Interview With A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Contains Some Startling Remarks

By the time Bowie gave this interview at 17, he had already shown a keen interest in music. He created his first group, the Konrads, in his early teens, but then jumped ship for a new band — the King Bees — soon after. He wasn’t happy with his colleagues’ lack of ambition, you see. These traits — an all-consuming drive to be big, and a willingness to try new things — would of course come to define Bowie. As well as his humor, of course.

Before he became a superstar in the 1970s, Bowie spent much of the 1960s attempting — and failing — to make it big. He experimented with different looks and musical styles, but nothing took off. As BBC writer Dylan Jones wrote in 2017, “When Bowie dressed up as a soul star, a dandy, a moody long-haired singer-songwriter, nobody took much notice.”

Then, in 1969 he finally had a hit. “Space Oddity,” the story of a stranded astronaut named Major Tom, was the world’s earliest taste of Bowie’s aptitude for portraying personas in his music. It reached the top five on the U.K. singles chart and is now considered one of his classic songs. And yet, despite its success, Bowie didn’t chart again for three long years.

When he returned in 1972, Bowie was a changed man. He’d adopted the persona of Ziggy Stardust, an orange-haired, gender-bending alien idol who’d come to Earth to inspire the masses. Both the single “Starman” and album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars were sizeable hits in the U.K. This was eight years after that infamous interview.

The flamboyant, eye-catching Stardust persona was thrilling, transcendent, and just a little bit dangerous. Bowie’s stage shows became sights to behold, with his outfits getting more and more outlandish. He inhabited his character much more thoroughly than many of his glam-rock peers, whom some argue seemed like they were simply wearing outfits.

The year after Ziggy Stardust hit, Bowie released the album Aladdin Sane. Incredibly, he debuted a new persona, whose title was a play on the phrase “A lad insane.” The cover, which featured Bowie with tall orange hair and a blue and red makeup lightning flash over his face, became an iconic image.

This new persona, birthed so soon after the one that had finally given him the success he craved, spoke to Bowie’s attitude toward reinvention. He was so fantastically creative and so determined to be unique, that he refused to simply peddle the same thing twice. Theoretically, he could have continued playing Stardust for decades and reaped the rewards, but this wasn’t how he was wired. And this was apparent even early on in his career.

Victoria Broackes, a theater curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, spoke about Bowie’s knack for reinvention to Vanity Fair in 2016. Conventional wisdom, she said, dictates that pop stars should “find something that works and then just keep at it. In Bowie’s case, when everyone was saying, ‘Go on and do more of that,’ he would throw everything up in the air and say, ‘Oh no, I’m going to try something else, and do something different.’”

In 1976 Bowie transformed again, this time into a character known as The Thin White Duke. Gone were the vibrant colors and skintight jumpsuits of Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, replaced by a white shirt, black waistcoat, and black pants. With his blonde hair short and slicked back, the character was purposely reminiscent of the alien Bowie played in the movie The Man Who Fell to Earth, which was released that same year.

Unfortunately, Bowie courted real controversy during this period when he made admiring comments about fascism in an interview. Bowie would subsequently allege that he’d done so while in character and that they weren’t his own opinions, but they still hung over the persona like a dark cloud. The singer would eventually attribute the comments to the severe drug problem he had at the time. And this wasn’t the first time he’d exposed a different side to himself in an interview.

Nile Rodgers, with whom Bowie collaborated on the 1983 hit “Let’s Dance,” once told the New York Post that the singer admitted to having no memory whatsoever of recording his Pin Ups album in 1973. He reportedly told Rodgers, “I know that’s me singing, I know that’s my record and my picture, but I don’t remember writing the songs. I don’t remember going into the studio.”

While in the throes of addiction, Bowie was living in Los Angeles. But, as he eloquently — and hilariously — put it, “I blew my nose one day and half my brains came out.” This scared him straight, convincing him that he needed to kick his habit and get his life back in order. So, he left LA completely and, in 1976, moved to Berlin, Germany.

It was here that he managed to relaunch his career with three albums that became known as the Berlin Trilogy. Low, “Heroes” and Lodger were all released over a three-year period and are now considered to be among his greatest works. In fact, the man himself once said, “My complete being is within those three albums.”

After this, Bowie reinvented himself yet again. Let’s Dance, which came out in 1983 and saw him move into the dance-pop arena, would prove to be his biggest-selling album ever. It increased his fame even further, turning him into a truly upper-echelon worldwide star. And this was how he’d stay until his death in 2016.

