Speaker 1: Off the Record is the production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Off the Record.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jordan Runtak. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Our latest chapter focused on a Ladin Saying, the American
Speaker 1: sibling of Ziggy Stardust. He was born during David Bowie's
Speaker 1: first tour of the United States in the fall two.
Speaker 1: His bisected face split in two by a lightning bolt,
Speaker 1: goes a long way and illustrating David's conflicted views about
Speaker 1: these undoubtedly exciting times. On one hand, he was seeing
Speaker 1: America a close range, living out as Jack Caroact dreams
Speaker 1: on the road. The crowds were growing, the press followed
Speaker 1: his every move. Everything he'd been working towards seemed to
Speaker 1: becoming true. But on the flip side, he was physically
Speaker 1: and mentally exhausted. The constant travel, grueling performances, financial chaos,
Speaker 1: and psychic confusion caused by as many characters had stretched
Speaker 1: David to his breaking point. He discovered as many newly
Speaker 1: six TuS for artists do the commercial success the man's
Speaker 1: creative repetition and repetition was one of David's least favorite words.
Speaker 1: Rather than succumb to the slow artistic death, David would
Speaker 1: have to kill off his most beloved creation. Witness to
Speaker 1: the high highs and low lows was Tony Zenetta, a
Speaker 1: legendary figure in the experimental downtown drama scene of late
Speaker 1: sixties New York. He first entered David's orbit as a
Speaker 1: cast member of Andy Warhol's play pork Ine, co starring
Speaker 1: with last Week's guest Cherry Vanilla. Before long, both would
Speaker 1: be swept up in the whirlwind of David's management company,
Speaker 1: Maine Man. In case you're not already familiar, this was
Speaker 1: not your average suit and tie kind of company, headed
Speaker 1: up by Bowie's larger than life manager, Tony Defrees. The
Speaker 1: organization traded in excess in style. In practice, it was
Speaker 1: more like an elaborate performance piece and a strict bottom
Speaker 1: line business. This goes a long way in explaining why
Speaker 1: Defreese hired Zenetta to be made Man's president, despite the
Speaker 1: fact and he had no business experience whatsoever. Saneta would
Speaker 1: later be drafted into a much more demanding role as
Speaker 1: David's tour manager, overseeing the tracks for a Ziggy Stardust
Speaker 1: and later on the notoriously over the top Diamond Dogs Production,
Speaker 1: keeping the show on the road and egos and check
Speaker 1: all with a daily operating budget of close to zero dollars,
Speaker 1: It's not a job for the faint of heart. Sanetta
Speaker 1: was gracious enough to speak to me about those thrilling
Speaker 1: days on tour with David as his star soared to
Speaker 1: New Heights and how just as fast everything changed. Before
Speaker 1: we get to Bowie, I want to take it back
Speaker 1: a little further. How did you first get involved with
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol in the theater of the Ridiculous in the
Speaker 1: downtown arts community? Well, you know, I I mean, I
Speaker 1: always loved acting and I loved theater. I did high
Speaker 1: school plays and I did plays in college. But when
Speaker 1: I got to New York, of course it was a
Speaker 1: little different, and I didn't get involved right away. But
Speaker 1: I've been here a couple of years and I started
Speaker 1: doing some acting. Blah blah blah blah blah. Fast forward.
Speaker 1: I had met Tony and Garcia when I first got
Speaker 1: to New York, because Tony and Gracia was from Massapequa,
Speaker 1: Long Island and my college roommate, Tom Carbury was from
Speaker 1: Massapequa Long Island, so Tom had grown up with Tony
Speaker 1: and with Jimmy Slattery, a k a. Candy Darling. So
Speaker 1: I met Candy and Tony early on. And then Tony
Speaker 1: was working with the Playhouse of the Ridiculous, John Bacaro's company,
Speaker 1: and then Tony was a playwright, and Tony began directing,
Speaker 1: and one of the early things he directed was a
Speaker 1: play by Jackie Curtis called Femme Fatale. And then the
Speaker 1: meantime his own plays were being done, had a play
Speaker 1: called Sheila. He had a play called Island But and
Speaker 1: then he directed a play called World Birth of a
Speaker 1: Nation by Wayne County. Tony always had aspirations to be
Speaker 1: kind of a very legitimate writer director, so he always
Speaker 1: advertised in the trade papers, which most people downtown did
Speaker 1: not do, but he did. And I saw the ad
Speaker 1: for the casting for World Birth of a Nation, and
Speaker 1: by that time I had decided that I really wanted
Speaker 1: to work with the Ridiculous because I had had just
Speaker 1: seen a play that John Macaro did, or the playoffs
Speaker 1: of the Ridiculous did, called Nightclub, which was absolutely mesmerizing.
Speaker 1: It was just incredible. So I went to the audition
Speaker 1: for World and Tony remembered me and he said, diling
Speaker 1: you don't have to where audition. Of course you could
Speaker 1: be in my play anyway. That was in like September
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy, and from then on my world kind
Speaker 1: of changed because I entered the world of The Ridiculous
Speaker 1: and the one day I met Tony and my new Tony,
Speaker 1: I met Lee black Childer's I met Wayne Jane County.
Speaker 1: I met Terry Vanilla, who was still Cathy Doherty. I
Speaker 1: met Jamie Di Carlo Lots Andrews, who would later come
Speaker 1: work with us at Maine Men. So I met I
Speaker 1: met basically the people that I would become closest to
Speaker 1: for the next years. I mean, Cherry Vanilla and I
Speaker 1: are still closest, closest friends, and that's been quite a
Speaker 1: that's what's that fifty years something like that. And then
Speaker 1: that leads into into Pork, which I mean, what was
Speaker 1: it like when Pork hit New York? I mean, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine there's anything like that before on on the stage. Well,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting question for a lot of reasons. First
Speaker 1: of all, Warhole. You know, if you were in downtown, well,
Speaker 1: if you were in The Ridiculous, let me put it
Speaker 1: that way, in Downtown theater and if you went to
Speaker 1: Max's Kansas City, and if you know, or if you
Speaker 1: were somehow in the art world and the fringe of
Speaker 1: the art world, I mean, Warhole was kid and the the
Speaker 1: Factory was was what it was all about, you kind of.
Speaker 1: I mean most of us wanted to become a part
Speaker 1: of the Factory or we wanted to be superstars or
Speaker 1: whatever whatever whatever. You know. We hung out with Jackie
Speaker 1: Curtis and Candy and Hollywood Love, I Love, Derek Emerson,
Speaker 1: who else, oh, Geraldine Smith and Andrea warholo whips. These
Speaker 1: are all people that went to the Max's Kansas City.
Speaker 1: But so to be associated with Warhol was like very exciting.
Speaker 1: But that's one part of it. The other part of
Speaker 1: it was the play itself, because you know, this was
Speaker 1: tape recorded conversations that Andy turned over to Tony and
Speaker 1: Gracia and then Tony and Gracia I mean the transcripts.
Speaker 1: But there were hours and hours and hours and hours
Speaker 1: of transcripts. So Tony and Garcia went through the transcripts
Speaker 1: and put them together to create this quote unquote play
Speaker 1: which brings, you know, it really questions the idea of
Speaker 1: what is a play, which Warhol had already done with
Speaker 1: his book A which was taped conversations with the Superstar
Speaker 1: and also playoffs of The Ridiculous Star un Dean. So
Speaker 1: that I mean that was a novel called A So
Speaker 1: was it a novel, you know? But but it was
Speaker 1: also the same thing as his paint takes painted. He
Speaker 1: painted a soup can and put it on the gallery
Speaker 1: wall and said it was art. So I mean, what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say is it just confirmed Warhol's um
Speaker 1: role as a conceptual artist. So paintings and silk screens,
Speaker 1: books and now a play. Now he was moving into
Speaker 1: the film and then the idea of theater. So one
Speaker 1: of the most interesting things about Pork was was it
Speaker 1: brings it to question the whole idea of what makes
Speaker 1: theater or what makes a play and uh and it
Speaker 1: was definitely perceived as a play when it at the
Speaker 1: beginning of middle Internet end thanks to Ingrassias editing and
Speaker 1: how we put the thing together. So it was exciting
Speaker 1: on a lot of levels socially to be part of
Speaker 1: the factory and just artistically to be a part of
Speaker 1: this process in this whole idea of performance. Also, I
Speaker 1: want to ask you about the culture element of the
Speaker 1: play as well. I mean, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: things going on on the stage that people didn't see
Speaker 1: very much, especially when you took the show to England.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine how that was received over there,
Speaker 1: because I think only a few years earlier they removed
Speaker 1: the basically the censorship position in the government where all
Speaker 1: the plays had to be approved by I forget that
Speaker 1: the person's title, but I can only imagine how how
Speaker 1: that went down in England. That must have been shocking
Speaker 1: in the best way and just completely blew some minds. Well,
Speaker 1: while we were there, there was and I'm not um
Speaker 1: my memory fails me a little, but there was something
Speaker 1: called the Trial of Oz. It was right, it was
Speaker 1: all about censorship in the arts and um that was
Speaker 1: going on while we were in England that summer summer
Speaker 1: of ninety one. Plus the plant, the movies and I
Speaker 1: think it was lesson trash could not be shown in
Speaker 1: a cinema. They had to be shown in a cinema
Speaker 1: club because of censorship, right, exactly funny, So yeah, there
Speaker 1: was a censorship issue. Now I don't remember if they
Speaker 1: came to review it, how we got past the sensors.
