At the dawn of the decade he’d grow to dominate, David Bowie found himself in low spirits. His first taste of fame with “Space Oddity” was not so sweet, and he seemed in danger of becoming that most sorry of acts: a one hit wonder. As his music career floundered, he grew closer to Angie Barnett, his girlfriend and creative co-conspirator. Their marriage in 1970 was one of the wilder rock unions, characterized by mutual ambition and sexual exploration. At Angie’s encouragement, David began to experiment with gender roles, shocking the public with his feminine appearance, makeup and “man dresses.” It was a time of constant transition for Bowie as the ‘60s became the ‘70s. In just two years he’d bury his father and become one himself. Musically, he’d morph from a sci-fi loving space hippie and into the androgynous Godfather of Glam. He established his singular songwriting style with 1971’s irrepressibly tuneful Hunky Dory, which contained his personal anthem of the era: “Changes” — changes in looks, sounds, homes, management, and partnerships. But the most transformative experience would be his first visit to the United States. The trip opened up a whole new realm of ideas, leading to David’s greatest artistic breakthrough.
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Off the Record is a production of I Heart Radio. September, twenty year old David Bowie receives his very first American fan letter. It comes as quite a surprise. His career is hardly flourishing. He'd released his debut album a few months prior in June, but hardly anyone in his native England took any notice. Learning that his music and made it all the way to America was like finding out your message in a bottle made it to Antarctica. He's so shocked by the note that he immediately sits down and manager Ken Pitt's office and writes a friendly response to the fourteen year old from New Mexico named Sandra. Dear Sandra. A few moments ago, I was handed my very first American fan letter, and it was from you. I was so pleased that I had to sit down and type an immediate reply. I've been waiting for some reaction to the album from American listeners. There were, but they were by professional critics and they rarely reflect the opinions of the public. And answer to your questions. My real name is David Jones, my birthday is January eighth, and I guess I'm five ft ten. There is a fan club here in England, but if things go well on the States then we'll have one there. I suppose it's a little early to even think about it. I hope one day to get to America. My manager tells me lots about it, as he's been there many times with other acts. He manages. Thank you for being so kind as the right to me and do please write again and let me know some more about yourself. Yours, sincerely, David Bowie. January David Bowie takes his first step on US soil. He arrived solo at Dallas International Airport in Washington, d C. There's no crowd to meet him, just a lone pr rep from his record label. Despite the light reception, David is dressed like a star, specifically Lauren Bacall. He regally sasch eate off the plane, long locks spilling past his shoulders in soft golden tendrils. He's wearing a dress. Technically it was a blue maxicoat crafted by oh Koran London designer Michael Fish, topped off with a white chiffon scarf, but these finer points were lost on the American immigration officials. To them, it was just a strange man in a dress, which is always grounds for suspicion. They detained this soft spoken, exceedingly polite cross dresser for more than an hour, interrogating him about his attire and fay mannerisms. Finding nothing technically illegal, they let him go, mothering various homophobic slurs as he went. David's pr contact greased him warmly before asking about the lengthy delay. Oh, they held me on the plane, David replied, for some reason. They seemed to think I looked strange. David Bowie was certainly ready for America, but was it ready for him? Hello, and welcome to Off the Record, the show that goes beyond the songs and into the hearts and minds of rock's greatest legends. I'm your host, Jordan Runt. This season explores the life, or should I say lives, of David Bowie. In this episode, we're gonna talk about Bowie at the dawn of the seventies, shedding his hippie skin for something a little rougher and more raw. The new decade saw him become the godfather of glam but also a father and a husband more than any other. It was an era of changes for David Bowie. David Bowie needed a new pad in the summer of nineteen He and his girlfriend Angie had worn out They're welcome staying with David's increasingly fed up ex girlfriend Mary. The final straw came when Angie attempted to seduce Mary, who had never signed up from Nagati. So they were out. Aggressive. Angie on a new home, and soon she found the perfect place just a short distance away in the town of Beckenham. Elvis Presley had Grace Land. David Bowie, with whom he shared a birthday, had Hadden Hall. The imposing, thirty room Victorian mansion had lost some of its grandeur since being converted into suburban apartments, but the air of faded glamor only added to the distinctly funky vibe. The red brick turrets and wrought iron weather vans loomed over a rambling English garden choked with weeds and barren trees. It looked, for all the world like a haunted house, and with good reason. Bowie and many of his housemates claimed they saw the ghost of a young woman strolling the property. Their ground floor apartment There's for just seven pounds a week included access to the cavernous formal entrance hall, featuring a massive staircase illuminated by a forty foot stained glass window. Some friends called the Gothic pile Beckenham Palace, others called a Dracula's living room. Both descriptions are apt, outrageous, and ostentatious. Hadden Hall was the ideal place for David and Angie to live out the eventful years ahead. At first, they couldn't afford much in the way of decoration, furnishing the flat with some old orange crate stolen from a local market, But with some help from Angie's parents, the young couple began to add their own touches. They painted the walls and ceilings vibrant shades of green, pink, and silver. David took a more personal approach in the bathroom, where he pasted handmade collages of nude women cut from men's magazines. Once David's space addity royalty started to roll in, the pair began frequenting local antique shops, acquiring elegant art deco lamps and a huge seven foot wide regency bed. After doing up their living quarters, David began building a workspace, He converted a small cupboard under the stairwell into a makeshift rehearsal studio with rudimentary recording equipment. There he demo many of his best known songs over the next three years, often with the help of his friend and producer Tony Bisconti, who was so taken with the place that he rented the flat next door. Hadden Hall became the center of gravity for David and his entourage, serving as a home, an office, and a creative incubator. This was where music was made, photo shoots were held, costumes were