Why Bowie Matters. Will Brooker
These eighteen months with The Konrads – he joined in June 1962 and left on 31 December 1963 – give us a template for Bowie’s early approach. Rather than trying to strike out on his own as a singer-songwriter, he worked within the existing frameworks; nudging a jobbing covers band to experiment, while pushing for his own ideas and styling the brand as much as he could. But failure is also a key aspect of Bowie’s career. The Konrads’ song ‘I Never Dreamed’ – co-written by Jones, Alan Dodds and Roger Ferris, and recorded during an audition for Decca – was rejected by the label, and the band also failed to get past the first round of Rediffusion’s TV contest, Ready, Steady, Win. David, frustrated at his lack of control within the group, teamed up briefly again with George Underwood – significantly, their side-project the Hooker Brothers was initially called Dave’s Reds and Blues, giving him top billing – and recorded music in his bedroom, using basic equipment to build guitar parts and harmonies and effectively creating a band on his own.
By January 1964, a month after leaving The Konrads, he’d recruited three older musicians, along with Underwood, into a new band, Davie Jones and The King Bees. Now he was headlining. The green corduroy, striped tie and brown mohair trousers were out, replaced by jeans, T-shirts, piratical leather waistcoats and high-cut boots from a fashionable London boutique. Acquaintances of the time describe him as ‘very fashion conscious’, with ‘way-out clothes and dyed hair’; outrageous enough to embarrass his more conventional girlfriends. With a distinct focus on blues, rather than just playing every chart crowd-pleaser, the King Bees had a stronger identity, and the Davie Jones of his 1964 publicity shots is more recognisable as proto-David Bowie.
Again, with characteristic inventiveness and cheek – perhaps inspired by his dad’s insider knowledge – he wrote to a local entrepreneur, laundry magnate John Bloom, asking him to sponsor the band. Bloom passed the details on to talent scout Leslie Conn, who signed up David, offered the King Bees a prestigious gig and management, and negotiated a record deal with Decca. On 5 June, just six months after The Konrads’ failed Decca audition, Davie Jones released his first disc, ‘Liza Jane’: on the 19th they performed it on Rediffusion’s TV show, Ready Steady Go!. In July, David was fired from his job in advertising after a blazing row with his boss – he’d been working as a ‘junior visualiser’, a paste-up artist – or, if you believe his version of events, decided to quit and dedicate all his time to making it in the music business.
From one angle, it seems a clear-cut, focused trajectory towards his later fame. But what if The Konrads had been signed by Decca, and triumphed on Ready, Steady, Win? Every point of apparent failure in Bowie’s 1960s is a pivot to an alternate future – now an alternate history – where his success would have come sooner, but surely would have been short-lived.
The pattern continued: a few steps forward, another setback, and another shift. The King Bees’ first major gig was a flop that left David in tears. Juke Box Jury, on BBC1, voted ‘Liza Jane’ a miss. Musically, though credited to Leslie Conn, it’s indebted to the standard ‘Li’l Liza Jane’, and, in the words of Rebel Rebel author Chris O’Leary, is ‘doubly derivative (aping the Stones aping American electric blues)’, not far from The Konrads’ straight covers. Davie Jones, despite his growing confidence, still tries to disguise his accent, though it slips through: as O’Leary notes, ‘Jane’ becomes a twangy ‘Jayne’ by the end. Anne Nightingale, in a contemporary review, called it ‘straight R&B with a strong Cockney inflection’. The B-side, ‘Louie, Louie Go Home’, was a cover of an American release and another mash-up of borrowed styles: if the original was white kids trying to sound black, the King Bees’ cover added Beatles-like backing vocals and a whiny Lennon inflection from the lead singer.
‘Liza Jane’ failed to sell, and David once more left the band. He was chasing success, rather than a particular sound; he even altered his accent from the A-side to the B-side of the single, as the genre shifted from blues to pop. Once again, his projects overlapped as he impatiently sought a new vehicle: he auditioned for The Manish Boys in July 1964, and quit the King Bees later that month. (But again, an alternate path branches out from this point. What if ‘Liza Jane’ had been a hit?)