Speaker 1: If it was different for live performance at that point.
Speaker 1: But the thing about Pork that was also interesting was
Speaker 1: that it was it was a lot about sex, a
Speaker 1: lot of talk about sex. There was a lot of nudity.
Speaker 1: Jerry Miller douched on stage. Um. However, there was also
Speaker 1: almost a Charlie Brown kind of innocence quality about Pork.
Speaker 1: It was it was very childlike and very kind of innocent.
Speaker 1: So in its in its display of like public of sexuality,
Speaker 1: it wasn't really well, it wasn't prurient er and you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like pandering too. It wasn't pornographic in any way.
Speaker 1: It was it was very childlike and I think and
Speaker 1: it was comedy basically, it was funny. So people were
Speaker 1: not offended by the open sexuality because of the way
Speaker 1: it was presented. How did David first become aware of it?
Speaker 1: I've heard multiple different stories about Dana Gleesbie possibly auditioning
Speaker 1: and taking a script to him. How did you first
Speaker 1: enter his orbit? I guess Well, Danna denies that. Now,
Speaker 1: for some reason, I always thought that that was how
Speaker 1: it happened. She says, no, she never auditioned. That's total bunk. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know where I got that story from he
Speaker 1: became aware of it. Um he may have been aware
Speaker 1: of it anyway. But when we were doing Pork in
Speaker 1: New York and this that spring, um there there was
Speaker 1: a little article in Rolling Stone magazine about him. He
Speaker 1: had come to to the United States in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: That movie that's out now called Start Us by the Way,
Speaker 1: is about him coming to the United States in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy and doing this promotional tour for Mercury Records. He
Speaker 1: didn't have the right visa to perform, so he went
Speaker 1: around and talked to radio stations and met people and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, blah blah. So part of it was here.
Speaker 1: There was a little this little interview with him or
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was actually and I guess
Speaker 1: it was an interview in Rolling Stone. And there was
Speaker 1: a photo of him in in his famous man dress.
Speaker 1: So that titilated us. Me and Lee and Wayne County especially,
Speaker 1: we were fascinated by because he was very pretty wearing
Speaker 1: this dress, and but we didn't know his music. We
Speaker 1: didn't know much else about him. Now, when we were
Speaker 1: in London doing Pork, Cherry was sort of a group here.
Speaker 1: She fancied herself a groupie, and she decided she would
Speaker 1: do uh a column for it was Cream magazine called
Speaker 1: Cherry Vanilla Scoops for You. Basically, it was an excuse
Speaker 1: for her to contact bands that she wanted to see
Speaker 1: in concert and get in for free. So she and
Speaker 1: Lee would go to all these concerts, leave taking photos
Speaker 1: and Cherry meeting the band and ostensibly writing about them.
Speaker 1: One and they saw an ad for the Man in
Speaker 1: the Dress David Bowie. He was playing a place called
Speaker 1: the Country Club, which was a small venue. I was
Speaker 1: thought it was acoustic. It wasn't acoustic, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: like a big rock and roll show. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a team rocket anyway. It was a kind of a
Speaker 1: tame concert. They went. She, Cherry, Lee and Wayne went
Speaker 1: to see David Bowie um and either he knew they
Speaker 1: were coming or somehow they connected before because he actually
Speaker 1: announced them from the stage and they stood up. Since
Speaker 1: Cherry stood up and took about and thrust her tid out,
Speaker 1: which was a signature moved for pork because that's what
Speaker 1: bridget poke. Pork is based on Bridget Pokes tape recordings.
Speaker 1: She was a Warhol superstar well, always went around with
Speaker 1: one breast. Not always, she frequently would expose one breast.
Speaker 1: That was like a cute little thing that Bridget did.
Speaker 1: And you know she had books of tip prints and
Speaker 1: books of cock prints. That was her art anyway, So
Speaker 1: Terry exposed it to it and they all make contact
Speaker 1: and Aie was there. I don't know, I don't think
Speaker 1: Dana was. But anyway, they invited David and Andy to
Speaker 1: come to see Pork and that's how that's how the
Speaker 1: first connection was made. And then David and Angie and
Speaker 1: Dannick LLSB and Tony defrees them at their manager I
Speaker 1: think Mick Ronson. Yeah, mc ronson was with them too,
Speaker 1: came to see Pork and they came back stage and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. We ended up going to the Simba Row,
Speaker 1: which was the dance club and Kensington High Street and
Speaker 1: that was our first encounter, my first encounter. And said,
Speaker 1: you were really more taken with Angie at this stage
Speaker 1: rather than day because he was a bit more more
Speaker 1: shy and reticent. Well, I don't know if he was
Speaker 1: actually shy, but he was quiet and he didn't really Uh,
Speaker 1: it wasn't that forthcoming. She was very effusive and very outgoing.
Speaker 1: And yes, she was definitely kind of the diplomat of
Speaker 1: the two. She was the one that was really reaching out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he kind of stood back, kind of taking it in.
Speaker 1: And then even at the sombrero, he didn't really participate.
Speaker 1: He was sitting in the corner speaking to I was
Speaker 1: every call a Japanese boy. Uh, closely huddled. I don't
Speaker 1: know what that was all about. But anyway, but Angie
Speaker 1: was rocous and dancing with me and Cherry and carrying on.
Speaker 1: So we had a good old time with Angie. Mick
Speaker 1: ronson coward in the corner because he was scared to
Speaker 1: death of Jerry. Jerry could be a little aggressive. It
Speaker 1: was a little much for mick Um. And then at
Speaker 1: the end of the night Angie invited me to up
Speaker 1: to their house the next day in Beckenham, which I
Speaker 1: did out of Hadden Hall. What was that scene, like
Speaker 1: a pictured looking like a Gothic commune or something, Well,
Speaker 1: it was. It was kind of a Gothic house. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was very imposing from the exterior. It was. It
Speaker 1: was an old mansion and yeah, it was quite impressive.
Speaker 1: But they they lived in the entry hall. Basically you
Speaker 1: know that this was an old mansion that was divided
Speaker 1: into apartments into flats, so they certainly didn't live in
Speaker 1: much of the house. That you walked in and you
Speaker 1: were in this big entry hall and there was a
Speaker 1: staircase that went up and there was a balcony, but
Speaker 1: the balcony all the rooms were closed off up there. Oh,
Speaker 1: there was was this balcony and although I didn't see it,
Speaker 1: that's evidently where like Rhino and the band slept if
Speaker 1: they stayed there, and it was kind of a sleeping balcony,
Speaker 1: I guess. And then downstairs there was a bedroom, a
Speaker 1: music room, and I guess the kitchen. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I even saw all the kitchen. So it wasn't big.
Speaker 1: It was like three or four room apartment. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: but very impressive from the outside. What was the dynamic
Speaker 1: like between David and Angie at that time, Well, they
Speaker 1: were they were pretty you know, they were like a
Speaker 1: really tight couple at that time. The baby was young.
