Documentary/Music (2008) 150 minutes ~ Color
These documentary reviews concentrate on David Bowie in the 1970's - the decade in which he not only made his name but in which he dominated the music scene like no other musical icon before or since. Running at over 2.5 hours the program looks at his pre-fame era, his early low-selling albums, his glam period when the world sat up and took notice and his constant rejuvenation throughout the decade when every few weeks it seemed this bizarre creature would adopt a brand new persona. This set features rare and classic performance footage, exclusive interviews, exhaustive archive and fascinating contributions from his closest friends, associates, band members, producers and other colleagues and review and critique from the finest Bowie writers, archivists and journalists, including one of the final interviews the late, legendary DJ John Peel ever gave.
Stars: David Bowie
These documentary reviews concentrate on David Bowie in the 1970's - the decade in which he not only made his name but in which he dominated the music scene like no other musical icon before or since. Running at over 2.5 hours the program looks at his pre-fame era, his early low-selling albums, his glam period when the world sat up and took notice and his constant rejuvenation throughout the decade when every few weeks it seemed this bizarre creature would adopt a brand new persona. This set features rare and classic performance footage, exclusive interviews, exhaustive archive and fascinating contributions from his closest friends, associates, band members, producers and other colleagues and review and critique from the finest Bowie writers, archivists and journalists, including one of the final interviews the late, legendary DJ John Peel ever gave.
Stars: David Bowie
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Short filmTranscript
00:00:00You
00:00:31With a career spanning five decades, David Bowie is one of the most successful recording artists of his generation.
00:00:40Effortlessly evolving with the times, he has managed to remain both relevant and influential,
00:00:46continually attracting new audiences whilst sustaining the devotion of his earlier fanbase.
00:00:52Emerging as a fully fledged star in the 1970s,
00:00:56Bowie achieved global success as an innovator and artist,
00:01:00rising above his contemporaries to become the icon of a generation.
00:01:05Having had the phenomenon of the Beatles and all the groups that came up in their wake and alongside them,
00:01:16when they split up, everybody thought it would be another group that would take over,
00:01:22that would be the world dominating force in music, it would be another group.
00:01:27So everyone was looking for who's going to be the next Beatles, who's going to be the next Beatles.
00:01:30And it struck me really heavily one day, it's not a group, it's David Bowie.
00:01:35Yet his road to success was far from steady.
00:01:39Throughout the 1960s, Bowie suffered many setbacks while searching for an authentic voice that would secure him an audience.
00:01:48It just took a little bit longer for this country and the world to catch on to what David was doing.
00:01:56They caught on to the Kinks and all the other bands quicker, but David became much bigger than all of them.
00:02:04This is the story of Bowie's ascension, from Bromley schoolboy to international superstar,
00:02:10from Davy Jones to Ziggy Stardust.
00:02:18David Robert Jones
00:02:27David Robert Jones, the boy who would become Bowie, was born in Brixton, London in 1947.
00:02:34By 1953, the Jones family had moved to Bromley and David was enrolled at the local junior school, Burnt Ash.
00:02:43I first met David Bowie at Burnt Ash school. He was a year below me.
00:02:49He was, I remember him being very small, very short little chap, always quite neat, tidy, clean and well behaved.
00:02:57He didn't stand out in any way.
00:03:00Not a particularly gifted student, David failed his exams.
00:03:05However, through his mother's persistence, he was accepted into Bromley Technical School in 1958.
00:03:11After Burnt Ash, he followed me to, being a year younger, followed me to Bromley Technical School,
00:03:17which was pretty much a brand new school when I joined.
00:03:20And when he came along the next year, he fitted in.
00:03:24And yeah, I remember him again. He didn't stand out in any way.
00:03:28The only thing that stood out from the crowd was he was so dapper and so well dressed.
00:03:32I mean, when he was at school, he was obviously all in the same school uniform,
00:03:35but I mean, he always seemed to have, you know, the best trousers and he always looked smart and nice shirt and tie.
00:03:41And if you saw him out, I mean, he was always dressed in a suit, etc.
00:03:45We were both from the north side of Bromley, sort of the side nearer London.
00:03:50It was a nice, pleasant area, very much suburbia.
00:03:54It was a friendly, more relaxed, less frenetic time than it is now.
00:04:00A good time to just grow up in, really.
00:04:04David, I would say, a very pleasant, very personable guy.
00:04:08Would always be easy to talk to and liked to talk to people.
00:04:13He would always expound his knowledge about music.
00:04:17And again, like all of us in those days, we were all besotted with all things American.
00:04:24And David very much liked American things,
00:04:28to the extent that he decided, or he listened, I believe, to the American Forces radio.
00:04:34And he then thought, what a good idea. We don't have baseball.
00:04:38He wasn't much of a footballer. I don't think he liked games generally.
00:04:41But he got this idea, maybe, just maybe we could play baseball.
00:04:45So he wrote or contacted a baseball team in America.
00:04:49And they thought, great, hang this English guy.
00:04:52So they sent him bats, balls, hats, gloves.
00:04:56And suddenly he appeared on the bus with all this stuff.
00:04:59And he started playing baseball with his schoolmates outside after school.
00:05:03And that lasted for a bit. And then, of course, he got fed up with it and went off it.
00:05:07But he was always trying new ideas.
00:05:10He was always the all-American boy and he always seemed to be up for everything.
00:05:14He didn't get into as much mischief as the rest of us used to get into.
00:05:18Perhaps mischief is too light-hearted a word.
00:05:20But the rest of us used to sort of play about a lot, but he never seemed to.
00:05:25But I remember he had us all playing baseball once, or trying to get us all to play baseball.
00:05:31And another time he wrote off to the American embassy for the rules of American football.
00:05:37And they sent him down all the armoured jacket and shoulder pads, etc.
00:05:41And we had somebody come down from the evening news that was,
00:05:44taking photographs of us with all this gear.
00:05:47It was really when he got to the art stream, when he got to the third year.
00:05:52You didn't sit up then. You either did languages or art or engineering more.
00:05:57But he went into art, not surprisingly.
00:06:00And it was then he just started to get into his music,
00:06:05and started to really get into art generally.
00:06:10Under the tutelage of charismatic arts teacher Owen Frampton,
00:06:14and with strong influences at home, Bowie's interest in music and the arts developed.
00:06:20One thing that's really important about Bowie is that he always loved music.
00:06:25He was around music from a very early age.
00:06:28And his father was a press officer for Barnardo's.
00:06:34And press officers were quite a new thing at that point.
00:06:37Now every second or third person seems to be one.
00:06:41But then it was quite a new thing.
00:06:43He'd been used to growing up and seeing stars and celebrities
00:06:48go to children's homes with his father and things like that.
00:06:53And also his brother brought home a lot of records that Bowie got into.
00:06:59So already he'd absorbed an awful lot of influences.
00:07:04And it was almost entirely natural that what he would then want to do
00:07:09is to get into playing music.
00:07:13I remember him talking very much, as a lot of us did at the time,
00:07:16we were all very keen on Buddy Holly.
00:07:18And it was quite the sort of thing to be.
00:07:20He was the person that you were quite cool, in a way, to like him.
00:07:26He liked Little Richard.
00:07:28He was quite an icon at the time of the early rock stars.
