Silhouettes and Shadows: The Secret History of David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)

Steiner (Into the Never: Nine Inch Nails and the Creation of the Downward Spiral) dives deep into David Bowie’s 1980 album, Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), a pivotal work for him. This book describes it as a culmination of sorts that was also fresh and thrilling in its own right. Bowie dominated the 1970s with some of the most memorable work of his career, covering so many styles and genres that it seemed he could do anything. Then, competing with young upstarts he had influenced, he, naturally, wanted to take his music into the next decade. The dense book is not merely a chronicle of the songs as they are written, or the recording process, the musicians involved, and so on. Instead, the author analyzes the songs on nearly a molecular level with the eye of a poet and the detail of a historian. Steiner’s description of Bowie’s life during that period sets the scene for the emergence of one of his most beloved works.