From The National Tabloid Paper, here is a story that has been passed around lately. It includes an interesting conspiracy theory. Have a look…
MAJOR TOM’S NOT PLAYING BALL Question: Was David Bowie’s Major Tom named after the fomer Prime Minister’s [John Major] father? Recent biographers of Bowie maintain that, when writing his tenth single and first hit, Space oddity, in South-East London in early 1969, the budding rock star remembered an old Brixton theatre bill advertising a circus performer named Tom Major and named his song’s doomed spaceman Major Tom. Tom Major, living in Brixton, had changed his name from Abraham Thomas Ball and left the stage and circus to make garden gnomes. David Bowie, born in nearby Bermondsey, changed his name from Jones. Both John Major and David Bowie had older brothers called Terry whom they initially idolized but who later became potential sources of embarrassment to them.
Bowie is famous for ‘remaking’ his image many times during a lengthy career. John Major’s sister Pat has said her brother John ‘remade himself so thoroughly, the creation had become the real thing’. But any suggested connection won’t stand closer examination. When Tom Major- Ball moved his family from Worcester Park, Surrey to Coldharbour Lane, Brixton in 1955, his stage career was already well in the past. Though Tom claimed to have played every theatre in the land, including Brixton, his act had no specific link with the Brixton area, to which he moved only when his gnome business was failing. Bowie’s family had moved from Bermondsey to suburban Bromley by the time he wrote Space Oddity. It would have had to have been a very old poster indeed which attracted his attention if despairing Major Tom was named after performing Tom Major.
Sent by Richard from the UK division of Gossip Inc