upfront


50 years of Ziggy Stardust


Marking five decades since the release of one of David Bowie’s most iconic albums, singer and formative confidante of his (among other legends of the era) Dana Gillespie will be in Cardiff for an intimate celebratory weekend. Adam England got a taste of what audiences can expect to hear from her storied life.


“I haven’t been to Cardiff for a while,” Dana Gillespie tells me, “I‘ve always loved the city, but haven‘t been there for a while.” The 73-year-old will be heading back to


the Welsh capital on Sat 18 June, however, for the Newsoundwales Bowie Weekend. She’s taking part in An Evening With Dana Gillespie, – speaking to David Owens as part of a weekend of events set to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the David Bowie classic The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. “I haven’t a clue how the evening will


“He was taken to the next level, thanks to DeFries and his clever planning and mad ideas. But he always accepted Bowie’s ideas, as well. When they decided to kill off Ziggy Stardust, I was in the room when it was being discussed the night before.”


go because one waits to get the vibe from the audience,” she explains. “I’ll tell whatever stories come to my head … Maybe we’ll do an acoustic version of Andy Warhol.


Did Gillespie ever think that Bowie would become the huge megastar he did back in those early days? “The answer is no way,” she says. “America was sort of a dream away – charter flights hadn’t been invented; a lot of people after the war didn’t even have passports. I don’t think anyone thought about the American side of it … I can’t even say it was a dream.” Gillespie tells me that she started writing


“What I really like from these talks are the questions and answers at the end of it, so I hope that people will think up some interesting questions. I don’t care how crazy and off-the- wall they are – it’s always amusing!” Gillespie, whose book Weren’t Born A


Man came out last year, and Bowie went back decades – they first met in their teens. “It was 1963 or 1964 – I’d just started going to the Marquee Club, the top blues club. One night there was Bowie, but he was still called David Jones and the Manish Boys in those days,” Gillespie explains.


song – I want to come and play it to you’. He came in, and he played Space Oddity to me, so I heard it when it was just created.” Gillespie


careers, describing Bowie as “far better at networking with important people than me”, while the pair would eventually both get signed. Dana would sign to the legendary Decca Records, while Bowie signed to Deram Records, a subsidiary.


talks about their respective


“The main thing that stuck, in a way, to our friendship, was wanting to be known as songwriters,” Dana explains, “He would listen to my very naive newly-penned songs, and he played me some of his. I was at home one day when he called and said, ‘I’ve just written a


“And then [David] called me one day,” says Gillespie, “and said ‘I think I’ve found the perfect man to be our manager’. And this was Tony DeFries, who started the company MainMan, which was, in a way, very pivotal in catapulting Bowie to the next level of superstardom.


MOONAGE DAYDREAM David Bowie / Mick Rock (Genesis, £45)


20 years after its initial publication, this unparalleled visual guide to the cultural phenomenon that was Ziggy Stardust has been revamped to celebrate the half-centu- ry since the Spiders From Mars crashlanded into British living rooms. Well, that’s what it felt like at the time for any Top Of The Pops viewer who witnessed David Bowie’s 1972 performance of Starman with his arms around guitarist Mick Ronson. Bowie looked like he’d travelled around the cosmos a few times since his Space Oddity performance of 1969 – an alien to this world. What Moonage Daydream does so well is chart that development through the thousands of photographs that legendary photographer Mick Rock took of Bowie in the lead-up to the launch of his alter ego, Ziggy Stardust – across tours, single performances, the release of the seminal Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars album release to, of course, the final death of Ziggy when Bowie broke up the band. Visually stunning and featuring plenty of words from the man himself, there’s no better way to see how the myth was first conjured by the late master of magic and music, David Bowie aka Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, Major Tom… and, of course, Ziggy Stardust.


JOHN-PAUL DAVIES 8


songs at 11. Further into her teens, she had her first manager and her first record deal. However, “nothing was ever planned; there was no template. A ‘pop star’ didn’t exist – you were a singer. The most you could do was make your singles and hope that it would sell or that the BBC would play it.” Certainly, it would be fair to say that Dana has had a rather good career. From her beginnings in folk to her current blues output, her discography is prolific, and she tells me that she’s already got gigs booked for next year. And what about the next volume of her autobiography? Well, “that takes a bit of just sitting in a chair, looking thoughtfully at the sky, and waiting for the right mood to strike.”


Seligman Theatre, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Sat 18 June. Tickets: £12.50. Info: chapter.org


WIN!


A copy of MOONAGE DAYDREAM


With your appetite hopefully whetted for a full-scale book of peak Bowie, and peak Mick Rock for that matter, why not go the competitive route and attempt to score one of the five Moonage Daydream hardbacks generously donated by Genesis Publications?


All you need to do is answer this question: In the lyrics of Ziggy Stardust the song, what instrument is Ziggy credited as playing?


Email your answer to:


info@buzzmag.co.uk by Thursday 30th June 2022 with ‘Moonage Daydream’ in the heading.


Mick Rock


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