FEATURE:
Starman
IN THIS PHOTO: David Bowie as ‘Aladdin Sane’, 1973/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Duffy
The Essential David Bowie
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I am doing a couple of other features…
PHOTO CREDIT: Gavin Evans
before 10th January, as that date marks five years since David Bowie died. His final album, Blackstar, was released on his sixty-ninth birthday on 8th January and, since he has passed, there has been such fondness for his classic albums and his work in general! There is so much to dissect when it comes to Bowie and why he was so loved. I will explore a couple of different sides to him soon but, in this feature, I am sort of expanding on my A Buyer’s Guide series – where I recommend albums and a book to own about various acts. Instead, here, I am going to highlight the ten standout David Bowie albums; one that is underrated and warrants another, keener look; his final-recorded studio album; a great compilation album to have as a starting place if you need it; a great book that should provide some great detail, in addition to a playlist of his very best tracks. Here is a fond salute to a music genius who, on the anniversary of his death on 10th January, we will remember and…
PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Putland/Getty Images
PLAY his music loud!
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The Ten Essential Albums
Hunky Dory
Release Date: 17th December, 1971
Label: RCA
Producers: Ken Scott/David Bowie
Standout Tracks: Oh! You Pretty Things/Life on Mars?/Kooks
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=1718&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/6fQElzBNTiEMGdIeY0hy5l?si=5vVuRLsaRkuxCEgK7YHrPA
Review:
“After the freakish hard rock of The Man Who Sold the World, David Bowie returned to singer/songwriter territory on Hunky Dory. Not only did the album boast more folky songs ("Song for Bob Dylan," "The Bewlay Brothers"), but he again flirted with Anthony Newley-esque dancehall music ("Kooks," "Fill Your Heart"), seemingly leaving heavy metal behind. As a result, Hunky Dory is a kaleidoscopic array of pop styles, tied together only by Bowie's sense of vision: a sweeping, cinematic mélange of high and low art, ambiguous sexuality, kitsch, and class. Mick Ronson's guitar is pushed to the back, leaving Rick Wakeman's cabaret piano to dominate the sound of the album. The subdued support accentuates the depth of Bowie's material, whether it's the revamped Tin Pan Alley of "Changes," the Neil Young homage "Quicksand," the soaring "Life on Mars?," the rolling, vaguely homosexual anthem "Oh! You Pretty Things," or the dark acoustic rocker "Andy Warhol." On the surface, such a wide range of styles and sounds would make an album incoherent, but Bowie's improved songwriting and determined sense of style instead made Hunky Dory a touchstone for reinterpreting pop's traditions into fresh, postmodern pop music” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Changes
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
Release Date: 16th June, 1972
Label: RCA
Producers: Ken Scott/David Bowie
Standout Tracks: Five Years/Suffragette City/Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=1561&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/48D1hRORqJq52qsnUYZX56?si=HNdt_g_dS62qeg1zfehUkw
Review:
“Bowie initiates “Moonage Daydream” on side one with a riveting bellow of “I’m an alligator” that’s delightful in itself but which also has a lot to do with what Rise and Fall … is all about. Because in it there’s the perfect touch of selfmockery, a lusty but forlorn bravado that is the first hint of the central duality and of the rather spine-tingling questions that rise from it: Just how big and tough is your rock & roll star? How much of him is bluff and how much inside is very frightened and helpless? And is this what comes of our happily dubbing someone as “bigger than life”?
David Bowie has pulled off his complex task with consummate style, with some great rock & roll (the Spiders are Mick Ronson on guitar and piano, Mick Woodmansey on drums and Trevor Bolder on bass; they’re good), with all the wit and passion required to give it sufficient dimension and with a deep sense of humanity that regularly emerges from behind the Star facade. The important thing is that despite the formidable nature of the undertaking, he hasn’t sacrificed a bit of entertainment value for the sake of message.
