'I Didn't Care About His Lovers As Long As They Realised I Was Queen'

Beside Bowie: The Mick Ronson Story Coverage date: 19 May 2017 Circulation: 450910 Page: 4,5 ‘I didn’t care about his lovers as long as they realised I was queen’ David Bowie’s first wife, Angie, tells Will Hodgkinson about the couple’s bisexuality, life after Bowie’s death and her estrangement from their son ot long into our interview, Angie Fair Hotel in central London, and it Bowie offers a doesn’t take long to see how she would frankly surprising have been instrumental in propelling perspective on Bowie to fame. She has a voice that how she helped can surely be heard back in her home to come up with in Georgia. Now 67, she exudes a N more feminine version of the brittle, David Bowie’s sexually confrontational image for peroxide-blond glamour with which the Ziggy Stardust era. She didn’t she first made an impact in the early want to get pregnant. 1970s. And she can switch from being “My father didn’t want me to do utterly charming to quite terrifying. anything to upset his apple cart in She’s not actually here to talk about Cyprus,” says Angie Bowie, who her slight, feminine former husband, grew up on the island where her but the muscular hunk who once American father, a mining engineer, played guitar stage left of him. was stationed. “But hormones will Mick Ronson was working as a run rampant, so what does that gardener in Hull when in 1970 he leave you with? The other 50 per received an invitation to form a band cent of the population. I had an affair with Bowie. He went on to play on with a girl at college in Connecticut and also to arrange and co-write many and had to leave because if I stayed of the songs on Bowie’s golden-era there I would be locked up, as she albums in the early 1970s: The Man was, for four years in a psychiatric Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy institute in Yale for being gay. Stardust, Aladdin Sane. As Bowie states “So I had a grudge. I sat down with in an interview included in a new David the first night I met him and documentary on Ronson, Beside Bowie: we agreed we were bisexual. Later, The Mick Ronson Story: “I thought we when it came to understanding how were every bit as good as Mick Jagger we could reach the marketplace, I and Keith Richards. Ziggy and Mick wondered if there was a niche suited [Ronson] were the personification of to David. My conclusion was that that rock’n’roll dualism.” conversation about bisexuality.” Davie Bowie’s first wife is ensconced “Mick was a northerner first and in a suitably grand suite at the May foremost,” says Jon Brewer, a former The contents of the publications from which these extracts have been taken are copyright works and without prior permission of the relevant collecting society or save as permitted by statute may not be copied or otherwise reproduced (even for internal purposes) or resold. Beside Bowie: The Mick Ronson Story Coverage date: 19 May 2017 Circulation: 450910 Page: 4,5 manager of Bowie and the director album, Transformer. of the documentary. “He was as “Lou arrived at Heathrow with a boy down-to-earth as he was ambitious and girl who were brother and sister and hardworking. Bowie knew the and said, ‘Have you met my boyfriend two of them had a connection. He and girlfriend?’ ” says Angie. “In the also knew Mick was the best guitarist studio it was a love fest. Rono was at he ever worked with.” the console, David was beside him, Ronson does make for a fascinating and Rono said to Lou, ‘When it comes chapter in the Bowie story. After to recording, you might want to have Angie and David visited the guitarist your guitar in tune.’ He impressed the at his mother Minnie’s house in Hull hell out of Lou.” and Angie promised Minnie she would Brewer adds: “In the industry iron her son’s shirts and stop him from everyone knew Mick Ronson did falling prey to any rock’n’roll ailments, Perfect Day and Walk on the Wild Side. Ronson moved down to live with the It was only when I saw the album cover couple at Haddon Hall. It was a huge that I discovered he wasn’t credited.” Victorian house in suburban How about their lifestyle? Angie has Beckenham where Bowie, written off admitted the nanny did the lion’s share as a one-hit wonder after Space Oddity of looking after her and Bowie’s son, in 1969, was plotting ways of making Zowie (now known as Duncan Jones another impact. and a successful film director). “I got Haddon