Obviously, while occupying a position at the forefront of popular culture for more than five decades, Bowie gave plenty of interviews. And it’s certainly worth looking at something he had a habit of doing anytime someone put a microphone in front of him. Bowie, for some reason, would start predicting the future.

Perhaps the best example came in a 1999 interview that saw Bowie give his thoughts on a fairly new-fangled invention known as the internet. The star said, “I don’t think we’ve even seen the tip of the iceberg. I think the potential of what the internet is going to do to society — for good and bad — is unimaginable.” And he went into more detail.

“The actual context and the state of content is going to be so different to anything we can envisage at the moment,” Bowie continued. “The interplay between the user and the provider will be so in simpatico it’s going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about.” He also felt that the internet would break down barriers between musicians and the public. Pretty on the money, huh?

Fascinatingly, Bowie was also speaking about diversity in the entertainment business almost 40 years ago. Way back in 1983, he questioned an MTV interviewer about why more black artists weren’t spotlighted on the channel. When an excuse was made, which involved appealing to Middle America, Bowie countered, “Should it not be a challenge to try to make the media far more integrated?”

This brings us nicely to the star’s TV debut, long before he was known as David Bowie or Ziggy Stardust or any of his other alter-egos. In 1964 he appeared on a show called BBC Tonight, on which he and some friends spoke to host Cliff Michelmore. Davy Jones, who was just 17 at the time, had formed a special group, you see.

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men had come together to combat society’s rejection of young guys growing their locks out. Bowie wasn’t happy at all, telling Michelmore, “I think we’re all fairly tolerant. But for the last two years, we’ve had comments like, ‘Darling!’ and ‘Can I carry your handbag?’ thrown at us, and I think it just has to stop now.”

To be fair, as the resolutely short-haired Michelmore admitted, the longer-haired gentleman in British society had been enduring some tough times. “They’re tired of persecution, they’re tired of taunts, they’re tired of losing their jobs,” the host explains. “They’re tired of being sent home from college, they’re tired of being sent home from school.” It didn’t paint a pretty picture.

As he struggles to find out what inspired Bowie and his friends to grow their hair to levels previously believed the exclusive domain of females, Michelmore asks, “Did you get this off the Rolling Stones?” This line of inquiry was quickly shot down in flames, though. All the young men claimed they were doing it long before Mick Jagger strutted onto the scene.

The young Bowie then delivers his bottom-line verdict with trademark gusto. He says, “I think we all like long hair, and we don’t see why other people should persecute us because of this.” The show created a significant buzz, and Bowie subsequently chatted to the London Evening News. It was here that he elaborated further on his society’s aims.

“It’s really for the protection of pop musicians and those who wear their hair long,” the future pop icon stated. “Anyone who has the courage to wear their hair down to his shoulders has to go through hell. It’s time we were united and stood up for our curls!”

This amusing response should clue you in that everything was not as it appeared with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Long-Haired Men. As it turned out, Bowie’s organization wasn’t really about spurned young men standing up for the rights of the persecuted long-haired masses. You see, the guys seen behind Bowie in the BBC Tonight interview were his group the Manish Boys — and their manager Les Conn!

In truth, the whole thing was actually a beautifully orchestrated publicity ploy spearheaded by Conn. It was born out of a situation that occurred when the band was supposed to perform on BBC series Gadzooks! It’s All Happening. Before cameras rolled, executives tried to get the band members to cut their long manes — and they weren’t happy about it.

The band rejected the idea but were only allowed to perform if they agreed to a strange proviso. It was that, if any complaints were raised about their unruly hairstyles, their performance payment would be donated to charity. Bowie and his band-mates begrudgingly agreed, but the front-man reportedly made sure to tell a producer, “I wouldn’t have my hair cut for the prime minister, let alone the BBC!”

Even though everyone was annoyed about the situation, Conn realized there was an opportunity for raising the band’s profile. A demonstration by the BBC’s headquarters was organized, with fans enlisted to hold wave placards that extolled the virtues of long hair. This then led to the appearance on BBC Tonight and a young Bowie getting his first taste of the limelight!

All in all, the stunt would prove to be indicative of something Bowie would then do throughout his career. Even though he wasn’t fighting for the rights of long-haired boys in any serious sense, he still resolutely stuck to his ideals of personal non-conformity. As a by-product, though, it helped many other young men of the era feel comfortable with wearing their hair long.

