The author of several posts on this site, Tolie Bowkien is my online identity, a name chosen to reflect my major influences. My name, combined with the above image should give you all the clues you need to work out the major influences of my view of my own identity.

Tolkien and Bowie

Two surnames immediately recognisable to many people.

For myself these are names that conjure feelings of comfort, familiarity and thoughts of myself. I will use this very short biography to explore the relationship between Bowie and Tolkien.

Although alive at the time, I didn’t know of Tolkien when he died, but I did of Bowie.

Bowie’s death felt very personal; the loss of a friend; Kittee took me to see Lazarus shortly after his death at the King’s Cross Theatre in London. During the show I was rapt. After, I had to find a quiet spot to myself on the street around the corner from King’s Cross where I could deal with an over-whelming tide of emotion.

It’s strange describing that episode. It smacks of an air of pretension I ascribe to TV dramas!

But that is honestly how it felt.

I felt more emotion then than I did in subsequent years when my youngest brother died, shortly followed by my mother.

The reason for such a comparatively low level of emotion is because of the quality of my childhood, and how it shaped my relationship with my brothers and my parents, and my future life. These two individuals were my internal defenders during my formative years, providing a strong foundation for me.

I was introduced to Bowie by Top of the Pops in what I always thought was 1979. It turns out it was 1980.

It was the video for Ashes to Ashes. As I continued through my school years and relationships with friends, Bowie under-pinned my self-formative decisions from how I deliberately held my arm with animal grace to excusing myself for taking up smoking (a short-lived episode), and everything in between.

Whether I knew it or not, this set a solid foundation on which I would build and develop my own personality, changing it whenever I felt it was necessary (another Bowie-inherited attitude). More importantly, Bowie was the ideal role-model for this very shy, self-conscious person to create a fluid mask for the changing company he kept.

My affair with Tolkien began in 1979 when I first saw Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings.

At that time it cost 10p to get the bus from Boultham Park library in Lincoln back home after school.

It was from there that I first got hold of a copy of The Hobbit. Waiting for the bus was cold and wet, but the story was warm and comforting.

Picking up on Tolkien’s love of the landscape and the natural world, I arranged walks of adventure with friends as well as on my own. These were walks where I would convince my father to drop us off 20-25 miles away from home and we would work our way back using paper maps and a compass.

I remember one time there were too many of us to fit in the car, so one was placed in the boot…

I planned these walks using a hardback road atlas and a paper-round waged procurement of an OS map of Lincolnshire.

It was also during this time that I developed a strong affinity for history, particularly that of (what was called at the time) the Dark Ages and pre-Roman Britain. This naturally led into an interest into Arthuriana.

All this progressed further in 1985 when I came across I.C.E.’s MERP, Middle Earth Role Playing (which I still have). It was this that furthered my interest into Tolkien’s fictional works and its deep history (assisted by David Day, an admission that will raise a few dis-approving eyebrows). From this point people around me began to think of me as being an expert geek in the field of the J. R. R. Tolkien’s world.

A couple of caveats to this reputational claim; these people had little understanding of his works so it was easy to appear “an expert”; also, at this time, “geek” along with “nerd” had very negative connotations and so suited the bullies.

Both Tolkien and Bowie acted as foils in my early life. They both provided me with a retreat from the persecutions of bullies, both at school and home, and both provided strong mental foundations that I could rely upon internally. I’ve only begun to realise just how strong their influence has been following some very strong mental health challenges recently.

Throughout my life they have continued to be part of who I am, something recognised by both myself and people around me, now reaching the point in my life where it can be openly celebrated with these people!

In fact, my life also appears to have sub-consciously followed around different parts of both Tolkien and Bowie’s

I left Lincoln in the very early ‘90s and moved to the West Midlands. There, as well as living in a place called “Underhill”, I pursued my love of cycling, regularly finding myself mountain-biking around Cannock Chase, occasionally stumbling across Tolkien’s (now dis-used) training camp, with regular road-training exercises taking me through Great Haywood, places which Tolkien had a strong connection with in his early life. I didn’t intentionally seek these out, they just sort of happened and I realised their significance later.

