My friend Dani was the biggest David Bowie fan I ever knew. For a few years in the 1970s, she bought every one of his records that she could find, went to every show she could see, scrapbooked every newspaper and magazine article she read.
But, one night, she went to a show, the first Bowie had played in a while, and she hated it — hated the new songs and what he’d done with the old ones. She hated the costumes, hated the haircut. The whole show felt cheap, it was nasty, and it was fake. She never went back.
It was February 1972, and Ziggy Stardust had just lost his first fan.
Bowie was in a peculiar place in early ’72. His latest album, Hunky Dory, had failed to chart upon its release; although, his new single, “Changes,” was the record of the week on the BBC’s Radio 1 breakfast show. He’d come out as bisexual in the weekly Melody Maker, and he’d been booked for a spot on TV’s The Old Grey Whistle Test.
Maybe that broadcast, in early February, should have alerted Dani. Or maybe she wrote it off as a passing aberration. He performed two songs: one from the new album, “Queen Bitch,” and one he’d not yet released, “Five Years.” (A third was filmed, “Oh You Pretty Things,” but it would be another decade before anyone got to see it.)
But new songs weren’t unusual for Bowie. A few months earlier, at Aylesbury Friars, he played just two numbers from, but the audience didn’t know that at the time.
