Bowie

by Pat Gilbert

  “David wasn’t a guy that was particularly easy to know,” Christmas told the author. “He was quite a guarded soul but also very engaging and easy to be around. I remember we worked in the studio pretty spontaneously. There were two seats and just three mics—one on David’s guitar, one for his vocal, and one on my guitar. I hadn’t heard the tracks at all. He played ‘Letter to Hermione’ first and tried some different things out. I did this run that we liked and became part of the song. We made it up as we went along.”

  None of the new songs quite topped the progressive, science-fiction magic of “Space Oddity,” but the music had impressive depth and originality. The confessional “Letter to Hermione” and euphoric psychedelic rave-up of “Memories of a Free Festival” were evidence of Bowie’s unusual melodic and harmonic approach, and the ambitious prog-folk opus “Cygnet Committee,” with its embittered hippie messiah figure and cynicism about the counterculture, provided the first glimpse of the dystopian ideas more fully explored in the key Bowie records of the early 1970s. Strong echoes of Dylan reverberated around “Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed” and “God Knows I’m Good,” but the overall flavor of the record—as good a musical summation of 1969 as any other, if a somewhat uneven affair—was all Bowie’s own. The album was released in November 1969, confusingly with the same title in the UK as his 1967 Deram album, David Bowie, while in the States it was bestowed the appalling name Man of Words/Man of Music. Not that it mattered, as it didn’t sell in either territory. Visconti’s fear that “Space Oddity” would mimic the fate of most novelty records was proved correct too, and Bowie wouldn’t see the higher reaches of the charts again for another three years.

  A promotional shot of Bowie and his trusty twelve-string, taken around the time of the release of his second album.

  Following his father’s death, Bowie and Angie Barnett had moved into Plaistow Grove to look after Peggy, but at the end of September, they took out a lease on their own home, a capacious ground-floor flat within a crumbling, converted Edwardian mansion in Beckenham, with the grand name Haddon Hall. Within the walls of this neo-Gothic palace, lit at night by candles and flames from its large open fireplace, Bowie would spend much of late 1969 and 1970 in semi-reclusion, fermenting the ideas that would shape his future work. Playing a major part in his development was the formidable Barnett, who increasingly exerted her influence over Bowie’s career choices, much to the annoyance Ken Pitt. Loud, smart, and domineering, Barnett had arrived in London in 1967 to take a business course but soon found her way onto the music scene. Her bright mind and indifference to Bowie’s promiscuity—she herself was bisexual and uninhibited—made her an attractive partner, and Bowie’s feelings for his new girlfriend were encapsulated in one of the few new songs he wrote in the winter of 1969/1970, “The Prettiest Star,” a nostalgic rock ’n’ roll number recorded at Trident on January 8, 1970.

  Now back on equal pegging with Marc Bolan thanks to “Space Oddity,” Bowie agreed to Visconti’s suggestion that Bolan play electric guitar on the track. The session was good humored—it was, after all, Bowie’s twenty-third birthday—until Marc’s girlfriend June screamed at the playback, “This song is crap! The best thing about it is Marc’s guitar!” Bolan didn’t demur and packed his guitar away, and the couple left without bidding goodbye. As far as Bowie was concerned, “The Prettiest Star” had already worked its magic, since at Christmas Barnett had agreed to marriage after he had serenaded her with the song over a telephone line, as she was abroad visiting family at the time. At Haddon Hall, the couple’s nest building continued apace, the royalties for “Space Oddity” now flowing in, funding shopping sprees for expensive antiques, rugs, drapes, and furniture. One purchase was a seven-foot Regency bed, conveniently sleeping three or more. For the first time in his life, Bowie had money in the bank, and he enjoyed spending it. He took driving lessons, passed his test, and brought a car. Meanwhile, he continued to perform at the Arts Lab every Sunday evening, drawing crowds curious to see Beckenham’s biggest star.

