Shouting from the Hop

David Bowie died yesterday. These are words many people my age, and older, never thought that they would write, or see written. He was ageless. An icon. A hero, and not just for one day.

As with most music, I picked up on Bowie late; I do believe that his was the first single that I ever bought - it was either The Jean Genie  in the summer of  1972, or Life On Mars in 1973. I bought it at the record shop in Sidcup, on my way home from school one afternoon. I had seen him on Top of the Pops well before then, but as with many people, despite liking the Starman and his music, was confused by his looks.  Once glam-rock took hold, at least we could pigeon-hole him a little (but not for long). I never bought a Bowie album, just those few singles.

I never met him, or went to see him play live, So my memories of Bowie tend to be personal, about times of my life when he influenced things around me.

One such time was when Bowie announced he would be playing a series of gigs at Milton Keynes Bowl in 1983. I was working on NME at the time, and used to manage the classified ads production on press days at the printer or typesetter (we actually moved from our Kettering printer to the Goswell Road typesetter that spring). The important thing about the classified ads was that they had to be in alphabetical order, under their different section headings (For Sale, Records For Sale, Personal, Tickets Wanted, etc etc). Bowie announced about six dates, and soon there was a massive uptake in new lineage ads either wanting to sell the tickets, or to buy, or exchange for different dates. We seemed to regularly get about 200 or so different ads per week for the For Sale section that all started with the words BOWIE, and then usually gave a date, a price, contact details, etc. This boosted out normal page and a bit Classified section to over two pages on occasion, the busiest I ever saw it in my 14 years at NME.  Being a bit anal about these things, I insisted that the ads had to be carried in exact alpha order, so the first advert that started BOWIE had to have the next part in alpha order - Bowie A would precede Bowie B, which would precede Bowie C, etc. Putting a couple of hundred of these ads in order very week was a big task, and it was too big for the computer system that typeset them (that could only cope with the Bowie bit, and not much more). So me and my colleagues Barry and Lee (whichever one of us had the classified bit of our job to do that week...) had to sort out the slips that the ads were submitted on into the exact right order, find the typeset ad on the proof page, read and correct it, then mark it with a number to show the running order in that section. Once corrected and re-proofed, we had to stand with the comp who had to cut up all 200 plus ads that started with BOWIE individually and then add each one to the classified page as we made it up - using the number order we had written on the proof - in exact alpha-order. Very time-consuming! I was actually glad when he finally played those gigs, so that the classified page could return to normality (which is more than Bowie ever did!).

It is hard to define Bowie's best period; obviously people remember the great Ziggy Stardust years, but I have a fond liking of his white-soul hits Golden Years and Fame (The Thin White Duke persona). Others I knew loved his return to these shores with Let's Dance, Modern Love, etc. Lots of songs got mentioned on the 10pm BBC news yesterday (which, give them credit,  ran a lengthy piece), but that just reminded me of so many more that he worked on (even if he did not necessarily perform or write) - Suffragette City, All the Young Dudes, China Girl - the list could be endless!

For the Man Who Fell to Earth, it was time to return whence he came, Ashes to Ashes, Rebel Rebel, he will be Waiting in the Sky. Farewell David Bowie.