Bowie Style

Ava Cherry, the funk-soul sister.
While Angie became increasingly irrelevant, Ava
was fresh, fun – and different. “He was fascinated by
black people,” she told the Gillmans. “Black girls, any
girls he would sleep with when I was with him were
black.” That’s when he wasn’t enjoying brief liaisons
with Salvador Dali’s muse Amanda Lear, Marianne
Faithfull or, later in the decade, Berlin tranny Romy
Haag. Bowie found further exotic thrills in the
company of two older women, Oona Chaplin and
Elizabeth Taylor, but by the mid-Seventies, the
dominant woman in his life was his assistant ‘Coco’.
MainMan’s gloriously shambolic organisational
structure gave Coco, alias Corrine Schwab, a former
assistant to UK concert promoter Peter Bowyer, the
opportunity to rise from secretary in the London
office to David’s personal assistant during the ‘74
US tour. Stepping into the vacuum created by the
stand-off between Bowie and Tony DeFries, her
composure and cultured manner was exactly what
Bowie needed during this strained period of his life.
But her ascent to the top, which was complete by the
late Seventies, won her enemies. Some insisted the
iron curtain she wrapped around her charge was a
way of disarming rivals. Others suggested that Coco
was another Bowie creation, a surrogate mother
who did his dirty work for him – and took the flak for
it, so that David’s genial reputation remained