Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

invited and there were just a handful of people there,
and I was utterly unimpressed. Unimpressed by
David’s mime, because at that time he was imitating
Marcel Marceau, which is a very different kind of
mime than I do, I mean a very different kind of mime;
my mime is much more expressive. It’s much more
of a dance mime as opposed to the French
pantomime. Even though I studied with Marceau and
I passed on what I learned from Marceau to Bowie.
But then David went off into that awful kind of whitefaced
striped shirt mime routine. He did it because
he loved it. He loved to mime and Marcel Marceau
and white faces and striped shirts. Whereas I have a
great talent as a mime but absolutely no talent as a
singer, he has a great talent as a singer-songwriter,
but not as a mime.”
Others, like the London-based photographer Ray
Stevenson, found Bowie’s mime forays to be
perfectly in keeping with the sway of the culture. “The
mime stuff. I’m not very big on that but I think he
brought something fresher to it,” he says, “Marcel
Marceau that was my idea of mime, but I recall
seeing Bowie doing a mime of an old guy walking
down the street with a bent back. He stops to pick up
a discarded cigarette and it’s a joint. Then he stands
up straight, has a great time smoking, and as it
wears off, he goes back to his bent back. Marcel
Marceau wouldn’t have done that.”
After the shows, the incense would be lit and hash
joints passed around. Maybe a little money would be
exchanged for their efforts, but that was not the point.