Spider from Mars Read online

  It sounds so simple to say it, but a lot of recording bands don’t grasp it, and seek perfection rather than communication. If a shit snare sound does something wonderful to a song, you don’t send out for a better snare drum and tune it up and record it again, because you’ll kill the special thing that you had.

  ‘Soul Love’ is next. The concept of these alien songs was important, so when I picked a drum beat I didn’t want it to be too unfamiliar; I wanted it to have a futuristic edge without being gimmicky. I tried to find that in all the tracks. I knew how John Bonham or Deep Purple’s Ian Paice would do it, but that wasn’t the point. As I’ve said, I followed the maxim that less was more, and avoided making everything too busy.

  The new version of ‘Moonage Daydream’, which we’d recorded before with Arnold Corns, blew our heads off when we finished it. It was a dirty, sexy, rock ’n’ roll track from the future, and I had to communicate that, so I had to find a beat that not only rocked but was a stable rhythmical pulse that would work even through the far-out solo sections.

  And then there’s ‘Starman’, which might be Bowie’s best-known song, alongside ‘Heroes’ or ‘Space Oddity’, perhaps. It’s funny to think that when we finished recording the Ziggy album, it wasn’t on it.

  I remember how this went. Ziggy Stardust was done as far as we were concerned, but Defries came to Bowie and told him that RCA needed a single. They liked the album, but they didn’t feel that it had a song that would grab people instantly.

  ‘I’m going to write my own “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”,’ said Bowie, sitting down to write a song on his acoustic guitar. We went back to Trident between Christmas and January and recorded ‘Starman’. Without that one track, the album might not have come out at all.

  ‘It Ain’t Easy’ was hard to play because there’s a bass drum and the jangling guitars, but no hi-hat to help me keep time. Getting that to feel good and be on time was tricky. ‘Lady Stardust’ is dead straight when it comes to the drums, and ‘Star’ is a steal from Mitch Mitchell’s beat in Jimi Hendrix’s ‘I Don’t Live Today’, but speeded up, because it kicks. As a future rock band, we thought, you would be influenced by the great rock artists of the past, hence the Jimi reference.

  ‘Hang On To Yourself’ was partly ‘borrowed’ by the Sex Pistols. Glen Matlock came to a talk I gave and told me, ‘You know I ripped off the bass part, note for note, for “God Save the Queen”?’ That had never occurred to me before. We were full of youthful arrogance when we played this. We were saying, ‘Pin back your fucking ears and listen!’

  The drum beat in ‘Ziggy Stardust’ is influenced by King Crimson, believe it or not. I love ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’ because of the way that Michael Giles starts and ends the rolls in unusual places. I thought the whole feel of this song would suit that approach.

  ‘Suffragette City’ was just balls to the wall and go for it. It’s one of those funny grooves: you listen to it and you think ‘Is that all there is to it?’, but when I tried different beats the song was diminished. Somehow the beat that is on there keeps the listener involved and doesn’t let up. You are in there until the end. Talking of endings, ‘Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide’ almost ends the Ziggy album on a downer, but by the end it takes everything up a notch again.

  As we were recording Ziggy, we gradually realized that we were capturing something that was modern, fresh and in the right creative spirit. There’s an immediacy, a nowness, that gets onto the vinyl, which bands that do thirty takes nowadays and join six of them up in Pro-Tools never achieve. The playing might be superlative, but there’s no life to it. That happened in later years: rock went up its own arse and everybody lost out. Kids nowadays are used to hearing empty, lifeless music made with digital technology.

  We were starting to think of our music as something special at that point. But while I knew the music was good, and I was incredibly proud of it, I was concerned that it might be a bit much for the public. Was it too weird? Would anybody understand it? Possibly, and possibly not. A cheesy song called ‘Knock Three Times’ by Tony Orlando & Dawn was Number 1 at the time, and there was lots of average music of that sort in the charts.

  Bowie was determined. He was really going for it, 24/7, which was impressive. He didn’t have any ‘ifs’ – ‘if’ we make it, or ‘if’ we do this or that – even though he didn’t have it all together yet. He was trying everything to make it work.

