Bowie's best, saying "if this is the new art-rock, I'm for it." The New York Daily Newss Clint Roswell likewise hailed the record as Bowie's best in years, naming "Ashes to Ashes", "Fashion", "Because You're Young" and the title track as songs that recognise the artist as "the preminent figure in pop". Adding further praise was James Johnson of the Evening Standard, who described the "remarkable" LP as one of the year's best and "proves that Bowie can still maintain his mastery of the rock mainstream whenever he feels like it". The Boston Globes Jim Sullivan found side two weaker than the first, but concluded "Bowie continues to present a complex, invigorating challenge". Tom Sowa was more mild in The Spokesman-Review. He hailed Scary Monsters as Bowie's finest in four years, highlighting Fripp's contributions and signalled out "Ashes to Ashes" and "Because You're Young", but panned "Teenage Wildlife" as "an overheated, confused and totally embarrassing four minutes of plastic". Murray gave the album a more mixed assessment in NME, stating: "Scary Monsters is shorn of all hope, yet it represents a call to arms. It is an album which presupposes defeat, yet it is unashamedly and unequivocally confrontational." He further called it the "realist's" Bowie record. In The New York Times, John Rockwell felt the album lacked appeal for all rock listeners due to it being "too misshapenly ugly. grindingly abrasive and proudly self-withholding. Nevertheless, he deemed it a "fine record of its particular type". Record Mirror named it the year's second best album, behind Sound Affects by the Jam, while NME ranked it the ninth best album of the year. Subsequent events In February 1980, during the sessions for Scary Monsters, Bowie was approached by Jack Hofsiss, the director of the Broadway play The Elephant Man, to star in the lead role of Joseph "John" Merrick, a severely deformed English man who was rescued from a freak show by the surgeon Frederick Treves in 1880s Victorian England. Hofsiss saw Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) and believed his presence would fit the role. Bowie accepted the role in June 1980 and researched Merrick extensively in preparation. He portrayed Merrick through miming rather than the use of make-up. The play premiered in Denver, Colorado and ran from July 1980 to January 1981, with Bowie receiving immense praise for his performance. Bowie pursued other projects throughout the play's