“Ziggy threw a party that lasted all night”
With what would have been David Bowie’s 75th birthday today, we can rewind exactly 50 years to his 25th birthday and a party at his then home, Haddon Hall. But first, some background.
The very same day as his 25th, Melody Maker (MM) ran the full-page Hunky Dory advert (slightly adjusted) that Billboard had run in the US two months earlier.
For the partygoers on their way to Beckenham who hadn’t seen him for a while, the long-haired Bowie was how they imagined the current Bowie to be, as confirmed by that day’s MM advert.
However, the hair had started its journey to the Ziggy cut the previous November, when Trevor Bolder trimmed the top short, but left the back long. The length was then cut in time for the Bowie family Christmas visit to Cyprus in December.
Inspired by Alex Chatelain's photos of Christine Walton for Vogue (see colour image) David’s locks were cut into the style that greeted the Haddon Hall guests.
In 1990, journalist Lisa Robinson remembered the moment like this: “Bowie greeted us at the door of his London house wearing the patterned Ziggy jumpsuit, red vinyl boots and his hair was chopped off in that short spiky orange style – all of it a far cry from the Greta Garbo of the year before – and I remember saying to him, ‘Ahh, so you’ve seen Clockwork Orange’.”
Eighteen years is a long time to expect anybody to remember an event with complete accuracy. At this point David’s hair wasn’t dyed and he had yet to see A Clockwork Orange.
Sadly, photographs from the party have never surfaced. A missed opportunity considering that aside from the soon to be named Spiders From Mars (David wasn’t actually Ziggy yet either), both Lionel Bart and Lou Reed were among the guests purportedly in attendance.
The closest we have are Barry Wentzell’s images we’ve used today of Bowie in the same outfit, taken the following week at the Gem offices in Regent Street. The session was for the famous 22nd January MM Bowie cover feature: Oh You Pretty Thing. But that’s another story.
FOOTNOTE: See the Facebook version of this story for more pictures.
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