Music: The Father of the Blues, Golden Age of Jazz, and David Bowie | History in Photos

Summary

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The Rest Is History

Music: The Father of the Blues, Golden Age of Jazz, and David Bowie | History in Photos

Podcast Hosts: Tom Holland & Dominic Sandbrook
Guest: Chris Floyd (photographer)
Date: April 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode, part of a photography miniseries, delves into the intersection of music, history, and iconic images. Host Dominic Sandbrook and renowned photographer Chris Floyd discuss how photographs both capture and shape our understanding of musical legends. Their conversation touches on the mythic aura of bluesman Robert Johnson, the camaraderie and style of jazz musicians during the Harlem Renaissance, and the pioneering image-making of David Bowie—centered around the creation of the "Aladdin Sane" album cover.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Power of Photographic Image in Music

[00:08–01:21]

• The episode explores how key photos have both recorded and constructed the myths around famous musicians.
• Chris Floyd shares his own experiences photographing music legends, highlighting the difference between capturing a persona and seeking an authentic portrait.
• Notable musicians and moments discussed:
  • Robert Johnson’s myth of selling his soul at the crossroads.
  • The iconic Harlem jazz gathering in the 1950s.
  • Grace Jones’s 1980s visual impact.
  • The focus of the episode: David Bowie’s "Aladdin Sane" cover.

2. Photographing David Bowie

[01:21–01:52]

• Chris Floyd describes photographing Bowie, noting both the pressure and the humor Bowie brought to the session:
  • "He was surgically funny about other famous people and their foibles." — Chris Floyd [01:41]
• Floyd recalls Bowie's pointed comment about fellow glam-rocker Bryan Ferry but stops short of revealing personal dislikes.

3. The "Aladdin Sane" Album Cover – Creation and Meaning

[01:52–04:39]

• The photograph, shot by Brian Duffy, was a deliberate, expensive production—underscoring the new importance of image in popular music.
• Bowie's manager Tony De Vries operated on the theory that making record companies spend more tied them to the artist's success:
  • "If it cost £5,000, the record company were now having to pay attention. The record company couldn't have come to a better con artist than my good self." — Brian Duffy, quoted by Chris Floyd [04:20]
• The cover used costly dye transfer printing, a method employed on high-profile projects like the Pirelli calendar.

4. Technical & Symbolic Aspects of the Image

[03:32–04:39]

• The cover’s memorable look: A pale Bowie with red hair and a red/blue lightning bolt across his face.
• Printing involved separate plates for each primary color (red, green, blue), with final production in Switzerland.

5. The Lightning Flash—A Tale of Musical Inspiration

[06:14–06:47]

• The iconic lightning flash links back to Elvis Presley’s “Memphis Mafia” (with the “TCB” – Taking Care of Business – logo).
• Elvis himself borrowed the lightning motif from the "Templar Christian Brotherhood," showcasing a layered cultural lineage:
  • "So there's this lineage of— it all comes from the Templar Christian Brotherhood." — Chris Floyd [06:47]

6. Contrivance vs. Authenticity in Music Imagery

[04:39–07:13]

• Bowie’s image was a calculated, ever-changing persona—contrived for effect and stardom, a far cry from Robert Johnson’s “pre-image era.”
• Jazz musicians in the Harlem photo manifested personal style but not “superstar” branding.
• Discussion on the photographer’s role:
  • Floyd distinguishes between creating album art (deliberate contrivance) and editorial portraiture (striving for something compelling, but not necessarily truthful):
    • "You're trying to capture some element of them that is compelling... Not necessarily any truth, but just an image that makes people stop and read the headline." — Chris Floyd [07:29]

7. Reflections on the Influence and Danger of Image

[06:50–07:13]

• Bowie’s obsession with image led him, at times, into controversial territory, e.g., likening himself to “rock star Hitler” during a turbulent personal period.
• Later in his career, Bowie reflected on the dangers of “carrying too far the idea of playing a part.”

