Oh, you pretty things! I was in love with Bowie in the 70s... and he felt the same, reveals Lulu
LULU has revealed that she was in love with David Bowie during their brief fling in the 1970s.
The pair became lovers when she recorded one of his songs. And the Scottish pop star, 70, said yesterday that she believed he shared her feelings during their ‘unique’ relationship.
‘I had a little bit of a thing about him I would say. And it was reciprocal,’ she told ITV’s Lorraine.
Lulu said she had been in love with Bowie, who died in 2016 aged 69, ‘maybe for a minute’ during their short-lived romance.
She also admitted that, after she burst on the pop scene as a 15-year-old in 1964 with the hit Shout, she was ‘frightened’ of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger and preferred the company of the Beatles.
‘I always found Mick Jagger scary. I was only 15 or 16,’ she said. ‘Where I would be excited, all of a twitter whenever I saw John or Paul or George or Ringo – they were my favourites. But then I loved the Stones’ music.’
Lulu, born in Lennoxtown, Dunbartonshire, said she found it easy to fall in love with the musicians she rubbed shoulders with, and in 1969 married Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees. ‘You work with or you meet someone who is really talented,’ she said.
‘I mean, that’s why I fell in love and married Maurice Gibb. I fell in love with the Bee Gees, the music, and he was just the most tender, gorgeous, cute and he felt the same way about me.’
Lulu, whose hits include The Boat That I Row, Boom Bang-A-Bang and Relight My Fire – with Take That – was married to Gibb from 1969 to 1973. He died in 2003.
Her fling with Bowie happened when she was 24 and he invited her to record with him at his studio in a French chateau in 1973. He had just ditched his Ziggy Stardust glam rock persona.
Lulu recorded a cover of The Man Who Sold The World, which Bowie, then 26, produced with his guitarist Mick Ronson. It was a UK hit the following year.
She went on to marry celebrity hairdresser John Frieda – with whom she has a son Jordan, 42 – in 1977. They divorced in 1991.
In her 2002 autobiography, I Don’t Want To Fight, Lulu described Bowie as ‘totally seductive’ with a ‘magnetic sort of personality that was intoxicating to be around’.
She said: ‘He had a reputation for being very sexually adventurous, and I’m sure it’s true. But with me he stayed within fairly normal territory. It wasn’t wild or anything like that.’ She also revealed that he told her to lose weight.
Bowie, who was married at the time, was famed for his wild sex life, which included male and female partners.
He is rumoured to have had flings with Elizabeth Taylor, Marianne Faithfull and Susan Sarandon, while his male lovers included mime artist Lindsay Kemp.
He had an open marriage with his first wife Angie, whom he married in 1970 and divorced in 1980. Their son Duncan Jones is a film-maker.
Bowie married Somali-American model Iman, with whom he had a daughter, in 1992 and the couple remained together until his death from cancer.
Lulu recently admitted she has given up dating and would never consider using a dating app to find love. ‘I hope I never date again,’ she told Women’s Weekly.
‘I always found Mick Jagger scary’