David Bowie – “Lady Stardust”

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People stared at the makeup on his face
Laughed at his long black hair, his animal grace
The boy in the bright blue jeans
Jumped up on the stage
And Lady Stardust sang us songs
Of darkness and dismay

And he was all right, the band was all together
Yes, he was all right, the song went on forever
Yes, he was awful nice
Really quite out of sight
And he sang all night long

Femme fatales emerged from shadows
To watch this creature fair
Boys stood up on their chairs
To make their point of view
I smiled sadly for a love I could not obey
And Lady Stardust sang songs
Of darkness and dismay

And he was all right, the band was all together
Yes, he was all right, his song went on forever
And he was awful nice
Really quite out of sight
And he sang all night long

Oh, how I lied when they asked if I knew his name

Oh there was all right, the band was all together
And, he was all right, and his song went on forever
He was awful nice
Really quite paradise
He sang all night long

Interesting story about this Bowie song: The original demo for it was titled “He Was Alright (A Song For Marc)”, and thus is generally believed amongst diehard Bowie fans to be about Marc Bolan. This was not unusual for Bowie, as he had written songs about Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol previously. On the other hand, if you think Angie Bowie is to be believed, Bowie and Bolan had a series of regular sexual encounters beyond their friendship. It’s also generally believed that Bolan introduced Bowie to the “glam” concept —this isn’t all that far-fetched, either, as Bowie is often referred to as “the great rock n’ r roll chameleon”. Think about it, do chameleons create their own looks, or do they simply adapt to their surroundings? Bowie is one of those guys who’s just really good at adapting to whatever the people he admires or is hanging out with are doing —his brief foray into mime came shortly after his meeting and eagerly working with Lindsay Kemp and Jack Birkett, and not only does Jayne County believe that Bowie plagiarised one of her songs to write “The Jean Genie”, many Bowie historians believe she’s correct. It makes sense that he’d adapt the Marc Bolan’s prototypical glam rock look to his own style –and let’s face it, if Bowie is a greyhound, Bolan is… a pug: Very cute, stylish in his own way, but hardly intimidating or threatening in his looks –possessing that potential for gender-confusion and controversy, Bowie became an international superstar and sex symbol for gender-fuckery for decades to come, and in lacking it, Bolan, while a household name in the UK, barely made a blip on the radar, elsewhere, especially while he was alive.

Now, sure, some people believe that there were certainly other reasons for Bolan’s thwarted international pop stardom, but that’s another story for another time.

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  • caro

    Oh? Where and when did Angie say this about them? I’ve never seen it, and I have her book.

    • http://ofthespiae.hellenistai.com/ Ruadhán J McElroy

      I never said it was in her book (I wouldn’t –I’ve never read it and only barely remember it exists when people remind me of it), and she may very well have kept it out of her book, but pretty much all through the time they were married and into the early 80s, she was very fond of naming various people, including Bolan, as people Bowie bedded –and yes, at some point, she started backpeddaling (most famously, about Mick Jagger), saying she never *really* knew what Bowie and (other people) were *doing* before she walked in, or rang, or whatever, but I believe that habit started with a solicitor issuing her warnings to stop talking about Bowie “allegedly” sleeping with other people, especially men. It’s easy enough to find old interviews with her, or references to said by others, that I really don’t have to do your homework for you. It’s not my fault you’ve only read the censored and authorised versions, but this really has been common knowledge for decades, at this point.

      • caro

        I’m not sure why you’re responding in such a hostile way; you made an assertion, I’m interested and I’m asking for your sources. I’m not asking you to do any research for me, either; I’m doing my own, which is how I happened upon your post. It isn’t “easy” to find direct, first-hand, quotable references to Bowie and Bolan’s relationship being sexual; yours is one of the relatively few mentions of it I’ve found (another being a second-hand reference from a biographer saying that Bolan had apparently talked about it with Secunda, but not with him–most of them have been this kind of hearsay), and you sounded very sure of it, as though you knew your sources, so I asked. Bolan himself, rather hilariously, denied it being overtly sexual in an interview (and Bowie doesn’t talk about him), so I’m interested in seeing the sources that refute this when people refer to them, that’s all. If you don’t have any sources, just say so. “Common knowledge” isn’t citable for research. (And if you haven’t read Angie’s book, which I assume means you don’t find it credible, I’m surprised that you would find her earlier assertions made during her high times any more credible. She is, by and large, not very credible at any time; she actually doesn’t discuss Marc at all in the book, which tells a story of its own, IMO. You have to read between the lines with Angie.)

        • http://ofthespiae.hellenistai.com/ Ruadhán J McElroy

          No, I haven’t read her book cos I haven’t read her book —when I remember she wrote it, I don’t have the time, and when I have the time, it somehow falls off my mental list of shit I wanted to read. I don’t find her any more or less credible than any other ex-spouse.

          I’m sorry I can’t help you, but I likely read it in some interview, or quoted in some other book or website, maybe 15-20 years ago, when the Internet was young n soft and I was a teenager MASSIVELY into Bolan and Bowie. I clearly remember reading her naming Bolan in a short list of one of Bowie’s regular extramarital partners, and unfortunately, I can’t remember the source. If you’re researching this, I really can’t help you, cos my memory isn’t 100% eidetic. I’m assuming “common knowledge” cos the time I was most likely to have read it was when I was living in a small town in rural Michigan, and managed to find it in some book there, or in their unusually large archive of magazines (this was the only library I’ve seen, including before when i lived in metro-Detroit, and since when I’ve lived in Los Angeles, Chicago, or Lansing, MI, that had a huge section of its main floor dedicated to a couple dozen 8ft-high shelves filled with ledgers of magazines, sorted by title and year, dating from 1970 to the present, and magazines going back to 1900 on microfiche, and a detailed index of topics on their computer). Like, I’m assuming that if a small town in Michigan didn’t censor that from their collection, then it just had to be common knowledge.

