Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

everyone who had been working on it. So we were
really down in the dumps. Being Midwestern kids,
they had taken the seats that were on the numbers of
the tickets they had bought. So looking out over the
arena of eleven thousand empty seats, there would
be people here, and people there, and in the balcony
and down in front, and all scattered here and about.
So David just came out, stopped the show
immediately, and walked to the edge of the stage
and said, ‘Everybody come on down.’ And so they all
got up, and they all came down and just took seats
there in front of the stage, and there and then he
drew out the set list and altered the whole show, and
pretty much did a lot of it just sitting on the edge of
the stage singing directly to the audience. Stood up
for the dramatic bits. Used the lighting, used the
facilities, but he made it an intimate show tailored to
his audience. And that, I think, made as much
difference to St. Louis on the next tour being a
successful show, because those six hundred people
went away feeling special.”
What Bowie lacked in actual record and ticket
sales he more than made up for in media appeal.
The October 9, 1972, issue of Newsweek magazine
featured a short profile of Bowie, putting his roostercut
visage in millions of American homes. Entitled
“The Stardust Kid,” the piece accurately, if a bit
ornately, frames Bowie as the perfect star for the
seventies: “This is a time of confusion, a middle
ages, an appropriate breeding ground for the dark,
satanic majesty of England’s David Bowie.” This