sold, journalists were wined and dined, and grand plans were conceived. David was in low spirits as summer turned to fall. The single Space Oddity had been his first bona fide success on the charts earlier that year, but the accompanying LP did dismal numbers, selling barely five thousand copies in the UK. The public who had known him for the dramatic sci fi operetta were confused by the meandering folk of Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed and the dystopian proto prog rock of Signet Committee. And then there was the full on psych freak out that concluded memory of a free festival. If he sounded lost and unfocused, it's because he was. David hoped at least for critical acclaim, yet that too eluded him. This was mostly due to a major managerial over ight. In November nine, David stage the showcase to promote his album rather loftily dubbed an Evening with David Bowie. David rose to the occasion, delivering one of his finest and most passionate performances to date, But when he arrived backstage after his triumphant set to charm the v I P S, he was told there were none. The great efforts have been made to invite friends and label reps, they had completely forgotten to invite members of the press. David's friend Calvin Mark Lee, the man who had introduced him to Angie and got them his record deal in the first place, took the heat for the snaffoo. He was duly banned from David's circle. Still, the damage was done. David felt like Major Tom, drifting further into the commercial abyss. I was in the depths of despair, he later said. I became disillusioned. I used to have periods weeks on end, when I just couldn't cope anymore, I'd slump into myself. I felt so depressed, I really felt so aimless, and this torrential feeling of what's it all? War? Anyway, Angie did what she could to lift him out of his funk. She played an increasingly active partners career, falling somewhere between an artistic collaborator and manager. Much to his actual manager, Ken Pitts chagrin, Ken viewed is an opportunistic egomaniac, leaching onto his talented client and disrupting his meticulously crafted promotional strategy with ill advised stunts. Angie viewed Ken as, in her own words, a deadweight albatross, one who's hopelessly out of touch. Supper Club tactics weren't doing her avant garde boyfriend any favors. They were both right and wrong. The degree to which Angie shaped Bowie's music and persona has has been exaggerated over the years, usually by Angie herself, but her role as an organizer and hustler is undeniable. In many ways, she inherited the advisor role formerly held by David's father, John, a one time pr executive who died of pneumonia in August nine sixty nine. David trusted his father more than anyone and valued his creative instincts and expertise. Now Angie, this big, dreaming, big talking American with little formal training, became his most vital sounding board. In addition to helping him land small gigs at local clubs, she steered David down daring and sometimes outlandish, creative avenues. There were partners, though some might say codependent ones. It was difficult to see where David ended and Angie began, and vice versa. That wasn't the only blurry line in their relationship. Gender roles and sexual identities were exchanged at will. Andie encouraged David to grow out as hippie perm into long feminine waves, while she opted for a short crew cut. She regularly bought women's clothing that she knew David would like. Sure enough, he would rate her closet and borrow one of her Mr Fish gowns. They were quite a site. Walking down Beckenham High Street, he freshly made up an address, and she with her close crop and pinstriped power suit. In the literal and metaphorical sense, Andie wore the pan in the relationship. She was prone to throwing tantrums designed to manipulate, confuse, and sometimes even seduce. They'd come on fast and sudden. David once said living with Angie was like living with a blowtorch. Many would find themselves burned. It was Angie's idea to install a phone line at Hadden Hall, the better to handle David's business. Unfortunately, the line was often jammed with pitiful calls from David's mother, Peggy. Though she'd been a cold and remote figure all throughout David's childhood, Peggy had grown increasingly needy since the death of David's father. This added to the tension between mother and son that had been brewing for years. Peggy's constant accusations that the couple were living in sin took their toll on Angie, who finally fled to her parents home on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus that November. David had been so preoccupied with his own affairs, business and otherwise that she doubted he'd even noticed her departure. Much like his mother, he always demurred when it came to outward displays of affection. He couldn't even bring himself to say the words I love you, preferring instead to whisper his own code phrase in your ear. So imagine or surprise when she received the postcard from David just before Christmas that read, this year I promise we'll marry. This was all so romantic and unlike David. Andie returned to Haddon Hall soon after. David had posed a question early on in their relationship, could she deal with the fact that he didn't love her? He warned Angie not to expect anything that even slightly resembled traditional monogamy. I'm not made like that. I do things that other people might not subscribe to. I think it's only fair that you should know that before we set out. The suited Angie just fine. She was no stranger to deviating from the sexual norm. She had, after all, been expelled from school for having an affair with a female student, Hadn't She and David first met because they were both sleeping with the same man. Clearly their relationship it was wide open from the start and that's how it continued to be. And she had no problem sharing David at first. Anyway, boys girls didn't matter. If and you could get in on it even better. That was the ethos of the age. If it feels good, do it, as long as it's not hurting anybody. They even had threesomes with David's old girlfriend, Danna Gilepsie, who described them as less like boyfriend and girlfriend and more like brother and sister and sometimes mother and son. For such a renegade, and You took a surprisingly old fashioned stance on housework, cooking and cleaning for David, and even drawing his bath. Sometimes he called her mother Ma, and even peg. And You would never fully shake the sense that David stayed with her purely for practical reasons. She was an all in one secretary, pr rep manager, creative partner, maid and lover who had the added bonus of finding him additional sex partners. Though they were obviously compatible. Immigration issues played a key role in their decision to tie the knot. Angie's visa was due to expire. A marriage would prevent her from being deported. David's no fool, She claimed. We got married because I was an American who needed to stay in London, and he was a weak brit who needed me to help break down doors and turn him into a star. I was wild