5.In the late 60s : Visconti,Bolan,Kemp,Hermione,Angela

By the middle of 1967,Bowie's career had reached something of an impasse.He had received some good reviews,but had negligible sales.It was at this time that he met one of the most important figures in his career,Brooklyn-born would-be producer Tony Visconti.

Here's a pic with both of them ( though it's form the 70s).

In Visconti,Bowie had found a friend who shared similar interests and who was,very importantly,an American,and therefore by definition rather cool.However,the change of producer from Vernon to Visconti had no immediate impact on Bowie's fortunes.

David Bowie was a natural convention-breaker.Personal style,and its articulation through dress,was central to this revolt.In 1997 he said: " And outfit is an entire life experience.An outfit is much more than just something to wear.It's about who you are ,it's a badge and it becomes a symbol".Even at school Bowie was a stylishly rebellious dresser,then,as now,something of a shoe fetishist : he was one of the first to wear what have now become known as winkle-pickers.

During the late '60s,he developed a rather uneasy friendship with Marc Bolan,that was a mixture of mutual respect and bitchy rivalry.

They were both often at Visconti's flat in Earls Court for many musical soirees.Marc Bolan,who was married,used his apartment about three nights a week to bath,and so did his wife.Bowie often used his flat as a place to bring girlfriends back.

Mod fashion was very important to both Bolan and Bowie.The first mods in the early 1960s were dangerous modernists: they wore expensice suits,lipstick,blusher,and eye shadow.They were yet another scion of gay subculture and sartorially part of glam's forbears.

Both Bowie and Bolan would hang around the chich joints of swinging London,raigind the dustbins of Carnaby Street for any discarded seconds which could be salvaged for nigh-time clobber.

Here you can listen to David Bowie's story about meeting Marc Bolan:

In terms of personal style in the 1960s,Bowie for the most part followed,rather than set,fashion trends,although he was one of the first teenagers in Britain to have long hair.On 12 November 1964 he appeared as the president of the Society for The Prevention Of Cruelty To Long-Haired Men on the Tonight programme and told an amused Cliff Michelmore how members were being taunted for their sartorial excess.

The young Bowie lved all this taboo-breaking and flaunting of moral codes.He wanted attention,he wanted to be known,and,back in 1964,to be a man and to have long hair was one way of achieving this aim.

In 1965,Bowie was a mod,in 1966 and in 1967 a hippy,but by 1968 he had begun developing his own post-hippy,slightly feminised cool.In performance,Bowie demonstrated a theatricality that was,for the time,certainly out of the ordinary for British pop.

Under the tutelage of dancer Linsday Kemp,Bowie's innate love of the bizarre flourished widly.

Kemp's influence had less to do with the fact that Bowie attented some of his dance classes,and more with the fact that,by his very being,he increased Bowie's awareness of the bizzare.In 1997 Bowie said of Kemp: he lived on his emotions,he was a wonderful influence.His day to day life was the most theatrical thing I had ever seen,ever.It was everything I thought

Bohemia probably was.I joined the circus."

Bowie's first performance with Kemp and his partner Jack Brikett,came in Pierrot in Turquoise,at the OXford New Theatre on 28 December 1967.

Bowie went to mix rock and mime in the late 1960s,touring in early 1969 with Tyrannosaurus Rex (T-Rex) as an opening act and performing a mime called Yet-San And The Eagle,with 'Silly Boy Blue' as his backing track.

Visconti,about the friendship between Marc Bolan ( the lead singer of T-Rex) and David Bowie: " David was open to friendship but Marc was quite cruel about David's as yet unproven musical career.I think it was with great sadistic delight that Marc hired David to open for Tyrannosauurus Rex,not as a musical act,but as a mime."

Bowie had,undoubtedly,more false starts than any other superstar in pop,and his early work provides us with not even a glimpse of the greatness to come.However,in the 60s you were allowed to fail.Bowie would probably not have made it if he had started out today - record companies and managers would not stick with a consistently unsucessful,if talented,artist ( here we must give Ken Pitt the credit fot sticking with "his boy",despite year after year of commercial disappointments).