00:07:32And he talked endlessly on the bus back from Keston,
00:07:37when we were at school, back into the centre of Bromley,
00:07:40for ages just about music.
00:07:42Latterly, of course, he then started performing
00:07:45and would talk about functions, gigs that he did.
00:07:49In 1962, David joined his first band, the Conrads,
00:07:54a Shadows-inspired outfit who toured local youth clubs.
00:07:58I remember specifically on one occasion,
00:08:00he was quite delighted that he appeared with Johnny Kidd and the Pirates,
00:08:05who were quite a big name at the time,
00:08:07although he only had perhaps two or three hits.
00:08:10And David showed me a scrap of paper on it that had written,
00:08:14Good work in tonight, boys, and that was from Johnny Kidd,
00:08:17and that was, wow, Johnny Kidd, this was really something.
00:08:20And David took that to be, you know,
00:08:22well, someone that's in the profession rates me, you know,
00:08:26and that was obviously a spur to him that kept him going.
00:08:30It was during 1962 that David suffered an injury
00:08:34during a fight with fellow pupil George Underwood
00:08:37that would affect his appearance forever.
00:08:40The way I remember it was George Underwood...
00:08:45I mean, David was after his girlfriend or something
00:08:48and George was moaning about it,
00:08:50and the week before, me and some of the lads I'd been out with,
00:08:53a guy called Malcolm had just walked up to somebody,
00:08:55tapped him on the shoulder, who was much bigger than him,
00:08:57as he turned round, he'd whacked him once.
00:08:59I said to George, I said,
00:09:00Go up, just go up, tap him on the shoulder,
00:09:02and he turns round, whack him once.
00:09:04And I understood that's what had happened,
00:09:06but obviously for the school, they said it didn't happen,
00:09:10and I read in his biography that they said it didn't happen like that,
00:09:13but apparently he got hit on the side of the head
00:09:16and it put the blood across the back of his eye
00:09:18and had to actually take his eye out of its socket
00:09:20to clean the back of it off and then put it back in again,
00:09:22which is why he had the frozen pupil.
00:09:24But, I mean, as far as I understand it,
00:09:26it was George Underwood who did it,
00:09:28I mean, whether or not it was, I don't know.
00:09:30The resultant contrast in eye colour
00:09:33would come to signify David's otherness later in his career.
00:09:37In Bromley, however, he was beginning to attract attention for other reasons.
00:09:42David's sort of rise to fame, although it was slow,
00:09:46he would, after school, he would be around town,
00:09:50he had long hair, and I can remember him specifically
00:09:54walking around Bromley on a Saturday
00:09:56and seeing him with sort of suede long boots with tassels on them.
00:10:00I thought, just, we wouldn't have dreamt of wearing that,
00:10:04we'd have been too self-conscious, generally.
00:10:06But he was, it didn't bother him at all.
00:10:09He was around, and people knew him, a lot of people knew him around town.
00:10:13To be honest, I think most people didn't think he'd get anywhere.
00:10:18He was just sort of a crazy guy at the time,
00:10:21different to everybody else in his style of dress,
00:10:24doing things that we wouldn't dream of doing.
00:10:35After leaving Bromley Technical School,
00:10:38Bowie disbanded the Conrads to join his second band, the King Bees.
00:10:43Where the Conrads were doing sort of R&B in Seoul,
00:10:47he went into the King Bees,
00:10:49and the King Bees sort of developed that further, the whole R&B thing,
00:10:54because he had a huge appetite, and he absolutely adored Little Richard.
00:10:59He was listening to the Motown things that were coming through.
00:11:03In 1964, they recorded Liza Jane, David's first single.
00:11:09A simple pop record, it vanished without a trace,
00:11:13and Bowie subsequently left the band.
00:11:16His manager, Leslie Corn, persuaded him to join the Manish Boys,
00:11:20a group that would bring him much greater attention.
00:11:23It was a fairly established act he joined,
00:11:27and he wanted it to be Davy Jones and the Manish Boys,
00:11:32and I don't think that led necessarily to a lot of tension,
00:11:36but it was quite clear that he wasn't...
00:11:39Although several times in his career he sort of retreated into a group,
00:11:44you know, he's always been the leader of that group
00:11:47as much as he's ever sort of tried to protest otherwise.
00:11:50He came to join the Manish Boys in a very oblique sort of way.
00:11:55We had a contract with Dick James Music, which was Northern Songs, I think,
00:12:01and our manager at Northern Songs was Leslie Corn.
00:12:06And we'd been there a few weeks,
00:12:09and Leslie Corn said,
00:12:12Would you like a new singer?
00:12:14And we said, No, thank you, we've got enough mouth to feed.
00:12:17So he said, But he's good, he's great, he'd be good for you,
00:12:22and he has already made a record.
00:12:26So, you know, that sort of success could rub off on you,
00:12:30and who knows, you'll make a record too.
00:12:32So we said, OK, let's just...
00:12:36Let's just give him a trial.
00:12:39Leslie brought him down on the following Sunday,
00:12:42and he walked into the living room where we were all rehearsing,
00:12:47and instantly we said, OK, that's fine.
00:12:51He doesn't have to sing even.
00:12:53He just looked the part, and he was dressed in buckskin
00:12:56and, you know, thigh-high boots and so on and so on.
00:12:59So that was it really, and the hair.
00:13:03And he did sing, but we weren't so interested in the singing
00:13:07as we were his appearance, basically.
00:13:10Even at this early stage in his career,
00:13:13David's sights were set solely on fame.
00:13:16We were more interested in the musical content of the thing
00:13:19than really the fame and fortune in those days,
00:13:22except David, I think, because he was probably more interested
00:13:26in the future than he was the actual bands itself.
00:13:29The bands were a stepping stone to his success, really.
00:13:32He had his eyes set on the future, basically.
00:13:35As well as gigging extensively with the Manish Boys,
00:13:38Bowie was also seeking the public eye from outside of the music world.
00:13:43During the time of the Manish Boys,
00:13:45he did that thing where he was on the BBC,
00:13:48the campaign for long hair,
00:13:52where he was on Cliff Mitchell Moore's Tonight programme
00:13:55talking about he'd been victimised for having long hair,
00:13:59which was, again, you know,
00:14:01you talk about the sort of press officer side of things,
00:14:04that he already was looking for an eye to a good story.
00:14:10Well, David was always up to some scheme to hit the public eye.
00:14:15And it was his idea to come up with this notion
00:14:21that he would form a society
00:14:24for the preservation of animal filament, it was called,
00:14:28which was long hair.
00:14:30Well, long hair in those days wasn't so long as you imagine.
00:14:33I mean, I've probably got long hair now, to a 60s person.
00:14:37And anyway, he came up with this scheme
00:14:40and he got several people, famous people, to sponsor it.
00:14:43And we all had longish hair, you know, to back him up.
00:14:48And it made a lot of newspapers.
00:14:52Virtually all the newspapers ran the story.
00:14:55And then it ended up on television with the Cliff Mitchell Moore
00:14:58Tonight programme, I think it was.
00:15:11It's all got to stop.
00:15:13They've had enough. The worms are turning.
00:15:15The rebellion of the long hairs is getting underway.
00:15:19A 17-year-old, Davy Jones, has just founded
00:15:22a society for the prevention of cruelty to long-haired men.