  Bowie’s casual approach to life was a hallmark of his early days—as were unexpected strokes of luck that would prove critical in advancing his career. The BBC approached him to headline a prestigious new In Concert radio program on February 5. The singer needed a band and recruited Visconti on bass and drummer John Cambridge from Junior’s Eyes, who had backed him on an autumn promoting David Bowie. The job of guitarist was initially to be filled by Junior’s Eyes’ Tim Renwick, but Cambridge proposed instead they audition a musician he knew in Hull. So Cambridge headed 150 miles north to seek out the Rats’ Mick Ronson, an extraordinary guitarist who was set to play a huge part in Bowie’s story.

  In early 1970, Ronson had all but retired from music and was making a steady living working for the local council marking out rugby pitches. Having made little money from the no-hope bands he’d played in, he was reluctant to re-enter the world of rock ’n’ roll, but Cambridge persevered, luring him to the capital on February 3 to watch Bowie at the Marquee. After the show, Ronson returned to Haddon Hall, where a late-night jam convinced Bowie that “Ronno” was the missing ingredient they needed. The following day, the band frantically rehearsed for the radio show, tackling several tunes from Bowie’s last album and a new song, “The Width of a Circle.” Bowie also rehearsed a solo version of Jacques Brel’s “Amsterdam.”

  A serious-looking Bowie sits among the falling leaves in Hyde Park, London, 1969.

  The Hype—featuring Tony Visconti on bass—at the Roundhouse, London, in March 1970.

  At the recording, Bowie warned the audience that he’d met his guitarist “Michael” only two days before, but the performance proved to be electrifying. With Ronson now on board, Bowie prepared for a gig at the Roundhouse two weeks later supporting ex–Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding’s band Fat Mattress. Bowie decided would be his own group’s inaugural show as the Hype, a name suggested by Ken Pitt after Bowie had told him, “This needs a strong element of hype,” or something to that effect. The Roundhouse concert on February 22 has gone down in history as a potential candidate for glam rock’s Big Bang. Tickled by the idea that the group should dress up as cartoon characters, Angie Barnett ventured into London to purchase suitable garments which she and Visconti’s partner Liz Hartley then ran up into stage costumes. “David was Rainbow Man, dressed in Lurex, pirate boots and with diaphanous scarves pinned to his clothes,” Visconti recalled to Mark Paytress. “I was Hype Man in a mock Superman costume with a white leotard, crocheted silver knickers and a big red cape.” Meanwhile, Cambridge appeared as Pirate Man, and Ronson, his guitar turned up deafeningly loud, was a Chicago gangster. “I thought it would be interested if each of us adopted a persona,” Bowie later recalled, “because it was all jeans at the time. But we got booed all the way through the show. People loathed what we were doing. It was great!”

  A poster advertising Bowie’s September 1970 performance at what would become a regular haunt, Friars in Aylesbury.

  The Hype’s extravagant threads and heavy-metal thunder may have been two years ahead of their time, but there could be little excuse for the audience reportedly booing “Quicksand,” one of the finest songs Bowie would ever write, granted its first airing that night with a full band arrangement. But the Roundhouse and other Hype shows in the following weeks did little to help the cause of “The Prettiest Star” single, which leaked out in March 1970 and whose failure—it sold only a few hundred copies—all but ended Bowie’s faith in Ken Pitt to oversee his career. Pitt’s suspicions that his managerial role was threatened were confirmed on March 20, when Bowie and Barnett married at Bromley Registry Office, having spent the previous night in a threesome with an actress following a show at the Three Tuns. Pitt only heard about the wedding secondhand and was deeply hurt. The sense that an era in Bowie’s life was ending was underlined by the closure of the Arts Lab, which, Bowie felt, had lost its numinous qualities and was now simply an opportunity to see Bromley’s famous one-hit wonder i
n person.

  The UK and US editions of Bowie’s third album, The Man Who Sold the World. For the British edition, Bowie was photographed wearing a dress by fashion designer Michael Fish; the American release features a cartoon image by Bowie’s friend Michael J. Weller.

