David Bowie invited confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees, Bowie renamed himself after the 19th-century American pioneer James Bowie and the knife he had popularised. His April 1967 solo single, "The Laughing Gnome", using speeded-up thus high-pitched vocals, failed to chart. Released six weeks later, his album debut, "David Bowie", an amalgam of pop, psychedelia, and music hall, met the same fate. It was his last release for two years. Bowie met dancer Lindsay Kemp in 1967 and enrolled in his dance class at the London Dance Centre. He commented in 1972 that meeting Kemp was when his interest in image
David Bowie came from outside the entertainment industry and pop culture, such as those from the Vatican, namely Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, who quoted "Space Oddity", and the Federal Foreign Office, which thanked Bowie for his part in the fall of the Berlin Wall and referenced "Heroes". On 7 January 2017 the BBC broadcast the 90-minute documentary "David Bowie: The Last Five Years", taking a detailed look at Bowie's last albums, "The Next Day" and "Blackstar", and his play "Lazarus". On 8 January 2017, which would have been Bowie's 70th birthday, a charity concert in his birthplace of Brixton was hosted by the