Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

oller skates,” he quipped upon announcing the tour.
It was around this time that lots of Bowie spottings
began to take place. “Bowie was at the show last
night!” “I just saw Bowie.” “I shared a cab with
Bowie.” Ironically, as the city was under implicit
siege (on constant orange alert), David Bowie
walked around with no protection to speak of. He’d
become, as he had in Berlin in the late seventies,
very much a man of the people, grabbing coffee in
the morning, unbothered, at Café Gitane by his
apartment.
“If he wanted off the street, he could do that too,”
says Moby. “It’s a bourgeois city. If he wants to have
a five-hundred-dollar dinner he can do that. I’d see
him walking on Prince Street on the way to dinner
and we’d just run into each other. It made him feel
more comfortable knowing he had a friendly face a
block away. I think he really enjoys it. Every door is
open. He and Iman, on their own, they’re both iconic
superstars. Together they are closer to royalty. They
are our royalty.”
Bands like the Strokes, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs,
Secret Machines, Interpol and the Liars made a
living downtown and went to exciting shows. Bowie
started going out again and drawing inspiration from
the new rock. He’d be spotted at many of the early
club shows of the above-mentioned bands and used
his influence among Bowienet subscribers to talk
many of them up. A visit from Bowie backstage
became tantamount to being in the court of the king
of New York. It meant your band had arrived. As with