and he needed me to help him be wild. It worked. Bowie himself would admit that they probably wouldn't have gotten married if it wasn't for her visa problems. Yet that didn't mean he didn't care well. The marriage ceremony never mattered much to him, Angie resolutely did. They married at the Bromley Register Office in March nineteen seventy. The bride wore a pink and purple silk dress from the nineteen twenties, purchased the day before from one of the vintage stalls at Kensington Market. The groom wore an oversize sheer ling afghan and an ascot. Instead of rings, they exchanged two Peruvian silver bracelets. They'd said farewell to single them the night before by staging an impromptu threesome with a female artist friend. As a result, they got a start that morning and nearly missed their own wedding. The trio arrived at the registry office only to find David's mother, Peggy, waiting on the steps. This was unexpected, as David hadn't invited her. There were only a handful of friends on hand to watch the couple take their vows. Manager KEM Pitt the man had been as much of a father to David over the last few years as his own dad wasn't among them. David hadn't invited him either, and you had already supplanted him as David's ultimate confidant. Now it was official, before God and law. The newlyweds posed for photos outside the registry office before heading to a nearby pub for a quick reception. It was raining, so they honeymooned at Haddon Hall in front of the TV set. A couple used their marital bed for their first ever fivesome that night, bringing the day to an eventful end. Married life clearly didn't slow them down. Shortly after their wedding, David introduced Angie to a friend by merrily proclaiming, this is my wife. She gets boys from me and I get girls for her, and we're all very happy. You'll notice David's music hasn't received much attention thus far. Between the death of his father, the move to Hadden Hall, and the promotional responsibilities for the Space Oddity album, David didn't have much time to write during the tail end of nineteen sixty nine. One of the only songs he completed in this period was called The Prettiest Star. He'd written it for Angie while she was away in Cyprus and played it to her through the phone as part of his proposal. Recorded on January event, his twenty third birthday, it was the first song he released in the seventies, the decade. He'd grow to dominate you and I will rise up all the way he sang on the track. Though The Prettiest Star sold a dismal eight hundred copies, he'd make good on the lyrical promise. An explosion of glam rock shook the English music scene in the early seventies, and he was David Bowie who lit the fuse. The Big Bang occurred on February twenty, nineteen seventy, at London's Roundhouse Theater, where David was playing with this new band Hype. The other acts on the bill epitomized the earthy root seed back to the land hippie sensibility that permeated the rock escape as the sixties drew to a close. It was all about being real man Jeans and buckskin were the official musician uniform. Performers were indistinguishable from their audience. Nobody was a star. They were just on stage doing their thing. This egalitarian ideal was shattered when David and his fellow hype man appeared on stage dressed as literal superheroes. Bowie took center stage as rainbow Man, decked out and multicolored spandex thigh high boots and a flashy silver jacket. Tony Wisconsin handled bass duties dressed in a white leotard, silver crochet briefs and a green cape. A gold suited gangster and a cartoonish lee gaudy cowboy completed the unusual lineup homemade costumes. So with love, if not tremendous fell by Angie went a long way and separating David, the sci fi folky of space Oddity, from his latest guys as a rock and roll frontman. But more than just putting his past behind him, the sensationalist personas were a stand against the snoozy status quo. David had spent the sixties spotting trends and chasing them. Now he was determined to subvert them. Hype was an exercise and rebellion, pure and simple. You want a self serious poet, will get a load of us. We're superheroes, all in good fun, of course. Hype weren't the first band to bring a touch of theatricality, and the rock and roll groups like Johnny Kidd and the Pirates and Paul Revere and the Raiders had incorporated elaborate period costumes into their acts back in nearly sixties, self style horror rockers Screaming Lord such when even further, opening each show by emerging from an oversized coffin and toying with props, skulls and daggers. And then there was Arthur Brown, who kicked off performer of his ninety eight hit Fire by setting his head dress ablaze and draw Jenny also seemed to be embedded in rocks DNA, stretching back to the thick lashings of mascara worn by David's HERA Little Richard, The Beatles Long Hair garnered an untold number of column inches, and even the rebellious Rolling Stones don Drag on the sleeve for their nineteen sixty six single have You Seen Your Mother Baby Standing in the Shadows. Such camp was generally viewed as a gimmick meant to mask lack of talent, lack of sex appeal, or some combination of the two. To engage in such silliness while retaining artistic credibility. Now that was the new frontier. With Hype, David sought to present obvious artifice with a straight face, performed so skillfully that you can't help but be impressed. That attitude became the spirit of glam rock. Even the band's name was the war Hollian Nods, the thin veneer of glitz that separated mere human beings from stars. Hype was almost provocatively on the nose, an averted mission of phoniness that resolved David of so many show business sins. I deliberately chose the name, he would say, because now no one could say they were being conned. He could be plastic, he could be disposable, He could be anyone he wanted, although in the short term he didn't want to be rainbow Man. Hype disintegrated a short time after that day at the Roundhouse. The band endured vicious homophobic heckels from the crowd, but there was at least one person who enjoyed their set. It was Mark Bolan, David's friend and sometimes friend of me. Their rivalry stretched back to the R and B boom of the mid sixties, and Mark was definitely winning the fame race. Heat earned middling success with his band Tyrannosaurus Rex. Within months of David's Roundhouse show, Mark had given himself a glam makeover, launching himself to the top of the pop heap in the UK, rivaling even the Beatles for mass adoration and selling a hundred thousand copies of his single and one day. He became the public face of glam Rock, which pisted David off to no end, leading to one of the many TIFFs between the pair, Telling Lee. Mark would later deny that he ever attended David's Roundhouse gig. Whether he simply forgot or had a guilty conscience is up for debate. In addition to kick starting the glam Rock revolution, the Roundhouse Show is notable for another reason. It marked the first time David ever shared a stage with his new guitarist, Mick Ronson. Just weeks