Bowie

by Pat Gilbert

  As the King Bees’ new singer and self-appointed leader, Bowie had the idea to approach a famous British entrepreneur of the time, John Bloom, with a view to Bloom managing the group. The text of his letter, drafted with the help of his father, ran along the lines of “Brian Epstein’s got the Beatles, you need us.” Bloom was impressed by their cheek and passed the missive on to his friend Leslie Conn, an associate of the Beatles’ publisher Dick James. The group was invited to prove its mettle at Bloom’s wedding anniversary party at a Soho nightclub, where pop singer Adam Faith and World War II icon Vera Lynn were booked to top the bill.

  The King Bees, again featuring George Underwood (left), perform “Liza Jane” on The Beat Room, summer 1964.

  Bowie’s first recorded appearance (as Davie Jones) was the Vocalion single “Liza Jane.”

  The appearance was a disaster. Bloom was appalled by the King Bees’ raucous, Stones-y racket and pulled the plug, but Conn loved them and offered to become their manager. As Bowie was only seventeen, Conn visited Plaistow Grove to obtain David’s parents’ signatures on the group’s contract. Bowie immediately quit his job and took to hanging out at Conn’s offices on Denmark Street, London’s own Tin Pan Alley of music publishers, booking agents, and management companies. It was there that he first encountered another Conn protégé, Mark Feld—soon to rebrand himself as Marc Bolan—whose career was at a similarly embryonic stage. Conn gave the pair the job of painting his office “a shitty green” color, beginning their infamous fifteen-year friendship and rivalry.

  “Marc was very much the mod and I was sort of neo-beat-hippy,” Bowie recalled to MOJO regarding their initial clash of youth cults. “He went, ‘Oh, I’m going to be a singer and I’m gonna be so big you’re not gonna believe it.’ Oh right! Well, I’ll probably write a musical for you one day then, ’cos I’m going to be the greatest writer ever. It was all this. Just whitewashing walls in our manager’s office.”

  Conn’s involvement quickly paid off; Davie Jones with the King Bees, as they were billed, signed with Vocalion for a single, “Liza Jane,” a reworking by Bowie and Underwood of an old folk song. Released in June 1964, it was an underwhelming vinyl debut for the future superstar—and an early lesson in sharp management practices, since Leslie Conn’s name mysteriously appeared on the record as the song’s author. Decca pushed the single hard, but even two TV performances, on Ready Steady Go! and The Beat Room, where Bowie cut a dash in knee-high suede boots and a leather jerkin, couldn’t shift any copies.

  When it was obvious the single was a flop, Bowie dramatically informed his bandmates he was quitting for pastures new. They were stunned. Underwood was particularly ruffled by his best friend’s capricious behavior—though, thanks to Conn’s help, the King Bees’ demise enabled Underwood to enjoy a short-lived solo career as a protégé of producer Mickie Most before finding his vocation in the world of art. Bowie, meanwhile, headed off into deepest Kent to try his luck with a band he considered better attuned to the craze for tough, horn-driven R & B and soul music that was gripping mod-era Britain. The outfit, another in Conn’s stable, was called the Manish Boys. Bowie met them on their home turf in Kent, where they made it clear they “didn’t want him” as they already had a singer. Conn argued that Bowie’s experience as a recorded artist and veteran of the nation’s biggest TV music shows was exactly the injection of star quality they required. So, in July 1964, Bowie jumped into the Manish Boys’ beat-up Bedford van and spent the next twelve months gigging around the UK.

  Television journalist Barry Langford ruffles David’s long hair outside BBC Television Centre in March 1965.

  On stage, Bowie relished performing camp routines and winning over rowdy crowds, while off stage he gained a reputation as an incorrigible ladies’ man, determined to bed as many admiring fans as he could. Women found his boyish charm irresistible. Singer Dana Gillespie first encountered him around this time backstage at the Marquee Club in Soho. “I was brushing my hair and he took the brush and carried on brushing,” she recalled to writer Peter Doggett. “He asked if he could stay at my home… I had a single bed so it was a tight squeeze. His hair was so long my parents thought he was a girl.”