Speaker 1: They were the kind of couple where you know, one
Speaker 1: could start speaking and the other could end the sentence
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Angie was always more outgoing, but and
Speaker 1: she was very very um but she could she could
Speaker 1: definitely when he wanted to take over, she would definitely
Speaker 1: step back and put the spotlight on him. He was
Speaker 1: the kind of he always My whole association with him
Speaker 1: was he's the kind of person who if he didn't
Speaker 1: want to be noticed, he wasn't. He didn't You didn't
Speaker 1: even see it. He could be very It was almost
Speaker 1: like crawling into himself. He just didn't see him. But
Speaker 1: if he wanted to takes center stage, it was almost
Speaker 1: like there was a spotlight that suddenly went on, the
Speaker 1: following spot that went on him, so you didn't see
Speaker 1: anything but him and it but almost like turning it
Speaker 1: on and off. He really had that ability. It was
Speaker 1: like great Marilyn Monrose story where she's walking down the
Speaker 1: street with I think her photographer or friend and no
Speaker 1: one notices her. It's just a crowded New York City
Speaker 1: street and she's just walking around and her friend says
Speaker 1: something like, I can't believe you're able to just do this,
Speaker 1: and Maryland says, do you want to see her? Do
Speaker 1: you want to see Maryland? And then just put these
Speaker 1: little imperceptible shifts. All of a sudden, she just radiates
Speaker 1: some people. Cars slowed down and people start turning and
Speaker 1: looking at her, and it reminds me of what you're
Speaker 1: saying about David. It's exactly the same thing, exactly. And
Speaker 1: he was he's he was extremely charming. He was very seductive, intelligent,
Speaker 1: you know, when he wanted to turn it on, it
Speaker 1: was like whoa. It was pretty radiant. You couldn't luck away,
Speaker 1: let me put it that way. But the two of
Speaker 1: them were very close. She was extremely extremely I mean,
Speaker 1: she definitely took a backseat. Everything was about him, Nomanama.
Speaker 1: She called him noa uh she um, he could do
Speaker 1: no wrong. You know, everything was David David, David, David, David,
Speaker 1: David David. And he kind of soaked it up. He
Speaker 1: he did like that kind of adoration and support, you know,
Speaker 1: he did he Lindsay Kemps once said this, he was
Speaker 1: the kind of person who opened the door for and
Speaker 1: he was the kind of person who opened the door,
Speaker 1: and she was pushing doors down for him. Yeah. She
Speaker 1: she was very aggressive where he wasn't, and she was
Speaker 1: like noisy and lively where he wasn't. So I think
Speaker 1: he needed that at that time. And they were they
Speaker 1: were really a good couple and they seemed to be,
Speaker 1: you know, very fond of each other. And it was good.
Speaker 1: It was good until it wasn't good. I guess it
Speaker 1: was good for a long time. Now it was good
Speaker 1: until he I think he didn't need so much anymore,
Speaker 1: because that's again I'm jumping ahead a little bit. But
Speaker 1: he was He's David was pretty self centered in that mean,
Speaker 1: I don't mean that as a criticism necessarily, but everything
Speaker 1: about him was really about and it all came out
Speaker 1: in his art. Everything about him was but his art
Speaker 1: so so the people around him. He was only interested
Speaker 1: in people that somehow he could absorb and they would
Speaker 1: spit back out in whatever art he was doing if
Speaker 1: he didn't find you interesting. But believe me, he was
Speaker 1: not gonna turn that light on or give you the
Speaker 1: time of day and money was done. He was done,
Speaker 1: you know. He didn't necessarily stay interested in the same
Speaker 1: things of the same people all the time, although to
Speaker 1: his credit, I mean, George Underwood was a lifetime friend.
Speaker 1: Jeffrey McCormick was a lifetime friend. Uh. He and Iggy
Speaker 1: James Osterberg were friends for quite a long time. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think I think David could also be very generous
Speaker 1: in his friendships. She certainly helped Iggy a lot. Um. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it. Well, I guess I think sort of piggybacking
Speaker 1: of what you just said. I mean, very soon after
Speaker 1: seeing Pork, Bowie starts putting together his own piece of performance.
Speaker 1: Are the sort of Bractean theater pieces? Did he start us?
Speaker 1: What kind of influence do you think Pork had on
Speaker 1: on that the construction? But he didn't start doing that
Speaker 1: because of Pork, that's for sure. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody's always gotten carried away through the years of him
Speaker 1: taking things from Pork. I'm sure he did, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't really that. It's not like he was not alive
Speaker 1: until Pork he told me about what he was doing.
Speaker 1: You know, when that that Sunday afternoon, we talked a
Speaker 1: lot about theater. I didn't know much about Brecktean theater.
Speaker 1: He was explaining Breckteean theater to me and he was
Speaker 1: talked and at that time it wasn't Ziggy wasn't totally evolved,
Speaker 1: although I think the music was pretty much involved because
Speaker 1: he was he was very infatuated with Freddie Barrett, who
Speaker 1: was who made ended up making a lot of his
Speaker 1: early costumes. But Freddie was a boy from the Sombrero
Speaker 1: when Freddie was great looking and Freddie could like really
Speaker 1: make an entrance, you know, you cut, you know, Freddie
Speaker 1: was one of those boys. It was very pretty. You
Speaker 1: noticed Freddie also, it was like very sharp witted and
Speaker 1: kind of fun to be around. But I think David
Speaker 1: was kind of basing Ziggy in some ways around Freddie.
Speaker 1: He um. He wanted to record Freddie. Of course Freddie
Speaker 1: couldn't sing, but he had the idea of having a
Speaker 1: band where Freddie would be the lead singer. Again, the
Speaker 1: fans are gonna kill me because they know this better
Speaker 1: than I do, because he had a band called Hype,
Speaker 1: but I can't remember if that was where Freddie was
Speaker 1: supposed to be a lead singing or something else, but
Speaker 1: it didn't really work out. But it was kind of
Speaker 1: a dress rehearsal for the Ziki. Oh the Arnold Corns
Speaker 1: Project ND points Yes, that's a see you no more
Speaker 1: than I do. Um. The Honold Corns Project kind of
Speaker 1: morphed into Ziggy in my opinion, but it was his
Speaker 1: kind of address rehearsal, you know, for creating this character
Speaker 1: at least, so he was in the process of really
Speaker 1: creating this. Yes, it kind of was zinky was I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that was going to go to the West End
Speaker 1: next the next week. But it was kind of a
Speaker 1: musical in a way, and it was about this alien
Speaker 1: rock star that he then decided to play. But when
Speaker 1: and when in Brecty and yes it was Brecty, and
Speaker 1: that it wasn't him, It was him, David Bowie standing
Speaker 1: there and saying, this is Ziggy stared us, this is
Speaker 1: my creation, is this is a this is an alien
Speaker 1: rock star. It's not me, but I'm playing it on
Speaker 1: stage and and I don't think and I think it
Speaker 1: was pretty remarkable because no, as far as I don't know, no,
Speaker 1: that hadn't happened in rock and roll. So he was
Speaker 1: accused of being, you know, authentic because he was. It
Speaker 1: was misunderstood what he was doing. No, he wasn't ziggy
Speaker 1: startnist He was showing us ziggy startist um. In terms
Speaker 1: of Pork, what was I I do have a couple
Speaker 1: of theories myself, and they're just my opinions. Doesn't mean
Speaker 1: anything other than it's my opinion. One of the things
Speaker 1: about Pork again, I was telling you how kind of
Speaker 1: it was kind of childlike, even though it was very
Speaker 1: kind of outrageous, and some of the dialogue and some
Speaker 1: of the ideas that was presenting, so it had a
Speaker 1: flam We had a sexual flamboyance about it and in it.
Speaker 1: Um it wasn't that it was so gender neutral, because
Speaker 1: I don't really think it was, but it was very
Speaker 1: um kind of outrageous, and and and those of us
Speaker 1: who were involved in that company were all kind of
Speaker 1: sexually outrageous, kind of sexual outlaws. I like to call
Speaker 1: them sexual outlaws. So I say, I think that now
Speaker 1: I'm not saying he wasn't outrage It was probably more
Speaker 1: of a sexual outlaw than any of us. But the
Speaker 1: idea of presenting it so blatantly might have um influenced him. Plus,
Speaker 1: you know, he was very influenced by again going back
Speaker 1: to Warhol, the Velvet Underground and lou Read and lou
Speaker 1: Reid certainly had the sexual ambiguity about him. Was he gay?
Speaker 1: Was he straight? Was he androgynous? He's gay, he's married.
Speaker 1: I mean, nobody quite knew what that was all about.