earlier, Ronson was working as a gardener in his hometown of Hull, England, not the best use of his formidable musical talents. Ronson was a classically trained pianist who also took up violin, cello and finally guitar as a boy. As a teen Ronson idolized Jeff Beck and moved to London in the mid sixties to try his hand as a blues player, but he was quickly reduced to living on tins of beans and returned to Hall a short time later with his tail between his legs. Ronson's route to Bowie is windy filled with several fortuitous connections. Bowie had begun playing with Ronson's former bandmate, drummer John Cambridge. When a heavy duty guitarist was required for Bowie's hype project. Cambridge was sent up to haul the recruit Ronson. They found them working for the Hull City Council painting lines for a rugby field. Commenced his musical career was over. Ronson was persuaded to call on David and Angie at Hadden Hall, where they jammed in the early morning hours. David invited him to play on an upcoming BBC radio session two days later, on February fifth, nineteen seventy. Ronson's high octane guitar lines added extra muscle to David's music, making the songs rougher, roarer and sexier. David was entranced, describing Ronson as Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Jimmie Hendrix all rolled in the one person in Rono, as he was forever known, David had found his secret weapon and his musical soul brother, the first true partner he'd ever had. Soon, Ronson moved into Haddon Hall, where he, Bowie and Tony Visconti worked in their makeshift studio, the old wine cellar under the stairwell. The homemade soundproofing made from egg christ did little to muffle the noise, making them less than popular with their neighbors. A new album began, the Coalesce. Inspired by the creative spirit of the Beatles at their most daring, they wanted to craft a studio production with sounds that could only exist on tape. It was to be David's personal sergeant Pepper, his pet sounds, his magnum opus, but the result, called The Man Who Sold the World, didn't quite turn out like that. David's mood had plummeted by the time he and his hatt In Hall cohorts convened in the studio in April of ninete. The small amount of buzz that space Oddity afforded him had died down, and as follow up, the Prettiest star had flopped. The band itself was an upheaval as Ronson engineered the arrival of a new drummer, Mick woodman Z, known to all Is Woody. They all camped at Haddon Hall, bringing their financial fears and other anxieties literally to David's door. Everyone was broke and this album was make or break. For the first time, the hyper ambitious David began to shrink from the challenge. In Visconti's words, this man would just knock it out of bed and write a song. The producers spent much of the sessions trying to retrieve David from the studio hallway, where he and Angie could be found holding hands and cooing at one another. With David indisposed, Visconti and Ronson played an oversized role in shaping the sound of the record. Ronson, the young buck guitarist, was eager to emulate his heroes Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton with his cranked up les Paul and towering stack of marshal lamps. As a result, many of the songs were significantly louder and harder than anything that bore Bowie's name to date. Forged from the same fire that would yield heavy metal beatles were Dead Long, Live led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. She Shook Me Cold. There's more than a passing similarity to Beck's cover of Muddy Waters. You Shook Me Black Country Rock is an overt homage to t Rex and the quavering vocal stylings of David's friend of me, Mark Boland. The Width of the Circles an eight minute tour to Force with Ronson's guitar pyrotechnics as the main event. Many of these instrumentals were assembled by Visconti and Ronson, who all but begged their nominal leader David to put pen to paper and write lyrics. Visconti was not a fan of David's new writing process, defined as I can't be bothered until I have to. David's procrastination was so extreme that he was still recording vocals on the last day of album mixing, writing lyrics in the studio lobby, while Visconti and Ronson waited impatiently at the mixing desk. When David finally did decide to write, the words were often dark, unsettled, and deeply disturbing. The record company had given him a shoe string budget, necessitating weekend sessions done on the graveyards shift This darkness permeated his output. David would remember the sessions for The Man Who Sold the World as quote a nightmare, and characterized the record as the most drug oriented album I've ever made. Few in this period recalled David is lost in any sort of drug haze, but it was clear that he was engulfed by some form of black cloud. In the last year, he'd lost his father and slipped away from his manager and mentor, Ken Pitt. The utopian hippie dream of the Arts Lab had crumbled to nothing, and his first taste of fame had turned sour. And what would become something of a theme David acted out as personal traumas through science fiction tales. Violence, alienation, confusion, and madness are recurring themes throughout the songs, obvious indicators of his haunted and paranoid state. The width of a Circle describes a sexual encounter in the depths of Hell, though it's unclear whether the figure is God out of the Devil after all, features a nod defamed Satanist Alistair Crowley. The Superman is an apocalyptic Nietzschean Tale and Running Gun Blues alluded to the Milai massacre and Vietnam told from the point of view of an unhinged veteran. The most potent track was All the Madmen, one of the first songs recorded for the sessions. It's rooted in David's own personal nightmare, the mental deterioration of his elder half brother, Terry. David had worshiped Terry as a young boy, looking to him as the sole source of emotional warmth in their otherwise frigid family home. Later, as a teen, it was Terry who turned David onto free jazz and beat poetry, which became crucial pillars of his creative identity. Terry encouraged his individuality, fostering David's unrivaled single mindedness. Most importantly, they cared for one another. It was the only uncomplicatedly loving relation and ship in young David's life. But then Terry's moods became more erratic, leading to terrifying hallucinations, lengthy disappearances, and horrific breakdowns. Schizophrenia had ripped Terry's reality to shreds, just as it had done to so many in David's family. By the late sixties, Terry was living at Cane Hill Hospital, the notorious Gothic asylum south of London, where patients were once confined to padded rooms, doused with ice water, and brutalized with an arcane form of electro shock therapy. Terry endured slightly less abuse during his stay, but life behind the imposing gates was undoubtedly disconcerning and tinged with fear. Because Terry was a voluntary patient, he could come and go as he pleased. Often he'd visited David Crashing at Haddon Hall for sometimes weeks on end. Terry had responded well to his