Bowie Style

comments like ‘darling’ and ‘Can I carry your
handbag?’ thrown at us and I think it has to stop.
In one 1964 interview, David insisted, “I would
sooner achieve the status as a Manish Boy that Mick
Jagger enjoys as a Rolling Stone than end up a
small-name solo singer.” With his next group, The
Lower Third, he had it both ways, adding his name
as the prefix. Impatient and still desperately chasing
success, he modelled the group on The Who,
hitching mid-Sixties Carnaby Street Mod imagery to
a more metropolitan take on R&B. The group’s first
single, ‘You’ve Got A Habit Of Leaving’, was a clear
appropriation of The Who’s sound; they’d even
roped in Who producer Shel Talmy for the session.
As David’s pop modernist styles grew ever more
flamboyant, his hipster strides, chisel-toed shoes
and highly-cultivated (and lacquered)