| I became a huge fan of David Bowie from the moment I first saw him perform Starman on TOTP on Thursday 6 July 1972 (the internet is an amazing thing, isn't it?). Since the Apollo moon landings back in 1969 I had been heavily into space exploration, and Starman (and the reissued Space Oddity) really caught my imagination at the impressionable age of fourteen - I was reading a lot of science fiction too - Heinlein, Bradbury, Fred Hoyle, HG Wells etc. as well as stuff like Huxley and Orwell, so it all kind of fell together... |
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The first Bowie album I bought was the embarrassing one with Laughing Gnome on - well it was cheap! The ones below are the real deal though, and saw me safely through my adolescence, shaping my identity and confusing my parents - oh, my poor old dad!              
After Lodger my interest in his new stuff petered out. I was drawn to punk and new wave, and then electronica, and Bowie seemed to have become a bit of an old fart, moving away from the experimental and interesting, and into mainstream pop - not at all my bag at the time. I flickered in and out of Bowie consciousness over the next three decades but it wasn't really until the 2000s, after my 90s baroque soujourn, that my interest was rekindled and I discovered the back catalogue, at least as far back as Black Tie White Noise and eventually Tin Machine, still can't get fully down with the 80s quartet: Scary Monster, Let's Dance, Tonight and the aptly named Never Let Me Down. David Live I first saw David Bowie live on 18th June 1973 at Bristol Colston Hall. We (Robin, Simon and I) had tickets in row 3 of the stalls. It was my first proper gig and I can remember vividly Beethoven's Ode to Joy playing at the beginning (the Wendy (at that time Walter) Carlos version). It was a bit dance in your seats until the start of the second half when they started playing Jean Genie and all hell broke loose. We got down to the front and I was grabbing Mick Ronson's leg and strumming his guitar. I still regret at the end not crawling under the tables which held up the PA - there was a direct route to backstage!... Here are some other people's memories of the Ziggy/Aladdin Sane tour, and Ziggy tour information on Wikipedia. And here's a setlist from four nights before in Salisbury, and I think I have the ticket somewhere... |
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The second time I saw Bowie was exactly ten years later on July 1st 1983, on the Serious Moonlight tour in Milton Keynes. Here is some tour information from Wikipedia. Below are some of my typically shaky photos. | |
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