Db And Sex In The Seventies


“Hang on a minute, mate…what am I doing here? !964 is sooo last week!”

You’ve got your mother in a whirl, She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl…

For those of you that have missed Spaceface‘s plugs in the BowieNet calendar, BBC2’s four part series, Girls and Boys: Sex and British Pop, focuses on the 1970s this week.

As previewed in last week’s programme, this second episode, called Oh You Pretty Things, will attempt to explain DB’s (among others) contribution to the wonderfully confused ideologies of the Glam Rock era and beyond…during which, according to the BBC2 site, “David Bowie encouraged boys to play with their sisters’ make-up boxes”.

I think you’ll agree that if any one person can be held responsible for the changing sexual attitudes in Britain during that decade, it was without doubt David Bowie.

Last week’s look back at the 1960’s featured a 40-year-old snippet from the BBC TV programme Tonight, (originally broadcast in November 1964) on which the young Davie Jones (see above) put forward his case for The Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Long-Haired Men …a full 10 years before the lyric quotation above.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the full Tonight broadcast before, but it’s always a treat to see again. Anyway, Oh You Pretty Things airs at 9:00pm in the UK on Sunday evening, and while I doubt we can expect anything new from it, I’m sure it’s well worth a look.