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Memorable Quotes

• "He was surgically funny about other famous people and their foibles." — Chris Floyd on Bowie [01:41]
• "The record company couldn't have come to a better con artist than my good self." — Brian Duffy (quoted by Chris Floyd) [04:20]
• "With Bowie, you get the elevation of the individual to superstar status rather than simple old-fashioned star status." — Chris Floyd [05:49]
• "So there's this lineage of— it all comes from the Templar Christian Brotherhood." — Chris Floyd [06:47]
• "You're trying to capture some element of them that is compelling... Not necessarily any truth, but just an image that makes people stop and read the headline." — Chris Floyd [07:29]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:08 — Episode introduction and photo subjects overview
• 01:21 — Chris Floyd on photographing David Bowie
• 01:52 — The story behind the "Aladdin Sane" album cover
• 03:32 — Technical details of the cover’s creation
• 06:14 — The lightning flash’s origins from Elvis to Bowie
• 06:50 — Reflection on Bowie’s complex relationship with image
• 07:29 — Chris Floyd on the truth vs. contrivance in portrait photography

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This episode offers a vivid journey through music photography, unraveling how myth, style, and commerce intertwine in creating the legends of popular music.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

It's Dominic here from the Rest Is History. So we are in the middle of an exclusive mini series for Our Rest Is History Club members about photography and the way it has been interwoven with the story of history. And in today's episode, with the great photographer Chris Floyd, we are looking in particular at music. So we'll be talking about the great bluesman Robert Johnson, who sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads in Mississippi. We'll be looking at the great titans of jazz assembling in Harlem in the 1950s. For a group portrait, we'll be talking about the career of David Bowie and we are talking about an iconic image of Grace Jones from the 1980s. Now, if you don't want to miss out on this, all you need to do is to go to therestishistory.com to sign up and not only will you get this exclusive miniseries, but you'll get a host of truly unbelievable benefits. So we hope to see [e-mail] and in the meantime, here's a little clip of the episode. So our third image that Chris has chosen. And Chris, this is somebody that you photographed yourself, but you didn't choose your own picture of him. And that's David Bowie. Just before we talk about the picture, photographing David Bowie, was it fun?

[A]

Stressful? Because again, you're with someone who's worked with the very best and also, not only with the very best, but also done it a lot.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And has probably limited patience for any faffing around. But it was good. He was surgically funny about other famous people.

[B]

Oh, that's always good.

[A]

And their foibles.

[B]

Right? Yeah, right. Was anybody he particularly disliked?

[A]

Well, I wouldn't say disliked, but he was, he, he, he made a very pointed and amusing comment about Brian Ferry.

[B]

Well, okay. Another 70s glam rock kind of product. So this is a picture. It was an album cover. The. It's Aladdin Sane.

[A]

Isn't it insane?

[B]

Yeah. And it's by. Taken BY A great 60s photographer, actually, Brian Duffy, one of the, kind of. One of the enfant terrible of kind of 60s photography.

[A]

Yes, there was Duffy, Terence Donovan and David Bailey and they were, they were given. They were known as the Black Trinity.

[B]

Right.

[A]

All from the East End, all, you know, classic 60s working class boys who

[B]

did good, you know, high end photographers had been involved with album covers since the Beatles, I guess, since the mid-60s. 64, 65. And Brian Duffy being invited to come in and do David Bowie. I mean, it's a sign of how Successful David Bowie is at this point, because. What year are we in?

[A]

We're in 73.

[B]

So Bowie's at his peak.

[A]

No, he's not at his peak, actually. So there's a great story about this. So Bowie's manager, it was called Tony De Vries, operated on the theory that if he made the record company spend a lot of money, then they would be committed because they would have spent so much money on a project that they would have to put the effort in to make their money back. This album cover in particular. He went to Duffy and said, we gotta make this album cover as expensive as we possibly can. And Duffy said, well, no problem.

[B]

Yeah, he's delighted by that.

[A]

So he hired one of the best makeup artists in the world. The printing of the image was done a Kodak process called dye transfer printing, which. Which was the most expensive process by which you could print an image in those days.

[B]

So I was going to ask about this because there's a technical story behind this picture. So for people who can't see it, I mean, you should have a look at it. You can Google it, or you can watch the episode on the website or whatever. So the image is a kind of white and pale David Bowie shot from kind of shoulders upwards. He's got this kind of shock of red hair and he's got this zigzag pattern on his face, the kind of red and blue zigzag and the technical sk that was brought to this. So Duffy had just done the Pirelli calendar, is that right? And he's using the same techniques that he'd used on the Pirelli calendar.

