Tag Archives: David Bowie

➤ Bowie’s “lost” Jean Genie from 1973 to be aired on Top of the Pops this week

Posted on 18 Dec 2011 | Leave a comment
David Bowie, Jean Genie, Top of the Pops, Mick Ronson,video,John Henshall,

1973 revisited: Bowie and Ronson singing Jean Genie in the "lost" Top of the Pops performance. (Videograb © BBC, courtesy of John Henshall/Bowie.net)

❚ HOT NEWS OF A CHRISTMAS TREAT for Bowie fans. They have waited for almost 40 years to see his only Top of the Pops performance of The Jean Genie with The Spiders from Mars in January 1973 — shirtless, though clad in an open satin jacket. The tape was long thought to have been wiped or lost.

However a former BBC cameraman recently discovered that he possessed the only broadcast-quality copy in pristine condition, and today Bowie Wonderworld announced that entertainment boss Mark Cooper has arranged to have it included in this Wednesday’s 90-minute collection of classic Christmas hits (TOTP2, 7.30pm). The intention had been to unveil the clip in the BBC4 documentary Tales of Television Centre in the New Year, but enthusiastic fans persuaded him to bring forward its screening, even though you won’t see the track listed in the online billings.

As executive producer of Top Of The Pops 2, Cooper said: “I can’t imagine what other piece of TOTP from the early 70s would be as extraordinary a find.”

Bowie’s performance of The Jean Genie was recorded on Jan 3, 1973 and transmitted the following day for the first and only time. The “lost” recording — copy on 2-inch broadcast videotape — was screened last week at the NFT’s Missing Believed Wiped event. BowieNet’s news editor enthused: “A shirtless David looks amazing as he shakes maracas and blows on the harmonica. It’s clear David and the Spiders were at their peak when this video footage was shot, just a few days before David’s 26th birthday.”

Andy Barding, another privileged witness, added: “The first screening of the newly rediscovered clip of Bowie, Ronson, Woodmansey and Bolder performing The Jean Genie on Top of the Pops saw a packed National Film Theatre struck agog at the majesty of Ziggy in action: in pristine, full-colour TV quality. David, with deep-red hair, shaved brows and bafflingly wide trousers, looked every inch the epitome of what we recall as glam.”

➢ Read Barding’s full appreciation of the lost clip at BowieNet

David Bowie, Jean Genie, Top of the Pops, Mick Ronson,video,John Henshall

TOTP 1973: Jean Genie viewed through John Henshall’s innovative fish-eye lens. (Videograb © BBC, courtesy of John Henshall/Bowie.net)

The Jean Genie single had been released in November 1972, and the January 4 transmission on the BBC’s flagship pop show boosted it to peak at Number 2 in the UK singles chart. The track was remixed for Bowie’s sixth album Aladdin Sane in April 1973 which divided critics over his genius. The Jean Genie surfed in on the inspirational wave caused by the arrival of Ziggy Stardust and the Starman in July 1972, when Bowie’s Top of the Pops appearance years later passed into legend as the glam-rock moment that shaped the imaginations of a teen generation who were to become the popstars of the 80s.

➢ Update Dec 21: Bowie’s friend Wendy Kirby spots herself dancing in Jean Genie for the first time

➢ Glitter versus Glam and where to draw a line – naff blokes in Bacofoil versus starmen with pretensions

TV INNOVATOR WHO SAVED THE KEY RECORDING

❏ The retired cameraman John Henshall, now 69, has been speaking of how he came to own the footage of David Bowie’s Jean Genie which was thought to be lost. In the early 70s, long before the days of digital effects, Henshall ran a company called Telefex which made star filters, multi-image prisms, fish-eye lens attachments, kaleidotubes and picture rotators. Encouraged by TOTP producer Johnnie Stewart, he used the fish-eye to create the optical effects seen in the Bowie recording.

David Bowie, Jean Genie, 1973, Top of the Pops,video,John Henshall ,Mick Woodmansey

Cameraman caught on camera: John Henshall seen in Studio 8 just beyond drummer Mick Woodmansey during the Jean Genie recording. (Videograb © BBC)

Afterwards he asked Stewart for a personal copy on 2-inch tape to include in his company’s showreel.

Today he is an expert in digital imaging, who pioneered the now ubiquitous lightweight television camera mounted on a long boom arm that we see sweeping above artist and audience at concerts. He also directed photography on hundreds of early music videos for artists including Paul McCartney, Kate Bush, Blondie and Elton John.

Henshall only discovered how “rarer than rare” the clip was when he mentioned it in a radio interview. He said: “I couldn’t believe that I was the only one with it. I thought you wouldn’t be mad enough to wipe a tape like that. They’d been looking for it for years.”