The pattern continued into 1965. The Manish Boys recorded ‘I Pity the Fool’ in January and released it in March with one of David’s own compositions, ‘Take My Tip’, on the B-side. His talent for provocation and media manipulation emerged more boldly, as he told a promoter his sexual preference was for ‘boys, of course’, and invented a story for the Daily Mirror: he’d supposedly been banned from the TV pop show Gadzooks! It’s All Happening because of his long hair. While enjoying the press attention, David was furious that the band had persuaded Leslie Conn to drop his individual credit on the record, and release it as a single by The Manish Boys. He reasserted himself when they played at the Bromel Club, his home territory, and ensured his name was highlighted, but the other band members hit back with a reminder in their own local paper that ‘Davie is a member of the group, and not, as many people think, the leader.’ Again, the single tanked, and he left the band on 5 May 1965, less than a year since his audition. Once more, we get the sense that every band, every stunt, every style and soundbite was a means to an end: he wanted to cultivate his own brand, not just to join a gang.
And the cycle started again. By 17 May he was leading Davie Jones and the Lower Third. In August, the new group released ‘You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving’, credited solely to Davy Jones. It was an original composition, though this time David steered his new group towards a Who sound – built around the structure of ‘Tired of Waiting for You’, by The Kinks – and his vocals approximated Roger Daltrey. The B-side, ‘Baby Loves That Way’, pastiches Herman’s Hermits and owes a further debt to The Kinks. Drumming up attention for the new single, David met agent Ralph Horton, who agreed to manage the Lower Third and advised a style shift towards London’s mod fashions.
David was still a darling of the local press – the Kentish Times saw it as newsworthy that ‘Davie Changes His Hairstyle’ – and now, under Horton’s influence, adopted what the paper called a ‘college-boy’ look, with Carnaby Street white shirts, hipster trousers and flowery ties. In September, Horton introduced David to the more experienced manager Ken Pitt and, on Pitt’s advice, they changed his stage name to Bowie. David was interviewed in style magazines – ‘I consider myself just to be fashion conscious, not a mod or anything’ – released ‘Can’t Help Thinking About Me’ in early 1966 for his new label, Pye, and covertly planned to go solo. The other band members suspected, but only realised when their 29 January gig at the Bromel Club was billed as ‘David Bowie’, and they were told they wouldn’t get paid. We can predict the next step. On 6 February, Bowie formed a new group, The Buzz, and toured with them for eight months. In August, he released ‘I Dig Everything’, without the band: it was his last work for Pye. Again, the writing was on the wall, and in late November, just before launching a new single on the Deram label, he told The Buzz he wouldn’t be needing them in future.
The single was ‘Rubber Band’, with ‘The London Boys’ on its B-side. ‘David not only wrote the song,’ boasted the press release, ‘he scored the arrangement and produced the master recording.’
Finally, we’ve reached tracks that appear on his debut album from June 1967. It feels like a landmark: after five years of adapting, borrowing, ditching, adopting and dropping – from David Jones through Davie Jay to David Bowie, from The Konrads to The Buzz, from Pye to Deram, from Horton to Pitt – he’s become the solo performer we start to recognise, grabbing his hard-hustled place on the outskirts of fame and edging closer to the centre. The LP features a close-up of his face and his stage name. He’s made it, surely.
How had he got here, when so many other boys and bands from Bromley had dropped out of the race? Partly, simply, through persistence. He’d decided to make it his career, and he wanted stardom enough to get over any misgivings and hesitation. He had a safety net, certainly – not every young man can give up his job in advertising, knowing his father will fund him – but he was still pushing himself on a personal level, taking risks and forcing himself to make them come true. This had been his sole focus since the age of fourteen: or earlier, depending which story we believe.
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