A flyer for the night
13 year old Morrissey first saw Bowie, at The Hardrock's opening night, just round the corner from his Stretford home {Steven's, not David's} ~
"T. Rex are my first concert and my dad and sister drop me off at daunting Belle Vue on June 16th 1972, watching me waddle away alone in my purple satin jacket – a sight ripe for psychiatric scrutiny. I am now determined, and newly emerged from Groovin’ with Mr Bloe by Mr Bloe. England was already set to change trains from Marc Bolan to David Bowie, whose Starman single had shaken everyone with its somewhere-over-the-rainbow chorus and Blue Mink’s Melting pot bridge.
Full-page advertising for David Bowie’s new Top Rank tour causes me to laugh excitedly as I see the now famous shot of spike-thin Bowie half-propped on a high stool, wearing tight white satin pants tucked into plastic boxer-boots, one hand on hip, the other hand pointing the way to somewhere, quite fanatically homosexual.
The face is damned-soul-as-savior-of-society, preacher and reformer, now free of his own unhappy childhood and willing to help you through yours should Black Sabbath and Deep Purple prove insufficient.
I crawl from the cultureless world to Stretford Hardrock in September 1972, where David Bowie is showcasing the venue. At mid-day he emerges from a black Mercedes, every inch the eighth dimension, teetering on high heels, with all the wisdom of our ancestors. Smiling keenly, he accepts the note of a dull schoolboy whose overblown soul is more ablaze than the school blazer he wears, and thus I touch the hand of this inexplicably liberating reformer; he, a Wildean visionary about to re-mold England, and I, a spectacle of suffering in a blue school uniform.
*"
* Why is he wearing his school uniform on a Saturday?
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