I’d give it at least a 99” – Rolling Stone
Choice Cut: Starman
Aladdin Sane
Release Date: 13th April, 1973
Label: RCA
Producers: Ken Scott/David Bowie
Standout Tracks: Drive-In Saturday/Cracked Actor/Lady Grinning Soul
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=2162&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/3HZKOk1knxrUU3y5ZIOdbz?si=sR8QPaOHSgCHm0535zz_jA
Review:
“Aladdin Sane, recorded while Bowie and the Spiders were touring their asses off in an attempt to get America to love them the way England already did, is effectively Ziggy Stardust II, a harder-rocking if less original variation on the hit album. There's a paranoid sci-fi scenario ("Panic in Detroit"), a blues-rock stomp ("The Jean Genie"), a bit of cabaret ("Time"), a blunt sex-and-drugs nightmare ("Cracked Actor"). The big difference is that where Ziggy ended with a vision of outreach to the front row ("Give me your hands, 'cause you're wonderful!"), Aladdin is all alienation and self-conscious artifice, parodic gestures of intimacy directed to the theater balcony. Bowie overenunciates his cover of the Rolling Stones' "Let's Spend the Night Together" to turn it into a caricature of a disinterested Casanova; his sneering rocker "Watch That Man" is a better evocation of the Stones themselves” – Rolling Stone
Choice Cut: The Jean Genie
Station to Station
Release Date: 23rd January, 1976
Label: RCA
Producers: David Bowie/Harry Maslin
Standout Tracks: Station to Station/Golden Years/Stay
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=22420&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/0MWrKayUshRuT8maG4ZAOU?si=98xxWRVbRrGEkVuwpkdIDQ
Review:
“Taking the detached plastic soul of Young Americans to an elegant, robotic extreme, Station to Station is a transitional album that creates its own distinctive style. Abandoning any pretense of being a soulman, yet keeping rhythmic elements of soul, David Bowie positions himself as a cold, clinical crooner and explores a variety of styles. Everything from epic ballads and disco to synthesized avant pop is present on Station to Station, but what ties it together is Bowie's cocaine-induced paranoia and detached musical persona. At its heart, Station to Station is an avant-garde art-rock album, most explicitly on "TVC 15" and the epic sprawl of the title track, but also on the cool crooning of "Wild Is the Wind" and "Word on a Wing," as well as the disco stylings of "Golden Years." It's not an easy album to warm to, but its epic structure and clinical sound were an impressive, individualistic achievement, as well as a style that would prove enormously influential on post-punk” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: TVC15
Low
Release Date: 14th January, 1977
Label: RCA
Producers: David Bowie/Tony Visconti
Standout Tracks: Speed of Life/Warszawa/Art Decade
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=22382&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/2de6LD7eOW8zrlorbS28na?si=KWNMZH1nQo2wN3wT-ya_DQ
Review:
“Brian Eno gets much of the credit for Low — not only did he play keyboards on six of the eleven tracks and co-write "Warszawa," but you can hear the heavy influence of his own solo records, especially Another Green World. Still, Eno only dreamed about making noise like this, mainly because he never assembled a band anywhere near this great: A big hand, please, for the fuzzed-out guitars of Ricky Gardiner and Carlos Alomar, and the fantastic production of Tony Visconti, who distorted Dennis Davis' snare to create one of rock's all-time most imitated drum sounds. Bowie sings haikulike lyrics about emotional death and rebirth, sometimes hilarious ("Breaking Glass"), sometimes brutally honest, as in the electric-blue loneliness of "Sound and Vision" and "Be My Wife" or the doomed erotic obsession of "Always Crashing in the Same Car."
