Stardust Memories

by Ray Connolly

  He thinks that women know more about living than men, although unfortunately he doesn’t think he’s articulate enough to explain what he means. ‘I wish I’d been to grammar school,’ he says with a certain amount of whimsy.

  The success of working-class lads like David Bailey became possibly the most boring over-worked cliché of the sixties, and he looks back on those times now with mixed feelings.

  ‘The trouble is that I never get judged on what I do because young people always call me the “trendy, Cockney photographer — that has-been from the swingin’ sixties”.

  ‘Now that I’ve done a few films the critics say “Well, Bailey may be a fantastic photographer, but he’s a terrible film maker.” But before I did any films they said I was a terrible photographer. Both the books of pictures I did got terrible reviews. We had to work terribly hard for years — from 8.30am till 10 at night, and then we’d be up half the night developing. Everybody was talking about swinging London, but I didn’t know where it was. We worked so hard in fact that two of my assistants had nervous breakdowns.’

  Twice married, he’s been living happily with Penelope Tree for five years now, at a house in Regent’s Park which is also inhabited by thirty-five parrots.

  ‘Penelope’s lovely. She’s fantastic. You’d love her. We’re like Darby and Joan now.’ Penelope is just twenty-three.

  So far he doesn’t have any children, nor does he think he wants any, but if Penelope did, then that would be all right. Then he adds facetiously: ‘I don’t particularly like children. I prefer parrots. Most parrots are more intelligent than most babies I know.’

  Parrot-breeding was a childhood hobby with him, and he got his first when he was ten years old. At that time he thought he’d either like to be an ornithologist like James Fisher, or someone like Fred Astaire.

  ‘I keep the parrots to breed them. Some of the small parrots I’ve got are virtually extinct, and if people like me didn’t breed them then they would be extinct. We don’t keep them like Pretty Pollies. I don’t talk to them. It’s a pure hobby. Like my painting or silk screens.’

  This year he may have two more books published. He has prepared a collection of pictures quite different from anything he’s been associated with before, and he’s also written a manual on how to take pictures which he thinks should be called ‘How To Do It’.

  ‘You know,’ he says, ‘I got a marvellous new Pentax the other day. It’s a fantastic camera that does everything for you, so that you don’t have to think about things like getting the exposures right. It’s almost got a built-in computer inside it. I’ll never have to worry again.’

  POSTSCRIPT Bailey never seems to get any older. He still lives in the same house near Regent’s Park, although now with his third wife model Marie Helvin. Now considered an elder statesman of photography, he is much seen on television advertising Olympus cameras. His film on Andy Warhol was eventually broadcast and there were predictable reactions from those who make a living out of being shocked. It wasn’t, to be honest, a particularly good film (Bailey never said it was), and after it he channelled his interest for a while into doing profiles of people into the magazine Ritz, which he started and co-edited with David Litchfield.

  February 1973

  David Bowie

  I think the singularly most interesting aspect of the development of pop in the last couple of years has had less to do with the music being played than with the presentation of that music.

  Thus, we have, with little surprise, become accustomed to watching on television shows directed at children, the macabre pantomimes of Alice Cooper and the camp silliness of teeny favourites like that bunch of sissyish looking lads who call themselves the Sweet. But most of all we’ve come to know and accept unquestioningly the most outrageous performer of them all — David Bowie.

  When it comes to camp stage acts Bowie is both the best and the most original. Where Mick Jagger once pampered and teased his audience with the hint of something we used to call unisex, Bowie now treats us to a full-blown parade of sexual ambiguity, complete with make-up, hair dyed bright red and the exaggerated pouts and facial expressions of the mime artist. The effect he creates is startling — not least, I suspect, because he dares flout so deliberately the time-honoured law of pop music that rock idols had to appeal to the heterosexual desires of the females in the audience on the one hand, and to be objects with which the boys might identify on the other.

  ‘I’ve never considered myself anything to do with transvestites or drag acts,’ he told me this week. ‘I think what I’ve done on stage is to create a kind of neuter state. It isn’t unisex either, but it does incorporate both masculine and feminine aspects of sexuality. I think androgynous is the best word to describe us.’

  Is he a homosexual, I asked.

  ‘No… I’m bisexual. I first realised it when I was about thirteen or fourteen.’

  Was he frightened of public scorn when he first realised he was bisexual?

  ‘No. I was more frightened of football. That makes me sound really fey doesn’t it? Well actually I was bemused by it. I suppose I’ve always been an outsider.’

  He was brought up in Brixton where his father was a public relations man for Dr Barnardo’s Homes. After an education at a technical school he joined an advertising agency as a junior visualiser, playing saxophone in the evenings.

  ‘I only had the job for about six months, because I found I was much better at playing saxophone than selling gaberdine macs. I’d already begun to play the guitar a little, but I got tired of playing other people’s material and began to write my own.’

  By the time he was nineteen he was supporting himself as a full-time musician, having also been through a period working with a mime company.

  ‘I think now that that was where I learned a lot of my stage craft. In fact I did an experiment with mime last year at the Rainbow, and I hope that we’ll be able to create an environment where I’ll be able to incorporate more mime.’