➢ Listen to John Henshall telling Malcolm Boyden at BBC Radio Oxford about how he saved the Bowie tape

➢ Update Dec 21: Finally, the BBC Six o’Clock News gets round to its own report on John Henshall’s prize discovery

➢ View the Jean Genie video on the BBC iPlayer until New Year’s Eve

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1965 ➤ Teenage Bowie flashes priceless smile to an amateur cine camera

Posted on 27 Nov 2011 | 1 comment

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❚ HERE’S A FAB GLIMPSE OF DAVID BOWIE in a London street, caught on cine film when he was aged 18. It is newly posted at YouTube by 57-year-old Joe Salama from south-east London. Shapersofthe80s asked Joe about his Bowie connection and he replied: “I suppose I have always been a fan of David Bowie’s music certainly since Hunky Dory when as a youngster I drove a minicab for a while with my Hanimex tape player rigged up to some headphones in my Renault 16. I remember delivering some parts to IBM in Birmingham at night and that album kept me going all the way there and back, thrilled to bits with the sound.

“Regarding the 1960s cine clip, it really was a complete surprise to me and needless to say my late father, who had no idea at the time. This exceptional footage was taken by him on a trip up to the West End of London, totally unaware that David Bowie was the young dude who smiles graciously at the camera. Even when I showed him what he had filmed he was none the wiser and couldn’t remember why he focused on this particular chap. He was trying to film my mum whose face crosses fleetingly behind the great man if you look carefully at the shot. Roughly dated to 1968.”

❏ YouTuber momasu comments: “This is spring 1965, and Davie Jones (as he was still called then) is heading into his favourite cafe on Denmark Street, La Gioconda, possibly after recording demos with his new band The Lower Third at Central Sound Studio next door.”

David Bowie , Davie Jones, Manish Boys, 1960s,Denmark Street, Tin Pan Alley,joesalama,YouTube

Pre-Bowie Davie Jones, aged 18: filmed possibly in Tin Pan Alley, London, by Joe Salama’s father

❏ Judging by the numerous photos in Kevin Cann’s meticulous book Any Day Now, two details pin the date of Joe’s film clip down to the early part of 1965: the giant button-down tab-collar shirt Bowie is wearing, and his hair hanging well over his collar, now parted as he moves on from the “helmet” style seen in the 1964 video below. Under the stage name of Davie Jones he had been singing since the previous July with the six-piece R&B band, The Manish Boys, whose hair-length had caused controversy. They record the single I Pity The Fool — produced by Shel Talmy and with a guitar solo by Jimmy Page — which leads to a TV appearance on BBC2’s Gadzooks in March 1965.

17-YEAR-OLD BOWIE ON THE TONIGHT SHOW IN 1964

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❏ Nov 12, 1964: Kevin Cann’s book reminds us that when Bowie, then known as Davie Jones, appeared on the BBC’s Tonight show (above) campaigning for “The Society for the prevention of cruelty to long-haired men”, it was a publicity-seeking ploy. Nowhere in the interview does he admit that the hairy men around him in the studio are mostly The Manish Boys, on a rare night off from touring southern England. The previous night they’d played the legendary home of British R&B, the Eel Pie Island club in Twickenham, and the next they were at the Witch Doctor in St Leonards-on-Sea (though without Davie). Incidentally, this is not his TV debut as some claim — that was on Juke Box Jury the previous June.

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2012 ➤ Diamond Dogs snarl denial over Bowie / Heroes The Musical

Posted on 27 Nov 2011 | Leave a comment

Guy Peellaert’s sci-fi cover for Bowie’s Diamond Dogs album, 1974... That year Elle magazine named the Belgian pop-artist “the Michelangelo of Pop”

➢ Nov 27 Update at davidbowie.com: Following news reports in today’s UK press, such as The Observer, here is the official statement from his spokesman…

“ Neither the David Bowie Organization, nor its co-publishers EMI Music and Chrysalis, has issued a license for this performance at the O2. There are no negotiations pending for a long-running musical featuring the music of Mr Bowie ”

❏ Nov 29 update: Julian Stockton at The Outside Organisation confirmed today: “That statement put out by me at the weekend still stands, there has been no change.” When I suggested that his phrase “long-running” doesn’t actually rule out a one-off show, and asked “Are negotiations pending for a one-off musical?” he replied: “To the best of my knowledge no there are not.”

➢ Dec 1 update: A Guardian blog today surmises that Bowie made “the right artistic call” over this jukebox musical, yet no correction to last Sunday’s report has been published or explanation of whether the reporter checked the facts with Bowie’s management.