Throughout his years as a persona-inventing pop star, Bowie would again and again refuse to conform to society’s norms. He often did it with his tongue firmly in cheek and a mischievousness that was intoxicating. Again and again, though, his boundary-pushing would help countless people in society who previously felt like they existed on the fringes.

For example, Bowie’s gender-bending characters challenged the world’s idea of what was male or female, as well as what was gay or straight. After all, here was a man who wore make-up, dresses, and high heels. He wound up becoming an important figure in LGBTQ culture, despite flip-flopping numerous times on the status of his own sexuality.

During a 1972 Melody Maker magazine interview, Bowie said that he was gay. But, four years later, he told Playboy, “It’s true — I am a bisexual.” He again changed his stance in 1983, informing Rolling Stone that it was a big mistake to say he was bisexual, as he “was always a closet heterosexual.”

In his book Strange Fascination — David Bowie: The Definitive Story, biographer David Buckley stated that the star “mined sexual intrigue for its ability to shock.” He was of the opinion Bowie was “never gay, nor even consistently actively bisexual.” Buckley felt that, at the most, Bowie experimented with his sexuality “out of a sense of curiosity and a genuine allegiance with the ‘transgressional.’”

At the core of the matter, Bowie loved pushing people’s buttons and embodying the “other.” He was his own man and would do exactly what he wanted with his music, his image, and his personal life. This fierce adherence to non-conformity therefore meant that he was never viewed as someone who “used” queerness in a calculating way. Instead, he was vital to the enrichment of LGBTQ culture.

Angela Mazaris, the director of the LGBTQ Center at North Carolina’s Wake Forest University, spoke to the LiveScience website in the wake of Bowie’s 2016 death. She tried her best to explain why the man was so beloved. In her opinion, “He was so important for all the people who felt different, who felt like outsiders, who felt like their identities, for whatever reason, weren’t recognized and loved.”

Mazaris added, “When you read accounts of people who remember seeing David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust for the first time, they talk about this sort of awakening. The rocker’s bisexual alien alter-ego portrayed androgyny and non-heterosexual sexuality as beautiful and worth celebrating. I think it’s about being able to imagine possibilities for yourself and your identity.”

Elizabeth Coffey Williams, a transgender actress who starred in John Waters’ Pink Flamingos in 1972, spoke to the Daily Dot about Bowie’s legacy. She said, “There were people who were horrified by his presentation. He was genuinely pushing the boundaries. Make no mistake, it was a theatrical decision.”

Williams believes that the effects of Bowie declaring himself bisexual were seismic, though. “It had an impact on people who were never exposed to any such notion,” she explained. “Yet they were so impacted by his music and presentation.” In the end, Williams added, Bowie’s pioneering attitude toward fluid gender identity was a factor in taking the idea “into the mainstream.”

“He broadened the visibility,” Williams continued. “There was no word for this stuff. There was no transgender.” Yet even back in the 1970s, people like Williams and Bowie “recognized gender fluidity, and viscerally we understood gender as being more non-binary. And I think that David expressed that non-binary construct even before it had an official word.” In the end, though, Bowie’s true love ended up being the gorgeous model Iman Abdulmajid. And she’s the only one who can say she really knew what he was like. Since his death, Iman has given a few candid interviews, opening up about both their relationship and how she’s fared without him by her side.

One of Iman’s most candid interviews came three years after Bowie’s passing, when she bared her soul to magazine Essence. The confessional chat is proof just how much the celebrity couple truly loved each other. In it, she mentions a heartbreaking vow that she made after losing her husband.

Surprisingly, Iman once claimed that she initially had little interest in pursuing a romance with one of the world’s most celebrated musicians. She told The Guardian, “I was not ready for a relationship. Definitely I didn’t want to get into a relationship with somebody like him.”

That soon changed, though. And in 2010 Iman told Harper’s Bazaar that she was just as smitten with Bowie as she’d ever been. She said, “He always makes me laugh. It’s like cabaret. I keep him entertained, too. I still fancy him – totally! – after all these years.” The star’s passing was, as you can imagine, devastating for the Iman.

Following her husband’s untimely passing, Iman took to Instagram to reflect on their enduring 26-year relationship. In one particularly emotive post, the former model shared the unattributed quote, “The struggle is real, but so is God.” She also took to Twitter, where she offered the simple message, “Love & Gratitude.”