00:15:26Now, exactly who's being cruel to you?
00:15:29Well, I think we're all fairly tolerant,
00:15:31but for the last two years we've had comments like,
00:15:34Darlene, can I carry your handbag?
00:15:36thrown at us. I think it's just had to stop now.
00:15:39Of course, it was all just a joke, really.
00:15:42But it was anything to get known and get noticed.
00:15:45I think he saw with the Manish Boys
00:15:49that quite quickly it wasn't the vehicle he wanted.
00:15:53And now, you know, he was almost already a veteran.
00:15:56He'd been through three groups,
00:15:59had a level of success with each of them
00:16:03and was becoming a boy most likely to.
00:16:07On leaving the Manish Boys,
00:16:09David Jones looked to the Who for inspiration,
00:16:12changed his image and joined the mod-obsessed Lower Third.
00:16:17If you ask people, you know, bands David Bowie was in
00:16:20before he was David Bowie, if you like,
00:16:22you know, the Lower Third is one that always sort of springs to mind.
00:16:27And I think this was where he started to actually find his own voice.
00:16:34Albeit it was largely someone else's,
00:16:37it was the Who's, if you like, at this point.
00:16:40Because, you know, the one thing Bowie has always been
00:16:43is obsessed with style and it's always been, you know,
00:16:48as much part of the package as the music.
00:16:51And he started to completely engulf himself in mod-style.
00:16:56As well as being prepared to change his image to fit the times,
00:17:00David also decided to change an element of himself
00:17:03that he'd been dissatisfied with since school.
00:17:06David Jones is quite a common name.
00:17:10Also, at that point, the Monkees had just broken big over here
00:17:15and David Jones was everyone's favourite pin-up.
00:17:18And I think there was also a David Jones
00:17:20working in someone's management company.
00:17:23There was a lot of David Joneses around.
00:17:25So he looked into American mythology,
00:17:30which is, again, something he was to visit several times in his life,
00:17:34and go for the classic Bowie name,
00:17:37or Bowie, as it's often mispronounced,
00:17:40but I think he loves Bowie now.
00:17:43And the Bowie, you know, from the Bowie knife.
00:17:46And there was all the images of him being sort of cutting,
00:17:50at the cutting edge and the cutting blade and all of that.
00:17:53And here was sort of David Bowie.
00:17:56The lower third sort of did gather quite a head of steam
00:18:00and they worked with Pye Records,
00:18:03which at the time was sort of third behind EMI Decca.
00:18:10So, again, he had the right deals,
00:18:15but he just couldn't get that hit single,
00:18:18which was a bit of a downer,
00:18:21but, again, he had the right deals,
00:18:24but he just couldn't get that hit single
00:18:27and it was proving very elusive.
00:18:31So, again, in sort of Bowie style at that point,
00:18:35he walked away from the lower third
00:18:39and created a group called The Buzz.
00:18:43The Buzz were designed specifically for Bowie
00:18:46by his manager, Ralph Horton,
00:18:48and at the time he would be the undisputed focus of the group.
00:18:51The first member enlisted was guitarist John Hutchinson.
00:18:55I was in London waiting to decide whether to go back to Sweden
00:18:59where I'd spent a year playing with a Swedish band.
00:19:02The Marquis Club in Wardour Street,
00:19:05I'd heard of it, so I walked in.
00:19:07There was one guy there, Jack Barry, the manager.
00:19:11I asked him if anybody was looking for a guitarist
00:19:14and he gave me a phone number
00:19:16and I auditioned the following Saturday
00:19:18and I met David, Spike, the roadie,
00:19:23and Ralph, the manager.
00:19:25Ralph had arranged the auditions
00:19:27because he'd fired... or they'd fallen out with the previous band.
00:19:31I did an audition and they liked my Swedish clothes
00:19:35and I played the Bo Diddley rhythm that he asked me to play
00:19:39and they said, right, we'll form a band basically round you.
00:19:42I got pegged and said, well, we've got a bass player
00:19:45that we've seen that we like and we've got a drummer.
00:19:48We need a keyboard player.
00:19:50And I got Chow Boys, a guy from Scarborough,
00:19:53an old friend of mine that played keyboards,
00:19:55and he brought his Hammond B3 down on the train.
00:19:58Well, Chow and I played rhythm and blues really
00:20:01and David liked that stuff but David had written his own songs.
00:20:05So we had a kind of mixture of rhythm and blues and David's songs
00:20:10which we played in a rhythm and blues style.
00:20:13And when we started gigging,
00:20:15David decided we should do some covers of Tamla Motown stuff.
00:20:19So it was kind of an interesting mix
00:20:22with a Hammond-based four-piece band
00:20:25and the guy doing his own thing.
00:20:28So I thought it was a very good band
00:20:31and we weren't following any pattern.
00:20:34Even in those days he had originality.
00:20:37I think the thing with this period being managed by Horton
00:20:42was that he really did start to sort of hone his material
00:20:48and he just wrote, he wrote an awful lot of material
00:20:53which he was able to then use over the next couple of years.
00:20:58David could be very intense, I would say,
00:21:01compared to most musicians that I'd worked with.
00:21:05But he was unusual in that he was writing all his own stuff
00:21:10and it was different.
00:21:13He was a nice... He always has been, basically, a nice guy.
00:21:18He's just an ordinary guy that's got very famous.
00:21:22So he was a nice guy, a good friend.
00:21:25In 1967, Bowie split with the Buzz
00:21:28and began working on his first album for Decca Records subsidiary D-Ram.
00:21:33It was released later that year, titled simply David Bowie.
00:21:39He recorded this album for D-Ram
00:21:41and he worked with sort of Decca House producer Mike Vernon
00:21:48and it created this very unusual sound
00:21:54which was like a sort of baroque musical.
00:22:00Well, there was a lot of that sort of thing about at the time, you know,
00:22:04and I'd like to say I immediately detected in him a rather special artiste
00:22:11but I don't think I really did.
00:22:13I just thought he was, you know, another...
00:22:16I mean, there are a lot of people doing stuff
00:22:19that now sounds slightly cutesy and faintly irritating.
00:22:24But he seemed to have attracted more attention
00:22:27with his cutesy and faintly irritating stuff than other people had done.
00:22:33I think what was different was the way he was singing.
00:22:38There was absolutely no nod to America whatsoever in that.
00:22:43He was reinforcing his Bromleyness, as he's called it.
00:22:49The South London vowels were out.
00:22:52But he made this record which has been compared many times
00:22:57to that of Anthony Newley.
00:23:00So you had this album of these strange little vignettes
00:23:05about, you know, Sell Me A Coat and Rubber Band and She's Got Medals
00:23:11and one of the absolute key tracks on this album is The Laughing Gnome
00:23:16and Bowie, of course, has had a very troubled relationship with that song.
00:23:24I think it's unfair to keep throwing The Laughing Gnome back in David Bowie's face.
00:23:28He was influenced by Anthony Newley
00:23:32and I know, I think, what influenced him
00:23:35was not the kind of all-singing, all-dancing, musical West End Anthony Newley
00:23:40but there'd been a very peculiar TV series he'd been in
00:23:44which was a very avant-garde thing called The World or something like that.
00:23:48I can't remember what it was called.
