David Bowie said in 2003. “The family and I have no problem going out and eating.”
Bowie and Iman were aware of the fact that Lexi would be famous from the day she was born. However, New York City offered relative anonymity, and they kept it that way. It wasn’t going to be her parents’ celebrity status that would decide Lexi’s path in life, but rather her own passion.
Lexi Jones grew up having a big interest in painting and art, but her mother Iman knew just how cynical show business could be.
Two years ago, when Lexi turned 18, she posted a picture of herself on Instagram. It didn’t take long before several heavyweights in the fashion industry contacted her.
‘”Every agency, every designer, called me to say: ‘If she wants to, we’d love for her to model for us.’” Iman told Porter. “I said: ‘No, she doesn’t.’ I know why they wanted to her to model – it’s because she is David Bowie’s daughter.”
Talented artist
Iman and David were keen on guarding the privacy of their marriage and also that of their daughter. Iman says Lexi is a talented painter, and she decided to take a gap year to fulfil her dreams.
“She [Lexi] says I am overprotective,” says Iman. “But I told her, this can all wait, it isn’t going anywhere. Have a life that is private while you can, because one day soon it is going to be public, so enjoy this.”
On Instagram, Lexi, who’s now 20 years of age, shares pictures of herself. She also has a special account dedicated to her art. In May, The Sun reported that Lexi now lives in Los Angeles, selling artwork and clothing for up to $250.
“Lexi has been here for a while now, but she isn’t interested in the Hollywood scene and going to red carpet events,” a source told The Sun.
“She’s a great kid and very down-to-earth, most of her friends are also studying art and they spend their time vintage shopping, going to exhibitions and hanging out by the beach.
“The world is Lexi’s oyster, there are a lot of opportunities for her being Bowie’s daughter, but she’s enjoying being a regular teenager for now and making it on her own.”
The Covid-19 pandemic has been hard on families all over the world, and it’s been no exception for Lexi and Iman. Lexi admitted she hadn’t seen her mother in over six months.
New photos
The artist shared a photo of herself and her mother from her childhood, telling her followers to stay safe.
“I haven’t seen my mum for 6 months because we live on opposite coasts and it is very difficult to leave NY right now but I’m a child and i miss her dearly so please be party poopers this one time so it doesn’t take 2 f**king years to see her again thank you!,” Lexi wrote.
David Bowie will forever live on in our hearts, a musical genius who changed the world of entertainment forever. We wish his daughter Lexi Jones and the rest of their family all the best in the future.
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