When David Bowie turned up midway through Elvis concert!

Elvis Presley exercised a sway over David Bowie to such a degree that even when the latter was on the threshold of stardom, he once took a flight from Heathrow to New York to watch the king of rock and roll perform at the Madison Square Garden only to turn up midway through the concert.
This and several other details about Bowie, the British singer-songwriter who died after an 18-month battle with cancer on January 10, find mention in a new book named "Bowie: The Biography" by Wendy Leigh.
In the biography, published by Simon & Schuster imprint Gallery Books, Leigh reveals the man behind Bowie's myriad images - up to and including his role as stay-at-home dad, happily monogamous in his quarter-of-a-century-plus marriage to supermodel Iman.

David was a dedicated Elvis fan and both shared birthdays. David was born on January 8, 1947, Elvis' twelfth birthday. David's mother, Peggy was overcome when Elvis flooded the radio with hits, and she viewed the fact that David shared his birthday as a positive omen.
Said David once, "She never let me forget it. She was enthralled by the idea."
David himself was not immune to the significance of sharing a birthday with Elvis, and it added to his sense of his own destiny, his own specialness. Consequently, when he watched his aunt Una's daughter, his cousin, Kristina, dance to "Hound Dog" soon after it was released in 1956, his passion for music was ignited.

"It really impressed me, the power of the music. I started getting records immediately after that," he said.

Leigh says even when Bowie was on the threshold of stardom, Elvis continued to exercise such a sway over him that, in the face of the King, he would instantly be reduced to the level of fandom.
"In June 1972, David and his guitarist Mick Ronson took a midday flight from Heathrow to New York and arrived just in time to catch Elvis headlining Madison Square Garden. Or so they hoped. In fact, they arrived there after the show had begun.
David later it was "really humiliating but unmissable".

"Although the idea was floated that David work with Elvis in a production-writer capacity, which David has said he would have loved, nothing ever came of it. But he still cherishes a note that Elvis sent him, wishing him a good tour - and his imitation of Elvis's Southern drawl is perfect, mimicry being yet another of David's manifold talents," the book says.
The author brings fresh insights to Bowie's battles with addiction; his insatiable sex life - from self-avowed gay to bisexual to resolutely heterosexual - and countless conquests; his childhood in a working-class London neighbourhood and the troubling family influences that fuelled his relentless pursuit of success; and much more.

According to the author, Bowie's amorous exploits through the years amount to an extremely multifaceted sexual odyssey, which can be attributed not only to his good looks, his trim, toned, and flexible body, his high-octane libido, his impressive, much-vaunted endowment, his star quality and massive powers of attraction, but also to the fact that Bowie has always been an-equal opportunity lover.
"Neither age, race, religion, nor the looks of his lovers ever prevented him from following the siren's song of his lust, wherever it might lure him," she writes.
Long after David's birth at 40 Stansfield Road, a three-story terraced house, mythology had it that the midwife who delivered him swooned about his "knowing eyes" and insisted that the newborn baby had "been here before", says Leigh.

"The baby David's other worldliness is the first of the many myths attached to David Bowie, perhaps by his father, John Haywood Jones, a seasoned public-relations man who devoted his considerable talents to raising David's profile, or by subsequent publicists, or possibly by David himself, always his own best publicist, willing to spin untruths into truth, all in quest of lending luster to his image and his career," she writes.
From his father, David got his love of reading; he got his first taste of Hemingway from his father's readers' book club, which sent him a book a month, each of which David eagerly devoured.

"My father opened up my world because he taught me the habit of reading. I got so much information, so many of the things I wanted to do came from books," he once recalled.
Another, less salutary habit that David picked up from his father was chain-smoking, and despite undergoing hypnosis and aversion therapy to break the habit, for a great part of his life, he was unable to quit, says Leigh.