  Bypassing Pitt, Angie badgered Philips directly for a £4,000 advance to fund the Hype’s living expenses and some new recordings. The label coughed up, and the group began work in the tiny room under the staircase at Haddon Hall, now transformed into a makeshift rehearsal room/studio. The first fruits included a new arrangement of “Memory of a Free Festival,” which was released in the United States as a follow-up to “Space Oddity.” A radio recording in late March convinced Ronson that John Cambridge wasn’t up to the job, and he was replaced by another drummer from the Hull music scene, Woody Woodmansey. After intensive rehearsals, sessions for what would become The Man Who Sold the World began at Trident in April, with Ronson driving the songs forward with his fluid, transformational guitar playing. Visconti would later gripe that Bowie, distracted by his infatuation with Barnett, had limited input into the backing tracks for the hard rockin’ “She Shook Me Cold” and “Black Country Rock” or the prog-rock excursions within “The Width of a Circle.”

  But the end results were remarkable. The Man Who Sold the World was unquestionably Bowie’s first classic album, a dark, psychologically complex work where science-fiction, theosophy, and empathy with society’s outsiders collided, and a warm (if dysfunctional) human spirit prevailed. Bowie’s interest in Buddhism and the occult permeated the disturbing visions of “The Width of a Circle,” where the narrator seemingly has sex with Satan—or God, or himself—while the chilling “Saviour Machine” described a dictator who builds a computer that turns on the human populace. “The Supermen”—using a chord change “given” to the Bowie by Jimmy Page at the session for “I Pity the Fool” back in 1965—referenced Nietzsche’s idea of the exiled super-race so beloved by the Nazis.

  It was “All the Madmen” that was the most revealing song lyrically, though few outside Bowie’s inner circle could have guessed its significance. In early 1969, Bowie’s half-brother, Terry Burns, had become a regular visitor to Haddon Hall at a time when his mental state was fast deteriorating. The first indication of his worsening schizophrenia had been an episode in 1967, when on a visit to Chislehurst Caves he saw Christ, then a vision of the ground opening up before him revealing the fires of hell burning down below. After sleeping roughly for a week, he turned up at Plaistow Grove, where Bowie was profoundly shaken by the sight of his deeply distressed sibling (it was soon after this that Bowie moved in with Ken Pitt). Burns was subsequently treated at Cane Hill psychiatric hospital, a grim former Victorian lunatic asylum a few miles away from Bromley. The references to the “cold and grey” Cane Hill in “All the Madmen” are clear, and Bowie’s sympathy for his brother’s illness, coupled with an awareness of his own possible proximity to madness, is deeply touching. Yet its inspiration remained hidden to outsiders, as did the origin of the line, “He struck the ground, a cavern appeared / And I smelt the burning pit of fear,” in “The Width of a Circle.”

  The conclusion of The Man Who Sold the World sessions—with Bowie’s vocal takes for the title track a disquieting meditation on being, identity, and death—coincided with Pitt’s formal dismissal in May. The coup de grâce came from a litigation clerk named Tony Defries, whom Bowie appointed as his legal advisor on the advice of Olav Wyper at Philips. The showdown took place at Pitt’s home on Manchester Street, where the manager agreed to step aside—if he was adequately compensated for the time and money he’d invested in his charge. Defries, the forthright son of a West London antiques dealer, assured Pitt that they could come to an arrangement. Defries’s next move was to inform Bowie’s publisher Essex Music that the singer would not be renewing his contract with them. (A lengthy legal battle ensued, eventually settled by Essex acquiring ownership of several Bowie songs.) Visconti, who retained close ties with Essex, was unimpressed with Bowie’s new legal advisor and buried himself in other projects. Adding to the confusion, that summer Philips dismissed Wyper, one of Bowie’s few fans at the label, leaving the tapes of The Man Who Sold the World in limbo. Ronson and Woodmansey signaled their unease with Bowie’s floundering career by moving back to Hull; when they did return to London later that year, it was to record a single with their new band, Ronno. The producer was none other than Tony Visconti, no longer a lodger at Haddon Hall and busy working with Marc Bolan’s T. Rex.

  Typically relaxed, Bowie shrugged off the departure of his key musical allies and spent the summer of 1970 ensconced with Angie in their strange, suburban imaginarium—whose bedroom was likened by one visitor to “Dracula’s living room”—where they hosted sex parties and held late-night discussions on philosophy, religion, and the occult. Occultist diviner Aleister Crowley’s concept of enlightenment via sexual intercourse—so-called “Sexmagick”—was enthusiastically explored, though by day Bowie wasn’t beyond more prosaic preoccupations such as fiddling around under the hood of his old Riley sports car. A year after the release of “Space Oddity,” it once again looked as if sustained success was destined to elude Bowie. Without an album to promote, or a band, he saw little point in playing live, and besides a handful of solo shows in July and August, he retreated from public view.

