by Paul Trynka
David and Mike’s friendship had a sexual element but any such fumblings were brief, he says, ‘Mostly, we’d talk about things. At the time he was semi-straight, and semi-gay, we talked mainly about music, or politics, what was happening with the Cuban crisis – none of us were sure we’d be alive the next year. Or we’d talk about, Do we fancy him or her, who’s had who, and of course nobody knew who was telling the truth.’
David was cool, playful, funny, ‘and there was something waif-like about him. And of course those eyes struck you straight away, they were unforgettable.’ David’s good looks helped him pass easily in and out of the gay-oriented scene – he flaunted his campness, but it was nonetheless all a bit of a laugh. In fact, the campness helped him to attract more girls. In the main, he was voraciously heterosexual; occasionally he’d go on dates with Dana Gillespie, a sixteen-year-old former public schoolgirl with an unforgettable cleavage, whom he’d met in The Manish Boys’ final days; sometimes Dana would bring along her friend Sarah Troupe for a double date. David had also been briefly involved with Annie Howes, the promoter’s daughter, but it seemed to his friends that he ‘had a girl in every port’, as Denis Taylor puts it. ‘Wherever we were, some bird would pop up.’
Still, in mid-sixties Soho, a certain rough-trade appeal was great for the career. This certainly applied to Marc Bolan who, according to his one-time manager Simon Napier-Bell, had ‘no great hang-ups’ about who to sleep with. By late 1965, David was beginning to build up his own following in the West End’s gay music–business clique, particularly around the Marquee Club where, says employee Simon White, ‘There’d be six girls at the front, and half a dozen of us queens at the back, with Ralph [Horton] hanging on his every move.’
Many of Ralph Horton’s connections revolved around the Marquee and Radio London; both places with a strong gay contingent, all of whom loved speculating about David’s relationship with Horton. In a characteristically outrageous anecdote, Simon Napier-Bell claimed on his website in 2006 that Horton had offered him David’s sexual favours to sweeten a co-management deal. Whatever Horton may have promised, David’s confidants, like Mike Berry, insist, ‘It would never have happened in a million years. David was always in control of what he wanted.’
Painted by history as a cynical exploiter, Ralph Horton was – he died in 2009 – in fact ‘a nice, gentle person, who was completely out of his depth’, says Terry King, who gave Horton his first London job, and in turn fired him. Rather than exploiting David, Horton was simply besotted with him and revelled in displaying his handsome client at clubs around town. Horton’s obsession, however, meant that the first months of 1966 were dominated by back-biting and dubious financial dealings, for his jealousy and possessiveness inspired a seemingly irrational campaign to separate David from his closest friends, namely The Lower Third.
For Taylor, David Bowie’s main musical foil in the group, Horton’s influence was negative, right from the start. ‘We had good laughs together when we were a group. David was great fun, one of the lads. And we had hard times, too, the van breaking down, but he didn’t mind – he mucked in.’ After Horton took over, David started to spend less time in the band’s converted ambulance, in favour of a cushier, more upholstered existence. ‘And so he got himself a nice lazy little job of pissing off with Ralph in his Jaguar Mark X,’ says Taylor. ‘It was very disappointing.’
Worse still was the air of sleaziness around Horton’s financial affairs, typified by a deal he made in November 1965 with a London businessman, Ray Cook, to borrow £1500 – a sum worth roughly £30,000 in today’s currency. A vague contract promised return of the money once David was earning over £100 a week. Ken Pitt, who as Bowie’s next manager had to unravel these financial tangles, is not alone in believing Cook had been taken for a ride. ‘I felt sorry for him. It was not a good situation.’
Horton’s one coup was to secure a new recording contract through Tony Hatch, whom he’d originally met via Denny Laine. The house producer for the Pye label, Hatch later became one of the best-known producers in the UK – the Simon Cowell of the seventies – thanks to his role on the New Faces talent show. He thought Horton was pleasant enough, ‘but I recognised he wasn’t “top echelon” – he was still in the junior league. And I suspected if David had a hit, there would be a new manager along soon.’