treatment, and, like many patients on the men, decided he didn't need to take his medication anymore. This wrought havoc on his neural chemistry. David usually tried to keep things light, steering the conversation to topical things like soccer, but while they shared the same roof, they rarely shared the same reality. Whenever Terry would leave Haddon Hall, David was flooded with relief, followed by an immense wave of guilt. Why couldn't he help his brother? Why this happened to Terry? It could have just as easily happened to him? Could it still? David lived in constant fear of the madness that he felt coursing through his veins. He could feel it bubbling up whenever he got drunk or high. His mental stability was fragile. His art was his salvation. Among his first songs to confront this phobia head on was All the mad Men, an empathetic look at Terry and the trials he endured. It contained lyrical references to lobotomies, librium, and electroshock therapy. Most poignantly, the reef Frank quotes Jack Caro Wax on the Road. Terry had given the book to David as a young boy. Now he repurposed Caro wax words and tribute to his stricken brother. The only people for me are the mad ones, David sings, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles. Terry had encouraged David to embrace his inner madness, that wildfire that burned within. Now Terry was paying the price. David couldn't help, But wonder was he next? He wrestled with this question on the album's title track, The Man Who Sold the World as vexed fans for decades. With its dense lyrics that obliquely hint at David's worsening identity crisis. It speaks to the devils and angels inside of him. In the song, the narrator has an encounter with a ghostly doppelganger on a stairwell. Is it a past self, a future self, a potent entual self that he'd never become? It's unclear. I thought you died alone a long, long time ago, he says to the figure in the song. Oh no, the double replies, not me. I never lost control. Control was a word that comes up again and again in the life of David Bowie. Control was a necessary part of his survival the fragile border between reality and madness. David struggled to define himself as a parent in his search for a cover for the Man Who Sold the World. Initially, he commissioned a painting by his old Beckenham Arts lab friend Mike Weller. The foreboding music inspired Weller to paint and illustration of a rifle wielding cowboy standing at the entrance of of all places, Cane Hill Hospital. The choice was pure chance. Weller had no idea of David's connection to the place. The coincidence was not lost on David, who loved the cartoonish pop our style cover design at first at least, but soon he changed his mind in favor of an image that would showcase himself in a more domestic environment. A photo shoot duly took place in the living room at Hadden Hall. The final shot is striking, resembling a pre Raphaelite painting more than a rock album cover. David, surrounded by rich red drapes and his growing assortment of antiques, is seen reclining in an elegant chase lounge, fingering his long, elegantly styled blonde curls with one hand while casually spilling a deck of playing cards with the other. He provocatively stares down the lens in a cream and blue satin dress. It is, as he would explain numerous times, a man's dress purchased from cutting edge designer Michael Fish's Savoreau boutique. But as David would soon learn on his American arrival, a man's dress is still dress too many His androgynous attire flirted uncomfortably close to drag and not the can't be silly except double kind of drag, which had long been a staple of British comedy. Transvestites were fine if they're there to be laughed at, after all, but Bowie demanded respect. He was used to challenging gender norms back in the mid sixties. His shockingly long mop top hair got him threatened and spat at. This cover image took it even further, daring or even welcoming outrage. Leave it to David Bowie to court controversy just by lounging in his living room. As with the rest of his albums to date, the Man Who Sold the World failed to sell. Relations between David and Tony Visconti grew strained during the difficult sessions, and it will be years before the pair would work together again. But the troubled recording saw David split more permanently from another intimate, his manager, Ken Pitt. Their four year relationship had been monumental but hard to define. Ken guided David's career with class and skill. At times he also did David's laundry. The old man had been like a surrogate father to David, welcoming him into his elegant London flat after David moved out of his family home for the first time. Like any good show business figure, he introduced David to entertainment luminaries and industry titans. He also introduced David the classic literature, fine art in the theater. There was indeed a lot of love between the men, though Ken's intentions seemed more amorous than David's. It's not quite fair to add lover to the lengthy list of words that applied to their relationship, but there was an intensity that transcended the usual manager client bond Angie clocked this from the start. To her, Ken was enemy number one. He was the only other person David listened to. She didn't need the competition and was eager to get him out of the picture. Andrew regarded Ken as a show business dinosaur, a holdover from the old school style of management. Ken would take the heat for David's stalled career, as many over the years accused him of trying to steer as unly talented client down the stagy supper club and cabaret route. This is both unfair and untrue. Ken may have been lost amid the hippie dippy world of mimes and arts labs, but he believed in David's more avant garde work, even financing sessions for Space Oddity out of his own pocket when David was without a label. In the end, Ken's extensive experience was his undoing. He was used to doing business the way it had always been done. David had no interest in doing anything the way it had always been done. As time went on, David grew emboldened by the achievements that Ken had a major role in engineering. He became stubborn and contrarian, disregarding Ken's well considered advice. He complained to friends that he was drowning with Ken, who he no longer related to. Creatively, during sessions for The Man Who Sold the World, David decided that he'd had enough. He tearfully sought advice from the head of his record label, telling him that he wanted out of his management deal. The label chief didn't want to get involved breaking such contracts was seen as ungentlemanly and also a conflict of interest, but he recommended a legal firm who could do the dirty work for him. So in April, David sent Can a letter informing him that their professional relationship was over. The following week, David arrived at the apartment they used to share for what amounted to a farewell meeting. David's counsel, bullish litigation clerk named Tony Defreese, did most of the talking. David himself sat quietly on the chase lounge, looking frail and deeply