00:23:50I'm convinced that that is also what set David Bowie on his avant-garde path.
00:23:56You can almost hear on that track and on that album
00:24:00this sort of tremendous relief.
00:24:02It's like, I'm actually making an album now.
00:24:04I've been trying for three or four years
00:24:07and this time it looks like it might actually happen.
00:24:10And I think that really comes across.
00:24:13It's certainly not an album that's in people's David Bowie top tens
00:24:18and nor is The Laughing Gnome in their top 100s
00:24:21but there is a certain naive charm.
00:24:24If you listen to that, it's progessed from that one to the next one
00:24:28and each one, it's like the Beatles when they started off with Please Please Me
00:24:32and then it went to, you know, with the Beatles
00:24:34and then you got up, you know, until they come up with Signing Pepper
00:24:38and every album got better and better and I think that's the same with David.
00:24:41Despite the album's commercial failure
00:24:43it did attract the attention of mime artist Lindsay Kemp.
00:24:47Hearing about this interest, Bowie enlisted in Kemp's mime class
00:24:51and the teacher-student relationship quickly evolved
00:24:54until it incorporated all aspects of David's life.
00:24:58He was, you know, the mime artist that the hippies loved
00:25:03and he taught Bowie a tremendous amount about stage craft, stage presence
00:25:14as well as the rudiments of mime.
00:25:19Also, I mean, after the sort of DRAM material failed
00:25:24Bowie just went and studied with him and then actually went out on tour with him
00:25:30and if you think of, you know, today's pop climate
00:25:33it would almost be unthinkable to hold a pop career to go off and study mime
00:25:38and it wasn't necessarily that he was doing it to come back as this, you know
00:25:44my next album will be completely in mime
00:25:47which obviously doesn't sound that brilliant anyway
00:25:49but he, you know, he went and did it because he wanted to
00:25:54and of course the theatricality that he gained from Kemp
00:25:59courses through everything he does even to today
00:26:03but, you know, you see the footage of Ziggy
00:26:07and he is bringing this sort of compendium of experience to those performances.
00:26:14Bowie immersed himself in mime for more than a year
00:26:18and it would play a major part in his next group formed in late 1968.
00:26:23He moved into yet another act which was called Feathers
00:26:28which was with his then girlfriend Hermione Farthingale and John Hutchison
00:26:34and if you like this was the start of the next big change in his career
00:26:41we'd seen the R&B boy, we'd seen the soul boy, we'd seen the mod
00:26:45we'd seen the musical entertainer and now it moved into the hippie phase.
00:26:51Feathers came about because I'd gone to Canada
00:26:56I'd gone back to the day job and gone to Canada
00:26:59when I came back from Canada I hadn't a clue what I was going to do
00:27:03so I called David and he was at the same number
00:27:08I might have even called him at home because I knew where he lived
00:27:12and I'd met his mum and dad, been to his house in Bromley
00:27:16anyway I got in touch and I suppose I was just wondering what to do next
00:27:21and David said well it's funny you should call but our guitarist is leaving
00:27:26I've got this really interesting thing I think you'll like
00:27:31why don't you come down and see if you like it
00:27:34so I did that, I went to London to see him when I got back from Canada
00:27:38and it was what he called a multimedia experience
00:27:42playing acoustic guitars, singing harmonies
00:27:45that was good fun, completely different to being in a rock band
00:27:50it was very much an acoustic experimental kind of thing
00:27:54I remember Pink Floyd were knocking around at the same time
00:27:57and I kind of wondered if we were anything like them
00:28:00but I never saw them so I have no idea, probably we weren't
00:28:04I think we had David and Hermione dancing, David was doing mime
00:28:09one of my jobs was to turn the tape machine on so that he would mime to it
00:28:14and it was very controlled, it wasn't rock and roll
00:28:28In 1969 Bowie moved back to Bromley
00:28:32while continuing his work in mime he arranged folk nights at the Three Tons pub in Beckenham
00:28:39Here he met Keith Christmas, a folk singer who regularly played the Sunday night session
00:28:45I can remember him as a 12 string strummer of the acoustic guitar
00:28:50and as a writer of not very good songs
00:28:55and he was the resident at the Three Tons in Beckenham round about 1969
00:29:02it was the best club on earth, it was brilliant that place, it was fabulous
00:29:07it was so sixties, it was so late sixties London
00:29:12it was the archetypal late sixties gig
00:29:15if you wanted, I mean folk music, acoustic music ruled
00:29:19I mean it absolutely ruled the earth
00:29:21Bob Dylan started it all, it ruled the planet
00:29:24and bands ruled the planet, long hair and smoking
00:29:28but of course if you wanted a smoke you still had to go and be very discreet
00:29:32because it was still very illegal
00:29:34He tended to stay in the background a bit, he wasn't very obtrusive
00:29:38he ran the club and he booked me and I was one of his favourite guests
00:29:43so I got regular work there
00:29:45and he used to open up the evening and strum
00:29:49he used to play 12 string and he used to strum
00:29:51and he used to open up the evening and sing a couple of songs
00:29:54and that was it, nobody really took too much notice of him
00:29:57He was a really nice bloke, I mean he was very South London, very middle class
00:30:02he came across that way, very nice, very quiet and assuming
00:30:05he was a bit of a scamp, I always got the feeling he had a sense of mischief about him
00:30:11and he had a twinkle in his eye, that's for sure
00:30:14Although he involved himself in various projects
00:30:17Bowie's career seemed to be heading nowhere
00:30:20Despite all his hard work, fame appeared to be an elusive dream
00:30:26He was on tour with Mark Bolan
00:30:29and this presumably must have been some kind of low point in his career
00:30:33because he wasn't even singing at that stage, he was doing a mime act
00:30:37and I'm not much of an authority on mime
00:30:41but he'd be doing that kind of man locked in a phone box
00:30:46and all this sort of thing
00:30:49and I remember we treated him politely
00:30:55but it wasn't seen as a great coup having him on the tour
00:30:59and I think there was the rarest of God's creatures
00:31:04an Australian sitar player on the bill as well
00:31:07and I'm not entirely sure that Bowie wasn't even billed below him
00:31:11but I remember sitting in the theatre in Liverpool
00:31:15and sort of, oh God, is it eight o'clock already?
