Psychedelic Suburbia: David Bowie and the Beckenham Arts Lab

After reading the first two reviews on Amazon I was skeptical about my decision to purchase this book. However, I just had a hunch this would be the best book I've ever read on Bowie--and I'm glad I was right! Finally we get a personal, firsthand account of the real David Bowie. Also appealing are the times he lived in and the interesting characters that go in and out of his life during this period. If you are looking for a slick biography that heightens the already existing myth of the man-- don't bother. The Bowie you find in these pages is earnest, idealistic, endearing, and real. Many thanks to the author for bringing the real man to life in his historical context.

Mary Finnegan has a new book about David Bowie called the Psychedelic Suburbia: David Bowie and the Beckenham Arts Lab.You can read it in about two hours. It's all about who was there, who was who and leaves one with the feeling of who cares. Well, aficionados of David Bowie days will care and read it, particularly now that he is dead, and young people into bi-sexuality. So will those curious about the "sex, rock and roll" and early drug scene in the sixties. A pretty large and marketable crowd.What is interesting is that in Mary's blog post in 2013, in the archives at her website Flower Raj, she writes about her motivation for writing, i.e. to expose the"horror stories" and the "dark side, the very dark side" of Tibetan Buddhism that she says has gone down a wrong path. This is because of corrupt Tibetan lamas, she says, and the naiveté of old flower children, like Mary.In this post she also says she became a "one-woman activist" to expose Lama Sogyal and his corruptions, as well as the shadow side of Tibetan Buddhism, which she knew well. And she was a one woman activist and she did expose Sogyal the predator Tibetan lama , relentlessly. She did know him very well being in his inner circle and one of his older female students who 'pimped" for him to find young naive women to join his Lama harem- a common task of the Western Tibetan Buddhists their communities. She writes explicitly about her experience, in her short memoir about Sogyal and her days in Rigpa :"Behind the Thangkas" that you can google and find online.This would have been the better book and more helpful to the younger generation who will now be fooled, once more. Too bad, because Mary was a feminist voice for the many women that had been abuse by this lama. Another feminist voice that appears to be silenced.As Mary says, "she was going to walk away from" Tibetan Buddhism, and "never come back.". But unfortunately for her and all those she could have warned, her new teacher Namkai Norbu , and his "genius" kept that from happening.Yes, Norbu is a genius, Mary.He made sure you didn't write this other book, the one everyone was led to believe was coming, a full length book about Sogyal, about all his and the corruptions of the exiled Tibetan Lamas- their "greed" and "sexual exploitation" and their "political skullduggery." as you experienced. Instead you wrote a book pairing David Bowie with Tibetan Buddhism which is really Lamaism.That's enough for the lamas. After all the Dalai Lama's picture to sell Apple computers was enough to keep a halo on him for decades. So why not try it again? With David Bowie?Mary's book will now pair Tibetan Buddhism with a popular brand name "David Bowie" and it will do exactly what Mary's other book, the one she didn't write, was going to expose and condemn: the marketing of the Tibetan lama's tantric Vajrayana Buddhism- their"greatest asset" now to a new group of "naive westerners" and retro-hippie, retro-punk millennials. All thanks to Mary, this new generation will see David Bowie as their new canonized "saint" and role model , as another generation before them did. As with Allen Ginsberg - they will positively pair Bowie with Tibetan Buddhism. A new "chip" is planted in another generation's minds. This will be the third generation now of minds that the Tibetan lamas hope to manipulate and completely dumb-down, with the help of famous icons, and their groupies, like Mary.The Tibetan lamas are nothing, if not clever marketing professionals. After all, they have had over a thousand years to perfect their art.Mary doesn't refer to Trungpa at Samye Ling when she writes about Bowie and where he found Tibetan Buddhism and surely lama Trungpa. After all, he was the head lama at Samye Ling and was surely who Bowie was studying with in his Tibetan lama phase. I would guess it is because of the reputation of Trungpa and his Vajrayana tantra and its sexual abuses that he imported into the States later on that Mary doesn't mention him. Trungpa created chaos and using the drug and rock and roll scene had been so helpful at Samye Ling to spread his misogynistic and sexually abusive Tibetan "Buddhism" that he used it immediately here, as a model in the United States, to ride in on his tantric carpet. You see, in Tibetan Buddhism "anything goes" if it creates chaos and confusion in your host countries in the West, where Trungpa had come to purposely create an "enlightened dictatorship." He told us that all the time. So paring up with Joni Mitchell and other rock and roll stars in California and their drug scene, was just as helpful in marketing him here as it was with David Bowie in Britain, almost fifty years ago.... and now again.Now Mary, like the few Western Tibetan Buddhists feminists before her, that I can count on one hand, who have tried to speak out and get the Western world to wake up and listen, is never going to speak a negative word again- at least not about her Tibetan masters, her gurus and their abuses. That's what always happens when the lamas fold someone back into their tantric net. Tantra actually means "net."Mary's lips are now sealed forever. Norbu, and his Dzogchen trick up his sleeve, made sure that happened. Mary is probably never going to be allowed to walk away.Not with what Mary knows..They "got cha " Mary.These clever lamas .They almost always do.Particularly the flower children that want to still live in the twenty-something world of their old rock and roll glory days. After all, it is the dream world that your new teacher, Norbu, has always said is what is "really true."For the book that Mary should have published but didn't google "Behind the Thankas" the expose of Sogyal the Tibetan lama she left out of this book, for obvious reasons. Maybe Mary can someday walk away and can publish this book.