In 2013 I moved to Kingston-upon-Hull (Hull). It was in Hull that Tolkien, recovering from trench foot after his time on the front-line in WW1, developed his Quenya language. This took place approximately a mile away from where I now live in a buildoing now known as The Dennison Centre.

Indeed, around the corner from me now is the site of the office of the military medical board at the time which signed off Tolkien’s fit-notes (now a car-park…) and the Sisters of Mercy church where Mother Mary Michael was based (I’ll add further references onto the website at a later date about this).

In Holderness, the area of Yorkshire East of Hull, Tolkien was stationed for his domestic war duties. Around the Holderness area are several blue plaques commemorating Tolkien’s time in the area. Perhaps one of the places in Holderness most famously connected to Tolkien is Roos, a little village 15 miles away from where I live. In Humphrey Carpenter’s biography you can find the following:

“[H]e [Tolkien] and Edith went for walks in the countryside. Near Roos they found a small wood with an undergrowth of hemlock, and there they wandered. Ronald recalled of edith as she was at this time: ‘Her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes bright, and she could sing – and dance.’ She sang and danced for him in the wood, and from this came the story that was to be the centre of The Silmarillion: the tale of the mortal man Beren who loves the immortal elven-maid Lúthien Tinúviel, whom he first sees dancing among hemlock in a wood.“

J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography, p.97

And Hull was where Bowie spent time with The Spiders of Mars: Trevor Bolder, Mick Ronson and Woody Woodmansey all of whom came from this great city and for whom a similar blue plaque commemorates their journeys from Hull station.

Bowie actually visited Hull on Saturday 14th February, 1970 staying in a council flat between Brisbane Street/Bathurst Street (less than 10 minutes from the site of The Sister’s of Mercy site mentioned above), visiting The Gardener’s Arms for a pint and getting fish and chips from The Gainsboro fish and chip shop (now a pub called Ebenezer Morley). He returned once more to Hull on the 6th March, 1970 with his “new electric” band, The Hype, with Mick Ronson on guitar, playing Hull University.

I’m also aware of several photos of Bowie sat on someone’s Mum’s couch here in Hull.

Seemingly small coincidences, these are also completely unintentional and only realised after the fact. It’s this realisation that makes me occasionally feel that my life is fated around these two people Then I realise it’s only because they are so large in my life; millions of other people have associations with both these geographic areas.

And what of Bowie and Tolkien themselves? How did they influence each other?

Tolkien was still around when Bowie really began getting himself noticed, from the BBC Moon landings through to his Ziggy and Aladdin phases. I’m not aware of any comment from Tolkien about Bowie although I do hold out hope for something to emerge somewhere in the future, even if it is just a passing quip that he made.

Please do let me know if you know of anything!

However, we do find evidence of Tolkien’s influence on Bowie.

In 1969 Bowie, along with his then girlfriend Mary Finnigan, organised a regular Folk Club at the Three Tuns in Beckenham. This went on to become the Beckenham Arts Lab, in line with the wider Arts Lab movement (particularly Drury Lane Arts Lab at which Bowie performed mime). Prior to that summer’s Free Festival (commemorated in Bowie’s song Memory of a Free Festival), Bowie and the Arts Lab re-enacted Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings at Beckenham Place Park.

(I’m assuming the above was in anticipation of performing at the Free Festival, but we all know what assuming doe. However, it was shortly after this, and 5 days before the Free Festival that Bowie’s father died.)

Now, Bowie himself may have come across LOTR himself but there is another avenue that could have inspired him, or at least have reinforced any interest the young Bowie had at the time. Prior to the above re-enactment, Bowie had already recorded Space Oddity, a demo of which he played to a friend of his, a friend of whom he had tremendous admiration, Marc Bolan. A commonality between Bolan and Bowie was Tony Visconti who both played instruments and produced for both artists.

Of meeting Bolan, Visconti has this to say:

“I knew he [Marc Bolan] was special from the first moment I saw him in a nightclub. This was in a little club off Tottenham Court Road. He was in a duo, him and Steve Peregrin Took, called Tyrannosaurus Rex, and as soon as i heard his voice and his melodies…

I wasn’t yet aware of Tolkien or Celtic music but they had all those prehistory elements in them and it was a very strange experience.

He looked like an otherworldly creature to me and i couldn’t recognise the language he was singing in as English. But shortly afterwards, we met up and became friends, and it was certain we were going to work together.