00:31:18David, you're on! kind of thing, shouting down the corridor
00:31:21and he'd go out and do his act
00:31:23so he was in a fairly humble position really at that stage
00:31:29I think he could have, from time to time, wondered if he was ever going to crack it
00:31:36because I don't think it was so much that he was from out of London
00:31:41I think even in those days, certainly we from the North
00:31:44thought that Bromley Beckenham was London
00:31:47I think that right deep down he just had a very strong belief in himself
00:31:53stronger than I thought he had actually
00:31:55I kept leaving
00:31:57but I realise now that he had a very strong belief in himself
00:32:01You've got to have huge drive and ambition to be successful
00:32:06There's an awful lot of people out there who've got lots of drive and ambition
00:32:10without any talent who you've got to compete with
00:32:14It's no use just having the talent and expecting it to be discovered
00:32:18so you've got to have that incredible belief in yourself, yeah I think so
00:32:21Certainly in today's pop idol culture, David Bowie would not have existed
00:32:26He would have, after his second single, he would have disappeared
00:32:31or he might have had a career on the pub circuit
00:32:34I think I did believe that he would make it, yeah
00:32:37I always thought that he would make it, to be honest
00:32:41I didn't think he would be as big as he is now
00:32:44but I did believe he would make it, yes
00:32:47In my limited experience, people only tell you that they saw genius blossoming
00:32:53after the genius has blossomed
00:32:56and with the gift of hindsight
00:32:59so I would love to be able to say yes
00:33:01as soon as he walked into the room I detected something magical about David Bowie
00:33:06and time has proven me right
00:33:08but that would be complete bollocks, frankly
00:33:10and I think anybody who tells you that is probably lying
00:33:13In the end, it was one song that set Bowie on the road to glory
00:33:18Despite his difficult start, by the end of 1969
00:33:22Bowie had entered the public eye and achieved the first of many hits
00:33:27I can remember seeing the stones in the park
00:33:30and there was a million people there and it was hot that day
00:33:33and before the stones came on
00:33:35in between, I can't remember, it was Donovan or somebody like that
00:33:39they played Space Oddity and it had just come out
00:33:42and it was just starting to go in the charts
00:33:44and it just fitted like a glove
00:33:47you could just tell this was going to be huge
00:33:50and I knew then, it was going to be huge
00:33:52that's when I knew
00:34:01We actually recorded several songs that we'd used in our Feathers act
00:34:06and also, after Hermione had left
00:34:09we did a few gigs as Bowie and Hutch
00:34:12and we decided we'd put them on a Reevox
00:34:16we had a machine in his flat
00:34:19and we recorded maybe a dozen songs
00:34:22and Space Oddity was just one of them
00:34:24and that was to send to America
00:34:28Eventually, it was the tape that was to get him a record deal
00:34:31after I'd left
00:34:33but we basically just sat on the corner of the bed
00:34:37and played through the songs
00:34:40but then, a little bit later
00:34:43we made what was to be a promotional film
00:34:47the three of us, Hermione, David and myself
00:34:50made what is still available as Love You Till Tuesday
00:34:54and for that film, we went into a studio
00:34:57and we employed, or David employed, some session musicians
00:35:01and we recorded what they now call the original version of Space Oddity
00:35:05Space Oddity was written as a two-part song
00:35:09I was ground control and he was Major Tom
00:35:11and we recorded it with that in mind
00:35:14we sang those two parts
00:35:16after I'd left, gone back to get another day job
00:35:19David did it as a solo
00:35:21A solo version of Space Oddity became Bowie's calling card
00:35:25It secured him a lucrative deal with Mercury Records
00:35:28and on its release in autumn 1969
00:35:31found an audience enticed
00:35:33both by the subject matter and by the artist
00:35:37It's at the time of the man first landing on the moon
00:35:41people were fascinated by it
00:35:43people were obsessed with space
00:35:45and here, it was a pun
00:35:47on 2001, the Stanley Kubrick film
00:35:502001 A Space Odyssey
00:35:53so this was called Space Oddity
00:35:55which was a pun on that, which everyone got straight away
00:35:59and so it was immediately very intriguing
00:36:01because it was a very unusual subject to write a song about
00:36:04It coincided with the first space shot
00:36:07and it had with that ethereal voice he's got
00:36:10it fitted exactly the style of music at the time
00:36:13it just fitted perfectly
00:36:15It fitted the time, fitted what people wanted
00:36:18I personally thought it was a bit of a depressing song
00:36:20because the guy dies in it
00:36:22but it was very clever, very unique
00:36:26It's difficult to know why any record's successful
00:36:31Space Oddity, superficially, quite clearly
00:36:34just because it was kind of spacey
00:36:38and had a kind of story to it
00:36:42but enough left unsaid to have you puzzling slightly
00:36:45over what it all meant
00:36:47It was very spacey, and when it first starts out
00:36:49the chords to it are very spacey and weary
00:36:52Mick Wayne's solo in that, I think, had a lot to do with that
00:36:55if you listen to the solo in that
00:36:57Mick Wayne, the guitarist, with Juney's eyes
00:36:59and all the slide bits, it's not a bottleneck
00:37:01it's Mick's cig lighter, a little metal cig lighter
00:37:04and it's his cigarette lighter doing all them
00:37:07and I always remember Mick telling me
00:37:09there's a bit where they couldn't get out of the solo
00:37:12and Mick had to just detune his machine head
00:37:15he went, da-da-da-dum, this is Major Tom
00:37:18that was Mick's idea
00:37:20His persona really has been around
00:37:22the sort of slightly otherworldly thing
00:37:25the man who fell to earth and Starman and things like that
00:37:29I think that that element is there
00:37:32I think that it comes back to outer space
00:37:35and the unknown and stuff like that
00:37:38rather unexpected, actually, given his form prior to that
00:37:43and I quite like it when somebody just makes a record
00:37:48which seems to go against what it is that they've done previously
00:37:53and if you've written them off
00:37:55it's quite good to be proven wrong, I think
00:37:58Bowie went to work on an album
00:38:01The result was another eponymous long player
00:38:04later repackaged as Space Oddity
00:38:07Displaying obvious signs of his folk leanings
00:38:10Bowie had recruited his Three Tons colleague
00:38:13Keith Christmas on several tracks
00:38:16When I got to know him in the studio
00:38:18he asked me if I'd come and play guitar with him
00:38:21on this series of tracks he was putting down
00:38:25and it became just known as David Bowie, the album
00:38:27I think it's been reissued and given another name now
00:38:30probably Space Oddity
00:38:32but it was a strange album because
00:38:35it was a bunch of acoustic songs
00:38:38with just me and him playing and him singing
00:38:41a bunch of songs with backing band
00:38:44and then this one track, Space Oddity, that stood out a mile
00:38:48because it probably had more money spent on Space Oddity
00:38:51than the rest of the album put together
00:38:53and this was a superbly produced, of course, thing
00:38:56it's a classic track now
00:38:58The album, which was initially now known as Space Oddity
00:39:03originally it was just known as David Bowie
00:39:05or in America it was Man of Words and Man of Music
00:39:08and it's quite an odd record
00:39:12It's almost like Space Oddity
00:39:15and this collection of assorted freakeries
00:39:20and I think that that was reflected in its immense lack of sales
00:39:26Dismissed by many critics as a one-hit wonder
00:39:30after the commercial failure of the album
00:39:32Bowie concentrated on touring
00:39:35In Scotland he was supported by Juniors Eyes
00:39:38who had become his new backing band
00:39:41Bowie had some gigs in Scotland, we did a Radio 1 club
00:39:45I always remember we did that and it was on with the Swinging Blue Jeans
00:39:48and when I was about 14 or 15, Swinging Blue Jeans
00:39:51was one of my idol groups, the Hollies
00:39:54and here I am with the Swinging Blue Jeans
00:39:56and we was like this new underground band
00:39:58and they were supporting us
00:40:01and so we did these, we'd gone and backed David
00:40:05we'd just recorded the album
00:40:07so we basically just played his album
00:40:10In April Bowie had met Angela Barnett
00:40:13an American girl hanging out in Swinging London
00:40:16By the end of the year they had moved into Haddon Hall in Bromley
00:40:20along with Bowie's producer Tony Visconti and John Cambridge
00:40:26Haddon Hall was, when you look at it
00:40:28it was a great big house in Beckenham
00:40:30I remember it was on the main road
00:40:32and David just had this sort of, the downstairs
00:40:34I think on the left was the kitchen
00:40:36we had the first bedroom on the left
00:40:39David's bedroom was directly on the right
00:40:41Tony Visconti's was in the corner, in the back
00:40:45and we just basically slept on a mattress
00:40:48it wasn't a bed, it was just like
00:40:50you'd go and buy this old mattress
00:40:52you'd just walk about, it was like your own house
00:40:54the only thing we used to eat was toast with marmite
00:40:58we'd go and have toast with marmite
00:41:00and then we'd maybe go down to the pub down the road
00:41:03the Three Tons, which David used to play at
00:41:06it was just like an open house where you treated it as your own
00:41:11To the surprise of their friends
00:41:13Bowie and Angela married early the next year
00:41:16at the Bromley registry office to little fanfare
00:41:19John Cambridge would become an impromptu best man
00:41:23David's wedding, yes, I remember when we was at
00:41:25I think he either came up the night before or two days before
00:41:29and he just sort of said, John I'm getting married
00:41:32and I went, what?
