“THE WORLD WAS HIS FOR THE TAKING”
WHEN BOWIE’S UK TOUR BEGAN IN JANUARY ’72, ZIGGY WAS BARELY FORMED. BY SEPTEMBER, IT WAS ZIGGYMANIA, REMEMBERS KRIS NEEDS.
JANUARY 29, 1972, FRIARS AYLESBURY: THE BUZZ gripping our local club suggests something magical is about to happen. We know, because David Bowie himself had promised it the previous September. Back then, in a half-full hall the shy singer-songwriter with the long blond tresses had started his set a nervous one-hit wonder and ended it in euphoric triumph, fronting the yet-to-be-dubbed Spiders From Mars. From my vantage point behind Mick Ronson’s amp, I could see the elated relief light up his face.
In the dressing room afterwards, Bowie told the 17-year-old me, “That was great. I want to come and play here again but next time it’ll be ver y different. I think I’m going to be a huge rock star.”
He wasn’t wrong. Four months later in front of a feverish capacity crowd, the lights dimmed and Walter Carlos’s Ode To Joy from A Clockwork Orange filled the old Borough Assembly Hall: ethereal, futuristic and building to a massive climax accompanied by blinding strobes. The band, all sporting jumpsuits, took their spots and kicked into Hang On To Yourself, to be joined by a Bowie transformed – hair shorn into a red spike-top, strutting in his diamond pattern one-piece and red wrestling boots. The first set by the band mixed
Hunky Dory material with as-yetunheard Ziggy Stardust tracks, including Five Years (opening line inspired by Aylesbury Market Square outside). An extended version of Cream’s I Feel Free gave Mick Ronson the chance to shine and Bowie to change into shiny white satin, further stoking the liberated bedlam on a cacophonous home stretch of Chuck Berry’s Around & Around, Lou Reed’s I’m Waiting For The Man and Rock’n’Roll Suicide’s dramatic torch song finale. Some local girls timidly responded to Bowie’s plea to give him their hands, although not enough to sustain Iggy-style crowd-surfing. Most of the crowd were too entranced, shocked or even scared by the androgynous alien who’d landed in our little club.
Afterwards, a grinning, almost post-coital Bowie held court in the cramped dressing room, surrounded by a gaggle of love-struck locals, exuding the swagger of someone who knew he’d cracked it. Fixing me with a triumphant smile, he simply crowed, “I told ya!” When my girlfriend asked why he wore make-up, he guffawed, “Well, I don’t want to look like a dead bear!” The most vividly indelible gig of my young life was consummated with Bowie planting a great big kiss on my lips as I left. It was a kiss-off to the ’60s. A come-on to the ’70s and everything that came after, glam or punk.
THE NEXT SIX MONTHS were dominated by David Bowie as me and a small bunch of mutually-obsessed friends caught every Home Counties gig within driving distance. It was spellbinding watching Bowie adapt to his new skin until they became one and the same, his confidence growing with every show. The Spiders were coming into their own, injecting the new songs with raw power while enhancing their leader’s every twirl, pout and hip-thrust, yet Bowie’s startling new creation still took weeks to infiltrate, and some gigs were sparsely populated. A show at High Wycombe Town Hall on February 11 was about half full. At London’s Imperial College the next night the crowd was so sparse they failed to keep Bowie aloft during Rock’n’Roll Suicide and he fell to the floor. By then I was helping out with Bowie’s Aylesbury-based fan club, designing its membership card, establishing a connection with Mainman management that branched out into a fan club for latest acquisitions Mott The Hoople. Visiting Tony Defries’s offices for the first time I was given an advance copy of The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars.
By June, Bowie’s star was rising every day while he honoured gigs booked months earlier. Sometimes he could barely believe how fast things were happening but always greeted his “boys and girls from Aylesbury”.
Three gigs now stand out.
At Oxford Town Hall on Saturday, June 17 – the day after the Ziggy album’s release – Bowie sported the red, blue and gold quilted number he’d wear on Top Of The Pops for his Starman performance the following month. I was feet away when Mick Rock snapped Bowie going down on Ronno’s guitar during Suffragette City. The singer knew the shot’s impact immediately – once developed, it was sent to fan club members as a signed postcard. Dunstable’s Queensway Hall, four days later, confirmed Bowie’s breakthrough. Despite a near-cancellation after Bowie’s unsmiling new bodyguard Stuey George accidentally set off the sprinkler system, the show at the 1,000-capacity venue was packed with space cadets sporting DIY variations on Ziggy’s look. Bowie’s most incendiary show yet climaxed with him ripping up his white satin shirt and throwing it to the baying crowd.
The night also marked the first and only time I sat alone in a room with Bowie. Lost backstage trying to
find my lift home, I careered into a dressing room with bulbs around the mirrors, stumbling upon a lone figure on a plastic chair, sparkling legs crossed, each ending in multi-coloured platform brogues – Bowie, too, was awaiting his lift home. We talked about the show, the fan club and Mott The Hoople, whom he’d just saved with a killer new single, All The Young Dudes, recorded in May and to be released in July. Then, for one endless moment, his strange eyes looked into mine, probing and intense, before dropping with tiredness. “I guess nothing is ever going to be the same again,” he sighed softly.
And it wasn’t. When Bowie returned to Friars Aylesbury on July 15, Tony Defries had cut him off from press interviews and direct contact with fans. Knowing how a Friars show would guarantee adulation from a full house, our gig doubled as showcase for a planeload of American journalists flown in to start the buzz for Ziggy’s US invasion, including Lillian Roxon, Lisa Robinson, Lenny Kaye and Dave Marsh. Bowie duly turned in a scorcher, adding Life On Mars?, performing with poise and confidence gained over the last six months with new devil-may-care energy and professionalism. This time, he knew the world was his for the taking.
Trying to reach the dressing rooms, my path was blocked by Stuey George, who hissed I would only get to see David over his dead body. It felt like being dumped – Bowie didn’t belong to us any more. (He got smacked in the mouth getting into his car afterwards, blood everywhere.)
The following year, June 26, 1973, I’d sail past Stuey to visit David Bowie at Oxford’s New Theatre after he phoned me at work on the local paper. His first question: “How are the boys and girls in Aylesbury?”