Bowie (6 page)

The end result was that, even to this day, David’s left pupil remains permanently dilated, giving that eye the appearance of being a different color from his right eye. It also left him with damaged depth perception, so that when he drove, cars didn’t come toward him but just appeared to get bigger.

His unmatched eyes also lent his gaze a hypnotic quality, and although it took him some time to adjust to the fact that his eyes were no longer identical, and he thought that he looked “weird,” he admitted, “I quite enjoyed that as a badge of honor.”

 THREE 

SELLING HIMSELF TO THE WORLD

A
lthough George Underwood’s punch had damaged his vision irrevocably, David knew that his own nefarious plotting had provoked the attack, and that fact, coupled with his good nature, caused him to forgive George, and their friendship continued, undiminished. By the time he was fourteen, George, who was handsome and talented, had already sung with a local band, the Kon-rads, who played pop covers. A year later, in June 1962, David became the band’s saxophonist, calling himself Dave Jay, and also provided some backing vocals, while George was lead vocalist.

Soon David was playing gigs with the band, sometimes as Davie Jones, other times as David Jay. His first public performance with the Kon-rads took place at his school’s summer fete. He was nervous but the show went without a hitch, as the band performed covers of Little Richard’s “Lucille,” Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the Night Away,” and more. Although David was the youngest member of the Kon-rads, his creativity was already aflame, and he was constantly suggesting new songs and new outfits for the band, as he pushed to be allowed to write songs for them.

After leaving school in July 1963, on August 29, David made his first professional studio recording, singing backup on the Kon-rads’
“I Never Dreamed,” a landmark event in his young life. An assistant to Eric Easton, a manager of the Rolling Stones, had seen the band onstage and invited them to audition for the Decca Records label, who then invited them to make a studio recording of the song. Decca’s reaction to it, however, was negative.

So David, never one to cling to the wreckage of a sinking ship, moved forward on his own, and with George Underwood formed the rhythm and blues band the King Bees, and set about trying to get financing for them. In April 1964, in an enterprising move, which more than likely was orchestrated by his father, David decided to make an appeal to one of Britain’s richest men, washing machine tycoon John Bloom, and ask him to invest in him and the King Bees.

“His father probably helped him concoct the letter,” John Bloom says today. “In it, he wrote, ‘Brian Epstein’s got the Beatles, you should have us. If you can sell my group the way you sell washing machines, you’ll be on to a winner.’ ”

David’s chutzpah impressed Bloom, who, as it happened, had met the Beatles, liked music, and said to himself, “This is just another young kid, but then what was Ringo?”

“So I thought I’d give David a chance, and called my friend Leslie Conn, who ran Doris Day’s music publishing company and was also a talent scout for the Dick James Organization,” John Bloom said.

One of the few music industry figures instrumental in David’s early career who wasn’t gay, Leslie Conn, who also managed a young singer from Stamford Hill named Marc Feld (later Marc Bolan), invited David to audition at his Marble Arch, London, apartment. Upon hearing David perform, Conn decided that the teen had potential and signed David and the King Bees on the spot.

“He was as broke as any of the kids in those days, but he walked around like a star and was prepared to work for success,” Leslie Conn said, years later.

Unfortunately for David and the King Bees, the first gig that Leslie booked for them was singing at John Bloom’s wedding anniversary party.

As John remembers, “I’d invited Roger Moore, Vera Lynn, Adam Faith, Shirley Bassey, and all the top London show business impresarios to the party, and invited David and the King Bees to perform as I thought it would be good for him. David took the stage wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt. His hair was relatively short and dyed a cornflower blond with a Tony Curtis quiff. He looked like a young waiter who had blown his first check on a bad haircut,” John Bloom said.

The party was held at the Jack of Clubs nightclub in London’s Berwick Street, and when David and the King Bees started their set, the guests were in the middle of eating and ignored them, chatting away to each other instead.

“I did not realize how tiny Bowie was until I saw him on the stage that night. The thing I noticed was that he had really small feet. He was very pleasant but subdued: He seemed tired, even a bit nervous,” John Bloom said. “But most of the people in the room were in their sixties, and they didn’t understand or like the kind of songs David and the King Bees were singing. I wanted the party to be special for my wife, and I was worried that it would turn out to be a disaster.

“So I went up to Billy Wright, who captained England at football, and before David and the King Bees launched into their next song, on my request, Billy went up to them and told them nicely to pack up. I was very sorry, and I gave Leslie £100 for David and the King Bees on the spot. Then Vera Lynn came on next and sang, ‘The White Cliffs of Dover,’ ” John Bloom said.

Fortunately, David’s failure to wow the establishment at John Bloom’s anniversary party didn’t sour his new manager, Leslie Conn, on him at all. Despite the fiasco of his anniversary party, John Bloom also somehow still retained his belief in David as well.

He remembered, “I sent Leslie another £400 for David and the King Bees, and the next thing I knew, Leslie called me and told me he had got a record deal for them.”

That record deal was with Decca Records, and, on June 5, 1964, David’s first record, “Liza Jane,” an arrangement of the old standard
“Li’l Liza Jane,” produced by Leslie Conn, was released as a single. By then, David had left Bromley Technical High School and was working in an advertising agency called Nevin D. Hirst on London’s tony Bond Street, where he was employed as a junior visualizer (now known as a storyboard artist, a freelance artist who sketches out commercials and advertisements at the behest of the company’s art director.)

