Bowie Style

As Bowie and his Ziggy doppelganger reaped
greater success, the aloofness that critic Ray
Coleman had picked up on at the Festival Hall, had
intensified. The shows became more theatrical, with
a dance troupe, images projected onto the stage,
moveable scaffolding, even the piped sound of
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, lifted from the
soundtrack of A Clockwork Orange. “A Bowie
concert is your old Busby Berkeley production… this
was perhaps the most consciously theatrical rock
show ever staged,” wrote Charles Shaar Murray, not
entirely positively. David Bowie had become the
Star of ‘72, but there was already distinct unease
with what he was up to.
“The first couple of months were not easy. The people did
find it very hard, until we had a musical breakthrough. The