  He worked with the mime company for two years at places like Middle Earth and the Round House, later beginning his own little three-piece group called Feathers, which performed mime, dance, poetry and song. Then in 1969 he had his first hit album ‘Space Oddity’.

  ‘I suppose it was inspired by the newspaper malarky about space shots and all that. It just sort of oozed out. There’s never any heavy thought behind much of my material. It just finds its way out. I have very few preconceived ideas about what I’m going to write.

  ‘Really I’ve always felt like a public warning about what’s going to happen. That’s how I consider myself. If you come right up to date I find that I wrote a lot of songs in America and now when I look at them the strongest thing to come out is the superficiality and decadence which surrounds the rock business at the moment. It seems to me that that kind of feeling generally heralds the coming of some kind of catastrophe — notably wars. I wouldn’t say that was a strong theme going through my next album but it’s definitely there.’

  Now twenty-six, he’s married to an American girl called Angie and they have a little girl of eighteen months called Zowie Bowie.

  ‘Angie’s a writer,’ he says. ‘She writes theses. At the moment she’s writing one on the effects of extra-terrestrials on the human make-up. I haven’t read any of it yet because she’s in Detroit. We met at a dancing club about three years ago, and were married after about three months. Yes, it was quite quick. The main reason for getting married was that they were going to sling her out of the country. It was a good idea at the time. It seemed to be the only way to keep her in the country. It’s still a good idea. There’s not much I can say about Angie. We spend about fifty per cent of our time together and about fifty per cent apart. No, the absences don’t bother her. She travels, too.’

  Did she not find it a strain being married to someone who was bisexual, I asked. No, he said, she didn’t.

  Why did he wear eye make-up, I asked next, noticing that his lids were heavy with a brightly colo
ured eye-shadow.

  ‘I’ve always worn make-up. I first began to fool around with it years ago when I was a mod. I was a very heavy mod, and I used to wear ankle swingers [white jeans that only reached the bottom of his calves] and luminous socks. I always wore Clearisil and eyeshadow then and I’ve never got out of it.

  ‘Really I like to change my appearance a lot. Oh yes, sure it’s narcissistic. My hair has been a variety of colours but I’ve settled on red over the last year. Really it’s a kind of blond colour. Fortunately it takes dyes quite well.

  ‘Make-up isn’t a new thing particularly. Elvis wore make-up, although the difference then was that we didn’t know it. I think it became inevitable because of the indifference there is to long hair these days. I mean I think the only possible shock factor to emerge was that guys would begin to wear make-up. I suppose I knew that years ago because I’ve always been involved with shock tactics.’

  Why did he think that audiences could identify with him so much?

  ‘Well, I think they believe I’m a very truthful person. I’ve always been very honest in my approach to things. And because of that they know that they’re safe with me as an artist because I’m not going out of my way to hype them too much. What I try to do is to fantasise for them, because that was one of the main things I got out of any kind of entertainment and theatre when I was young.’

  What did he think of the cult which had grown up around him, and of the other rock music acts which were copying his sexual ambiguity?

  ‘Well, they’re all part of the great misconception. It worries me because I wonder why all the other bands are doing it. I really don’t think they know why I do it. I am, I think, open to a greater degree of sensitivity, and this illustrates itself in my performance.

  ‘You see a lot of my make-up comes from the mime thing I went through. The mime artist will wear a white face so that any movement he shows on his face will become accentuated — he doubles the intensity. And as a writer and artist I try to mirror sensitivity.

  ‘People like to call what I do “glam-rock” or “rock-and-rouge”.’

  Wasn’t it difficult being the first major rock star to admit to being bisexual?

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Although I’m glad you qualified what you said with the word “admit” — because there have been lots of others and I’ve got names to prove it.’

  Does he ever find that he’s becoming a figurehead for Gay Lib?

  ‘Well I think the Gay Lib people understand me, and I understand them very much, and I have a lot of sympathy of sorts for them. But being an independent I haven’t found a need for group therapy as such, or group togetherness to fight a cause. I don’t want to represent Gay Lib — I know too little about them, although I do know a number of people who are members and as people I find them very charming. But they attract an awful lot of ridicule, which is hard because a lot of them have to hold down very straight jobs.

  ‘I think being bisexual is a facet of my life, but not necessarily the most important. It certainly isn’t my foundation by any means. In the States it gets into horrendous proportions and it’s “fag-this” and “fag-that” and all the papers call me a “fag” —which is lovely.

  ‘But I don’t see why it should stop me from being an all-round entertainer. I am an all-round entertainer. My mother comes and sees us, and watches us on the telly and she loves us.’

  POSTSCRIPT David Bowie was always too bright to restrict himself purely to the poseur’s world of glam-rock and has made a reputation for himself as an actor, most notably as The Elephant Man on Broadway, but also in the movies Merry Christmas Mister Lawrence and The Man Who Fell To Earth. This year, after an absence from music of three years, he signed a record deal with EMI reputed to be worth ten million dollars and went back on the road to promote his new album Let’s Dance.