David worked in advertising for a year and along the way was able to glean the basics of advertising and marketing, drinking in the ethos of the industry as epitomized by the words of the adman in Hitchcock’s
North by Northwest
: “In the world of advertising there’s no such thing as a lie, there’s only the expedient exaggeration.”

All of this would color his future dealings with the media, so that Ken Scott, who produced several of his early albums, would go on to observe, “You never quite knew when he was being honest. It’s not something I realized at the time, but seeing various explanations in interviews of something I’d known about, I’d think, ‘Ah, so that’s what you’re like.’ ”

David’s schooling in the mores of advertising, marketing, and self-salesmanship would color his future pronouncements (most likely his slick explanation of the choice of Bowie as a last name), which meant they were not always strictly accurate. At the time, though, he kicked against the conventionality of his working life.

“He only took the job for his father’s sake. His father thought that all this business with groups and music could well be a passing fad and that, at least if he spent a year or so at work, it would give him some stable grounding to fall back on,” his mother, Peggy, remembered, adding: “So David went to work there, though not without protest. I can remember him coming home and moaning about his ‘blooming job.’ ”

On Saturdays, he had a morning job at a local record store, Vic Furlong’s, but it didn’t last long—Furlong fired him because he considered him to be a dreamer who talked too much. Nonetheless, music
remained his goal, his raison d’être. “I never, ever thought about the big house or the big car or anything like that. It never entered my mind,” he once said of his youthful ambitions.

In his spare time, he was single-minded about his music, so dedicated and determined that he ran the risk of alienating his peers. “What made him different was he would pass a party or anything up if there was something he needed to do for his music,” observed one of his contemporaries.

Through Leslie Conn’s persistence, “Liza Jane” was played on the BBC’s
Juke Box Jury
, in which a panel of four celebrities listened to a song—while the artist who recorded it was hidden behind a screen—then voted on whether it was a hit or a miss.

Sadly for David and the King Bees, the
Juke Box Jury
members’ vote was a resounding “miss”—but David wasn’t about to give up yet. Nor was his father, John Jones, who resorted to contacting former Dr. Barnardo’s boy Leslie Thomas, then a music columnist for the
London Evening News.

Leslie Thomas recalled, “John called and told me that his son was now a pop singer who had just produced his first record. ‘I think it’s terrible,’ John said. Then he added, ‘But would you listen to it?’ ”

Leslie obliged. He wasn’t particularly impressed, but wrote a small column item plugging David and “Liza Jane.” Still, his efforts came to no avail, and the record sank without a trace. By the summer of 1964, the King Bees were history for David, as he had moved on to become the lead singer and tenor sax player in the Manish Boys, a rhythm and blues band that mostly performed their own material and was based in Maidstone, Kent.

David disliked the band because it was too big; he also hated living in Maidstone, and when he cut a record with the band—the blues song “I Pity the Fool” and. on the B side, the first song he had ever written and composed, “Take My Tip,” a jazz-based song for EMI’s Parlophone—he was furious when the band refused to give him an individual credit on the label.

He might have been part of the Manish Boys, but inside, David had always seen himself as a star who stood on his own. So he was heartened when his father came up with a masterstroke—one that would solely focus on David, and him alone. John Jones swung into action and, applying his well-honed PR skills, along with David’s input, concocted a cause designed to thrust David into the limelight and—John hoped—win him some notice. Along the way, of course, David had the opportunity to observe and study his father’s PR techniques, which he would one day adopt.

Consequently, in November 1964, at John Jones’s behest, the ever-obliging Leslie Thomas published an article in the
Evening News
titled, “For Those Beyond the Fringe,” announcing the formation of a new society, the International League for the Preservation of Animal Filament, whose founder and president was none other than David Jones.

On November 12, 1964, in his second TV appearance after his brief moment on
Juke Box Jury
, David appeared on the prime-time BBC program
Tonight
, pontificated with polish and great self-possession about the trials and tribulations of sporting long hair, and announced, “You’ve no idea the indignities you have to suffer just because you’ve got long hair.” After the
Evening News
feature, in the interest of clarity, the name of the International League for the Preservation of Animal Filament was changed to the much more media-friendly Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men.

Declaring that he was targeting P. J. Proby and the Beatles as potential members, David also cited the Rolling Stones as prime candidates to join the society. In mentioning the Rolling Stones, David may well have left a clue as to the whole genesis of the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men Society: his memory of seeing Mick open for Little Richard, then being taunted for his long hair and cleverly defending himself, something that David said he would never forget, and most likely had imparted to his father in detail.

Following in Mick’s footsteps—something he would at times do in the future—and determined to expose the outrages inflicted on him
and others with long hair, David, already a consummate performer, laid on the drama as heavily as possible. “Dozens of times I’ve been politely told to clear out of the lounge bar at public houses. Everybody makes jokes about you on a bus, and if you go past navvies digging in the road, it’s murder,” he said. Then he delivered a final punch line, “We’ve had comments like ‘Darling’ and ‘Can I carry your handbag?’ thrown at us. And it has to stop!”