Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

he’d been pursuing since his early teens was now
just a matter of following instructions, like heating up
a can of Heinz beans.
Any suspicions were allayed when the Bowies
placed Zowie in the temporary care of their
neighbors in Haddon Hall and flew to New York to
formally sign the RCA paperwork in the fall of 1971.
RCA had gone out of their way to make the Bowies
feel special. Mercury had put him up in a Holiday Inn.
This time, RCA booked him into the Warwick Hotel
on Fifty-fourth street, the William Randolph Hearst–
built palace where Elvis, the King himself, stayed.
Waiting for them in their suite was Presley’s full vinyl
catalog, as if to say, “This is the good company you
will be in.”
“This is it, isn’t it?” Bowie reportedly said to Angie
as they looked down on Central Park from their
window. After nearly a full decade of chasing fame
and power, this was it.
He and Angie never did get to meet Elvis on that
trip. The King was in Vegas, but Bowie did meet
several figures who had been, in his eyes, just as
important as Elvis Presley. The first of these was
Andy Warhol. With his associates from the cast of
Pork as ambassadors, David was brought to the
Factory for an awkward tête à tête with the pop art
king on the afternoon of September 14. After
surviving an assassination attempt in June of 1968,
Warhol had tightened security at the Factory and
Bowie had to prove that he was who he claimed to
be before gaining admittance to the Factory.