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BOWIE... BEFORE THE STARDUST
Johnny Flynn tells why his controversial new movie about the pop legend sheds precious new light on his troubled early years
Back in 1971, when 24-yearold David Bowie was just emerging as a performer in Britain but was quite unknown in the wider world, he was sent on a publicity tour of America to promote his new album The Man Who Sold The World.
It was a time of insecurity in his life. The Ziggy Stardust Tour in which his outrageous glam rock alter ego was to explode onto the scene was still a year away, and as far as most people knew Mr Bowie was just an oddball with eccentric fashion sense.
His personal life wasn’t much more stable. True, he was happily married to actress and fellow misfit Angie, who was pregnant with their son Duncan. But he was constantly worried about his beloved older halfbrother Terry Burns – his mentor, who had introduced him to music. Terry had been admitted to a mental hospital with the psychotic issues that would plague him until his suicide in 1985. David was not only worried about him, but also wondering if Terry’s issues were hereditary. ‘One puts oneself through such psychological damage trying to avoid the threat of insanity,’ he said later. ‘You start to approach the very thing that you’re scared of.’
In other words, says actor and singer Johnny Flynn, who will be seen as the young Bowie in the new film Stardust, it’s a side of the flamboyant superstar we barely remember. ‘It’s when he goes to the States for the first time. He doesn’t have a visa, and he’s been booked into weird gigs like house parties and playing to vacuum salesmen in hotel lobbies.
‘It’s not working and it’s really depressing for him. Plus, he’s running away from a lot of stress at home. You listen to interviews at the time and he sounds quite fragile – it’s not the confident Bowie we think of now.’
The film, written by Christopher Bell and Gabriel Range, directed by Range and with Jena Malone as Angie Bowie, will be available from streaming sites from this Friday. But Duncan Jones, Bowie’s 48-year-old son who was known as Zowie in his youth, has made it plain he disapproves. ‘I’m not saying this movie is not happening,’ he wrote on Twitter last year. ‘I honestly wouldn’t know. I’m saying that as it stands this movie won’t have any of Dad’s music. If you want to see a biopic without his music or the family’s blessing, that’s up to the audience.’
Producers Salon Pictures responded that, since this film is not a biopic, more a snapshot of one period, it is not reliant on Bowie’s music. ‘Much like Nowhere Boy for Lennon or Control for Joy Division, the film uses period music and songs that Bowie covered.’
Johnny says he prefers the idea of showing just one part of Bowie’s artistic journey rather than trying to cover it all. When he was first shown the script, then a more comprehensive story of the singer’s life, he turned it down. ‘I wasn’t so into the Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman-type of biopic for David, because he’s so many things that it could be patronising to his legacy.’
It was only after Gabriel Range – best known for the 2006 political
thriller Death Of A President – signed on and narrowed the scope down to those few months in 1971, that Johnny’s interest was piqued. Having previously played the young Einstein in the TV series Genius, he says he’s always been fascinated by the evolution of the creative spirit.
‘We have a tendency to receive these figures from history as complete versions of themselves, and think, “Well, I could never have anything of importance to say because look at Bowie or Einstein or whoever. They’ve done so much, I could never compare,”’ he says. ‘But they had to start somewhere. They set out just like us, with dreams and ideas.’
Anyway, he insists, it’s a particularly interesting period in the life of a master of self-invention. ‘The time when there’s the most to say about Bowie is this period – he hasn’t found his artistic voice. He’s trying to be bold and making decisions that he sometimes thinks have been wrong.’
Johnny, a tall 37-year-old who lost 2.5st for the role, says he didn’t think twice about transforming into the thin kid from Peckham. ‘I don’t look like David Bowie, but David Bowie didn’t look like David Bowie!’ he laughs. ‘Our story isn’t about a perfect physical impression – hopefully it’s soulfully inhabiting him.’
‘He hasn’t found his artistic voice, he’s trying to be bold’