          All I can do is assure you that it’s out there, and recommend checking your library. Maybe I was just unusually lucky to find it, but I assure you, it’s out there. Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.

          • caro

            Libraries, even those in small towns, don’t usually censor the material in the media they carry; if they have a mag subscribed, it’ll all be there, because they don’t have the resources (or the mandate) to edit them. I was doing similar archive crawling in the mid 90s (U2 was one of my subjects of interest then, for instance) and spent a lot of time on the fiche machines, so I know what that’s like. A list of suspects that Angie threw out there might or might not be accurate (she’s a bitter, bitter woman, and I suspect David cared for Marc more than he did her, in some ways–for longer, certainly, one possible reason for leaving Marc out of her otherwise quite salacious book) but she’s an on-the-spot source, so she has to be taken into account. She supposedly gave an interview in 1980 where she originally outed the David/Mick relationship, I’ve heard (the later telling is actually a retelling, apparently, not recent news), but I haven’t found the original of that, either. These things do get harder to dig up as time passes, unfortunately. Thanks for clarifying, though.

            • http://ofthespiae.hellenistai.com/ Ruadhán J McElroy

              So I take it you yourself only recommend Angie’s book with a grain of salt? I’ve run into a few, rather rabid, Angie supporters, and honestly, while I know the middle ground isn’t always the most correct, I just figure that, unless one is friends with these people, or one ex-partner’s claims are sufficiently corroborated by mutual friends, etc…, then the truth is somewhere in-between one person’s often highly details stories of the other’s misbehaviours, and the other’s extreme silence on the whole matter. Sometimes, I have no idea what to think of the fact that Bowie’s said practically nothing (in comparison to Angie’s eagerness to dish stories out) —it seems either there’s at least some truth to the things she says and he doesn’t want to give her the satisfaction of saying so publicly, or perhaps he’s just decided to just let her say whatever nonsense she likes, within some limits.

              I think there was a relatively recent interview (or maybe it was twenty years old; I’m pretty sure I saw a clip on YouTube, though), wherein Angie claimed she and Bowie were married pretty much out of convenience —because she was only in the UK on passport, not a residency visa, the regular back-and-forth between the UK and US every six months was getting tiresome, and being both rather young, marriage seemed logical. So I wouldn’t be surprised if your suspicions were at least somewhat true, and Bowie did like Bolan better on certain levels, if it’s assumed true that they *did* only marry cos Angie’s passport restrictions were tiresome.

              • caro

                One never knows how much to believe of what anyone says; even David lies about the meanings behind some of his own songs, for instance (I think it was Ken Scott who said he knew this was true because he has knowledge, or so he believes, of the origins of some songs and he knows David’s given out false info about them, which is a common and perfectly defensible practice, IMO). Angie is hilariously non-self aware and reveals things she doesn’t know she’s revealing while she’s trying to convince us of something else entirely (like the rash thing, oy). There are things in the book that probably did happen much as described, but Angie’s take on them is Angie’s (very biased) take. I think there are probably some things she’s gotten right, and things that David probably never wanted shared, if he had his choice; he’s likened life with her to “living with a blowtorch” and has little hope of ever stifling her entirely, so he ignores her. I suspect the book contains some truth mixed with some half-truth mixed with some fantasy, and most people seem to know that she’s crazy enough (multiple supposed suicide attempts = borderline personality disorder?) that everything she says should be suspect, which probably provides David with all the plausible deniability he needs. That, and everyone knows she bears a grudge–it’s bigger than Dallas and twice as obnoxious.

                The marriage of convenience thing does seem to be true, according to Angie, at least on his part–she wanted UK access, David wanted US access, David’s relationship with Hermione had ended less than a year before he met Angie and his father had died recently, David liked her fearlessness and her focus on him, and (probably not a factor, but they did everything else pretty much in parallel) Marc got married that January. Angie tries to claim that it was never love for her, but I doubt that. She reveals things about her feelings while discussing her actions and trying to convince us to the contrary, as with everything else she says. I think David probably wanted someone to commit to him and focus on taking care of him and what he wanted (thus, Coco’s longevity) and Angie didn’t end up being that person, apparently. Anyway, the book is interesting reading, even if it’s suspect as a historical document. Most things written about people in the entertainment industry are, really.

                (Re: Bowie and Bolan, it strikes me that their relationship is one of the few that either of them pursued over time without any apparent motive of career gain; they met and became friends as teens, before either had anything but themselves to offer, were competitive as well as supportive of each other, and, as many who knew them say–though without much further detail–were very close, at least at times. I think there was genuine, deep friendship there–Tony V. called it “a real love” and says he feels that’s why David doesn’t talk about him. So, maybe something for Angie, who was as much a convenience and a tool as a partner, to be jealous of and a reason to omit him from her book? Either that or there really wasn’t any deeper relationship there, at least that she knew of, so there was no threat to her ego and nothing to explain away, which may be more likely.)