He gave me a copy of The Lord of the Rings and said ‘If you’re going to work with me you have to read these books, this is what I’m all about’. At the time, he was.“

https://rolandcorp.com.au/blog/roland-talk-exclusively-with-david-bowie-producer-tony-visconti

This was in 1968 in the Middle Earth club (formerly the UFO Club)

This was a year before Bowie released Space Oddity, and before the above re-enctment of The Lord of the Rings. Bowie is famously the chameleon of pop, picking, choosing and discarding (with apparent ease) anything that he wished to use to create his own image and/or works (leaves on a particular tree anybody?). If the above quote is accurate, we can see Bowie in the statement “He looked like an otherworldly creature”. I wouldn’t doubt that Bowie incorporated the elements from Bolan that he found appealing (something I know I have done myself; see above). Bowie thought enough of Marc Bolan to write a song about him. Written in 1971, Lady Stardust appeared on the famous album Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Another coincidental connection here is not just closing the loop on the Hull connection, but that the album was released on my birthday…

It appears that Tolkien certainly influenced Bowie, directly or in-directly, through his social circle.

In 1967, Bowie released The Laughing Gnome (in the style of Anthony Newley). A commentary on the music industry at the time, was the whimsical Gnomish character inspired by Tolkien’s fictional world? Well, in the same year, Syd Barret wrote The Gnome, a “Tolkien-esque” song on Pink Floyd’s debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

Bowie had this to say about Barrett, shortly after Barrett’s death:

“I can’t tell you how sad I feel. Syd was a major inspiration for me. The few times I saw him perform in London at UFO and the Marquee clubs during the ’60s will forever be etched in my mind. He was so charismatic and such a startlingly original songwriter. Also, along with Anthony Newley, he was the first guy I’d heard to sing pop or rock with a British accent. His impact on my thinking was enormous. A major regret is that I never got to know him. A diamond indeed“

https://www.nme.com/news/music/pink-floyd-128-1366035, accessed 15/10/2023

I mention these “Gnome” songs not only because Bowie claims Barrett as a “major inspiration”, but also because of Tolkien’s association with the counter-culture of the 60’s, something evident in both these songs and also that Tolkien may have been a direct influence on Syd Barrett:

“At the time [summer of 1966] Barrett’s reading reputedly consisted of Grimm’s Fairy Tales; Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings; Carlos Castenada’s The Teachings of Don Juan (a hippie bible); The I-Ching; and works by Aldous Huxley, William Burroughs, Aleister Crowley alongside plenty of science-fiction – all forward-thinking proto-hippie fare. And Barrett was writing at an incredible rate, creating not just the songs that would comprise The Pipers at the Gates of Dawn, but most of those on his later solo albums.”

The Rough Guide to Pink Floyd, 2006 – Manning, Toby.

Again, I can’t help but think that Bowie was influenced by Barrett’s The Gnome (there are similiarities in the songs) and that Barrett himself had a direct conscious influence from Tolkien just as Bolan did.

And of course more recently, we also have Jareth, the Goblin King from Labyrinth and the rumour that Bowie auditioned (unsuccessfully because of his association with Jareth) for a part in Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings (one rumour claiming for the part of Elrond, another that it was for the part of Gandalf).

And whilst we’re here Mick Jagger, another artist from the London scene of the 60’s who has been (in-)famously associated with Bowie also auditioned for the part of Frodo in The Lord of the Rings film. Not Jackson’s, but Bakshi’s.

This was also only a few years after Jagger himself became an adjective for Sauron in John Boorman’s 1970 script for The Lord of the Rings:

“A character who is a combination of Mick Jagger and Punch leaps onto the table. … He (SAURON) struts menacingly around the table”

J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Screenplay by John Boorman and Rospo Pallenberg, 1970, p.34

Although Bowie went on to famously champion the cause of futuristic space-men and aliens in his music, his roots were more folkloric, influenced by the hippy-culture of the 60’s, a culture which took Tolkien’s fictional works to heart.

For me, it’s little surprise that these two elements have combined to shape the person I am. What is slightly surprising is that without Tolkien, I may not have been influenced by Bowie, but without Bowie, Tolkien would always have been there.