Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

edgy literature like Jean Genet’s homoerotic
Parisian novel Our Lady of the Flowers. By the time
he encountered Bowie, he was already equally
reviled and renowned for his work and his
accelerated and archly bohemian approach to life
and art.
“Most people think my life is very theatrical anyway
because it’s played to the hilt,” he has said. “I like to
do everything fully. I drink until I’m drunk. I eat until I’m
full, frequently until I’m sick. I don’t fancy people; I fall
in love with them. Leave out hate—it doesn’t come
into my work at all. I’m terribly into intoxication—
that’s the only thing that counts …”
Kemp first heard Bowie’s music while at NEMS,
the British booking agency that was finding him
employment as an opening act for various rock ’n’
roll shows. “They were getting me occasional gigs
during what was then my mime act, billed as Lindsay
Kemp’s a Man Who Mimes His Own Business,” he
says. Kemp is now in his seventies but his speech is
still marked with dramatic rolling “R”s and fits of
wicked laughter like John Lovitz as “Master
Thespian,” on Saturday Night Live.
“I’d be put in those kind of university gigs and
things with rock ’n’ roll singers and skiffle players
and so on. And it was one day that I was in the office
just checking that there was any work and the girls in
the office said, ‘Oh my God, Lindsay, you have to
meet and listen to David Bowie,’ who they had just
met. Bowie had been in the office also trying to get
work through NEMS even though he was with Ken