Angela Bowie

She is an American cover girl, model, actress, and musician. She is the former wife of English musician David Bowie.

Early life:

Angela was born an American citizen on September 25, 1949 in Cyprus and she is of paternal English and maternal Polish descent, and she was brought up in the Catholic religion. Her father, Col. George M. Barnett, a U.S Army veteran, was a mining engineer and ran a mill for Cyprus Mines Corporation. Her mother was Helena Marie Galas. Both her parents died in 1984. Angela has one older brother.

Educated in Cyprus, Switzerland and Kingston Polytechnic (UK), she briefly attended Connecticut College For Women until she was expelled.

Career developments and relationship with David Bowie:

She met David Bowie in 1969, at the age of 19. According to David Bowie, they met through their mutual friendship with Chinese-American record executive Dr. Calvin Mark Lee. She married Bowie one year later, on 19 March 1970 at Bromley Register Office in Beckenham Lane, Kent. On 30 May 1971, David and Angie Bowie had a son they named Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones. Zowie later preferred to be known as Joe or Joey, although now he has reverted to the name Duncan Jones.

David Bowie wrote the songs "The Prettiest Star" and "Golden Years" about her. (Angela appears in the D.A. Pennebaker concert film Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars: The Motion Picture; in a backstage sequence, David calls her by the name "Star".) She often accompanied him on his international concert tours, which included the U.S., Japan and Europe. In 1973, she appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show, hosted by Johnny Carson on 16 November 1973 alongside Dinah Shore, Joan Rivers and Ashley Montagu. Angela also performed on The Mike Douglas Show in early 1975. She auditioned for the leading role in what dates show to have been the ABC-TV telefilm Wonder Woman which aired on 12 March 1974 and starred Cathy Lee Crosby (not as often reported for the later television series Wonder Woman, which eventually went to Lynda Carter). Newsweek reported in their 11 February 1974 issue that she apparently lost the part because of her refusal to wear a bra. She also modelled for photographer Terry O'Neill and others, often under the name Jipp Jones.

Angela has often been rumoured to be the inspiration for the Rolling Stones 1973 hit "Angie"" from the album Goat's Head Soup, however Mick Jagger has dispelled these tales. He was quoted as saying: "People began to say that song was written about David Bowie's wife but the truth is that Keith [Richards] wrote the title. He said, 'Angie.' And I think it was to do with his daughter. She's called Angela. And then I just wrote the rest of it."

Angie and David Bowie separated after eight years of marriage and divorced on 8 February 1980, in Switzerland. She later called it "a marriage of convenience" for both, and settled for £300,000. She had already begun a long-term relationship with punk musician Drew Blood (real name Andrew Lipka), and on 24 July 1980 gave birth to their daughter, Stacia Larranna Celeste Lipka, in Mendocino, California.

Later life: writing, film work and musical releases:

Angela has written two autobiographies, Free Spirit (Mushroom Publishing, London, 1981) as well as the autobiographical bestseller, Backstage Passes: Life On the Wild Side with David Bowie, published in 1993 and updated in 2000. It detailed her alleged drug-fueled and openly bisexual lifestyle with her former husband and many other well-known musicians.

In addition to appearing as herself in the above-mentioned Ziggy Stardust film (1973) and Glitter Goddess of Sunset Strip (1991), her filmwork includes credited acting roles in at least four films: Eat the Rich (1987, as "Henry's wife"), Demented (1994), Deadrockstar (2002, as "Bartender") and La Funcionaria Asesina (a.k.a. The Slayer Bureaucrat, 2009, as "Helen Price/Constance").

A CD maxi-single, "The World Is Changing" (six mixes, including prominent vocal support by Dabonda Simmons and all credited to Angela Bowie as composer with various co-composers including David Padilla, Morgan Lekcirt, Tom Reich, Jim Durban and D.J. Trance and published by Angela Bowie Music) appeared in 1996 on the New York label Warlock Records (distributed in Europe through Music Avenue on the Nite Blue label). The cover featured a logo of the Bowie name clearly modelled on the one seen on her former husband's Let's Dance releases. An album, Moon Goddess, on Subterraneans' was released on the London-based record label The Electric Label in 2002. The UK release of the album contained a duet with Subterraneans' vocalist Jude Rawlins on a version of the Rolling Stones song "The Last Time". She is currently working on her second album, Fancy Footwork.

She currently lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Fictional portrayals:

The movie Velvet Goldmine was loosely based on her life with David Bowie. She was fictionalized as a character named "Mandy", portrayed by Toni Collette.