Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

shop, where David first took a part-time job. “He was
always a bit of a dreamer in that I’d give him a job to
do, come back in about an hour and he was still
chatting, the job unfinished, so that he had to go,” the
shop’s owner Vic Furlong said.
Jones and Underwood soon formed a group,
George and the Dragons, with a small, revolving
gang of like-minded classmates, allowing David a
chance to test his musical ability and begin to learn
rudimentary guitar strumming on an inexpensive
guitar that John had purchased for him along with a
tape recorder. “David and I were pretty good at
Everly Brothers–style harmonies and he definitely
had a gift or a talent which at that time was difficult to
put your finger on. We would sit for hours working out
numbers and recording them on his little Grundig
[tape recorder].” As with the sax lessons he would
soon begin with horn player Ronnie Ross, these
sessions inform his later approach to songwriting
—natural, born of conversation and improvisation as
opposed to any formal training; call it personal
discipline.
“We’d all bring our guitars to school and slip them
in my dad’s office before assembly,” says Frampton,
who formed his own group, the Little Ravens, at the
time. “And then at lunchtime he’d leave the door
unlocked so we could go get the guitars and sit on
the art block concrete stairs, which for guitar sound
and vocal echo was perfect. George, myself and
David would sit there and play all afternoon. They
were the rebels with thin ties and rocker haircuts. I