Hatch was impressed by David, though – primarily because he wrote his own songs. Pye was a strange agglomeration – spliced together from the Polygon and Nixa labels – which Hatch had joined as part-time producer, arranging A&R meetings in the afternoon so he could fulfil his National Service as arranger for the Coldstream Guards (another Pye act) in the mornings. His workload was immense, so the fact he didn’t have to find material for David was crucial. ‘The one thing that struck me is he had a lot of songs – different songs.’ Hatch went to see The Lower Third at the Marquee to check out the material. ‘I remember “The London Boys” – there were a lot of songs about his background. There was one about the Hackney Marshes which is probably in some archive somewhere.’ (Sadly, David’s unreleased Pye material seems to have disappeared.)
With Hatch’s numerous distractions, it took some time to tie up a recording contract; the publishing stayed close to home, with Mike Berry signing him to Sparta for his planned singles. The deal brought in a small advance, and together with the money from Raymond Cook, the cash flow enabled a season of high living at Horton’s Warwick Square flat, with lavish drinking parties. David acquired a guitar during this high-living period, and although his playing was, at best, rudimentary, he worked up songs like ‘It’s Lovely to Talk to You’ and ‘Maid of Bond Street’. In the autumn The Lower Third demoed ‘The London Boys’, which they considered a standout song, but Hatch and his Pye colleagues turned it down at their weekly sales meeting. According to Hatch the main reason was not the downbeat subject matter, or references to pill popping, ‘It takes too long to get going. It would never make a single.’
Its replacement was far more concise, with a simple three-chord chorus once again lifted shamelessly from ‘Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere’. But while ‘Can’t Help Thinking About Me’ thieved exactly the same three-chord trick as ‘You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving Me’, it makes far better use of it, with that punchy chorus allied to a subtle verse whose minor-key chords perfectly match the foreboding lines of a ‘question time that says I brought dishonour’.
The verse alone was a huge leap forward in David’s work, but it was combined with another sophisticated technique, a pre-chorus section that raises the excitement level (‘it’s too late now’) before we reach the release of the chorus. This was a song as story, one musical vignette giving way to another, in a technique that became a cornerstone of David Bowie’s great songs.
The lyrics, too, are subtle, with hints of a crime that had blackened the family name, and a chorus that slightly subverts expectations, for according to pop convention, the protagonist should have been thinking about a ‘you’, not ‘me’. In many cases it’s simplistic to assume David is the subject of his own lyrics, but here, the accusation of blackening the family name echoes some of Peggy’s complaints. She’d been hospitable to The Manish Boys, nice well-spoken middle-class lads, but by now she had lost patience with David’s musical ambitions and demonstrated a sneering suspicion of his mates from Margate. ‘She didn’t like us at all,’ says Denis Taylor, ruefully. ‘I remember her telling me, “You’re leading my boy astray – he was never like this before.”’
Hatch realised the song’s virtues instantly – ‘it was a standout’ – and played piano for the session at Pye’s Marble Arch Studio on 10 December, 1965. Although Hatch had reservations about the performance, for Graham Rivens’ bass part speeds up noticeably halfway through, The Lower Third clatter along with élan, driven by a neat twelve-string acoustic and superb singing. The David Bowie we know and love croons darkly, before losing all restraint in the impossibly thrilling run-up to the chorus. The single betrays some influences – notably Pete
Townshend’s ‘The Kids are Alright’, as well as that chorus chord sequence – but transcends them thanks to its innate drama, as the singer, song and band carry the listener along in their headlong rush.
The single was released on 14 January, 1966, a week after David had turned nineteen. Ralph Horton had borrowed more money from Raymond Cook for a launch party and to help buy the single into the charts. There was a party that evening at the Gaiety Bar in Strathearn Place to celebrate the release: the band walked through the nearby Hyde Park to get there, while David took a ride in Ralph’s Jaguar, and all the musicians dressed up and mingled with the Pye staff and celebrities – the most famous was Freddie Lennon, John Lennon’s incorrigible absentee father, who was enjoying a brief flurry of notoriety. ‘It was a really weird party,’ says Taylor. ‘Freddie Lennon, this peculiar old geezer, a bit inebriated, wandering around saying “Do you know who I am?”’