Speaker 1: And then the other edge of the drugs. But it's
Speaker 1: not even going to the drugs just the sexuality was
Speaker 1: very um mysterious, shall we say, And I think he
Speaker 1: incorporated a lot of that into the Ziggy persona um
Speaker 1: um makeup wise, I mean, I think I think the
Speaker 1: look of Ziggy certainly was it wasn't so much about
Speaker 1: from Pork. It was really there was almost pure Lindsey Kemp.
Speaker 1: But I see a lot there's also a lot of
Speaker 1: other coincidences going on, or a lot of synchronicity Lynn
Speaker 1: the Kemp's company and the Playhouse, so the ridiculous although
Speaker 1: they weren't similar at all, were very similar, particularly visually
Speaker 1: and particularly because of some of their influences Japanese theater
Speaker 1: for instance. You know John Bacaro from the Playhouse had
Speaker 1: spent time in Japan, was very interested are very um
Speaker 1: um um my mind's going blank, very um Well, Kabuki
Speaker 1: theater had a big, big influence, very influenced by kabuki
Speaker 1: theater and the look of kabuki theater that met makeup um.
Speaker 1: But the whole style of kabuki he really incorporated into
Speaker 1: the Playhouse. But Lindsey Kemp was doing kind of the
Speaker 1: same thing. Plus Lindsay and John had other similarities in
Speaker 1: that they were both interested in kind of creating something
Speaker 1: that was new. It wasn't like what Lindsay was doing.
Speaker 1: Wasn't just mine, but you couldn't call it really egg.
Speaker 1: You know, it was drag, it was mine, it was circus,
Speaker 1: that was Japanese. It was all sorts of things I'm
Speaker 1: mushed in together to create something new. And that certainly,
Speaker 1: um wasn't one of the biggest influences influences on David
Speaker 1: and taking a little bit from here, a little bit
Speaker 1: from there, a little bit from over there, and all
Speaker 1: taking it all in and creating something new. And I
Speaker 1: think he always did that. So he wasn't averse to
Speaker 1: borrowing ideas or things from other people, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: But like a true artist, he borrowed and then and
Speaker 1: then it came out in a different way his way. Um.
Speaker 1: So sometimes people say, well, that was the playhouse or
Speaker 1: that was this that not really there were a lot
Speaker 1: of things happening all over the globe that at the
Speaker 1: same time. So I think I think, if anything, he
Speaker 1: certainly already dead. Its gratitude to Lindsey kemp Um. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of the ziggy look was from clockwork. Orange
Speaker 1: started out as almost pure clockwork Orange, but he didn't
Speaker 1: get it quite right, so it became again, it became
Speaker 1: more his own. It wasn't really Clockwork Orange at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, it was David Bowie, or it
Speaker 1: was Ziggy Stardust. But if you if you marry Lindsay
Speaker 1: Kemp's mind and the clockwork or in the Clockwork Orange,
Speaker 1: you'll get Ziggy startist. I wanted to ask you about
Speaker 1: sort of the very famous uh second trip to the
Speaker 1: United States and in I think September of seventy one,
Speaker 1: when David's signing with tow Our c A with Tony Defrees.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you about Tony DeFries because I
Speaker 1: feel like he's a really misunderstood character in the whole
Speaker 1: Bowie story. What what did Tony do for David Everything? Yeah,
Speaker 1: good answer. I mean again, that wouldn't have been a
Speaker 1: David Bowie without Tony, or they might have been, but
Speaker 1: nobody would have known about it. Um. Tony is um. Well,
Speaker 1: he's pretty interesting character in many many ways, but I
Speaker 1: think that the really key thing was, you know, David
Speaker 1: was very ambitious and very focused, so it was Tony.
Speaker 1: Tony was looking for um. Yeah, I think he wanted
Speaker 1: to be Alan Klein. But he needed he needed the
Speaker 1: Beatles or he needed whatever. At first he was going
Speaker 1: after Stevie Wonder and that didn't not work anyway. Tony
Speaker 1: needed a vehicle, and along came David Bowie. No one
Speaker 1: was interested in David Bowie at that time. David Bowie
Speaker 1: was old news. He had been around for a long time.
Speaker 1: Uh so it wasn't you know, he had been around
Speaker 1: since he was fifteen. It's it's almost ten years at
Speaker 1: this point, not quite. But there wasn't anything but I mean,
Speaker 1: there was nothing wrong with him, but he wasn't particularly extraordinary.
Speaker 1: You look at all those other English bands. They were
Speaker 1: making it a j eighteen nineteen twenties anyone. Uh, he
Speaker 1: was almost getting old because he wasn't really a different
Speaker 1: generation from the Beatles and the Stones. What wasn't two
Speaker 1: years younger? Um? Anyway, So Tony had brand damn um.
Speaker 1: You might call him meglomaniac. But he was a fascinating man.
Speaker 1: He was very intelligent. Uh, he could expound on anything
Speaker 1: for hours. But he was also pretty fearless. He was
Speaker 1: not afraid of taking chances and he was smart. So um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know this this all took a lot of money
Speaker 1: that Tony wasn't afraid of going out after and he
Speaker 1: when he signed David, he uh, the deal is misunderstood
Speaker 1: number one. And the deal the deal actually was not
Speaker 1: that different from a lot of other UM English acts
Speaker 1: at the time. The deal was a fifty fifty split
Speaker 1: after expenses is Tony Uh. Now you have to understand
Speaker 1: David Bowie had no incomes when Tony signed him, and
Speaker 1: Tony said to him, I will support you. Don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about anything. I'll pay your rent, by your
Speaker 1: new guitar, by the fabrics from Liberty of whatever, whatever
Speaker 1: you need. Don't worry. You're taken care of. And UM
Speaker 1: we will if we make any money, we will split
Speaker 1: it fifty fifty. If we don't, well then it's my loss.
Speaker 1: That's pretty seductive if you're an artist sitting there with
Speaker 1: nothing in your pocket. Now, of course there was enough
Speaker 1: side to that eventually, but we'll get so Tony took
Speaker 1: over everything. The first thing he did was he UM
Speaker 1: got him a publishing deal. He changed the publishing to
Speaker 1: get a little bit of money, and then he started
Speaker 1: started shopping for a record deal. He wanted to go
Speaker 1: with our c a global not our c a u K.
Speaker 1: He did not signed David. R C a u K
Speaker 1: signed David. That's why they came to New York to sign.
Speaker 1: It was r C A Worldwide because he felt that
Speaker 1: would give him a lot more cloud, which it did. Um.
Speaker 1: So David wasn't really an English act anymore. He was
Speaker 1: an English act starting to a global company. Um. So
Speaker 1: Tony was not afraid to take huge chances when um,
Speaker 1: when they came to the you know, and he had
Speaker 1: he had certain like principles that he stood by. David
Speaker 1: was not going to be a support act in the
Speaker 1: United States and he never was. He was only going
Speaker 1: to travel first class, which he did. Tony's philosophy was
Speaker 1: to be a star, you had to act like a star.
Speaker 1: So David stay at the Plaza Hotel and went everywhere
Speaker 1: in limos. Everybody's looking, I know, everybody in New York's like,
Speaker 1: look like, what he's going on here? This guy hasn't
Speaker 1: sold one record. Um, but you know, people began to
Speaker 1: perceive of him, um, not as that loser who had
Speaker 1: been around for ten years, but as oh, let's watch
Speaker 1: what's it, what's going on with him? Um? Now they
Speaker 1: were perfectly matched because they off. It had been working
Speaker 1: for ten years. David was very smart, he had been studying,
Speaker 1: he um, he was focused, he was ready, he was
Speaker 1: ready to take the next step. He was ready to
Speaker 1: go out in the world. And Sheldon Zink he started
Speaker 1: us and the Freeze was willing to take the chance
Speaker 1: to get the right record company, to get the bookings,
Speaker 1: to do this, to do that, and they did it.
Speaker 1: So there are ambitions for that moment at least met again.
Speaker 1: I keep using the words in choinicity, but it was
Speaker 1: in chronictic. They were perfect for each other at that moment.
