‘I remember his charisma could hold a room in his thrall’: My friend David Bowie

David Lister knew David Bowie. As we approach the fifth anniversary of his death, he recalls the early years of multimedia performances and his passion for art

Bowie in concert in front of the Reichstag building in West Berlin in June 1987 (ullstein bild/Getty)

Like most right-thinking people of my generation – and subsequent generations – I was a huge fan of David Bowie. And when I was young, I was lucky enough to go to the now disappeared Rainbow theatre in London’s Finsbury Park to see him perform. That gig in August 1972 was to be one of the most memorable rock concerts of my life. For a start, the support band, a promising outfit called Roxy Music, weren’t half bad. The stage set, though, was odd. There was a ladder and scaffolding on stage, and I remember with some embarrassment remarking to my companion that it was pretty poor form by the venue not to have cleared all those remnants of renovation work away before the concert.

Well, rock as theatre was a new concept then, new that very night actually, especially with the multimedia elements it also contained –mime, dancers, a screen, a light show, you name it, so I’ll use that as an excuse. And then came the most theatrical sight of all. First, the sounds of Beethoven’s Ninth as adapted in electronic form for the then current film A Clockwork Orange. Then, Bowie came on stage – to gasps from the audience – in a blue Lurex jacket open to the navel, his hair described afterwards in a review by Petticoat magazine as “a solid bob of flaming Apricot Gold, made even brighter by a deathly white made-up face”. Bowie went through various costume changes during the show, again a novelty at a rock concert, and climbed to the top of the scaffolding for ‘Space Oddity’, to simulate being in space.

Bowie introduces Ziggy, who opens his first multimedia show at the Rainbow Theatre with ‘Lady Stardust’ ( )