What’s more, Iman has seemingly since made it her mission to keep the memories of her relationship with Bowie alive. In any case, she regularly takes to social media to upload throwback images of the pair in happier times alongside the #BowieForever hashtag. And perhaps one of the most touching of these snaps is a picture of the couple locked in a beachside embrace, with the model captioning the shot, “The best part of me is you.”

It’s true, too, that Iman has spoken about her loss in public. In September 2016 she was briefly interviewed at New York Fashion Week, where she was attending a show staged by designer Tom Ford. And after a TV reporter described her as a survivor, the model responded, “Not as much as you think. It’s just been a tough year, but I’m holding up.”

Yet while Iman may have put a brave face on things, she was still struggling to cope with the loss of her husband two years after his passing. While talking to Porter, she explained, “Sometimes, I don’t want people to know how sad I am. People say to me, ‘Oh, you’re so strong.’ I’m not strong – I am just trying to keep it together.”

The model also went on to discuss how the public have reacted to her since Bowie’s death. She said, “People take pictures of me in the street and say [while touching my arm], ‘I am so sorry for your loss.’ I’m like, ‘Don’t touch me. You just took pictures of me. How can you be sorry?’”

Iman continued, “I get the fans’ grief, but it’s not the same. They have lost someone they look up to; we have lost a husband and a father.” She also insisted that she has no plans to look for a new love any time soon, adding, “I will never remarry. I do feel very lonely. But do I want a relationship? I can’t say never, but, no, not now.”

Then, in July 2019 Iman graced the front cover of Essence magazine’s summer issue. Not only did this appearance coincide with the 25th anniversary of the ESSENCE Festival, but it also neatly tied into the 25th anniversary of Iman Cosmetics. And the star herself told the publication that she was hugely proud of what she had achieved in the industry.

Iman explained, “When I came on the scene, I was catering to women of all skin colors. Regardless of what hue you are, as long as you are a woman with skin of color – whether you are Asian, Latina or African – I opened that gate.” It appeared, too, that her late husband had been key to her company’s success.

At the very least, Iman Cosmetics may have stayed nothing but a pipe dream had Bowie not encouraged his wife. Yes, while the model admitted that she was initially reluctant to pursue her business ambitions, she also claimed that Bowie had given her both the confidence and the impetus to move forward with her idea.

Speaking about how much of a personal champion her husband was, Iman told the magazine, “[Bowie] literally did not understand fear. He was in my corner cheering me on every step of the way. If it wasn’t for him, I would never have done it.”

And Iman also had no qualms about further opening up on the subject of her late spouse. More than three years on from his passing, she told Essence exactly what she missed the most about Bowie. “His sense of humor – he made me laugh every day,” she revealed.

Iman also credits Bowie for inspiring her and anyone who knew him to learn more about the world. She added to Essence, “He was a very curious person, so he made all of us very curious about everything in life.” However, anyone who’s particularly curious about Iman’s private life may be left wanting.

You see, when Iman was asked about the possibility of a future autobiography, she answered, “I have nothing to hide, but I’m not telling it. I’m still old-fashioned. I still find that I like to keep my privacy.” She claimed, too, that she has no desire “to tell everything.”

Yet even though Iman may not be recounting her life story in print any time soon, she is apparently still focusing on leaving the kind of legacy of which she can be proud. She told Essence, “Whether it’s in my business or in my charities, I stood up. I did not stay on the side, and I did not waste what was given to me.”

And while Iman also claimed that she “stumbled into life,” adding, “I was not looking to be a model. I was not looking to be in America,” she nevertheless worked with what she had. “And so that will be my legacy: I stood up,” the star concluded.

Iman also spoke about her legacy when she took to the Essence Festival’s Beauty Carnival stage that same month. There, she said, “I knew from day one that there wasn’t a lot of make-up for me. I wanted to change the language of beauty. It wasn’t about black women. It was about women with skin of color, which means the whole world.”

“I wanted to really change the language [that was used to describe ethnic brands],” Iman continued. “It’s not an ethnic brand. These are consumers. Don’t pigeonhole us, because we have the buying power. Whether it’s through Iman Cosmetics, creating a service for black women [or] standing for my daughters and daughters of many – that’s what I want to be remembered for.”

And it seems that Iman is far from ready to rest on her considerable laurels. Today, she may be seen gracing fashion industry conference panels such as the Apple Awards and Vogue Forces of Fashion. She also has plans to travel across the globe with friend and fellow model and activist Bethann Hardison – yet another achievement, perhaps, in a career that is already full of accomplishments.