David was effervescent that night, friendly with The Lower Third – ‘like we were a proper band’ – meeting and greeting the minor industry figures and mouthing to his band, ‘This is it!’ Rail-thin, his hair in a Mod bouffant, he loved being at the centre of the hubbub, taking off to charm one huddle of guests after another, flirting with the Pye secretaries, and adopting an obliging, likely-lad persona with the company’s suited execs. He had turned nineteen a week before, had made his first great single and was in no doubt that, finally, this was it.
4
Laughing Gnome
I had a minor obsession about David. I just thought he was the most magical person. I think I would have signed him even if he didn’t have such obvious talent.
Hugh Mendl
For a tiny gaggle of fans, men and girls – centred around Soho – David Bowie was a star. At home in Plaistow Grove, he was anything but. Although he disappeared often to Ralph Horton’s basement apartment at 79, Warwick Square, he was still reliant on Haywood and Peggy for handouts. Haywood sometimes intimidated David’s fellow musicians, but they were often surprised to discover that behind his strait-laced exterior, he was surprisingly well informed about David’s career – and supportive. With Peggy it was a different matter; by the end of 1965, her tolerance of David’s musical ambitions was exhausted. Yet although his band used to joke about how they were forced to wait outside David’s house in their converted ambulance while he chatted to his mum, he seemed unconcerned, and would never mention a word of any family hassle.
After the huge build-up for ‘Can’t Help Thinking About Me’, its performance was underwhelming; the single entirely missed the UK’s main chart, the Record Retailer Top 40. Although Radio London pushed the single heavily, and placed it at number twenty-five, it was probably Raymond Cook’s money that helped grease the song’s path to number thirty-four in the Melody Maker chart. Tony Hatch remembers even this modest success was enough to make David ‘very excited’, and the producer was mildly encouraged. ‘I did see David as a long-term artist. And I knew we had a lot more material to play with.’
Yet a slightly dodgy Top 40 placing did not help generate live shows, the only reliable means of raising cash, and while Ralph Horton was not good at wheeler-dealing for money – ‘too wimpish’ according to flatmate Kenny Bell – he was good at spending it. It was Bell who’d first sub-let a room to Horton in the Warwick Square flat, previously home to The Moody Blues, and during the end of 1965 and beginning of 1966, he saw Horton spending ‘like a big shot. Cars, booze, you name it. I don’t know how much money Ralph got from Raymond Cook, but he certainly fancied himself as a big spender.’
Much of Horton’s spending was designed to impress David, who was learning, says Bell, ‘to dominate Ralph. Really, Ralph was a bit of a wuss, and I think David ended up controlling him.’
Unable to control his own spending, or his protégé, Ralph decided to pick on people he could control – namely The Lower Third. Even before ‘Can’t Help Thinking About Me’ had been released, Horton was planning the removal of Denis Taylor. ‘He decided to pick on one of us to bring us to heel – and he didn’t like me,’ says Taylor. ‘He wanted to get rid of me and the other two could stay.’
The band started to suspect Horton of trying to drive a wedge between them when Horton took David home in his Jag after another run of Paris Drouot shows over the New Year, leaving The Lower Third to struggle back in their old ambulance. During a short layoff in January, the band’s income dwindled to nothing. As a short run of shows approached, Taylor asked when they could expect to be paid. ‘That’s when Ralph made his big mistake,’ says Taylor. ‘He told us we were not getting any money, as it was all going into advertising.’
Although Horton’s hostility was focused mainly on Taylor, the manager’s confrontational attitude succeeded in uniting all of The Lower Third. Following a show in Stevenage on 28 January, 1966, the band asked for their share of the take. Horton informed them there was none. ‘He told us it had gone on expenses,’ says Rivens. ‘Like running his Mark X Jag, I guess.’