  In November 1964, Bowie’s hair—uncommonly lengthy, even for a rocker—was the catalyst for an invaluable piece of free publicity. After kidding a reporter on the prowl on Denmark Street that he was a member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Men with Long Hair, he ended up appearing with his group on the primetime BBC television show Tonight. “We’re all fairly tolerant,” he deadpanned, “but for the last two years we’ve had comments like ‘Darlin’ and ‘Can I carry your handbag?’ thrown at us. It has to stop!”

  An undated promotional photo, likely taken around the time of the release of “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving” in 1965.

  The reality was far worse. Bowie, disposed to wearing his hair in girlish pigtails tied up with pink ribbons, had been punched in the street several times for his provocative looks. He didn’t seem to care. The TV appearance brought him national attention, and the band was booked onto a package tour in December 1964 headlined by the Kinks and Marianne Faithfull. The momentum continued into January 1965, when Conn teamed them with the Who’s producer Shel Talmy to cut a cover of soul singer Bobby Bland’s “I Pity the Fool” and a zippy Bowie original, “Take My Tip.” Future Led Zeppelin star Jimmy Page, back then a session guitarist, appeared on the tracks but coolly informed the group that the record “wasn’t a hit.” He was proved correct, and after the single failed to make an impression, Bowie replayed his end game with the Kon-rads and King Bees and suddenly quit without ceremony. The last the Manish Boys saw of its hirsute singer was after a gig in Bletchley on April 24, when Bowie disappeared into the night with a female groupie.

  Conn understood Bowie’s frustration with the single’s failure, but he also needed to keep him working. Outwardly, the singer appeared assured of his future stardom, but inevitably there were occasional flashes of self-doubt. “I might have moments of, God, I don’t think anything is ever going to happen for me,” he later admitted. “But I would soon bounce back.” The bustling La Gioconda café on Denmark was the perfect spot to meet other musicians planning their next moves. While sipping a coffee, Bowie was noticed by members of the Lower Third, a singer-less group from Margate in Kent, who mistook him, as many did at the time, for the Yardbirds’ Keith Relf. Discovering he wasn’t Relf, but an experienced vocalist nonetheless, they invited him to an audition at the nearby La Discotheque on Wardour Street, a dingy club that had recently made the newspapers when its doorman was shot for refusing entry to a local Soho gangster.

  The Lower Third’s contract to appear at the Marquee in London, for a fee of £20 per night.

  Bowie turned up with his friend Steve Marriott from the Small Faces in tow for moral support and impressed the band enough for them to agree to be his new backing outfit. In June, Davy Jones and the Lower Third set out on a string of dates in the Midlands and the South, but by this time, Conn had tired of life in band management and quit the business, annulling his contract with the singer. Enter another habitué of La Gioconda, Ralph Horton, a former road manager for the Moody Blues. Horton was a fascinating character, not least because he was a player on the Soho gay scene which Bowie had become a curious spectator of and sometime participant in. Even back in the Kon-rads days, Bowie had declared he was bisexual, with little evidence to back up his claim. But with the Soho mod scene overlapping with underground gay culture—homosexuality was illegal in the UK until 1967—the taboo surrounding same-sex relationships was giving way to a thirst for experimentation. As the Who’s Pete Townshend explained, “We thought David Bowie was gay. We thought all cool people were gay.”

  The Lower Third onstage at the Marquee in 1965.

  The Parlophone Records single of “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving,” credited to Davy Jones.

  Horton began touting around his new charge, sensing he needed a more established manager to loo
k after the business side of things. “I was managing the Yardbirds and received a phone call from someone I didn’t know who introduced himself as Ralph Horton,” Simon Napier-Bell recalled to the author. “He said he had an artist he was managing that he was sure I’d be interested in. I went round to his basement flat near Victoria station, down a few steps, a bit dingy. In the corner was a young man. Ralph introduced him as David and said in due course he’d be the biggest star in the world. If I would agree to co-manage him with Ralph I could not only have half the profits, I could also have sex with him. I turned and left. I never felt I’d turned down David Bowie because at that time Bowie didn’t yet exist.”

