Station To Station…
BowieNetter lordofthethings pointed me in the direction of an
Entitled No fun at the Ministry of Drugs, here’s the paper’s description of the article: “Being a music journalist in the 70s was seen as a ticket to debauched glory. But, Tim Lott recalls, the bands were morons, the Stranglers tried to kidnap him, and Kate Bush wouldn’t take him up on a date.”.
However, it seems music journalism didn’t come naturally to Tim, as he explains: “Truth was, like many apparent extroverts, I was somewhat shy. I was nervous of the people I interviewed anyway, even when they were friendly, inoffensive characters such as Nick Lowe or Jonathan Richman. I was scared when they were superstars like David Bowie, Freddie Mercury or Bryan Ferry. And I was terrified when faced with buccaneers like the Stranglers, the Clash, the Pistols and the Jam, who treated the music press – when it suited them – as deadly enemies.”.
Tim goes on to talk about the interview he managed to grab with DB on a Euston-bound train from Manchester, following the taping of the Marc show. And, though he claims he was working for Sounds, I remember the interview was published by Record Mirror. Indeed the scans on this page are from that original article dated September 24th, 1977.
The Bowie interview was such a coup for the publication that it became the cover story in favour of the Marc Bolan retrospective following the 29-year-old’s untimely death the previous week, on the 16th of September.
Here are a couple of excerpts from the Guardian piece…
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My sweetest memory was getting the first interview for three years with David Bowie in his Thin White Duke days. I had been covering Eddie and the Hot Rods, who were appearing on the Marc Bolan show, on which Bowie was also a guest. I took the train back to London with them and Bowie invited us all to join him in first class for the journey back. He thought I was a member of the band, and I didn’t disabuse him of that notion. In the meantime, I noted down everything he said on a paper plate hidden under the table. Bingo – my first ever world exclusive.
I remember thinking that Bowie had a few of his pages stuck together. He talked of meeting the astronaut John Glenn, who had told him that he had seen something on the moon that he wouldn’t ever tell anyone about. And Bowie seemed convinced that Nasa kept a cosmic black hole confined in a small metal box in the midwest, which, if it escaped, would swallow the whole universe. But other than that, he was extremely engaging.
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Having the original article to refer to, it’s clear that a couple of points have been lost in translation to some small degree. I know I’m being pedantic here, but in the Guardian piece Lott recalls that Bowie told him that John Glenn “had seen something on the moon”. However, in the original piece Bowie’s quotation was that Glenn had told him: “I saw more up there than I care to talk about. Earth is not alone.”
Also, in the Guardian version Lott says that he, along with Eddie and the Hot Rods, joined Bowie in first class. In the original Record Mirror item Bowie apparently joined them in second class…OK, so I have too much time on my hands!
You can read the full Guardian piece