Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

trusting your instincts worked well. Getting yourself a
bit of sex on the way was just natural.”
David’s fifth band in less than five years was
called the Buzz, which was ironic, as they too had
none. “He was not even a big fish in that little pond,”
says Hutchinson, who auditioned for and joined the
Buzz after wandering into the Marquee. “He was just
another singer that hadn’t done very much. The
musicians knew him but the general public hadn’t
seen much of David in those days. He was quite a
small fish really. But I had enough respect for him. I’d
seen his advert in the back of the New Musical
Express. He used to have a weekly advert. ‘We’re
looking for gigs.’ With a little photo of him. I realized
that somebody who could organize something like
rehearsals at the Marquee Club was fairly
organized.” Hutchinson had a wife and child and was
wary about joining a pop group but was persuaded
by David’s professionalism and talent.
By the spring of 1966, the Buzz had a residency at
the Marquee and Ralph Horton had secured a
backing deal of 1,500 pounds against 10 percent of
their royalties from a private investor named
Raymond Cook. Things looked like they were about
to finally come together. Hutchinson brought in a
keyboard player named Derek Boyes who added a
thrumming Hammond organ to the band’s sound for
some of David’s new compositions.
“He’d written quite a lot,” says Hutchinson. “None
of us had day jobs. Ralph more or less said, you
need this to be full-time. By the time we started