sad. Pitt was equally devastated, not to mention shocked, but ever the gentleman who refused to stand in David's way and agreed to step aside. When the meeting was over and the dust settled, they shook hands. David offered a simple with sad, thank you, Ken. Then he disappeared down the street with the frieze. Ken. Pitt or in fifteen thousand pounds from the split, but his role in his client's development is incalculable. David maintained a warmth for Ken as the years went by, sending him rare books for his formidable collection. In three, during the height of the Ziggy Stardust craze, he invited Ken the one of his gigs with a note that read, come and see what your boys doing. Now. Without a manager, David looked to Tony DeFries for career guidance. He'd been won over by the freeze magical ability to extract him from contracts, which is the wave of his pen. David initially wanted him only to handle his finances, but the Frieze had his sight set on something bigger. He believed David Bowie could be the biggest rock act in the world, and he was just the guy to help him do it. David obviously appreciated the sentiment de Freeze drive matched those own sizeable ambition, and together the pair hashed the plan for world domination. In many ways, they were similar, captivating, charismatic, and gregarious in public. Behind closed doors, they were calm, focused and very shrewd. So. Barely three years older than David, Tony spoke with a measured tone that led you to believe that all was well and your life was about to get better. For David, this was indeed true. All of the Freeze gambles would pay off handsomely in the short term, at least. Tony's fast and loose management style and ethically questionable financial dealings with so the seeds for much of the insanity that would plague Bowie's professional life in the years to come. Angi Bowie would describe Tony Defreese as a thief and a gangster. But if he was something done, who do you hire in David hired Tony Defrees to make him a star, and he would. But first David had to go to America. David bow he had dreamed of going to America since he was a little boy, but the fantasy never included a full body search. That was the welcome he received after touching down at Dulles International Airport in Washington, d c. America in ninety one could be an uptight place, and immigration officials weren't accustomed to men arriving on their shore dressed in women's clothing. Eventually, David was released to the care of Ron Oberman, a publicist that has labeled Mercury Records. The purpose of the trip was to try to up the abysmal sales figures for The Man Who Sold the World, which had moved only a thousand copies in the months since its release. The label hoped that an in person visit would convey the singular magnetism of their unusual artist and America would fall under the spell of Bowiemania. Things didn't quite work out like that. A paperwork snaffoo with the American Musicians Union, many was barred from performing. David's visit was restricted to interviews in general glad handing with local DJs across the country. The first interview David gave was to Ron Oberman's brother Michael, in the living room with their parents all American ranch house in Silver Springs, Maryland. A photograph preserved the surreal moment. It looks like a bizarre TV special. Bowie meets the Bradys. Wearing pink crushed velvet pants and a mob turtleneck. He sits on an avocado green couch in front of him as a TV tray, perfect for eating a frozen dinner while catching an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies. David had wanted to see the real America. Just hours after arriving on us soil, he'd found it. When the interview was complete, the Oberman's middle aged parents treated everyone to dinner at a local steakhouse. The other diners were so freaked out by David's long hair and loud attire that a waitress stuck them in the back room and closed the curtain on their booth. After the meal, the Oberman brothers took David the Michael's Pad, where some friends from a local rock group had come to hang out. David's first night in the US marked another first first time he ever saw a bomb American man. Far out from d C, David headed north to New York, where Mercury booked him into the Holiday Inn at Times Square, the urban epicenter of sleeves and smut, where the porn theater marquees glowed just as bright as the grotesquely oversized billboards. Times Square in the seventies was a shimmering sea of peep shows, sex shops, and nudy mag stalls, and their contents spilled out into the dirty street. The cold January air was thick with car exhaust, subway steam and trash. David warded off the winter chill with the French beret, cuffed boots and a huge fur coat, drawing stairs from the hawkers and the hookers. David stared right back. He couldn't get enough. I couldn't believe the country could be so free, so intoxicating, and so dangerous, he remembered. It was filthy, but it was fun, like a velvet underground song come to life. It inspired Dvid to take a trip downtown and see the Velvets in the Flesh at the Electric Circus on St. Mark's. For years, they've been David's favorite American band, and the experience of watching them perform new songs like Sweet Jane at close range left him mesmerized. After the show was over, an uncharacteristically star struck David talked his way backstage and cornered the man he thought was lou Reid. He spoke breathlessly about what Reid's work had meant to him, and let it slip that he used to cover waiting for the man himself. It was only later that Bowie realized that lou Reid had left The Velvet Underground several months earlier, and the man he gushed too had been a new member, Doug Yule. Rather than being heartbroken, David found the humor in the situation. An idea started to coalesce in his mind. Maybe he could also impersonate someone on stage, not an actual, living, breathing, famous person, but someone else entirely, a character of his own creation. He mold the idea over as he strolled and hattan, shamelessly playing the tourist he visited the enormous met Museum, and the many record shops stocked with rare jazz LPs. He even spent time with Moondog, the blind eccentric street artists who stalked fifty two Street in full Viking regalia. Moondog was a familiar sight around Midtown, but David and his androgynous clothes were definitely not. People were fascinated by this strange, elegantly dressed young man. Strangers approached him with classic New Yorker aggression, striking up conversations and even touching him as if he was some sort of a zoo animal. One elderly lady stopped him on the street and asked David what animal had been used to make his oversized fur coat. David replied, teddy bear. The locals were less amused as his press tour took him through Texas, where a man apparently pulled out a gun and unleashed a torrent of homophobic slurs. David tone things down a bit as he made his way through Chicago and the Midwest, but the man dresses were back in full force as he touched down in Los Angeles. His welcome committee took the form