  February 1973

  Emperor Rosko

  Tire disc jockey was a long time coming to Britain. For years the old Light Programme emasculated the ambitions of those who might have sought to find a role for themselves in this medium, and indeed it wasn’t until the coming of the pirate stations in 1964 that strong, youth-orientated personalities were able to emerge from behind the records they played.

  Inevitably, many of the big names from the pirate stations sank for ever with the enforcement of the Marine Offences Act in 1967 which outlawed the pirates, but for those who survived the setting up of Radio One in that September meant a fame which had never before been possible in British radio.

  Yet even today, five and a half years later, the disc jockey is still a relatively new phenomenon in the British way of life, and his functions are still being defined and redefined.

  Of all the disc jockeys I’ve watched and met during the past few years, none has impressed me so much by his professionalism as Michael Pasternak — better known to listeners as Emperor Rosko.

  Where Rosko differs from many of his colleagues is in his total commitment to the music he plays and in the way his personality somehow manages to merge into the music without getting in the way. His shows have a pace and crispness that are ideally suited for the type of soul and rock music which he plays. He is, no doubt, also aided by the fact that an American accent marries better with the mainly American music that he plays.

  For a disc jockey his background is surprising. His father is Joe Pasternak, a former Hollywood producer who made a lot of money during the fifties and early sixties, and his upbringing was varied and affluent. ‘My old man must have been making about five thousand dollars a week with MGM in Hollywood for about fifteen years, up to about 1958, and we would have arguments at school about who’s dad was the richest. I remember my dad always used to say to me: “I don’t care whether you’re a street cleaner so long as you’re the best street cleaner.” That was always very important in his mind that you do the best in what you’re doing, whether you be a gigolo, street cleaner, airline pilot or whatever.

  ‘When I was about fourteen my mum sent me to Europe to be educated and I went to school in Switzerland and Paris before going home to join the navy. In those days you had to do national service, and I figured that if I went in at seventeen I’d be out and have it behind me by the time I was twenty-one.

  ‘But for me, the navy really opened my eyes to what was going on — rubbing shoulders with the black militants who were just getting it together in those days. Coming from a good family doesn’t help you there, and though I went in a complete neutral about colour, I came out the most prejudiced cat you ever saw. It took years to erase.

  ‘But I just dived into the situation and became like every other guy, whoring around the ports and all that. One night five of us went out and got tattooed. That happened twice, in fact. The first time was on the island of Quemoy. I think the second time it happened was in the Philippines or Japan or somewhere. Really it was four years of high-energy living. That was where I first learned to be a disc jockey. I went through a series of jobs — shoemaker, cook, everything — before ending up talking myself into the ship’s radio station.’

  Eventually he came to Europe, worked for Europe Number One, and then joined Radio Caroline. When Caroline closed there was a job waiting for him at Radio One.

  Now thirty, Rosko is probably the most popular disc jockey in Britain, and certainly the most successful in the discotheques where he performs several times a week. In a way, being a top disc jockey has the second-hand aura of being a top rock star about it. In the eyes of the fans it is a glamorous job, and in the discotheques, the disc jockey is a substitute for the performing group. To this end Rosko endeavours to give a complete show when he visits discotheques, taking with him £12,000-worth of sound and lighting equipment, and stripping to the waist as the energy of the evening begins to pulse through the club.

  ‘I now have two mobile discotheques — one for me and a second one for the other Radio One discotheques which I’m going to let out. Then on top of that I want to open the Rosko School of Broadcasting to teach othe
r guys how to be disc jockeys.’

  I interviewed him at his Bayswater home. A policeman’s truncheon hangs over his bed. It was a gift from the police, he said, for helping improve relations between them and young people.

  Did he not find, I asked, that being a disc jockey led to all kinds of sexual propositions which might not come up were he an ordinary man of thirty? ‘Well, I think a disc jockey has an advantage over the average guy, but maybe not so much as someone as big as Mick Jagger because he’s obviously appealing to a much bigger audience. But, you know, more often than not I’ll go home alone.

  ‘I don’t take advantage of my position. I never pull them, but always let them pull me. The first rule is that you must never take a punter’s girl. If a guy is in there with his chick then there is no way that I will take his girl. To me that would be taking advantage of the situation and if I put myself in his place I’d be really mad.

  ‘I’m not frightened of doing it. I just wouldn’t do it as a matter of principle. If a girl’s all alone, and she fancies me and I fancy her — then, provided she’s of the legal age, I don’t mind getting it together. But I think I’m fairly cool. Variety is the spice of life. I must meet at least one new girl a week.’

  Did he ‘get it together’ with one a week?

  ‘That depends,’ he said. ‘Sometimes there are three a week. Then sometimes I go through a dry period and I don’t meet anybody for two weeks. It’s kind of hard to say.’

  I put it to him that most of the other disc jockeys I’d spoken to on the matter of sex had been very reticent in their answers. Why did he think that was? ‘I don’t know why. Maybe they’re more hung up on it than I am. I’m not hung up on it. I wouldn’t give out names and phone numbers and descriptions of what happened but I mean it would be quite a fallacy, and pretty stupid of me, to say I didn’t go out with girls. You know what I mean?’