The record company begged Bowie not to release Low, but it became a surprise hit and holds up today as one of his most intense and influential albums, inspiring two excellent Berlin trilogy sequels, Heroes (1977) and the insanely underrated Lodger (1979). It makes sense that Bowie released Low the week after he turned thirty, for the same reasons it sounds so timely today: Low is the sound of the slinky vagabond falling to earth, trying to catch up with the speed of life — and maybe even find some kind of home there” – Rolling Stone
Choice Cut: Sound and Vision
"Heroes"
Release Date: 14th October, 1977
Label: RCA
Producers: David Bowie/Tony Visconti
Standout Tracks: Beauty and the Beast/Blackout/V-2 Schneider
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/David-Bowie-Heroes/master/22294
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/4I5zzKYd2SKDgZ9DRf5LVk?si=ZNtVO2LQQH2vKp3EIexniA
Review:
“‘Neukoln’ drops us off in one hell of a bad neighborhood. Stark and haunted by the looming ruins of an industrial past. Superficially, this may come off as glum self-indulgence to some. But this is truly an existential cry of pain. Another example of this album wearing its raw emotions on its sleeve. Bowie’s sax wailing away among the gloom and doom. I suppose here the case could be made for this being Low II. Then all too suddenly, we're tossed into the disco. Here the album ends on an almost schizophrenic note with the coyly oblique, ‘Secret Life of Arabia’. Suddenly it’s time to dance, with Bowie crooning, “You must see the movie, the sand in my eyes, I walk through a desert song when the heroine dies.” Its here you realize Bowie’s backing band consists of some truly formidable R & B musicians. Namely, Carlos Alomar, George Murray and Dennis Davis. Believe it or not, the same band that played on Low. And this is part of Bowie’s genius. To put himself and others in unfamiliar territory and see what happens.
Did I say genius? Yes, I think Bowie was a genius. Part of being a genius is knowing what’s important and what’s not. And Bowie had that. Obtuse, weird and disjointed as it all is, ‘Heroes’ shouldn’t work but does. Bowie was a keen practitioner of William S. Burroughs’ cut-up technique and more than any Bowie album, ‘Heroes’ feels like it was cut up and pasted together. Yet, somehow the glue holds. Here Bowie revels in the seedy underbelly and decadent nightlife of a haunted city, teetering on the brink. As he sings in ‘Sons of the Silent Age’ this record truly does sound like, “listening to tracks by Sam Therapy and King Dice”. If Low was the sound of breaking up, ‘Heroes’ is the sound of breaking free” – Soundblab
Choice Cut: Heroes
Lodger
Release Date: 25th May, 1979
Label: RCA
Producers: David Bowie/Tony Viscont
Standout Tracks: African Night Flight/D.J./Look Back in Anger
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=22318&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/0S5nxDIEprOH23QeDoMeFK?si=NRDKo79pS3GWNS2s_CpUTw
Review:
“On the surface, Lodger is the most accessible of the three Berlin-era records David Bowie made with Brian Eno, simply because there are no instrumentals and there are a handful of concise pop songs. Nevertheless, Lodger is still gnarled and twisted avant pop; what makes it different is how it incorporates such experimental tendencies into genuine songs, something that Low and Heroes purposely avoided. "D.J.," "Look Back in Anger," and "Boys Keep Swinging" have strong melodic hooks that are subverted and strengthened by the layered, dissonant productions, while the remainder of the record is divided between similarly effective avant pop and ambient instrumentals. Lodger has an edgier, more minimalistic bent than its two predecessors, which makes it more accessible for rock fans, as well as giving it a more immediate, emotional impact. It might not stretch the boundaries of rock like Low and Heroes, but it arguably utilizes those ideas in a more effective fashion” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Boys Keep Swinging
Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)
Release Date: 12th September, 1980
Label: RCA
Producers: David Bowie/Tony Visconti
Standout Tracks: Up the Hill Backwards/Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)/Fashion
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=30425&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5fxvWHvIDPIALfTfRiwyB0?si=7-XqImD4SbaWafdU1OkRMA
Review:
“Over on side two we have 'Teenage Wildlife', the longest track on the LP. An elegy to himself in his younger days – not for him the over-confidence of Ziggy-Stardust-era, but the mature realism of David Bowie now. Another facade is laid to rest. "And there'll be others on the line filing past who will whisper low/I will miss you/He had to go".
'Scream Like A Baby' evokes images of incarceration, Bowie sharing an imprisoned nightmare with another (mythical) character, Sam, being humiliated, being guilty till proven innocent. No good times to be had, they 'never had no fun'.