00:41:34I'm getting married, I'm about to marry
00:41:36and I remember, I always remember
00:41:39and this is quoted in some of the books
00:41:41and it's true, and he says to me, will he be a witness?
00:41:43and I said, yeah, of course he'll be a witness
00:41:45and I think Visconti, Tony Visconti was going to be his best man
00:41:48but I'm sure he had a session, I think it was with the Straub
00:41:50or someone, so Tony couldn't make it
00:41:52and even afterwards, David says to us,
00:41:54oh yeah, John was my best man, wasn't he John?
00:41:57I don't think there really was a best man
00:41:59but I was maybe one of the only fellow there
00:42:04and that's true, when we got to the wedding
00:42:07and his mother had come
00:42:09I don't think she even knew he was getting married
00:42:11I think she'd found out at the registry office
00:42:14and I always remember, I'm sort of sat like this waiting
00:42:17and David and Angie are right at the front of the table
00:42:20like little school chairs, you know, not a very big room
00:42:23and he said, can the witnesses come forward to sign that?
00:42:25and I think the other girl who was in the flat at the time called Clare
00:42:28I think she was in the flat round the corner, downstairs
00:42:31and I got up my chair to go and his mother sort of
00:42:33in front of me stormed up and went to the thing
00:42:35and she sort of went and I thought, you know
00:42:37and Bowie sort of looked round at me and sort of went
00:42:39and started to say, it's me mother, so, you know, cool
00:42:44Angela would become a vital part of Bowie's personal
00:42:48and professional life over the following three years
00:42:51Heavily influencing both his music and his image
00:42:54she aided the singer's rise from one hit wonder to global superstar
00:43:09I think one of the significant things around this period
00:43:11was that Bowie sort of formed a band, a band came together
00:43:17that unlike all the other bands that he'd been in
00:43:22and by this point, you know, there were many
00:43:24was that here was a band of sort of equal partners
00:43:30obviously Bowie was the star and the leader
00:43:33but there was a lot of sort of contribution given in
00:43:37and the first sort of example were called The Hype or Hype
00:43:41which had Tony Visconti who as well as being a producer
00:43:46was a tremendously accomplished bass player
00:43:49on bass, John Cambridge on drums
00:43:52and one of the most significant characters in Bowie's story
00:43:58Mick Ronson on guitar
00:44:01When Joonie's Eyes sort of finished
00:44:03I think Tim got offered another job with, I think
00:44:06the Terry Reid Fantasia or something like that
00:44:08I know it was Terry Reid but it was quite big in the States
00:44:11just like a three-piece, a bit like The Nice
00:44:13and Mr Link Palm, that sort of line-up
00:44:15and so Tim was leaving to join this band
00:44:18and so like, rather than getting another
00:44:21I think we tried to get another guitarist
00:44:23and it just wasn't working out
00:44:25and so we was coming home
00:44:27and I remember we was playing in Rotherham
00:44:30and Tim Renwick says to me
00:44:32he said, oh John, will you ring Visconti up?
00:44:34He said, will you ring him tomorrow?
00:44:36He wants a word with you
00:44:37and I thought it was just going to be a session or something
00:44:39I'd done some sessions for Tony
00:44:40and he said, oh David's forming a band
00:44:42and he wants you to be the drummer
00:44:44so I thought, oh, yeah, yeah
00:44:46I thought I was coming home
00:44:48so I stayed down there
00:44:51So that was the band
00:44:54and Visconti was going to play bass
00:44:56so we needed a guitarist
00:44:59I kept saying, there's a real good kid I know in Hull
00:45:02and they sort of looked at me
00:45:04and said, Hull?
00:45:05Yeah, alright John
00:45:06and I was pestering and pestering
00:45:08and they didn't really believe me
00:45:09and they thought I was just messing about
00:45:11so I came
00:45:14I pestered them that much
00:45:16until Tony and David said
00:45:17alright John, bring him down, bring him down
00:45:19we'll see what he's like
00:45:20he can't do any harm, you know
00:45:21The guitarist who John Cambridge
00:45:23eventually convinced to join the hype
00:45:25was Mick Ronson
00:45:27who had played with Cambridge earlier in The Rats
00:45:30His introduction into the fabric of the hype
00:45:32was, however, far from seamless
00:45:35He came back to Harding Hall and stayed the night
00:45:37and I said to David, this is Mick
00:45:39and the next day they sort of got out
00:45:41the acoustic guitars in the bedroom
00:45:42and started playing away
00:45:43and they just hit it off
00:45:44and David said, oh we're doing a John Peel show
00:45:47I think it was maybe the day after
00:45:49or a couple of days after
00:45:50Do you want to stay and do it?
00:45:51So Mick says, yeah, you know
00:45:53So I think he brought his guitar down with him
00:45:55his Les Paul
00:45:57So we ended up doing the John Peel show
00:46:00which was really terrible
00:46:02if you ever hear it now
00:46:04As I've said before, people used to say
00:46:07Well, it was good, it was raw
00:46:09They'd say the early bands like The Stones
00:46:12Well, The Stones in the early days was raw
00:46:15It wasn't raw, it was crap
00:46:19We'd finish a song and Mick would still be playing
00:46:21or the wrong chords
00:46:23all that sort of thing
00:46:24But it was live
00:46:25You couldn't say, oh, let's do it again
00:46:27and it just went out
00:46:28but that was Mick's first gig
00:46:30Mick Ronson was really important
00:46:33inasmuch that he could really play
00:46:35And that's not saying Bowie couldn't really play
00:46:37because he can
00:46:38but I think with all sort of great ideas
00:46:42people, they need someone
00:46:45who is going to make that song come to life
00:46:49and I think he was very, very accomplished
00:46:52at being able to do that
00:46:54Mick, as a person, was quite unique
00:46:59He's a very genuine person
00:47:01A nice guy, you know
00:47:03A very straightforward guy
00:47:05And in a way, that's how his music was as well
00:47:09But more than anything else
00:47:10he'd got an element of the showman in him
00:47:13which David brought out
00:47:15Mick Ronson was the alchemist to Bowie's magic
00:47:20He really was a very important part of that image, I think
00:47:24And a very good musician, too
00:47:25and a great shame he's dead
00:47:27When we was in The Rats
00:47:29we just did cover versions
00:47:31All we played was Hendrix, Cream, Zeppelin
00:47:34anything heavy
00:47:35That's what Mick was into
00:47:36Mick was into Jeff Beck
00:47:37Jeff Beck was his idol
00:47:39Anybody says, what was Mick's idol?
