Side 1

Five Years YANA ALANA

Soul Love SABRINA D'ANGELO

Moonage Daydream SEAN M WHELAN

Starman ALAN DUFFY

It Ain't Easy MAXINE BENEBA CLARKE

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Side 2

Star MANTRA

Hang On to Yourself ERIK JENSEN

Ziggy Stardust ANGIE HART

Suffragette City LINDA JAIVIN

Rock'n'Roll Suicide EMILIE ZOEY BAKER

In 1967, 20-year-old, long-haired, fancyboy folk singer David Bowie only had an unloved album of cockney tea-with-vicar psychedelic pop and gnome puns to his name.

He was looking for inspiration and his taste for the exotic led him to see one of Lindsay Kemp’s transsexual mimey dance stories. Bowie was entranced by its balls-out pretension. He brazenly asked to meet Kemp afterwards, then followed him home, and so began an affair, as they danced together on stage and between the sheets. As well as, er… human movement, Kemp taught Bowie about improvisation and makeup (which you’d have to say struck a chord). He also taught him tragedy. That was inevitable, considering Bowie’s tragic inability to not sleep with anyone he was introduced to. As it was, he was already sleeping with his genteel manager, Ken Pitt. Kemp wrote a show about his and Bowie’s coupledom, called Pierrot in Turquoise, in which Kemp’s “Pierrot” character wooed Bowie, who played the part of “Cloud”. The third part, “Harlequin”, was played by a tall blind man known as The Great Orlando. (Again, this was ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ London, 1967.) I think the show is best described in the bio, Alias: David Bowie: “Pierrot in Turquoise had its premiere at the Oxford Playhouse on December 28th. Kemp made his entrance by descending in a white hammock that represented the moon, while David, as Cloud, flitted about him. David wore a papier-mâché mask modelled on Kemp’s face, and the Great Orlando held up the frame of a mirror so that Kemp could paint himself with moonbeams. The performance won generous reviews, with David singled out for mention.” Needless to say Pierrot in Turquoise was a success and it got a fateful booking in the Lake District, for which the troupe set off in a rather un-Priscilla-like Transit van.

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It was driven by the costume and set designer Natasha Kornilof, with whom, just quietly, Bowie had also begun… relations. But actually not quietly enough, apparently, because on their first night, staying in a farmhouse, Bowie slipped out of Kemp’s four-poster bed and into Natasha’s arms, where they made enough noise to leave Kemp in no doubt he’d been — well, what’s the bisexual version of cuckolded? Bifolded? The next day Lindsay Kemp and Natasha had an argument over who’s boyfriend Bowie was, until late in the day, during preparations for that evening’s performance, The Great Orlando heard a scream from Kemp’s dressing room. At first he paid no attention, thinking it was a warm-up, but he soon discovered Kemp lying on the floor, blood trickling from his wrists. The Great Orlando whipped off his garters and applied them as a tourniquet, then carried his mentor out, wrapped in a cape. A most rock’n’roll suicide… Kemp was whisked to hospital. Doctors there declared his wounds underwhelming. “It was a gesture,” Kemp admitted. “They put Elastoplast on my wrist and told me not to be so daft.” (Presumably, the blind but Great Orlando was forgiven for getting caught up in all the drama, as Kemp no doubt described his plight convincingly.) The book takes up the story: “Kemp returned to the theatre just as the audience, in dinner jackets and evening dress, were settling into their seats. Even by Kemp’s standards, the performance attained new dramatic heights. As Kemp was lowered in his hammock, the wrists of his Pierrot costume were stained red with blood. David was at last sufficiently moved to cry, his tears saturating his papier-mâché mask and causing it to disintegrate. The audience hailed the performance as a triumph.” Things were not surprisingly awkward after that, but Bowie was off a new and theatrical path.