Bowie's version of Tom Verlaine's 'Kingdom Come' has him in physical chains and bonds as opposed to the mental ones in 'Scream Like A Baby'. A song of true hope, Bowie sings Verlaine's lyrics as if they were his own, bringing a vocalese both impassioned and sweetly savage into the song that was absent on the original. Bowie prays for salvation and is saved.
The penultimate song on side two is 'Because You're Young', Bowie's paean to his son, any son perhaps. Bowie being sentimental without being cloying, advising without dictating, being nice to others, but keeping the whiplash for himself: "Because you're young/What could be nicer for you/And it makes me sad/So I'll dance my life away/A million dreams/A million scars".
And that's it, the first instalment of the 1980's Guide to The Diaries of David Bowie, with Bowie being assertive, demonstrative, and resigned. It's an album which will, hopefully influence others into making true eighties music. We all know that when Bowie breaks wind, people sniff it as far away as Numansland, but that is always the disadvantage of being a real innovator” – Hot Press
Choice Cut: Ashes to Ashes
Let's Dance
Release Date: 14th April, 1983
Label: EMI America
Producers: David Bowie/Nile Rodgers
Standout Tracks: Modern Love/China Girl/Without You
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=48753&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/4NwG11AsDJluT732lSjMrV?si=f2hzE_d_TfuX-M1KPUrJKA
Review:
“In January 1983, Bowie signed a lucrative multi-album deal with EMI and hired Nile Rodgers to make him some hits. If still considered to be as major an artist as Fleetwood Mac or Michael Jackson, he was nowhere in their league in terms of units shifted. So the massive global success of Let’s Dance was no fluke—the album was planned as intricately as a troop landing or royal wedding. Made with economy (as Bowie hadn’t signed with a label yet, he funded the sessions and watched every penny like a hawk) and recorded and mixed in less than three weeks, Let’s Dance was an EP’s worth of songs padded out with covers and remakes—one of which, a new version of his and Iggy Pop’s “China Girl,” was a sure-fire hit, Bowie predicted. He was right.
He was ready-made for MTV, but Let’s Dance was also a counter-move: an “organic” soul- and jazz-influenced sound instead of synth pop, even if having some of most colossal gated drums heard on a rock album to date. It was hooky, its tracks given booming sing-along choruses, its players included Stevie Ray Vaughan and the Chic rhythm section. And it had a remorseless sequencing: Its first side is three hit singles, back to back to back, with “Without You” as a cooling dish. The rest of the album is more or less B-sides, some odd (“Ricochet” mixes W.H. Auden with a clunking attempt at West African highlife), some ghastly (“Shake It,” whose refrain is the theme of a game show in hell). Let’s Dance had enough Bowie weirdness to make it stand out from other 1983 hit albums—“visions of swastikas” in “China Girl;” the cheery nihilism of “Modern Love”; the dark undercurrent in “Let’s Dance,” a lonely, desperate song beneath its trappings” – Pitchfork
Choice Cut: Let’s Dance
The Next Day
Release Date: 8th March, 2013
Labels: ISO/Columbia
Producers: David Bowie/Tony Visconti
Standout Tracks: The Next Day/The Stars (Are Out Tonight)/Valentine's Day
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=530238&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/16F7X7WOFZhMwQNsMil7lq?si=mmzKhlNfRcOblEF-GerFTg
Review:
“What The Next Day has that perhaps Lodger didn't is something more prosaic. Whatever else he's been doing, clearly at least some of the last decade has been spent carefully crafting inarguable tunes. Its melody shifting from weary sigh to frantic angst, I'd Rather Be High is utterly beautiful; The Stars (Are Out Tonight) supports its Brad-Pitt-is-an-alien thesis with a fantastic chorus, all the more potent for the fact that it takes an age to arrive; Valentine's Day is so deceptively sweet that the bleakness of its subject matter – another tyrant, bent on crushing the world beneath his heels – doesn't initially register.