00:47:42Hendrix, Clapton at the time
00:47:44It was Jeff Beck
00:47:45Mick was a big Jeff Beck fan
00:47:47And so when you get
00:47:48when Davey's doing these songs
00:47:50it's like somebody coming with this nice little song on a 12-string
00:47:55and Mick just turns it into something like
00:47:57Stairway to Heaven by Zeppelin
00:47:59Which I imagine that probably started out something like that
00:48:02And you get Jimmy Page there
00:48:03and it just becomes a different song
00:48:04And I think that's what Mick did
00:48:05He just turned it around
00:48:06It's going to be like this
00:48:08And of course David loved it
00:48:10He loved it
00:48:11When I was in Haddon Hall
00:48:12I had me Zeppelin albums and playing it
00:48:14and he loved all that
00:48:16So I think it rubbed off on him
00:48:18Bowie's next record
00:48:19The Man Who Sold the World
00:48:21unsurprisingly bore the influence of Ronson's rock background
00:48:25Full of crunching riffs and thumping bass lines
00:48:28It could not have been further from the modest folk
00:48:31of the Space Oddity album
00:48:33The Man Who Sold the World's a very odd album
00:48:36and I think it's a very interesting album
00:48:38because it's like Bowie playing hard rock
00:48:43and whereas Space Oddity was very sort of trippy and whimsical
00:48:50here was an album where he just sort of
00:48:53everything went up a notch
00:48:55You could tell that the game was being raised
00:48:57Mick Ronson came in on guitar
00:49:00Visconti did a fantastic production job
00:49:03and you get these songs on there
00:49:06like Width of a Circle and Black Country Rock
00:49:10I mean Black Country Rock
00:49:11it almost sounds like Slade
00:49:13It's this very, very sort of unlike David Bowie music
00:49:18The Man Who Sold the World
00:49:19Yeah, that's another one that progressed
00:49:22and I think the song has got more melodic
00:49:25even, what was it, the title track?
00:49:27The Man Who Sold the World
00:49:28Once again, the Ron O's riff
00:49:33That would have been Mick Ronson's
00:49:35That was Mick Ronson's riff
00:49:36David wrote the songs, really good songs
00:49:38and Mick arranged them and put his heavy rock
00:49:42or whatever, you know
00:49:43Clever guy
00:49:45Clever guys
00:49:49I think the cover was probably one of Bowie's first iconic images
00:49:54and it showed that he was sort of unafraid
00:49:58to be who he was
00:50:00laying there on a chaise lounge
00:50:03cards scattered around, you know
00:50:05had he lost some bet and had to dress up in drag
00:50:08was he, you know, who knows
00:50:11but the mystery was there
00:50:13Throughout 1971, Bowie worked non-stop
00:50:17Despite The Man Who Sold the World's unimpressive sales
00:50:21Bowie embarked on his first American tour
00:50:23and played the Glastonbury Festival
00:50:26At the end of the year, another new album emerged
00:50:29Hunky Dory
00:50:30It was his strongest yet
00:50:33You get the notion of not just an isolated classic
00:50:37on there amongst some filler
00:50:39It's just track after track
00:50:43You know, you've got changes on there
00:50:45which, you know, even today
00:50:48most people will just identify that one song with David Bowie
00:50:52Life On Mars, which has got to be
00:50:55probably his deftest touch
00:50:57the whole orchestration on there as well
00:51:00And the most interesting thing about it is
00:51:02once he got it out
00:51:04he'd moved on so far already
00:51:07and already in all the interviews
00:51:09around the time of Hunky Dory coming out
00:51:11he started to talk about the next project
00:51:14and I think there's always that moment in pop
00:51:18when, you know, whether it's the planets aligning or something
00:51:21where, you know, he knew that something was happening
00:51:25and the years of work were paying off
00:51:28You know, this wasn't a fresh-off-the-block performer
00:51:32with nothing to say
00:51:33You know, he had been there, seen it, done it
00:51:36I think Hunky Dory was the real sort of catalyst for that
00:51:39because I think if that record hadn't been as strong
00:51:44I don't think his confidence would have been as strong
00:51:47While promoting Hunky Dory
00:51:50Bowie's new project emerged
00:51:52Drawing on the alien otherness
00:51:54that had struck a chord with audiences in 1969
00:51:57as well as the theatricality of mime and stagecraft
00:52:01Bowie unleashed Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
00:52:14Because he'd worked so hard
00:52:17It was only like a natural extension
00:52:19of how hard he'd been working until 1972
00:52:22where, you know, the fame was rocketing, you know, from Starman onwards
00:52:28Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was a masterstroke
00:52:32Not simply a breakthrough album, a stage show or an image
00:52:36It was a complete package which would propel Bowie to stardom
00:52:41The first single from the Ziggy Stardust album, Starman
00:52:44became the Spiders' signature tune
00:52:46It was also Bowie's first hit since Space Oddity
00:52:50From the moment it crashed into the charts
00:52:52there was no looking back
00:52:54Ziggy Stardust and David Bowie had arrived
00:52:58I've thought a few times about how he got
00:53:03from being a fairly unprepossessing young man
00:53:08sitting on the grass at Beckenham to being Ziggy Stardust
00:53:11And I think one of the key things is that I think he did that
00:53:15because he really enjoyed doing it
00:53:17He wanted to do it, he loved it, he loved dressing up
00:53:20He loved the theatricality, he loved that stuff
00:53:23And I think it shows through in what he did
00:53:26It's just a sheer enthusiasm for that part
00:53:29On the back of the massively successful album
00:53:32The Spiders from Mars toured the world
00:53:34With Ronson on guitar, Trevor Boulder on bass
00:53:37and Woody Woodmansey on drums
00:53:39Bowie already had dynamic backing
00:53:42But the sheer size of the tour called for a larger ensemble
00:53:46And once more John Hutchinson was brought into the fold
00:53:50Mick Ronson and David phoned me at work
00:53:52and said, we're going to New York next week, can you come?
00:53:56And it was as quick as that
00:53:58I just told my boss I was leaving and going to New York
00:54:03And I joined an already fairly successful outfit
00:54:08in New York
00:54:11My role really was to play 12-string
00:54:13because David had previously played 12-string
00:54:16with The Spiders from Mars
00:54:18But he wanted more freedom to move around the stage
00:54:21And the idea was that he got somebody to play guitar
00:54:25and who could also do backing vocals
00:54:28I think it was a bit of a budget cut
00:54:31so we didn't get backing vocalists
00:54:33So Geoff McCormack and I practised our falsettos
00:54:37and we did the girly vocals instead
00:54:40I found it quite an experience
00:54:42My first gig with them after playing in local pubs again
00:54:46in Scarborough
00:54:48was at Radio City Music Hall
00:54:51which was a huge venue
00:54:53Our entrance was up from the floor in a stage riser
00:54:57with steam curtains behind us
00:55:00And that was just a taste for the next few months
00:55:04The Ziggy Stardust tour was immense
00:55:07Bowie surrounded himself with an entourage of young talents
00:55:10Photographers, costume designers, bodyguards and hair stylists
00:55:15His fame was as carefully constructed as his character
00:55:18And with Ziggy, the music was arguably less important than the image
00:55:23His appearance matched the content of the music
00:55:28So he had a package
00:55:30And I think David's notion of himself was as a package
00:55:35that he could produce music to accompany his appearance
00:55:39He did it perfectly with Ziggy Stardust
00:55:42Even if you didn't know who he was, you couldn't ignore his image
00:55:46If David had come on stage singing Ziggy with a tuxedo on
00:55:51nobody would have said anything
00:55:53People at work said,
00:55:55Did you see that silly bugger last night with all that make-up on his face?