of Rodney Bingenheimer, the legendary l a scenemaker and so called mayor of the Sunset Strip. A dedicated anglophile, he played host to Elton, John kat Stevens Rod Stewart, another British artist beginning to break through in the States, but none prepared him for the sight of David Bowie, who looked more like a silver screen starlet than a rising rock star in his long dress, floppy hat, and bright blonde hair. As they strolled past Hollywood high on Sunset, the teens at recess went wild when they caught a glimpse of David. They had no idea who he was, but obviously he was someone. Rodney Bigenheimer took note. This was definitely different than taking Rod Stewart around. Rodney became David's social secretary, taking him to all the right places and introducing him to all the right people. Fellow ex pad Elton John, Marlon Brando, even rough and ready fifties rock or gene Vincent Dave It was thrilled to meet the man behind beef Appolula, and together they jammed on a pair of David's new songs, Hang Onto Yourself and moon Age day Dream. During the day Rodney shuttled David around to local radio stations, where he freaked out at least one DJ by touching up his makeup during a commercial break. One night, Rodney threw a party in David's honor, bringing the hip scene to him. David held court in the middle of the room, sitting cross legged on the floor in his exotic man dress, quietly playing half completed songs and his acoustic guitar. Guests found them enchanting and funny, but also shy, wide eyed, and extremely polite, even asking permission to go to the bathroom. Between songs, David scribbled lyrics and ideas on a stack of notebooks and holiday in napkins. A new concept was slowly beginning to take shape in his imagination. America had awoken David to the possibilities of reinventing yourself. It was classic Hollywood. You could be whoever you like. He began talking more and more about an alter ego from Mars. The party guests weren't totally sure what David was on about, but it sounded far out. David outlined the concept to journalist John Mendelssohn, who profiled David in l A for his first Rolling Stone feature. My performances have got to be theatrical experiences for me as well as the audience. He said. I don't want to climb out of my fantasies in order to go up on stage. I want to take them on stage with me. What the music says maybe serious, but as a medium it should not be questioned, analyzed or taken too seriously. I think it should be tarted up, made into a prostitute, a parody of itself. It should be the clown, the piro medium. The music is the mask, the message wears music is the pirou, and I the performer and the message. David had combined the mime teachings of Lindsay Kemp with the meta artistic awareness of Andy Warhol and Marshall McLuhan's theories of communication. The result was a Frankenstein's Monster, or rather Martian of his own design. Ziggy start Us was conceived, but his birth was still a little ways off. Not long after David returned home to Haddon Hall, he experienced a different kind of birth. On May thirtieth, nineteen seventy one, he and Angie became parents. They named their son Duncan Zoey Heywood Jones Heywood after David's late father, and Zoe after the Greek word for the life. The delivery was rough on Angie, who suffered a cracked pelvis, blood loss and exhaustion. Weeks after Zoe's birth, She took a trip to her parents villa in Italy to recuperate. David said he didn't mind Angie's vacation and wished her well, but later, after the relationship had disintegrated, she couldn't help but wonder if that was the moment it had all gone wrong that David viewed her getaway as an abandonment of their new family. She was, by her own admission, not the maternal type, but the Bowie set about child proofing Hadden Hall as much as they could. Little Zoe slept in a crib with blue stars painted above it. When work intervened, friends and neighbors took turns nannying the baby, and David's play was fool As he geared up to record a new album, he moved the piano into the room. Tony Visconti had recently vacated a bright space that overlooked the back garden of Hadden Hall. It was David's first time that he seriously composed on the instrument, previously preferring the guitar. The battered out of tune upright sounded more like an old honky tonk pub piano than a Steinway, but it opened up a whole new world of harmonic potential. He would sit there for hours in the spring of while his fingers searched for the right melodies. I forced myself to become a good songwriter, he said at the time. And I became a good songwriter, but I had no natural talents whatsoever. I made a job of working at getting good. He worked feverishly, producing demos at an impressive clip, and the music was unlike anything he'd ever written in the past. Many of his songs could be derivative, if not contrived, engineered with an eye towards trends and the charts. Now his music came from pure inspiration, deep in his subconscious. One day, he was awoken in the pre dawn hours by a tune. He was calling out to him, Wake up, you sleepyhead, put on some clothes, get out of bed. He ran to the piano to play it out of him so he could go back to sleep. It started off as a rather off colored did he called I'd Like a Big Girl with a couple of melons, before morphing into something a bit more serious. The lyrics fused an impressive blend of sci fi influences wells or Well Crowley, iron Rand, but the refrain oh you pretty things, that was pure Bowie. The tune for Life on Mars came to David while he was on a bus heading into town to buy some shoes. Feeling inspiration coming on, he got off with the next stop and ran home. It was piano. He finished the song that afternoon with chords borrowed from an unlikely place. Back in the sixties, Ken Pitt persuaded David to write English lyrics to a French song called Come Debbutude. David complied, but his efforts were unceremoniously rejected. Singer Paul Anka had better luck, rewriting the tune as My Way, which became a smash for Frank Sinatra and an instant pop standard. Still smarting from the rejection, David initially wrote Life on Mars as a takeoff of the Mawkish ballad Not unlike Space Oddity and It's playful nod to the Kubrick film. Yet Life on Mars packs more emotion than a mere parody. It's a plea for escape, freedom and transcendence. David would admit that his songs were like talking to a psychoanalyst. My act, he said, is my couch. The music helped him process the tumult of the last few years. Everything seemed influx and impermanent. Life was scary and chaotic. Despite the uncertainty, David seemed happier and more optimistic than ever. The birth of his son and his trip to America reignited his sense of the possible. He felt good, he was okay. The feeling was reflected in the title he chose for this new collection of songs, Hunky Dory. He was almost ready to record, but first he needed a band. David had been inactive on stage and in the studio since completing The Man Who Sold the World nearly a year earlier. Without their front man, Hype began to wither, and both Mick