Despite the lyrical density, The Next Day's success rests on simple pleasures, not a phrase you'd ever use to describe Lodger or Station to Station. You could argue that means the naysayers still have a point. For all the pointers it offers in that direction, The Next Day isn't the equal of Bowie's 70s work: but then, the man himself might reasonably argue, what is? Perhaps it's destined to be remembered more for the unexpected manner in which it was announced than its contents. That doesn't seem a fair fate for an album that's thought-provoking, strange and filled with great songs. Listening to The Next Day makes you hope it's not a one-off, that his return continues apace: no mean feat, given that listening to a new album by most of his peers makes you wish they'd stick to playing the greatest hits” – The Guardian
Choice Cut: Where Are We Now?
The Underrated Gem
Black Tie White Noise
Release Date: 5th April, 1993
Labels: Savage/Arista
Producers: David Bowie/Nile Rodgers
Standout Tracks: Black Tie White Noise (ft. Al B. Sure!)/Pallas Athena/I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=49487&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1yFItZkb7DBAkQ5RB8OJv9?si=HuyGjePFRf2vwx1-hVbdtA
Review:
“Black Tie refers to many aspects of Bowie’s career. Rodgers provides a more considered sound than the crash and glitz of the pair’s previous collaboration, Let’s Dance. Mick Ronson, who’d not worked with Bowie for almost 20 years, plays on a cover of Cream’s I Feel Free, an old Spiders staple (it was sadly their last recording together, as Ronson was to die of cancer that year). Another song covered here, The Walker Brothers’ Nite Flights, is one that directly influenced Bowie’s own work with Brian Eno; and that work is also referenced in the instrumental opener The Wedding, which is named in tribute to Bowie’s wedding to model Iman Abdulmajid that year. And while the title-track (featuring rapper Al B Sure!) considered the recent LA Riots, the darkly beautiful single Jump They Say was a more personal effort, Bowie expressing his feelings concerning the death of his half-brother Terry.
All of this could have been something of a mishmash were it not for Bowie’s immense confidence (his vocals have never been better) and Rodger’s sympathetic production. As an album, it was both a critical and commercial success (number one in the UK). As a statement of the next stage of Bowie’s career, it was perfect. The 90s would be a decade of change and experimentation for David Bowie, and Black Tie White Noise was the first step on his new journey” – BBC
Choice Cut: Jump They Say
The Final Album
Blackstar
Release Date: 8th January, 2016
Labels: ISO/Columbia/Sony
Producers: David Bowie/Tony Visconti
Standout Tracks: Blackstar/’Tis a Pity She Was a Whore/I Can't Give Everything Away
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/sell/list?master_id=939598&ev=mb
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/2w1YJXWMIco6EBf0CovvVN?si=K04rWwmaQZ-LVEZHtq8IUA
Review:
“In different hands (say, those of Scott Walker, whose morbid experiments seem to be a reference point here), an album of paranoid fragments and subterranean thoughts would be off-putting, but Bowie still has a fantastic voice and an ear for catchy hooks. Ever the interpreter, even with his own work, he belts out what his characters would mutter to themselves, drowning in bass lines and sax solos, the next life glimpsed as a swell of synth strings. Pushing his longstanding interest in theater (“Lazarus” comes from his same-titled musical, “’Tis A Pity She Was A Whore” is a play on the 17th century tragedy ’Tis Pity She’s A Whore, and so on) into soundscape, Blackstar uses music as staging and scenery, placing his dynamic voice in the context of noir atmosphere.
