Bowie PDF Book from JFK247

the road, Woolf, who was at the wheel, suddenly
shouted out, ‘Eeeuurgh, what’s that smell?’ Realising
the woman was a vagrant, he pulled over and,
mercilessly, insisted their passenger get out.
David’s annoyance at this, the others speculated,
was nothing to do with sympathy for the homeless
woman. ‘Would he have?’ they asked each other,
before responding in chorus, ‘Yes, he would!’
After uniting David with The Manish Boys, Les Conn
had declined to take his managerial cut of the
band’s intermittent live earnings, but he still hustled
on their behalf. At the end of September he secured
an audition with Mickie Most, who, in the wake of
The Animals’ ‘House of the Rising Sun’, was
probably the biggest independent producer in
London. After setting up at one of their regular
haunts, the comedian Charlie Chester’s casino on
Archer Street, the band ran through a couple of
numbers. As was his habit, Most made his decision
on the spot, asking, ‘Do you want to record for me,
boys?’ In unison, they shouted, ‘Yes!’
There was another meeting with Mickie Most to
talk through their material on the evening before the
recording session at Regent Sound on 6 October,
overseen by Decca’s Mike Smith. As the band ran
through their three songs, ‘Hello Stranger’, ‘Duke of
Earl’ and ‘Love is Strange’, David’s singing was
flawless, but on every take of ‘Love is Strange’, John
Watson and Johnny Flux’s backing vocals were
ragged and out-of-sync. As Smith played back the
song, pointing out the problem, tension mounted and