{"id":810696,"date":"2026-10-22T20:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T20:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/810696\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T20:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T20:08:10","slug":"in-1971-david-bowie-became-a-father-three-days-later-neil-young-inspired-him-to-write-a-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/810696\/","title":{"rendered":"In 1971, David Bowie became a father. Three days later, Neil Young inspired him to write a song"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"David<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy \/ Neil Young<\/p>\n

October 22nd, 2026 \u00b7 6:30pm BST <\/p>\n

For a musician who spent his life transforming personal experiences into extraordinary songs, the birth of his first child was never going to pass without inspiring something special. On May 30th, 1971, David Bowie<\/a> and his then-wife Angie welcomed their son Zowie, who would later become the filmmaker Duncan Jones. To celebrate becoming a father, Bowie did what came most naturally to him: he picked up his guitar and wrote a song.<\/p>\n

Just three days after his son\u2019s birth, Bowie performed the song during a live BBC session. \u201cI\u2019d been listening to a Neil Young album, and they phoned through and said that my wife had a baby on Sunday morning, and I wrote this one about the baby,\u201d he told the audience. The song that followed was \u2018Kooks\u2019.<\/p>\n

On \u2018Kooks\u2019, which was included on the album he released later that year, Hunky Dory<\/a>, Bowie sounds almost giddy with joy. \u201cWill you stay in our lover\u2019s story?\u201d he chirps, as if he is telling his newborn son a fairytale. <\/p>\n

With its simple melodic structure, merry trumpeting, and jaunty piano, the song is charmingly twee, sonically evoking a childhood wonderland. The string arrangements underscore a sense of parental affection and foreshadow the melancholy of a child growing up and leaving the nest. <\/p>\n

\u201cSoon you\u2019ll grow, so take a chance,\u201d he sings.<\/p>\n

It is likely the album that influenced Bowie was Young\u2019s tender 1970 masterpiece<\/a>, After the Gold Rush<\/a>. Musically, \u2018Kooks\u2019 has the most in common with the album\u2019s fifth track, \u2018Till the Morning Comes\u2019; both are sweet and upbeat, both feature horns, jangling keys, and comforting melodic repetition. There are some lyrical similarities between \u2018Kooks\u2019 and the song \u2018I Believe in You\u2019. On the chorus of \u2018Kooks\u2019, Bowie sings the line, \u201cIf you stay, you won\u2019t be sorry. \u2018Cause we believe in you\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018Kooks\u2019 portrays an endearing but idealistic vision of parenthood. Bowie describes himself and his wife as a couple of romantic weirdos and sings of buying his son a \u201cfunny old crib\u201d, a pair of shoes, and a trumpet. He promises to throw Duncan\u2019s homework in the fire, and tells him not to pick fights, because he doesn\u2019t believe himself capable of \u201cpunching other people\u2019s dads\u201d. He is, however, aware that he is not the most conventional father: \u201cIf you stay with us, you\u2019re going to be pretty kooky too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n

In an interview with Rolling Stone in 1976, Bowie explained, \u201c[Fatherhood] pleased my ego a lot. I think Zowie\u2019s a survivor. He\u2019s very definitely an independent person of his own choosing, it seems. And I find it very easy to think of him not as mine or Angie\u2019s, but as [Kahlil] Gibran has said, \u2018a little plant\u2019. I don\u2019t feel very paternal about him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunky Dory co-producer Ken Scott later told Uncut, \u201c\u2018Kooks\u2019 is the love of Duncan that he never really showed when Duncan was growing up\u2026 It says it all. It\u2019s how he felt at the moment of birth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, the fact that Bowie was performing live at the BBC less than a week after his son was born perhaps hinted that he wouldn\u2019t be the most present father. Mountains of cocaine and a fascination with Nazi paraphernalia<\/a> are probably not all that conducive to a healthy childhood.<\/p>\n

That being said, father and son clearly forged and managed to maintain a strong relationship as they grew older. Duncan was the best man at his father\u2019s second wedding in 1992, to the model Iman. He even referenced the song \u2018Kooks\u2019 on Twitter \/ X in 2018: \u201cUnfortunately, those lyrics were fantastical. I had to do my homework every bloody time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy \/ Neil Young October 22nd, 2026 \u00b7 6:30pm BST For a musician who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":810697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[42201,162942,6491,16845,90733,96,265931,23564,1581,103157,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-810696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-1970s","tag-162942","tag-celebrities","tag-david-bowie","tag-duncan-jones","tag-entertainment","tag-hunky-dory","tag-neil-young","tag-pop","tag-pop-rock","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}