by Paul Trynka
With Hutch’s departure, David immersed himself in Arts Lab meetings. The group boasted two formidable administrators in the form of Finnigan and Nita Bowes – later an adviser to Tony Blair, and daughter-in-law to Tony Benn – who pursued government grants and talked of setting up a countrywide network of arts organisations. The pair would dominate their debates; David more quietly spoken but earnest and thoughtful, as happy talking about puppeteers and street theatre as about music. According to Keith Christmas, one of the main musical draws along with David, the audience’s motivations were not as high-falutin’ as the organisers’. ‘It was a terrific gig from day one. Because the pub looked quite normal from the front, but at the back was a large room and conservatory, with its own entrance. So people could get down there and get off their faces in the warm evenings.’
Throughout the Art Lab period, David’s talk was peppered with fashionable underground sentiments; yet a few people close to him at the time wondered how profound his conversion to the cause was. Alan Mair is one of several who were ‘not 100 per cent sure about the hippie trippie thing. I thought his mind was somewhere else.’ But David’s hippie collectivism and talk of being ‘off his face’ did at least signal his independence from Ken Pitt – who viewed such attitudes with abhorrence. Keith Christmas, later a leading light of the folk revival spearheaded by Fairport Convention and others, was certain that Bowie was a fellow traveller, although not necessarily for cynical reasons. ‘He recognised there were groovy people – and he liked groovy interesting people. And he knew that most of the big talent was making acoustic music, so he wasn’t slow to have a go.’
For David Bowie, the hippie movement represented a seam of inspiration to be mined, rather than a guiding philosophy. Even while he was taking his foot off the career accelerator, at heart he remained a traditional entertainer. ‘Space Oddity’, a highlight of his Three Tuns set, embodied this contradiction. It would be the perfect sixties anthem, with its trendy sci-fi theme and rejection of materialism. Yet, as friends like Tony Visconti believed, it was a gimmick song, just like Joe Meek’s ‘Telstar’, and to get it released, David would have to indulge in plenty of old-school, music-biz networking.
Fortunately, David had fallen in with one of London’s finest networkers back in June 1967, at a party in New Bond Street. Calvin Mark Lee was a doctor in pharmacology, who’d won a grant to pursue postgraduate research under the internationally renowned Professor Arnold Beckett in 1963. Deciding his criteria for meeting people were that they be ‘beautiful, creative and intelligent’, and that scientists rarely ticked all three boxes, Lee’s new project would be Swinging London. Soon the thirty-three-year-old’s social circle included Lionel Bart, fashion boutique Dandy Fashions’ John Crittle, acid king Stan Owsley, Monkee Mike Nesmith and Jimi Hendrix. The influential, wayward folk singer Anne Briggs was briefly his girlfriend, and a wall of photos, many naked, in his King’s Road flat diarised his eclectic social and sexual acquaintances. If that were not enough to mark his exotic status, Calvin Lee wore on his forehead a glittery plastic disk – a diffraction grating, which shimmered in the light like a hologram – which proclaimed his starchild credentials, as it would Ziggy Stardust’s a few years later.
Lee had met David at a reception at Chappell Music Publishers three weeks after the release of his Deram album in 1967. From early 1969, when Lee was given an expense account by Mercury Records and a role as Head of Promotions for the label, he became an integral part of David’s social scene, which was now fiendishly complicated. Lee explains, ‘David was adored on all sides. You have Ken, you have me, you have Hermione. So there were certain amounts of jealousy.’ The two, says Lee, shared a sexual relationship that was remarkable partly for its brevity. He remembers David’s incessant, crippling headaches, which he believes were ‘brought on by all these various tensions’. Today, he wonders if David’s flirtation with him was partly driven by ambition. ‘He has to be in that situation otherwise you don’t get ahead. You could call it manipulation, but what the hell.’
Still, Calvin understood David’s music, and he was one of the first to hear ‘Space Oddity’. He considered it ‘other-worldly’, in every sense, and set about a mission ‘to clandestinely push David Bowie’.
Lee had an ally at Mercury named Simon Hayes, who had come to the label’s attention as manager of The Fool – the London design collective that Mercury had, in a bizarre move, signed on the basis that they’d painted John Lennon’s Rolls Royce and were therefore the next best thing to having The Beatles themselves. Hayes negotiated the band’s deal with Mercury before being offered the job of Head of International A&R by the company’s co-founder, Irving Green, in January 1969. Hayes and Lee knew each other from the London fashion and art scene, and according to Hayes, ‘Lee was really on the case with “Space Oddity”, a total convert. He wanted to sign David – and I said, “Fantastic idea.”’ David Bowie would be his first major signing.
The process, however, was fraught with complications, thanks to the labyrinthine corporate and internal politics of the Mercury Philips empire: an organisation described by Philips manager Olav Wyper as ‘a disaster’. The UK arm, Philips, was a joint venture between Mercury USA and the Dutch electronics conglomerate; the American company also retained its own London office, overseen by Lou Reizner.