I absolutely loved this book. I devoured it in one sitting, barely pausing for anything. I was so fascinated and enthralled because it was fun to consider in retrospect what was happening simultaneously in my own life during that amazing time in the late sixties. I absolutely loved it. I bought a copy to my daughter as well. The author's openness and honesty, the wonderful and transformative energy of the time, and the compelling story of young people connecting during such a significant era all worked together to make a great read.

An interesting look into Bowie's early life as an English hippie musician. You get to read how Angie moved in an took over. Mary keeps the proceedings classy. A very good read.

Someone recommended this book to me and honestly, I was gravely disappointed in it. Not because it wasn't full of 'juicy tidbits' but more so there wasn't enough of David in it. Mary should have just written her life story and tossed in her sprinkling of Bowie in it.

I really enjoyed this book, couldn't put it down, a must read!

A bit self indulgent emotionally from the author injecting herself into the narrative with hurt feelings etc. But a good report on Bowie's early development as an artist. The message: just be what you have to be and keep going.

great book finished in one sitting would recommend

Quite honestly, I thought she behaved like a doormat for an egotistical narcissist and the fact she upped sticks to go to India, leaving her young children in the charge of strangers would probably have her children taken into care these days. I love Bowie's music but as a person he probably poisoned every person he touched. I grew up in that era as someone working class and I always thought middle/ upper class hippies spoilt, entitled, repulsive and amoral.

As someone who only experienced the 60s as a young child, I have always felt I missed out on the wonderful music that was taking place in London (and elsewhere).I would give my back teeth to have gone to some of the gigs of that era and I find myself drawn back to that time through Mary Finnigan's writing.This book is about Mary's life, of which David Bowie was a part of, at least for a time. She takes us through the circumstances that brought her to Beckenham, her meeting and relationship with David and how they set up the Arts Lab culminating in the legendary 'Free festival'.When they went their separate ways David Bowie remained a part of her life, in a way that I'm sure he touched a lot of people who never met him.This is no 'kiss and tell' story. This is a book which takes us back to that time which is remembered with fondness by those who were there.If you love time travel to the recent past, or are just interested in David Bowie, this book is for you.Read it!

In her acknowledgements section Mary apologises for anything that she might have got wrong, and as someone who was around at the time I'd like to assure her readers that her descriptions seem to fit extremely well with what I recall. I thought it a very enjoyable read that took me right back there. So thanks to Mary for writing it and re-awakening in me memories of those fascinating times, as well as filling in some additional background relating to David Bowie's early days.=======================================================I'd just like other potential reviewers know that this fascinating book is also available from Amazon in the US and reviews can also be posted there. Just visit amazon.com and log in with your UK ID, and follow the usual links.

A slim volume which took me a few hours to read. Quite touching in its own way and provides an interesting insight into Bowie's 1969 Beckenham Arts Lab period and briefly, the period just before Ziggy. It is as much about Finnigan's life at that time as it is about Bowie's. She emerges as a thoroughly likeable woman if a little naïve in her expectations of Bowie and their relationship. Contains a fair bit of gossip about Bowie's antics as well as a thoroughgoing account of the Arts Lab and its followers. I've given it 3 stars because I though it rather pricey for what it was. A decent second hand copy would probably suffice.

Although Mary spent quite a short time with David, she captures his essence perfectly. As a Goa hippie type myself, also a Buddhist, and one who has met David too, I can feel her genuine spiritual connection with David still and feel that apart from Chimi, she comes closest to understanding our great Enigma of anyone I have read work from. Tears well up at the end when she says 'I loved him'. As we all do, Mary. Thank you for sharing this story with us. Diana.