In an extract from Chris O’Leary’s new book Ashes to Ashes, we witness David Bowie at a turning point in his career
Around 1976, London clubs began having “Bowie nights”, where DJs played Bowie records and clubgoers came dressed as an edition of him. For some, it was the pupal stage before they became punks. Others kept at it. By 1978, the big Bowie night was at Billy’s in Soho, where Rusty Egan was the DJ and Steve Strange worked the door. By the turn of the 80s, the scene had shifted to the Blitz club in Covent Garden, where Bowie nights became competitive pose-offs. Doing a variation on Bowie was work. In summer 1980, Jon Savage saw a group whose lead singer, “banging around in a Lurex mini-dress, was drawing entirely from a vocabulary invented by Bowie. And people stood and took it.” Egan and Strange formed Visage, later described by Simon Reynolds as “a confederacy of punk failures looking for a second shot at stardom” (so, very Bowie).
Bowie recognised his heirs, visiting the Blitz (he was sneaked in and ensconced in an upper room, like slumming royalty) and using Strange and other Blitz kids as mourners in his video for Ashes to Ashes. Each party had few illusions about the other. Strange regarded Bowie as a skilled operator, someone “allowed to get his ideas across quicker than up-and-coming bands. He’s always in the right place at the right time, checking out ideas. When he was in London he was always at the Blitz or at Hell.” And Bowie bottled his thoughts into Teenage Wildlife, his early midlife crisis song.
Continue reading...from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2NeVgF1
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