“On “I Can’t Give Everything Away”—which features sax and guitar solos that are, respectively, too smooth and too busy to be called cool, which makes them cool, because coolness is paradoxical—he hits unexpected emotional notes by simply singing the title over and over. The nearly 10-minute title track starts funereal over skittering beats, before drifting into a pop song as though it were carried up to a cloud. On “’Tis A Pity She Was A Whore,” driven by a sax line as insistent as paranoia, he treats the chorus as a whimper. For all its jazz accents and solos, Blackstar ends up becoming a stage for the things that first made Bowie a pop star: his incessantly catchy melodies and elastic voice. With its simple (though oblique) lyrics and endlessly repeated choruses, it’s a secret pop record submerged in the dark places of studio improvisation” – The A.V. Club
Choice Cut: Lazarus
A Good Starting Point: A Suitable Compilation
Legacy (The Very Best of David Bowie)
Release Date: 11th November, 2016
Labels: Parlophone (U.K.)/Columbia (U.S.)/Legacy (U.S.)
Standout Tracks: Life on Mars? - 2016 Mix/Rebel Rebel/Modern Love - Single Version; 2014 Remaster
Buy: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Legacy-Very-Best-Bowie-VINYL/dp/B01LTHMSDY
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/4JEgSaokMH5mMRClx9wp3S?si=gmzZcZiHTi2hYA7IKoU-pg
Review:
“Not the first posthumous compilation from David Bowie -- that would be the lavish box Who Can I Be Now? (1974-1976), which was planned prior to his January 10, 2016 death -- Legacy is nevertheless the first designed with his, well, legacy in mind. That much can be gleaned from the title of the compilation, but that's a bit of a feint since this set essentially repackages the simplest incarnation of a previous Bowie hits compilation, 2014's Nothing Has Changed. Legacy is available as a single and a double-disc, both carrying sequencings that mirror those on Nothing Has Changed (and both featuring a new mix of "Life on Mars?"). On the single disc, the first 12 songs are the same, then the back sequence is different, discarding "Absolute Beginners" and "Hallo Spaceboy" and concluding with "Where Are We Now?" and "Lazarus." Similarly, the double-disc has a nearly identical sequencing on its first disc -- "Ashes to Ashes" and "Fashion" are swapped -- with the differences arriving in the comp's final six songs, so Heathen's "Everyone Says Hi" is here, and this concludes with "Lazarus" and "I Can't Give Everything Away." In both cases, the Legacy sequencing is slightly better than that on Nothing Has Changed, since it winds up ending on the elegiac note that Bowie gave Blackstar. Still, it's splitting hairs: the 2016 and 2014 compilations are similar to each other, and they're also similar to the many Bowie comps that came before, and they're all just as likely to satisfy and pique interest” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Space Oddity
The David Bowie Book
David Bowie: A Life (Paperback)
Author: Dylan Jones
Publication Date: 7th June, 2018
Publisher: Cornerstone
Synopsis:
“Standing head and shoulders above the slew of Bowie biographies that have been produced since his passing, Dylan Jones’s definitive account of pop’s great chameleon is a real labour of love. Curated from hundreds of interviews with the people who knew Bowie best, this is the closest mere mortals will ever get to understanding the Thin White Duke’s musical genius.
Shortlisted for the NME Best Music Book Award 2018
'Worthy of the Starman ... Of all the volumes to appear since Bowie's death, this is the most useful: an oral history that brings together the most incisive reminiscences and memorials' - Evening Standard
Drawn from a series of conversations between David Bowie and Dylan Jones across three decades, together with over 180 interviews with friends, rivals, lovers, and collaborators - some of whom have never before spoken about their relationship with Bowie - this oral history is an intimate portrait of a remarkable rise to stardom and one of the most fascinating lives of our time.
Profoundly shaped by his relationship with his schizophrenic half-brother Terry, Bowie was a man of intense relationships that often came to abrupt ends. He was a social creature, equally comfortable partying with John Lennon and dining with Frank Sinatra, and in Dylan Jones's telling - by turns insightful and salacious - we see as intimate a portrait as could possibly be drawn.
Including illuminating, never-before-seen material from Bowie himself, drawn from a series of Jones's interviews with him across three decades, David Bowie is an epic, unforgettable cocktail-party conversation about a man whose enigmatic shapeshifting and irrepressible creativity produced one of the most sprawling, fascinating lives of our time” – Waterstones
Order: https://www.waterstones.com/book/david-bowie/dylan-jones/9781786090430