A GLAM HOT ’DO
Rocking tribute to gal who created Bowie’s Ziggy coif
It was shear madness at Joe Hurley’s “Wham Bam Thank You Glam” concert in SoHo, featuring performances by Tony winner Michael Cervais, Grammy winner Vernon Reid and Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye.
But despite the talent on stage Friday, City Winery’s greenroom buzzed around Suzi Ronson, who was coaxed into talking about the time she gave David Bowie his famous Ziggy Stardust haircut in 1972. The evening focused heavily on the late rock star’s legacy.
“The way it worked out was I met his mother, then his wife, then I met him and he had that long blond hair,” Ronson told the Daily News. “They were talking about what would look good and asked me my opinion.”
Ronson had recently finished cosmetology school and began cutting hair in the London borough of Bromley in the early 1970s in a salon where Bowie’s mother, Maggie Jones, was a customer.
Ronson didn’t make the connection at first, then one thing led to another and she pieced together that Bowie — whose birth name is David Jones — was the local singer who’d recently had the hit song “A Space Oddity” on the radio.
An introduction soon followed and Bowie showed Ronson, who was Suzi Fussey before marrying Bowie’s guitarist Mick Ronson in 1974, a photo from a “motor club” magazine he liked.
“David was a perfect person for a hairstyle like that, he was tall and slim — rock-star thin — he had a really long neck and great cheekbones,” she said.
They got to work, and Bowie was transformed into a spaceage glam rocker. That aesthetic — topped off with a fiery red pompadour — evolved into something more personal with the 1973 album “Aladdin Sane.”
“We dyed it red, which gave it texture, made it stand up, but eventually, I think it became ‘my’ haircut because it grew in and he had ‘Aladdin Sane,’ which was really the haircut I created,” she said.
According to Ronson, fallout from the haircut caused friction in her house and Bowie’s.
“My mother saw it on a magazine cover with David announcing he’s gay!” Ronson recalled. “She was really upset. Remember, homosexuality in London was illegal in 1968; we’re only a few years later.”
She said Bowie’s mom — her client — wasn’t thrilled about the new aesthetic they’d created, either.
Ronson, who gives Bowie credit for creating the music and performances that changed rock ’n’ roll, said she had no idea at the time we would still be talking about a haircut that happened 45 years ago in a town 2,000 miles away.
“Before that, guys were getting up from the bar in their jeans and T-shirts, (they’d) have a beer and they’re getting on stage and they clank along,” she said. “We had style and panache and mystery. It was a moment in time.”
Among the well-wishers at Friday’s concert was Grammywinner Suzanne Vega, who made a point of introducing herself to Ronson after the show.
“Five of my best friends had it,” she said of the Bowie ’do.
Hurley, the musician who organized the show and grew up walking distance from Bowie’s house, called the hairdo, “The haircut that launched a thousand bands.”
He invited her to Friday’s show and introduced her on stage because “without her there wouldn’t have been glam rock.” Hurley closed the show singing Bowie’s “Rock and Roll Suicide” off the “Ziggy Stardust” album.
Ronson remains modest about the role her scissors and dye played in making Bowie a legend. “It’s amazing, really,” she said. “It was one of those lucky moments in one’s life that happens.”