After a Marquee show the next morning, The Lower Third were booked in at the Bromel Club, David’s home venue. The band met Ralph at the club, and Taylor told him it was No Pay, No Play. This time, Horton told Taylor, ‘You are definitely sacked!’ at which point Phil Lancaster weighed in: ‘If he goes, we go!’ To break the stand-off, Taylor informed the manager, ‘You can have half an hour to think about it. When we come back, tell us what you want to do.’
After downing a half-pint of lager in a nearby pub, The Lower Third returned. ‘We were convinced he was going to pay us,’ says Rivens, ‘but he wouldn’t. So we simply packed up our gear and walked.’ Taylor walked up to David and asked if he’d stick up for them and prevent the walkout. David’s response was to burst into tears. ‘He didn’t want us to go. But he’d probably been listening to Ralph, all the things he’d made up.’ By now the club was packed with Bromley art school students, and various friends and fans of David, and The Lower Third were convinced that David or Ralph would run after them and relent. They didn’t.
‘We thought within a few days [David] would come running back,’ says Graham Rivens. ‘But of course he couldn’t do that, because Mr Horton was pulling the strings.’ After a couple of days waiting for David’s call, The Lower Third carried on without him for a few shows, before splitting and joining other bands.
The departure of The Lower Third marked a triumph for Ralph Horton; it would also be symbolic in David’s own career. His peers and rivals like Jagger, Lennon and indeed Steve Marriott – whose third single with the Small Faces, ‘Sha-La-La-La-Lee’, had soared to number three in the charts as David’s own single languished at the bottom – each shared a commitment to their own band, building up a grassroots following via show after gruelling show. This was an English rock ‘n’ roll convention that David ignored; his vision was more old-fashioned, something out of the tinselly showbiz conventions of the fifties, where managers nurture their protégés like mother hens. There was something unmistakably square about David’s loyalty to ‘Numero Uno’, rather than the gang mentality of rock ‘n’ roll. And in the short run, his career would suffer.
Ralph Horton, meanwhile, revelled in the job of finding a compliant backing band for his charge, placing an advertisement for replacement musicians in Melody Maker that same week. Bassist Derek ‘Dek’ Fearnley was among the first to turn up at Warwick Square. Within thirty seconds of walking into the basement apartment he decided he wouldn’t take the job. ‘I just felt this strange, gay atmosphere – it made me feel very uncomfortable.’
Ushered in by Horton, Derek saw a skinny, camp young man, reclining on a bed; confused, he was trying to assess the situation when David calmly started detailing how he wrote all his own material, before producing a cigarette packet – ‘Literally, a piece of card from a fag packet, with some chords written on the back’ – and the bassist found himself intrigued, against his better judgement. David picked up his twelve-string and strummed through some chords, humming along. After eight bars or so, Fearnley
was transfixed: this was not the predictable R&B most London musicians were churning out. ‘Then by the time we got maybe halfway through I thought, I don’t care what’s going on here – I want to work with this guy.’
Guitarist John Hutchinson went through a similar process, hearing from Jack Barry at the Marquee that there was a singer looking for a new band, turning up for an audition at the club on the Saturday, and jamming along on a Bo Diddley riff. Hutchinson – ‘Hutch’ – and David soon established a natural, musicians’ rapport, a bond of which Ralph Horton was, says Hutch, jealous. Horton wanted a pliable band of non-entities who wouldn’t challenge his own relationship with Bowie. And for that reason, says Hutch, ‘[This band] were more meek. We did it and we acted like a backing band.’
Drummer John Eager joined up at the same time as Fearnley, and Hutch suggested a keyboard player, Derek ‘Chow’ Boyes, whom he knew from the Yorkshire club circuit. Radio London DJ Earl Richmond, who introduced their sets at the Marquee, named them The Buzz, and within a couple of days they were filling in for The Lower Third at a string of live dates and, on 4 March, Ready, Steady, Go!, miming to ‘Can’t Help Thinking About Me’. Steve Marriott was on the same show with the Small Faces, jumping around and joshing David as the cameras rolled. It was good-natured fun, but it showed how David was falling behind the Small Faces’ singer who ‘had a lot more exposure, success, confidence and natural character [than David]. That’s the one thing I remember from that show,’ says Hutch.