Reizner had his own musical ambitions; his best-known achievements would be overseeing the soundtrack for The Who’s Tommy and the disastrous All This and World War II, which set Beatles covers to black-and-white wartime cine footage. He also fancied himself as a singer and saw Bowie as a rival, which meant Calvin Lee had to work surreptitiously to advance his friend’s career.
Lambeth Archives
‘Our playground.’ Boys playing in cleared bombsites in Lambeth, 1947, ten minutes from David Jones’ birthplace. Brixton was a prime target for Nazi terror weapons, thanks to British duplicity. Bombed-out buildings were omnipresent and ideal for adventures.
Roger Bolden
Stansfield Road, David’s street. No garden fences, no cars and kids like David’s neighbours Graham Stevens, Leslie Burgess and (right) Roger Bolden could wander unhindered.
Pictorial Press
‘Always well scrubbed, with clean fingernails’. The polite, neatly dressed David Jones, 1955, a year after the family’s move to Bromley.
Max Batten
Burnt Ash Juniors football team with eleven-year-old David Jones (middle row, far left) and his friends Chris Britton (two to his right) and Max Batten (bottom right). ‘Bright, with oodles of personality,’ he was already a favourite of the school’s headmaster and was fast learning how to deploy his charm ‘as a weapon’.
John Barrance John Barrance
David, 1962, in his final year at Bromley Tech (left), and his best friend and bandmate George Underwood – the boy who damaged David’s eye in a schoolboy fight. Both aspiring rock ‘n’ rollers were well known at the Tech, but the dark-haired, outgoing Underwood was more popular: ‘Everyone thought he was going to be big,’ says school friend Roger Bevan.
Pictorial Press
The Kon-Rads – initially George Underwood’s band – in late 1962 or early 1963. David is on tenor sax, left. ‘He just wanted to be part of show business. You could feel it,’ says drummer David Hadfield.
Dezo Hoffmann/Rex Features
The King Bees, May, 1964. David standing with, from left, Roger Bluck, Bob Allen, Dave Howard and George Underwood. Their single, ‘Liza Jane’, must count as one of the least auspicious debuts by a noted rock star. ‘I had real trouble getting it even released,’ says manager Les Conn. When it flopped, Davie Jones abandoned George, who went on, initially, to greater success.
Bob Solly
The Manish Boys: tough, horn-based blues; nomad lifestyle. From left, Woolf Byrne, John Watson, David Jones, Paul Rodriguez, Mick Whitehead, Johnny Flux, Bob Solly. Their green van was covered with lipstick messages from girls – most of them dedicated to David.
Denis Taylor
Denis Taylor
The newly christened David Bowie poses with Phil May and Brian Pendleton, singer and guitarist in The Pretty Things, plus Lower Third guitarist Denis Taylor (‘me’) and drummer Phil Lancaster.
Les Conn
‘He was brash, sure he was going to make it.’ David’s first manager, Les Conn, pictured with him in London, April, 1994, was crucial to his first two record deals. Conn was also an early supporter of Mark Feld – the future Marc Bolan.
Denis Taylor
A rare photo of David’s second manager, the elusive Ralph Horton (extreme right, glasses). Devoted to his charge, Horton also set out to split him from his band, The Lower Third.
Ken Pitt
Ken Pitt (in glasses) – the manager who oversaw Bowie’s career from obscurity to his first hit – with The Mark Leeman Five (singer Roger Peacock, far right) shortly before he took over David’s career. ‘He had the right instincts,’ says one client, but others considered him too ‘gentlemanly’ for the cut-throat 1970s.
Dezo Hoffmann/ Rex Features
‘The most magical person.’ David Bowie, June, 1967 – capable of inspiring near obsession in experienced record company execs, but not as inspiring when it came to delivering a hit.
Bob Flag
The Riot Squad, April, 1967. Clockwise from top left: Del Roll, David, Butch Davis, Rod Davis, Bob Flag and Croak Prebble. David’s short, obscure tenure with the band showed, for the first time, his ability to take risks (and to cover Lou Reed).
Ray Stevenson
See my friends: by 1968 David Bowie had acquired the knack of surrounding himself with inspiring people. Above, with girlfriend Hermione Farthingale (left), newly acquired producer Tony Visconti and (far right) ‘Hutch’ – the guitarist with whom he’d cut his first version of ‘Space Oddity’.
Jeff Dexter
Singer and songwriter Lesley Duncan with leading Mod-turned-head Jeff Dexter in early 1968. Duncan was ‘like an older sister and lover’ to Bowie, turning him on to the songs of Jacques Brel and accompanying him on UFO-hunting jaunts over Hampstead Heath.
Ray Stevenson
‘The Brits sit around whining; Americans get out there and do things.’ Angela Barnett, 21 July, 1969 – she had just stayed up with David to watch the Apollo 11 moon landings (and, she insisted, seen aliens in Beckenham). From the summer of 1969, Angie would become the dominant force in David’s life.
David Bebbington
David Bowie, showbiz trouper, plays his solo slot at the Beckenham Free Festival, 16 August, 1969, just five days after the funeral of his father, Haywood. His ace in the hole, the single ‘Space Oddity’, had vanished after a brief appearance in the charts, but six weeks later it would start climbing once more.