  Bowie’s metamorphosis into an increasingly exotic mod peacock—sharp suit, sculpted hair, Italian loafers—was accompanied by a new stage name, assumed in September 1965, a few weeks after Davy Jones and the Lower Third’s first single, the Who-inspired “You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving,” sunk without trace. The name change was motivated by a phone call Ralph Horton had made to his friend, Manfred Mann’s manager, Ken Pitt, asking if he would help manage the singer. Pitt told Horton he was too busy at present, but did suggest Bowie should change his name; Pitt had read that a British actor named Davy Jones had just signed up to star in an American TV series about a fictional Beatles-style group called the Monkees.

  David had been drawn to the name “Bowie” ever since seeing the 1960 film The Alamo, in which Davy Crockett (played by John Wayne) and Jim Bowie (Richard Widmark) stage a heroic defense of the titular fort. Jim Bowie had also given his name to the Bowie knife, the basis for the US Army’s survival knife, further enhancing the name’s dangerous magnetism. “It is the medium for a conglomerate of statements and illusions,” Bowie floridly explained at the time. The first show with his new moniker was on September 21 at the 100 Club on London’s Oxford Street, and though he would legally remain David Jones for the rest of his life, the stage name stuck.

  Horton felt that Bowie would benefit from a different sound and introduced him to Tony Hatch, Pye Records’ in-house producer/writer, whose own successes as a songwriter included the Searchers’ “Sugar and Spice” and Petula Clark’s “Downtown.” The result was one of Bowie’s finest pre-fame singles, “Can’t Help Thinking About Me”; the crooned verses and rowdy choruses showcased his characterful baritone, and the narcissistic, mod-minded title concealed a poignant account of his uncomfortable life at Plaistow Grove. Positive notices in the press failed to propel the single onto the chart, as did a launch party at Victoria Tavern near Hyde Park, attended by John Lennon’s father, Freddie, then enjoying a brief rapprochement with his son. Though the party went with a swing, with Bowie applying his boundless charm to the music biz types and journalists in attendance, behind the scenes, his group was nearing mutiny.

  Davy Jones, as he was still calling himself, plays a Framus twelve-string acoustic, 1965.

  If the Lower Third’s credit on the single wasn’t sufficiently demeaning—“David Bowie” appeared in large type, “With The Lower Third” in small type—then Horton’s condescending attitude toward it underlined its place in the hierarchy. A loan from a London businessman, with vague terms that didn’t require any repayment unless Bowie earned over £100 a month, had enabled the manager to indulge his enthusiasm for high living. Wild parties raged at his Warwick Square bachelor pad, and he bought a flashy Mk 10 Jaguar car. Little, if any, of this new wealth trickled down to the Lower Third. On a trip to Paris, Horton had whisked Bowie back to London in the Jag, leaving the group to trundle home in their converted ambulance. Worse, in the last week of January, Horton refused to pay the group, claiming that their money had been swallowed up by expenses. A standoff took place before at show at Bromley’s Bromel Club, and the Lower Third walked.

  Bowie works on lyrics for his first album outside a café on Clapham Common, London, in 1966.

  Bowie’s reaction was typically airy and pragmatic: he simply advertised for replacement musicians in Melody Maker, consigning another backing group to the dustbin of history. The successful applicants, collectively christened the Buzz, promoted the Lower Third’s single before backing Bowie on a second Pye release in April 1966, “Do Anything You Say,” effectively David Bowie’s first solo record since the Buzz was uncredited on the label. “Do Anything You Say” had none of its predecessor’s élan, and it flopped. But it did coincide with Horton’s friend Ken Pitt finally taking an interest in the singer.

  Bowie and his latest group, the Buzz, at his old stomping ground, the Marquee, in April 1966.

