CIGARETTES AND TAMBOURINES: INSIDE THE SPIDERS BY PETER HINCE.

IT WAS 1973, I was 18 and my cousin, Mick, was looking after Woody Woodmansey’s drums on the Ziggy Stardust tour. Mick also painted the Ziggy flashes for the backdrops at Hammersmith. I was at Mick’s house when the head of the crew, Robin Mayhew, asked if I’d help out, mostly taking care of Mick Ronson’s gear.

David was always a little aloof, he didn’t hang out, but he trusted the people around him. Unlike Freddie Mercury, whom I worked with later, I never saw him throw a tantrum. Ronno was the most down-to-earth guy and he and David were closer than the others. Both of them chain-smoked too. I think David smoked Gitanes and Ronno smoked something like 80 Dunhill a day. Ronno was central to the Ziggy sound, the performance, all of it. Woody was like Charlie Watts – always solid, always there – and Trevor Bolder’s bass playing was fantastic but he wasn’t always the easiest person.

I remember being at the Grosvenor House hotel and Tony Defries had hired a suite. Four roadies carried in a video player the size of a small bungalow into the room and everyone watched the gig from the night before. They wanted to see what worked and what could be made better.

After the tour, Robin bought the equipment from Defries and formed a hire company called Ground Control. It was an unwritten rule that Ground Control helped out David, which is how I ended up at Olympic when he was recording Diamond Dogs. I had to deliver a tambourine to David and I remember watching him sat in the control room banging this tambourine on an acoustic guitar trying to get a sound for the album. I was still young enough and enough of a fan for the whole thing to feel like one big adventure.