Reizner’s dislike of Bowie would soon be intensified by another figure in the web of relationships that surrounded the singer. An American girlfriend of the Mercury exec, who was also involved with Calvin Lee, had declared her fascination with David Bowie after accompanying Reizner and Lee to a Feathers show at the Roundhouse in January 1969. Her name was Angela Barnett.
As Mark Pritchett, a long-term friend of David Bowie’s, puts it: ‘Angela Barnett was a complicated character at the time – let alone now.’ Pritchett’s description is as apt as anyone’s. In future years, Angela Barnett, who had arrived in London in the summer of 1966 to study at secretarial college and later enrolled at Kingston Polytechnic, would claim to be a key figure in securing David Bowie’s new record deal. In fact, the key figures in the signing, notably Simon Hayes, remember Angie’s involvement as peripheral in this early stage – but she would become a prime mover in almost every aspect of his career for the next four years.
In 1975, David Bowie would tell writer (and later film director) Cameron Crowe that he met his future wife ‘because we were both going out with the same man’. The guy was Calvin Lee, and Bowie’s boasts about his own bisexuality would become a key element in his public persona. Angie was the co-creator of this persona, yet her contribution to David’s career went much further. From the moment she appeared on the scene, following her first ‘date’ with Bowie on 30 May, 1969, Angela Barnett electrified everyone around her. For, as Ray Stevenson puts it, ‘She was a bit of spunk. She was American. The English sit around whining; Americans get out there and do things.’
The couple first met over a Chinese meal with Calvin Lee – and on his expense account – after which the trio carried on partying at the Speakeasy, where King Crimson were playing one of their first London shows. As they sat, talking and flirting, Angie thought the Mercury promotions man was trying to serve her up as a kind of sexual delicacy for the singer he’d helped sign. Angie dominated the conversation, as was her habit, while David’s remarks were mostly drily amused, savouring the electric atmosphere; the two even looked quite similar, with their clear skin and almost elfin features. That night, David returned with Angie to her tiny flat above a travel agent’s in Paddington.
It was on a morning shortly after this that Angie and David first mapped out the pattern they would follow during their time together. She knew full well from the outset that he was ‘like an alley cat’ but nonetheless succumbed to a bout of jealousy – or theatricality – when he told her he was leaving, and threw herself down the stairs. According to Angie, David stepped over her on his way out of the door without batting an eyelid, and quietly took his leave.
For the time being, Ken Pitt remained blissfully unaware of Angela Barnett’s existence, and exchanged letters with Simon Hayes over April and May 1969, as the Mercury A&R man put together a deal. With Hayes largely absent in New York and Chicago, David Platz and Essex Music took charge of the recording session for the song that had so impressed Hayes and Lee. Earlier in the year, Ken Pitt had tried sending a demo of ‘Space Oddity’ to George Martin, hoping The Beatles’ producer would agree to oversee a Bowie recording. After chasing him for several weeks, Pitt eventually found out from Martin’s secretary that he was unimpressed. There was a more surprising knock-back to come – from the man who’d produced all of David’s recent material, namely Tony Visconti.
Today, the stripped-down bleakness of ‘Space Oddity’ gives it a certain purity. Yet that purity belies its origins, for most of those concerned in releasing it considered it a good song, distinguished mainly by the marketing opportunity it represented – namely the Apollo moon landing scheduled for late that July. It was a good gimmick. According to Simon Hayes, the notion that the single would tie in with that July’s moonshot was what drove the signing. ‘Everybody was always looking for a hook – that was it.’
Even while Tony Visconti threw himself into planning the album that would follow ‘Space Oddity’, he disliked the song itself. ‘I didn’t like the idea of capitalising on the man on the moon,’ he says today. ‘I thought it was a cheap shot.’ For a ‘principled hippie’, Visconti’s celebrated distaste for the song made sense at the time, though today he concedes, ‘I’ve grown to like it a bit.’ Meanwhile, having rejected the song, he would help ensure its eventual success by suggesting several of the key figures in its recording – a role he would adopt for many subsequent David Bowie works, even ones that did not bear his name.
The imminent Apollo launch meant that contractual negotiations, and the session, needed tying up quickly. Gus Dudgeon, who had recently joined the Essex empire, worked in the next office to Visconti, who called him up and suggest he take over the song. Dudgeon, who knew David well though their work on the Deram album, thought Bowie’s demo of the song was ‘unbelievable. I couldn’t believe my luck. I had to phone Tony just to make sure he wanted me to do it. He claimed there was a lot of better stuff on the album, at which stage Bowie and I sat down and planned the record – every detail of it.’
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br /> The session was tightly budgeted and choreographed: Dudgeon sketched out a plan, adorned with squiggles denoting a Stylophone or Mellotron part, Visconti suggested guitarist Mick Wayne and keyboard player Rick Wakeman, then still at music college, while string arranger Paul Buckmaster was another Essex contact. Only the rhythm section were experienced hands – drummer Terry Cox had played with Alexis Korner and Pentangle, while bassist Herbie Flowers had been working sessions since he’d been talent-spotted by Paul McCartney in 1967.