---
product_id: 22355125
title: "Psychedelic Suburbia: David Bowie and the Beckenham Arts Lab"
brand: "mary finnigan"
price: "€ 35.44"
currency: EUR
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.nl/products/22355125-psychedelic-suburbia-david-bowie-and-the-beckenham-arts-lab
store_origin: NL
region: Netherlands
---

# Psychedelic Suburbia: David Bowie and the Beckenham Arts Lab

**Brand:** mary finnigan
**Price:** € 35.44
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Psychedelic Suburbia: David Bowie and the Beckenham Arts Lab by mary finnigan
- **How much does it cost?** € 35.44 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.nl](https://www.desertcart.nl/products/22355125-psychedelic-suburbia-david-bowie-and-the-beckenham-arts-lab)

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## Description

Psychedelic Suburbia: David Bowie and the Beckenham Arts Lab

## Images

![Psychedelic Suburbia: David Bowie and the Beckenham Arts Lab - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51HcAMzLiaL.jpg)
![Psychedelic Suburbia: David Bowie and the Beckenham Arts Lab - Image 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51JASxB5osL.jpg)
![Psychedelic Suburbia: David Bowie and the Beckenham Arts Lab - Image 3](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/312Co77BkgL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    I just had a hunch this would be the best book I've ever read on Bowie--and I'm glad I ...
  

*by G***K on Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2016*

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.

### ⭐⭐ 







  
  
    David Bowie, Mary Finnegan and the Marketing of Tibetan Lamas
  

*by C***S on Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2016*

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 loved it and you will too!
  

*by A***R on Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2016*

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.

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*Product available on Desertcart Netherlands*
*Store origin: NL*
*Last updated: 2026-01-26*