  Like him, we were in this for a reason: we wanted to kick the music business up the arse. Every now and then the business needs to be shocked by somebody approaching it from a new angle – something that hasn’t been done before – and that’s where we felt we came in. We wanted to make it more entertaining, create some great rock music and tour the world. The artist is often a rebel against the status quo, because he or she sees that something needs to be said, or improved, or changed. That impulse is there, and is one of the reasons I became an artist, a peaceful way of making things better.

  Mick, Trevor and I moved out of Haddon Hall in late 1971. It had been a fun place to be, of course; at one point, I saw half a dozen naked girls who turned out to be models from various fashion magazines dancing around downstairs, giggling and screaming. I recognized one of them from a shampoo ad on TV. This happened when Mick and I were still sleeping on the landing. I woke up, peered through the banisters and couldn’t believe my eyes.

  ‘Mick!’ I hissed. ‘Wake up!’

  It was early afternoon, so we hadn’t got up yet.

  Mick opened an eye and groaned, ‘What is it, Woods?’

  ‘Look down there!’

  He crawled over to the banisters, looked down at what was going on and started to laugh. So did I.

  Angie, who was down there with the dancing girls, saw us and shouted up, ‘Put your hard-ons away, boys, they’re all lesbians.’

  Mick said, ‘I’m hungry – aren’t you?’

  I said, ‘Yeah.’

  And down we went. It was the best tea and toast we’d ever had.

  It wasn’t always like this: sorry to disappoint you. Over the years, there have been rumours about the orgies that supposedly took place at Haddon Hall when we were there. There were certainly odd times where I’d meet people I hadn’t seen before at breakfast, and I’d think, ‘I wonder where they slept last night?’, but if there were any orgies our invitations must have been lost in the post.

  Anyway, after a year and a half or so, Haddon Hall was getting a bit overcrowded with all the Bowies’ friends coming over and hanging about. We had a bit of money by now because our weekly wage had gone up to £50, so we wanted a flat of our own and moved down to a place at 6 Beckenham Road, about a mile away.

  We still went over and rehearsed at Haddon Hall, though.

  Hunky Dory was released on 17 December 1971, which was an exciting time for us. We could hear ourselves on the radio at last and it started to feel as if we were on our way.

  The album has that amazing cover image, with Bowie in a sexually ambiguous pose and long blond hair. He had taken a Marlene Dietrich photo book to the photo session, so the pose was definitely influenced by her look. Bowie’s school friend George Underwood contributed to the artwork – the same George who infamously, and accidentally, gave Bowie an enlarged pupil during a fight when they were both about fifteen. It left Bowie looking as if he had different coloured eyes.

  The album did moderately well, compared to Bowie’s previous releases. The songs are great and it was clear that we as a band were moving up to another level, somehow. The four of us had been giving it everything we’d got. Even though Hunky Dory wasn’t a big hit, and ‘Changes’ didn’t chart when it was released as a single in January 1972, it did receive plenty of airplay and it felt as if major developments were around the corner.

  We couldn’t have imagined just how major . . .

  6

  STARMAN

  The year 1972 was shaping up to be an insane one for us. An English tour was booked from January until September; The Rise
and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars was set to come out in June on RCA, even though we were still flying high because Hunky Dory had just been released; and, in the autumn, we were going to America for the very first time as a band.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  It’s hard to imagine now, but ridicule and career suicide were very real concerns. We knew our music was brilliant, but our look . . . Our ‘education’ on showmanship and image had started back in Haddon Hall around the time we were recording Ziggy. We always had weekends off and David used them.

  ‘There’s a play in London that I’d like us all to go and see,’ he announced one day.

  ‘What’s it called?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t give a shit what it’s called,’ he said. ‘The lighting director there is really good and I want you to get an idea of what can be done with lights.’

  Looking back, I suppose that, at the time, bands would use red, green and yellow lights and possibly a strobe light. It was very basic. So he more or less asked us to watch the lighting, not the play. It was quite an eye-opener when we saw how the lights integrated with the music and the scene on the stage, and helped create more impact.