Heroes the Musical ,website,David Bowie ,Deep Singh, IndigO2,

SORRY, FANS, THIS HEROES SHOW IS A DEAD DUCK

❏ Despite the official denials expressed above, the website for Heroes the Musical is still announcing a performance on Sunday March 11, 2012… and its Facebook page says tickets go on sale 9am January 5. Meanwhile an email from Shapersofthe80s seeking clarification from the producers remains unanswered.

➢ Original report Sunday Nov 27 by Vanessa Thorpe in The Observer newspaper and still online without retraction Monday Nov 28:

“ PLANS HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED this weekend for the first full-scale musical based on the songs of the totemic British performer David Bowie. A futuristic fantasy called Heroes: The Musical will tell the story of Major Tom, as well as the starman and a “young dude” called David and will have its world premiere in March at the IndigO2, the nightclub venue with a flexible capacity of 2,400 inside London’s former Millennium Dome.

Bowie, who is one of Britain’s most successful songwriters, rarely gives permission for his songs to be used and has never allowed them to be used in this way before. Deep Singh, a former screenwriter who wrote the musical, believes that Bowie gave consent because he emphasised that his story was set in the future and aimed to show the timeless relevance of Bowie’s lyrics.

The villains of Singh’s story are the patrolling Diamond Dogs and the “ruthless Smart Simon” who has created, and now controls, a dystopian empire set in an indeterminate future… ”/ continued online

➢ A feast of Bowie-ana served in waffeur-thin slices
in Kevin Cann’s new book

➢ Discovered last week, a Bowie smile flashed to an amateur
cine camera in 1965

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2011 ➤ Peter Frampton: how Bowie changed my life at Bromley Tech

Posted on 8 Nov 2011 | Leave a comment
Peter Frampton, Frampton Comes Alive,world tour 2011,1954 Les Paul Custom

Frampton then and now: the 1976 gatefold sleeve shot for Frampton Comes Alive! by Richard Aaron... and earlier this year playing live at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, photographed by Wenn... Both pictures are united by Frampton’s signature guitar, the solidbody “Black Beauty” 1954 Les Paul Custom, which was re-finished with three pickups by the Gibson factory in 1970. In fact the original Black Beauty (left) was lost in a 1980 cargo plane crash, after which Gibson’s crafted another guitar in the image of the 1954 Les Paul Custom but with a slim-carved neck profile for optimum speed plus ebony black finish (above right)

❚ 35 YEARS AGO BRITISH-BORN GUITARIST Peter Frampton was a rock god, given two Rolling Stone covers within months of each other, the second declaring him Rock Star of the Year. His appeal has evidently been reignited by this year’s 35th anniversary world tour of his multi-platinum album Frampton Comes Alive!, drenched as it always was with West Coast sunshine. The “better than ever” tour has been extended from this Friday with extra dates in the UK and Europe, and yet more in the US from February. There is no support and the show runs for three hours. FCA! is the first set, including a 14-minute arrangement of Do You Feel Like We Do to re-create his epic stadium concerts of 1976. The second half features newer work, but also earlier numbers that resulted from forming the supergroup Humble Pie with “little” Stevie Marriott of the Small Faces in 1969.

Peter Frampton, Rolling Stone, magazines, Rock Star of the Year,

Cover star: in April 1976 Frampton Comes Alive! won him the cover of Rolling Stone. Afterwards, he feared the shirtless photo by Francesco Scavullo “turned me into a pop idol” and would reduce his career to 18 months... Fortunately by the following February he was photographed by Annie Liebovitz as Rock Star of the Year

It has taken this comeback to remind us, or for most of us to reveal, that Frampton learned to play the rock classics at the feet of another Beckenham boy, David Bowie, when they were students together in south London.

➢ The Bowiezone website supplies these (and other) childhood details:
“ [Frampton] first became interested in music when he was seven years old. Upon discovering his grandmother’s banjolele (a banjo-shaped ukulele) in the attic, he taught himself to play, and later taught himself to play guitar and piano as well. At the age of eight he started taking classical music lessons.

Both he and David Bowie were pupils at Bromley Technical High School where Frampton’s father, Owen Frampton, was head of the art department. The Little Ravens played on the same bill at school as Bowie’s band, George and the Dragons. Peter and David would spend time together at lunch breaks, playing Buddy Holly songs.

At the age of 11, Peter was playing with a band called The Trubeats followed by a band called The Preachers, produced and managed by Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones. He became a successful child singer, and in 1966, he became a member of The Herd, scoring a handful of British pop hits. Frampton was named The Face of 1968 by teen magazine Rave!. ”

➢ In an interview this summer with the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Frampton himself added this first-hand account:

“ I got to know [Bowie] when I was 12 and he was 14, 15, maybe. I said, ‘What music do you like right now?’ He said, ‘Buddy Holly.’ I said, ‘Teach me that.’ I remember sitting on the stairs at lunchtime with two guitars and him and George Underwood — who became the artist who did the covers of Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane — and the three of us would hang out and play Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly numbers.”