  The fateful meeting occurred at a Radio London–sponsored showcase at the Marquee Club, billed as the “Bowie Showboat.” Pitt was deeply impressed with Bowie’s performance, which ended with either a stirring version of “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from the musical Carousel or else possibly Anthony Newley’s “What Kind of Fool Am I?” (accounts differ), with Bowie dramatically illuminated in a spotlight. “Standing at the back of the Marquee, I realised straight away David was somebody very different,” Pitt told journalist Chris Welch. “I’d never seen an artist like him. When the show was over and the people were leaving, David walked up to me and I was delighted to find he had an amazing sense of humour.”

  Unlike Horton, Pitt—a D-Day veteran—was an industry heavyweight who had worked in PR and promotion since the mid-1950s and was referred to by Frank Sinatra as “my man in London.” His clients had included everyone from Liberace to Bob Dylan, and in recent years, he had steered Manfred Mann into the charts with “Do Wah Diddy Diddy.” Pitt agreed to help manage Bowie, though it quickly became apparent that his and Horton’s business affairs were in a parlous state. “The morning after our first meeting I had lots of bills arriving on my desk,” Pitt explained to Welch. “They included one from Pye Records. It seems Ralph had purchased a large number of David’s records and never paid for them. I also discovered they’d never paid their electricity bill so it was always being cut off. Not that there was much money coming in, but all the bills were paid.”

  The “I Dig Everything” single, released just before Bowie’s twentieth birthday.

  In August, Bowie released another Tony Hatch–produced single, the funky swinging ’60s wig-out “I Dig Everything,” promoted with a nationwide tour. The song added to Bowie’s growing pile of failures, so to bring in some much-needed cash, Pitt extended the band’s concert schedule right through until December, when the singer declared he no longer wanted to play live and the Buzz quietly disbanded. By then, it had become clear why Bowie was ready to shed another skin: there had been a radical change in the style of songs he wanted to write and perform. Earlier in the year, Pye had passed on the opportunity to release a Bowie song called “The London Boys,” a semi-spoken, semi-autobiographical tale of a seventeen-year-old leaving home for the pill-popping demimonde of Soho’s back streets. In terms of lyrical depth, it was a huge leap forward for Bowie, and Pitt encouraged the singer to write more story-songs. A tape of “The London Boys” plus the equally theatrical but far stranger “Rubber Band” and “Please Mr. Gravedigger” convinced Decca’s experimental offshoot Deram that Bowie, due to celebrate his twentieth birthday in January 1967, was finally coming of age as a songwriter.

  By the time “Rubber Band” and “The London Boys” were bundled as a single in December 1966—which tanked—sessions for Bowie’s self-titled debut album were already underway at Decca’s studio in Hampstead, North London, overseen by producer Mike Vernon and engineer Gus Dudgeon. The influence of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds permeated the new material, which forsook R & B in favor of complex baroque pop songs featuring quirky time signatures and woodwind, brass, and strings. The orchestrations were scored by Bowie along with the Buzz’s bassist Dek Fearnley—neither of whom had previous experience producing charts for professional players.

  An early taste of the sessions, “The Laughing Gnome,” appeared as a single in April 1967 and has ever since been seized upon as evidence that Bowie had lost his marbles—though one wonder
s if this comedy record about “a little old man, in scarlet and grey” wasn’t meant entirely as a joke, chiming as it did with psychedelia’s obsession with childhood memories, fairy-tale creatures, and drug-induced visions.

  Released as a single in April 1967, “The Laughing Gnome” gave listeners an early taste of the sessions for Bowie’s self-titled debut.

  Bowie’s debut album, released on June 1 and simply titled David Bowie, proved to be similarly out there. Its fourteen songs, half-sung in a mannered London accent, inhabited a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang–type world where music hall, fantasy, and pop music converged. Unlike “The Laughing Gnome,” however, there was little to smile at. “Uncle Arthur,” “Little Bombardier,” and “Come and Buy My Toys” were unsettling vignettes of a dark adult world viewed through child’s eyes; there were also traces of the dystopian sci-fi themes of Bowie’s later work, most strikingly in “We Are Hungry Men,” a disconcerting tale of a future race ensuring its purity through abortions and infanticide. Confusingly, the album also included the straight pop of “Love You Till Tuesday,” the obvious choice for a single that July.