  Once we even went to see a ballet – I think it was The Nutcracker – which was funny because we all thought it was just a night out and we bought popcorn, crisps and Cokes before we went in. When the performance started we had to very gently place these things on the floor as they were too noisy to devour! I actually enjoyed the ballet, which surprised me. And once again we saw how the lighting added so much to the performance.

  David was tackling us on the clothes front too. We had a bit of a clothes allowance now and so we started to shop on the fashionable King’s Road in Chelsea. We particularly liked Alkasura – which was a favourite of Marc Bolan – and Mr Fish (owned by Michael Fish, who’d designed the dress Bowie wore on the front of The Man Who Sold the World). Freddie Burretti, David’s friend and clothes designer, had also introduced us to Stirling Cooper clothes, which we liked because of the cut of the jackets and the trousers, which were more like jeans and fitted well around the crutch. Very rock ’n’ roll.

  I remember the first time we went to these chic clothes shops, Bowie bought a black and green striped satin suit. I bought a brown velvet jacket with a peplum and embroidery down the front, and a mustard-yellow canvas jacket. Mick got a suede jacket that had multicoloured snakeskin lapels. We also bought t-shirts with unique designs.

  The femininity and sheer outrageousness of the offstage clothes, let alone the soon to come onstage gear, was a stretch for us at first, I admit. But after a while, we calmed down and got used to the idea. We knew we couldn’t just wear jeans and t-shirts any more, on or offstage. It wouldn’t have worked. Plus we got used to standing out in a crowd, pretty quickly I might add. So it definitely appealed to our rebellious artistic instincts.

  For shoes, more prosaically we went to Russell & Bromley. I remember the sales assistant looking at our selection and saying, ‘You do know these are girls’ shoes?’ We did! They looked better and more stylish than any men’s shoes and complemented our new clothes. It’s quite ironic that Mick, Trevor and I chose these ourselves, considering our initial reaction to what we’d be wearing on stage in a short while.

  So we had started to look more like a rock ’n’ roll band. At least, we thought we did.

  One weekend at Haddon Hall Bowie started to talk about our stage clothes. He mentioned the films A Clockwork Orange and 2001, A Space Odyssey which we all loved. He said he liked the look of the ‘Droogs’ in A Clockwork Orange – who were dressed the same, all in white, their trousers tucked into black ankle boots – and thought we should look like a gang. He then showed us some drawings he’d done, of collarless bomber jackets with zip-up fronts and lace-up boots which almost came up to the knee. I think at the time we just shrugged it off as an ‘idea’, although we did like the concept of being a gang.

  A week later we found ourselves in the fabrics department of Liberty of London, following David and Angie as they sorted through the shelves. Occasionally they’d ask us, ‘What do you think to this?’ We hadn’t really joined up the dots at this point so we’d answer dismissively, ‘It’s all right.’ Between ourselves we’d be saying, ‘This isn’t really rock ’n’ roll, is it!’

  Having said that, the four of us had been to see Alice Cooper at the Rainbow, Finsbury Park, when he toured the UK in 1971 and his band wore very similar outfits to the ones we eventually had made, although I think theirs were less stylish and less well made, and they didn’t have the boots. (Funnily enough his band was originally called the Spiders, before becoming the Nazz and then simply Alice Cooper.)

  Back in Beckenham swatches of the fabrics they’d chosen were brought out. Freddie Burretti had helped refine Bowie’s concept and it was he who’d suggested the outfits should be different colours – pink, blue and gold – so we had the gang image but it was less menacing than the ‘all white’ of the Droogs. It was decided that Trev would look best in blue as he had dark brown hair. Angie suggested that Mick would look best in gold as he had blond hair. That only left one colour!

  ‘I’m not too sure about pink!’ I said.

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Bowie said thoughtfully, ‘but it takes a real man to wear pink and pull it off.’

  I obviously fell for this line as that’s what I ended up wearing.

