David Bowie & the Story of Ziggy Stardust Page #2

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was quite confused.

Bowie had shown the world a glimpse

of his extraordinary talent,

but it would be three years

until he could recapture

Space Oddity's success

with Ziggy Stardust.

And as those years rolled by,

Bowie became increasingly worried

he was damned to be

a one-hit-wonder.

In 1970 he was

fundamentally depressed.

He had no idea where he was going, he

didn't know how he was going to fit.

A serious change of direction

was needed.

And that, in part, came from Bowie's

bride-to-be, Angie Barnett.

Angela was really a driving force

behind David.

She was very influential

with the costumes.

She made him brave.

She would have her hair cut first,

if she didn't think he'd like it.

She made him brave.

She was encouraging and always

on his side and always positive.

She would always encourage

dressing him and help the image,

and I always found her as

a very positive force.

Bowie formed a new band

called the Hype

and in February 1970,

he unleashed a radical new image.

Was going to do a gig,

and Angie said,

we're going to dress you all up.

We did the Round House.

I was supposedly Cowboy man

cos I had a cowboy hat on, and a

frilly shirt with some tassels on.

We were just thrown together,

but David's was like, he had

the big knee-high leather boots.

And we just did this gig dressed up,

you know. Theatre.

The London audience wasn't ready

for superheroes playing heavy rock

and The Hype bombed.

With hindsight, it seems

Bowie was just ahead of his time.

Especially when you consider

the Hype's makeup and costumes

pre-date Marc Bolan's

first glam-rock TV appearance

by over a year.

Bowie's plan to create

his famous alter-ego

was beginning to take shape.

The proto-glam band

the Hype are most notable

because it's the first time

David Bowie worked with Mick Ronson,

the guitarist who would become

part of the sound of Ziggy Stardust.

Their first studio collaboration

was on Bowie's next album,

the heavy, guitar-based

The Man Who Sold The World.

But what shocked people the most,

wasn't the new hard rock sound,

but the image on the sleeve.

He sells it by positioning himself

on the front cover in the very long,

flowing, pre-Raphaelite dress,

which was the least macho,

least hard rock image imaginable.

And it's hard to think now

how shocking that actually was.

It wasn't until David and Angela

walked down Beckenham High Street,

David in a dress and Angela

looking remarkably boy-like

that we all started

taking notice of him.

I mean, people would recoil.

Literally, the old girls

would kind of go, "My God!"

Shocking was what he wanted to be,

and shocking was what he was.

The rock scene in 1970 was

very much the colour of blue jeans.

Everybody wore denim,

everybody had long hair

and the music very much reflected

that sort of monotoned culture.

I'm sure that's why the album

wasn't a hit in this country

was because anybody who was

interested in the music

picked up the cover and said, "No way

I'm getting involved in that."

This was not an era when men

flirted with camp imagery at all.

Three albums in and Bowie was

still failing to find his audience.

He desperately needed someone

who could turn his undeniable

talent into record sales.

Somebody did come along and grab me

by the empty wallet and said,

"I'm Tony De Fries and

I'm going to make you a star."

I said, "Oh, yeah?"

David was great, yes he was,

but he hadn't gotten very far

until he'd met Tony.

He was struggling. Tony had a master

plan and things started to happen.

"Yeah, you want to be

Elvis Presley? I can do that.

"It can be done, David.

It can be done."

He financed it, that was

the most important thing.

Everything that Bowie did,

there was Tony De Fries

with the money to pay for it.

Without Tony De Fries,

we would never have had David Bowie,

Pop Star, Rock Star at all.

MUSIC:
"Venus In Furs"

by the Velvet Underground

Tony's main objective

was to make Bowie a superstar.

And that meant cracking America.

So at the beginning of 1971,

the 24-year-old singer was sent

there on a short promotional tour.

Within a few months

he returned, signing a deal

with RCA Records in New York,

the company who would later

fund the Ziggy Stardust project.

It was during this period

that Bowie was introduced

to the subversive world of Andy

Warhol and the Velvet Underground.

He felt immediately at home

surrounded by New York's

counter-culture.

We were all working

in underground theatre,

which involved a whole

lot of outrageousness.

The rock 'n' roll world

at the same time in New York

was becoming very underground.

There were men dressed in

women's clothes but not in drag,

they were just wearing

women's blouses and things

and a lot of make-up and things.

And everything was

getting very bizarre.

Back in London, Bowie continued his

fascination with the avant-garde.

He hung out in gay nightclubs

with a fashion designer

called Freddie Burretti.

And when an Andy Warhol play

called Pork arrived in town,

Bowie and his new wife Angie

befriended the American cast.

We invited Angie and David

to come see the play,

and they came with Tony De Fries,

and we all started

to hang out together.

We met David's incredible, loud,

crazy wife Angie, and she was,

"Oh, we have to go do this,

"we have to go do that,

we have to outrage the populace."

And we were fine for that.

I was, you know, psychedelic,

acid-head, hippie chick.

In those days, we were still pretty

outrageous sexually, I have to say.

You know, we had sex in the

loos at the Hard Rock Cafe,

even with the owners.

This was, like, every night

and a lot of people doing it.

Inspired by the

outrageous characters

he'd met in London and New York,

the very beginnings

of Ziggy Stardust

began to materialise

in Bowie's mind.

Taking his lead from

the star-maker Andy Warhol,

he invented his own

rock 'n' roll star, Arnold Corns.

What he hasn't yet done is

manage to get together the balls

to be that rock star himself,

and so he chooses somebody who,

effectively in musical terms,

is a blank canvas.

The idea was to take

Freddie Burretti,

this beautiful boy that

he'd met in the Sombrero Club

and to hand him the songs

and dress him up

and get him to be Ziggy, even though

he would be miming to David's voice.

Bowie decides that he's going to

create a band called Arnold Corns.

Now unfortunately, the music

that he's selling is terrible.

It's very early versions

of some of the songs from Ziggy,

and they sound really rudimentary,

very boring and raw demos.

But that is really

the seed of Ziggy Stardust.

# Make me know you really care... #

Although Arnold Corns failed,

Bowie was convinced

the idea of a fictional

rock star would work.

In the meantime, financial necessity

meant Bowie had to submit his songs

to a publisher to sell on

to other artists.

# Oh, you pretty things... #

One such song scored

a number 12 hit

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