Bowie PDF Book from JFK247

The awareness that this adventure was coming to
a close imbued the album with a kind of desperate
nostalgia. David, Ronson and Richardson simply
picked out a bunch of 45s – The Pretty Things’
‘Rosalyn’, The Kinks’ ‘Where Have All the Good
Times Gone’, Syd and the Floyd’s ‘See Emily Play’
– and played a couple of the records to the band
each morning; they learned each song in the same
key, then bashed it out. David was more obviously
disengaged from Angie, at ease in the studio,
enjoying the carefree atmosphere of simply playing
other people’s songs, happy to let Mick Ronson bear
most of the musical burden while he honked away on
his schoolboy saxophone. He was nevertheless
rushed, as always, and keen to lay down his vocals
as quickly as possible. Ava Cherry was over in Paris
on a modelling job, and after tracking David down to
the Château, they spent cosy afternoons together
cuddled up before the huge Baroque fireplaces.
David was calm, but distracted, and Ava noticed
how he would defer his decisions to Tony Defries,
reliant on him – almost like a child. For her to
become anything more than a temporary fixture in
David’s life, Tony had to give his approval: he was
the gatekeeper to David’s personal life, like a father
or a priest, and had to be honoured. Her ritual
offerings took the form of demo recordings, which
David recorded with Ava in the studio.
Over those weeks, Ava also observed Bowie and
Ronson’s relationship up close. ‘Mick seemed very
distraught – there was some scuttle about him doing
a solo album and David wasn’t totally happy about