David Bowie is that rare thing: a person so famous, it’s hard to imagine them as a ‘normal’ person at all. But the last surviving member of his Spiders from Mars band says the iconic singer was ‘a strange bloke who you could not discuss the football scores with’.
‘Woody’ Woodmansey had a front row seat as Bowie rocketed to fame. They were together from the early days in obscurity in Beckenham, Kent, up until Bowie dramatically killed off his musical alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, on stage in 1973. Woody had a final conversation with the star just two days before he died in 2016.
Nearly ten years on, Bowie’s astonishing achievements are to be celebrated in a huge exhibition at London’s V&A museum, which opens on Saturday. But Woody recalls how his friend changed from a quiet, work-focused man who liked to drink a modest amount of lager on a night out.
‘Looking back, I think the whole thing changed because of the drugs,’ he says. ‘When they did interviews with him sometimes, it was like they wanted Ziggy Stardust to talk to. They didn’t even want Bowie.
‘It was like, what would Ziggy do? What does Ziggy think? He kept it on all the time. So when he came off stage and he got in the limo, you were in the limo with Ziggy, not with David. It did take over, really. And it was very hard to deal with Ziggy.
‘Bowie was definitely fighting it. He was trying to play the game and be in control, in control of the Ziggy creation, but it was more needed and wanted on a 24-7 basis. And then the drug thing just merged the two, I think. And I think he got a little bit scared of it.’
That much Bowie himself confirmed in interviews. Woodmansey has his own insights, however.
By the time they were touring America in 1972, Bowie was travelling with his own drug supplier as he fell headlong into cocaine addiction. By 1974, when he made the iconic documentary film Cracked Actor, he was existing on a diet of cocaine and milk.
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Speaking at the first Ziggyfest, which was held on Heddon Street last Saturday, Woodmansey said: ‘I remember one night saying, “What does that guy do?” There was a guy dressed in black who was always around the stage, and I said, “He’s been on every gig. I’ve never seen him lift an amplifier or do anything.”
‘And they went, “Yeah, well, he supplies, doesn’t he?” And I was like, “What? What does he supply?”
‘It took a bit for the penny to drop. And then I thought, that’s for the road crew. I didn’t know till after the [band] had split that David was doing stuff. I had no idea. I’d never seen him do anything.’
Woody’s adventures with Bowie started when he shared a bill with Spiders from Mars guitarist Mick Ronson.
Drummer Woodmansey said: ‘I was working in a factory. One Sunday, I was doing overtime and I was on a lathe. I looked up and Mick Ronson stood there with the whole band, and they’d somehow got through security.’ They asked him to join the band there and then.
Ronson went on to work with Bowie – then a struggling folk singer – and brought Woodmansey with him.
‘Bowie phoned and said “You don’t have to worry about food, rent. I’ve got this flat in Beckenham … we’re going to do an album”.’
He went on: ‘He drank lager. We never got over the top though. It was just a good night out. He was very work-driven and it had to work and he skyrocketed.’
David Bowie with Mick Ronson. Mick ‘Woody’ Woodmansey, far right, on the drums
Woody Woodmansey attends Ziggyfest at Ziggy Green, the Bowie-inspired restaurant on Heddon Street, London
Woodmansey was there when Bowie composed hits like Starman and said: ‘He never explained where his ideas came from. He was pretty strange anyway. You couldn’t say to him “I see Arsenal won again”. He would just look at you as if you’d fallen out of a tree.
‘When he started writing, he had a guitar in the lounge and his piano in the bedroom. You’d just hear him bashing the words all day and then he’d shout, “Woody, I finished one” and I’d go in and he’d just play one and go, “Oh, that’s good, you know”, and then that just went on. Every song was like, “Hell, these are really good”.
‘We put Changes out as a single, and Life on Mars – they got played on the radio every hour, but didn’t sell. We finished an album but the record company wouldn’t put it out as we didn’t have a single. Then Bowie wrote Starman over the weekend and we thought, “That will do it”.’
There was some resistance in the band to wearing make up. ‘The make up was something else. That was a bit of a jolt. I think he just bulls***ted us into it.
‘We were doing a TV show and he took out eyeliner and make-up and started putting foundation on. We were looking at him, and he was like “You boys not wearing make-up then?” as if we had forgotten it.
‘[We were] three Yorkshire boys, and we told him we were not. He didn’t bat an eyelid. He said “Oh, that’s a shame. You haven’t worked under these strong studio lights, they’ll pull the features out of your face. Your face will look like an egg with a wig on it and your family will be watching and a million others.”
‘The next day we were like “What do you do with this, then?” And he gave us a quick demo on how to put it all on. We looked like three hookers but we refined it really quickly – and we found that that the girls loved it.’
Then, on the 1972 tour of the States, Bowie expected the band to dress up.
The new David Bowie centre, home to an archive of over 90,000 items, available to see at the V&A East Storehouse in London from this Saturday
‘You get to a hotel in New York or Denver or wherever, and there’d be a parcel with a new outfit. I remember we got to Philadelphia. I said when I saw my costume “He can’t pay me enough to wear this”. And he (Bowie) said, “Are you wearing that outfit tonight that Freddie sent?”
‘I went, “Look, I’m not wearing it”. And he was like, “You’re so ungrateful. He was up all night doing that. His fingers were bleeding.”
‘I said, “I don’t care if his fingers fell off. I’m still not wearing it.” So we were having this massive fight and we’re still fighting underneath the stage. And he’s going, “You’re so ungrateful.”
‘I swore, you know? And he’s just cursing me so much and I’m doing the same back. Anyway, during the first song, he comes over to the drums and we both just crack up and laugh at it. That was the kind of the spirit of it. You could have a big fight and then it was gone, you know?’
Woodmansey found himself out of a job after Bowie killed off Ziggy Stardust, meaning he no longer needed the backing band.
They maintained sporadic but fond contact over the years. When Woody was performing in New York in 2016, he was told by security that Bowie was going to come down and sing with them.
Woodmansey said: ‘We got halfway and he did not turn up. Halfway through the gig, Tony (Visconti, Bowie’s friend and manager) said “Shall I give David a ring?”
‘He answered and it was his birthday, January 10. We played Happy Birthday and the audience sang and we held the phone up and he said to ask what they thought of Blackstar, his final album.
‘Then he said, “Thanks for ringing. Have a good tour. I’ll catch you later”.’
It was one of the last times anyone spoke to David Bowie. A day and a half later it was announced that he had died of cancer, having kept his illness secret.
- The David Bowie Centre opens at V&A Stratford Storehouse this weekend showcasing 90,000 Bowie items. Details of Ziggyfest can be found here
