Born in 1965 in Liverpool, David Buckley completed a Ph.D. at Liverpool University’s Institute of Popular Music in 1994. His book, loosely based on his doctoral thesis, David Bowie: Strange Fascination (Virgin Books, 1999) has been in print ever since and David has also contributed sleeve notes and press material for David Bowie’s reissues. A new, updated and expanded edition of Strange Fascination is currently scheduled for 2021.
David has worked as a lecturer at Munich University and as a tutor-counsellor at the Open University. He has contributed to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and the Encyclopaedia of the Popular Music of the World (several volumes, Continuum Press). He has published seven books, Alongside Strange Fascination David has written a consumer guide, The Complete Guide To The Music of David Bowie (now retitled David Bowie: The Music and the Changes – Omnibus Press 2014), the official biography of the punk veterans the Stranglers, No Mercy (Hodder and Stoughton, 1997), a biography of R.E.M. (R.E.M: – Fiction, Virgin, 2002), biographies of Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music (2004), Elton John (2007), and in 2012, a biography of Kraftwerk (Kraftwerk: Publikation, Omnibus Press 2012), with a foreword by ex-member, Karl Bartos.
For almost 20 years, David has been a contributor to Mojo magazine as a reviewer and writer, including features on Bowie, Genesis, Elton John, the Human League, Ultravox, Florence and the Machine, and Goldfrapp.
David is currently working on a history of electronic music in Britain focusing on the work of the Human League and Heaven 17. After spending half his life in Munich, he returned to the UK in 2019. He is a dad, a Liverpool FC supporter, a Bowie Boy, a Whovian and a Socialist.