While in school, Frampton became lead singer and guitarist of the Herd. In 1969, he formed Humble Pie with Steve Marriott of the Small Faces and also did session work on albums, including George Harrison’s classic All Things Must Pass. After five LPs with Humble Pie, he went solo in 1971. ”

Bowie and Frampton in New York rehearsing for the Glass Spider Tour, 1987: Peter contributed to the album Never Let Me Down, Bowie’s follow-up to Let’s Dance, then played lead guitar on tour. Photograph by David McGough

The Bowie connection was rekindled in 1987 when Frampton was hired to play on the Never Let Me Down album and then as lead guitarist for that year’s Glass Spider Tour. Echoes of Bowie can often be heard in Frampton’s own vocals, especially his acoustic version of Baby I Love Your Way — shown below in impressive footage recently released from promoter Bill Graham’s archive.

➢ Bowiezone recently published an interview with Mick “Woody” Woodmansey, the drummer on Bowie’s early 70s albums

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2011 ➤ Pay now — so We Can Be Heroes goes ahead!

Posted on 26 Oct 2011 | Leave a comment

1980: Clare Thom, Philip Sallon and George O’Dowd on a coach trip to Margate. Photograph by Graham Smith/grsmith@mac.com.jpg from his book We Can Be Heroes

WE CAN BE HEROES
must be funded by November 12 17 [update]

❚ NOBODY IS BETTER QUALIFIED to chronicle the whirlwind six years between punk and the death of the New Romantics than Graham Smith through his eye-witness photography, and the writer Chris Sullivan, one of the core movers-and-shapers of his generation. UK music and style evolved out of all recognition in a mighty resurgence of youth subcultures that directly triggered a rejuvenation of mainstream media for the rest of the decade. Shapersofthe80s was on hand as an observer. But these two wags were in the thick of the action — major players in a spontaneous youthful collaboration to regenerate the UK’s ailing music and style scenes as 1980 dawned. With contributions by a galaxy of stars, who include Gary Kemp and Boy George, this will become the definitive story of one of the great explosions of creativity in British youth culture.

The authors aim to get their large-format 320-page coffee-table photobook We Can Be Heroes to you in time for Christmas. Their “crowd-funding” venture requires them to raise the cash first by asking YOU to buy your copy in advance, before 6pm GMT on November 12 17. Your reward is to see your name printed as a Supporter in the limited first edition. The clock is ticking.

View Graham’s video today at Unbound Publishing, a new company under the patronage of Faber, the most prestigious publisher in Britain. Here you can purchase your book and enjoy other perks such as an invitation to the launch party. Join the clubbers at Facebook who are submitting their own photos and tales of merriment.

➢ Twitter directly with the publisher, Unbound

READ WHAT HAS ALREADY BEEN SAID
ABOUT WE CAN BE HEROES

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➢ Unbound aims for 40 books in year one … Supported by Faber, the platform was created by QI writers John Mitchinson and John Pollard, and Crap Towns author Dan Kieran — The Bookseller

➢ Funded by the people — Channel 4 News video on “crowdfunding”, the process that decides when and how Graham’s book gets published

➢ Why creative clubbing ended with the 80s — the credentials that equipped Smithy, Sullivan and Elms (and a few other crazies) to start changing the world

➢ Boy George says the 70s were the best time ever to be a teenager — and Tweets that “it’s a brilliant book about the New Romantics! Really!” He has also written a foreword in We Can Be Heroes. (So have Gary Kemp, Steve Strange and Robert Elms)

➢ A slideshow of Graham’s Blitz-era gems at Guardian online

➢ Thirty years of punk and post-punk photo imagery — by Disneyrollergirl, one of The Times’ 40 bloggers who count

➢ Huffington Post: All about 1980s club kids — former Blitz Kid and Times fashion editor Iain R Webb writes about Bowie’s impact on the Blitz scene

➢ A legacy that has inspired each decade since the 80s — Princesss Julia, international deejay and fabulous Blitz Club coat-check girl, writes for i-D about stripping away the posers’ facade

➢ Update Nov 6: priceless storytelling about 80s mayhem with Elms and Sullivan on video

➢ Promo video for Blue Jean (1984) starring David Bowie as Screamin’ Lord Byron before a London clubland audience … Below is the alternate version of Blue Jean for MTV, starring Bowie and the Aliens, shot live before an audience in Soho’s Wag club, which was hosted for 19 years by Chris Sullivan

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