David Bowie Far Above The World – The Time and Space of David Bowie

The world is awash with books about David Bowie, almost one hundred have been published since his death in January 2016. Author Paul Morley is no stranger to Bowie, having published the impressive The Age Of Bowie shortly after Bowie died in and being an advisor to the stunning V&A Bowie exhibition. Clearly, Morley knows his stuff, but does he have anything new to add to a story he has already told? Rather than rehashing the same old tale or focusing on a singular decade, as many before him have done, Morley chooses to explore David Bowie through the lens of his role as an everlasting cultural force and changemaker. The premise of Far Above the World is to document Bowie as a creative artist, one who lived in the future, “using pop songs to chronicle overwhelming and dangerous times whilst creating a communication channel between post-war 20^th century times and where(ever) we are now.” This is quite a challenge, but one Morley embraces and tackles with energy and spirit.

Given the book is a detailed analysis of such a creative artist, the second-rate cover seems somewhat thrown together with either little thought, or more likely completely overthought. Compared to recent Bowie publications, the cover, and to a degree the photos within the book, fail to capture the true artistry of Bowie. But once you get over this and open the book the delights begin.

Despite being set out in a roughly chronological order, Far Above the World is less a biography than a collection of over 70 short pieces focusing on themes such as Trial and Error and Art and Commerce. Morley’s attention to detail is interesting; he avoids the music hack trap of discussing each single, album and tour to explore the impact of, for example, Bowie choosing Florence as a setting for his wedding to Iman where Morley gives great detail to the artistic importance of Florence, lending weight to Donatello’s statue of David, which had “announced the rebirth of humanism.”

As with most Bowie books, the majority focuses on his work between the late 1960s and the pre-stadium rock of 1983. This is to be expected, but Morley has perhaps missed a chance to reset the balance in terms of the cultural impact Bowie had in the 25 years between the greatest hits Sound + Vision tour and his untimely death in 2016. Morley’s insights into this period of Bowie’s career are certainly thought-provoking, but it would have been interesting to read more of his interpretations of this hugely artistic period for Bowie.

At times, Morley goes off at a cultural tangent and needs to rein himself back in to help the reader make sense of where he is going. But even at these times, it is interesting to see where Morley travels in his thought process as he always returns to the impact culture had on Bowie and Bowie had on culture. It is fascinating to read about the importance of lesser-known artists who had such an impact on Bowie, and in this way Morley has found his unique selling point. This is not a book ‘dishing the dirt’ or based on ‘newly discovered’ sources or detailed interviews, nor perhaps is it a book to read cover to cover, but instead one to dip into. The hardened Bowie fanatic, of which there are many, will learn little of David Bowie the pop star, but instead will have their mind opened to a side of Bowie rarely explored in such depth. Morley has produced a wondrous collection of writings to provoke the Bowie fan into deepening their understanding of the man, not just the myth.

Paul Morley’s Far Above The World is published on 6^th November 2025, by Headline Press.