Bowie PDF Book from JFK247

event. Different people have different perceptions of
that week: Lisa Robinson, who was central to the
RCA signing, saw David as the star of proceedings,
boyish, enthused, with Defries playing the role of
Colonel Parker to David’s Elvis. Lisa, her husband
Richard, and many others were caught in the
spotlight of David’s charm, which he’d learned to
focus with dazzling effectiveness: he’d pick words
out of their sentences and repeat them, as if they
had crystallised thoughts in his own mind, or when
bumping into them again, he’d act as if he was
barely able to function in the intervening minutes.
Sometimes, talking to him, the objects of his
attention would experience that giddy, tingly feeling
you get when you’re in love.
Others saw Tony Defries as the star of the show:
Tony Zanetta was enchanted by Bowie, but found
Defries had a unique sense of power emanating
from him. ‘[He was] a magical person, he seemed
older than he was and very wise – like a sage.’
Dennis Katz, RCA’s head of A&R, was keen to
close the deal. As Tom Ayers had told David, the
label had seen Elvis Presley’s sales in seemingly
irreversible decline; Katz desperately needed new
talent and had been bowled over by an acetate of
the earlier Hunky Dory tracks. But it was Richard
and Lisa Robinson who would prove crucial to the
signing; the couple were arbiters of cool, RCA’s
‘company heads’. Richard had joined RCA as house
producer and Katz’s assistant in A&R; his wife Lisa
was New York’s hippest music journalist; together
they would prove David’s most potent champions.