MOJO - David Bowie Special Edition

Foreword by Siouxsie Sioux

I WAS 15 WHEN I FIRST SAW DAVID Bowie. He was singing Starman on Top Of The Pops, and I was in hospital recovering from a serious illness. I just couldn't believe how striking he was. That ambiguous sexuality was so bold and futuristic that it made the traditional male/female role-play thing seem so outdated. Besides, I'd lost so much weight and had got so skinny that Bowie actually made me look cool!

He was tearing down all the old cliches, but he was also having a lot of fun doing it. Bowie was well into clothes and dressing up, and that had a lot of resonance with me, although I was never a Bowie lookalike.

A few years later, when he began to withdraw from it all, it really felt like there was something missing. Until then, his albums had been eagerly anticipated. But by the mid '70s there was a vacuum. It was no coincidence that so many people involved in punk at the beginning had been inspired by him. Bowie was the catalyst who'd brought a lot of us, the so-called Bromley Contingent, together. And out of that really small group of people, a lot happened ‹ including Siouxsie And The Banshees.

The Banshees eventually got to play on the same bill as him in 1987 in Anaheim, Los Angeles. He was doing his Glass Spider tour- we called it his Plastic Jiffy tour! ‹ and obviously he wasn't at his peak at that point. But even then, for a few numbers when it was just him in the spotlight, you could tell that the old magic was still there.

A couple of years ago [June 2002], I was lucky enough to see him perform the whole of Low at the Royal Festival Hall in London. I thought that album was just so fantastic. You really got a sense that he was going out on a limb, so it was great to hear him play that material live. I only wished it had been louder!

Siouxsie Sioux
South of France
November 2003

Contributed by Bonnie Bryant.