Hall from two Meanwhile, Bowie’s promiscuity — professors with 18 cats,” Angie booms. for a man who was supposed to be gay, “The house was full of plants, so you he slept with an awful lot of women — can imagine what the cats did. They would surely have posed a challenge thought they were outside. But by to a more conventional wife. the time I bleached it down it felt like “I really didn’t care about anyone ours. The boys in the band lived in getting in my face with David as long the mezzanine, Tony Visconti [Bowie’s as they realised I was the queen,” she producer] built a rehearsal room in the says. “I thought, ‘Sure, flirt, do your basement and our nanny [Marion thing. But guess what? I’m the queen Skene, who was bequeathed $1 million bee, baby!’ ” in Bowie’s will] lived in the basement Not that the leading figures of London’s clandestine gay scene were particularly happy about Bowie’s flat. It was a compound of creativity outrageousness. “It brought us the and Mick was so accommodating. I total disdain of jackasses and said to David: ‘He’s so striking, he’s so hypocrites,” she hollers. “I realised strong, he’s a Yorkshire surfer!’ I was we were having an effect when the there for David first and foremost, but closeted old queens started raging I could see what Rono had to offer.” about us and saying we were so In the early years Angie, Bowie and terrible. I thought, ‘We’ve got ’em Ronson lived in a glorious bubble of where it hurts!’ They didn’t want outré excitement. Struggling to get out anyone to know.” of a record contract as Bowie switched managers, they gave the songs The Problems really began when Tony Man Who Sold the World to Lulu and DeFries, Bowie’s manager, hired the All the Young Dudes to Mott the cast of Andy Warhol’s musical Pork Hoople to keep the Bowie name out to run his office in New York. “The there. They hung out at the Sombrero, Warhol people were fabulous as a gay club on Kensington High Street entertainers, but I had an issue with where Ronson struggled to work out how much sweat we were paying out not only who was gay or straight, but of David’s body. I never forgave Tony who was male or female. And they for that, and wrote an evil poem about made Lou Reed a star by producing, him called Kinky Big Nose.” arranging and, according to Brewer, She recites it: “He found himself a writing much of his 1972 breakthrough little bird that could sing, sing, sing. The contents of the publications from which these extracts have been taken are copyright works and without prior permission of the relevant collecting society or save as permitted by statute may not be copied or otherwise reproduced (even for internal purposes) or resold. Beside Bowie: The Mick Ronson Story Coverage date: 19 May 2017 Circulation: 450910 Page: 4,5 He flogged that bird until it died, fell touring guitarist for Bob Dylan, Ian on its broken wing.” Hunter and Morrissey, a rapprochement with Bowie came too late, at a tribute What did she think of Warhol? concert for Freddie Mercury in “I thought Andy Warhol was a total 1992. A year later Ronson died moron. I still do. You can take someone of cancer. He was 46. who paints Campbell’s soup tins and Did he and Angie keep in tell me for ever that it was a populist touch? “No, because he started moment and I will look at you with a going out with Suzi [Fussey, glazed expression. David had been on Bowie’s former hairdresser] the road with [the mime artist] Lindsay and he didn’t need two Kemp, and his mind juxtaposed Warhol women in his life. Besides, and Lindsay. The difference is that David got mad at me when Lindsay has everything and Warhol I offered to help Rono.” had nothing. Including no sexual Bowie was certainly attraction, for anyone on the planet, entranced by Angie — he as far as I can tell.” wrote The Prettiest Star and Golden Years about her — Angie claims she had no but the marriage ended in idea that Bowie and 1980, with custody of DeFries had cooked nine-year-old Zowie going up a plan to kill off to David. Angie claims she Ziggy Stardust and the was blackballed from the Spiders from Mars, and only found out entertainment industry after the when everyone else divorce, and was so depressed that did: when Bowie she came close to suicide. When I ask announced it on stage if things have improved for her since at the Hammersmith Bowie’s death last year, she becomes Odeon on July 3, 1973.

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