[A]

Yeah. So it's dye transfer. So you make a plate, a printing plate, for each color in the. So red, green and blue. You make a separate plate for each. For each color. It's extremely expensive. And it was done in Switzerland, which made it triply expensive, having to go to Switzerland.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So there's a documentary about him, actually, called the man who shot the 60s. He quoted Tony Devries, wanted to make the most expensive cover he could possibly get a company to pay for. If it cost 50 quid, then they could say, so what? But if it cost £5,000, the record company were now having to pay attention. The record company couldn't have come to a better con artist than my good self.

[B]

Okay, good line. So he does this extremely expensive process. It's all part of Bowie's. I mean, Bowie's famous, isn't he, for pioneering the idea that a rock star or a pop star has a kind of has a malleable image that is constantly changing. Between each incarnation, he will assume different personalities. So Ziggy Stardust or Aladdin Sane or the Thin White Duke or whatever. And this is all part of the image making that goes hand in hand. It's actually very different from the, you know, the Robert Johnson pictures. He is, he is unconscious of his image. He's not even thinking about his image because he's not conscious of himself as a musical celebrity. Of course. He's just a jobbing musician.

[A]

Well, Johnson's in a pre image era, isn't he? He's a pre mass media era, really. People are selling music based on an image in the way that they were by the time we get to Bowie here.

[B]

So even the jazz musicians in A Great Day at Harlem, there was an innocence, I suppose, to that image. I mean, they're all quite. They're all very smartly dressed, aren't they? They're sharp, they're sharply dressed. But there's no sense, I would say, of it being a contrivance. Whereas the Bowie image is pure contrivance.

[A]

Yeah. They've all thought about what they're wearing.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they've all put effort and consideration to it because it was important to them to look good. But they've all done it in their own. Their own individual, personal way. With Bowie, you elevation of the individual to superstar status rather than simple old fashioned star status. Yeah, he's sort of going, it's superstars. You know, the idea that he's from another planet and he's an alien and all of that stuff. There's a great, interesting background to the lightning flash on his face.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So he got that from Elvis, you know, the Memphis Mafia, Elvis's buddies, his sort of posse.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So they were the Memphis Mafia. And he had this logo designed for them, which was a lightning flash and the letters tcb, which stood for Taking care of business.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But Elvis actually stopped. Stole that from the Templar Christian Brotherhood.

[B]

Tcp.

[A]

He took the TCV of the. Of the Templar Christian Brotherhood, changed it to Taking Care of Business, stole their lightning flash and made it his own thing. And then Bowie stole the lightning flash from Elvis.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

So there's this lineage of. It all comes from the Templar Christian Brotherhood.

[B]

Wow. I suppose Bowie, you could argue his fascination with image leads him down some dark paths, doesn't it? In the 70s, the point at which he's giving interviews saying, oh, Hitler was a rock star and all of this kind of thing. Well, later on in his career he said, oh, yeah, I was carrying too far, the idea of playing a part. Yeah, I suppose, yeah. And as a photographer yourself, so here, when you're. I mean, obviously this is all contrivance, this picture.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And when you're taking your portraits of people, when someone says to you, will you go and photograph, I don't know, Paul McCartney or Bill Gates or whoever. How much are you as a photographer colluding in the creation of a confected image? Or how much are you trying to instead get. Get to the truth?

[A]

I mean, that's just two totally different things here. They're creating. It's an album cover. That's what they're. They're creating an image, a two dimensional image for an album cover. The things you're talking about with the things I've. Those things. I'm doing a portrait for an interview in a magazine or something like that. And really you're trying to capture some element of them that is compelling on the page. Not necessarily any truth, but just an image that makes people stop and read the headline.

[B]

Thank you so much for listening to that. So if you want to hear the rest of that episode, which is of course all about music, then just head to the restishistory.com to join the club and to get all the other benefits. So please do join us at the Rest is History Club. We would love to have you with us. And on that bombshell, bye bye.