Journalist and writer Peter Ormerod, arts editor for NationalWorld and a longtime contributor to The Guardian on culture and faith, has written ‘David Bowie and the Search for Life, Death and God,’ a wide-ranging spiritual meditation on Bowie’s music and creativity that is already drawing serious praise. The Spectator calls it a book where “the Bowie you thought you knew is recast completely,” Publishers Weekly describes it as “a transfixing look at David Bowie’s life through a spiritual lens, fresh and revealing,” and The Guardian’s Simon Critchley says Ormerod “had me singing in the choir with him.” Raised in a clergy family with a lifelong fascination with religion, Ormerod brings a perspective to Bowie’s story that has largely been overlooked, tracing a spiritual quest that runs from his earliest recordings all the way through to his final album.
The book follows Bowie’s restless search for meaning across decades and traditions, from his earliest encounters as a choirboy to his enrapture with Tibetan Buddhism as a young musician, through the Kabbalah-influenced tracks of ‘Station to Station,’ the messiah complex embedded in Ziggy Stardust, and the profound affinity between “Heroes” and Christian thought. Ormerod takes Bowie’s spiritual obsessions seriously as a creative force, showing how that ongoing quest powered his most profound lyrics and propelled him through both his darkest moments and his greatest artistic peaks, including his occult phase in LA and the remarkable final album recorded in the shadow of his own death.
What makes the book essential for any serious Bowie reader is its argument that the spiritual dimension of his work is not incidental but central, the engine behind a genius that crossed genres, eras, and generations. Available in hardback, ebook, and audiobook formats, ‘David Bowie and the Search for Life, Death and God’ offers a genuinely fresh entry point into one of the most written-about figures in popular music history.