Bowie interested himself in Buddhism,befriended the Buddhist priest,Chime Youngdong Rimpoche,and,according to some sources,come close to becoming a monk himself.However,Tony Visconti,himself curious about Buddhism at the time,doubts Bowie took his own interest too seriously.

By mid 1967,Bowie had finally flown the parental nest,to lodge with Ken Pitt, taking the spare room upstairs in Ken's flat and coming and going when he wanted.Terry's mental ilness and schizophrenic episodes were becoming more harrowing,the general domestic situation was confininf,and Bowie needed space.During his residence chez Pitt,Bowie recorded a prototype rock musical,Ernie Johnson ,about a character who throwns a party to mark his intended suicide,planned for the next day.

Then as now,Bowie was a huge fan of new music.He was one of Britain's first Velvet Underground fans.

There are numerous unrealised,unflinished,unreleased and unreleasable tracks from this era,including a remarkable song recorded with The Riot Squat in April 1967 called "Little Toy Soldier" (Sadie's song) ,which tells the story of Sadie,who has a clockwork toy soldier who comes to life and whips her when he is wound up.One day the girl winds it up too much and it beats her to death.The song itself is basically The Velvet Underground's 'Venus in Furs',with some changes.

By 1968,so dire were his financial circumstances that Bowie was forced,on an occasional basis,into operating a photocopier at Legastar,and also to raise some cash,was forced into appearing a telvision ad for Lyons Maid 'Luv' ice creams,incidentally made by future Alien and Bladerunner director Ridley Scott.He then acted in a short silent film,The Image ,directed by Michael Armstrong,but with little impact.

Hermione Farthingal

In early 1968,Linsday Kemp was asked by the BBC to choreograph The Pistol Shot , a play by Pushkin.For the production ,Kemp chose Bowie and a beautiful red-haired dancer,Hermione Farthingale,to dace a poetic minuet.Very soon an item,the pair lived together.

Bowie's next project would be Feathers.

By the summer of 1968,the 21-year-old Bowie had set up home in a flat in Clareville Grove,London,with hermione.

His relationship with the classic "English rose",with long strawberry-blonde hair,high cheeckbones and 'Clodagh Rodgers' wispy folk vocal,and its abrupt termination in early 1969,apears to have had something of a devastating effect on Bowie.Farthingale ran off with a dancer and later lived abroad after marrying an anthropologist.

After the split,Bowie returned to live briefly at the parental home in Bromley.Later,he met Mary Finnigan,a divorcee with two children of her own to look after and she mothered Bowie too,during their brief affair.

Bowie moved in with Finnigan in the first half of 1969 and,much to her horrified amusement,took over the entire flat - a bass amp there,a twelve-string guitar there.A freelance journalist,Mary Finnigan was at the time working regularly for the Sunday Times as well for the underground newspaper IT.She therefore supported him financially for three months.Altough nominally her lodger,Bowie paid no rent or household bills.

The Arts Lab

He soon opened the Arts Lab,and gave it a suitably hippy-dippy name - Growth,and became moderately successful locally. Tony Visconti says: " What I liked about David's relationship with his Arts Lab was that it gave him a purpose...I admired his healthy attitude he had then."

Although committed to this grass-roots populism,Bowie never really fitted into the hippy underground.While the rest of his peers were into dope and LSD,Bowie was more into drinking bottles of barley wine and falling over outside the pub.In fact,on occasion,Bowie wouls lecture his audience at the Arts Lab about the dangers of hard drugs.Apart from cannabis tincture,which seemed to be particularly fond of at the time,Bowie was into alcohol.

Mary Angela Barnett

But life in Beckenham was far from uneventful.Following a trip away,Mary Finnigan returned to her flat to fint it,quite remarkably,spotlessly clean and well ordered. (According to Finnigan,the young Bowie was incredibly untidy).She had been usurped by a certain Mary Angela Barnett.

Mary Barnett,or Angie as she was known,was born in 1950 in Xeros,Cyprus,of American parentage.She met David while bot were dating the same lover,Calvin Mark Lee,who was working as an A&R man for Bowie's new record company,Mercury records.

Angie was attractive,actively bisexual,extravagant,prone to huge self-dramatisation and scene-stealing faints,tantrums and collapses.She also had aspirations of becoming an actress and a movie star.
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