Excellent new biography of David Bowie by Wendy Leigh. She interviewed me at length for it and includes several of my stories - very accurately related. Could be a huge seller this Christmas.

"David was bisexual, but was predominantly heterosexual. Looking back now, I’ve got the feeling that his gay experiences were part of wanting to get on.”

I'm not sure if I understand what you are saying: Bowie used his body / his sexuality to get into the music biz (by sleeping with import male gate keepers)?

It's pretty good, DJ, and I think spot on. A combination of the different times, uncertainty about teenage sexuality, what all the rest of us were doing, knowing that it might help... I tell how I reckon, if I'd wanted to, he'd have slept with me but neither of us really wanted it so it didn't happen. I've not read it all yet but so far it's very good.

JK2006 wrote:
It's pretty good, DJ, and I think spot on. A combination of the different times, uncertainty about teenage sexuality, what all the rest of us were doing, knowing that it might help... I tell how I reckon, if I'd wanted to, he'd have slept with me but neither of us really wanted it so it didn't happen. I've not read it all yet but so far it's very good.

You didnt want to sleep with Bowie?

The book is written from a unique perspective on Bowie’s life & career: From his bed. Wendy Leigh’s sources are mostly people who shared a bed with Bowie or who know someone who once spend some time in a bed or in a bathroom etc. with Bowie (alone or in the company of others).

The account of his early years is (as far as I can tell) essentially correct (some stories are too good to be true). But Leigh doesn't know anything about music and has nothing to say about Bowie's oeuvre.

And beginning in the mid 1970s the story gets blurry.

Some big mistakes:

The “Anaheim-Affair” (Bowie storming out of TV interview with JK), didn’t happen during the Serious-Moonlight-Tour (1983). It was four years later during the Glass-Spider-Tour.

In 1987 Bowie wasn’t on top of his game. Never Let Me Down is arguably his worst album (Bowie himself called it “his nadir”), the tour was a silly farce.

Mick Ronson died in 1993, not in 1997.

Marlene Dietrich approved of Bowie as co-star in “Just A Gigolo” because he wrote a song about Kreutzberg (sic!), the borough of Berlin where she was born.

This is nonsense: Bowie didn’t write a song about Kreuzberg: On Heroes there’s a song called Neuköln (sic!). Marlene Dietrich wasn’t born in Kreuzberg or Neukölln, she was born in Schöneberg.

WORLD EXCLUSIVE! Revealed for the very first time: It wasn’t Bowie, it was Stevie Winwood Marlene Dietrich wanted to play the Prussian officer Paul von Przygodskion.

And here is the song with which Winwood (as part of the Spencer Davis Group) won Marlene’s heart: “Det War In Schöneberg Im Monat Mai” (It Happened In Schöneberg In The Month Of May) (from 1966):



And here is la Dietrich's version (from 1964):

Correct; it was indeed the Glass Spider tour.