I Discover David Bowie - Part 1

On the strength of my slashing wit and glamorous self-presentation (I wore ruby satin suits from London and had a layered $15 haircut, while other writers-about-rock all looked like Lester Bangs), I was now on the LA A-list, but longed for a getaway. When the new publicist for the notoriously clueless Mercury Records offered me an all-expenses trip to San Francisco on the condition that I interview an obscure British folkie someone at the label hoped might be up to something, I eagerly accepted.

I was sent some albums. Their covers showed a frail young fellow with bad teeth and a terrific perm. I found most of his stuff tedious and wordy.

Mercury Records were already paying for my hired car, so they asked me to collect him at San Francisco International when he arrived from Houston. The guy who got off the plane bore little resemblance to the one on the album covers. This one had long flowing hair, was wearing a dress and carrying a purse. I wondered how he'd got out of Texas alive, and admired his audacity immediately. I liked also that he seemed to appreciate my slashing wit, even when manifested deadpan. I liked his too.

We were bivouacked in adjoining rooms at the Holiday Inn, in whose downstairs lounge a remarkable duo, who simultaneously played drums, organ, and two horns between them, were, uh, entertaining. They hooted at the sight of a man in a dress. We retaliated by braying implacably for songs we supposed they'd be deathly sick of playing.

Rodney Bingenheimer, the famous LA scenemaker, phoned to find if David craved a groupie. (Sight unseen, David was of interest to Rodney by virtue of being English. A Brit could write his own ticket in LA in those days.) David did; oh, boy, did he! When she showed up, she was considerably more interested in me. Gracious host that I was, I demurred. He asked with a gleam in his eye (the blue one, as I recall) if she fancied a guitar lesson. I thought that wonderfully debonair.

Mercury Records hoped to save more money, and prevailed upon me to drive him down to San Jose, where a radio station had agreed (probably with the greatest reluctance) to interview him on the air. We improvised a ribald new version of Edwin Starr's "War". Instead of War, what is it good for? we sang Tits, what are they good for! Good clean heterosexual fun!

The disk jockey looked like Lester Bangs and was clearly appalled by my new pal. Cutting short their very brief interview, during which he demonstrated himself immune to Bowie's slashing wit, the DJ asked if there were anything Bowie wished to hear. "The Stooges," I whispered to Bowie, who hadn't heard of them, but trusted my judgment. He loved them, as how could one not? I would later become as rich as a rajah on the back of Bowie's collaborations with Iggy Stooge, later Pop, and be mentioned in many of the biographies that came to be written about them.

More tomorrow!

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