Speaker 1: And that moment is seventy seventy three. And then it
Speaker 1: started to fade when the success began to commit. It
Speaker 1: began to fade because they didn't need each other quite
Speaker 1: as much. And then the money began to be questioned
Speaker 1: by why you were were spilling fifty but you bought
Speaker 1: that and you all that kind of thing. And then
Speaker 1: there were some of some a few things, definitely the
Speaker 1: um upset, the Apple car shall we say, but you
Speaker 1: mentioned the synchronicity. I mean, it's just incredible thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: even on that one trip in September when he goes
Speaker 1: to New York, I mean's all the people that he meets,
Speaker 1: I mean, he meets he meets Iggy, he meets Andy Warhol,
Speaker 1: is all coming together, this convergence of influences. I mean,
Speaker 1: what what an incredible trip that must have been. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it didn't seem it that's the time. But
Speaker 1: now looking back, yeah see he also I get credit
Speaker 1: for some of the stuff that I certainly didn't do.
Speaker 1: I did not introduce David Bowie to Louis Lisa Robinson
Speaker 1: and Richard Robinson did. Lisa Robins. Richard Robinson was part
Speaker 1: of the A n R team at R C A Records.
Speaker 1: Lisa was his wife. Lisa was a writer. She wrote
Speaker 1: for the New York Post, and the two of them
Speaker 1: had two magazines. They had Hit Parader and Rock Scene,
Speaker 1: which were very well read amongst American teenagers. Not that
Speaker 1: much in New York or maybe London, but in the
Speaker 1: American Hartley and every kid, every kid in mid America
Speaker 1: read Roxy magazine. So Lisa and Lisa was very She
Speaker 1: was very much the queen of the rock and road journalists,
Speaker 1: I think, and I don't remember another. I know that
Speaker 1: David and Andrew went to A or David maybe Andre
Speaker 1: wasn't even there, went to a party of their apartment
Speaker 1: ad during that week. I don't remember if if he
Speaker 1: actually met Lou there or he He certainly met Lou
Speaker 1: the night of the signing when we all went to
Speaker 1: the ginger Man after the signing, and of course Lisa
Speaker 1: and Richard were very much a part of that, and
Speaker 1: it was with Lisa and Richard that we then went
Speaker 1: to Max's Kansas City, where Danny Fields was who had
Speaker 1: been he's manager, and he happened to be at Danny's
Speaker 1: apartment and Danny called him to come me. David so
Speaker 1: um um, so yeah, he did a lot in that week,
Speaker 1: and the fact revisit to I mean, it's just it's
Speaker 1: mind boggling to think of of all the people he
Speaker 1: met me. Now you've said that, that Bowie Warhol, and
Speaker 1: it makes sense too, I can't imagine. Mean, they both
Speaker 1: sort of reserved, I guess at first blush. So it
Speaker 1: sounds like it wasn't the most successful meeting in the
Speaker 1: world between the two. It wasn't terrible. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: these things that are kind of ordinary take on legendary reputations.
Speaker 1: It was just that David was not a star. You know,
Speaker 1: he was just he was He wasn't a star. He
Speaker 1: had had some records out, Yeah, but it wasn't like
Speaker 1: they were going to lay down the red carpet because
Speaker 1: the superstar was walking and he wasn't a superstar and
Speaker 1: no Andy. To be to really click with Andy, you
Speaker 1: had to be kind of a certain kind of personality,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's how funny stories and entertain and
Speaker 1: David wasn't that kind of personality at all. He was
Speaker 1: kind of a serious artiz if anything. And I didn't
Speaker 1: Andy that well. I had been in pork, but I
Speaker 1: didn't have that kind of rapport with Andy where I'm
Speaker 1: going to be calling him on the phone or anything. Um.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, we were, you know was it was
Speaker 1: really the Defrees engineered the whole thing because he wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to Paul Morrissey about film distribution in Europe,
Speaker 1: a better distributor for their fat don't now you know.
Speaker 1: It was one of those things so they're often the
Speaker 1: corner talking about film distribution. Andy kept flitting in and
Speaker 1: out and yeah, there was this video crew there, which
Speaker 1: it's funny because I hardly was aware of it at
Speaker 1: the time. It's years later when you see this video
Speaker 1: and you think, oh my god, that is not the
Speaker 1: way I remember this meeting. But I guess it's the
Speaker 1: way it happened because here's the video and David did
Speaker 1: do that weird mind thing, which to me, David was
Speaker 1: always a little or at least in those days, was
Speaker 1: a little bit on the edge, you know, could have
Speaker 1: gone either way, because sometimes he could go into super
Speaker 1: corny terry story when you let the mind take over
Speaker 1: too much. And that was one of those moments. It's like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what is this guy doing? But it
Speaker 1: was okay. It wasn't terrible. It wasn't like humiliatingly embarrassing.
Speaker 1: It was just like, is he gonna hurry finished this
Speaker 1: kind of embarrassing? What was it? Was? It just like
Speaker 1: it was it like a disemboweling thing or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know one of his mind routines. But to
Speaker 1: do that in the middle of the factory was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. I'm sure nobody else didn't mind in
Speaker 1: the factory. But see, that's the other thing about David
Speaker 1: that it was so key that David was not bothered
Speaker 1: by taking chances and failing, and he had been failing
Speaker 1: for years, But what is another failure? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: by the time he hit again, he had been around
Speaker 1: a long time. Nothing stopped him. Where most of the
Speaker 1: people I know, you know, maybe they have one. Whatever
Speaker 1: you do something that creative, you kind of shoot your
Speaker 1: creative one and if it's not well received, your kind
Speaker 1: of like, you know, hulk off into the sunset or something.
Speaker 1: Not him, nothing really bothered him, which I think is
Speaker 1: a great you know, it's a sign of success. First
Speaker 1: of all, he wasn't bothered by failure or success. He
Speaker 1: was involved in the process always and he was a
Speaker 1: constant seeker that I think we see if you look
Speaker 1: at his entire career, especially if you look at the
Speaker 1: end of his career and the way he died, but
Speaker 1: creating up until the last second, using his illness or
Speaker 1: whatever he was going through as creative fodder. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a true artist. We don't see that ham Fod.
Speaker 1: Is there is there a period for you of of
Speaker 1: his work that that really resonates the most with you?
Speaker 1: Or I would assume the Ziggy Land the same era
Speaker 1: just because it was such a part of your life.
Speaker 1: But is there anything in particular that that you really
Speaker 1: that's a favorite of yours. Well, of course all of that,
Speaker 1: but I happened to love you on Americans. You know,
Speaker 1: then I was on that. I wasn't on that tour also,
Speaker 1: you know, that was kind of the best of times,
Speaker 1: the worst of times, because in some ways things were
Speaker 1: beginning to fall apart. But the music was so extraordinary.
Speaker 1: The musicians were all first first rate. They were all
Speaker 1: great kids. They were so much fun to be a
Speaker 1: I mean, Carlos Almar and Robin Clark are two of
Speaker 1: the nicest people you could ever ever ever meet, and
Speaker 1: there were so much fun. Luther Vandross's fat nineteen year
Speaker 1: old boy that was so talented, you know, a sweet Ave.
Speaker 1: I love Ava Um Dave Sandborn probably one of the nicest, amazing,
Speaker 1: one of the best sax saxophone players in the world. Um.
Speaker 1: It was an extraordinary and I think that music it
Speaker 1: is just really fantastic. But of course I love Ziggy
Speaker 1: that you know, that was that was that was also great.
Speaker 1: And then um the last album UM and I had
Speaker 1: to have a a pursuit like uh scan cask had
Speaker 1: I have an m R where they stick you into
Speaker 1: those metal tubes. Had the toe which is like horrifying
Speaker 1: and it claims and does this and that. But when
Speaker 1: I got in um Um, they said they asked me
Speaker 1: if I wanted to hear some music, so I said,
Speaker 1: oh yeah. So they played Now I'm blanking out in
Speaker 1: the name? Was that the last album Star? Yeah? Black Star? Okay?
Speaker 1: So they played black Star and I hadn't heard it,
Speaker 1: and I'm listening to it in this tin can Oh god,
Speaker 1: may I do your association with him? I mean, that's
Speaker 1: the I can't believe. I mean, the queen into that
Speaker 1: is pretty overwhelming. It was overwhelming. It was really intense
Speaker 1: because number one, it was like getting personal messages from
Speaker 1: and the clanging, but most music would have been destroyed
Speaker 1: by the clanging, not that. It just set right in.
Speaker 1: It was incredible, and the music was it was just like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I can't believe he made this album
Speaker 1: like two weeks before he died or whatever. It was
Speaker 1: just fantastic, and it really it really gave me a deeper,
Speaker 1: fuller appreciation for him and his work. It was absolutely incredible.
