The summer of 1976 was very long and very hot, I was 12 years old. I had spent most of the summer playing cricket and generally lounging around, a friend of mine Steve Page offered me the chance of either listening to the best of the Everleys or the strangely entitled ‘changesonebowie’. I think it must have been the art work but I chose the Bowie album.
The songs on the album seemed magical, mysterious the cover was simple but still unique to any thing I had seen and that was it I was and still am a Bowie fan.
Living in a pigeon hole can be difficult and at times restricting but I wouldnt change a thing, I soon began to collect the back catalogue and read and found out as much as possible. This was a time when the music press consisted of the NME and Melody Maker, the only music television was TOTPS and The old grey whistle test.
After leaving school me Pagey, Dins, and Greeny headed for PiPs, the club had 9 dance floors two of which were set aside for Bowie and Roxy Music. The music played at the club introduced me to Simple Minds, Talking Heads , Joy Division the very gothic Bauhaus, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground were in there, Banshees , the god fathers of house and trance Kraftwerk and even the easily forgotten Fad Gadget.
I first got to see Bowie in West Germany in 1983, although the first time is always special looking back bowie had entered one of the most successful periods in his career but also his most soulless, the Serious Moonlight tour followed by the glass spider tour was bowies spinal tap period.
The last ten years for bowie has seen him gain a lot more of his credibility, he has come to terms with his songs he can now just stand and deliver them for what they are , classic songs.
Listening to Bowie has taken me to a lot of places, PiPs and pernod, wearing 18 peg canary yellow pants, braces, cloud nine and legends on a Thursday night, lous frontroom, dancing in nightclubs in Cologne the night before a gig only to be told he was playing in Bochum 60 miles away, a night in Milton Keynes bus station, the front page of the Manchester evening news queuing for live aid tickets, the Hacienda, the night in a car park in Milton Keynes, the 91 bus, pneumonia at Old Trafford, bootlegs, the bbc radio theatre, tinternet , hair dye and quims.
Alice Cooper was my Gran