  The first fruits of Bowie’s new deal with Chrysalis: the “Holy Holy” single.

  His inaction wouldn’t last long. In October, Defries netted Bowie a publishing deal with Chrysalis, which came with an astonishingly generous advance of £5,000. Chrysalis’s liberal terms reflected the enormous potential that one of the company’s partners, Bob Grace, saw in the singer. Over the next few months, he encouraged Bowie to disregard himself as a budding pop star and instead view himself as one-man Brill Building, writing hit material for other artists. This was more than fine with Defries, who advised the singer to wait until his contract with Mercury expired the following June before he recorded another solo album. Grace also arranged access to Radio Luxembourg’s demo studios in Mayfair, a welcome progression from the makeshift facility under the staircase at Haddon Hall. The first song recorded under Bowie’s new contract was “Holy Holy,” featuring Herbie Flowers on bass and, doing his old boss a favor in between his Ronno work, Mick Ronson on guitar.

  Bowie and Grace’s relationship fast evolved into a close friendship, permitting the publisher a unique insight into the singer’s increasingly otherworldly existence. On several occasions, he accompanied Bowie and Angie—now pregnant—to outré night spots such as El Sombrero in Kensington, where they’d hang out with London’s fashionable gay elite, including Oliver! composer Lionel Bart, the Who’s manager Kit Lambert, and fashion designer Ossie Clark, as well as exotic young scenesters such as stylist Freddie Burretti and boy-about-town Mickey King. At this time, Grace believed that Bowie “was convinced he was bisexual,” though others, such as his Beckenham Arts Lab partner Mary Finnigan, preferred to consider his bisexuality “opportunistic and contrived.” Bowie, of course, reveled in the confusion his flirtation with gay society provoked and relished even more the strange looks he received for wearing the latest addition to his wardrobe—a velvet “man-dress” from the Mr. Fish boutique in Mayfair.

  If Grace was struck by Bowie’s flamboyant social circle and intriguing sexual ambiguity, he was even more impressed by Bowie’s determination to develop as a songwriter. Previously, the singer had tended to write songs on the twelve-string guitar, but in the weeks leading up to Christmas 1970, he acquired a piano and installed it in Visconti’s old room at Haddon Hall, overlooking the back garden. With the pregnant Angie attending his every need, he would sit for hours each day toying with unusual chord sequences and melodies. It was amid this period of suburban exile and periodic dissipation that the first songs for Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust, his first truly great works, began to take shape. “I forced myself to be a good songwriter, and I became one,” Bowie admitted to MO
JO in 2002 of his determination to improve his craft. “I made a job of work, of getting good.”

  Bowie and his new American wife, Angie (born Mary Angela Barnett), at Haddon Hall in 1971.

  Yet Bowie’s new life as a cross-dressing, stay-at-home songwriter was soon interrupted by the unlikely intervention of Mercury’s offices in New York. In November, although still not available in the UK, The Man Who Sold the World album, with a cartoon cover by artist Michael J. Weller showing a cowboy and Cane Hill hospital, had crept out in the United States, selling a somewhat risible 1,300 copies or so. Bowie and Defries had already discussed the idea—or, at that time, possibly the fantasy—of breaking the singer in the United States before launching him in Britain, so when a call came from Mercury’s publicity department suggesting a short US promo trip to boost the album’s profile, Bowie jumped at the chance. The singer arrived in the country that had enchanted him since boyhood on Wednesday, January 27, 1971, only to be greeted by an hour’s wait at Washington Dulles International Airport while customs officials tried to figure out why their London embassy had issued a visa to an unknown foreign musician with women’s clothing and flowing long blond hair. Unusually, the ever-forceful Angie wasn’t there to be in her husband’s corner; five months pregnant, she’d opted to stay at home in London. Absent too was Defries, leaving Bowie to make his grand adventure alone.