Speaker 1: So I thought that was also, you know, I hadn't
Speaker 1: I hadn't listened to that much of what he did
Speaker 1: um Um. In the eighties or nineties really, so I
Speaker 1: kind of lost track of him in the late seventies.
Speaker 1: And again for me, you know, it was this was
Speaker 1: a friendship that blossomed into something else that I had
Speaker 1: never expected. So it wasn't like, um, I was that
Speaker 1: smitten with the idea of David Bowie. He was just
Speaker 1: somebody I happened to work with for a few years. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't know that that sounds about making myself clear,
Speaker 1: But I worked with a lot of talented people, you know,
Speaker 1: they just didn't become as famous as he did. I mean,
Speaker 1: you rapidly ascended the ranks of maineman too, I believe, president.
Speaker 1: I mean, how how did that happen? How did you become,
Speaker 1: you know, the head of the American Division of Maine
Speaker 1: man seemingly overnight, like well, it wasn't exactly all night
Speaker 1: right right right, couple of months. I don't know, because
Speaker 1: I was like tight with him and Tony. Tony and
Speaker 1: I got along really really well. Once he started coming
Speaker 1: to he would come to New York after that signing
Speaker 1: of URCA Records and RCA records, Tony would come to
Speaker 1: New York every couple of weeks to like where the
Speaker 1: record company up and he would always call me. I
Speaker 1: would always get together with him. Then I started just
Speaker 1: doing like basically errands for him. But you know, we again,
Speaker 1: we we um we we turn all this stuff into
Speaker 1: like legend and everything's iconac. It's just I was just
Speaker 1: doing errands for him, and they were just doing the best.
Speaker 1: You know, it wasn't. It wasn't nobody was looking at
Speaker 1: under a micro microscope and saying, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: is just incredible. It was me passing out records and
Speaker 1: it was doing whatever. He didn't know anybody else in
Speaker 1: New York. Neither did David. You were a friend in
Speaker 1: New York. You were that guy. I was the friend
Speaker 1: in New York. And and we got and you know, meanly,
Speaker 1: it was a family. We all loved each other. I
Speaker 1: only brought in my best friends Lee, well, they weren't
Speaker 1: even my best friends at the time. We became best
Speaker 1: friends Lee and Cherry because they were more involved in
Speaker 1: the rock scene than I was, and I thought that
Speaker 1: they would, like, you know, I'll be able to contribute more,
Speaker 1: which they did. Um. Lee was phenomenal. We sent Lee
Speaker 1: out as the advanced man and if you know anything
Speaker 1: about Lee Black Childers. He was like the most charismatic,
Speaker 1: charming person in the world, bleached blonde hair and black eyeliner,
Speaker 1: and and he just walked proudly through the world with
Speaker 1: his camera, taking pictures of everyone and making everyone feel
Speaker 1: like a million bucks. That was lead so for him
Speaker 1: to walk into Cleveland. He had friends immediately of everybody
Speaker 1: in the tattl paving the way for us to get there.
Speaker 1: And Cherry, none of us had ever been inside of
Speaker 1: an office. Cherry had been a producer and advertising. She
Speaker 1: knew it went around the office, and she wasn't working it.
Speaker 1: She was kind of at a down period in her life.
Speaker 1: So I we just hired Carry to answer the phones
Speaker 1: for a few days, and she immediately took over start
Speaker 1: organizing everything because she was the only one that knew how,
Speaker 1: and she was brilliant. Tony became totally dependent on her.
Speaker 1: She put the whole office together. She was absolutely fantastic.
Speaker 1: And then when she got bored with that, she became
Speaker 1: the press lady. And now she had never done press,
Speaker 1: and she was brilliant at press. She created a press
Speaker 1: list of like five thousand contacts we sent up the
Speaker 1: main man lose letters became sort of legend, Jerry, that
Speaker 1: was all Cherry Vanilla. Um. And then when we just
Speaker 1: started to go in to make our own to make
Speaker 1: TV commercials, who produced them Cherry Vanilla because again she
Speaker 1: had worked in advertising. Um. Now, Cherry Cherry is one
Speaker 1: of my dearest friends. I love her, and she's always
Speaker 1: stressed certain things about herself, Like she was a group
Speaker 1: heach was this she was, like, Cherry's a really smart
Speaker 1: woman and really talented and a lot a lot of
Speaker 1: things that she's always played down. Um, she's played up
Speaker 1: with certain things and played down the rest of it.
Speaker 1: And she's a very capable, resourceful person and a lot
Speaker 1: of maintenance success was due to Cherry Vanilla. All of
Speaker 1: you were doing so much were you thinking of? You mean,
Speaker 1: not only you the you know, American president of the
Speaker 1: American Division of Maine, man, you're the tour manager for
Speaker 1: the city start us tour on top of all that,
Speaker 1: Like I can't imagine when you slept, Well what do
Speaker 1: you being president him? I mean I wasn't exactly righting
Speaker 1: the Senate. I mean that was like, you know, I
Speaker 1: signed some papers now and then I was the tour
Speaker 1: manager is what I was? Yes, I was a tour manager.
Speaker 1: You know, that's that was really my job, right and
Speaker 1: you and I'll tell you how I got I became
Speaker 1: the tour manager. Um. I went to England with Tony
Speaker 1: just before they came to the United States to do
Speaker 1: Ziggy started and it was David was doing the Rainbow,
Speaker 1: which was a famous gig the Rainbow Theater in London.
Speaker 1: Then we went, we went to Manasion, we went to
Speaker 1: some other cities in northern England. We get to the
Speaker 1: first town, I don't remember what it was, but it
Speaker 1: was we got that at night. We go into this
Speaker 1: hotel and everybody kind of sits around in the lobby
Speaker 1: and it was like nothing's happening. We're just sitting there
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I want to I'm tired. I want
Speaker 1: to get to my room, but nobody's saying, oh, Tony,
Speaker 1: your room's over there are here's your key. So finally
Speaker 1: I went up to the desk and signed everyone and
Speaker 1: got the keys made every room, you know, passed them out,
Speaker 1: wrote down what room people were in. So that's a
Speaker 1: room manifest. I didn't know what's called the room manifest
Speaker 1: because I wanted to get to my room. But that's
Speaker 1: what a road managers. You were tired and suddenly you
Speaker 1: woke up a road manager exactly. I mean it was
Speaker 1: really that simple. Nobody else was taking the initiative. Being
Speaker 1: the only American. We do have a bit more energy.
Speaker 1: No offense to English people, but um, yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 1: that's how I evolved into me into the road manager then.
Speaker 1: And I've told this forgive me if I'm boring you,
Speaker 1: because you've probably heard it before. We're now we're gotting
Speaker 1: ready to do the US tour. And for the first
Speaker 1: week or two we were at a bus which was horrible,
Speaker 1: but that's another story. So the bus is sitting in
Speaker 1: front of the Plaza Hotel. So I said to Tony, Tony,
Speaker 1: because he's said I'm the road manager, say, well, Tony,
Speaker 1: what does the road manager do? He said, oh, see,
Speaker 1: just make sure they find Cleveland. Point the bus starts
Speaker 1: Cleveland and you're good. Yeah, And that was I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: I can find Cleveland, and off we went to Cleveland.
Speaker 1: Was it? I mean, we're things that. Did it run
Speaker 1: smoothly or was it? Was it? Really? I can only
Speaker 1: imagine the number of moving parts going on with this,
Speaker 1: because this was not a small entourage, right, This was
Speaker 1: some thirty something people thirty cluss. Well, the sound was
Speaker 1: done by h a company called ground Control, uh you
Speaker 1: know to one of David's songs. But anyway, um space already,
Speaker 1: but by a guy named Robin Mayhew who um. They
Speaker 1: had been doing the sounds in England, so they were
Speaker 1: pretty tight. They knew what they were doing. And we
Speaker 1: had rented some equipment from a company in Pennsylvania called
Speaker 1: Claire Brothers. And we didn't know like anything about lighting
Speaker 1: or who to get. So we called Jerry called now
Speaker 1: I'm blanking out in his name. He was like a
Speaker 1: famous lighting designer in New York. Not Joshua. Well, Bob
Speaker 1: C had just gotten out of it an y U
Speaker 1: and he worked for this guy with the lighting, the
Speaker 1: lighting guru, and Bob C like worked at the film
Speaker 1: War He lived upstairs from the film or anyway. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we didn't get the big guy, but they said
Speaker 1: call called this guy Bob C. Bob C was four
Speaker 1: years old, kind of a big hippie looked he looked
Speaker 1: like a Hell's angel, like a motorcycle guy. And Bob
Speaker 1: C was fantastic. He was so on top of thing.