Ronson and Woody Woodman's left London for cheaper lodgings in their hometown of Hall In May one. David tracked them down and persuaded them to return to the fold. For a bassist, they enlisted Trevor Bolder to replace Tony Visconti. To produce, David asked Ken Scott, the engineer on his last two albums. Scott hadn't been impressed with David's work so far, but when he listened to his new demo, he was floored. Scott had spent the last few years working with the Beatles. Now he was getting that feeling again. This guy, he thought, he's gonna be massive. Recording began in June one at Trident Studios in central London. David's demos had included guitar driven songs like moon Age, day Dream, Lady, Stardust and Star, but they decided to hold them back in favor of the piano oriented sounds born in the Haddon Hall Music Room. They hired Rick Wakeman, a veteran of the Space Oddity Session and future member of the band Yes Dad Is Broke. Keyboard Flourishes played on the same Beckstein piano Paul McCartney had used to record Hey Jude. Mick Ronson resumed his role as unofficial musical director, crafting the orchestrations for Life on Mars, Fill Your Heart and quicksand around Wakeman's or Nate piano parts. David could sometimes be a hard task master, once shouting just play the songwright during a fumbled take of song for Bob Dylan, but by and large he was a benevolent dictator with a knack for motivating his talented bandmate. Go On, do it, Boy would say, after hearing what of Ronson's more out their ideas. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, but have a go. More often than not it worked out. The album was a breakthrough. David Bowie made the music he heard in his head, an exotic gumbo of as many influences modern jazz and British music, hall avant garde and radio friendly pop, folk rock and the velvet underground. He quite literally found his voice, not Anthony Newley's, not Lou Reid's, not Bob Dylan's, but his own, a cockney tinged baritone that, when provoked, could rise to a crazed, wailing falsetto. For the first time, he'd achieved transcendence on record. For the first time, he wasn't trying to please anyone except himself. An early version of the Hunky Dory cover featured David in full Egyptian pharaoh regalia, a play on the media buzz around the new King Tut exhibit that had taken London by storm. But rather than go for easy hype, David looked inward. The final image, taken by photographer Brian Ward, is how he saw himself. It's a tribute to Hollywood glamour. The ever Androgynus Bowie plays both Bogart and Bacall on a fluffy blouse, pulling his long locks off his gorgeous face and staring wistfully into the distance, like Norma Desmond awaiting her close up. David's time on the spotlight would come soon enough, but first there was some business to attend to. David wanted out of his record contract with Mercury. Tony de Friese believed he could get more money elsewhere. A label executive flew all the way from Chicago to London the proudly offered David a slightly better deal. De Frieze would hear none of it. David will never record for you again, he dramatically informed the jet Lag exact, and if you insist on it, we will deliver the biggest piece of crap you've ever heard. Though Mercury could have easily unleashed a legal tornado on David and his haughty manager, they chose not to press the point. David walked De Freeze went right to our Cia, which had once been the biggest record company in the world. Hell it was Elvis's label. De Frieze wasn't star struck in the least. You've had nothing since the fifties and you missed out on the sixties, he told our c a brass but you can own the seventies because David Bowie is going to remake the decade, just like the Beatles did in the sixties. The bully approach worked, but it would take some time to iron out the finer points, delaying the release of Hunky Dorry until the end of the year. In the meantime, David played a handful of gigs, his first real shows in nearly a year. The first, a BBC Radio session in June, allowed him to test out his new band, who would soon be dubbed The Spiders from Mars. David played without them a few weeks later on June for the first official Glastonbury Festival. This wasn't a festival in the modern sense, but a hippie approximation of a medieval fair with music, dance, poetry, theater, lights, and other more spontaneous entertain Tickets were free, and so were the revelers. Some ten thousand and number many splayed out in the nude across the farm pasture to catch acts like traffic and Fairport Convention perform atop a giant sheet metal pyramid, a one tenth replica of the Great Pyramids of Giza. David Angie and a small entourage had traveled south from London by train, intending to walk the last few miles to the venue, but their journey was impeded by David's less than practical choice of outfit ultra baggy Oxford pants, square heeled boots, a blue magician's cloak, and a floppy brimmed Three Musketeers style hat that kind of set the tone for the whole experience. He'd been due to perform in the evening, but the show was running over time. Instead, he climbed the top the wobbly pyramid stage at the very un rock and roll hour of five am. He started playing for the muddy crowds slumbering in their tents alternating between acoustic guitar and electric key board, David played ten songs, many from his work in progress, Hunky Dory. He was accompanied by Mick Ronson and briefly a random Scandinavian woman who, in the spirit of the time, had gotten too high and watered onto the stage to sing with him. The sun began the rise over the hill, warming the cold and groggy festival goers and bathing David and glorious Dawn rays God does a hell of a light show. As David sang songs like the Superman, Quicksand and Kooks, the audience assembled in larger numbers, swaying in time to the music like a great, long haired ocean. David felt the seed change. Even at this unholy hour, people were listening, and they liked it. He addressed the captivated crowd with touching sincerity. I'll try and be serious for a second, he said. I just want to say that you've given me more pleasure than I've had in a good few months of working. It's really nice to have somebody appreciate me for a change. David debuted a new song that day, Change Ages, who had written just a short time before. It was a song that seemed to define David in the summer of nine. It was a time of constant transition. He had experienced his first taste of fame, followed by his rapid return to obscurity, the death of his father and the mental decline of his half brother, changes in his band and his management. He'd become a husband and a father, but there were more changes to come. David Bowie was about to become Ziggy Stardust Off. The Record is a production of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are Noel Brown and shan Ty Tone. The supervising producers are Taylor Shikoin and Tristan McNeil. The show was written and hosted by me Jordan run Tug and edited, scored and sound designed by Tristan McNeil. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.