  The Droogs also wore a codpiece and Freddie used an idea from the Stirling Cooper jeans to simulate this idea, adding a separate piece of fabric cut in a zigzag from the waist down to the crotch on either side. (The influence of A Clockwork Orange was also heard in the live show, because we used the electronic version of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony from the film’s soundtrack to open every gig.)

  We had a second set of outfits that were just as outrageous. Mine was a brown and gold top with gold lamé trousers. Trev had another blue outfit but the top was made from a flock material. Mick’s was a sequined maroon jacket and black trousers. Bowie had a black and white flock top with white satin trousers. They were all made in the same style: collarless bomber jackets and tucked-in trousers. All these clothes were made by Susie Frost, Zowie’s nanny. Freddie may have helped make some of Bowie’s outfits, too.

  The boots were a kind of trendy looking wrestling boot, flat and laced up the front and made of coloured patent leather. Mick’s were green, Trev’s were blue and mine were dark pink. We all also had a pair of black patent leather boots while Bowie had his red ones.

  During this deep discussion on who was wearing what, which went on for some time, Angie burst into the room and in a panicky voice said, ‘You’ve got a problem, boys. Ronson’s just packed his case and headed for the station. He said it’s all too much for him, he’s quit the band!’

  Bowie said to me, ‘Go find him and talk to him, do whatever you have to do to get him back.’

  So I made my way to Beckenham station to find Mick sitting on the platform looking very pissed off.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

  ‘Back to Hull,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough. I can’t go on stage wearing clothes like that. I have friends who’ll see me. It’s all too much, I just wanna play guitar.’

  ‘I understand what you’re saying,’ I said, ‘but it’s not going to work wearing jeans and t-shirts, is it? I remember when we were in the Rats you wore Apache boots and a long tasselled waistcoat and wristbands. That was over the top for the time, plus I’ve seen pictures of you wearing a real girlie frilly shirt so it’s not that much of a leap, is it?’

  We then talked about how it would either work brilliantly or not at all and there was always the possibility that we could be laughed off the stage, but it was worth the risk, wasn’t it?

  Eventually, after much talking it through, he said, ‘I suppose you’re right’, and we headed back to Haddon Hall.

  Quite a few people have claimed that I’m the one who said, ‘Fuck off, I’m not wearing that’, but this time
it wasn’t me.

  As well as the clothes, the shoes, the lighting, etc., what was still needed to complete the transformation of us all, Bowie concluded, was the hair.

  A young woman called Suzi Fussey worked in a local Beckenham hair salon where she did Bowie’s mother’s hair. Mrs Jones would talk to Suzi about her son and eventually Suzi was asked to come up to Haddon Hall to do Angie’s hair. While she was there Bowie asked her, ‘What would you do with my hair?’, which was shoulder-length and brown at the time.

  ‘I’d cut it short,’ Suzi replied, which she did.

  So he had the start of what would become the Ziggy haircut. The colouring of it would come later. I don’t remember exactly when.

  Daniella Parmar, a muse of Freddie Burretti’s, often came over to Haddon Hall with him. She would regularly have different coloured hair; once it was very short, peroxide blonde with an ice-cream-cone shape cut into the back and dyed in three colours! This inspired Bowie to look for a more synthetic hairstyle for Ziggy. He found a girls’ magazine with a model on the cover who had red hair (apparently she was a Kansai Yamamoto model, though I didn’t know that then). He copied the cut and colour and had Suzi carry it out. When his hair was finally completed he asked, ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It looks amazing,’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it, especially on a guy.’

  My hair was now shorter, and styled, but it was still brown. A couple of months into the tour, I decided I would have the Ziggy cut and also have it bleached blond. It made me look a bit unearthly, perhaps like a member of Ziggy’s family.

  Back then there wasn’t the range of hair products we have today; in fact, the trick to the Ziggy hairstyle, which stood up on end, was a ladies’ setting lotion called Gard, which you spread over your hair before blow-drying it straight. We needed Suzi to join us on that tour so she could do all our hair, and she also became wardrobe mistress.