Speaker 1: So he put a little crue I mean he put
Speaker 1: it together like immediately. So Bobcy did the lighting. But
Speaker 1: Bob Cy was like a really one of those guys
Speaker 1: you know that you can depend on uh and if
Speaker 1: something goes wrong, you can depend on Bob Cy to
Speaker 1: find a solution. And Bobcy became a very very successful
Speaker 1: lighting guy. C Factor was his company ended up own
Speaker 1: New York City block in Long Island City in New York.
Speaker 1: I guess that he ended up doing huge shows all
Speaker 1: over the world. But anyway, so we had Bob c
Speaker 1: and then um, the thing was, we never had any money.
Speaker 1: So we're on the road with no money. I need
Speaker 1: no money, um um. And but Tony talked our c
Speaker 1: A r c A Corporate into letting us book the
Speaker 1: hotels and whatever transportation we needed through their in house
Speaker 1: travel agency, which we did plus plus plus plus plus.
Speaker 1: So because we were going, I mean we were supposed
Speaker 1: to go to check out of the whatever hotel in
Speaker 1: Cleveland and pay the bill, well, we didn't pay any
Speaker 1: bills because we didn't have any money. We just look
Speaker 1: put everything off onto our c A and we got
Speaker 1: away with this. They said okay, and they built our
Speaker 1: c A. R c A didn't really agree to paying
Speaker 1: for anything. They were just supposed to be doing the bookings.
Speaker 1: But by the time you know, all the dots got connected, um,
Speaker 1: we had charged up about four dred thousand dollars and
Speaker 1: we only earned a hundred thousand and the whole three months.
Speaker 1: So it was a little um um um spotty. I
Speaker 1: suppose you might say. One time we were in uh
Speaker 1: we were in Florida. We were in Miami, actually Hollandale,
Speaker 1: which is slightly north of Miami, and we had I
Speaker 1: think I had like thirty dollars for the whole thirty people.
Speaker 1: So Lee and I so this idea was the office
Speaker 1: was supposed to wire me some money the next day.
Speaker 1: I was supposed to go to Fort Ladder or not
Speaker 1: for a lot of though how Hollywood, big Hollywood to
Speaker 1: pick it up. And so Lee and I decided, well,
Speaker 1: let's go what well, what we'll go out tonight was
Speaker 1: the thirty dollars and the next day I'll go pick
Speaker 1: up the money and we'll be fine. So Lee and
Speaker 1: I did go out, and we spent about over twenty dollars.
Speaker 1: We didn't spend the thirty because I saved enough to
Speaker 1: take a cab from this hotel to to to Hollywood, Florida,
Speaker 1: which was like five or six dollars anyway. So we
Speaker 1: did that and the next day I got I got
Speaker 1: a cabin and went to the bank in Hollywood. First
Speaker 1: of all, I got there like two fifteen, thinking the
Speaker 1: band closed at three. It actually closed it too, but
Speaker 1: being an aggressive New York or, I would not take out,
Speaker 1: and they let me in. But the money wasn't there.
Speaker 1: They hadn't arrived. So now I'm still no. I'm with
Speaker 1: that ten dollars because I still had a few couple
Speaker 1: of dollars in my pocket. So now I'm standing there
Speaker 1: in Hollywood. I have to get back to Hollendale, like
Speaker 1: oh Jesus. So I thought, well, I'll get a cab.
Speaker 1: I'll just go as far as it takes me. When
Speaker 1: it runs out, when when the meter runs out, I'll
Speaker 1: just say stop, let me out here. So that's what
Speaker 1: I did. And so I'm liking a little I don't know,
Speaker 1: jeans and whatever. I'm dressed, and I have a briefcase
Speaker 1: with me, and it gets it gets to a place.
Speaker 1: Actually I knew where we were. We were at Daniel
Speaker 1: Beach because Lee and I had gone there the day
Speaker 1: before we had walked there from our hotel like it
Speaker 1: was like a good seven mile walk. But Daniel Beach
Speaker 1: was a gay beat. So I said, oh, let me
Speaker 1: out here, and so I paid whatever wherever money I
Speaker 1: had left. Now I'm penniless on Daniel Beach. Think you know,
Speaker 1: I'll find I'll meet some gay guys. You get asked
Speaker 1: him to give me a ride back to Holland All
Speaker 1: or our hitchhik or whatever. So I I go to
Speaker 1: the beach, but there's nobody on the beach, which I thought,
Speaker 1: that's weird. There's nobody on the beach, and I'm walking
Speaker 1: down the beach and walking, and the more I walked,
Speaker 1: the sicker I'm getting like sick and I'm choking because
Speaker 1: it was something called red Tide, which I had never
Speaker 1: heard of. I didn't know from red Tide. And you
Speaker 1: gotta realize, I'm I mean, I'm all dressed, I'm carrying
Speaker 1: my shoes with my briefcase on this beach. So then
Speaker 1: I thought, well, let me get to the highway and
Speaker 1: I'll hitchhick. But you know, in Florida there's all those intercoastals.
Speaker 1: I had to there's a river between me and the
Speaker 1: road now, so I I strip off all my clothes,
Speaker 1: followed them up, put him on my briefcase, put my
Speaker 1: briefcase on my head, and wade across this river into
Speaker 1: this sort of like jungle in order to get to
Speaker 1: the road, so I can hitchhike to get back to Hollandale.
Speaker 1: And uh, and I did, and I got there, and
Speaker 1: I dried off, and I put my clothes back on
Speaker 1: and I got to the road and the car stopped
Speaker 1: immediately some young guy picked me up and brought me
Speaker 1: to Holland Town. But that's the kind of adventures we
Speaker 1: would often have on the Ziggy Star Ust tour. It
Speaker 1: was a little haphazard. Yes, it's gonna say, I mean,
Speaker 1: just charging a lot of food room service, because I mean,
Speaker 1: how are you going to get food with no cash? Food? Yeah,
Speaker 1: no room service, which we cherished everything, the room service.
Speaker 1: In Beverly Hill, we stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Speaker 1: You could buy anything at the Beverly Hills Hotel. They
Speaker 1: had a drug store that had you know, you could
Speaker 1: rent car anything you wanted, You could rent buy the
Speaker 1: Beverly Hills Hotel on room service, and we did, I
Speaker 1: mean just the personalities on the tour. I mean, was
Speaker 1: it easy to was everybody relatively laid back? I mean,
Speaker 1: were there any how is David not at all? Well again,
Speaker 1: you know you think of these tours and you think
Speaker 1: of David Bowie and you think, oh, so glamorous and
Speaker 1: so this and so that. That was not the reality.
Speaker 1: What the reality was a bunch of boys from northern England.
Speaker 1: The band was off of northern England. They had never
Speaker 1: been anywhere. Not only that, we had these bodyguards all
Speaker 1: from Hall Stewart, George what Tony Frost wasn't wasn't anyway.
Speaker 1: They were very like Stewart could be a real pain
Speaker 1: in the ass and a real thug, and so could
Speaker 1: the other ones. And they like we were on this
Speaker 1: bus they started drinking eight o'clock in the morning and rock.
Speaker 1: I mean it was not aphisticated group, let me put
Speaker 1: it that way. And it was because it was these
Speaker 1: boys have never been anywhere, so, you know, traveling in
Speaker 1: this glamorous cavalcade, traveling with a bunch of like who
Speaker 1: against from northern England. And but I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of them arerow some sweet the boy the band is
Speaker 1: very sweet, woody and Trevor Nick. You couldn't find a
Speaker 1: nice of guy than Mick ronson Um. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: what you think. It wasn't what you would want to
Speaker 1: project it to be. It wasn't that at all. I
Speaker 1: heard a story, I don't know if it's true, that
Speaker 1: that David called you one morning and said, I don't
Speaker 1: know where I am. I think I'm in a house
Speaker 1: in the woods somewhere. Uh, And it felt to you
Speaker 1: to sort of track him down. That is true, And
Speaker 1: I kind of must have written about it my book
Speaker 1: because I kind of don't remember it that well. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. We went Seattle and he had gone home
Speaker 1: with some girl and we were well, I was freaking
Speaker 1: out because I couldn't find him. Yeah, and then he
Speaker 1: did call me, Yes, and I g think I said,
Speaker 1: we just get into a cabin. I'll be waiting downstairs
Speaker 1: to pay for it. But yeah, that was a little
Speaker 1: because we treated him. Yeah, And this is on Austin,
Speaker 1: not on him, And maybe it was a little him.
