Budget Stopps Remembers Bowie At Aylesbury

Ain’t that poster love?

We’ve posted a fair bit on these pages regarding Aylesbury Friars over the last year or so, (04.04.2009 NEWS: BOWIE AT FRIARS REVIEWS IN NEW ROXETTE MAGAZINE & 02.13.2009 NEWS: OFFICIAL FRIARS AYLESBURY COMPENDIUM UPDATED & 05.07.2008 NEWS: OFFICIAL FRIARS AYLESBURY COMPENDIUM IS LIVE) and now Mike O’Connor who runs The official FRIARS Aylesbury compendium has told us about his most recent interview which is with Budget Stopps, the wife of Friars promoter, David Stopps.

Budget was instrumental in putting on the first Bowie gig at the venue and she designed many of the posters, so familiar with locals, including the two Bowie related ones above. Here’s an excerpt from the interview…

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That (Groundhogs April 1971)was the saviour gig wasn’t it? Without that, there would have been no Bowie, no Mott The Hoople…

I think one of the things that helped put the club on the map was the Bowie gig in 1971. That was my connection (laughs). Nobody had heard of him, but I was a huge fan as he had written stuff for my ex husband (a musician) and I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t recording it himself. I had a demo tape of Bowie which I played to David and later when we were offered him through the music business, we snapped him up and got him when nobody else knew who he was. We had 700 people at that first gig. People were coming up from London. That was the beginning really – it was the first night he had played with Mick Ronson.

I’ve heard a bootleg of that gig and what surprised me was how nervous he seemed to be.

He was a very different person then! He was with Angie Bowie and had long hair. He was wearing all these long flowing clothes. If you imagine the cover of The Man Who Sold The World album, that’s what he looked like. He loved Friars, it’s close to his heart and you should try to find him to interview him! That gig was important for us and for him.

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I’m presuming the ex husband that Budget mentions is Les Payne whose band, Chameleon, were given a demo of Star by Bowie in early 1971 with a view to them recording it as a single. The song was recorded by Chameleon but never released. The demo was markedly different to the version that eventually surfaced on Ziggy Stardust and you can read more about it over at The Ziggy Stardust Companion.

Stay tuned for further accounts of the Bowie Friars gigs by local man Rick Pearce and read the full Budget interview here.