00:55:59David Bowie!
00:56:00But these would be old fellas, you know
00:56:02And they'd remember his name
00:56:04If he'd have come on in a black tuxedo, they wouldn't know who he is
00:56:08And that's part and parcel of getting there
00:56:11It had all the theatricality that he had shown promise of in Beckenham
00:56:18But writ large
00:56:20And he had Mick Ronson with him
00:56:22Upstage him on the platform shoes
00:56:25It was a circus
00:56:27But the music was good
00:56:29It was the perfect combination of theatre and music
00:56:32And that's what he managed to do
00:56:34That's what he created with Ziggy Stardust
00:56:36And that's what the world was ready for about him as well, I think
00:56:39His image was everything
00:56:41Because he was more of an actor than any of his contemporaries
00:56:45Even before we knew that he could act actually
00:56:49and do things like Elephant Man
00:56:51and The Man Who Fell to Earth and stuff like that
00:56:53It was an actor on stage
00:56:55It was somebody dressing up and being a role, a character, which wasn't him
00:57:00I'm very much a character when I go on stage, I feel
00:57:04Like an actor?
00:57:06Yeah, I believe in my part all the way down the line
00:57:09But I do play it for all it's worth
00:57:12Because that's the way I do my staging
00:57:14That's part of what Bowie's supposedly all about
00:57:17I'm an actor
00:57:19By 1973, Bowie's career had gone stratospheric
00:57:24While continuing the sell-out tour with The Spiders
00:57:27He released another album, Aladdin Sane
00:57:30In Britain, it was the fastest-selling record since The Beatles' heyday
00:57:34Incorporating the title character into The Spiders From Mars show
00:57:38Bowie was now both creatively and commercially on the crest of a wave
00:57:43It was on the 3rd of July at the Hammersmith Odeon
00:57:46that it all came to a sudden and unexpected end
00:57:50Hammersmith Odeon was one to remember, really
00:57:53Because it was a big gig right at the end of the three tours around the world
00:57:58And to us, it was just another gig
00:58:03We were actually planning on going back to the States
00:58:06What happened was that the first clue that I had
00:58:10that something was a little bit different about that gig
00:58:13was that David said to me, don't start rock'n'roll suicide
00:58:16I used to play the intro on 12-string
00:58:18He said, don't play the intro until I give you the note
00:58:22I thought, well, he must be going to say something
00:58:25Well, he did
00:58:27He said, thanks very much, we're retiring
00:58:32And the band kind of looked at each other and I started playing
00:58:36When we came off it, people were looking at each other
00:58:40Woody and Trevor were a bit taken aback
00:58:43We were all saying, what did he say?
00:58:46He said, we've just been fired
00:58:48We got fired on stage
00:58:52And as it turned out, that was the last gig we did
00:58:55But we didn't know about it at the time
00:58:57It was just another real good gig
00:59:00But that was it, the end of the road for the Spiders, yeah
00:59:04I got in my car and drove back to Scarborough
00:59:07and got another proper job
00:59:09By Ziggy Stardust, he was huge by that time
00:59:14So when he killed him off, that was huge news
00:59:18Well, it seemed to be at the time
00:59:22When Bowie killed Ziggy, if you like, at Hammersmith Odeon
00:59:27and the famous quote, this is the last show we're ever going to do
00:59:33I think there was a genuine feeling that at that point he'd had enough
00:59:40Because ironically, after wanting it for so long
00:59:44and the great cliche of care for what you wish for
00:59:47It all sort of happened at that point
00:59:51And I think he just genuinely needed a break
00:59:55The suspension of Bowie's career was very short
00:59:59Ziggy may have gone, but Bowie, his music and his persona
01:00:03continued to mature and develop
01:00:06The sudden change in direction would come to characterise Bowie's later career
01:00:11Once he had set himself up, intentionally or not
01:00:15He was the next big thing
01:00:18Then he'd got to keep on evolving
01:00:21And that's where it gets very difficult
01:00:24Because if you keep on being ahead of your audience
01:00:28The underground love you, the avant-garde love you
01:00:31But other people haven't actually caught up with you
01:00:34And then you've changed again
01:00:37And I actually admire that, I think that's a great quality
01:00:40And a lot of people don't do that
01:00:43They find this persona that's worked very well
01:00:46And then they stick with it
01:00:48Because all the people in the so-called industry go
01:00:51Well, that's really nice, we like that, keep doing it the same
01:00:55You're an artist
01:00:57You never quite knew what you were going to get
01:01:00And this at a time when predictability was seen as a virtue
01:01:04And I can understand that up to a point
01:01:07Because if you buy a packet of cornflakes and you like them
01:01:10You don't want the next packet to be ginger-flavoured or something
01:01:14So nevertheless, things were incredibly predictable
01:01:18And rather pretentious and pompous
01:01:21And very little of the music from that era, I think
01:01:24Actually stands much re-examination
01:01:27Which is why I don't bother to re-examine it
01:01:30As I said, the bulk of bands that were successful at the time
01:01:35And musicians that were successful at the time
01:01:37Their success depended on them not changing too much
01:01:40But Bowie managed to buck that trend, I think
01:01:43And build success without being predictable
01:01:49In fact, we've been, frankly, at times, almost willfully unpredictable
01:01:55Whereas somebody can be really good at what they do
01:02:00And keep doing it, whether it's successful or not
01:02:04I think David makes a point of changing, keeping changing
01:02:08Nobody should be at the peak of their career
01:02:11When they're very, very young
01:02:13They should be getting better and better at it
01:02:15Unfortunately, a lot of people in pop music don't
01:02:18And it's one of the great mysteries to me
01:02:20Is whether you lose the muse or you stop being hungry
01:02:25Somehow, David seemed to carry on being hungry
01:02:28For a much longer period of time than most of his contemporaries
01:02:33Moving on, always doing something else, always ahead of the game
01:02:37You thought, is he ever going to trip over?
01:02:40Is he ever going to stop being able to reinvent himself?
01:02:45This was the phenomenon of David Bowie
01:02:48In the years that have followed Ziggy Stardust
01:02:51Bowie has continued to transform himself with the times
01:02:55While his music has persistently broken new ground
01:02:59From such inconspicuous beginnings in South London
01:03:02And with such a lengthy musical apprenticeship
01:03:05In the handful of early bands in which he enlisted
01:03:08David Bowie struggled through to become an icon
01:03:11In the history of popular music
01:03:41.