Speaker 1: The minute he started playing the Ziggie character to us,
Speaker 1: he was Ziggy David Bowie disappeared and Ziggy Ziggy was
Speaker 1: who was in the room, not David, and we treated
Speaker 1: him with kind of kid gloves and very we made
Speaker 1: him very precious and very you know, he had to
Speaker 1: be taken care of every step of the way. And
Speaker 1: that really wasn't his demand, I don't think, because some
Speaker 1: of it might have been a little bit. But we
Speaker 1: we made him, um, we kind of there was a distance.
Speaker 1: He was always in this very special place. Part of
Speaker 1: it was, you know, our c a's big act was Elvis.
Speaker 1: And I sat with the guy from our c A
Speaker 1: who had always been like the Elvis guy he'd always
Speaker 1: put on the road with with Elvis, and and then
Speaker 1: he said something very interesting to me. Early on, he said,
Speaker 1: she said that Elvis always had to be taken care
Speaker 1: of because without Elvis, you know, they were like fifty
Speaker 1: people on the road whatever. But without Elvis there, I'll
Speaker 1: be out of a job. So it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: you were there for Elvis, and I took that to heart,
Speaker 1: like we were there, there were thirty something I was,
Speaker 1: but without David Bowie, we wouldn't be there. We were
Speaker 1: there for David Bowie. So we we treated him all.
Speaker 1: I certainly treated him with kid gloves. It wasn't no
Speaker 1: longer my friend at that point he was, you know,
Speaker 1: the alien rock star. Basically, why did the famous Hammersmith
Speaker 1: Odean show in seventy three were the retirement concerts? So
Speaker 1: called retirement concert Why did that occur? Was it financially motivated,
Speaker 1: creatively motivated? All the above, but the retirement Yeah, well
Speaker 1: a few reasons. Um, it was financial. But but first
Speaker 1: of all, you know, we've been on the road. He
Speaker 1: had been on the road for a year and a
Speaker 1: half of I mean, he did need a little bit
Speaker 1: of a break. We all did. Um, that was a
Speaker 1: year and a half solid touring. But the other thing
Speaker 1: that happened was publishing. Um Defrees was in a dispute
Speaker 1: with the publishing company and he wanted to get David
Speaker 1: off of that publishing company. And and uh so he
Speaker 1: didn't want to deliver anymore. He did not want to
Speaker 1: deliver any new material. And if you notice, the next
Speaker 1: album was pin Ups, which was all covers. So that
Speaker 1: was part of it. The other part of it was
Speaker 1: when we had been in l A. You know, the
Speaker 1: spiders got well, Mike Garrison was a scientologist. He was
Speaker 1: the piano player, and he got the boys a little
Speaker 1: bit involved in scientology and and the whole thing of
Speaker 1: money came up because because all of us had been
Speaker 1: done on a shoe string for the all a year.
Speaker 1: Even though the money had begun to come in a
Speaker 1: little bit, still nobody was being paid. I mean we
Speaker 1: were being paid very small amounts, like subsistence wages, including
Speaker 1: the band. So the band's media expenses might be paid.
Speaker 1: Everything was paid, but they didn't get a salary. And
Speaker 1: Mike Garthon did get a salary. And when it came
Speaker 1: out like well he was making eight hundred dollars a
Speaker 1: week and they're making sev it was like what. So
Speaker 1: that created that began to erode the relationship between the
Speaker 1: band and David and Maine Man. They were demanding money
Speaker 1: and there were there really wasn't any money, so um
Speaker 1: and David took that. You know, David also had a
Speaker 1: history of leaving bands. You know that he wasn't this
Speaker 1: was not the Beatles, this is like his support band.
Speaker 1: So I think he took a lot of that as
Speaker 1: a betrayal and so he was like done with the
Speaker 1: band once that started. Basically, plus I think creatively, you know,
Speaker 1: he didn't want to be stuck as any starts for
Speaker 1: the rest of his life, so he needed to recharge
Speaker 1: and move on. Um. So all of those things had
Speaker 1: to play. Um. He didn't They didn't know that that.
Speaker 1: Nobody knew what it meant that he was retiring. Basically,
Speaker 1: he was retiring as he startist. Wasn't retiring David Bowie um. Um,
Speaker 1: but the band was being retired and they didn't know that.
Speaker 1: So they found that out on the stage. That wasn't
Speaker 1: so nice. But maybe that was like getting back at
Speaker 1: them for their betrayal whatever. Um. Yeah. So and that
Speaker 1: that was the in some ways the beginning of the end,
Speaker 1: because it was kind of like at that moment, everyone
Speaker 1: did stop and you could relax to a certain point.
Speaker 1: David could relax to a certain point. The freest could
Speaker 1: relax to a certain I mean, they could stand back
Speaker 1: and kind of evaluate what they had been doing, what
Speaker 1: they had been working so hard towards for the last
Speaker 1: two or three years, because a lot of it had
Speaker 1: been accomplished. At that point. David was responsible for four
Speaker 1: percent of our record sales in the UK. He still
Speaker 1: didn't have any success in the United States except for
Speaker 1: public for publicity and press. I mean, he didn't have
Speaker 1: wreck big record sales in the United States. He didn't
Speaker 1: have a number one single or anything like that when
Speaker 1: he didn't England. So all his life he had been
Speaker 1: working towards becoming a pop star. That summer he was
Speaker 1: a pop star, and for for the next few months
Speaker 1: he was living in London like a pop star. An
Speaker 1: Tonio J. Freese who wanted to be this entrepreneur and
Speaker 1: impresario and had been working all his life towards that
Speaker 1: could sit back and get his Park Avenue office and
Speaker 1: ran out a big house in Greenwich and act like
Speaker 1: the mogul that he wanted to be. So they had
Speaker 1: both kind of accomplished their goals. And that next period
Speaker 1: of like six months or so, before David came to
Speaker 1: the United States to prepare for the Diamonds Us tour um,
Speaker 1: that was kind of all about that, and it was
Speaker 1: kind of the beginning of the end of mean Man.
Speaker 1: My last question, is there an image or a scene
Speaker 1: to you that really sums up that period of your
Speaker 1: life with David There like one snapshot or vig yet
Speaker 1: that you treasure above all others. Wow, that's an interesting question.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I mean, I'm going to just tell
Speaker 1: you the first thing that comes to my mind, and
Speaker 1: I don't know why, because it's certainly not dramatic. We
Speaker 1: were on the road somewhere and this was during the
Speaker 1: Young Americans tour, and we were in David Sweet we
Speaker 1: were watching television. We were watching California Split, which was
Speaker 1: a movie directed by Robert All. It's just a nice
Speaker 1: moment that we had because he was you know, it
Speaker 1: was he was he was in the midst of trying
Speaker 1: to write a screenplay and he was headed towards the movies,
Speaker 1: and we both were just in total awe Robert All.
Speaker 1: But it was kind of because I guess by that time,
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole thing, the whole experience for me
Speaker 1: was not one. I was not ambitious. I did not
Speaker 1: want to be in the music business. I got involved
Speaker 1: in all of this because these are my friends and
Speaker 1: we all loved each other. We were all very close,
Speaker 1: including Lee and Cherry, Angie and and and David certainly,
Speaker 1: but you know, you get caught up in the work
Speaker 1: and that that kind of it kind of turns into
Speaker 1: something else. But that was I guess, one moment where
Speaker 1: I felt the kinship with him again. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: based on you know, David Bowie Superstar or Tony's Aneta
Speaker 1: president of Main Mean, it was just two people who
Speaker 1: watching this movie. That was nice And I don't know
Speaker 1: why it seems significant at this moment, but I guess
Speaker 1: it was because your friends it was getting back to
Speaker 1: originally were right exactly exactly. Off the Record is a
Speaker 1: auction of I Heart Radio. If you liked what you heard,
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